Marc Tracy parses a new study that suggests that, despite popular belief, Jewish life in America is not in decline:
[A]s Jews increasingly tolerate intermarriage and focus on other signifiers—pride, religious participation, and above all child-rearing—some good news appears. Ninety-four percent of U.S. Jews are proud to be Jewish, says Pew, and three-quarters feel a “strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people.” Seventy percent attended a Passover Seder, and more than half fasted during Yom Kippur. Fewer than 20 percent are not raising their children Jewish to at least some extent; 59 percent are raising them Jewish by religion, although, again, this number is insanely divergent depending on whether the marriage is all-Jewish (96 percent) or interfaith (20 percent).
“The most important finding is that contrary to the lachrymose narrative of a declining, disappearing, vanishing Jewish population, there are many more people who say that they are Jewish, claim Jewish identity, and the vast majority [who] say it is their religion,” Leonard Saxe, a Brandeis professor and prominent Jewish-American demographics expert who consulted on the Pew survey, told me Tuesday.
Jessica Grose takes a different interpretation of the study, stressing that actual religious observance has dropped significantly:
[A]s we get further and further away from virulent anti-Semitism (according to the Pew Survey, 15 percent of American Jews say they have been called offensive names or snubbed in a social setting because they are Jewish, and Jews think other groups, like gays and Muslims, face more discrimination than they do), perhaps it is not surprising that fewer Jews are religious. Other people do let us forget who we are. Plus we don’t have to believe to be Jewish: Judaism, unlike Christianity, is passed down through blood. It’s also difficult to convert to Judaism, and we welcome questioning. Not exactly a recipe for creating generations of faithful devotees.
Gabriel Roth doesn’t despair:
For my grandchildren, the fact that some of their ancestors were Jewish will have no more significance than the fact that others were Welsh. That will be a real loss. But we should be realistic about what’s being lost and what isn’t. Here are some of the things I cherish about Jewishness:
unsnobbish intellectualism, sympathy for the disadvantaged, psychoanalytic insight, rueful comedy, smoked fish. Those things have been thoroughly incorporated into American upper-middlebrow culture. Philip Roth and Bob Dylan and Woody Allen no longer read as “Jewish” artists but as emblematic Americans; their influence is as palpable in the work of young gentiles as young Jews.
The loss of Jewishness as a meaningful identity in America is the kind of loss that occurs when individuals are free to engage in the pursuit of happiness. It’s the loss of something that has great meaning to many people and an important place in history but that is, essentially, tribal.
To that point, Douglas Rushkoff suggests that “if we want to promote Judaism and its practices, we might need to transcend our rather primitive misconception of Judaism as a race”:
It was Pharaoh who first called the Jews a “people”. The notion of a Jewish bloodline didn’t emerge until the Inquisition as a justification for executing even those Jews who had converted. And it was Hitler (repurposing a bit of Jung) who called the Jews a race.
As I look at history and the Torah, Judaism isn’t really a religion at all, but a path beyond religion. It was developed by the equivalent of recovering cult members, as a way beyond the idolatry and death worship of Ancient Egypt. Instead of “believing” things, a disparate amalgam of tribes (those mythic sons of Jacob), developed a living myth together – as well as a system of law that could be amended as civilization evolved. Everything from the Sabbath to the US Constitution came out of these insights and this continuous process of revision and renewal.
By applying the techniques of the census taker to the Jewish people (a practice actually forbidden in Talmud – we’re not allowed to count ourselves) the would-be protectors of Judaism are practicing a dangerous game with diminishing returns.
The Dish 