(originally published at PresenTense Magazine)
The most popular Jewish pastime, arguably, is our obsession with numbers and the size of the Jewish population, which, according to most recent studies, is in danger. The questions reverberate across Jewish boardrooms and dinner tables: How many Jews are there? Why aren’t there more of us? If two Jews fall in the forest, how many opinions will they have, and can we arrange for them to fall on each other in a way that might help one impregnate the other?
While the Orthodox community continues to grow apace, and its women have an annoyingly high total fertility rate, the non-Orthodox Jewish community seems to dwindle away with every new generation. Short of massive proselytizing and conversion efforts, what can we do to reverse Jewish population decline and avoid the fate of becoming a nation of stagnation?
Luckily, help is on the way: the popular birthright israel program has had success in bringing young, horny, undersexed, North American Jews of prime childbearing age to Israel for the first time. But, while hook-ups are common on the free 10-day trip, its true potential remains untapped: not enough is being done to encourage unprotected sexual encounters. For shame! With a small investment in intentionally defective condoms and some authoritative sounding, scripturally grounded bad advice, there could soon be a bumper crop of “birthright babies.”
The solution to the Jewish population crisis should be immediately obvious to anyone with no more than a seventh grade education: to save the Jewish people, we need more babies. To maximize baby production, we need an orgy. It’s utterly simple, with but a few insignificant and nearly insurmountable difficulties. The annual IJO: the week-long International Jewish Orgy (perhaps between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but I’m open to Passover, too) will provide Jewish men and women with endless sexual partners in a non-competitive, pro-procreative environment. The fully-catered event will feature an open mustard and cold-cut bar to get the men excited and provide ample liquor as social lubricant. Sponsored and underwritten by Goldman Extramarital Sachs, the event will be a draw for paying male customers who step up to this important national service, to impregnate as many Jewish women as possible. And for women, the formula is simple: arrive on time, have a drink or twelve, and leave pregnant with the Jewish future.
While this plan is undoubtedly controversial, it is not without precedent. For a period in Jewish history, sex with multiple partners, free love, and communal possession of children was common within kibbutz communities—an outgrowth of egalitarian attitudes. These children belonged to and were raised by the community. Such creative reproductive actions taken by Jews living in the nascent Israeli state deserve contemporary emulation.
As for providing community care for Jewish children and mothers, The Hebrew Mutual Benefit Society, Jewish Unmarried Mothers Services, and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum are all models we can build on for the disbursement of funds and assistance. Along with donations from wealthy Jewish benefactors, an endowment can be set up to provide for the unwed mothers and their bastard children.
Reason cannot guide us; only fear can. The unmitigated fear of what might happen in a distant, unpredictable future must compel us to take radical actions that might otherwise be considered unwise, were we to pause and reflect rationally. And we must not wait. We must act immediately, before someone realizes how ridiculous this proposal actually is. As taught by the apocryphal thirteenth century Rabbi Menachem “the Weird” of Chelm, “The only way to fight the reasonable is with the unreasonable or, if that doesn’t work, poison their borscht.” It should be noted that Rabbi Menachem’s congregation consisted solely of nine chickens and a very large radish—barely a minyan by most shtetl standards—hence the name Rabbi Menachem “the Weird.” To this day there remains much debate whether he was actually a rabbi. But, I digress.
Back to my point: the Jewish future. Orgies are the only way to ensure population growth. Some may consider this proposal absurd, offensive, or even unrealistic; but I would ask these critics to consider the millions of Jews who died in the Holocaust and, hopefully, in that moment of distraction, they will decide to criticize something else.
As the Bard famously said: “Let’s get it on.”
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Ben Asher is a comedian and writer from New York.