San Diego (special) -- As Elliott Abrams was an assistant secretary of state during President Ronald Reagan's administration, you might guess that the reason he was invited to speak Nov. 18 at the San Diego Jewish Book Fair was that he wrote a learned treatise on Israel, or an insider's book about how Jews interact with the State Department.

Forget it, you would be wrong. The book that caught the eyes of the organizers of the Nov. 15-18 book fair is on a completely different subject. Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America is a conservative polemic that argues 1) political liberalism has been a "substitute religion" for many Jews in America; 2) political liberalism has led to a diminution of religious and family values; 3) this breakdown of Jewish identity leads to intermarriage and assimilation and 4) it's time for us Jews to reexamine our fears of conservative Christendom and cooperate politically on issues that can help us as well as them.

On what kind of issues does Abrams want Jews to form a coalition with the Christian Right? School vouchers, enabling parents to receive tax credits to send their children to religious schools, is one of them. While Jews have the opportunity to fully integrate into American society, Abrams argues that we would be better off if during some periods in our lives we exercise a form of "self-segregation" in order to spend more time with other Jews, and to learn our unique culture, history and religious outlook. This "self-segregation" can occur by going to Jewish day camps, taking a trip to Israel, regularly attending Shabbat services or enrolling in a Jewish day school. If vouchers can help parents to afford to send their children to Jewish schools, they should be supported, he argues.

ellioo abrams

What about the argument that this breaks down the constitutional barriers between church and state? Abrams replies that tax credits for grade school and high school students should be as acceptable as the government grants and loans that college students now receive to attend private and public universities of their choice.

As the government doesn't compel people to go to any school in particular, no one should fear that Big Brother is pushing one religion over another.

Abrams rejects arguments that vouchers will result in the best students transferring to private schools and the public schools being left with poorer and minority students. 

He said Catholic parochial schools are virtually free today, yet only 25 percent of Catholics attend these schools--with the rest choosing to attend public schools.

"I happen as an individual to be in favor of vouchers and more privatization of the high schools, at least, and the public schools generally, because they are failing so many students," he said during a recent interview.

"They don't happen to be failing for the most part suburban Jewish students; they are failing urban non-white students," he added. "To me what is shocking about the attitude of the Jewish community is that it basically is ...'We are against vouchers and we don't think anybody should have any voucher for any reason whatsoever.'"

"I think that is a very callous attitude...it is a remarkable lack of concern about what is happening in the cities," Abrams said. "Those central city public school systems are for the most part in big trouble....But if you get a black parent who wants to send a kid to a better school--this has been happening in Milwaukee, for example--for the Jewish community to say 'yeah, well, tough...' seems to me to be seriously an inadequate response."

Abrams compared the attitude to the famous New York newspaper headline about President Gerald R. Ford's refusal to endorse a financial bailout for the stricken metropolis: Ford to City: Drop Dead.

In his book, Abrams writes: "American Jews believe simply as an article of faith that a more religious society threatens them, and this has been a much more powerful credo for the American Jew than any of the laws of Moses." 

He also argues in the book that many Christian groups have revamped their teachings about Judaism, so that it is seen in a positive light, and that liberal secularism is a far greater danger to the Jewish people.

I asked Abrams whether he had seen the television and newspaper stories recently about the Jewish family in rural Alabama whose children had been forced in public school to write essays on "Why Jesus is My Savior." Was he unmindful of the resolution adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention specifically targeting Jews for proselytization? Are we Jews so wrong to interpret the drive for vouchers, and the campaign for prayer in public schools as part of an unfolding campaign to "Christianize" America?

He replied that "to say, as I did in the book, that there is a tremendous change in the Christian view of Judaism is undeniable. It is also undeniably true that some Christians still don't get it. Some Catholics don't, some Protestants don't. 

"And it is always going to be true that there are always going to be violations of law and the Constitution....Even in the best of times we are always going to have anti-Semites, and we are always going to have people who may not even be anti-Semites, but they are just ignorant and don't recognize the effect of their action on Jews....this is life in the Diaspora."

On the other hand, he said, "I am troubled by the fact that there is a tremendous amount of hostility in the Jewish community toward devout Christians and a tremendous amount of fear. It doesn't extend just to evangelical Christian conservatives but it extends to Catholics for instance, a pretty good amount of prejudice as well. There is this sense that Christianity is a danger."

Abrams said he finds it regrettable that "you see an awful lot of Jewish organizations constantly taking on Evangelicals on issues that are not Jewish issues, by which I mean things like gun control and abortion, which are important issues, but I would say they are not specifically Jewish issues.

"I think in many cities the Jewish community is so monolithically liberal that it is very hard for it to have much of a dialogue with the Evangelical community," he said.

Surely, he doesn't expect Jewish organizations to give up their opposition to guns, or their support for a woman's choice, as a precondition for a dialogue with Evangelicals?

"I don't think anybody has to change their mind," he replied. "What I would like the Jewish community to do as a community is say we want to talk to you about Jewish issues; we don't want to talk to you about politics. Let's keep politics out of it."

The point is that "if your goal is to achieve an America where people of faith are free to practice their faith, you are going to have a lot in common between a practicing Jew and an Evangelical." 

"If your basic goal is to achieve gun control and free choice for abortion rights, then you are not going to have anything in common, but I don't see those as Jewish goals."

While critical of what he believes is Jewish failure to accommodate Christian Evangelicals in the market place of ideas, he thinks some Jewish congregations go too far in accommodating non-Jews in their temples.

"If the barriers to Judaism are lowered to include more people within them, the incentive to convert is reduced," he writes. "When the Jewish partner stresses his Judaism, and his parents do as well, there is a better chance of conversion. 

"When the non-Jewish spouse is welcome to participate in synagogue life as a temple official, as is the case in so many Reform temples, and when the children of the mixed marriage are already considered Jewish, have outreach efforts begun to defeat their very purpose?"