Be Fruitful and Multiply
To the Editor:
Milton Himmelfarb’s “The Vanishing Jews” [September '631], indicates that American Jewry is not doing as well as we would like to believe. I think this is due to certain trends in American Jewish life, primarily the fact that our families have grown too small. There are too many only children . . . who grow up without a sense of belonging anywhere. They are sometimes attracted to Christianity, where the larger families give an impression of solidarity and strength. . . . We have become too middle-class. Despite what the Israeli pioneers have wrought with their bare hands, many Jews still look upon physical labor as a shameful way to earn one’s livelihood. . . . It is considered better to be a fourth-rate professional, frustrated and with feelings of inferiority, than to be a laborer with the satisfaction of doing a necessary job well—an attitude which makes American Jewish life unattractive for such frustrated minor professionals. . . .
Joseph Lovitz
New York City
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To the Editor:
If America’s Jewish population is stagnating or actually declining, a revised rabbinical attitude toward intermarriage and conversion will hardly effect an overnight solution. The statistical picture could, however, be reversed if the average young Jewish couple decided to have just one more baby. That they are not doing so is the crux of the problem; and the villain is the mighty dollar. . . .
A generation or two removed from the Lower East Side and its larger families, the college-educated young Jewish professional of today is climbing the American social ladder and has very ambitious hopes and plans for his children. He knows what the keys to the establishment are, and intends to hand them to his kids. The decision to have another child is not lightly taken, and the discussion is more appropriate to the banker’s office than it is to the bedroom. . . .
Norman Samuels
New York City
