Yet, as one encounters these ubiquitous Jewish faculty who have "made it," one is left with the gnawing feeling that the process has exacted a toll on their Jewishness. It is indeed the case that they have been fully accepted, but apparently it is with the implicit provision that they not be Jewish in too obvious a manner. There are even Jewish administrators who, having internalized this understanding, willingly assist in its implementation.

It would, however, be unjust to hold the university completely responsible for the assimilationist tendencies of the professorate. Jewish academics are, after all, a self-selected group of individuals who have, by and large, abandoned their formal ties to the Jewish community and who seem to be ever in the throes of an identity crisis. Many, of course, have discarded all vestiges of Jewishness. But most, including a large number of intermarried faculty (Jewish academicians are the most heavily intermarried segment of the American Jewish community) have retained some residue of Yiddishkeit.

More to the point, there is a clear generational difference among the faculty: those who completed their degrees in the post '67 days of rising consciousness, are more willing than their older colleagues, who were reared among Freud and Marx and struggled against a genteel anti-Semitism, to openly express themselves as Jews. They are likely to have a young family and are seeking some Jewish type of connection. Given the make-up of organized Jewish life, it falls largely to Hillel to provide that link by creating a faculty community that might choose to celebrate the Jewish holidays together or to retreat periodically for a family weekend of study and association.

Scholarship as Jewish Identity

1967 and its aftermath occasioned yet another major transformation in Jewish academic life: the development of Jewish Studies as a rigorous scholarly discipline at the American university. As a consequence virtually no research institution of higher learning is currently without a Jewish Studies program and there are even many small colleges and theological schools that can boast of a Judaica component. This has resulted in intellectualization of Judaism and in an official recognition of Jewish learning as a legitimate intellectual pursuit. For many faculty who were not trained as Judaic scholars, this meant that it was "kosher", usually after earning tenure, to apply their particular discipline to a Jewish problem that had been of concern to them. In general, it meant that professors were seriously considering Jewish matters, that the public discourse at universities included references to Judaism, that university libraries built Judaica research collections, and that graduate work in Jewish Studies became an option for the normal university student. In turn, the scholarship produced by this burgeoning field had a profound impact on both elite and popular American culture in the form of proliferation of specifically Judaic publications and of articles of Jewish interest that regularly appear in the general scholarly and mass circulation journals.

This university undertaking, engineered by Jewish academicians, has opened the door to Jewish studies for many heretofore unlearned and unaffiliated Jewish intellectuals. One could say that Jewish Studies created an alternative mode of expressing one's identity as a Jew. This is certainly true for the scholars of Judaica, but it is also possible that other Jewish faculty who devote their lives to all forms of scholarship find Jewish learning the most appropriate means of articulating their Jewishness. These secular Talmudists, as I am fond of calling them, carry on the Jewish tradition of Torah lishmah, learning for its own sake, each one in his/her own discipline, and are therefore, easily drawn into a Jewish study circle.

It is the task of the Hillel professional to structure the circumstances and the environment that is conducive for such learning so that the current cohort of Jewish intellectuals can continue to carry on a learned and fruitful conversation with the tradition. One never knows when and how exposure to a Jewish text will trigger a scholarly interest and ultimately yield a ground-breaking interdisciplinary essay or stimulate the introduction of a new course of study (e.g. a UCLA political scientist developed a course on "The Politics of the Bible" in response to his participation in a faculty study group). Moreover, the symphonic variations that emanate from a discussion wherein the participants are drawn from different specialties are so enriching as to infuse the experience with a revelatory sensation. While so engaged, one feels as if Torah (the outsider) functions uniquely as a unifying intellectual force through which diverse disciplines, that otherwise have little or no contact, speak to each other.

Which are "The Books" You Care About?

Nevertheless, despite all the above vitality and the positive energy of an active Jewish faculty program, the integration of faculty into the organized Jewish community remains an elusive goal. This thoroughgoing alienation bespeaks a lack of trust on the part of both faculty and community. From the perspective of the faculty it reflects their firmly held belief that communal life revolved around fundraising and endless repetitive meetings, while issues of substance are rarely if ever addressed in a serious and thoughtful manner. From the perspective of the Jewish communal leadership it reflects their sense that faculty have lost their Jewish moorings and that their primary commitment is to objective scholarship and not to Jewish survival. Both view each other as superficial Jews.

The truth is that the two groups speak a different language of Jewish concern and that those of us in the middle must undertake a mediating role as translators so as to facilitate productive interaction. (Our efforts to date in Los Angeles, however, have seemingly broadened the gap, due largely to some stereotypic bungling on the part of the communal leadership.) As an atmosphere of anti-intellectualism continues to grow in a community that is increasingly dominated by a business class, this enterprise takes on an air of urgency. For it is difficult to imagine a Jewish community that has lost contact with its intellectuals. How can we attempt to construct a Jewish future without the involvement, in at least an advisory capacity, of our "best and brightest"?

Many have suggested that a key source of the above-mentioned alienation is the policies of the Israeli government. However, while it is certain that Israel's current political conduct finds few adherents among Jewish faculty, as it runs counter to their liberal/left propensities, and at some academics offer this as an argument for their lack of involvement, faculty ambivalence regarding identification with the Jewish community is a consequence of a much more profound sense of discomfort, which is only exacerbated by the case of Israel. That is to say, Jewish professors are extremely wary of articulating any overt particularism, viewing such as a grave offense against the universalistic ethos of the university which informs and defines their worldview and constitutes the essence of their commitment.

Suddenly a new Campus Marginalization

At the same time that Jewish faculty find themselves on the margins of Jewish life, they are confronting a new, if somewhat disconcerting, situation on campus. Having, as campus liberals, championed the affirmative action programs that opened the doors of academe to students designated as oppressed minorities, they are now, in the visible positions of authority and power, being targeted as the oppressors. (The scuttlebutt is that the Jews are in control.) And having come to the campus in large numbers following the Second World War looking to assimilate through their scholarly work, they presently confront a new generation of ethnically identified academics who have chosen to use their scholarship as a vehicle for expressing their cultural differences. The Jewish academics of the earlier generation who bought into the campus ethic of universalism as their ticket of entry, are discovering late in life that the rules have changed and that the new names of the game are diversity and multiculturalism.

Amidst this climate of tension, the Jewish students, who as chief beneficiaries of the assimilationist program of the Jewish faculty can now "pass" as whites, are suffering from a pronounced confusion as to their true identity. For, as assimilated Jewish-whites, they are the first generation of Jews to no longer be considered a minority. All of their prior education which emphasized the very opposite did not prepare them for this cultural and psychological shock. And so the students look to the Jewish faculty for guidance, which is not forthcoming. They continuously wonder why ethnic faculty advocate on behalf of their students while Jewish faculty seem so distant and uncaring.

This honest dilemma provokes the following recommendations:

1) Hillel must facilitate informal contacts between Jewish faculty and students, so as to engender a much needed feeling of support;

2) Younger Jewish faculty who are more secure in their Jewishness might effectively and constructively help students address the real conflict between universalistic assimilationism and particularistic separatism in the hope of developing a model of synthesis;

3) Having placed this issue squarely on the Jewish agenda, students and faculty ought to impress upon university administrators that this age-old identity conflict is at the heart of current inter-ethnic tensions and that the aforementioned model of synthesis that instills cultural pride while imparting a sense of commonality should be the focus of a university-wide effort.

In the end the predicament of the Jewish faculty turns out to be not that much different from the dilemma confronting Jewish students. Both are struggling with the impact of the modern experience on Jewish identity. Nothing less than our future survival is contingent upon a thoughtful and informed response to the challenge.