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The American Jewish community is coming apart at the seams. Its vital center is
Bad for America because the tiny, six-million-member Jewish community -- two
(https://www.linkedin.com/cws/share?url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sandy-goodman/bad-for-the-jews-bad-for362
percent (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/us/poll-shows-major-shift-inamerica_b_7425212.html)
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science.
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
(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/us/poll-shows-major-shift-in-identity-of-usjews.html) 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 nonOrthodox; 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 (http://mosaicmagazine.com/response/2014/11/theunimportance-of-jewish-difference/). 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.
"It's a very grim portrait of the health of the American Jewish population," says
(http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2014/11/the-pew-survey-reanalyzed/)Jack
Wertheimer, a professor of American Jewish history. Sociologist Steven Cohen sees
(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/us/poll-shows-major-shift-in-identity-of-usjews.html) "a sharply declining non-Orthodox population in the second half of the
21st century." Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch goes further, predicting
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-ammiel-hirsch/pew-survey-jewishamericans_b_4057905.html)that the existence of so many entirely secular Jews
threatens their survival:
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British drama series Downton Abbey. A rare Jewish peer in the 1920s, he hotly
opposes his son's marriage to a non-Jewish girl. "Our family has achieved a great
deal," he says. "And now you want to throw all that away... The second Lord Sinderby
[the son] may be Jewish but the third [a grandchild] will not," because of the (oftignored) rule of matrilineal descent.
5/26/15 6:41 PM
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Of the 10 percent of all Jews who are Orthodox nationwide, only three percent
(https://www.ou.org/jewish_action/03/2015/three-percenters-mandate-mission/)
are so-called modern Orthodox -- Jews who, while seriously observant, are fully
members of modern society. Outnumbering the modern Orthodox two-to-one
(http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/chapter-3-jewish-identity/) are the much
more fundamentalist and insular ultra-Orthodox, including many Hasidim ("pious
ones"), notable for their distinctive dress
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasidic_Judaism#Dress): men in black hats and suits,
whose wives conceal their hair under scarves or wear wigs.
Many of Pew's nationwide findings reflect those of a 2012 survey
(http://forward.com/news/157766/changing-face-of-new-york-jewry/) of six
thousand Jews in the New York City area, home to the nation's largest Jewish
population, conducted by the local UJA-Federation. That Jewish group's poll counted
1.5 million Jews in the area, an increase of 100,000 in a decade, almost entirely
because of a "huge surge" in the Orthodox population, which now numbers one-third
of the area's Jews.
Even more significant, it found that six out of ten Jewish children live in Orthodox
homes, largely because the Hasidim have very big
(http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/sunday-review/are-liberal-jewish-voters-athing-of-the-past.html) families (seven or eight children are not uncommon). Jews of
no religion ("nones") are the second largest group in New York. The numbers of
Reform and Conservative Jews in the area totalled 583,000 -- 80,000 less than ten
years before.
Nationwide, both Reform and Conservative Jews have suffered losses -- especially
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Judaism) the latter. Reform remains the
largest group (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/us/poll-shows-major-shift-inidentity-of-us-jews.html), at 35 percent. Conservatives are 18 percent. The Orthodox
make up 10 percent as noted, and "nones" are another 22 percent.
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the only ones left to repair an increasingly polarized nation in a badly broken world.
And the loss of their efforts would be bad for the Jews. And bad for America.
MORE: Jews, American Jews, Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Ultra Orthodox, Pew Portrait of Jewish
Americans, Intermarriage, Assimilation, Secular, Yeshivas, Rabbis, Hasidics
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