Comment
May 2, 2008
Too Many Jews?
Ira Rifkin
Special to the Jewish Times
What’s it going to be: food or fuel? The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
From Haiti to Whole Foods, food prices are rising, in part because of the increased diversion of corn and other potential food resources to produce biofuels. But we’re fortunate. We can purchase cheaper and still nourishing food. No such choice exists in Haiti, Egypt, Mozambique and elsewhere.
Biofuels are just a part of the problem. Sharply rising production and transportation prices plus drought in key producing areas are also factors. So is the ballooning demand for food in China, India and similar places. However, the root cause of the growing food shortage is overpopulation.
Too many mouths to feed have led to the rapid depletion of natural resources, leading, in turn, to the despoiling of our environment. But the worst is likely still to come as climate change further stresses the food supply, triggering increased human conflict over dwindling resources.
The United Nations estimates the global population at about 6.7 billion. China and India account for more than a third of the total. As for Jews, the best guess is, we number around 15 million worldwide — less than a quarter of 1 percent of the global total.
What can be done? The obvious answer is to slow or, better yet — though this seems impossible — reverse the population growth rate. But which nation, which people, will do that voluntarily?
Totalitarian China tried to institute compulsory birth control with modest success. However, the gains appear about to be undone by the massive number of Chinese of child-producing age, increased wealth and better health care. China’s glacial move toward political liberalization threatens to further erode the government’s ability to mandate family planning.
Meanwhile, there seems little possibility that voluntary population control will take hold among traditional Muslims, conservative Christians, sub- Sahara Africans and South Asians, people for whom a large number of offspring remains the primary social safety net and a source of cultural pride.
So what about Jews?
A decade ago, while a reporter in Washington, I covered a news conference at which various liberal religious groups called for voluntary controls on population in response to environmental concerns now even more evident. I asked a leading Reform Jewish spokesman who was there whether Jews should voluntarily limit their numbers as others were being asked to do.
No, he replied, not after the Holocaust and certainly not in an age of assimilation. Were Jews to limit their growth, he reasoned, we would soon disappear. Mind you, this was a liberal Jew speaking, not a representative of the Orthodox community, in which large families are de rigueur.
My heart agreed but my head wanted to scream hypocrite. Why an exception for Jews — because we’re the Chosen People? Just what does that mean, and who besides traditional Jews will accept that as a reason?
Why not exceptions for Navajos, Mormons, Albanians, Salvadorans, Gambians, Laotians and other groups with relatively small populations? Who decides who should and should not procreate at will?
I admit to being conflicted. Population growth needs to slow, yet I’m committed to Jewish survival. Perhaps a reader can articulate a clear answer. I’d appreciate your feedback. I invite you to log on to jewishtimes.com , click the “opinion” button on the left and then “comment” to post your answer at the end of my column.