On Jewish Peoplehood

In reviewing twentieth century Jewish history, the cause of peoplehood in many ways was a mainstay of Jewish life. The two dominant events of the century, the Holocaust and the birth of Israel, drove home the message of common Jewish fate and destiny. By century's close, however, the communal bonds of peoplehood had been badly frayed. Trends of mixed marriage and assimilation had blurred the very definition of membership in the Jewish people, while currents of Jewish renewal-often expressed through spirituality and individual identity-frequently underscored personal narrative and selfdevelopment rather than links with the larger collective of the Jewish people. For example, a 2002 UCLA study found that of children of mixed marrieds, only one-third of the children of Jewish mothers and but 15 percent of the children of Jewish fathers even claim to be Jews once they've reached age 18. As Jewish theologian Emil Fackenheim argued two decades previously, the definition of Jewish peoplehood was sustained for three millennia by the simple fact of commonality of understanding of who was at Sinaipast, present, and future generations of Jews. That assumption of commonality could no longer be sustained when the definition of who was a Jew had been so badly blurred by the realities of mixed marriage.