Manfred Gerstenfeld is chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. This is his eighth book and it centers on the present situation of American Jewry. It contains a lengthy introductory overview essay summarizing the findings of the work as a whole. The body of the work consists in seventeen interviews Gerstenfeld conducted with leading American Jewish communal leaders, and public intellectuals.It is a distinguished list :Alan Dershowitz, Gary Rosenblatt, David Harris, Malcolm Hoenlein, Stuart Eisenstat, Abraham Foxman, Marvin Hier, Daniel Pipes, Shoshana Cardin, Rela Mintz Geffen, David Ellenson, Ismar Schorsch, Norman Lamm, Richard Joel, Carole Solomon, Mark Charendoff.
Most of them in one way or another address the threats presented to the community by demographical factors, increasing intermarriage and assimilation, aging populations, decreasing communal participation on the part of those under forty. But they frequently come to contradictory conclusions in regard to deeper analysis of the situation, and proposals as how to strengthen the community as a whole. Dershowitz condemns the present leadership and finds them ineffectual and lacking in initiative. Norman Podhoretz is impressed by the contradictory trends within the community, the withering and assimilating majority opposed by an increasingly more religiously learned and committed minority. His distinction suggests that a prediction made ten years by Rabbi Nachum Amsel which sees the Jewish world dividing into two groups, a Jewishly ignorant one and a truly committed knowledgeable one may be coming closer to being an accurate description of the American Jewish reality. Others such as Richard Joel and Marvin Heir provide encouraging stories of the building of individual institutions , respectively Hillel , and the Simon Weisenthal Center) which have strengthened the community as a whole. The book is a rich one and provides a great deal of insight into the American Jewish situation now. Gerstenfeld himself in his summary essay touches upon another crucial matter for the community its relation to Israel , and the effect that what he calls the ` mega- event' of Sept.11, 2001 has had upon the situation of American Jewry. In this area a number of the essays touch upon the ` new Anti- Semitism' that has emerged on the Left, and has become prominent on a number of American campuses.
This is a volume which should be read by anyone who has real concern for the American Jewish community and for the Jewish people as a whole.
I would however add that I would have like to have seen in this volume a more detailed analysis of the possible security implications for Israel and the Jewish people as a whole as a result of future developments in the American Jewish community.