Chaim I. Waxman, “The Limits of Futurology: Conflicting Perspectives on American Jewry,” in William Frankel, ed., Survey of Jewish Affairs, 1987 (Cranbury and London, Associated University Presses, 1988), 160-172 (original) (raw)

From the early 1960s until several years ago, there was more or less a consensus among social scientists of American Jewry that there was a steady decline both numerically and qualitatively in American Jewish life and the American Jewish community. In the spring of 1964, for example, a very gloomy prognosis for the future of American Jewry was provided in two widely read and discussed articles. One was a cover story for Look magazine, entitled "The Vanishing American Jew," which focused on the declining American Jewish birth rate, and the other was Marshall Sklare's article in Commentary, entitled "Intermarriage and the Jewish Future," in which he warned that intermarriage is "a matter more crucial to Jewish survival than any other" and projected a bleak outlook for the Jewish future. Empirical studies of American Jewish communities throughout the 1960s and 1970s confirmed the continuing decline of the birth rate and rise of the intermar riage rate, and in 1977, a Midstream article argued the possibility of a decline of the American Jewish population to some 10,000 by the year 2076. Al though most social scientists argued that was an exaggeration, virtually no one questioned the trend of decline. In fact, the evidence of decline, both in proportion to the total American population and in absolute numbers, was dramatically evident. While in 1937, according to demographer Sidney Gold stein, Jews comprised 3.7 percent of the total American population, by the onset of the 1980s, they had declined to between 2.4 and 2.5 percent. Nor was it anticipated that there would be any growth from one of the other major Chaim I. Waxman, associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University, has written widely on the sociology of American Jews and is a past president of the Association for the Sociological Study of Jewry. In addition to books on other subjects, he is the author of America's Jews in Transition (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983), and he is now completing a book on the sociology of American aliya, to be published by Wayne State University ftess.