What's going on with faith trends in American Judaism, nationally and in your locale?

Since 9-11, the media have — with good cause — lavished attention upon Islam in America.

There's been less interest in the cultural and demographic challenges facing Judaism, long the nation's second-largest religion behind Christianity. Jewish news coverage in the mainstream press tends to focus on Democratic Party politics, trends in anti-Semitism and attitudes toward Israel and the unending Mideast mess.

Those are important, of course, but what about Judaism as a living 21st Century religious faith? Here, as so often, the Pew Research Center steps up with its 248-page survey on "Jewish Americans in 2020" (click here for the .pdf report).

The Guy proposes that this is the ideal moment for journalists to focus on the religion of Judaism, asking rabbis and lay synagogue leaders how Pew's trends are playing out both nationally and with their particular audiences and locales.

At one time, Jewish federations conducted such community surveys. This one follows up Pew's major survey in 2013 but direct comparisons with the 2000 numbers are iffy due to changed methodology.

As so often, Pew worked from an unusually large random sample of 4,718 Jewish adults who were interviewed between November 2019 and June 2020. To learn more about Pew's revised methodology to cope with low "response rates" among those sampled -- among factors that produced the embarrassingly wrong 2020 political polls -- see this prior Guy Memo.

As writers dig into the numbers they'll understand fears that unless things change "we are going to lose the illusion of there being a Jewish people." So says "modern Orthodox" Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, speaking with Forward.com (“Pew’s new study of American Jews reveals widening divides, worries over antisemitism”).

The bottom line: Across the board, the gap between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews is deepening. This looks very much like the gap between declining U.S. "mainline" and "liberal" Protestants over against conservative or "evangelical" believers, or the gap between traditional religious believers and the growing world of atheists, agnostics and the “religiously unaffiliated.”

How many articles have we read about the inexorable demographic slide of U.S. “mainline” Protestantism, difficulties lately hitting “evangelicals,” declining Mass attendance for Catholics and the growth of religiously unaffiliated people (“Nones”) who forsake all religious ties that bind?

There’s been far less media attention to the state of Judaism, the nation’s second-largest religion though Islam is moving up. It faces far worse prospects, according to premier chronicler Jack Wertheimer, a historian and former provost at Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS).

Reporters — if American Judaism is in serious trouble, that’s a big story by any definition.

This dire, developing story is a good example of the way scholarship that deserves media coverage can be mostly hidden for an extended period yet remain pertinent and newsworthy. Wertheimer’s “The New American Judaism” (Princeton), published two years ago, only caught The Guy’s eye when boss tmatt noted a review in the current edition of the Orthodox Union magazine Jewish Action. (The Guy has not yet read the book but that lengthy review provides ample substance and quotes.)

Wertheimer sees a “recession” — if not a great depression.

More than 2 million people of Jewish parentage “no longer identify as Jews.” Many others do not see themselves as part of the Jewish religion and define themselves only in cultural or ethnic terms. Rising intermarriage means fewer Jews tomorrow. Birth rates among the non-Orthodox are so low one wonders “who will populate Jewish religious institutions in the future.”

If the religion atrophies, can non-religious communal life thrive?