Bad for the Jews, Bad for America
The American Jewish community is coming apart at the seams. Its vital center is collapsing, and the entire group is increasingly polarized by runaway growth at both extremes: religious fundamentalism on one end, secular non-belief on the other. The result is not only bad for the Jews, but bad for the rest of America.
Bad for America because the tiny, six-million-member Jewish community -- two percent of the population -- has proved one of the most vibrant, creative and useful groups in American life. Its loss would be a loss for the entire nation.
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It's because Jews are so influential in American life that the disintegration of the Jewish community would surely be hurtful to the nation as a whole. Recent surveys show, beyond a doubt, that this unravelling is taking place.
The most important study was the 2013 Pew Portrait of Jewish Americans, a poll of some 3,500 Jews nationwide. It found that almost six out of ten are intermarrying, including more than seven of ten of the non-Orthodox; more than one-fifth of all Jews don't believe in God, and two-thirds don't belong to a synagogue.
Other key findings were that although more than 90 percent say they're proud to be Jewish, the more than 20 percent who don't believe in their own religion still identify as being Jewish -- but only on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity or culture. More important, the percentage of these Jews of no religion ("nones"
, has increased with each successive generation, rising fourfold from only seven percent of those born before 1927 to 32 percent of Jews born after 1980.
The effect of this ballooning number of "nones" on the continuity of non-Orthodox Judaism is devastating. Two-thirds of Jewish "nones" don't raise their children Jewish. Even more than younger Jews generally, they are less likely to join synagogues or other Jewish organizations, donate to Jewish charities, marry other Jews or raise Jewish children.
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The changing face of New York Jewry reveals that today's Jews "are poorer, less educated and more religious" than a decade ago, as well as politically "less liberal" (nationwide, Pew found 70 percent of all Jews favor Democrats, but 57 percent of the Orthodox prefer Republicans). A New York Times story analyzing the local Orthodox surge was headlined: "Are Liberal Jewish Voters a Thing of the Past?"
Not just yet. But the story speculates that "in a generation a majority" of the city's Jews may be Orthodox, including a sizable number of the ultra-Orthodox Hasidim. An early sign may have been a 2011 special Congressional election in Brooklyn and Queens. A Catholic Republican won a big majority of the Orthodox Jewish vote, beat an Orthodox Democrat and became the first GOP candidate to win the district in 88 years. Jews who voted for him followed the wishes of their rabbis and other leaders. Ultra-Orthodox Jews often vote as a bloc, following instructions.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sandy-goodman/bad-for-the-jews-bad-for-america_b_7425212.html