The peril of acceptance: American Jewry assimilation trends 60 years after the Holocaust

Jews have always been aware of persecutions and historically have clung together as a community to pass their culture from one generation to the next.;In contemporary America, however, Jews rarely experience prejudice due to their religious identity. Rather, Jews are so fully integrated into American life that they have intermarried, the associated stigma in secular America so imperceptible.;But now that American Jews finally enjoy a quality of life defined by acceptance and equality, many have chosen to move away from the religion they are at last free to practice.;The Holocaust still a recent memory, some Jews fear that this assimilation presents a threat greater than the violent annihilations of the camps. It is extermination by choice.;America's acceptance has caused Jews, in these early years of the 21 st century, to wonder why they should preserve Judaism and Jewish culture. If assimilation is the ultimate approval, why should they resist it? What of Jewish culture must survive? The answers to these questions, as the following profiles of three children of Holocaust survivors attest, arise viscerally; the answers are personal, even primal, each a unique expression attempting to define what it means to be a Jew.