Nicole Vahlkamp, now a junior in the Honors program at the University of Maryland has challenged her Jewish background at Solomon Schechter Day School and Aitz Hayim with exploration of different Jewish perspectives. Her respect for and involvement in traditional Jewish practice is profound. But her intellectual curiosity leads her to question contemporary Jewish conventional wisdom. In this essay in which a footnoted form is available, she really challenges us to create Jewish living and the accompanying Jewish institutions worthy of Jewish sensibility.

Hundreds of articles from Jewish publications and organizations proclaim the need for increased emphasis on Jewish Continuity. “Something is missing,” is the cry to attempt to rally Jewish leaders to the cause of continuity. There is desperation to save the endangered Jewish community, to hold onto an eroding Jewish identity, and the solution, we are told, is through Jewish continuity.

Jewish continuity is the desire to continue Jewish life on this continent, vigorously and creatively. More specifically, Jewish continuity is the preservation of the Jewish people through the passing down of their history, heritage, and traditions, to ensure continued Jewish practice. Essentially Jews want their grandchildren to be Jewish.

To achieve Jewish continuity presumably Jews must first possess a strong Jewish identity; to measure the transmission of Jewish identity, we must first define it. Yet, identity and continuity are terms not easily defined, as they are obscure and subjective concepts.

Nevertheless, the strength of Jewish identity and of the success of Jewish continuity are most often calculated by a set of standards fixed by the leading Jewish organizations, such as the United Jewish Communities and the American Jewish Committee. Their main preoccupation is the number of Jews who retain their Jewish identity by refraining from intermarriage or conversion and who practice Judaism through either home observance, belonging to a Jewish organization, attending synagogue, or traveling to Israel.

Thus, this set of criteria not only defines effective Jewish continuity, but also defines acceptable Jewish identity. Suddenly, Jewish identity- one's Jewishness- is characterized by membership in Jewish institutions and adherence to traditional religious observance of the mitzvot. Because most Jews are not observant in this manner, we have a crisis.

Or maybe we don't. Maybe the UJC and AJC definitions of Jewish identity and continuity are inadequate, including only the framework of institutionalized Judaism.

For example, in an article from the Jewish News Weekly a Jewish ophthalmologist, who traveled to the Soviet Union to give free eye exams, begins by confessing, "I'm not really very religious". Rabbi Irwin Kula, one of the foremost leaders in Judaism, exclaims, "For 1,800 years men have said the morning Barahu- 'Praise are you, oh God, who opens up the eyes of the blind.' The ophthalmologist gave these people sight... And in his wildest dreams he didn't realize his actions epitomized Judaism."

What we have here is not a crisis of Jewish identity, but a failure to recognize the new Jewishness of the Jewish people. Thus, these Jews end up feeling disconnected and being pushed to the periphery.

Rabbi Kula observes that, "Jewishness is now finding new forms of expression in a new social context." And these forms of expression are varied.

Stephen Elkin, Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, is profoundly Jewish in his thinking, yet barely Jewish according to the AJC criteria.

Professor Elkin did not marry a Jewish woman, is not observant, and does not belong to any synagogue, yet has an intrinsic Jewish consciousness and connection to the Jewish people. In an interview with the Jewish Public Forum, Professor Elkin expressed a truly Jewish worldview and illuminated how Judaism has affected his life.

Elkin uses Judaism as a gauge for the moral seriousness of the path he chose to pursue- scholarship in the "theory of democratic practice". "A lot of the effect of Judaism on me is that it shaped how I evaluate my own life. I have not been willing to do anything in my professional life that I didn't take to be perfectly serious." In talking about his upbringing and the lessons he learned from the Orthodox Jewish household from which he came, he says, "I think what did come across-and I'm sure this came from Judaism in my mother's case- was the sense that someone was supposed to do something good in the world, period." This family teaching to "do good" is one of the most essential components of Judaism– tikkun olam-repairing the world. There is nothing more Jewish than to grow up with the intention of changing society for the better-Professor Elkin does this through political theory and practice.

But Professor Elkin's relationship with Judaism is not so simple. His story, like many Jews', is one of questions, insufficient answers, and frustration-but not surrender.

"I could never just not be a Jew. Maybe that's the simplest way of saying it. I couldn't just say: 'The hell with this, I'm done. Who are those guys?'... I never dropped my sense of myself as a Jew or my sense of the importance of Judaism, but I had no way of making sense of it. It makes my heart ache. There is something missing, something profoundly important to me...(I am) here as a specimen of what can go wrong, of failure. That is, of the way in which Judaism, as it has been, has just failed some of its perhaps most thoughtful possible adherents."

Here is an example of someone who fails the AJC criteria for strong Jewish identity; I argue that it is the AJC that has failed. They have failed to recognize the multitude of ways in which modern Jews are expressing their Judaism. Accordingly, they have adopted standards for Jewishness that ignore various ways of being Jewish. Judaism, namely rabbinic Judaism in its current form, failed for Stephen Elkin, but Jewish thought did not. Redefining Jewish identity would allow individuals like Stephen Elkin to feel part of the Jewish community. Furthermore, it would lead to a reevaluation of the belief that the Jewish community is diminishing and in need of urgent plans to ensure continuity.

Shifting the focus away from Jewish continuity initiatives (that work almost exclusively with already established institutions) would allow the Jewish community to refocus its energies into something less reactive, more productive and creative, and hopefully more stimulating for disengaged Jews.

Today Elkin realizes that new forms of Judaism are flourishing. "The level of my ignorance was so profound that it had never occurred to me that the rabbinical Judaism that I was "taught" was in fact just one version of Judaism. It might be the normative version of the world I inhabited, but it certainly wasn't the only possible one. And there have been all kinds of people who have tried to rethink all this."

Of course there are those who argue that not everything a person does is Jewish, simply because that person is a Jew. Specific traditions have been practiced for thousands of years by generations of Jews and, as Frank Dimant argues, "Applying the label 'Jewish' does not bestow instant certification!"

Despite the fact that an American Jewish Committee survey found that more than 90 percent of Jews told researchers that they are proud to be Jewish, this does not guarantee that Jewish beliefs and practices will be passed down.

Many argue that it is only through action and practicing Judaism that it can survive. Most Jewish community leaders want to focus on already established institutions, such as Jewish Sunday schools, to enhance students' knowledge of Judaism. "Turning specifically to the issue of Jewish education, the AJC report commented that Jewish day schools, Hebrew or Sunday schools and Jewish education at the adult level are "critical" to Jewish identity and continuity. 'And so is practice,' he said, 'for Judaism is a religion that lives in our actions and not just in our thoughts. In the end, only Judaism -- the religion -- can explain to American Jews, and to our children, why they should care about staying Jewish.'"

The Synagogue is also emphasized as the center of the Jewish Community and as the starting place from where Judaism should grow. "How do we create Jews out of Americans? Only the synagogue can do it. Another member of the American Jewish Committee, John Ruskay, concluded that the most beneficial strategy for Jewish continuity is one that focuses on those individuals who are already engaged with Jewish life in one way or another, particularly within the synagogue.

However, I believe there is an overemphasis on traditional institutions- specifically the synagogue, which unfortunately most people see as boring. A National Jewish Outreach survey of more than 550 people from across the country showed that more than 50% of respondents said that High Holiday services are either too long, boring, repetitive, or not relevant. Similarly, only 48.9% of the people polled said that they go to synagogue because it is "spiritually uplifting."

If people do not identify with prayer, but identify as Jews, there should be other ways for them to express their Jewishness. The old institutions fit the old definitions; new definitions will produce new institutions, ones that will be successful in the modern age. Because most people don't practice Judaism in the traditional way, but still have a very Jewish way of thinking. Judaism needs to develop a new form of practice that extends "beyond the synagogue".

Rabbi Kula responds to just this when he says, "Statutory prayer, extensive Talmud study, and zealous ritual observance-all of these behaviors are indeed important...but it may well be that these long established forms of Jewishness... are too circumscribed for this new era in Jewish history." Instead of the emphasis that Jewish organizations place on numbers of Jews, the Jewish community's main concern should be the quality of its Judaism. Because the truth is that you cannot tell your children what to think or what to do, but you can teach them a Jewish way of thinking and a Jewish way of doing.

Jews are not disappearing, they are transforming. We have traditional practices, which fit the more traditional form of Jewish identity. What we need now is to accept new Jewish identities and develop new institutions accordingly. How you define Jewish continuity depends on how you define Jewish identity. If you define Jewish identity narrowly- specifically focusing on observance and institutionalized Judaism, then the Jewish community is in danger, and so is Judaism. But most Jews are not observant Jews and their identity is too subjective and nuanced-it cannot be measured by three survey questions centered on traditional Jewish institutions.

We have seen that there are those with profoundly Jewish identities and ways of living who neither go to synagogue nor travel to Israel. If the larger organizations would define Jewish identity more broadly, Jewish continuity would be tremendously less alarming. Then Jewish continuity and the future of Judaism could finally be looked at differently - even optimistically. As one of the many peripheral Jews, Stephen Elkin knows, better than I, that, "the way in which the Jewish community is organized and what actually happens in synagogues are not doing the trick. No one quite knows what might do the trick, but we'll never find out unless we talk about it."