The new UJA-Federation 10-year study of New York’s Jewish population shows exponential growth among the Orthodox shrinkage among the heterodox and increasing disaffection among those who identify as “just Jewish.” Three of its findings provide a sense of the overall picture: 74 percent of all school-age Jewish kids in New York City are Orthodox; Reform and Conservative membership has been declining by about 1 percent annually; and in the last five years the non-Orthodox intermarriage rate stands at 50 percent. The study has been generating all sorts of reactions; let’s take a look at a few of them.
The UJA-Federation’s CEO John Ruskay admirably expressed interest in finding “ways while respecting differences to strengthen the whole Jewish community and people.” At the same time he acknowledged that “no doubt elements of this report will be uncomfortable for many if not most who hold it up as a mirror.”
In the Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt takes a largely moderate stance even recommending that UJA-Federation further deepen “its role in dealing with issues of particular concern to the Orthodox primarily the increasingly prohibitive cost of day school education. He adds that the “notion that ‘the Orthodox can take care of themselves ’ prevalent among a number of influential philanthropists is seen as dismissive and untrue in the Orthodox community.” Bravo Mr. Rosenblatt.
He does however unfortunately perpetuate the stereotype of devoutly Orthodox Jews as being “known more for separating themselves from other Jews than connecting with them.” The other evening while attending a wedding at a Williamsburg catering hall I wandered into a tzedakah gathering of dozens of chassidishe Yidden elsewhere in the same venue being held in support of an organization called L’maan Achai.
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