Dennis Prager on reasons to marry in early 20s

The first and best argument for early marriage — providing, of course, that one meets a good person and believes this person will also be a good parent and/or provider — is that it forces you to grow up.

Nothing — and I mean nothing — makes us grow up as much as marriage does. Children are a close second, but the maturity leap from singlehood to marriage is still greater than the maturity leap from marriage without children to marriage with children.

The problem today is that becoming mature is not even on the list of most young people’s life goals. If anything, staying immature — committing to no one and remaining dependent on others — is more of a goal.

That is what “not ready” usually means.

Putting aside the financial issue, which we will address, “not ready” almost always means not willing — not “not ready” — to take on the permanent commitment to someone else that marriage entails.

Why were people throughout history ready to commit to marriage at a much younger age than people today? Only because society expected them to become adults at a younger age than today. Nothing makes you an adult as much as responsibility does. And no responsibility makes you an adult as much as marital responsibility.

And why, even today, are religious Jewish and Christian young men and women ready to marry in their early 20s? Because their values and their culture expect them to.

Let’s be honest. “I’m not ready” is usually a statement of emotional immaturity even when the person is otherwise a wonderful and responsible man or woman.

Dennis Prager, “Marry Young”, The Jewish Journal (11-17 October 2013), 10.

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“People will observe the Shabbas if it actually works for them”

I am actually not interested in simply furthering that we represent the Jewish people. I understand that it was a blip, a modern blip, exacerbated by the Holocaust, the Jewish peoplehood and “more than the Jews kept the Shabbas, the Shabbas kept the Jews” – that’s just a lie. It’s okay, I appreciate it, but for Jews who stopped keeping the Shabbas, it’s wonderful rhetoric, but it has nothing to do with how people function. People will observe the Shabbas if it actually works for them in their life to help them flourish. They’re not going to keep it because it keep them. I love the rhetoric and so I’m interested in shifting the balance – and I think this is great for rabbis – from Jewish peoplehood to actually Torah, to the wisdom and practice.

Rabbi Irwin Kula, “Texts Without Borders”, Rabbis Without Borders Fellowship, Third Cohort, Session #1 (Clal: New York City, 8 November 2011).

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The Decline of Ethnic Judaism in America & of Big Jewish Organizations

America loves your religious identity, it doesn’t care for your ethnic identity. If you want to have a Catholic school system in America, “That’s great, we respect your religious difference”. “Oh, you want to have a Presbyterian school, בסדר, we have one of those.” “Methodist school? Great!” “A Polish school? I don’t think so.” “Oh, you want to have a Catholic parish? Great.” “You want to have a Spanish-speaking school district? No way.” America is founded on religious difference and a tolerance for religious difference and a great, agitating inhospitability to ethnic difference. And so, as a result, the Jews who come from 1920-1960 to the United States have to figure out a way to do Jewish. And the way they do it is they cloak their ethnic experience in religious terms. The symbol of that is the social hall in the synagogue. You will never find a social hall in a synagogue in Eastern Europe, because it doesn’t make sense. A social hall is where you go to hang out with other Jews, because you can’t build a Jew club; America won’t let you do that.
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Institutions like Hillel, the Anti-Defamation League, Hadassah, UJA-Federation; any of these big organizations are outgrowths of that ethnic Jewish expression. And what we are facing in those organizations right now is a crisis in the decline of ethnic Judaism. That’s why Federation dollars go down, why the ADL is not as relevant, why young people are not so interested in the parochial concerns of Jews all around the world any more. This is one of the two master stories: the decline of ethnic Judaism.
The last gasp of this effort was the Richard Joel line of “Jews doing Jewish with other Jews”. That is the definition of ethnic Judaism: make a building on-campus, you’ll feel safe here because you won’t be tolerated anywhere else, and you’ll just hang out with other Jews.
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When the majority of people who are not Orthodox in the United States intermarry, why would you have a building for Jews doing Jewish with other Jews? That doesn’t make sense.

Rabbi Daniel Smokler, “Jewish Enrichment”, Hillel Institute (Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life: St. Louis, 30 July 2013).

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The Tribe as a Means for Judaism….

Judaism is about the wisdom and practice to help human beings become deeply human. And it is not, for me, an idealogous, tribalist, experience. The tribe is a means, the people is a means, and, although I understand and I walked away from synagogue life to work inside, strengthening the Jewish people, exclusively, at a moment in which I thought that the fundamental issue was to strengthen the Jewish people, to rescue a million Jews from the Soviet Union, to rescue 60,000-100,000 Jews from Ethiopia, to build the political infrastructure, and to help build the political structure of American Jewish life so that the body politic could be protected in a physical way. So I got that.
But I never imagined that was an ends. I cannot believe that, basically, we’re down to and American organized Jewish community that, at the core, worries simply about its security and survival. And it has taken that anxiety and projected it upon issues of identity. I’m mind-bogglingly blown away that that is what has happened to a 3,000-year-old wisdom tradition that has been knocking around the planet that has been asking and moving around fundamental human questions. I just cannot believe it.

Rabbi Irwin Kula, “Texts Without Borders”, Rabbis Without Borders Fellowship, Third Cohort, Session #1 (Clal: New York City, 8 November 2011).

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A difference between Jews who do and do not feel it is a liability to be a Jew

His interest in youth was closely allied to education. He cherished a great respect for learning….
He said, “There are those among our people who feel it is a liability to be a Jew. This does not occur to the Jew who has had an adequate background. The glories of his people, the luster of their history, the magnificent values which constitute the essence of his religion, the recognized fountainhead of all religions of modern civilizations, condition him to avert such self-hatred and self-pity. He can understand why the martyrs in Israel’s history died for their ideals. Their pride of ancestry gave them courage to accept and endure the most extraordinary punishment. Their thorough appreciation of their history was a sustaining force against shock and against confusion. It constituted a basis for the rebuilding of dignity and self-respect.”

Maurice Bisgyer, “Henry Monsky: His Work”, in Mrs. Henry Monsky and Maurice Bisgyer, Henry Monsky: The Man and His Work (New York: Crown Publishers, 1947), 76-77.

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The More Successful Movie Studios Become, the Less Risk-Averse They Are

The instinct to retrench and overemphasize strategies that have worked in the past is a common problem in companies as they get bigger and have more to lose, particularly as technologies change. Polaroid and BlackBerry doubled down on their time-tested formulas despite market changes, suggesting that this behavior can undermine even the most successful companies. “The more successful and larger they become, the more antibodies they develop to doing anything new,” said Alan MacCormack, a Harvard Business School professor. And this may explain why summer 2015 will see sequels in the franchises for “Batman,” “Superman,” “Avengers,” “Terminator,” “Independence Day,” “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Smurfs.”

Catherine Rampell, “Revenge of the Nerds”, The New York Times Magazine (8 September 2013), 16.

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The Jews have an old relationship with wine

…the Jewish relationship to wine has remained rooted in religious practice. Despite challenges in simply finding a bottle [or an amphora] of wine, our ancestors were able to maintain their wine traditions. I would venture to say that we Jews have the oldest codified relationship to wine of any people on earth. In this light, how could wine be anything but critical to Jewish life?

Jeff Morgan, quoted in Rob Eshman, “People of the Vine”, The Jewish Journal (30 August – 5 September 2013), 26.

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Intermarriage is a relationship of power, depending on gender and who negotiated for what

Intermarriage, like all marriage, is a relationship of power. How the power is divided depends on two things: gender and who negotiated for what, either before or after saying “I do.” If intermarriage has the potential to strengthen the Jewish people (along with institutions of education, such as summer camp or trips to Israel), it is critically important to understand the influence of the gender of the Jewish member in the marital union. Analyzing gender—the roles of both men and women combined with the relationship between the two sexes—is key to a full understanding of the meaning of Jewish intermarriage because gender informs how men and women raise children.

Keren McGinity, “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle: How the Gender of the Jewish Parent Influences Intermarriage”, AJS Perspectives (Spring 2013), 42.

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The Different Jewish Approaches of Obama and Booker

When Obama addresses Jewish audiences, he comes across as a liberal rabbi. He presents Jewish values as synonymous with progressive politics and draws heavily upon American Jewish history, name-dropping noted civil rights rabbinic activists like Abraham Joshua Heschel and Joachim Prinz. The American story, he seems to say, is the Jewish story—an ever-advancing universalistic ethic.

Booker, on the other hand, though committed to similarly liberal ends, presents more like his Orthodox mentors. He leans on traditional texts, from the weekly Torah portion to the Pirkei Avot, and is more likely to reference Hillel than Heschel. He keeps a stack of religious books on his desk, including an Artscroll Tanakh—the imprint of Orthodoxy’s most prolific publisher. When speaking Hebrew, his pronunciation sometimes slips into Ashkenazic, rather than the Sephardic-inflected tones of Modern Hebrew favored by non-Orthodox Jewry. And like his Chabad companions, Booker does not conflate Judaism with one particular political platform but rather plays up its spiritual uniqueness.

It would be tempting to dismiss these affectations as accidents of proximity, the incidental result of Obama and Booker being introduced to Judaism by different teachers. But they are not. They reflect deep-rooted divergences in both men’s political outlooks. …

Barack Obama has built his political career on downplaying difference. …

But where Obama conflates, Booker differentiates. He celebrates the sharp edges of identity that Obama works to soften—even when they are in tension with his own ideals. … He respects the dignity of difference, and the integrity of identity, which endears him even to those—like many in the Orthodox community—who do not share his progressive political views.

Yair Rosenberg, “New Jersey Senate Candidate Cory Booker Knows His Torah. So What?”  Tablet (12 August 2013) {http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/140767/cory-bookers-jewish-story?all=1}

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The challenges to Orthodoxy are how to deal with its burgeoning numbers

While the other movements are engaged in soul-searching on how to deal with dwindling and aging membership in synagogues, the challenges to Orthodoxy are how to deal with its burgeoning numbers: how to cost-effectively educate the hordes of children the Orthodox are having, how to expand ever-growing synagogues, and where to establish new communities where housing costs—for large homes—are low. But from college campuses, to urban communities of singles and young couples, to suburban communities with families and empty nesters—the numbers all show that Orthodoxy is an attractive type of Judaism, one that is easily replacing any fall-off, and is actually expanding through a relatively high birthrate and an expanding professional outreach movement.
It would stand to reason that Orthodoxy’s greatest challenge—in America, Israel, and around the world—would be having too much self-confidence and sense of triumphalism.

Rabbi Asher Lopatin, “Challenges and Opportunities for a Robust Orthodox Judaism”, Conversations Issue 17 (Autumn 2013/5774), 51.