The Orthodox community would appear to be growing faster than the Jewish community as a whole, but I say “appear to be” because when we think of the growth of a population, we have to take into account other factors other than age of marriage and fertility. For example, we have to take into account retention rates: How many people who are raised Orthodox remain Orthodox?
Orthodox Jews do not have the lowest retention rate. The lowest is among Conservative Jews. Only 36 percent of all people who told us they were raised Conservative are still Conservative today; 55 percent of people who were raised Reform are still Reform today, and 48 percent of all the people in the survey who told us they were raised Orthodox still identify as Orthodox today.
Does the Orthodox retention rate vary depending on the age group being examined?
Yes. Among those over 65 who tell us they were raised Orthodox, four out of five – 80 percent – no longer identify as Orthodox. On the other hand, among young adults between the ages of 18-29 who tell us they were raised Orthodox, four out of five – 80 percent – are still Orthodox.
So, one could look at this data and think that over time more and more people leave Orthodoxy. That’s possible. But it’s also possible that there could be what sociologists call a “period effect.” It could be that people who came of age in the 1940s, ’50, ‘60s, and into the ‘70s were raised in what they say were Orthodox homes but today we might not think of them as strictly Orthodox. Many of these people left what they considered Orthodoxy. In contrast, many of those who came of age in the 1980s, ‘90s and since 2000 were raised in very traditional Orthodox homes and are still Orthodox today.
How does a survey of this nature measure Jews who pray at Chabad Houses? A Chabad House is an Orthodox institution and yet a tremendous number of Jews who affiliate with Chabad Houses would not consider themselves Orthodox, nor would they consider themselves Conservative or Reform. How, then, does one classify them?
No survey is perfect and among the shortcomings in this survey is that we did not ask a specific question in which we tried to measure people’s participation or involvement with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. In retrospect I wish we had.
In fact, if we had been able to, I would have wanted to ask not just about participation in Chabad but a series of questions about participation in a variety of things so that there would be something to compare it to. For example, what share participate in Hillel? What share participate in independent minyanim?
The big thing I would note, though, when you talk about what’s changed in American Judaism is the large and, it seems likely, growing number of Jews who don’t identify with any of the major streams of Judaism. It’s a very large group now – 30 percent. I don’t think, though, that most of those folks are in Chabad. Most of them according to our survey are the least likely to have made a financial contribution to a Jewish cause, have the lowest level of participation, etc. They’re not “doing Jewish,” so to speak.