Twenty years ago Professor Barry Kosmin, the Executive Director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research conducted the American Jewish Identity Survey. What he and his fellow researchers did was to survey around 50,000 people throughout America and asked them a series of questions one of which was this: what is your religion.
Then they were asked this: when it comes to your outlook do you regard yourself as religious, somewhat religious, secular or somewhat secular. For those surveyed who might not have understood what secular means they were told “secular means non-religious”. The Jehovah’s Witnesses lined up like this: 73% said that they were religious, 18% that they were somewhat religious, 3% somewhat secular and 5% secular – no great surprise. Of the Catholics who are a good quarter of all Americans – 30% said that they were religious, 50% somewhat religious, 7% somewhat secular and 6% secular. For those of you what are adding up in your heard and wondering where the missing few percent went – they are the don’t knows. The figures for Muslims are virtually identical to those for the Catholics. For Methodists over 90% of respondents went for one of the religious choices and only 6% for secular or somewhat secular.
In reading these figures you may feel that Barry Kosmin and his team had too much time on their hands going around asking people what their religion is and then whether or not they are religious and getting the answer from 90% or so that they are indeed religious.- and if they hadn’t got round to asking the Jews you would be right.
The Jews, this American survey proves were distinctly definitely, odd. When asked how they regard their outlook American Jews who, when asked their religion had said that they were Jewish said this: secular 27%, somewhat secular 17%, somewhat religious 42%. The percentage of Jews who said that they were religious was only 11%. No other religious group in America including Buddhists had any thing like this small a proportion of adherents who said they were religious. Even among people who said that they were of no religion 8% said that they were religious.
What does this prove? We British Jews might smugly say that yes American Jews are odd. But then the Institute for Jewish Policy Research brought the survey closer to home a year later and asked Jews in Leeds the same question. The result? A survey of 1500 people in Leeds of whom 89% of the respondents said that they were Synagogue members and of whom 82% had been to Synagogue in the past year – found that only 9% said that they regarded themselves as religious, 44% somewhat religious – about the same as that found among American Jews, 47% of Leeds Jews identified with secular or somewhat secular.
You may still scoff. Perhaps all that we have proven is that American Jews are odd and that Jews from Yorkshire are equally odd. But then another year later the Institute for Jewish Policy Research published “A portrait of Jews in London and the South East.” They asked 3000 Jews in London, concentrating inevitably in our own North West London – “when it comes to your outlook do you regard yourself as religious, somewhat religious, secular or somewhat secular?” Of their sample of which 59% described themselves as Orthodox Jews what did we answer? Secular – 25%, Somewhat Secular 33% (That is a far greater proportion of self avowed Secular Jews than in either America or Leeds), Somewhat religious 34% and a tiny 8% of London’s Jews would describe themselves as religious. Perhaps then we London Jews are the oddest of them all? These figures for the whole gamut of London’s Jews, Orthodox, Masorti, Reform and Liberal veer more to the secular than the responses of American Reform Jews, our nearest spiritual cousins, so to speak.
When I have spoken about the results of this survey before it has surprised few. At the core of the issue is the meaning of the word religious to English speaking Jews. For some reason it does not mean in Rabbi John Rayner’s definition of the word religious: “fundamentally an attitude to reality – a response of the whole of our being – mind, heart and soul – to the world in which we are placed. It is a sense of awe and wonder, an apprehension of the mystery beyond the commonplace.” Rather when you ask Jews if they are religious they tend to think you are asking “are you observant of current Orthodox Jewish law”. Quite how Orthodoxy has managed to gain a monopoly of the English meaning of Jewish religiosity is a mystery to me. This Synagogue contains many religious Reform Jews by Rabbi Rayner’s definition – but I bet if you asked them if they were religious they would probably say no I am not, not possessing a beard, black hat or sheitel!
Ten years ago the Institute for Jewish policy research decided that it was time to dig deeper – to survey a greater number of Jews about their Jewish practice and values in order to know better where the community here is going.
Just over 3700 Jewish households completed the survey from all sections of the Jewish community representing more than 10,000 people.
A quarter of the households describe themselves as “traditional Jews”, a quarter as “secular or cultural Jews”, 16% as Haredi or ultra orthodox and 18% as Reform or Progressive Jews. When comparing to how they were brought up nearly a third of people brought up as “traditional Jews” have since moved to be Reform or secular Jews, with a small number becoming Haredi Jews. Ultra-orthodox Jewish growth is mostly fuelled by an ultra high birthrate.
What we actually do as Jews is deeply Jewish across the whole spectrum. 60% are part of a Shabbat meal every week. 50% keep kosher to a substantial degree. 63% are at Seder every year. 28% go to Synagogue weekly and 76% at least once per year. 30% give more than £500 per year to tzedakah – charitable causes. 63% fast on Yom Kippur. If this is religious behaviour then of course it is way over the 8% who would, in the previous survey have called themselves religious! Perhaps a counter intuitive finding of the survey was that the younger the household the more likely they were to display these religious behaviours. Younger Jews are doing more Jewish.
The survey asked the respondents to rank twenty Jewish concepts according to their importance in their Jewish identity. The top five turned out to be “strong moral and ethical behaviour, remembering the Holocaust, feeling part of the Jewish people, combating anti-Semitism and supporting social justice causes.” Much further down the list were supporting Israel, observing some aspects of the Shabbat, believing in God and at the bottom studying Jewish religious texts – though it should be noted that still 37% of respondents ranked this bottom of the table Jewish value as very or fairly important. In general for older respondents the ethnocentric Jewish values scored higher whilst the religious practice values were seen as more important by younger respondents.
What does this tell us? It tells us that the components of Jewish religiosity in the UK are changing. That figure of 8% of Jews saying that they were religious from 2003 was a red shamltz herring. A far greater proportion of Jews actually behaves and thinks in a Jewishly religious way– probably somewhere more like 60%. It just happens that one group of Jews has nabbed the word religious to describe themselves.
In our Torah portion we heard the beginning of the creation of the people of Israel – the children of Jacob, who will be renamed Israel at the beginning of next week’s Torah portion. Each of them, the progenitors of the twelve tribes is named in this portion with a name that describes their individuality. Judah- based on the root word for thankfulness, Reuben because God saw Leah’s distress, Dan, because of justice, Issachar because Leah perceives his birth as a reward for her struggle. Their plurality shows that there will always be more than one way to be a Jew.
This week, the new government of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government acceded to demands from ultra-orthodox parties to close down the variety of Judaism in the Jewish state by refusing to recognise conversions that have been made in Reform Synagogues. It is a dreadful policy, which if it is enacted, will drive Israel away from being the shared home of the Jewish people, as if only some of the tribes of Israel were welcome in the Promised Land. Our Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism is fighting for us to keep Israel a truly Jewish state against the attempts of ultra-Orthodox parties to reserve it for themselves – as if they are the only religious Jews.
This week we found out the first results of the 2021 National Census. It showed that the Jewish community in UK had grown a little to 271,000, meaning that we are a steady 0.5% of the UK population, around the same size as the Buddhist population and about half the size of the Sikh population. The Jewish populations of Barnet, Hertsmere and St Albans Boroughs where most EHRS members live are growing healthily whilst that of Harrow borough is shrinking.
Our job as a Synagogue community is to ensure that this is a centre of Jewish religion in all of its multifaceted senses. A place where all the tribes of Israel can gather and thrive. When we or our children are asked ‘are we religious’ may we be able to say proudly yes we are and explain why we are proud of the Judaism we follow, which no other Jewish group needs to define for us.
