If you’re solidly secular, you’re still very Jewish

One can argue about the labels, and for full details you should read the report, but arguably the most important insight comes from looking at how different parts of American society are distributed across the seven groups. In general, many more Americans (39%) are in the first three categories — the highly religious — than the last two (29%) — the non-religious. American Christians are the same, only more so: 55% are in the highly religious categories, whilst just 8% are in the non-religious ones.

But American Jews are different. Uniquely among all religions and denominations investigated, more are in the non-religious categories (45%) than the highly religious ones (34%).

I know what you’re thinking. Yes, but these are American Jews. We British Jews aren’t like them. But actually, we are. Using a research device known as the ‘outlook scale,’ which asks Jews to describe themselves as either ‘religious,’ ‘somewhat religious,’ ‘somewhat secular’ or ‘secular,’ we have also found that more British Jews situate themselves at the secular end of the scale than the religious end, by 28% to 18%. The method may be different, the scale more crude, but the results are much the same.

Typically, we apply a value judgement when interpreting this reality. The secular are the least communally engaged, well along the path towards assimilation. The data largely supports this — secular Jews are statistically less likely than religious Jews to belong to community organisations, have Jewish friends, marry other Jews or support Jewish charities. And yet, they are still Jews.

The implication is that Jewishness doesn’t really sit in the category of a ‘religion.’ Or, more precisely, it doesn’t sit exclusively in the religion category. It is also a civilisation, an ethnicity, a culture, a heritage, a nationality. It is those conceptions of Jewishness that resonate most for many of us. Indeed, statistically, we are much more likely to value ethnic, national or historical ideas such as “feeling part of the Jewish People,” “supporting Israel” or “remembering the Holocaust,” than we are to value clearly religious ideas or practices, such as “believing in God” or “prayer.”

For most of us, this comes as no surprise. We know it in our kishkes. But much of the non-Jewish world, and, indeed, of the Jewish one, doesn’t get it. They put us in the “religion” category, alongside Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc.

Pew’s categorisation reminds us that we don’t fully belong there. And by not making a value judgement, it prompts us to ask ourselves how to strengthen and enhance these ethnic, national and historical aspects of our identities so that they are better able to meet the challenges that currently make them so vulnerable to erosion.

And maybe the study also calls on us to stop judging Jews on the basis of religiosity or denomination, but to engage in more nuanced discussion about the multiplicity of rich and complex ways in which we express our Jewish identities. To my mind, that would not only be a more interesting and accurate conversation, but also a key strategy in engaging the next generation.

 

Jonathan Boyd is is executive director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR)