4 | JUNE 29 • 2023
PURELY COMMENTARY
essay
The Jewish Future Is All About Choice
There was a young lady of title
Who insisted on wearing a sheitel.
She didn’t care much
For kashrut and such,
“But the sheitel,
” said she, “now that’s
vital!”
A
s the old limerick suggests,
there has long been a tradition
of picking and choosing Jewish
observance in America, whether it involved
keeping kosher or observing Shabbat, or,
in this case, covering your hair with a wig
(a sheitel) if you’re a married
woman.
But in America today,
choice has come to occupy
a central place not merely in
how Jews practice Judaism
but in the very way they con-
ceive their religious identity.
Over the past several
decades, Americans have
come to regard their religion
less and less as an ascribed
identity — as something
they were born into — and
increasingly as what they
choose to be at the present
time. This shift has had
a particularly dramatic effect on Jewish
Americans, in whose tradition religious
identity had for millennia been ascribed
at birth. The tension between ascription
on the one hand, and choice on the other,
informs American Jewish religion.
How is the Jewish community respond-
ing to this new regime of choice? That is
the central concern of our new book, The
Future of Judaism in America. Understanding
religious identity as chosen is crucial to
understanding the future of Judaism in the
context of its denominations, its numbers,
its relationships with other faith commu-
nities, its stance on public affairs — and,
perhaps most important, its ability to renew
itself in response to pressures from outside
and from within.
Let’s consider the different denomina-
tional streams.
REFORM JUDAISM
Reform, after steady growth in syna-
gogue membership from the late 1970s
until the new century, is no longer the
fastest-growing movement. Still, Reform
in America, while it struggles with the
boundaries of “who is Jewish,” has low-
ered the barriers to participation in its
brand of Judaism. “Inclusiveness” is the
byword for contemporary Reform, both
externally (outreach to non-Jewish spous-
es), and internally, by welcoming those
Reform Jews who choose to embrace
rituals — tallit and kippah and tefillin,
mikveh, full synagogue services — tra-
ditionally considered outside the sphere
of a movement that does not regard
Halachah, or traditional rabbinic law, as
binding. “Reform Judaism teaches that
each of us is an autonomous individual,
able to make thoughtful, religious choic-
es,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president
of the Union for Reform Judaism, at his
installation a decade ago.
Have Reform’s accommodations
worked? So far, the answer appears to
be “yes,” as the percentage of Reform in
American Jewry has remained stable at
around 35-40% for decades.
CONSERVATIVE JUDAISM
For its part, the question for the
Conservative movement is more
about ascribed identity than about anything
else. The movement is struggling with the
question of how long it can sustain its poli-
cy of forbidding its rabbis from performing
marriages between Jews and non-Jews. (The
question is of a piece with the angst always
felt by Conservative leaders when their
commitment to Halachah collides with the
movement’s commitment to change.)
The question of intermarriage is central
to the future of Conservative Judaism, as
its contemporary identity is defined and
has always been defined by the clear line
it draws between Jew and non-Jew. This
dilemma, in addition to the host of serious
issues that plague the movement — not the
least of which is a precipitous decline in
Conservative’s numbers, from 43% to 17%
of those who identify with a denomination
over some two decades — suggests that the
future of the Conservative qua independent
movement is highly uncertain.
Many analysts (including several authors
in our book) suggest that Reform and
Conservative Judaism will ultimately merge
and become a single heterodox movement.
Jerome A.
Chanes
JTA.org
continued on page 7
Mark Silk
JTA.org