I think there is no accident that the further the idea of "people hood" gets from the western jewish identity, the more assimilation and back turning on it you find.
There has been a subtle, but radical, shift in how Jews see themselves in recent years. We went from a people in exile to a religion in a peopleless land (the US). And religions, they're interchangeable. You can pick em up and drop em as you go.
So people do.
If there is to be any meaningful difference in the future of jewish outreach, it is going to have to begin stressing that point.
