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| The Chasidic Jews of Williamsburg. (Pew Forum) |
Orthodoxy is the future of Judaism. That is the only realistic conclusion that can be drawn from yet another analysis of the 2013 Pew Report , ‘A Portrait of Jewish Americans’. The statistics indicating that are stark. From the Pew Forum:
(T)he median age of Orthodox adults (40 years old) is fully a decade younger than the median age of other Jewish adults (52). Despite being younger, more than two-thirds of Orthodox adults are married (69%), compared with about half of other Jewish adults (49%), and the Orthodox are much more likely to have minor children living in their household.
On average, the Orthodox get married younger and bear at least twice as many children as other Jews (4.1 vs. 1.7 children ever born to adults ages 40-59). And they are especially likely to have large families: Among those who have had children, nearly half (48%) of Orthodox Jews have four or more offspring, while just 9% of other Jewish parents have families of that size.
Moreover, nearly all Orthodox Jewish parents (98%) say they are raising their children in the Jewish faith, compared with 78% of other Jewish parents. Orthodox Jews are much more likely than other Jews to have attended a Jewish day school, yeshiva or Jewish summer camp while growing up, and they are also more likely to send their children to these kinds of programs.
Nothing really new here. But I can’t help noticing again that, sadly, the handwriting is on the wall for heterodoxy as they continue to struggle for existence. Sadly because -as the article notes, 12% of the current Orthodox Jewish population came from the Conservative movement.
Without heterodox movements the march of American Jews towards full assimilation will surely accelerate beyond the already astounding rate. While heterodox movements have in my view contributed mightily to that acceleration, they have at the same time tired to instill some semblance of Jewish identity into their members. But their willingness to overlook the importance of the most important feature of Jewish identity, adherence to Halacha – often substituting worthy (but not particularly Jewish) social causes in their place has not served them well. It has resulted in the mass migration out of Judaism we have today.
This is also not news. Nor is it news that the Conservative Movement is now attempting to rebrand itself - or their's and other heterodox movements are attempting to get recognition by the Israeli government as a means of reconstituting their numbers.
One thing that is interesting to note about this is the political makeup of the growing Orthodox Jews versus the shrinking of non Orthodox Jews:
(O)ne important subgroup clearly does not fit the picture of a relatively secular, liberal-leaning, aging population with small families. Unlike most other American Jews, Orthodox Jews tend to identify as Republicans and take conservative positions on social issues such as homosexuality. On average, they also are more religiously committed and much younger than other U.S. Jews, and they have bigger families… Other U.S. Jews lean heavily toward the Democratic Party, but the opposite is true of the Orthodox.
This explains why the vast majority of Orthodox enclaves like Lakewood, New Jersey voted heavily for Donald Trump. While he is not really a conservative ideologue neither is he liberal. Orthodox Jews saw the last election as an opportunity to thwart the increasingly liberal and more permissive society that counters their religious values by voting for someone they saw as an antidote to that.
They ignored Trump's own moral failings listening only his establishment rhetoric. Which included seemed to espouse more conservative values. conservative values tend to more reflect religious values. This is why Orthodox groups have more in common with evangelical Christians that they do with non Orthodox Jews that are heavily liberal.
While there are individual differences between groups such as Modern Orthodox and Charedi Jews, there is a common features among all Orthodox Jews that explains their growth: Their commitment to Halacic observance and their greater likelihood to give their children a formal Jewish education.
This does not mean that Orhtodox Jews do not have their own rates of assimilating out. They do. Taking the Pew numbers at face value, fully 52% of Jews raised in an Orthodox home assimilate out of observance. That Orthodoxy remains the only growing demographic is quite a statement in light of that.
Hiw can one explain that? I think it is because we tend to have more children by far than heterodox familes. And because we are pretty successful at outreach. Additionally my own thinking is 52% is an inflated nubmber based on how Pew defined Orthodox Jews. They simply asked each respondant how they were raised. My guess is that a large number of them had non observant parents that were nominally Orthodox by belonging to an Orthodox
My own experience growing up in Toledo will testify to that. There were 3 Orthodox Shuls in Toledo then. But only 3 families were observant. And yet membership to those Shuls were huge... perhaps in the thousands in total. Children in those families did not receive any formal religious education outside of an afternoon Hebrew school that they hated to attend. It is highly unlikely that any of them are today observant.
In any case, this is a fascinating article to speculate about. Which I just did.