From my readings as well as from my own experience, I understand that "ethnic" Jewishness cannot last.My generation of Jews are of the tail end of the generation of immigrants from Eastern Europe. There might have been a chance for ethnic Jews to survive another few centuries in America but that chance was destroyed by the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. After WW II there was no great source to keep replenishing American Jewry. So for a few generations [only a few] after the passing away of the Eastern European ancestors, the great grand children may know they are Jewish but they don't really know what that means so they cannot pass on the essential Jewishness to the next generations.
When I hear Jews with no religious background talking about their ethnic identity, I hate to tell them that identity is bound to perish at least here in America.
When I was first becoming religious, a young Haredi man told me that without the TORAH, Jews will disppear. It was frightening to hear and unbelievable. But now I know it's true. There will be many Jews in America in centuries to come, MILLIONS - but they will hardly be able to call themselves "ethnic" the way we secular Jews do today. Oh they will be ethnic alright but on a 24/7 basis.
We modern Jews who embrace humanistic values have already made decisions - which are hard to turn back from. We believe in the equality and the brotherhood of man. Haredim don't believe in that and even so-called modern Orthodox hardly believe in it. No, they believe that Jews are the "chosen people".
I'm not in any way religious anymore but even I believe in the chosenness of Jews but that is because I have been infected with Jewish chauvnism from my Orthodox days and it never goes away.
Many of you here are from my old exOrthodox group so you probably know what I am talking about.
I shudder to think what will become of Israelis unless they become more Jewish. Their ethnicity cannot survive on Hebrew alone. In fact, they don't even speak Hebrew in the classical sense. The language of Israel is a composite of real, original Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, English, and the grammatical mindset of Europe. There are Jewish linguists who call the speech of Israel, not Hebrew, but rather Israeli.
Israel has to become more Jewish and less democratic to survive what's coming down the pike. The Left in Israel is already dead. They just don't have the good sense to lie down. Maybe that's a good sign.