Jews

The large-scale destruction of the European Jewish community, the migration of Jews from Arab lands, the enormous growth of the American Jewish community, and the establishment of Israel forever changed the nature of the Jewish people in the last half of the 20th century. A majority of Jews today live in places different from those their grandparents inhabited, and one result is that virtually all aspects of Jewish cultural, religious, and political life have been altered. The dislocation has created tremendous stresses among Jews. People of extremely different religious and ideological orientations, who once lived in different countries and spoke different languages, now inhabit the same space—the major cities of Israel and the United States—and necessarily speak the same languages—either Hebrew or English.

Several challenges confront Jews at the beginning of the 21st century. Chief among these challenges is finding common purpose among the different forms of Judaism in the United States—Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox—and mitigating the severe tensions between religious and secular populations in Israel regarding the appropriateness of freedom of religion in a Jewish state. In Israel, in particular, where Orthodox Jews control religious matters and have power in the government, many secular Jews oppose the imposition of religious standards. Cultural differences in Israel have led to tensions between Jews of European ancestry and Jews who originated in the Middle East. European Jews have dominated political affairs as Middle Eastern and North African Jews have fought for more political and economic power. From the 1980s on, waves of migration from the USSR and its successor states, and smaller ripples of migration from Ethiopia, have added to ethnic tensions in Israel.

The question of who is a member of the Jewish community continues to divide Jews. Most Jews define a Jew according to Halakhah (traditional Jewish law) as anyone with a Jewish mother. But some Reform Jews insist that those who have a Jewish father may also be considered Jewish under certain circumstances. This position is under debate among Conservative Jews as well. Orthodox Jews, on the other hand, reject this position entirely. They insist that acceptance of descent through the father will lead to an irreparable split in the Jewish community. Israel's Law of Return grants full citizenship to any person of Jewish ancestry, although those who have converted to and actively practice Christianity have sometimes been excluded from this right.

Anti-Semitism remains a concern in all corners of the world. In the United States many observers regarded the nomination of U.S. senator Joseph Lieberman—the first Orthodox Jew to run for the vice presidency of the United States on a major party ticket—as a sign of diminished anti-Semitism. However, no one knows where Jewish life is headed. Jews will continue to wrestle with age-old concerns of religious piety as well as with new political and cultural concerns. Jews must deal with unprecedented levels of assimilation. In some parts of the world, more Jews are marrying outside the Jewish community than within it. The impact this will have on Jewish life is not yet known. Israel will soon become the largest center of Jewish population in the world, even as it struggles to come to terms with the Palestinians in and around it. Here, too, the impact remains unknown. The contemporary situation is one of flux, amid enormous communal tensions. How, or whether, these tensions are resolved remains to be determined.