The past few decades have witnessed the “polarization” of American Christianity. Evangelicals have grown, but so have the religiously unaffiliated. Meanwhile, mainstream Protestant Church members have declined sharply, along with non-Hispanic Catholics. We now find parallel trends among American Jews. From a demographic perspective, the Orthodox are incredibly healthy. Their birthrates are far more than…
The results of the Pew survey are not at all surprising, and the basic findings align near-perfectly with estimates that my colleagues and I at the Steinhardt Social Research Institute have reported. Pew’s estimate that there are 6.7 million American Jews — including more than 4 million adults who consider Judaism their religion — confirms…
If the United States had 6.7 million holders of a doctorate, and 1 million of these hold a doctorate partly, how many Ph.D.s are there in America? Or, to use another analogy, what’s the meaning of a partly democratic government, or of being partly pregnant? Few among the leading intellectuals in this country will object…
The findings of the Pew study point to an increasingly diverse Jewish population — one that defies generalizations. This diversity stems from several sources, especially the recent history of intermarriage and the increasing prominence and shift to the right of Orthodox Jews. Before I discuss the impact of these trends, I want to allay readers’…
Jewish America is on the brink of a massive generational shift in identity and practice, according to the first-ever independent study of American Jews, conducted by the Pew Research Center. Young Jews are increasingly likely to say that they have no religion, despite saying they are Jewish. In doing so, they are rewriting the norms…
Someone once asked Pamela Anderson — the regular Playboy centerfold and “Baywatch” star — what she thought her two sons would be like when they grew up. She joked that in order to rebel against her, they would probably become accountants. Though the quote seemed like a throwaway comment, it creeps back into my mind…
When the nation’s largest Jewish federation convened its first-ever conference recently on engaging interfaith families, perhaps the most notable thing about it was the utter lack of controversy that greeted the event. There was a time when the stereotypical Jewish approach to intermarriage was to shun the offender and sit shiva. A generation ago, the…
Nothing creates controversy and polarization in the United States more than discussing same-sex marriage, and nothing brings the anxieties of American Jewry to the surface more than discussions of intermarriage. Both of these issues have gotten some attention in the American Jewish world over the past few weeks. And in the process, they have raised…
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