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. 2 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 sub- groups 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. 3 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.