The Pew Research Center’s monumental 2013 survey of American Jews reported the current rate of intermarriage among non-Orthodox Jews at 70 percent. Other findings indicated a steady drop in committed members of non-Orthodox synagogues and a growing number of young Jewish adults who little or no connection to the official Jewish community and its institutions.
Despite the enormous discussion and debate generated by the Pew study, there has not yet been a massive coordinated communal programmatic plan or even a perfunctory effort to deal with the report’s findings. Our major challenge and Israel’s responsibility today is to help individual Jews and their families come to grips with the dim future, as documented in the Pew report, that awaits their children and grandchildren and to seriously consider and ultimately embark on aliyah.
* * * * *
The third and most compelling factor in my decision to make aliyah with my family was, to my great surprise, my father. As a boy in Ozarov, Poland, he went to work at the age of nine, rolling and selling cigarettes to help support his family. Because of a fire that destroyed sections of that city, his family moved to Ostrovtza, the home of the Ostrovtzer Rebbe, one of great chassidic leaders in Poland. (The Ostrovtzer Rebbe had a passionate love for Eretz Yisrael. Asked once where he was from, he responded that he was from Jerusalem but because of complicated reasons he now found himself in Ostrovtza.)
The Rebbe requested that my father meet with him one morning, at which time he offered him an orange, a delicacy my father had never seen or eaten. The Rebbe said he’d heard my father was planning to leave for America. Leizer, he said, addressing him by his Yiddish name, promise me you will not work there on Shabbos. My father promised.
When I received semicha from Yeshiva University, my father’s friends from Ozarov who had immigrated to America arranged an evening in my honor. All of the friends present that evening were no longer observant. But my father had kept his promise to the Rebbe – he remained shomer Shabbos even during the very difficult years of the Great Depression and would continue to be shomer Shabbos to the end of his life.
When I was in college I joined my father at a meeting with the Ozarover Rebbe, a great rabbinic scholar from his hometown of Ozarov. I recall very little about their conversation except for their reminiscing about Ozarov. What really struck me, though, was that despite the enormous chasm in learning between them (my father had hardly received any Jewish education) the Rebbe displayed tremendous warmth for my father. It almost appeared to be a conversation of equals. Although I was told by his grandson, the current Ozarover Rebbe, that his grandfather did not perform weddings, he did so for my parents and also served as the sandek at my bris, which greatly solidified my father’s observance.
In terms of religion, my father never directed me in any specific manner or fashion. Looking back, however, my brother and I are convinced that our father’s unpretentious but unwavering and continuing commitment to his observance of Shabbat kept us moored in the faith.
Unfortunately, given the five-day work week that long ago become the norm in America and, more significantly, the diminished and dim level of overall Jewish commitment and observance described above, Shabbat can no Ionger serve as the only or most effective vehicle, as it did for my father, in maintaining an appreciable level of religious observance among young Jews.
The vehicle I’ve tried to create that was analogous to my father’s success with Shabbat is aliyah, nurturing in my children a love for Eretz Yisrael and an awareness of what it means for a Jew to make his or her life in Israel, raising families there in an encompassing and inspiring atmosphere that, like the Sabbath, is saturated with holiness.
My children and grandchildren, Baruch Hashem, all reside and are flourishing in Israel.
In the U.S., Friday was always my favorite day of the week because it preceded Shabbat. Since making aliyah, I have trouble remembering which day of the week it is. They all appear to me condensed into “yoma arichta,” one day. The whole week here is my prelude to Shabbat. I pray that my grandchildren and, please God, their children and their children’s children will share that same enhanced spiritual experience.
