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

