Another Signpost

During the late 1970s when popular culture devolved into the hypersexual disco era, my Lithuanian grandmother sat me down on her floral patterned sofa and said this to me:
 
“Don’t date non-Jewish girls. Because if you do, you’ll marry one and your kids will be non-Jewish.”
 
My grandmother was neither a racist nor was she ethnocentric. She simply knew the point in Jewish law stating that if a child’s mother is non-Jewish, then the child’s non-Jewish. And even back in the '70s when intermarriage was still relatively uncommon (though gaining more speed and acceptance), my grandmother was concerned that assimilation would delete Jews from both her own progeny and the American population.
 
My grandmother wanted me to meet Jewish girls, which was nearly impossible in the suburban public high school I was attending. My parents also wanted me to meet Jewish girls. So did I. That’s why I joined USY.
 
USY, which stands for United Synagogue Youth, is Conservative Judaism’s youth group. I joined the USY chapter at the Conservative synagogue my family belonged to, and despite the florescent polyester bell-bottoms and puka shell necklace I had the misfortune to wear, I met Jewish girls and made Jewish friends.
 
And more than that, the group’s teen leaders became my role models because they seemed committed to marrying other Jews, continuing the Jewish people and living Jewish lives at least on some level. In fact, it was even against USY’s rules for these regional leaders to date non-Jews. If these teens wanted to become and remain USY leaders, they were required to date only other Jews.
 
It’s now a new generation and a new century. And according to a recent Times of Israel article, USY has dropped its ban on teenage leaders from dating non-Jews. This decision especially struck me because it was USY that kept me from interfaith dating during my high school years. After all, most of us non-observant kids were there because we wanted to date other Jews and stay at least culturally intact.
 
This decision to officially allow interfaith dating is also, at least to me, yet another signpost of the Ikvot Meshicha, the painful birth pangs preceding the messianic era. These birth pangs apparently include the tragic depletion of American Jewry.
 
Back in my USY days during the 1970s, there were about six million Jews in the US. Today, according to last year’s Pew Research Center survey of U.S. Jewry, there are now roughly 5.3 million Jews. And since the Pew survey broadly includes people with just one Jewish parent, there could even be much fewer than 5.3 million Jews in America according to Jewish law. Plus, with nearly six in ten Jews marrying non-Jews since 2000, we’re losing Jews fast.
 
This depletion of Jews seems reminiscent of what occurred at the end of the Egyptian exile. Only one-fifth of the Jewish population left Egypt according to Rashi, the great medieval Torah commentator. The remaining majority had assimilated to the point where they didn’t want to leave Egypt and ended up disappearing in the ninth plague of darkness.
 
And this historical and spiritual fact has everything to do with us.
 
Today, our leading rabbis all agree that ours is the generation right before the complete redemption of the Jewish people. Like that generation in Egypt, we’re also living in a historic time of transition with all roads leading to the Holy Land. And as we now stand at the cusp of this final redemption, especially in America, we’re once again seeing the majority of the Jewish people disappear.
 
It’s no great revelation to say that the only way to guarantee there’ll be a future Jewish generation is for Jews to date only Jews, which leads to marrying only Jews and hopefully raising (and educating) Jewish kids who care about being Jewish. It’s what my grandmother told me back when Jimmy Carter was still President.
 
I ended up being my grandmother’s only grandson who listened to her. The assimilation that devastated America devastated my own family as it has countless others.
 
What can we do to help stave off any further devastation (aside from dating and marrying other Jews as well as sending our kids to Jewish day schools)? 

We can spread emuna.

The more people are turned on to emuna books, CDs or just ideas, the more they’ll want to explore their Jewishness, marry other Jews, raise Jewish children and achieve their custom-made soul correction.

May the Jewish nation lose no more Jews to assimilation. May the full redemption arrive with every Jew accounted for and with unimaginable joy at the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem speedily and in our days.