American Jews are “losing their religion,” said Daniel Burke in CNN.com. A new Pew Research Center study has found that young American Jews are intermarrying at an astonishing rate and no longer practicing Judaism. While some 90 percent of American Jews born before World War II identify themselves as Jewish by religion, nearly a third of those born after 1980 say they have no religion at all. Almost 60 percent of Jews who’ve wed since 2000 have a non-Jewish spouse, and one third of intermarried Jews say they are not raising their kids as Jewish. “If these trends continue or worsen,” said -Jonathan Tobin in CommentaryMagazine.com,there will be very few Jews left in a generation or two. For too long, the community has promoted “cultural Judaism”—the idea that you can be a Jew if you like Seinfeld and eat bagels, but ignore the practice of Jewish religion. But that concept has proven to be a gateway to “a dismal future.”
As an assimilated Jew, I don’t see it that way, said Gabriel Roth in Slate.com. By marrying a gentile and raising my daughter without religion, some Jews say, I’m doing “what Hitler couldn’t”—-wiping out the Jewish people. But to me, the rise of intermarriage serves as proof that anti-Semitism is waning. Now that the country’s 6.7 million Jews “no longer suffer systemic discrimination,” we can now fall in love and pursue happiness just like other Americans. “For anyone not attached to terrible ideas about racial purity, this is good news.” As we engage with the world, Jewish ideals and values are being woven into the culture, said Douglas Rushkoff in TheJewishWeek.com. Among them are deep respect for constitutional law, tolerance, progressive values, ironic humor, and literacy. “We’re not disappearing. We are everywhere.”
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