God told Abraham: “I will bestow my blessing upon you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands of the seashore” (Genesis 22:17).
However, according to the 2000 National Jewish population survey released in 2003, conducted by the United Jewish Communities, there has been a 5 percent decline in the American Jewish population over the last decade alone. Will the American Jew vanish in the next 350 years?
According to notable demographer Sergio Della Pergola, the projections do not look good. With an intermarriage rate of over 50 percent and rapidly rising, a low birthrate, and the aging of the American Jewish population, the rate of decline will only accelerate in the coming decades.
Moreover, with 44 percent of American Jews unaffiliated with a synagogue or with other Jewish institutions, there is a widely held concern that these prevailing social and demographic patterns indicate that the future of the American Jewish community is in grave danger.
While the NJPS focused only on synagogue membership and excluded information on self-definition of identity in their study, the Center for Jewish Studies at City University in New York conducted the American Jewish Identity Survey in 2001, identifying a large population of American Jews that has been mostly ignored by conventional demographers.
Nearly half of this group identified themselves either as secular, non-religious, or cultural Jews.
According to Calvin Goldscheider, a distinguished demographer at Brown University’s Population Studies and Training Center, this may not have an effect. “Neither mixed marriages nor their offspring’s need result in losses to the Jewish community; indeed they might attract non-Jews to Jewish community life,” he said.
Recent dialogues about the Jewish future, however, are moving away from conventional demography, which focuses exclusively on individuals, to an alternative and more inclusive vision that considers the ways in which families are embedded in social networks, the Jewish community, and Jewish culture.
It is highly likely that the trend towards secularization will continue well into the next decades and beyond. But the long and optimistic view for the future of American Jewish life is one that accepts a range and complexity of Jewish identities from ritual observance and cultural identification to ethical and moral viewpoints.
Dr. Chava Frankfort-Nachmias is the director of the Center for Jewish Studies at UW-Milwaukee.
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