WHEN Frederick the Great asked for a proof of God's existence, his Lutheran pastor is said to have given him a two-word answer: "The Jews."

Their mere survival is a miracle of history. Enslaved by the Egyptians, slaughtered by the Philistines, exiled by the Babylonians, dispersed by the Romans, butchered and chivied from country to country in Europe, the Jews not only survived, but also nourished and renewed the religion that undergirds the culture of the Western world. Christian theologians from St. Paul to Paul Tillich have agreed with the Jewish belief that am olam (the eternal people) were preserved for a divine purpose. Whether or not the hand of God is especially laid upon the Jews, there is every sign that, here and now, they are going through a new kind of testing time.

The problem is that there is no problem--relatively. In contemporary America, the Jews are experiencing unprecedented freedom of a kind they never knew even in ancient Israel or their golden age in Moslem Spain: freedom to adhere to their faith or abandon it, to emphasize their differences or to become invisible. Having learned for 2,000 years how to "sing the Lord's song" in bondage, many Jews are wondering if they will learn how to sing his song in freedom. "The central issue facing Judaism in our day," says Dartmouth's Jacob Neusner, "is whether a long-beleaguered faith can endure the conclusion of its perilous siege."

Culture & Comedy

In the U.S. today, anti-Semitism is at an alltime low and publicly out of fashion. In most areas of U.S. life, Jewish representation and influence are far higher than the proportion of Jews in the total population--only about 3%. Where once it was a question of whether Jews could get a start, it is now only a question of whether they can reach the very top.

Jews are still relatively rare in the executive suites of banks, public utilities and heavy industry (notably automobiles), but they have branched out into many new fields, including electronics and advertising. In politics, says New York Senator Jacob Javits rather optimistically, "There is no office now closed to a Jew, including the presidency." At any rate it is no longer surprising to find Jews in the Cabinet, the Supreme Court or the World Series. Residential and social discrimination remains considerable, but not nearly so strong as depicted 18 years ago in Gentleman's Agreement. To prep schools and debutante lists, charity boards and private parties, Jews have an entree they never had before.

Among U.S. intellectuals and artists, the Jew has even become a kind of culture hero. Poet Robert Lowell of the Boston Lowells, who boasts "as a saving grace" that he is one-eighth Jewish, declared not long ago that "Jewishness is the theme of today's literature, as the Middle West was the theme of Veblen's times and the South was in the '30s."

Suddenly much of American fiction seems to be dominated by Jews: J. D. Salinger, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Edward Lewis Wallant, not to mention the popular novelists less favored by the critics, such as Herman Wouk, Irwin Shaw and Leon Uris. The book on a hundred thousand coffee tables this year is Saul Bellow's Herzog, which reincarnates the old Yiddish schlemiel (bungler or fool), as a modern intellectual in search of his identity. No true common denominator exists between these writers, but one explanation for their vogue is that in an age of "alienation" the Jew is looked to as the expert in estrangement--the perpetual outsider who somehow knows how to keep warm out there. At the same time, in a homogenizing society, the Jewish tradition is increasingly valued as rich and deep; Gentile readers seem to be finding themselves in Jewish fictional characters. Says Novelist Bellow: "I got a great many more letters from people who identified with Herzog in a human way than in a Jewish way."

The outcropping of Jewish creativity also continues in poetry and criticism, painting, music and, as always, entertainment. A clever little inside satire entitled How to Be a Jewish Mother has sold 200,000 copies in nine months, a figure that indicates many non-Jews are getting the joke, or at least trying to. Among Gentiles, it is becoming quite In to pepper one's talk with a yiddishism or two ("what chutzpah!"). Jewish humor has become an important part of American folk humor; most of America's top comedians have been Jews, from Eddie Cantor to Mort Sahl. Everyone who comes to New York still wants to see Jewish Actor Zero Mostel play Jewish Author Sholem Aleichem's Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof and Jewish Singer Barbra Streisand play Jewish Fanny Brice in Funny Girl. Only a few years ago, Barbra might have been tempted to Anglicize both her name and her profile, while today she triumphs with both.

The superficialities of Jewishness, in short, are getting to be more and more a part of American culture. And--to the consternation of some Jews--vice versa. While the U.S. is growing more Jewish, the U.S. Jews may be growing less so.

Ritual & Israel

The religion of ancient Israel was rigidly exclusive, obsessed with keeping its people separated from the tribes and idolatries that swirled around them. In the Diaspora, the Christians reinforced this separateness with their periodic persecution. The Jewishness that fled to America from the pogroms of Eastern Europe was surrounded by a triple wall of Yiddish language, peculiarity of costume and custom, and deep distrust of the goyim--the heathen. No Jew thought of asking himself what a Jew was. A Jew was a Jew.

Some of this attitude still remains. But today the Jew in America often seems like another three-button suit on the commuter train and another pair of slacks in the supermarket, the "church of whose choice" happens to be called a synagogue. What is happening to the Jews in pluralist America is not the rash of assimilation which characterized the liberal period of 19th and early 20th century Germany --until the Nazi holocaust horribly forced the assimilated to resume their Jewish identity. The American process is what sociologists call "acculturation." For the largest Jewish community on earth, the ancient pressure is off, the ancient differences are dying, and the increasingly urgent questions are: "What is a Jew?" and "What do I do about it?"

U.S. Jews are answering the question in various ways:

sb"I BELONG TO A SYNAGOGUE." A generation ago, the majority of U.S. Jews were not affiliated with a synagogue; now the situation is reversed. This does not necessarily bespeak an uprush of piety, any more than the parallel Protestant and Roman Catholic boom. It may simply be a part of the American feeling that everybody is supposed to belong to something. Like their Protestant counterparts, the new synagogues go in heavily for activities: discussion groups, dances, bazaars, marital counseling, softball teams. And the differences in ritual are blurring between rigid Orthodox, liberalized Reform and compromise Conservative. Belonging to a synagogue does not mean attending it. Most surveys indicate a weekly attendance rate of about 25%, compared to about 40% for Protestants and 71% for Catholics.

sbI WANT THE KIDS TO KNOW THEY ARE JEWISH." One reason for the relatively low synagogue attendance may be that so much of the religious side of Jewishness centers on the home. It is in following or omitting the minutely prescribed prayers and dietary laws, Sabbath rules and holiday ceremonials that the Jew affirms, or fails to affirm, his faith. The extent of this observance is impossible to measure; the majority of American Jews probably omit most of it, but try to keep something--if only the Passover seder. Many American Jewish homes are familiar with "the Christmas crisis": whether or not to deprive young children of the universal pleasure of that Christian holiday. Some households solve the problem syncretically--here and there, Stars of David have been known to top Christmas trees, and Hanukkah, the relatively minor Festival of Lights commemorating the Jews' miraculous victory over the Syrians in 165 B.C., has been elevated into a giftgiving, card-sending counterpart to Christmas. The once relatively low-keyed bar mitzvah, at which the 13-year-old boy is formally received into the Jewish community, has grown to awesome proportions, with food, entertainment and gifts often rivaling a Babylonian banquet. There has also been a notable increase in the study of Hebrew among the young. The children of any immigrant generation usually move away from the old rites as alien, but a growing segment of the next generation finds delight in them; "what the parents are trying to forget," goes a saying, "the children are trying to remember."

sbI GIVE TO ISRAEL TILL IT HURTS." Israel is the great new fact of Jewish existence. Since 1948, American Jews have poured about a billion and a half dollars into the new state, although only a few thousand have answered ex-Premier Ben-Gurion's call to become Israeli citizens. Israelis are sometimes skeptical of such vicarious participation in their pioneering and have been known to call their American brethren "alimony Jews"--willing to pay but not to live with it. The emergence of a tough state of modern Maccabees has tremendously strengthened Jewish morale, pride and prestige in a warrior-loving world. For 20 centuries, returning to Jerusalem was only a dim hope of Jewish prayers; now that it is a material, political fact, the question arises how it will affect Jewish spirituality and the complex relations between the homeland and the Jews of the Diaspora.

sbI HOPE HE DOESN'T MARRY A GENTILE." Marriage to a non-Jew is a traditional taboo. Today, in the eyes of most Jewish parents, and particularly grandparents, intermarriage is still something of a calamity. The desire to curb mixed dating partly accounts for the "5 o'clock shadow" that falls on interfaith group activities. But all surveys indicate that intermarriage is rising. A study of Washington's Jewish community (81,000) broke down the rate of intermarrying Jewish men by generations: 1.4% for the foreign-born, 10.2% for the first generation of American-born, 17.9% for the second. And the rate for the college-educated members of the last group was a startling 37%. Moreover, the Jewish birth rate has remained stable in the last 40 years, while the rest of the nation's has been generally rising. The optimistic view of intermarriage is that it is bringing valuable new blood to Judaism. Besides, Sociologist Marshall Sklare notes that in the anti-Semitic past the intermarrying Jew was likely to be seeking status; today it is the Gentile who may be striving upward, as "the tastes, ideas, cultural preferences and life-styles preferred by many Jews are coming to be shared by non-Jews." Many a bright Gentile college girl is attracted to Jewish men because of their intellectual and liberal attitudes. A growing number of Gentiles who marry Jews convert to Judaism--and, like most converts, tend to be stricter than their mates. In Los Angeles, for instance, two schools of instruction for converts function full time. Judaism traditionally declines to seek converts, but with a little proselytizing push, some Jewish leaders feel, conversions might eventually offset losses.

Textbooks & Divorce

The Jewish "lifestyle" is hardly uniform, but one of its basic features remains the traditional respect for learning, transferred from the Torah to the textbook. Proportionately more than twice as many Jews go to college than all Americans. Other familiar Jewish traits are showing signs of erosion. The sober Jew is not quite as sober as he used to be. Jews still drink less than Gentiles. One accounting firm reports that it can always spot a Jewish country club by examining the books; at the Jewish club, the food bills are much higher than the liquor bills, while at the Gentile club, it's the other way round. But studies indicate that the Jews' traditional temperance decreases with relaxation of Orthodox observances and increased social relations with non-Jews.

Ostentation born of insecurity remains an undeniable fact, and Miami is its monument; but there is now enough old money and new taste in the U.S. Jewish community to tone down the garishness. The Jewish divorce rate is still relatively low, but rising, and the modern Jewish family is far from the warm, amniotic unit it used to be. Nor is the modern Jewish mother the same half-funny, half-formidable injustice collector of old; she is inclined to be even more psychology-oriented than everyone else, and trying to avoid the coddling, overfeeding stereotype Momma.

Suburbs & Messiah

The U.S. has never forced Jews to live in ghettos, but the Jews have often created them voluntarily. Virtually every big city has distinct Jewish neighborhoods and suburbs. In part, this phenomenon is dictated by remaining anti-Semitic discrimination. Kept out of country clubs, Jews often set up "separate but more than equal" clubs of their own; frozen out of a debutante cotillion, they have been known to give their daughters a quasi-debut by presenting the girls to the Israeli ambassador. But some of this protective clinging together may be unnecessary. A recent study of a typical Midwestern upper-middle-class suburb found that 80% of resident Gentiles had no objection to having Jews in the community, and only 23% of these said they preferred their Jewish neighbors to remain in the minority.

Ironically, although Jewish intellectuals have been leading champions of Negro rights, there is much potential tension between Jews and Negroes. Slum Negroes tend to distrust Jewish landlords and merchants. On the other hand, some Jews wonder whether the Negroes' drive to batter down all barriers by political pressure (whereas the Jews have traditionally worked their way up via money and education) is undermining the pluralistic concept. Sociologist Nathan Glazer remarks that Jews will not easily welcome Negro incursion into "the true seats of Jewish exclusiveness"--business, union, neighborhood and school.

In general, though, there is a new spirit between the faiths, a refreshing decline of self-consciousness on both sides. It is a spirit that does not deny the differences between Jew and Gentile (as the liberalism of an earlier time did) but accepts the differences with mutual respect and enjoyment.

The churches have been pioneers of this new spirit. New Christian interest in the Old Testament, Christian guilt at the Nazi persecution and Christian intimations of minority status in the world at large have brought them closer to Jews than they have been perhaps since the first centuries of Christianity. "The Jews have the promise of God," writes Protestant Theologian Karl Barth, "and if we Christians from among the Gentiles have it too, then it is only as those chosen with them, as guests in their house, as new wood grafted onto their old tree."

The old tree is still somewhat suspicious of the new wood. But some of the same events and trends that have moved Christian scholars back to the Old Testament have moved young Jews back to the Bible--not as something to be reinterpreted and explained, but as the Word of God, to be confronted head on. This confrontation is not primarily with the minutiae of the Law but with the God of the Covenant and with the expectation of the Messiah's coming for the transformation of mankind. There is a growing awareness that without the light of religion, neither United Jewish Appeal, nor vacations in Israel, nor psychoanalysis, nor Phi Beta Kappa will keep the word Jewish from watering down in America to something as unspecific as the word Protestant can be.

-- At the same time, Jewishness is far more than religion; it is an inextricable mixture of faith, nationhood and culture. It is an order of being perhaps more than of believing. Being Jewish is feeling the past in one's bones and living all out in the present; it is Job's chutzpah as well as his submission to God; it is the lingering melancholy which the 12th century writer Judah Halevi called the "aching heart of nations," and it is sharp humor, often directed at oneself. For all his changes, the American Jew has not lost these qualities; in fact he is making them, more than ever, a gift to the world.

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