The Judaism in Transition exchange, part 3: Can we make do with fewer Jews?

Carmel U. Chiswick is Research Professor of Economics at George Washington University. A founding member of the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Culture and a former officer of the Association for the Social-Scientific Study of Jewry, she has written extensively on the economics of religion and has been a consultant to organizations in the United States and Israel. Professor Chiswick holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and has worked as an Economist at USAID, the United Nations, and the World Bank.

This exchange focuses on her book Judaism in Transition: How Economic Choices Shape Religious Tradition (Stanford, 2014). Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here.

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Dear Professor Chiswick,

In the previous round you stated that pessimists who see American Judaism as a religion in decline tend to look at “shrinking membership numbers… rather than the characteristics of the community itself”. You also mentioned that the benchmark some of them use – 17th and 18th century Eastern Europe – is a problematic one considering how inherently different their society was from that of modern American Jewry.

You clearly present a much more positive take on the current state of American Judaism. According to you, while there are large parts of the Jewish population that have low levels of Jewish human capital, the actively Jewish are showing a lot of ingenuity and commitment, and the traditionally small class of experts is a vibrant one. (This reminded me of an interesting article by rabbi Gordon Tucker which points out that the entire Golden age of Spanish Jewry consisted of 8 families; he used this example to show that we should always consider the quality of Jewish life, not just the number of adherents.)

If I understand you correctly, rather than a gloomy scenario of general decline, what we have here is a growing disparity between those who have Jewish human capital, who are becoming more engaged in different ways, and those who don’t, who are on the path to losing touch with Judaism and to assimilation. It seems like a case of ‘the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer’, only with Jewish human capital instead of financial capital.

I have two questions:

1. Is this indeed the case?

2. If it is, should we just get used to the idea of a smaller, but more engaged American Jewish community in the future? Is there any alternative to letting Judaism take care of itself and letting the invisible hand do its thing?

I’d like to thank you again for your book and for doing this exchange.

Yours,

Shmuel.         

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Dear Shmuel,

I am not comfortable with the notion that an “invisible hand” means “letting Judaism take care of itself.” Judaism survives not because it is large but because of the community’s engagement.  Sometimes change comes from its leadership and sometimes from grass-roots spontaneity; some changes improve the quality of Jewish life but others do not. The “invisible hand” metaphor suggests that people who adopt “bad” changes have trouble passing them on to the next generation, while “good” changes attract new followers and strengthen the community. It would be a mistake, however, to belittle the creative energies required to make these changes in the first place. American Jewry seems to be constantly innovating – in the synagogue, in the community, or on the Internet – in ways that are often (but not always) successful enhancements of Jewish tradition.

If change is just a matter of trial and error, depending on the “invisible hand” to select those changes that “improve” Judaism, is there any way we can shortcut this process to devise changes with greater survivability? Here it is helpful to think of Judaism as a single Great Tradition that is complemented by one of several Small Traditions. The Great Tradition is Torah, defined broadly to include Tanach, Talmud, and the various commentaries in Judaism’s religious canon. Its language is Hebrew, its holidays are common to all Jews, and the Great Tradition is what defines a religious community as Jewish. The Small Traditions most familiar to American Jews today are Ashkenazi (whose language is Yiddish), Sephardi (whose language is Ladino), and Mizrachi (whose language is Judeo-Arabic). These Small Traditions affect the way in which Jews express the Great Tradition – the synagogue service, the holiday menus, the music, art and literature associated with religious observance – but they are not common to all Jews everywhere. 

American Jewry has roots that are mainly Ashkenazi, but is well into the process of developing a new Small Tradition which, for the time being, we can call American Judaism. American Judaism relies on English as its everyday language and has developed Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, and various other smaller synagogue movements for expressing Judaism’s Great Tradition. Religious innovations that preserve and enhance the Great Tradition are the ones that survive, while those that ignore or undermine the Great Tradition reduce the Jewish content of religion and lead to assimilation or even schism. The American synagogue movements may be ideologically based, but they are sufficiently pragmatic to drop unsuccessful practices and adapt to their members’ preferences. American Judaism is still a work in progress, but it is already evident that it will be tolerant of variety so that people can choose the Jewish lifestyle that best expresses their connection to the Great Tradition.

Because of unsuccessful changes in the past that have resulted in high rates of assimilation, the American Jewish community is shrinking and will be smaller in the future than it is today. (It will also be older, not because we are losing young people but because our elders will live longer and continue to be active well past retirement age.)  We would do well to remember, however, that Jews have always been a small minority and Jewish continuity has never depended on the size of the community.  My favorite example of this is the Jewish community of China that never exceeded about 2500 families, a truly tiny minority in that country, but nevertheless lasted some 800 years.  For Jewish continuity, engagement is everything.

It is also helpful to remember that this is hardly the first time in history that the number of Jews has declined. Losing Jews through persecutions, exiles and massacres can not account for the large population declines experienced by Babylonian Jewry in the 13^th century, for example, or the rise of Ashkenazi Jewry after the 10^th century. Recent research provides evidence that these resulted from different responses to new economic environments, those in Babylon being unsuccessful and leading to assimilation but those in the Rhineland being successful and resulting in the rise of a new Jewish culture. American Judaism has already experienced several such cycles: old-tradition elders complaining that their children are lapsing followed by a “renaissance” in which the next generation develops new expressions of Jewish tradition.*

Jews have been described as “The Ever-dying People,” reflecting the persistence of these cycles of decline and renewal. The continuity of Jewish civilization depends on a combination of tradition and pragmatism, the ability to preserve the Great Tradition by adapting the community’s Small Tradition. From the perspective of an individual living a Jewish life, the distinction between Great and Small Traditions is difficult to make, and in any event is largely irrelevant. During a time of change, however, this distinction is very important. Innovations to a Small Tradition are possible and even welcome, but changes in the Great Tradition can occur only under very unusual circumstances. Developing the new American Small Tradition is an exciting creative experience that is currently well under way. Its goal is to engage new generations of Americans with Judaism’s Great Tradition, and innovations that contribute to that goal are most likely to stand the test of time.