Matt Lavine

Terrified by centuries of European oppression, Jews entered America and suffocated Judaism’s development. Viewing American culture through the lens of Europe, Jewish immigrants and their descendants failed to comprehend the unique relationship between Judaism and the American Republic. This failure has relegated American Judaism to little more than an homage to its European antecedent, thereby rendering irrelevant the greatest force for the progress of human society. Instead of continuing Judaism’s role in establishing the American civilization, America’s Jews have wasted their resources by transforming Judaism into a mere religion full of self-inspection and myopic isolation.

At the start of the 21st Century, American Jewish groups conducted surveys to determine the Jewish population of the United States. Depending on the survey, there were as many as seven million American Jews or as few as four million. The disparity in estimating the Jewish population is not the product of accounting error or statistical analysis but of each survey’s definition of a Jew. In contrast to their historical antecedents, these surveys were commissioned by Jews, not by gentile oppressors. While critical to survival in Europe, fixing the attributes of Jewish identity has little meaning and even less utility in sustaining Judaism in America. The continued obsession with irrelevant European standards has impeded the progress of American Judaism. The stifling of Judaism in America is the result of a paradigm that evolved from the European experience and that, in turn, has prevented American Jews from breaking free of Europe’s grip on Judaism.

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