After Pew: Thinking About American Jewish Cohesion, Assimilation and Division

After Pew: Thinking about American Jewish cohesion, assimilation and division

Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz Senior Director, Research and Analysis Director, Berman Jewish DataBank The Jewish Federations of North America

1 October 2015

Introduction

Since the release of the Pew Research Center’s 2013 Survey of U.S. Jews, much of the commentary and conversation in American Jewish communal circles has been decidedly downbeat. The rise of so-called Jews of no religion, the decline in identification with institutional Jewish religious movements, and the steady increase in intermarriage have set many professionals and volunteers in the Jewish communal world on edge. Concerns about the strength and vitality of the Jewish community in an open, enticing American society are pervasive.

While the concerns expressed in this discourse are legitimate and critical to the community’s future, the discourse itself has largely taken place without a well-defined conceptual framework. This is problematic, because survey data need a set of concepts to understand them. In this essay, I use a model of three concepts – cohesion, assimilation and division – that can help us better interpret and understand the current state of American Jewry. I’ll define them in greater detail below, but as a starting point, cohesion refers to the extent to which Jews interact with and feel close to each other, assimilation refers to the extent that they do not, and division refers to disagreements among them.

Once I define the concepts more thoroughly, I’ll look at the Pew findings and some other data to assess the current balance of cohesion, assimilation and division among American Jews. I argue that while there are clear signs of assimilation and division, significant areas of cohesion remain as well. For most of this essay, I undertake this analysis from a value-neutral perspective, using these concepts to interpret recent data without saying that the situation is either good or bad, positive or negative.

However, cohesion, assimilation and division also carry heavy connotations about the quality of communal life, and in that respect they are value-laden as well. Given the generally

1 pessimistic reactions to the Pew report, it’s fair to say that many American Jewish communal policy makers – both professional and lay – see a worrisome situation: not enough cohesion and too much assimilation and division. In my concluding thoughts, I address this set of values and ask: Can we understand the challenge of achieving cohesion and the inevitability of assimilation and division in positive ways? Are there alternative interpretations and, especially, more optimistic ways to understand the social processes that produce cohesion, assimilation and division? Can we, collectively, stake out a middle ground that acknowledges the good and the bad, the positive and the negative?

Cohesion, Assimilation and Division

The conceptual model I employ to understand American Jews comes from the work of Calvin Goldscheider, a sociologist, and Alan Zuckerman z’l, a political scientist (Goldscheider and Zuckerman 1984; Goldscheider 1989; Zuckerman 1990).1 The model has three main concepts – cohesion, assimilation and division – and like Goldscheider and Zuckerman’s approach, my analysis is structural. By this, I mean that I use the model to sort people into categories, examine behavioral and attitudinal patterns within and across those categories, and posit implications of those patterns for the group as a whole.

What do I mean by these three terms, cohesion, assimilation and division, and how do they apply to American Jews today?

Cohesion defines a group whose members interact peacefully and frequently with each other and partake in distinctive cultural, social and political activities of the group. It also includes a social-psychological component, in the sense that individual members feel emotionally attached to the group as a whole or feel a responsibility toward other group members. For Jews, cohesion results when they interact peacefully and often with each other – through their families, in their friendship networks, in their neighborhoods, and in the wide array of Jewish organizations that exist – and they do distinctively Jewish things together, from prayer to philanthropy, from politics to education. Cohesion also results when Jews feel that being part of the group is important to them or that they have a responsibility toward other Jews and the community as a whole.

1 In their works, Goldscheider and Zuckerman applied a transformationalist approach to American Jews. They posited that American Jews, like Jews in the modern period generally, have undergone large-scale structural transformations that provide new and emerging bases of cohesion and do not necessarily signify assimilation. They were arguing against scholars who viewed changes in American Jewry as overwhelmingly assimilationist. The debate largely dissipated as social science research on American Jews became increasingly dominated by social-psychology and issues of Jewish identity rather than social structure and stratification. In the wake of the Pew report, the debate over assimilation has been reignited (see Cohen 2014, Saxe 2014 and Wertheimer and Cohen 2014), though on different conceptual terms than those used by Goldscheider and Zuckerman.

Assimilation is one state of opposition to cohesion. Assimilation defines a group whose members are increasingly less likely to interact with each other, who increasingly discard the group’s distinctive cultural, social and political practices, and whose emotional connections to each other are declining. For Jews, assimilation occurs when there are fewer Jews in their family and friendship networks and in their neighborhoods, when they reduce their participation in Jewish organizations or their contributions to Jewish causes, when they are less likely to partake in Jewish cultural practices and political causes, and when they feel less emotionally connected to the group as a whole.

In this model, maximal cohesion and maximal assimilation are at opposite ends of a continuum. At maximal cohesion, group members interact exclusively and peacefully with each other, maintain an extensive array of the group’s cultural characteristics, organize together for political purposes and share political views, and feel close or connected to the group. At maximal assimilation, group members interact with each other no more than randomly, that is, no more than proportionate to their share of the population, completely discard their group’s cultural distinctiveness and political organization, and do not feel connected to the group at all.

For a group as a whole, maximal cohesion and maximal assimilation are ideal types, not empirical likelihoods. There may be individual members who approach these ideal types in their own lives, but it is hard to imagine a group in an open society that is either maximally cohesive or maximally assimilated. Some set of non-random interactions among members will likely occur, some distinctive cultural characteristics, social organization and shared political activity will likely be maintained, and some attitudinal or emotional connections will endure.

Division is another state of opposition to cohesion. Whereas cohesion refers to a group whose members interact peacefully and in agreement with each other, division defines a group whose members disagree with each other, taking conflicting and at times incompatible positions on interpretations of the group’s own cultural practices and social and political interests, and sometimes on the larger issues in the societies where they live. For American Jews, divisions occur over the interpretation of Jewish religious obligations, U.S. and Israeli politics and policies, which communal responsibilities should receive priority funding, and on many other issues.

Maximal cohesion and maximal division also stand at opposite ends of a continuum. At maximal cohesion, all group members agree with each other, all the time and across every issue. At maximal division, the group is divided into the same multiple and equally strong subgroups that disagree fundamentally with each other every time an issue emerges that the group addresses. Again, maximal division is an ideal type, not an empirical likelihood. On many issues, a majority position emerges that signifies more cohesion than division. In addition, shifting alliances within the group are likely to emerge, so that the same groups are not always facing off against each other, again reducing division below its maximal level.

The Pew Survey of U.S. Jews: evidence for assimilation

The Pew Research Center’s 2013 Survey of U.S. Jews was a nationally representative survey of American Jews – the largest, most extensive, certainly the most publicized, and arguably the most important in more than a decade.2 The full report of findings and methodology (Pew Research Center 2013) is available online,3 and Pew has made the data file available to researchers.4 The empirical findings reported here are mostly from the published report with some supplemental information that I calculated using the data file.5

First, some fundamentals: the Pew report estimates that there are 6.7 million Jews in the U.S. today, including 5.3 million adults and 1.3 million children,6 and that Jews are roughly 2.2% of the total U.S. population.7 The population estimate from Pew is higher than previous studies, though whether the population has been growing, shrinking or remaining relatively stable over time remains a contested issue in the research community.8 By near consensus, though, the share of Jews in the U.S. population has been declining over time. This is the case because even if the Jewish population has been growing, it has been doing so at a slower pace than the U.S. population overall, so that the proportion of the U.S. population that is Jewish has been shrinking.

Beyond the population estimate, the major story line coming out of the Pew study, though not the only one, is the continuing assimilation of American Jews, so from our model perspective it makes sense to start by assessing assimilation. Most interpreters of the data have pointed in particular to three factors in support of this argument: religious and ethnic identity; intermarriage; and denominational identity. These three factors are highly related to each other, as well as to other attitudinal and behavioral measures that by all reasonable standards point to increasing assimilation among American Jews.

Let’s start with religious and ethnic identity. Pew categorized respondents as either Jews by religion or Jews of no religion, based on answers to a series of screening questions that

2 The 2013 Survey of U.S. was also the first national study of American Jews to be commissioned by a non-Jewish organization. 3 http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/. 4 http://www.pewforum.org/datasets/a-portrait-of-jewish-americans/. 5 The Pew Research Center (www.pewresearch.org) is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world, and as such it does not take policy positions. The Center bears no responsibility for the analysis, interpretations or conclusions presented in this paper. 6 The adult and children estimates do not sum to the total population estimate due to rounding. 7 Estimating the size of the population was not the Pew Research Center’s primary interest in conducting the study. For a reassessment and higher estimate, see Saxe 2014. 8 The Jewish population trend remains contested for various reasons, including different research designs and methodologies brought to bear on the issue, the lack of comparability across the studies that have been used to estimate the population, and changes in the survey research environment that make cross-time comparisons difficult.

4 were initially used to qualify respondents for the survey and then later became the basis of this categorization. Jews by religion (JBRs) are respondents who said, in response to a closed-ended question about their current religion, that they are Jewish.9

Respondents who said they are atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular to the question on their current religion were asked a series of follow-up questions about whether they currently consider themselves Jewish in some way, whether they were raised Jewish and/or whether they had a Jewish parent.10 If respondents said yes to those questions, Pew categorized them as Jews of no religion (JNRs);11 other terms commonly used for them are ethnic, secular or cultural Jews, all connoting Jewish identity aside from religion.

Overall, more than three-quarters of respondents (77%) are categorized as Jews by religion, and just under a quarter (23%) are categorized as Jews of no religion, but there are significant increases in the proportion of Jews of no religion across age cohorts. Among respondents in what Pew calls the Greatest Generation, those born in 1927 or earlier, just 7% are Jews of no religion. Among Baby Boomers, those born 1946-64, 19% are Jews of no religion. Among Millennials, those born in 1980 or later, 32% are Jews of no religion. These patterns reflect more general American patterns: about a fifth of all Americans say they have no religion, and about a third of all American Millennials report no religion.

Whenever survey data show age differences like this, there are two possible explanations. One is a life-cycle explanation, which means that younger people differ from older people now because they are in a different stage of life, but younger groups will become like the older groups as they age. The other explanation is an age-cohort explanation, which means that younger cohorts (groups) are different from older cohorts by virtue of their experiences while growing up, and they will remain different from their older counterparts even as they age.

With cross-sectional data12 like the Pew survey, we don’t know whether life-cycle or age-cohort explanations are more powerful. In all likelihood, each is operating, and that’s the assumption I make here. Importantly, to the extent that age-cohort effects are driving the changes, we will see an increasing proportion of JNRs over time. In other words, an age-cohort

9 The specific question was as follows: What is your present religion, if any? Are you Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, agnostic, something else, or nothing in particular? 10 These same questions were also posed during the survey to JBRs but were not used for classification purposes for this group. 11 Jews by religion and Jews of no religion are the main groups in the Pew report and they are the only two groups I discuss here. Pew also interviewed other people with connections to Judaism: People of Jewish Background (raised Jewish or had a Jewish parent but do not currently consider themselves Jewish) and People of Jewish Affinity (no background connection to Judaism through parents or being raised, not Jewish by religion, but still consider themselves Jewish). There are chapters devoted to these groups in the Pew report, but I do not address them in this paper. 12 That is, data collected at one point in time.

5 effect means that at least some of today’s young adult JNRs are not going to become tomorrow’s JBRs.

What’s important about the (very likely) increase in JNRs over time is that JNRs are more assimilated than JBRs across nearly every measure we have at our disposal from the Pew survey (concomitantly, JBRs are more cohesive). Relative to JBRs, JNRs are less likely to be affiliated with Jewish organizations, to be married to other Jews, to have strong Jewish friendship networks, to feel close to and a responsibility for other Jews, to raise their children as Jews and to provide their children with some kind of Jewish education. With JNRs increasing as a share of the population, the evidence points to assimilation among American Jews increasing over time and cohesion diminishing.

Intermarriage provides additional evidence of increasing assimilation. If we look at all currently married Jews in the Pew survey, 44% are married to someone who is not Jewish (the spouse’s Jewish status is determined in an analogous way to the respondent’s Jewish status). But there are significant differences in intermarriage across marriage cohorts. Among those whose current marriage started before 1970, 17% are married to non-Jews. Among those whose current marriage started in 1995 or after, nearly 60% are married to someone who is not Jewish. Clearly intermarriage is increasing over time.13

What are the implications for assimilation and cohesion? For one thing, spouses are among those with whom married people interact most frequently, so rising intermarriage almost by definition leads to higher assimilation (more interactions with non-Jewish spouses) and lower cohesion (fewer interactions with Jewish spouses). In addition, intermarriage (usually) results in the Jewish spouse having ongoing interactions with the non-Jewish family in which the non-Jewish spouse was raised, again increasing assimilation.

But just as important is what the Pew data show about behavioral and attitudinal differences between intermarried and in-married Jews: intermarried Jews are much more assimilated than in-married Jews across multiple measures. They are less organizationally affiliated, attend Jewish religious services less often, have weaker Jewish friendship networks, are less likely to raise children as Jews and provide those children with Jewish education, donate less frequently to Jewish causes, and feel less emotionally connected to other Jews.14 All this suggests that intermarriage both reflects and leads to greater assimilation: fewer interactions with Jews, less engagement in distinctively Jewish cultural and social practices, and less intense social-psychological attachments to the Jewish group.

13 Current marriages are the only measure of intermarriage in the Pew survey. The survey does not contain information on past marriages that ended due to divorce or the death of a spouse. 14 The reasons behind this are multiple. As Case (2014) argues, some intermarried Jews feel unwelcomed by the Jewish community. It is also likely that some intermarried Jews simply place less value on communal involvement and attachments to other Jews than in-married Jews do. Other intermarried Jews may desire to have more communal involvement but lack the Jewish social capital to participate comfortably.

Now, let’s turn to Jewish denominational identity. All respondents, regardless of their categorization by Pew as JBRs or JNRs, were asked a question about their Jewish denominational identity. Overall, 35% identify as Reform, 18% as Conservative, 10% as Orthodox and 6% as something else, while 30% reported they have no denominational identity, and it is this last group, those with no denominational identity, that I want to highlight. As with JNRs, there are differences by age cohorts: 25% of those ages 65 and older say they have no denominational identity, but this rises to 41% among those under the age of 30. As with JNRs, the same considerations about life-cycle and age-cohort effects apply here. In almost all likelihood some age-cohort effects are operating, meaning those with no denominational affiliation are becoming a larger share of the Jewish population over time.

The Pew data show that those without denominational identities differ from those who have them. Those without denominational identities have fewer Jewish organizational affiliations, are more likely to intermarry and have weaker Jewish friendship networks, are less likely to raise their children as Jews and provide their children with some kind of Jewish education, and have weaker attitudinal attachments to the Jewish group. They are also, not surprisingly, less likely to attend religious services. On most of these measures, there are modest declines in cohesion from Orthodox to Conservative to Reform, but then especially sharp drop-offs among those with no denominational identity. By now, the implication should be clear: there is increasing assimilation of the Jewish population as Jews of no denomination become a greater part of the population.

Counter evidence for Jewish cohesion

Notwithstanding the data already presented, assimilation is not the entire story of the American Jewish population and community. In this section, I present counter evidence for continuing cohesion among American Jews, especially within certain segments of the population.

First, let’s re-consider the issue of intermarriage. Despite the assimilation that intermarriage represents, we are nowhere near maximal assimilation in the conceptual model of American Jews I have presented. To see this, recall that Jews are just over 2% of the U.S. population. If Jews were maximally assimilated – no more likely to interact with each other than proportionate to their share of the population, and by extension no more likely to marry other Jews than proportionate to their share of the population – we would expect that just 2% of married Jews would be married to other Jews.

That, of course, is not the case. Instead, 56% of married Jews are married to other Jews, meaning Jewish in-marriage rates are still significantly above what we would expect from a proportionate selection of marriage partners from the surrounding society. And of course, in- marriage is even higher in some segments of the population – Orthodox and Conservative Jews,

7 for example, or those who attended Jewish day school when growing up – suggesting cohesion remains particularly strong in these subgroups.

The same goes for friendship networks. If Jews were close friends with each other in proportion to their share of the total population, as they would be at maximal assimilation, very few Jews would say that all or most of their close friends are Jewish, and most Jews would say few or none of their close friends are also Jews. But again this is not the case. In fact, a strong minority of Jews (32%) say that all or most of their close friends are Jewish, and an additional 46% say some of their close friends are Jewish. In contrast, just over a fifth (21%) report that hardly any or none of their close friends are also Jews. Furthermore, Jewish friendship networks are particularly strong in some segments of the Jewish population, forming an important base of cohesion for them.

What about participation in Jewish organizations? The Pew study shows that nearly two-thirds of U.S. Jews do at least one of the following things right now: belong to a synagogue, belong to another Jewish organization, or make a donation to a Jewish cause. Pew doesn’t have data on whether respondents have ever belonged to a synagogue, but the National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01 showed it to be about 65%, while in local community studies rates of having ever belonged to a synagogue vary from more than half to about 80% (Sheskin 2013a). To be sure, these are not indicators of maximal cohesion, but they are also far from maximal assimilation. And again, those proportions and the cohesion they represent are much higher in some segments of the population than in others, and they will be higher over the entire course of people’s lives than at the single point of time that a cross-sectional survey captures.

Let’s turn to another issue, the geographic concentration or clustering of American Jews. There are 3,143 counties or county-equivalents (e.g., parishes) in the United States. If Jews were at maximal assimilation, we would expect roughly 2,100 Jews to live in each and every one of those counties, spread out thinly across the American landscape. But, again, this is not the case at all. In fact, the Pew data show about half of U.S. Jews live in just 58 counties (2% of all counties) and about three-quarters of all U.S. Jews live in just 132 counties (4% of all counties). We also know from local Jewish community studies that at the metropolitan level, Jews tend to cluster geographically in certain areas and neighborhoods. Geographic clustering does not guarantee cohesion with respect to participating in distinctively Jewish activities, but it contributes to Jews interacting with each other at rates far higher than their simple share of the total population would suggest if Jewish assimilation were maximal.

Moving beyond the data available in surveys, there is evidence of new and emerging bases of cohesion in the ever-evolving American Jewish community. The Jewish food and environmental movement (Informing Change 2014), Jewish-sponsored service in developing countries (Messinger 2002, 2008), and Israel travel and educational programs like Taglit-

Birthright Israel (Saxe, Shain, et. al., 2014)15 and MASA (Cohen and Kopelowitz 2010) are important examples, creating new opportunities for Jews to interact with each other and to pursue shared interests and goals within a Jewish framework. These specifically American- Jewish developments are part and parcel of the Jewish people’s two-century transformative experience with modernity (Goldscheider and Zuckerman 1984), as more traditional modes of cohesion are modified and innovative modes of cohesion are created and implemented.

Lastly, we know from qualitative research that many young Jews want to be engaged in Jewish life, even though their connections are often more personal, informal and episodic than preceding generations’ emphasis on organizational and institutional membership and affiliation. Moreover, many young Jews – who themselves often have complex religious and ethnic backgrounds as a result of intermarriage among their parents – want to share Jewish events and space with their non-Jewish friends (Ukeles, Miller and Beck 2006). That speaks volumes to their pride and interest in Jewish life and their desire to share it with others. It’s not maximal cohesion, but nor is it a full-throttle run towards maximal assimilation.

Division and cohesion

Division is the third concept in our conceptual model, denoting conflicts, disagreements or opposing opinions and attitudes among Jews, either on issues relating specifically to Jews or to the larger society in which they live. There is ample evidence of divisions among American Jews in the Pew data.

Let’s start with the obvious: Jews differ with each other across religious lines. Jews of various denominations understand, interpret and enact the Jewish religious tradition in very different ways. This is readily seen in many measures from the Pew survey. Orthodox Jews are the mostly likely to say religion is very important to them, to affirm absolute certainty in belief in God or a universal spirit, to attend religious services monthly or more, and to observe a variety of Jewish rituals. On all of these measures, Orthodox Jews are followed by Conservative Jews, then Reform Jews, and then, finally, those with no denomination.16

American Jews are also politically divided. When we look at U.S. politics, we find many Jews, about 70%, support or lean towards the Democratic party, but other Jews are Republicans, supporters of smaller parties, and independents. On other measures, political divisions are starker. About half of American Jews call themselves liberal, just under a third moderate and a fifth conservative. Just over half say they favor a bigger government with more services, but close to 40% say they favor the opposite, a smaller government with fewer

15 The entire series of reports on Taglit-Birthright Israel are available at: http://www.brandeis.edu/cmjs/researchprojects/taglit/publications.html. 16 There are some ritual measures – keeping kosher at home, always or usually lighting Shabbat candles, and refraining from handling money on Shabbat – where Reform Jews and Jews with no denomination are very similar to each other.

9 services. The political divisions that characterize American society also slice through, to varying degrees, the American Jewish population.

Similar divisions are evident with respect to Israeli politics and society. About 60% of U.S. Jews say a peaceful, two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is possible, but a third say it is not. At the time of the survey, just under four in ten (38%) thought the then- current Israeli government was making a sincere effort for peace with the Palestinians, while nearly half (48%) thought it was not.17 Moreover, just over half say the level of U.S. support for Israel is about right, but there are minorities on either side of that question: about 30% say the U.S. is not supportive enough and about 10% say the U.S. is too supportive. Finally, 44% of U.S. Jews say Israeli settlements hurt Israeli security, but 17% say they help, and nearly 30% say they don’t make a difference.

Moving beyond the measures in the Pew survey, the very recent debate among American Jews over the nuclear agreement between the P5+1 nations and Iran revealed serious and at times caustic disagreements among American Jews generally,18 between Jewish organizations advocating on both sides of the deal (Kampeas 2015), and even over which Jewish organizations should take stands on the accord (Hyfler 2015; Kurtzer 2015; Seiden and Arnoff 2015). Clearly American Jews have differences of opinion on critical issues facing Israeli society and security.

Divisions within a group increasingly threaten a group’s cohesion when they overlap and reinforce each other. This is often the case among American Jews with religious and political divisions. Take as examples Democratic partisanship and the belief that a peaceful, two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is possible. Remember that about 70% of Jews support or lean Democratic and 61% think a two-state solution is possible. However, Orthodox Jews, who are already religiously divided from most other Jews, are only about half as likely to take these political positions; just 36% are Democrats and 30% think a two-state solution is possible. Orthodox and other Jews are often on opposite sides of multiple U.S. and Israeli political issues (Kotler-Berkowitz 2014; Wald 2015).

Of course, religion and politics are not the only forms of division among American Jews. Divisions based on social class, region, immigrant status, gender and age also exist among American Jews, to name a few. Most Jews are middle class but a significant minority is poor or near poor,19 and the two group's economic interests may diverge. Jews in the U.S. West tend to be different in their Jewish connections than Jews in other regions of the country.

17 Thirteen percent refused to answer or answered “don’t know” to the question. To put the responses in more context, just 17% of respondents thought the then-current Palestinian leadership was making a sincere effort for peace with Israel and 75% thought not, with 13% again refusing to answer or answering “don’t know.” 18 See the downloadable Excel file of survey results from the LA Jewish Journal Iran Poll, July 2015, available at http://www.jewishdatabank.org/Studies/details.cfm?StudyID=783. 19 See, for example, Ukeles, Cohen and Miller 2013.

Immigrants sometimes have different communal and political perspectives than native-born residents. Despite changes over time, Jewish women and men continue to face different social expectations, professional experiences and family obligations (Fishman 2014). And, as much communal conversation and anxiety reflects, young Jews tend to have different orientations to community, organizational affiliation and social boundaries than older Jews. The social and demographic lines of division among American Jews are multiple.

So, too, are American Jews divided when it comes to communal funding priorities. For example, across 21 local community studies conducted between 1999 and 2010 (Sheskin 2013b), a median of 50% of donors said helping overseas Jews in distress was a very important motivation in their donation, while a median of 50% of donors to Jewish causes said helping overseas Jews in distress was only somewhat important or not at all important in their donation.20 Using philanthropic motivations as a proxy for what Jewish organizations should fund, the local studies suggest that about half of American Jewish donors would give priority to helping Jews in distress in overseas communities, and about half would not.

Despite this evidence, American Jews are not, in our model’s term, maximally divided. Indeed, it is important to highlight continuing evidence of cohesion even in the face of divisions. As measured in the Pew survey, attitudinal cohesion about Jewish identity is strong: nearly all Jews are proud to be Jewish (94%) and three-quarters (75%) have a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people. Moreover, Jews are generally accepting of other Jews even if those Jews do not adhere to stringent Jewish religious or social norms: majorities think a person can be Jewish if she or he works on Shabbat (94%), is strongly critical of Israel (89%) and does not believe in God (68%). As already noted, most U.S. Jews support the Democratic party (70%) and most think a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian solution can be found (61%). Nearly two-thirds (65%) approve of President Obama’s job performance and a strong majority (82%) think homosexuality should be accepted rather than rejected by society.

Class and regional divisions are also far from maximal. Most Jews have a college education and most Jews are solidly in the middle or upper classes, minimizing earlier class divisions that created rifts between immigrant generations and their socially mobile children (Goldscheider and Zuckerman 1984). Political divisions based on social class are also relatively weak among U.S. Jews compared to political differences based on religion and immigrant status (Kotler-Berkowitz 2014). Jews in the Northeast, South and Midwest – representing more than 70% of all Jews – are quite similar to each other in terms of their Jewish characteristics, even as Western Jews are somewhat different.

Differences between immigrants and the native born tend to dissipate over time as the children of immigrants become more like the group as a whole. Divisions based on gender, while very real, are also being offset by the rise of partnership marriages and long-term cohabitation (Fishman 2014). Age divisions may well be the most persistent across time when they are the result of age-cohort effects. But age divisions decline over time when they result

20 Community level data from Sheskin 2013b. Median calculated by author.

11 from life-cycle effects, as has been typical, for example, with synagogue membership, and as some have started arguing with respect to attachments to Israel (Sasson 2013).

Nor are communal funding priorities only characterized by division. Looking at giving among donors to Jewish causes in 22 community studies conducted from 1993 to 2008 (Sheskin 2013b), a median of about 70% of respondents said combatting anti-Semitism was a “very important” motivation in their donation.21 This, in turns, suggests a solid majority of American Jewish donors would prioritize funding communal efforts to combat anti-Semitism.

In sum, important divisions among American Jews clearly exist, and in some cases the opposing sides are more vociferous than in others. But in the aggregate there are signs of continuing cohesion – social, economic, political, and social-psychological – among American Jews that moderate the divisions.

What of the future?

As the historian Jonathan Sarna has pointed out (2009, 2014), making predictions about Jews is an exercise fraught with danger; many historical and contemporary projections about the Jewish path forward have missed the mark entirely. Or, as Yogi Berra reportedly said, it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future. I make it a point to keep Sarna’s serious admonition and Berra’s humorous quip front and center whenever I think about the Jewish future.22

Having said that, when we do predict the future, we are accustomed to making linear extrapolations out in time. If we do that, the evidence suggests increasing assimilation and diminishing cohesion. Jewish identity devoid of a religious component, intermarriage and the absence of denominational identity will continue apace, with all that these trends imply for fewer interactions among Jews, less engagement in distinctive Jewish cultural and social practices, reduced affiliation with Jewish organizations, and weaker attitudinal and emotional connections to the Jewish group as a whole. The general American social forces that underlie these patterns – the rise of religious "nones"; ethnic, racial and religious exogamy; fluid social boundaries and expansive social networks – will continue to impact American Jews as well.

At the same time, cohesion, perhaps even greater cohesion, will likely continue to characterize some segments of the American Jewish population. For example, the Orthodox and more traditional segments of the Conservative communities are highly cohesive. Given that these subgroups disproportionately say their religion is Judaism, marry other Jews, raise their children as Jews, and provide those children with more intensive and extensive Jewish education, cohesion in these sectors may strengthen, separating them from the growing

21 Community level data from Sheskin 2013b. Median calculated by author. 22 Perhaps the safest thing we can say about the Jewish future is summed up in another reported Berra witticism: “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

12 patterns of assimilation evident among other American Jews, and thus leading to an increasing polarization among American Jews when it comes to assessing cohesion and assimilation.

But linear projections themselves are not inevitable. The straight-line projection can easily be bent. Dynamics within intermarriages, fertility rates, denominational retention rates across generations, conversions and informal switchings into Judaism, the Jewish identification of the children of intermarriages, geographic migration, domestic and international political developments, and general social forces related to religion, ethnicity and social boundaries: all of these factors and more can take today’s patterns and change them in the future.

There is, as well, an additional factor we have to consider regarding the future: the role of Jewish organizations in shaping the Jewish population. Many Jewish organizations are committed to strategies of intervention to increase the engagement of Jews with Jewish life. The strategies and constituencies vary23 – camping, day school, Birthright Israel, adult education, day schools, appeals to young adults, singles, and intermarried families – but what they all aim to do, in the framework I’ve been using here, is increase cohesion and minimize assimilation, and to a certain extent reduce division by promoting understanding, pluralism and diversity.

How successful Jewish organizations will be in countering the assimilative forces in American society and shaping a more cohesive Jewish population, and at what share of communal resources, are open questions. Similarly, to what extent Jewish organizations can mend recent political rifts and re-invigorate a sense of political cohesion in the community is unclear. This doesn’t mean that communal professionals and volunteers should give up; after all, most of us work in the Jewish community because we believe developing, nourishing, and sustaining a cohesive American Jewish community has enduring value. And, as Cohen (2014) has pointed out in somewhat different terms, organizational inaction will almost certainly lead to declining cohesion and increasing assimilation. But it does mean that as we do our work, we need to be realistic. Some level of assimilation is inevitable; so too is some division.

Concluding thoughts: the value of cohesion, assimilation and division

The model I have used here shows, hopefully in a value-neutral way, that American Jews will always find themselves somewhere between maximal cohesion and maximal assimilation on one continuum, and between maximal cohesion and maximal division on another. It is important to understand the metrics of the community – including those emerging from surveys like the Pew Research Center’s – using a model that places those metrics within well- defined conceptual parameters. There is plenty of evidence of assimilation and division in the Pew data, but neither is at maximal levels. Cohesion remains part of the story of American Jews, and evidence of its continuation exists in the Pew survey and other data as well. As a community, we live in the space between the maximal levels of these concepts. We also live

23 For a robust list of suggested interventions, see Cohen 2014.

13 with the inherent tension that emerges from all three factors existing simultaneously in our community.

But beyond the issue of analytic clarity, cohesion, assimilation and division also have implications for the quality of communal life, and in that respect they are value-laden as well. In the Jewish communal world, cohesion is generally viewed positively and assimilation and division negatively. Cohesion – more Jews doing more distinctively Jewish things together – is the community’s strength. Assimilation and division – Jews distancing themselves from the community, downplaying their Jewish identity, and engaging in self-imposed and self-defeating intra-communal disagreements – are weaknesses. In the wake of the Pew report, most (though not all) of the communal conversation about the quality of Jewish life has been pessimistic. In our model’s terms, the survey reveals too much assimilation and division and not enough cohesion.

But is that the end of the story: must we necessarily view our situation negatively? Or are there alternative and more optimistic ways to interpret and understand the social processes that generate a balance of cohesion, assimilation and division? I think there are.

Let’s start with cohesion. There is little doubt that creating a cohesive community is a difficult challenge, but in the United States it is a challenge that reminds us that much of our destiny is, thankfully, in our own hands. Jews are free to voluntarily create a community, to organize, to form institutions, to conserve a tradition and bring innovations to it now and in the future. Most importantly, we are protected in the right to do all of this. In the midst of our collective concerns about too little cohesion, our right to organize our own communal life is no small thing to remember.

Assimilation is not only the abandonment of a distinctively Jewish life. It also signals the extraordinary social mobility of U.S. Jews, most crucially in education, the economy and politics. While necessarily increasing contact with non-Jews, social mobility has greatly benefitted the community, its institutions, and other Jews around the world by allowing American Jews to accumulate and distribute vast resources that they would not have otherwise had. Let’s not forget that most of the forebears of today’s Jewish community arrived on America’s shores as impoverished immigrants. Today, their descendants help sustain and renew Jewish life around the world.

Assimilation also reflects positive feelings on the part of non-Jews toward Jews. American Jews are sought after as marriage partners, family members and friends, and as economic, social and political leaders. We are a group whose culture – values, traditions, customs and worldview – are not anathema to most of the larger society but rather accepted and even celebrated by it.

Divisions, in turn, are not just self-inflicted wounds that threaten Jewish unity. We are wise to remember that disagreement, though often uncomfortable, is central to and legitimated by the Jewish tradition (Wieseltier 2014), and that conflict reflects passionate

14 engagement with critical issues in Jewish life (Wertheimer 2005). Moreover, contemporary divisions indicate that U.S. Jews are viewed as allies in the social and political contests that characterize American and Israeli society. Social, political and cultural interests in the U.S. and Israel want U.S Jews and their resources on their side and are willing to expend time, money and energy to mobilize Jews in support of their causes. American Jews are valuable partners to others.

Seen from these alternative and more sanguine perspectives, I would wager that most American Jews are not willing to trade less assimilation and division for more cohesion if the price is constraints on their social, economic and political opportunities, acceptance and status. Perhaps it is time for the Jewish communal world to have a more balanced view of our situation: the current patterns of cohesion, assimilation and division are not only what we should expect analytically, and not only what we should have legitimate concerns about, but what we can see some value in as well.

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Acknowledgements

This essay was originally delivered as the 2014 Shorstein Lecture at the University of Florida (UF), October 21, 2014, under the title “The American Jewish Community: Current Pictures, Future Possibilities.” I am grateful to Kenneth D. Wald, the Shorstein Professor of Political Science and former director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Florida, for inviting me to present the lecture; Samuel “Buddy” Shorstein for supporting the lecture; the UF Bob Graham Center for Public Service for sponsoring and hosting the lecture; and the UF Department of Political Science and Center for Jewish Studies for co-sponsoring it.

For their careful review and helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper, I thank Steven M. Cohen, Deborah Skolnick Einhorn, Mark Gurvis, Alisa Kotler-Berkowitz, Ron Miller, Rabbi Leon Morris, Jeffrey Savit and Larry Sternberg. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily represent those of my employer, The Jewish Federations of North America. I alone retain responsibility for the analysis and interpretation presented here.

About the author

Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz, Ph.D., is Senior Director of Research and Analysis and Director of the Berman Jewish DataBank, both at The Jewish Federations of North America, and served as an advisor to the Pew Research Center on its 2013 Survey of U.S. Jews. He earned a B.A. in political science and Judaic studies, M.A. in modern Jewish society and politics, and Ph.D. in political science, all from Brown University, where he was a student of Calvin Goldscheider and Alan Zuckerman z’l. He also earned an M.A. in Jewish communal service from Brandeis University.