Wednesday, October 30, 2013

A call to Action on Jewish Identity




As I’m sure many of the readers of The Reporter are aware, last month the Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Project released a report which has troubling implications for those who care about the present and future of Jewish life in America.  And while there were a few findings that seemed downright odd, such as the claim, for example, that some 34% of respondents (and by implication 34% of American Jews) say that one can believe that Jesus was the Messiah and still be Jewish is difficult for me to wrap my head around, there were other conclusions that were all too familiar. These other conclusions, about a slipping sense of Jewish identity, the impact of intermarriage and a declining sense of communal connection, resonated and are in line with many of the concerns that members of the Jewish community in New Hampshire have shared with me these last few months.  I read the media coverage of the poll results, but I decided that it would also be a good idea to go to the Pew website and look more closely at the report itself to better understand the challenges it elucidates and begin to look for possible solutions.

The report present an image of American Jewish life in decline over the last 40 years, and this, in and of itself, is troubling enough, but the implications for the future may be more so. Whether or not Jewish communal leaders accept the exact numbers presented in the Pew poll as an accurate reflection of the community as a whole, the logical outcome of such a profound decline in both religiosity and Yiddishkeit (Jewish peoplehood) paints a bleak picture.  Hand in hand with this decline in strong expressions of identity seems to be a rapid increase in assimilation among American Jews. The authors of the report state that “… intermarriage rates seem to have risen substantially over the last five decades. Among Jewish respondents who have gotten married since 2000, nearly six-in-ten have a non-Jewish spouse. Among those who got married in the 1980s, roughly four-in-ten have a non-Jewish spouse. And among Jews who got married before 1970, just 17% have a non-Jewish spouse. While the authors offer a caveat that the exact implications of this rise in intermarriage are not completely clear, it is hard not to assume a continued decline when one considers that the same survey reports that , “Jews who have non-Jewish spouses are much less likely than those married to fellow Jews to be raising children as Jewish by religion and much more likely to be raising children as partially Jewish, Jewish but not by religion, or not Jewish at all. Furthermore, Jews who are the offspring of intermarriages appear, themselves, to be more likely to intermarry than Jews with two Jewish parents.”

Of course everyone has a right to make their own decision about whom to marry and how to raise their children, but at the same time this part of the survey got me thinking about the kinds of resources JFNH provides to all Jewish families when it comes to raising children with a strong sense of Jewish identity, including our pre-school, summer camp, the PJ Library program (which sends Jewish books and activities to homes with young children across New Hampshire),  funding for children to attend Jewish summer camp and visit Israel, and yearly funding for synagogue Hebrew Schools across the state. These are important programs, but as I’ve been discussing this survey with members of the community there is clearly a desire to do more, to provide more resources for all different kinds of Jewish families, including families in which only one parent may be Jewish. At one time such an idea may have been seen as controversial; today I would argue that this approach is absolutely essential.

It’s also important to note that while the report suggests that intermarried families face additional challenges when it comes to raising their children as Jews with a strong sense of Jewish identity, that there are places where communities and Federations have made it a priority to be inclusive in a real and robust way.  Combined Jewish Philanthropies (the Federation in the Greater Boston area) for example, has made a serious effort to reach out to families in which only one parent is Jewish and has had great success in providing support to those families to ensure that both parents and children feel welcome in the community. Individual synagogues throughout New England also do a wonderful job of being inclusive in this way, and over the next few months the board of JFNH and I plan to look more closely at these models of inclusion to improve our efforts in this area. 

I firmly believe that in order to ensure the future of Jewish life in America that organizations such as JFNH need to continually adapt to changing circumstances and trends within the community. In this respect I think we can see the results of the Pew poll not merely as bad news to be received with resignation, but as a call to action, reminding us that we cannot take the idea of Jewish identity or community for granted.


This column originally appeared in the November 2013 issue of The Reporter.
Copyright Daniel E. Levenson 2013.