“Muslims to overtake American Jews by 2050” reads a headline, summarizing a recent Pew study. Pew counts 5.7 million American Jews and 2.75 million American Muslims.
The study is misleading in the extreme. It is likely that American Muslims already outnumber American Jews. This is because the Pew study counts as Jews those who self-identify as Jewish when asked their religion. Under the Pew study, the answer to the question “who is a Jew” is entirely subjective. A Jew becomes anyone who says he or she is a Jew. This method of Jewish demography counts —
• People who have no connection to any Jewish religious or secular institution, cause or family;
• People who consider “messianic Judaism” to be Jewish, a determination with which no Jewish denomination of Judaism agrees.
• People whose mother and fathers are not Jewish, and who have not converted to Judaism, but who “consider” themselves Jewish; who, under every denomination of Judaism, are not Jewish;
• People whose mothers are not Jewish and have not converted; who, under Jewish law, are not Jewish;
In fact, American Jewry is in trouble. A community that numbered roughly six million people some 65 years ago, but which today numbers, according to Pew, 5.7 million people, is shrinking fast. To wit:
• American Jewry’s fertility rate is below replacement level (1.9 children per woman).
• The median age among American Jews is significantly older than that of the general population — 28 in the world overall; 41 among American Jews.
• The value of marriage and childbearing among American Jews is no longer axiomatic.
• The central philanthropic bodies in American Jewry still spend more money on Jews abroad than on Jews at home, though that is slowly changing.
• Outreach, though greatly increased and highly valuable, still touches a small percentage of born Jews.
Every panacea put up by the organized Jewish community to create future, larger generations of Jewish grandchildren has failed. The idea that anything other than a serious commitment to Jewish ritual and ethical life as defined in the Torah and tradition will sustain the American Jewish community has been proven wrong.
Every Jews counts. Every Jew has the potential to be Jewishly informed, vital, creative and contributing. There are, however, no shortcuts. A simple point, not yet widely grasped.
The latest panacea is Jewish camping — a beautiful and worthy endeavor, to be sure — but also a shortcut, under which, for example, Shabbos is wonderful when it is detached from everyday rhythms — that is, when it is observed in a bucolic setting,far from home and school — but not an ineradicable Jewish commitment.
Like anything else worth achieving in life, the creation of one Jewish generation larger and stronger than the previous one requires discipline and the acquisition of knowledge, plus the unique Jewish way of living.
American Muslims seem to be much less apologetically inclined in the creation of their coming generations than American Jews. They seem to be visibly and proudly Muslim. Their population numbers seem to be real numbers, hard numbers, not the soft, mismash of American Jewish demography.
The twofold implications are clear: Israel will soon surpass the US as the largest Jewish community, if it hasn’t already; and political support for Israel in the US will be much harder to muster.
Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News
