A Jewish reader passes along Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein’s review of a new book examining how American Jews practice their religion today. The book is by Jack Wertheimer, a leading historian of American Jewish history. Excerpts:

The spoiler comes right at the beginning. “This book takes it as a given that Jewish religious life in this country has endured a recession” (p. 5). In this context, the term recession is an understatement. “Over two million individuals of Jewish parentage no longer identify as Jews, and many others . . . eschew identification with the Jewish religion, choosing instead to define themselves in cultural or ethnic terms. And outside Orthodox communities, rates of childbearing are depressed relative to the recent past, leaving observers to wonder who will populate Jewish religious institutions in the future” (p. 3).

If religion is on the decline, will a sense of peoplehood keep the Jewish enterprise afloat? “Peoplehood alone will not keep Jews engaged in Jewish life with any measure of intensity . . . Sacred religious practices, holidays, rituals, and commandments keep the Jewish people Jewish . . . Jewish families without religion don’t stay Jewish for very long” (p. 20).

The book is filled with evidence that non-Orthodox Jews are one tick away from total apostasy from the Jewish religion (N.B. Wertheimer is not Orthodox, but rather Conservative):

While a majority are not atheists or agnostics, the non-Orthodox are confused as to Whom God is. No wonder. One Conservative rabbi titled a High Holiday sermon, “Why Jews Should Not Believe in God,” and told his congregants that the images of God in our Torah that they cannot buy into should be upgraded to a kind of “container to hold our experience of life that is unnamable” (p. 31). A Reform rabbi who polled his congregants the day after Yom Kippur came to the conclusion that, “For them . . . God is a presence or power . . . not so much ‘above’ us in heaven as . . . ‘beside’ us or ‘within’ us . . . [Who] ‘acts’ when we act with God’s attributes, such as love, kindness, and justice” (p. 32). The replacing of the traditional belief in God with something else has led many rabbis “to sanctify the preexisting social and ideological commitments of their congregants by figuratively blessing them as somehow Jewish” (p. 39). Commandments per se are out. Rather, there is “a complete rejection of the notion that to be Jewish involves the acceptance of some externally imposed commandments . . . Internally generated rights and wrongs are all that matters” (p. 40). “The large majority of non-Orthodox Jews have internalized a . . . set of values . . . indistinguishable from those of their non-Jewish peers. A single commandment may have survived—one that was newly minted in the ‘80s: Thou shalt engage in Tikkun Olam”(p. 41).

Has any of this worked? Hardly. “Alas, it has not brought large numbers of members into synagogues, nor has it translated into other forms of religious participation” (p. 42).

This piece is really interesting. Wertheimer finds that Reform Judaism (the most progressive) has gone quite far away from the Jewish liturgical tradition, and gotten quite creative. It has not arrested Reform’s decline. The somewhat more traditional Conservative movement is declining even faster. Wertheimer’s research finds that Conservative Jews (he is part of the Conservative tradition) fail to give their children any but the most minimal understanding of what it means to be Jewish. Unsurprisingly, that little bit evaporates when they grow older. And why shouldn’t it? Modernity is the dissolver of all religion that isn’t infinitely malleable and focused on the Self. There are lessons there for Christians too, obviously.

One more quote:

Wertheimer does find evidence of vitality in new innovations outside of the old moribund denominations. He shows plenty of experimentation with new forms of engagement—religious start-ups, if you will. From the Renewal movement: “Picture 20 massage tables, with people lying down and being gently touched, with music playing. On Yom Kippur” (p. 240). From the Humanistic Judaism people: “Let’s rise and say the Shma. We are doing this as a tradition, not as a prayer” (p. 243). The Lab Shul reports that “Instead of using the baggage laden ‘God’, we’ve replaced it with terms like ‘source of life,’ and ‘deepest source.’” While these new ventures hold promise to their promoters, they all require urban environments. As millennials get older and move to the suburbs, Wertheimer wonders whether they can last. One of Wertheimer’s rabbinic interviewees asks:

How does a culture of narcissism[,] over[-]entitlement and personalization manifest itself in terms of Jewish communal engagement? How can an iPod generation find rigorous exploration of Talmud and Jewish literature compelling and life-sustaining? How can those taught to walk away/delete/unfriend on a whim be taught [and] . . . be stimulated to discover a spiritual practice that actually requires practice? Is there a way to cultivate a sense of obligation, enchantment, [and] spiritual hunger in a generation [that] is essentially able to log off or sign out in all other aspects of life? (p. 209).

There it is. And if you think that rabbi’s quote doesn’t apply to Christianity too, you’re daft.

OK, I have to mention one more thing here. Rabbi Adlerstein is an Orthodox Jew, the only form of Judaism that is thriving today. He cautions his fellow Orthodox against “I told you so”-ism:

There is no room for triumphalism or schadenfreude here. We are witnessing tragedy—pure, unmitigated tragedy. Millions of Jews are disappearing, but not because they ever had an opportunity to understand or experience the beauty of what they are giving up. The vast majority of them are victims of choices made by their forebears in earlier generations—and many of those choices were the consequences of the many manifestations of our long victimization through galut. [forced exile]

The rabbi says that the one thing Orthodox Jews should take away from Wertheimer’s study is that it is madness to try to update Judaism to fit contemporary mores. This has been a complete disaster for American Judaism.

Read it all. And think about this whenever progressives — such as we are dealing with in US Orthodox Christianity — say that we have to get with the times, and change our faith and practice to make it more suitable for contemporary America. But remember also the experience of the Conservative Jews: if you don’t both teach and practice your faith — that is, if faith is simply a matter of vague cultural and ethnic commitments and going to the temple on holidays — it will die in your children’s generation.

(By the way, you might not know that not all Orthodox Jews are the “black hat” types, who are typically called “ultra-Orthodox. Some are like Rabbi Adlerstein, pictured below: “Modern Orthodox”. They observe Jewish law strictly, but do not adopt the clothing traditions, and the separatism, of the ultra-Orthodox.)