Distancing from Israel: Evidence on Jews of No Religion

The Center for Cultural Judaism is very pleased to publish this edition of the important demographic study of America's Jewish population, the only comprehensive data about this population available as of the printing of this publication. The Center for Cultural Judaism is particularly interested in this study, as our Center was established largely in response to the findings of the American Jewish Identity Survey released by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (AJIS 2001). Among its key findings, this survey shows that nearly half of America's adult Jews regard themselves as secular or somewhat secular. The number of children born to the secular segment of the Jewish adult population has increased dramatically, up from 307,000 in 1990 to 590,000 in 2001. One-half of American Jews are completely unaffiliated, and do not belong to any Jewish organization or community center.

Contemporary Jewry, 2010

This paper reviews the two submitted articles on ''distancing.'' In addition to a review and brief critique of methodological and measurement issues, I present a macro contextual argument to address the question of distancing between American Jews and Israel. Keywords Distancing Á Oneness Á Relationships between American Jews and Israel The relationships between American Jewry and Israel have been a core theme in understanding the American Jewish community and Israeli society. The complexity of the issues involves the exploration of ideologies and policies, attitudes and norms, behavior and values, economics and politics. Studying these relationships requires multiple research and theoretical strategies as the patterns unfold over time among people and places. No simple research design, no matter how elegant, and no body of empirical evidence based on cross-sectional surveys, however complete, is likely to systematically address the nuances of these relationships. At the outset, therefore, the two papers that we are examining that attempt to shed light on changes over time in the closeness between American Jews and Israel are constrained by the theory/framework they are considering, the strategies of research they employ, and the data that they use. While we can all agree that the effort to study these processes is worthwhile, our expectations should be modest. The

Contemporary Jewry, 2010

This article assesses the debate between Sasson-Kadushin-Saxe on the one side and Cohen-Kelman on the other. We find that Sasson-Kadushin-Saxe's work has significant weaknesses in data, empirical analysis, presentation and theory, and as such we have no reason yet to accept their claims. In contrast, Cohen-Kelman's work is theoretically and contextually rich, but their case is not yet sealed because limitations of data and empirical analysis remain. We conclude with a brief discussion of how we might move forward to better understand American Jewish attachments to Israel.

2012

The Distancing Discourse The claim that young American Jews are distancing themselves from Israel is rapidly becoming a major preoccupation of those in charge of cultivating the Jewish People. This paper shows that the claim of distancing is not supported by the data currently available and argues that the conversation about distancing, as such, defeats the very purpose of those who engage in it: to enhance the attachment of the American Jewish community to Israel. The relationship between the two largest Jewish communities, Israel and North America, is complex. Both communities are undergoing a process of change and, as a result, American Jewry’s attachment to Israel is also undergoing a long and multi-faceted process of transformation. These changes carry both risks of genuine distancing in the future as well as opportunities for building new models of partnership between the two communities. But parsing the relationship between the two communities along a binary model of distance...

Although the arguments of both Cohen-Kelman and Sasson-Kadu Saxe are well presented and are based on careful analyses of the data each utilized Cohen-Kelman thesis is more convincing because there is a variety of evid supporting it and because its argument with respect to connectedness with Israe within a larger framework of patterns of American Jewish identity and identificat Keywords Young American Jews • Jewish identity • Identification • American ethnic groups Steven Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman argue that younger, non-Orthodox Jews significantly lower and declining attachments to Israel. Their argument is base largely on analyses of data from the 2007 national survey of American Jews. T Sasson, Charles Kadushin, and Len Saxe argue, based largely on their analys American Jewish Committee studies over a 13 year period (1994-2007), that th has not been a significant change in the patterns of connection of young Ame Jews to Israel, and that in every decade connections to and support for Israel te increase with age. Both arguments are well presented and both are based on careful analyses of data utilized. On that basis per se, I am somewhat reminded of the Rabbi of Ana and am tempted to say that they are both correct. Obviously, however, that cann so because the positions are so opposite of one another. In their response to Sas and colleagues, Cohen-Kelman attempt to narrow and define their disagreemen with Sasson-Kadushin-Saxe by emphasizing that their distancing hypothesis ap to only a segment of the non-Orthodox American Jewish population and not to an

Contemporary Jewry, 2010

This paper comments upon the two lead articles in the Contemporary Jewry analysis of the Israel distancing hypothesis-the contrasting interpretations of Steven Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman who argue that Jewish Americans, especially younger Jewish adults and the intermarried, are becoming increasingly distant from Israel, and the rejoinder by Theodore Sasson, Charles Kadushin and Leonard Saxe from Brandeis University, who argue that ''… neither the scholarly literature nor survey evidence consistently supports the view that attachment to Israel is declining among American Jews.'' After discussing some methodological shortcomings in the data used in both the Cohen-Kelman and the Sasson-Kadushin-Saxe papers, as well as the reality that the emergence of J-Street as an alternative and younger-Jewish-adult-oriented supporter (and critic) of Israel may reflect a qualitative change in younger Jewish adult perspectives on Israel, this commentary focuses upon the puzzling reality that the authors of the two articles present essentially the same data, yet come to radically different conclusions. Both groups of researchers demonstrate that younger Jews are less likely to be strongly attached to Israel; both note that the intermarried are less connected to Israel; both note that the majority of American Jews still feel connected to and support Israel. The Cohen-Kelman articles interpret these data as reflecting generational changes; Sasson-Kadushin-Saxe interpret the data in a life-cycle change model.

Jewish Population and Identity

Demographers look at the size and structure of populations and explore shifts in socio-demographic factors that determine them. The American Jewish population at the beginning of the twenty-first century holds on to its size yet changes its character. The number of Americans who identify as Jews by religion dwindles. Simultaneously, on the rise is the number of Americans who do not identify with a religion, yet have Jewish parents or were raised Jewish. We classify them as Jews of no religion (see Fig. 1) (Kosmin and Keysar 2013). These trends were documented by the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) series, which followed the same research methodology over two decades. The national surveys of American religion, unprecedented in size, utilized openended religion questions and employed an omnibus survey (Kosmin and Keysar 2006; Keysar 2014a). Tellingly demographers, especially Jewish demographers, do not always agree with each other on definitions and methodological issues (DellaPergola 2013). Added to the disagreements is the overarching and ongoing question of "who is a Jew?" The unresolved communal discourse promises to keep the social boundaries of the Jewish population undefined. The Pew Jewish Study in 2013, employing a research methodology different from that of ARIS, found more Jews by religion and fewer Jews of no religion. In all, Pew estimated the number of Jews by religion as 4.2 million, more than the expected number by natural demographic growth (DellaPergola 2015). Pew found 1.2 million Jews of no religion (Cooperman and Smith 2015). The number puzzle was not resolved in 2013 (Kosmin 2015). Rather it intensified the debate by introducing the classification of partial Jews. The Pew Jewish Survey (2013b) distinguished between 500,000 adults of no religion who self identify as Jewish and 600,000 adults who self-identify only as "partly" Jewish. (See also Cohen 2015).

is the founding chair of the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Hadassah Academic College in Jerusalem. He is also Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Rutgers University with which he was affiliated from 1975 to 2006. Prof. Waxman has written and edited some twenty books and more than 100 scholarly articles.

2010