Let me tell you my inside story of witnessing an extended American Protestant family over three generations in contrast with a Jewish family.
This lack of cohesion of the American family opened up American society to many problems, including:
- The public school was able to indoctrinate, in place of parents.
- Teens sought affection in the form of sexual activity whereas just a generation before their parents were able to wait til marriage, no problem.
Contrast between two families:
1920, Dorchester Massachusetts, the Goldstein family was hard at work eking out a living. The oldest daughter Bessie had to leave school at the age of 16 and work in a factory to help support her parents and eight siblings. She withstood both anti-semitic comments as well as was told the following: "you Jews are lucky, your husbands come home at night. Ours go to the pub after work."
Bessie's mother had put her children to bed every night with stories from the Bible and from the Chassidic Jews in Eastern Europe, overcoming adversity with faith. The Messiah would come, and we will all be together in Jerusalem some day with their call to remember. Do not forget. You marry and bring children into the world as it is a mitzvah and anyway our numbers are often getting decimated, with the pogroms a fresh memory.
1920, Vergennes Vermont, the Bridge family home boasted fine rugs, graceful furniture, household help. They had two daughters, of course you do not want too many children, they may muss the furniture.
The Bridges attended church every so often, with a lackadaisical attitude concerning religion. You were a good citizen because it was the right thing to do, but no Bible study permeated the rooms of their stately home. You married right after normal school for girls or trade school for boys, because that was accepted, that was done. The next generation graduated college and got married right after college.
Goldstein family - you are expected to give tithes, help people out, and your home is open. Uncle Shaya crowded in to their small apartment and slept in the living room after he returned from World War I until he found a place of his own.
Bridge family - you are expected to give tithes to the church. The home is well manicured and an overnight guest is close to an anathema.
Siblings in the Goldstein family had a sense that they would be helping each other out all the way down the road, in the Bridge family, siblings were competitors of each other, each expected to make it on their own by pulling themselves up by their own boot straps. You could not have too many children as each one eventually inherits either the fine china or the fine silverware, too many siblings would make dividing up the estate impossibly unfair, plus mussing the fine rugs.
As the economy changed and as their hard work paid off, the extended Goldstein family graduated from penury to attaining the American dream. The second generation bought homes. As they kept the Jewish Sabbath and Jewish holidays, they would get together often. They were not looking for personality clashes, in fact, they would brush off such friction as the goal was the success of the whole. They saw the success of their siblings as a reflection of themselves, a strong family would confer yiches, that is, good family background, making it easier to get the matchmaker to propose a good match to you.
The Bridge family assumed you would find a marriage partner on your own merits. Individual achievement is what counted. A sibling who is floundering, not only would that not reflect negatively on you, as it would in the Goldstein family, but it would almost make the other sibling look better in contrast. There simply was no motivation within the New England American Protestant family to see to the success of their own family members, as there was in the traditional Jewish family.
As the economy changed and the Bridges were not accustomed to discomfort, the second generation chafed at how difficult it was to make a living. A feeling of unfairness permeated two of the three siblings who did not have the standard of living that their parents had. The third sibling had married a man with inherited money, so she did not feel this pinch. One sibling became a liberal democrat, feeling that the government should provide better, the other became a conservative libertarian, which caused further friction between them, and both were somewhat bitter, waiting for their ship to come in. Oh they worked, but they could not fathom why the dollar did not go as far.
The Goldsteins remembered the Exodus from Egypt at their Passover Seder, in which family members were reunited for better or for worse, they remembered their hard work, and felt a sense of gratitude and the continual need to nurture a strong extended family which would ultimately reflect well on them, besides being charitable. They were pulling themselves up by their bootstraps in a communal way.
The Bridge's remembered their previous wealth with a certain bitterness. It did not occur to them to pull together as they had been raised with the idea of pulling yourself up with your own bootstraps completely on your own. There were cousins who only lived a four hour drive away whom they never met. What good would it have been? None whatsoever, as you needed to spend your time and energy grooming yourself for individual success.
Which values would better suit the individual, the community, and even the United States of America?
Individuals who are not well supported have less to offer society. Rugged individualism may have had its place in some circumstances, but not here.
The lackadaisical attitude, borne of living a stable life, would lead to not questioning the infiltration of political correctness into the educational system. The American Protestant was not paying attention, favoring aesthetics and the assumption that society is pretty stable.
Their kids returned from public school completely foreign to them.
The Jewish community is notorious for its constant internal debate, breakaway synagogues and schools are founded as robust debate begets robust urgency and robust building. Let alone the emergency attitude that permeates Judaism in general, celebrating holidays like Passover, Purim and Chanukah in which we celebrate not having been decimated, and the call to remember. Do not forget.
Take a vacation from a Jewish community and you will return to see two new synagogues and three new schools that were founded while you were away. Many of these start in basements, as philosophy is more important that finery.
The Goldstein family may have much in common with many immigrant families who pulled together, kept their eye closely on education, and preserved their heritage.
The modern American liberal Protestant just did not have these values. So they declined.
Do not rest on your laurels. Do not imagine that having made it in America, you can be more individualistic. Who knows? Maybe the Protestant family in the 1800's also had familial and communal supportive values that were lost with their growing wealth.
Remember what worked, and what caused a sharp decline, and let's learn from this:
- Keep up your familial and communal support. Getting together with family members should not be an act of competition and one-upmanship but seen in light of the success of the many is my success also.
- Take the religion you inherited seriously, read up on it, study it at home even if you are not a believer, your kids should know their religious heritage even if they question aspects of it. No one should be illiterate in their religion.
- Ask your kids what they learned that day/week in school. Be robust in your child rearing and in the values you want to impart. I know too many liberals who were surprised and hurt at how their own children morphed into the unrecognizable. I saw this in the lackadaisical and a little too comfortable secular American Protestant.
So please - be robust in your family and community building, and in your religious literacy. The success of the many is yours as well.
Remember. Do not forget.
Time to build something else, despite liberal self-loathing, and love America again. I am an orthodox Jew, living in Israel, grateful for the refuge that the USA gave to my forebears, and praying for the USA to redeem itself, and fast.
I have both WASP and Eastern European Jewish roots.
The above is my story. I am witness.
I am a descendant of Puritan leader John Bridge, as well as of the Moses Sofer, a scribe in Poland who, it is said, when he wrote, fire leapt from his pen. Two illustrious ancestors, but John Bridge leaves a statue and scant family memory, my Jewish cousins take pride in the Moses Sofer and try to live up to his memory.
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