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.
