The October 2013 Pew Research “A Portrait of Jewish Americans” tells a different story; a story of a national suicide. A story of a people who survived centuries of oppression, persecution, exiles, and genocides, but who is unable to survive the freedom and prosperity of America; a story of “a melting pot” that is melting away the Jews of America.
The Pew publication points out that only 10% of those who consider themselves Jewish are denominationally Orthodox. Orthodox Jews have a median age of 40 (for the US general public it’s 46), and a birth rate of 4.1 children per family (it is 2.2 for general US public). Unfortunately, only 48% of respondents who were raised as Orthodox Jews are still Orthodox today, with the greatest drop out rate among the those who are 30 and older, and this is where the good news ends.
The minimum replacement birth rate required for a people to sustain itself is 2.1 offspring per family. The median age for all U.S. Jews in the U.S. is 50 (among Reform and Conservative Jews it is 54 and 55 respectively), and the birth rate is only 1.9. The birth rate among Reform and non-denominational Jews who combined make up more than 70% of all Jews is only 1.5 (it is 1.8 among Conservative Jews who make up 18% of all Jews).
Unhappily, matters get even worse. 44% of all Jews intermarry (50% and 69% among Reform and non-denominational Jews), and 67% of Jews of no-religion raise their children as not Jewish. The bad news does not end there. Of Jews born after 1980 (Millennials) 32% identify themselves as Jews of no-religion, and 58% of Jews who married in the year 2000, or later, have a non-Jewish spouse.
We are witnessing the suicide of a nation. It is happening under the watchful eyes of all the Rabbis, all the Synagogues and their board of directors, all the Hebrew school teachers, administrators and boards of eduction, and the multitude of Jewish Federations and other Jewish American Institutions and Organizations. They are all watching it, with the customary silence that Jewish America has become so adept at, while raking in billions of dollars in donations and membership fees.
With persecution, again, in Europe, and slow suicide in America, thank God for Israel were Judaism is well and flourishing despite human rights violations, censorship, secularism, state religion, and perpetual war.