The American Dream Being Fulfilled for Jews : Social Scientist Silberman Maintains That Anti-Semitism Is on the Decline

Eighteen years ago, on his third son’s 10th birthday, Charles Silberman was visiting with his family in the office of then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

“Hey Dad” he heard Jeff call out to him. “Come over here and look at the Torah in the display case.”

Right then, Silberman began to realize that things had definitely changed.

“When I was his age,” Silberman said, “I would never have felt comfortable calling attention to my Jewishness like that.”

There were other changes that Silberman began to acknowledge. “I had seen the kind of relationships my kids had with Gentile friends. I had never had that. Jews and non-Jews did not socialize like that when I was a kid.”

Then there was Silberman’s oldest son, by then a third-year student at Harvard Law. “Law firms that would not have let my brother in the back door were begging for him,” Silberman said.

A Truly Open Society

This observation was nothing that Silberman’s gut hadn’t been telling him for quite a while. As a renowned journalist/social scientist, author of the widely acclaimed “Crisis in Black and White” and “Crisis in the Classroom,” among other significant sociological studies, Silberman decided to see if his head would substantiate his visceral conviction that anti-Semitism was on the decline, and that a truly open society was on the rise.

With the just-published “A Certain People: American Jews and Their Lives Today” (Summit Books: $19.95), Silberman goes so far as to say the proverbial American dream has been fulfilled. The transformation of American society over the last 25 years is perhaps the ultimate “American success story,” Silberman declares. And in a statement that has rocked much of his own American Jewish community, Silberman asserts that “anti-Semitism is no longer a significant factor in American life,” that among American Jews, “the commitment to Judaism is stronger than ever,” and that “the growing openness of American society creates new opportunities for American Jews--and American Judaism.”

“Equality,” Silberman writes, “is now a fact, not just an aspiration.”

If ever there were a tough test audience, Silberman faced it last week when he served up these ideas at a luncheon hosted by the American Jewish Committee here and attended by a roomful of prominent Jewish journalists and community leaders. As Silberman conceded, his patently optimistic conclusions make many Jews uncomfortable.

After all, said AJC executive vice president David Gordis, “we are a community that generally prefers its clouds without silver linings.”

And “in a way,” Silberman said, “it’s like taking away a security blanket, saying that anti-Semitism is no longer a real problem.”

In discussing his book, Silberman hastens to point out, first of all, that he is not saying anti-Semitism is nonexistent. For example, on an early morning radio call-in show the day before, “I had a real nasty anti-Semitic call, one of those people who still insist the Jews were responsible for Hitler.”

‘Anti-Semitism Is Real’

Silberman recognizes that “anti-Semitism is real.” He shudders, moreover, that “the upsurge of anti-Semitism among the farm belt of the Midwest is frightening.”

But those who treat anti-Semitism as some great nuclear cloud hovering over their community, Silberman said, “have difficulty distinguishing between”--he cringed, explaining, “I’ve got to get a little sociological here”--”level and trend. They have run into an anti-Semitic incident. It is real, it exists. They have a hard time putting it into perspective. They have a hard time accepting the idea that, at the same time, there can be some anti-Semitism and it can be less than there ever was.

“What we have to keep in mind,” Silberman said, “is that anti-Semitism is the fringe. It does not affect the crucial decisions we make in our lives. It does not affect where we live, where we work, where we can go to school.”

Americans, he said, “have shown themselves to be far more resistant to anti-Semitism than anyone had realized.”

As one illustration, Silberman harks back to the oil embargo of 1973. “Everyone took it for granted that Jews would be the scapegoat,” Silberman said. Rather, “there wasn’t any upsurge in anti-Semitism.”

After the flap over President Reagan’s on-again, off-again, on-again to the German military cemetery at Bitburg earlier this year, “we expected anti-Semitism to increase during and after Bitburg,” Silberman said. “It didn’t happen.”

On the contrary, Silberman said that in the wake of the Bitburg incident, “I think that Elie Wiesel speaking truth to power, to use his language, on national television, was a phenomenon that would have been inconceivable a generation ago.” Further, “This reflects a dramatic change in Jews’ own sense of themselves and non-Jews’ sense of who Jews are.”

As Silberman noted: “On the one hand, American society has broken open to Jews in ways we never could have imagined a generation ago. On the other hand, many of us are worried. We are afraid that our success is going to reawaken old pools of anti-Semitism.”

But will that happen? Silberman fairly exudes confidence: “The answer is a resounding no.”

Indeed, Silberman maintains, “there are powerful forces built into our society that contain anti-Semitism.”

Certainly those “old pools” of anti-Semitism existed, and undeniably so. Silberman remembered that during his childhood, “there were anti-Semitic newspapers for sale on the street.” Jews were subjected to “quotas, restrictions.” There were few Jews on university faculties, Silberman said, and “not even the telephone company knowingly employed Jews.”

Not surprisingly, Silberman said “many of us saw our Jewishness as a burden, if not an embarrassment.”

But, he marveled, “what a different world my children and grandchildren inhabit. For them, equality is a fact. The opportunities appear limitless.”

As open as that future may appear, Silberman said, a parallel question for this next generation is “will this new freedom, this new openness mean that Jews will stop being Jewish?” Will the dissolving of barriers melt the willingness of Jews “to survive as a distinct group?”

Said Silberman: “My answer is no. Judaism is not seriously threatened by an open society.”

True, he admitted, “it makes it much easier to stop being Jewish.” But by the same token, “the openness reduces the temptation to try to abandon one’s Jewishness.”

In fact, Silberman argues, this very openness is actually a boon to Judaism. “We are in the early stages of a major revitalization of American Jewish religious, cultural and intellectual life--one that is likely to transform, as well as strengthen, American Judaism,” Silberman writes.

As for contentions that the number of Jews is declining, or that intermarriage is eroding this proud, ancient culture, Silberman retorts that “the Jewish birth rate is higher and the intermarriage rate lower than is generally assumed.” To be sure, “you don’t have to be a statistician to realize that intermarriage has increased,” Silberman said, “but how much?”

His findings begin with an intermarriage base rate in 1981 of 24%. “Assuming an increase of 1% per year--and I’d say that’s on the high side--that means the rate now is on the order of 28%.”

And while “a 28% rate is not exactly grounds for rejoicing,” Silberman said, “the question is, what are the consequences?”

Silberman’s research shows that “on the order of 25% of non-Jewish spouses convert to Judaism, and a substantial number, even where conversion does not occur, tend to raise their children as Jews.” Among Jewish women married to non-Jewish men, he said, “85% raise their children as Jews.” Conversely, Silberman said, one-third of Jewish men married to non-Jewish women raise their children as Jews.

According to Silberman’s reasoning, “what this means is that we have the potential of intermarriage leading to an increase in the number of Jews.”

But “what is also crucial to realize,” he said, “is that what happens is not preordained. The future is very much up to us.”

Silberman’s six years of research for “A Certain People” have produced findings that some have dubbed downright Pollyanna-like in their optimistic innocence. Tall, silver-haired and 60, Silberman, deadpanning, rejoined that “I would have to say that I am not Pollyanna.

“I am not saying this is the best of all possible worlds,” Silberman said. “I am saying it is a very good one.”

Anti-Semitism is real, Silberman went on, “and I am not in any sense suggesting that we should all lie down. But I am saying that our society has changed so that these things do not draw reinforcement from the dominant trends of the society at large.”

Rather than outside forces, Silberman fears that if a danger does exist for American Jews today, “it comes from within, as many community leaders turn inward and focus exclusively on Jewish concerns.”