At synagogues, ‘Trump bump’

many years, every population study has shown that the American synagogue is in trouble. The demographic collapse of non-Orthodox Jewry has affected every aspect of US Jewry, none more so than the Reform and Conservative movements. While the Bar and Bat Mitzvah business has kept many such institutions afloat, the notion that joining a synagogue is normative behavior is fading. An aging and increasingly assimilated Jewish population has shown decreasing interest in the traditional synagogue paradigm, and the result has been empty buildings and shrinking membership lists. While many talk about the need to reinvent Jewish life to better serve the needs of 21st-century Americans, with few exceptions the response of the Reform and Conservative movements to the crisis highlighted by the 2013 Pew survey […]