The facts behind the fears are plain for all to see. The masses of America's Jews, third and fourth generation descendants of immigrants have embraced the American dream of social equality, democracy, individualism and the pursuit of private happiness too passionately. This embrace of the American value system has resulted in widespread interfaith marriage, a decline in synagogue affiliation, a general disinterest in Jewish religious education and related process of disaffiliation with the formal institutions of the Jewish community. The conclusion that the vast and growing numbers of unaffiliated Jews are doomed to cultural extinction is by no means obvious.

Throughout the United States there are tens of thousands of interfaith families whose Jewish partners have attracted their spouses and children to a wide variety of Jewish social and religious participation. Approximately forty percent of such families worship in synagogues on the High Holidays. Many have sought inclusion in the Jewish community only to be turned away by acts of insensitivity.

Current concerns about "the Jewish future" are an ironic recasting of the "Jewish Question" born of modernity in the late eighteenth century. "The Jewish Question," generally posed by genteel anti-Semites, worried about the unity of the body politic. How was the Jew -- the eternal outsider of Christendom, the believer in chosenness by God -- to fit into an egalitarian society. By contrast, the present-day "Jewish Question" is posed by Jews anxious about their own collective future. How can a population of Jews who have fully integrated into modern American society, they ponder, sustain Judaism and Jewish community. The fear animating the contemporary "Jewish Question" was perhaps best exemplified by the cover of a recent issue of New York magazine: it depicts the Star-of-David built of sand, that is seriously eroding, one end being wind-blown or tide-washed away as a child's sand castle at the end of a summer's day.

"The Jewish Question" of the Enlightenment era masked (just barely) a desire to exclude Jews from civil society (i.e. liberty, equality, fraternity). The anti-Jewish fear was that the "foreignness " of Jews would destroy the harmony of an otherwise homogeneous society. Oddly, the contemporary variant of the "Jewish Question" also masks (just barely) the desire to exclude from an otherwise religiously monolithic community those Jews whose ideas about religion (e.g. atheists), family life (e.g. those in interfaith marriages or homosexual relationships), culture and the role of the State of Israel differ sharply from those held by rabbis and other communal leaders of the Jewish "establishment."

Anxious about the future of some mythical collective, self-chosen guardians of the faith insist that only those Jews will "survive" -- an amazing word about Jews in the twentieth century -- who adhere to creeds and practices rooted in the Torah, or at least devote themselves to a lifetime of study thereof. What makes this seemingly objective forecast of the Jewish future borderline anti-Semitic is that it would negate the legitimacy of individual Jews defining their private and collective destiny in the light of their own reason and life experiences.

If defenders of Jewish "continuity" insist that Jews who do not pray to God cannot be Jewish, are they any less anti-Semitic than Baptist leaders who claims God doesn't hear the prayers of Jews? If defenders of Jewish "continuity" insist that charitable funds be withheld from Jewish communal agencies that provide non-denominational recreational services that include large numbers of Jews who are married to Christians, are they any less anti-Semitic than the leaders of all white country clubs of yesteryear who excluded Jews ? These Jewish continuity enthusiasts convey a profound disdain for the masses of America's Jews who differ from norms, values and ideals espoused by an idealistic minority.

To protect the Jewish future, argue the pundits, the community must teach as well as discipline its young men and women to avoid interfaith marriage at all costs; teach as well as discipline its young women to bear more babies; teach as well as discipline its children to avoid all social contact (other than the economic and political) with non-Jews; and teach as well as discipline its families to ever greater piety and communal responsibility expressed through affiliation and philanthropy.

Disregarding the obvious fact that such a prescription for "Jewish continuity" will be acceptable to only a minority of Jews, and would be disastrous for the masses of American Jews if it were adopted, some of its champions have gone so far as to sign a petition (circulated by the American Jewish Committee) that would, in effect, progressively read out of the community those who will not be subject to collective discipline.

Why those who most loudly purport to be concerned about the Jewish future are so ready to lead out of the community the millions of Jews who do not belong to synagogues, do not send their children to Hebrew schools, and who do not restrict their marriage choice to fellow Jews or members of the opposite sex is at least puzzling. Perhaps, the answer to the puzzle is that, at its root, the contemporary "Jewish Question" as its precursor is really asking: who is making these Jews disappear?