ABSTRACT
The reader who has followed me this far is aware of the personal and subjective nature of much that I have to say. This will be especially true in this chapter where offer my assessment of the quality of American Jewish life. First of all, “quality” is a subjective term. There are no standards for assessing the quality of a peoples religio-ethnic life. Secondly, even if we could agree on such standards we have no criteria by which to measure them. For example, I believe that both a cause and reflection of the decline in the quality of American Jewish life is the decline in the quality of the Conservative and Reform rabbinate. But it may be argued that the quality of the Conservative and Reform rabbinate is not a fair standard by which to assess the quality of American Jewish life. Perhaps the rabbis have been replaced by other types of spiritual leaders so the decline in the quality of American rabbis is irrelevant to the quality of Jewish life or is balanced by other developments in Jewish life. Second, even if one were to agree that the quality of American rabbis is a fair standard by which to judge the quality of Jewish life, how could one demonstrate the decline in the quality of the American rabbi?
