The Silent Holocaust

The Silent Holocaust in America


There is a Holocaust taking place in America right now. We can't hear it, because there are no barking dogs; we can't see it because there are no goose-stepping Nazi soldiers or concentration camps; we can't smell it because there are no gas chambers. But the net result is exactly the same, if not worse. Jewish intermarriage in America is by far the worst tragedy occurring to the Jewish people as a nation in the last 50 years.

Yes, we have our own country and at the moment there is no genocide in affect to threaten our nation from existence. Nevertheless, it is sad to say that on the going rate, without any war against the Jewish nation taking place, out of the 6 million Jews in the U.S, it is projected that by the year 2051 there will be close 3.6 million Jews remaining. One Harvard study shows as low as just 1 million by the year 2071. The intermarrying of Jews in America is out of control. Since 1985, over 66% of Jews who married have done so outside the faith. This tells us that out of 10 Jews who wed after 1985; just 3 married a fellow Jew. The affect intermarriage is having on the United States Jewish population is just heartbreaking.

The current situation is impossible to ignore and can no longer be delayed, the facts are in black and white. If we don’t act now, we will cause our own demise. There must be a solution that will minimize the loss of Jews from the disaster of intermarriage. Fortunately, there is a community where the problem of intermarriage has been brought up and a resolution is in affect, with an overwhelming 98% of the youth marrying within the Jewish Faith. This community is in the heart of Argentina, where the Jews have a tremendous growing population in a land where assimilation and intermarriage is as common as America. Although this community is in Argentina, it borders on the same problem we have here in America, assimilation, intermarriage and the threat of Jewish existence outside Israel in the next 100 years. How can the facts be so flip-flip, with the majority of the American Jews (66%) will intermarry and a community in Argentina with as low as 2% intermarriage rate? The reason is just two words, Rabbinical Edict.

In 1927, a great and holy man named Rabbi Shaul David Setton Z’L foresaw the tragedy that would affect millions of Jews throughout the world. As head of the rabbinical court of Argentina, Rabbi Shaul David Setton placed a rabbinical edict to his community, refusing to allow converts to enter the faith of Judaism for the sake of marriage.

Rabbi Setton, having observed the conditions prevailing the general Jewish community, where some youth have left their faith and have assimilated with non-Jews, “sometimes without any effort to convert them, and other times an effort is made for conversion to our faith” ruled that it is “an action which is absolutely invalid and worthless in the eyes of the torah.” After this Takana, (edict) it was endorsed by all community organizations in Argentina, who enforced the Takana to its fullest.

This Edict changed the Jewish Community of Argentina tremendously; it went from a huge percentage of assimilation and intermarriage to less than 2% even trying to pursue an illegitimate conversion. This method of preserving the Jewish nation was a huge success; it was everything the community of Argentina could ask for, a growth of population rather than a decline.

After proving its achievement to the world only one community in America followed in their footsteps to create a Takana, clearly not enough. It times like today, an Edict is the only way to preserve and protect the Jewish communities of the world. After the Nazi-Holocaust in 1945 there were 11 million. While in the 13 years following the Jewish population grew by one million, it took another 38 years for it to grow another million. The worldwide Jewish population is now roughly 13.3 million Jews and Jewish population growth worldwide is close to zero percent. We are yet to match the number of Jews in existence in 1939, before the tragic Nazi Holocaust, 17 million.

All would agree that Jews in America are demographically endangered. In addition to the usual suspects of assimilation and intermarriage, the survey revealed that Jews in America are getting married later and having fewer children - so few that we are experiencing negative population growth. As the Chinese proverb says, "If we don't change our direction, we will end up where we're headed." If we fail to act now, if we fail to share with our young Jews the beauty and meaningfulness of Jewish life and Jewish heritage, there will be few Jews left in the next generation who will even know that there ever was a Nazi Holocaust of European Jews. The "silent Holocaust" will have done its job. Hitler will have emerged victorious.