Sociologist Barry Kosmin offers his take on American Jewish trends
By Judie Jacobson

HARTFORD n “The key to good, relevant, social science and especially sociology, is asking the right questions at the right time,” says Professor Barry A. Kosmin, director of the newly established Trinity College Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture.  
Kosmin should know.
As a nationally recognized sociologist and demographer, best known for heading four major studies of religious identity in the United States, Kosmin has been asking the right questions for a long time.
Author of the critically acclaimed book, “One Nation Under God: Religion in Contemporary American Society,” much of his previous work has focused on deciphering trends among America’s Jewish population. Some of his previous posts include director of research for the North American Council of Jewish Federations in New York and executive director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in London,  and founding director of the North American Jewish Data Bank at the City University of New York (CUNY).
Recently, the Jewish Ledger spoke with Kosmin about trends among American Jewry, as per the CUNY American Jewish Identification Survey 2001 (AJIS).  

Q: According to the AJIS that you conducted, the number of American adults stating they had no religion doubled over the previous decade. Is American Jewry in line with this statistic?  That is, is religious belief and/or practice growing or waning among America’s Jews?
A: Just like other Americans, religious Jews seem to be polarizing. Certainly the ‘religious’ or observant are more ‘traditional’ today than 30 years ago, and we have all noticed an Orthodox revival. But we also know that there has been a strong countervailing trend towards assimilation, which is highlighted by the high rate of intermarriage.  
However, Jews are a special case. Jewish statistics of any sort are a disputed area because America’s Jews are divided, perhaps as never before, over a question that would surprise most other Americans who are not familiar with the Jewish heritage or the Jewish community in any way.  That question is, quite simply:  Who is Jewish? 
To put it in actuarial terms - there is no consensus about the size of the population at risk, so we cannot agree on key statistics, such as rates of intermarriage or synagogue membership. 
At a more subtle level, the questions in dispute are, what does ‘Jewish’ mean? and who gets to decide? Who is a rabbi? Or, how are those who call themselves ‘Jewish,’ or are labelled as such by others, to signify that identity or social status to themselves and others?  Only if these questions are satisfactorily resolved can we definitively answer: What do Jews believe? To what do Jews belong? And how do Jews behave? 

Q:  What are the implications for the community if we can’t reach  consensus on the answers to these questions?
A: The answers to these basic boundary questions also affect how we count the relative size of those different segments of the over-all American Jewish population. Because the ‘Jewish community’, as all ethnic and religious communities in the United States, is voluntary in nature: its members determine the criteria on the basis of which they include or exclude fellow members; get to decide from whom they seek support so as to sustain the community, and get to decide upon whom and for what purposes they expend the resources and voluntary associations they share in common.  Who is defined in and who is defined out matters greatly. So do the criteria on the basis of which such definitions are made. 

Q:  That said, are there any valid conclusions we can draw about the state of the American Jewry?
A: Even if the actual figures are in dispute we can talk about trends because, in fact, the data collected in numerous surveys show that, however restrictively one counts Jews, the gap between Jews and the rest of America is so wide that one can state categorically:

* More Jews than most other Americans respond "None," when asked "What is your religion, if any?"
* More Jews than members of most other American religious groups think of themselves as “secular” rather than as “religious.”
* Fewer Jews than members of most other American religious groups agree with the essential proposition of religious belief that "God exists."
* Fewer Jewish believers than Christian believers think God performs miracles or answers prayers.

So, one salient finding is that there is a large and growing population of American Jewish adults who are without religious faith. They adhere to no creed nor choose to affiliate with any religious community. These are the seculars, or the ‘unsynagogued.’  

Q:  Are these trends at all indicative of what is happening in American life in general?
A: While such trends may be lamented widely within the organized Jewish community, it reflects a much broader trend of non-affiliation in American religious life. Yet this fact has particular relevance to the study of America’s Jews since, in ARIS, we found that adults of Jewish parentage who claim no religion constitute more than 3.8% of all American adults without religion, while adults claiming Judaism as their religion constitute just 1.6% of all American adults who claim a religion.
These facts and the questions they raise have wide ranging ramifications for the broad network of religious, educational and social service organizations that collectively comprise the organized Jewish community in the United States.”