Wertheimer’s point is that poor Orthodox Jews are going to be increasingly reliant on outside philanthropy, which in turn may be increasingly scarce. But Miller proposes an alternative:

In 2008, 2.7 million Americans called themselves religiously Jewish, down from 3.1 million in 1990. Wouldn’t the central challenge of American Jewry be to encourage the broadest range of people (including the intermarried, like me) to identify as Jewish and to raise Jewish kids? Costly barriers to entry need to be taken away, or, at least, reimagined. “We have this very bizarre pay-to-play philosophy,” says Jay Sanderson, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. Christian churches, Sanderson points out, begin with an invitation to prayer; they ask for money later. “The Jewish community’s first instinct is ‘give us money,’ instead of ‘come in.’”

Those black-clad Chabad volunteers who have no doubt approached you—first asking, always, “Are you Jewish?” (since Jews don’t proselytize outside the faith)—and then invited you to come to Shabbat dinner at the local house, without asking you for money? According to Miller, they represent the future of Jewish growth, if there is a future of Jewish growth.

The Cost of Being Jewish [Newsweek]
The High Cost of Jewish Living [Commentary]
Related: Teachable Moment

What Israel Can Teach Us About Rebuilding An Economy [TNR]
Earlier: Israel’s ‘Tech Miracle’ Explained

Ultra-Orthodox Women Go to Work [World Vision Report]

The High Holidays—and these High Holidays in particular—have been pushing me to think more about cyclicality. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we dust off the melodies, prayers, and tropes used only at this time of year. Simchat Torah represents the end of a cycle of Torah reading, and the beginning of a new one. Growing up in a large college town in the Midwest, it struck me that the High Holidays coincided with other vital cycles: the return of students to the college campus a few blocks away after a quiet summer, the turning of the leaves and onset of crispness in the air, displacing humidity. As an adult, the holidays inspire another type of cyclical activity—an annual visit to Sable’s, the hole-in-the-wall smoked fish mecca on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

At work (I’m the business columnist at Newsweek and Slate), the fall—and again, this fall in particular—is always a period for reflecting on cycles. September and October are the periods when those in the financial world remind themselves that bad things can happen in the markets—because bad things did happen in the falls of 1929, 1987, and 2008. This year, the High Holidays nearly coincide with the one-year anniversary of the market meltdowns and ensuing bailouts. The High Holidays are the Yomim Nora’im—Days of Awe. But in Hebrew, nora means both awesome and terrible. And last fall, as Lehman Brothers failed, as the world’s financial markets seized up, as governments scrambled to stop a total meltdown, they were truly terrible days for the global economy.

The downturns in markets are cycles we’d just as soon forget. And yet, I can’t help thinking this year that we’ve been too forgetful of cyclicality—in our personal and professional lives. Had our leaders—and we as individual investors and consumers—been more mindful of the power of cycles, we might have avoided some portion of our current woes.

Until recently, an appreciation of cyclicality was deeply embedded in the way we thought about how the global economy worked—periods of growth followed by occasional contractions, which set the stage for more growth. But in the past two decades, the thinking changed. Technology, globalization, interconnectedness, improved management, and understanding borne of experience and the study of history gave us the impression that we could escape the tyranny of economic cycles. Alan Greenspan, elevated to chairman of the Federal Reserve in 1987, came to believe—and convinced us—that the business cycle could be tamed. And to a large degree, he was right. Recessions, which had plagued the economy every three or four years, became rare. Between March 1991 and December 2007, the economy contracted for a single eight-month period, in 2001. And even that recession was brief and shallow by historical standards.

A certain arrogance sets in among those who believe they live outside history. But that’s precisely what the financial world came to believe. As prosperity rose and spread, the prospect of a recession, of a cyclical downturn in the economy, or in markets like housing and stocks, was increasingly dismissed as an impossibility. Housing prices would always rise. Loans would always be paid back. The unemployment rate would always remain low. And with every passing day, more money was wagered on this belief that the business cycle was a thing of the past. When you believe prices move in only one direction, it makes sense to borrow (and lend) as much money as you can. The intensity of this belief made the reckoning all the more difficult when it inevitably came last year. The recession—the sudden reassertion of the economic cycle that began in December 2007 and probably ended this summer—was so devastating to the fortunes of so many individuals and institutions because their financial models didn’t account for the possibility of a downturn. It’s as if they had built houses astride an active fault that would shatter at the merest tremor. And so we should approach this High Holiday season with a deeper appreciation of the importance of cyclicality in worldly affairs.

Finally, for me, at least, the High Holidays—and Yom Kippur in particular—represent an antidote to another type of cycle: the news cycle. Journalists have always been captive to the relentless rhythms of world affairs. But in the past several years, it’s gotten much worse. Time was, a reporter could unplug in the evening, or for the weekend, without missing a beat. Now? Not so much. It’s irresponsible to turn off the BlackBerry and avoid email. Editors kick copy back in the evening, and sources in Asia may only be available at five in the morning Eastern time. Amidst the raging storm of Twitter, magazine deadlines, the mandates of filing for the internet, phoning in to radio shows, and rushing to television studios, there are only a few places you can seek respite from the datasmog: airplanes and synagogue. Yom Kippur is probably the one day of the year I don’t check my email or consume any media—regardless of which company might be failing or which television network is calling. It’s a time for reflection and humility. For at least 24 hours, the economic and news cycles can spin without my presence.

Daniel Gross writes about business for Newsweek and Slate.

It may seem to you a sad little town, whimpering under the weight of a plummeting economy, scoffing at the glooms of a recession, sighing at its insecurities and its fears. And, to be sure, it is very much all of the above: living rooms once atwitter with talk of interior decorators and summers at St. Barts are now silent, and imperial retailers once adept at branding each bit of merchandise with ubiquitous logos now resort to plain brown wrappers in an effort to assuage that strange new phenomenon afflicting the affluent, luxury shame.

But for us common folks, it’s a happening place, a city bursting with a sense of possibility and moved by happy resolve and defiant optimism. How do I know? Because I got a table at a certain restaurant.

Which restaurant is unimportant; if I disclosed that information and informed you that its previously impossible-to-get reservations are now, well, only slightly less daunting to come by, you might get on the line and snag away its remaining spots. And they are mine, all mine: I’ve earned them.

For years, you see, I’ve been calling up this hallowed eatery—that is an achievement in of itself, as its number is not publicly listed—and, in a hushed tone, ask politely if, perhaps, they may find it in their hearts to permit me the pleasure of paying the equivalent of Guatemala’s gross domestic product for their renowned salmon tartare with horseradish, creme fraiche, and onions. More often than not, the answer was no. Or yes, but at 5:15 in the afternoon, 11:45 at night, next August, two solar eclipses from now, or at any other time in which neither the stomach nor the mind could fathom enjoying a masterful meal.

But this week, with the famous names that once graced the restaurant’s guest book now making up a good chunk of Bernard Madoff’s newly revealed list of clients, my prayers, and phone calls, were answered. The voice on the other end of the line sounded demure. A table? On the weekend? 8:30? With pleasure. Looking forward to seeing you, sir, and thank you very much.

My culinary Xanadu is not alone in its sudden subservience; as Frank Bruni gleefully reported this week, Manhattan’s most august eateries are struggling to unlearn their former cool reticence and instead embrace the few clients still interested in costly and time-consuming cooking. Once the masters of this town, the chefs are now at the hands of the people.

Which may make Mario Batalli, Sirio Maccioni, Eric Ripert and their fellow aproned emperors especially interested in this week’s parasha, a meditation on just how unremitting people can get when they’re hungry.

The story begins on a high note: the Israelites leaving Egypt, Pharaoh giving chase, Moses splitting the sea, and a grateful nation rapping a long hymn of thanks to the Almighty and His miracles. Soon, however, stomachs begin to grumble, and minds turn vicious: “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by pots of meat, when we ate bread to our fill!” the people complain to their exasperated leader. “For you have brought us out into this desert, to starve this entire congregation to death.”

As if He were heaven’s own Top Chef, the Lord provides the protesting people with some manna. And since man cannot live on manna alone, he throws in some quail. All, mind you, raining down from the sky, requiring the Israelites to do nothing more than reach out, buffet-style, and gorge themselves. But they’re still not happy: the Lord forgot their soft drinks.

“Why have you brought us up from Egypt to make me and my children and my livestock die of thirst?” they complain, neglecting to give thanks for the baked goods and the roasted birds and sending Moses into a fit of desperation. The poor leader: he never understood what every New York foodie knows instinctively, namely that the times are only as good as the chow.

This is no frivolous statement, and God is not furious at the Israelites’ endless kvetching. Eating, our dietary-minded deity knows, is not only a matter of the stomach, but also of the soul; this, after all, is the same God that gave us a list of rules and rituals so obsessed with the preparation and consumption of edibles that it often reads like something penned by the priests of the Slow Food movement. A God who understands that we are what we eat, and that a bit of quail, perhaps encrusted with spices and herbs and served with a tumbler of cool, sweet water could make even the most stricken man sing, the most dire desert bloom, and the most impoverished town spring to life.

And so, the Lord obliges, the people have their fill, and Moses is free to address more pressing matters, like the gathering Amalekites. But before he wages war, he makes sure a bit of manna is stuffed in a jar and preserved for future generations to behold.

Hey, you never know: with even the city’s most celebrated cooks now resorting to canned truffles, squirreling away some goods is not a terrible idea. After all, who knows when we’d next be able to get a decent table in this town.