The (Un)Importance of Jewish Difference

For several decades, Jack Wertheimer and Steven M. Cohen have been calling on American Jews to pay attention to the social, cultural, and demographic realities of their life as a community—and to how those realities have begun to endanger the future of that community. A high rate of intermarriage, a falling birthrate, and a steep decline in either religious or secular affiliation have placed at risk the ability to maintain a vital, pluralistic center, anchored in a strong middle ground between assimilation on the one hand and ultra-Orthodoxy on the other.

Wertheimer and Cohen’s latest essay, “The Pew Survey Reanalyzed,” offers a social-scientific version of the classic jeremiad, the prophetic lament over the imminent failure and downfall of a people. Unlike most examples of the form, social-scientific or not, theirs does not delve into the realm of ultimate causes or present a large-scale explanation of the tribulations that beset American Jews. But it does do something else: in a welcome turn, it offers glimmers of hope in the form of concrete suggestions for communal or philanthropic investments that, they believe, might yet help retard the downward slide.

Still, the state of non-Orthodox Jewry calls out for explanation and analysis. Although Wertheimer and Cohen begin by separating American Jews’ religious behavior from such other factors as their educational and social-economic status, this is not really possible. Without connecting the heart of Jewish culture to the lungs of Jewish life, one cannot grasp the condition of American Jewry. Jews are still unique in interesting ways, but overwhelmingly they reflect the larger society. Those among them, preeminently the Modern Orthodox, who do manage to maintain a committed Jewish life while being highly integrated within American society are very much the exception and not the rule.