Spending a day in Manhattan recently, I was reminded of the power of seduction. The stately, grand Metropolitan Museum was showcasing a small but stunning exhibition of paintings by El Greco, perhaps the  most influential artist in history. The Jewish Museum had a tribute to Helena Rubenstein, a formidable woman who had a major impact on women’s cosmetics and the role of women in business. I saw the 9/11 memorial, a striking demonstration of human will and the determination to memorialize loss while affirming life. The venues, the culture, the pulse of one of the great cities of the world are seductive.

It is not hard to see why people spend their whole lives captivated by this culture. In the past, Jews who had the opportunity to leave their cloistered existence – during the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) or the ghettos of eastern Europe – left their religious life and Jewish identity behind to enter the exciting and promising world of whatever culture it was that surrounded them.

This was true in every age. If they had to choose between Greek culture or Judaism, many chose Greek culture. In modern times, it was Polish or German or Hungarian culture over Jewish culture. You had to choose, so many took the path of secular culture. It was either/or. The price of a passport to fame and fortune was shedding your Jewish identity: British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, German poet and essayist Heinrich Heine, the list is endless.

The story has it that Queen Victoria asked Disraeli, whose father converted to Christianity to enter English society and who raised his son in the church, whether he was Jewish or Christian. He is said to have responded, “Your Majesty, the King James version of the Bible has the Old Testament, then a blank page, and then the New Testament. I am the blank page.”

That was then and this is now. Something completely new has arisen in the modern world. No longer is it necessary to choose. That seductive culture, whether American, Canadian, English or other, is no longer inaccessible to the Jew as Jew. For the first time in history, there is no need to choose. Jews can be as observantly Jewish as they like and participate in the culture of their country. This is unprecedented.

Jews don’t have to abandon their ancient and venerable past to be fully and completely modern. They can study their source texts of wisdom literature, practise any form or denomination of their religion and still work and live in the same mental and physical space as their fellow citizens of different heritages and religions.

(It is a delicate balancing act for the modern Orthodox Jew who keeps Sabbath and kosher but it can be done. In fact it is being done, by countless thousands across our country and many other countries.)

So the inevitable question imposes itself. In an era when Aboriginal Peoples, African-Canadians and Americans, French-Canadians and others are exploring and asserting their identity and dedicated to preserving it, why are Jews abandoning theirs in droves? 

Are the rabbinic and lay leaders of the Jewish community not doing their job? Are the attractions of secular culture so great that they overwhelm the religious culture even when the one need not preclude the other? Has the long reign of religion in Western society run its course?

We ignore this question at our peril. We risk becoming Disraeli’s blank page. Jews constitute 7/10 of one per cent of the world. With low birth rates and low rates of affiliation, a minuscule Orthodox community (10 per cent of Jews at best) will represent the future of a people that has given enormously to the world: everything from ethical monotheism to ground-breaking scientific discoveries, from a unique brand of humour to breathtaking business acumen and philanthropy. We owe it to ourselves and to the world to safeguard our legacy. As John Ruskin wrote: “Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future.” 

Paul Socken is distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo.