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MY TWO HOMES Continued from Page 28 when we moved back after a stint back in my home state of Texas. Many new Israelis – especially journalists like myself – come here looking for a life-less-ordinary, to travel the region and beyond, to be part of history in the making in the Middle East, or at least to write for a living and have fun while doing it. But whatever you did for a living, there was the joy of living in Tel Aviv in your 20s, spending countless nights in a club, a sherut, a park bench or a bar – like one of those people adrift in the background of a certain Evyatar Banai video. That joy has been sapped now, and it’s unclear to me when and how it can ever return. In Israel, there is chaos. The pandemic is completely out of control, the acrimony in the politics is worse than at any point since I’ve lived here, the economy is in a free fall, the cost of living is sky high and always will be, and unlike in my 20s, I no longer have a grasp on the youthful idea that things will or can actually be better here. Meanwhile, I hear friends in the U.S. talking about leaving the country, and while some people made remarks like that back when Bush won reelection in 2004, this time it seems more serious. I also think they’re rational, and they’re thinking practically, not just emotionally. I’ve spent the past 17 or so years with a foot in two worlds – here and there. If I’m here I compare everything to there, and vice versa. But when both of your countries are in collapse, what can you do? What happens when neither feels like a great option anymore?
PROPORTION Continued from Page 9 Lately, I’ve thought more and more that maybe I’ve been going about this the wrong way. It’s not Israel or the U.S., it’s whichever one vs. somewhere else, a third country. It’s the idea that maybe it doesn’t have to be a choice between two countries in deep peril. I have no idea what this third country could be, though my wife and daughters are Canadian citizens and that would probably make the most sense. For now at least, I’ve found comfort and a new daydream to get lost in, hammering out the details of the “Third State Solution.” When I think about being an immigrant, and the way (conservative) people talk about immigrants in the States, it doesn’t really sit right. There is this approach that there are bad immigrants and good immigrants who “contribute to society.” In other words, we judge them on the net benefit they have brought to their adopted country. I never saw it like this. I feel that Israel was good for me, that the country gave me more than I gave back, and it’s an experience I would wish upon any immigrant to the States. This country gave me a career, my family, and a million life-changing experiences I would have never had anywhere else. But someday I’d like to stop repaying the debt. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
Happy Chanukah to all my friends in the Jewish Community. Thank you for your continued support! Judge Paula Brown
Louisiana Court of Appeal, Fourth Circuit, Division C
Happy Chanukah to our many Jewish Friends Over 80 years of service in New Orleans
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JEWISH LIGHT
key, which used to have 39,000 Jews in 1970, now has only 14,600 of them. That drop is the product of a low reproductive rate and a high emigration rate amid what many local Jews call the rise of government-supported anti-Semitism. Turkey is not alone: “Low fertility is characteristic of Jews in Europe, with the exception of those countries possessing large populations of strictly Orthodox Jews. Intermarriage, operating on the back of low fertility, complements the picture – these two factors in combination create a situation where the reproductive capacity of many European Jewish populations is low and conducive to future numerical decline,” the report states. Intermarriage rates are lowest in Belgium, where just 14% of Jews are estimated to be married to nonJews. They are highest in Poland, where the equivalent proportion is 76%. The figure was 24% in the United Kingdom, 31% in France and above 50% in Hungary, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden. The report’s findings on Germany are remarkable because it had seen an influx of about 200,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union following its collapse in 1990. That wave, as well as the immigration of about 10,000 Israelis, had revitalized German Jewry. But the newcomers have failed to change the community’s demographic trajectory because many of them and their children intermarried, stopped considering themselves Jewish, emigrated elsewhere or died, the study shows. There are some exceptions to the picture of decline, and all are occurring in countries where the Jewish community has a large Orthodox contingent. The Jewish populations of Austria, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, all with sizeable strictly Orthodox communities, “may be growing, or at least, not declining,” according to the report, which is based on official census data, community figures and the 2018 EU survey. In Belgium, where more than half of the country’s 29,000 Jews are Orthodox, 43% Jewish households have at least four children, the study shows. In the Netherlands, where Orthodox Jews make up only a tiny minor-
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ity of that country’s similarlysized Jewish community, only
Antwerp has a large population of haredi Orthodox Jews. (Alexander Stein/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
about 18% of families have that many children. Still, Belgium is seeing what some Jewish community leaders there are calling a “silent exodus,” which is marked by the sale of former synagogues and the closure of Jewish educational institutions in Brussels. In the United Kingdom, the Jewish minority has declined by 25% from 1970, down to 295,000 members, the study said. But the community is displaying potential for growth, as 33% of its households have at least four children. (For comparison, that figure is 26% in Germany and France, 25% in Hungary and 21% Denmark.) The report’s findings on the number of Israelis living in Europe are also surprising, and they contradict estimates that there are tens of thousands of them living in Berlin alone. The survey claims there are only about 70,000 Israel-born individuals living on the entire continent, with more than half residing in the United Kingdom (18,000), Germany (10,000), France (9,000) and the Netherlands (6,000). Still, Israelis have been a stabilizing force for the Jewish communities of countries with very small Jewish communities — for example, they account for over 40% of all Jews in Norway, Finland and Slovenia; 20–30% in Spain, Denmark, Austria and the Netherlands; and over 10% in Luxembourg. Overall, though, the declining trend reshaping European Jewry is not likely to be reversed, according to the study. “Only under exceptional circumstances do demographic trends radically modify their course,” the authors wrote. But, they added, “such modifications have actually occurred more than once in European Jewish demography during the last hundred years alone.” THE
JEWISH LIGHT