American Jewry Loses Middle as Orthodox and Unaffiliated Grow
Image by getty images
Steven M. Cohen October 7, 2013
The past few decades have witnessed the “polarization” of American Christianity. Evangelicals have grown, but so have the religiously unaffiliated. Meanwhile, mainstream Protestant Church members have declined sharply, along with non-Hispanic Catholics.
We now find parallel trends among American Jews. From a demographic perspective, the Orthodox are incredibly healthy. Their birthrates are far more than twice those of other Jews; their age profile is young, and their intergenerational retention rates are soaring.
Meanwhile, Jews with no religious identification are surging, reaching 22%.
In contrast, those identifying as Conservative plummeted. Even though Reform numbers increased, they share the same disturbing vital signs as do all non-Orthodox Jews.
For all non-Orthodox, birthrates average around 1.7, falling well below the 2.1 needed for stability. Moreover, the average age of Conservative and Reform adults (55 and 54, respectively) points to an aging population, with few young adults coming to replenish the numbers.
Significantly, not all the 1.7 are Jewish. Among in-married Jews, 96% raise their children as Jews-by-religion. Among the intermarried? Just 22%. Since, among the non-Orthodox, more than 71.5% intermarry, the 1.7 average birthrate translates into only 1.2 children raised as Jews.
As with global warming, the changes are too subtle to be palpable; but they’re too massive to be denied, and too grave to be ignored.
Steven M. Cohen is a research professor of Jewish social policy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
