They are in their 20s, were raised in families with only one Jewish parent, do not associate themselves with any Jewish denomination and are likely to hold liberal political views.
This is the profile of one in five young American Jews and, according to a new analysis of data collected by the Pew Research Center in its 2013 survey of American Jews, they feel deeply alienated from Israel.
...
Cohen, a leading sociologist who researches the American Jewish community, has defined in his analysis a new category that combines detachment from Israel and opposition to the country’s policies. “When it reaches 20% of Jews under the age of 30, this is huge,” he said. “There is a real leap in various forms of alienation from Israel.”
The category of “Israel-alienated” includes members of the Jewish community who both indicate having low attachment to Israel and think the United States is too supportive of it. Combining these two aspects, Cohen explained, provides a look at those in the community who are not only critical of Israel, as are many Jews who do not agree with the positions of the government in Jerusalem, but also reached this position without having any attachment to the Jewish state.
The analysis found that a fifth of non-Orthodox young Jews could be categorized as “Israel-alienated.” In general, younger Jews tend to be less attached to Israel and less supportive of Israel in the context of its conflict with the Palestinians.
The portrait of Israel-alienated American Jews that emerges from the data analysis includes several main characteristics: They are young (18.8% of Jews between the ages of 18 and 29 feel alienated from Israel) and they are more likely to be unaffiliated with any denomination within Judaism (14.9%), liberal in their politics (21.6% describe themselves as very liberal) and have grown up with only one Jewish parent. Of those raised in interfaith families, 19.4% have low attachment to Israel and think America is too supportive of it. Only 4.4% of American Jews raised with two Jewish parents share these sentiments.
...
Similar views on Israel among young American Jews have been detected in polls for almost three decades, but the recent analysis pinpoints the reasons for detachment and alienation, and points to interfaith marriage as a key indicator of resentment toward Israel. “The rate of alienated remained the same, but there is a change in their characteristics,” Sasson said. “A couple of decades ago they came from homes with two Jewish parents, and now they are coming from intermarried families.”
Children of interfaith families, experts explain, show less engagement in all aspects of Jewish life, including attachment to Israel. But while there was a relatively small decline among children of interfaith parents in participation in certain religious ceremonies (Passover Seders, for example), their feelings toward Israel demonstrated a greater drop.
“The non-Jewish parents have an understanding of Judaism that comports with Christianity, and that’s why going to synagogue makes sense to them” Cohen said. On the other hand, he added, “there is no counterpart in Christianity to the idea of an ethnic state.”
The Jewish community’s evolving attitude toward intermarriage could, however, hold promise for forging a better connection between these younger Jews and Israel.
...
According to the recent analysis, alienation toward Israel among those who never visited Israel hovers around the 20% marker. This figure drops only slightly among young American Jews who have visited once. A real decline in alienation is seen only after a second trip to Israel, or after living there for a while.
Also, while researchers agree that intermarriage is the leading indicator for alienation from Israel, political views still play a role. The data analysis shows a steady increase in negative feelings toward Israel that correlates with the spectrum of conservative to liberal views. The alienation rate among the self-described “very conservative” is less than 1%, while among the “very liberal” it reaches 21.6%.
According to RCE's research, over 85% of European Jews assimilate and
intermarry with non-Jews; 80% do not attend synagogues, even on the
central holiday of Yom Kippur; over 75% of Jewish children in Europe do
not receive a Jewish education, and over 90% of European Jewish students
have no connections with the Jewish community.
The sobering figures led Rabbi Shimon Elitov, a member of the Israeli
Chief Rabbinate Council, to say "assimilation in the shocking numbers
that we see is worse that the physical Holocaust that we saw."
In order to provide European rabbis with tools to respond to the
threat, Rabbis Moshe Braverman and Doron Kornbluth ran a workshop at the
conference to give pointers on how to deal with the phenomenon.
It sounds like the situation is well-past workshops. Massive action is needed - and even that may not help.
Deputy Religious Services Minister Eli Ben-Dahan presented a different
counter-measure to the difficulties of Jewish life in Europe, calling on
European Jews to leave and immigrate to Israel or face disappearing. In contrast to the 85% assimilation rate, Ben-Dahan argued that in Israel the rate is a mere thousandth.
Perhaps it's a Heavenly decree that so many French Jews are fleeing to Israel. And given that the cause of that flight is Muslim anti-Semitism -a phenomenon that is rising in many other European countries, perhaps ultimately European Jewry will either flee to Israel or be lost.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu failed to set an example for the Jewish people by not preventing his son from dating a non-Jewish Norwegian woman, Shas MK Nissim Ze'ev told The Jerusalem Post Sunday.
In what world is Ze'ev living? I'm sure that many parents wish it were so simple to just 'prevent' your adult children from dating whomever they please. It's not. Obviously, it would have helped if Netanyahu had given his older son a stronger Jewish education and had shown more of an example. For that he can be criticized. But the example he didn't set was for his son and not for the Jewish people. That's absurd.
There are others who think the problem can just be blinked away.
World Zionist Organization vice chairman David Breakstone, who
represents the worldwide Conservative movement, said he hopes that if
the relationship becomes serious she would want to convert to Judaism.
"The
laws should changed in order to enable Leikanger to convert to Judaism
as she and the Netanyahu family would understand it," Breakstone said.
"She should not be limited to a Judaism as understood and interpreted by
a Chief Rabbinate with an antiquated interpretation of Judaism that is
out of sync with the majority of Jews around the world."
Yeah.... When the standard is violated, just lower the standards.... No, thanks....
And by the way, I doubt the 'Netanyahu family' is thrilled about this either. Sara's family - the Ben Artzi's - is religious, and the younger son, Avner, finished third in the National Bible Contest a few years ago.
The difference between American Jews and Israeli Jews
I'm enjoying watching a bunch of you trying to figure out what I really meant about that Pew poll in the comments. Despite what I'm about to post below, in the long run, I don't believe that Israeli Jews are immune from assimilation. But for now we just might be.
Jeff Woolf and I go back about 45 years to a boy scout troop in a Conservative temple in the Boston area (there were no Orthodox scout troops in Boston then). I was actually in a group with his younger brother. Note what he says about Jewish identity in Israel.
I am, at the same time, thunderstruck by the stark contrast between the Pew Study, and the most recent Guttman/IDI Study of Israeli Jewry. The findings are almost symmetrical opposites. Israeli Jews believe in God (over 80%). There is a Jewish Renaissance(in Study, Culture, and Observance) in
Israel that literally boggles the imagination (even as it confounds the
usual definitions of Religious and Secular). And, while individualism
and individual expression are certainly not absent, the sense of
national cohesion, what we call bayachad, is movingly strong.
Anyone, who lived here through the Second Intifada, or the various wars
and campaigns since then will readily attest to this fact. All that my
American brothers and sisters have so readily jettisoned, is held sacred
by the Jews of Israel. No wonder that we speak so often at cross
purposes. The two communities organize themselves around different value
systems.
I write this
column with a significant measure of pain. I am a fourth generation
Bostonian. America has been incredibly generous to my family, and to me.
The education and upbringing that I received was uniquely Jewish and
uniquely American. I am very much part of both countries, as are my
peers here. I cannot, will not, express any type of cheap triumphalism.
At the same time, every year when I visit the graves of my forbears on
the Mount of Olives, Hovevei Tziyyon who trekked from Volkovisk
Lithuania to Jerusalem in 1882, I am painfully reminded that of their
hundreds of descendants, no more than fifteen in my children’s
generation can be identified as Jews.
I should preface this post by saying that I don't know anything about any of the participants in the wedding ceremony and that they may or may not have anything to do with the story below.
A new Pew poll - the first on the subject in more than ten years - reports that 58% of American Jews and 71% of non-Orthodox American Jews are marrying out of the faith. Pew is calling it a major decline in Jewish identity.
The intermarriage rate, a bellwether statistic, has reached a high of 58
percent for all Jews, and 71 percent for non-Orthodox Jews — a huge
change from before 1970 when only 17 percent of Jews married outside the
faith. Two-thirds of Jews do not belong to a synagogue, one-fourth do
not believe in God and one-third had a Christmas tree in their home last
year.
“It’s a very grim portrait of the health of the American Jewish
population in terms of their Jewish identification,” said Jack
Wertheimer, a professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary, in New York.
The survey,
by the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, found
that despite the declines in religious identity and participation,
American Jews say they are proud to be Jewish and have a “strong sense
of belonging to the Jewish people.”
While 69 percent say they feel an emotional attachment to Israel, and 40
percent believe that the land that is now Israel was “given to the
Jewish people by God,” only 17 percent think that the continued building
of settlements in the West Bank is helpful to Israel’s security.
...
“It’s very stark,” Alan Cooperman, deputy director of the Pew religion
project, said in an interview. “Older Jews are Jews by religion. Younger
Jews are Jews of no religion.”
The trend toward secularism is also happening in the American population
in general, with increasing proportions of each generation claiming no
religious affiliation.
But Jews without religion tend not to raise their children Jewish, so
this secular trend has serious consequences for what Jewish leaders call
“Jewish continuity.” Of the “Jews of no religion” who have children at
home, two-thirds are not raising their children Jewish in any way. This
is in contrast to the “Jews with religion,” of whom 93 percent said they
are raising their children to have a Jewish identity.
Reform Judaism remains the largest American Jewish movement, at 35
percent. Conservative Jews are 18 percent, Orthodox 10 percent, and
groups such as Reconstructionist and Jewish Renewal make up 6 percent
combined. Thirty percent of Jews do not identify with any denomination.
In a surprising finding, 34 percent said you could still be Jewish if you believe that Jesus was the Messiah.
...
While earlier generations of Orthodox Jews defected in large numbers,
those in the younger generation are being retained. Several scholars
attributed this to the Orthodox marrying young, having large families
and sending their children to Jewish schools.
Steven M. Cohen, a sociologist of American Jewry at Hebrew Union
College-Jewish Institute of Religion, in New York, and a paid consultant
on the poll, said the report foretold “a sharply declining non-Orthodox
population in the second half of the 21st century, and a rising
fraction of Jews who are Orthodox.”
That last paragraph is nothing I haven't told you about before. I've posted this chart many times:
In Israel, many people think we're immune from this sort of thing. We're not. First of all, an increasing number of Israeli Jewish girls are running off with, or being kidnapped by Arabs. A couple of weeks ago, I went to a fundraiser for a group that rescues Jewish girls - from across the religious spectrum - from Arab villages throughout Israel.
Second, if there is ever 'peace' with the Arabs, you can bet that intermarriage will increase if only because Arabs will have more access to Israeli society.
Third, secular Israelis often don't understand the difference between the different 'streams' of American Jews and can find themselves involved in relationships with those who are halachically (under Jewish law) non-Jewish.
The survey also portends “growing polarization” between religious and
nonreligious Jews, said Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz, senior director of
research and analysis at the Jewish Federations of North America.
The Jewish Federations has conducted major surveys of American Jews over
many decades, but the last one in 2000 was mired in controversy over
methodology. When the federations decided not to undertake another
survey in 2010, Jane Eisner, editor in chief of The Jewish Daily Forward, urged the Pew researchers to jump in.
It was a multimillion-dollar effort to cull 3,475 respondents from a
pool of 70,000. They were interviewed in English and Russian, on
landlines and cellphones from Feb. 20 to June 13, 2013. The margin of
error for the full sample is plus or minus three percentage points.
Ms. Eisner found the results “devastating” because, she said in an
interview, “I thought there would be more American Jews who cared about
religion.”
“This should serve as a wake-up call for all of us as Jews,” she said,
“to think about what kind of community we’re going to be able to sustain
if we have so much assimilation.”
So what is likely to sustain us for the coming generations is exactly what sustained us for the last 3,000 years: Torah, Torah and more Torah. Too bad Torah is under attack even in Israel today.
If we ignore the ultra-Orthodox, will they go away? #tomorrow12
Two panels at the President's conference that dealt with the future of the Jewish community did not include any ultra-Orthodox representatives despite the fact that another panel I pointed out today did include them. The two panels were The Challenge of Being Jewish in the Diaspora and New Interpretations of an Ancient Identity: The Next Jewish Generation.
"It was the elephant in the room," Dov Waxman, associate professor of political science at CUNY, who was in the audience said. "The growing demographic weight of Orthodoxy and ultra-Ortdhoxy as revealed in the recent UJA Federation Study raises huge and fundamental questions about the Jewish future. It has implications for federations to sustain themselves and also huge implications for the future political and cultural orientation of Jewish communities."
Last week new data released by UJA - Federation of New York showed Orthodox and specifically ultra-Orthodox or haredi Jews were by far the single fastest growing demographic in the Jewish population of that city. According to the study, the 10 percent increase in the number of Jews living in the Big Apple over the past decade --who now number 1.5 million-- was largely due to high birth rates among the fervently religious. At the same time, the number of people affiliated with Reform and Conservative Judaism dropped and intermarriage rates among seculars remained high at about 50 percent.
...
While Cohen's study has been discussed at length in Jewish media it was mostly skirted around in Jerusalem on Wednesday even when it did come up. During the talk titled "The Challenge of Being Jewish in the Diaspora" the editor of The Jerusalem Post Steve Linde, who was its moderator, asked Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Reform movement, about the study's findings.
"Lets be careful with that study," replied Jacobs. "It is the New York Jewish community and it is unlike any Jewish community except parts of Israel."
Jacobs called ultra-Orthodox Judaism a "beautiful and authentic" form of the Jewish faith. He added, however, that non-Orthodox denominations like his own were equally so and should not be discriminated against.
"It's easier to be Jewish in the diaspora than a non-Orthodox Jew in Israel," he said, referring to the exclusion of non-Orthodox rabbis from the religious establishment in Israel, which is dominated by Orthodoxy.
Let's go to the videotape.
You might recall that rabbi Rick is a board member of the New Israel Fund, a member of J Street's 'rabbinic cabinet,' and has participated in demonstrations in Israel against Jewish residents of Jerusalem. He favors BDS - but 'only against the settlements.' If any of you happen to run into rabbi Rick at the conference on Thursday (if he is still there), you may want to show him the chart below, which shows that, if anything, New York is actually quite representative, and in places where there are few or no Orthodox Jews, the Jewish community is in danger of disappearing entirely due to intermarriage and the failure to reproduce at a replacement rate.
Jerusalem parents warned to keep their daughters away from Arabs
The 'wedding invitation' above is supposedly being posted on Jerusalem streets. I haven't seen it yet - perhaps because I mostly frequent religious neighborhoods where this sort of thing is about as a rare as a total eclipse of the sun. But of course, the Leftists are up in arms about it.
In an ad made to look like an imaginary wedding invitation between Michal and her chosen groom Mohammad, distributed throughout Jerusalem's streets, the organization is seeking to demonstrate what would happen if parents fail to keep watch over their daughters.
Secular people who passed by the "invitations" expressed their anger over what they say is the racist wording of the ad: "They are staining an entire nation and turning us into racists against our will. We are not all primitives as might be understood from the ad," said on Jerusalemite after reading the ad.
The "invitation" asks you to join Michal and Mohammad as they celebrate their marriage on a Friday night at the Shahid (martyr) events hall in Ramallah. Next to the invitation the ad reads: "If you don't want your daughter's wedding invitation to look like this then…Don't let her work with Arabs or do national service with non-Jews, don't let her work in place that employs enemies and don't bring home migrant workers…"
The organization behind this is Lehava, and if those y'fei ha'nefesh (translates as 'beautiful people' but that doesn't give the true, contemptuous nature of the term) who are offended by it had led the Jewish people through our 2,000 years of exile, we would have no Jewish people left, God forbid.
For those of you who think that it's a pleasure for Jewish women to be married to Arab Muslim men, please consider this story.
I know someone who hides Jewish women who are fleeing their abusive Arab Muslim husbands and their families.
For centuries, Jewish parents have torn their clothing and sat shiva when their children married non-Jews. And for good reason.
This is slightly off topic, but the future of the Jewish people depends upon our marrying each other and producing future generations of Jews, without which Israel will not have a Jewish population, so perhaps it's not so far off topic.
Stacy McCain has some prescient comments on the marriage habits of various ethnic groups around the world. He starts out quoting Rabbi Dov Lior speaking out against intermarriage, and then he continues.
A conservative ought always to respect tradition, and I find it remarkable that even so widespread a tradition as the preference for marriage within one’s own ethno-religious group — which inevitably strikes some modern minds as barbaric tribalism, if not indeed hatefully “racist” — should be so controversial. Is it really bigotry for Jewish parents to prefer Jewish sons-in-law and daughters-in-law? But I digress . . .
...
We note from this article that the Jews are a group sufficiently small and consanguinous, afflicted with a number of distinctively Jewish hereditary disorders, that the reproductive union of two Jews whose genealogy is unknown poses a distinct medical risk to the offspring. That’s why this article about Rabbi Lior’s controversial opinions, which I first read a few days ago, came to mind today when I read Ann Barnhardt’s American Thinker article about the mating habits of Muslims:
In the Muslim culture, marriage and breeding between first cousins has existed since day one. Mohammed himself married Zaynab, who was his father’s sister’s daughter. Mohammed and Zaynab were direct first cousins. Marrying your first cousin is the genetic equivalent of marrying your half-sibling. . . . First cousin marriage for just one generation is extremely risky in and of itself. . . . Now, understanding that single-generational risk, understand that Muslims have been marrying their first cousins over and over again for 1,400 years. . . .
Barnhardt’s article — and please go read the whole thing — cites studies showing very high levels of inbreeding in Muslim nations due to marriages between cousins. It is reported by no less credible authority than the BBC that 55% (!) of Pakistanis living in Britain are married to their first cousins.
Now, one may attribute this to the Islamic religion, per se, or to the culture of specific nations. (We often see this argument about “honor killing,” which some Muslims insist is not so much Islamic as it is representative of certain tribal or ethnic cultures.) Nevertheless, Barnhardt is certainly correct in saying that the high frequency of cousin marriages in the Islamic world should be seen as highly significant.
...
We ought to encourage marriage, rather than discourage motherhood, but when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. The liberal hammer when it comes to teen pregnancy is “family planning” or “reproductive health” or “safe sex” – i.e., contraception and abortion. Heaven forbid we should tell young people to keep their britches on, or tell them to consider marriage as a feasible alternative to fornication and bastardy.
A group of female 'reform rabbis' has come out in favor of social contact between Israeli Jewish women and Arab men, pretending that such contact cannot lead to intermarriage.
"We, rabbis of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, oppose interfaith marriages, but we consider professional and social contacts between us and all of Israel's citizens and residents to be positive -- regardless of race, religion or sex," the new letter, dated Wednesday, read. The letter is signed by the 40 female Reform rabbis who are part of the rabbinical council of the Israel Movement for Progressive and Reform Judaism.
The letter came in response to a statement distributed earlier this week by Lehava, an organization dedicated to preventing intermarriage between Jews and Arabs, and signed by 27 Israeli rabbis' wives that urged Jewish women not to date or work with Arab men.
...
This week's Reform letter said, "Jews who are confidant in their Jewish identity do not have to fear contact with people from other nations." It went on, "Dialogue and social contact between Jews and non-Jews are the foundations of a healthy society. The way to strengthen the Jewish identity of our sons and daughters is through education, not incitement and fear. "
The 50 male Reform rabbis who are members of the council also support the statement, Rabbi Gilad Kariv, executive director of the movement, told JTA.
What's the intermarriage rate among reform and what's the intermarriage rate among Orthodox Jews? This is an American chart, but if the group above gets their way, it will - God forbid - be true among Israelis as well. If any of you is offended by that - too bad. To me, the relationship between social contact between Jewish and Arab members of opposite sexes and the potential for intermarriage is quite clear.
I don't understand why only the 'nationalists' are opposed to the assimilation in Bat Yam. All Orthodox Jews should oppose the assimilation in Bat Yam.
It's sad that such a demonstration is even necessary in Israel. But it is.
After a rabbis' letter instructing Jews to not sell or rent apartments to Arabs, racist behavior reaches new low [not my view. CiJ]: An organization called Jews for a Jewish Bat Yam is expected to protest on Monday against the "assimilation of young Jewish women with Arabs living in the city or in nearby Jaffa."
The protest will be held around 7:30 pm near the Bat Yam mall, not far from the police station. The organizers are also expected to show support for the controversial rabbis' letter.
"It's a local organization of Bat Yam residents, because the public is tired of so many Arabs going out with Jewish girls," explained one of the organizers, Bentzi Gufstein. "In addition to the protest, we will hand out pamphlets explain the situation."
The organization behind this local protest is actually the Lehava organization, which works to prevent intermarriage in Israel. The right-wing activist Baruch Marzel and a few local rabbis will participate in the demonstration, and the organizers are expecting hundreds more.
During the past week, posters have been hung around the city calling residents to come out and protest. Some of the posters explain: "I will not allow them to hit on my sister! What would you do if an Arab hit on your sister? Put an end to it! Recently we have learned of a grave phenomenon: Hundreds of girls from Bat Yam and the center get together with Arabs, they are integrated amongst us, their confidence rising. Put an end to it! Lower their confidence!"
Another poster reads: "Keeping Bat Yam Jewish. Arabs are taking over Bat Yam, buying and renting apartments from Jews, taking and ruining Bat Yam girls! Around 15,000 Jewish girls have been taken to villages! Jews, come on, let's win!"
No, it's not a 'new low' as YNet claims. The Jewish people survivied for 3,000 years because we did not intermarry. Those who intermarry - God forbid - are lost to the Jewish people. In the case of Arabs marrying Jewish women, the women soon find themselves tortured prisoners. I am personally acquainted with people who rescue these women and hide them from their husbands. Remember this story?
Read the whole thing. It's sickening that these people are being labeled 'racists.' Those of you who are in Israel may want to think about joining them tonight.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
