The State of Liberal Jewry

It's not looking good...

Dear Reader,

I am shortly going to begin a series on liberal (i.e., Reform, Conservative, Reconstruction, Renewal, etc.) Judaism. A personal pet peeve of mine is the widespread ignorance of that world among today’s frum Jews. As the frum world has grown, its increased size has allowed for increased insularity. Whereas 50 years ago your average Orthodox Jew would certainly have had ample contact with secular Jews — either as friends, family members, or neighbors — my impression is that this is no longer the case. Yet we are all one people, and it is a mistake to write off anyone.

I thought that it might be helpful, therefore, to start with a look at the current state of liberal Jewry. In particular, I am interested in the question of whether and to what extent liberal Judaism can be classified as a successful project.

Putting ourselves in the mindset of early/mid-20th century American Jewish leaders, there were a number of directions that Judaism could go in the new, modern world. For reasons that we will discuss in a future missive (largely lay-driven demand), we ended up with three primary Jewish denominations: Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox.

Yet putting aside the particulars of each denomination, I think that it is fair to look back and see how things turned out. I will focus on the Orthodox separately, but for the moment let’s look at Reform and Conservative Jews. None of this is new for those who follow these issues, but I think this will be serve as useful stage setting for future discussions.

Pew conducted a survey of American Jews in 2020, fittingly titled “Jewish Americans in 2020,” which gives us some baseline statistics to work with. And frankly, it doesn’t look good.

Overall, Pew found that 32% of American Jews claimed to be of unaffiliated with any denomination, 37% claimed to be Reform, 17% claimed to be Conservative, and 9% claimed to be Orthodox. An additional 4% reported being members of some other branch of Judaism.

The nice thing about demographics, however, as that they are as close as we can come to prophecy. Tomorrow’s Jews have largely already been born. Assuming that people mostly stay in the groups they associate with when they are young, we can anticipate what the world might look like decades down the line.

Indeed, among Jews aged 18-29, the results tell a very different picture from the statistics given above. 41% of Jews claimed to be of unaffiliated, 29% claimed to be Reform, 8% claimed to be Conservative, and 17% claimed to be Orthodox. On the one side, Orthodoxy is rapidly growing; on the other side, the Reform and (especially) Conservative movements are rapidly shrinking.

What does Jewish life look like inside the Reform and Conservative movements? Pew asked a series of questions about Jewish practices and activities.

Among Reform Jews, 67% said that they held or participated in a Seder last year, 69% observed a Jewish ritual to mark a milestone (e.g., bar or bat mitzvah, etc.), and 45% fasted all or part of last Yom Kippur. Among Conservative Jews, 79% said that they held or participated in a Seder last year, 80% observed a Jewish ritual to mark a milestone (e.g., bar or bat mitzvah, etc.), and 68% fasted all or part of last Yom Kippur.

Digging a little deeper, 36% of Reform Jews and 59% of Conservative Jews reported that they often or sometimes “mark Shabbat in a way that is meaningful to them,” whatever that means. 5% of Reform Jews and 24% of Conservative Jews say that they keep kosher in their home. In terms of synagogue attendance, 14% of Reform Jews and 33% of Conservative Jews attend synagogue at least monthly. In terms of belief, only 18% of Reform Jews and 37% of Conservative Jews believe in the “God of the Bible,” though a significant number do believe in some “other higher power/spiritual force.”

Why are these numbers so low? Low levels of interest, low levels of religiosity, and low levels of Jewish literacy.

Further, while both groups reported high levels of Jewish cultural affiliation, they also reported staggeringly high levels of intermarriage. 45% of married Reform Jews and 25% of Conservative Jews have a spouse who is not Jewish. Moreover, those rates will only grow. 72% of non-Orthodox Jews who got married between 2010 and 2020, married non-Jews — a dramatic 18% increase over the rate for marriages that took place in the prior decade.

With numbers like that, it is no surprise that retention appears to be a serious problem for both movements. More than a quarter of people raised within the Reform movement now either are Jewishly unaffiliated (14%) or are no longer Jewish (12%). The numbers are only slightly better in the Conservative movement, where 15% report being unaffiliated, and 7% report being no longer Jewish.

Of course, in analyzing the success of any project, you also have to look at the counterfactuals. Whether these results are good or bad, from a Jewish communal perspective, really just begs the question of what the results might have been if things were done differently. Perhaps we will address some of those counterfactuals in a subsequent post.