The Jewish Question

National Review, Dec 21, 1998 by John J. DiIulio, Jr.

Fast-forwarding his journey, we find him in 1993 strengthened by the always-on-target spiritual guidance of an Orthodox rabbi, Daniel Lapin, yet craving to discover his "authentic" Jewish roots rather than (as my some of Protestant friends like to say) to "just get right with God." He tracked down his birth mother. In due course, they discussed why she chose the Klinghoffers as his adoptive parents. "Well, you know," she told him, "my mother was Jewish" by way of a Jewish great-grandfather with the surname Goldkuhl. With a surge of tribalist adrena- line, he "sat bolt upright. . . . If this was true, I was part Jewish by blood! . . . I realized that, to be precise, my blood was one-sixteenth Jewish. . . . I could walk into a synagogue or a kosher restaurant and return the curious glances," for the Goldkuhl family was "my blood link with the Nation of Israel." Klinghoffer and his co-religionists will, I hope, not misunderstand me when I say that the book's final chapter constitutes the most satisfyingly Christian moment of Klinghoffer's journey. Christians believe that the only blood that matters is the blood of Jesus Christ. It took a genealogical investigation that would make Dick Tracy (Jewish?) proud, concluding in Stockholm, for David to realize that human blood "evaporates. Quickly." (But I won't give away his surprise ending.)

Klinghoffer "reached the conclusion that Judaism is true" even though several Christians-including a Catholic girl he almost married-had courted him for Christ. Not, mind you, that any Christian ever sought him out with what I would consider a full-court intellectual or spiritual press for Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. (Friendly memo to Wm. F. Buckley Jr.: Who tends to God and man at NATIONAL REVIEW?) But alas, The Lord Will Gather Me In insists that for Klinghoffer, Christianity simply was not in God's plan. The author engages in no inter-faith shading. Oral Torah, he writes, "excludes belief in Jesus" as the Messiah.

Different as they are, however, Judaism and Christianity in their orthodox manifestations are not only joined at the hip theologically ("If nothing happened at Sinai, both religions are frauds" writes Klinghoffer), but one in opposing so-called mainstream religions that blink or wink at Biblical injunctions against abortion, sex outside of marriage, and more. Klinghoffer suggests that Reform Judaism and other liberal religions are crashing while Orthodox Judaism, born-again Protestantism, and old-school Catholicism are expanding because the latter speak authoritatively about God, stir souls, and keep them stirred by stressing daily prayer and other religious habits.

At least regarding Judaism, certain statistics bear him out. For example, American Jews are now marrying gentiles at the rate of 52 per cent (60 per cent for Reform Jews). Among Orthodox Jews, intermarriage is negligible, birth rates are high, and the ba'al teshuvah movement is increasing the ranks every year. He credits Irving Kristol and other "pragmatic" thinkers for seeking antidotes to intermarriage (for example, reemphasizing Jewish education), but chides them for failing to address what you might call the ultimate Jewish Question: whether the religion of the people they want "to save is true or mainly a useful fiction . . . an instrument for the survival of the tribe."