Even if I accept your figure of 10% Orthodox (which sounds about right), their share is growing while everyone else’s is shrinking.

Yes, unfortunately, Franken and Boxer DO represent the majority opinion among American Jews. You know that as well as I do, even if neither one of us is happy about it.

Ah, well, you probably are right. They don’t represent the opinion of, for example, my East Coast family, but all that means is they’re in the minority too, I fear.

“Wouldn’t you rather have intermarriage in which the kids honored and identified with their Jewish heritage, rather than no intermarriage, but offspring growing more and more apathetic?” Yes, that’s a nice thought, but most children of intermarriages DON’T identify with their Jewish heritage–in fact they most likely don’t identify with ANY heritage. Subsequent generations are even more diluted until the notion of Judaism fades away completely.

Do you have figures on that assertion, or have you observed it in practice?

You say you “identify” as Jewish. Do you observe any rituals? Do you fast on Yom Kippur? Do you ever attend services or keep kosher?

Passover at my cousins’, and the Hanukkah menorah. No fasting on Yom Kippur, but at least the token apples and honey on Rosh Hashanah. No keeping kosher, either, and no services. (Kasha varnishkes regularly, though.)

OK, so maybe that doesn’t sound particularly Jewish, but most of my “fully” Jewish cousins fail to keep kosher. Some go to services, some don’t. I’d be surprised if the ones who don’t keep kosher fast on Yom Kippur.

OK, so maybe they don’t sound particularly Jewish either (the ones who don’t keep kosher, go to services, etc.), but they consider themselves Jews — one even lived in Israel for a time, though she has since returned.

I mean, my father, as I think I have mentioned, who grew up in an Orthodox household, stopped going to services altogether after he joined the army, never kept kosher after that, never fasted, never did any of the above except Hanukkah and the apples on Rosh Hashanah, mostly for his kids’ benefit. But you would be hard-pressed to find a more Jewish (American) Jew, and Welmer can testify to that.

I mean, there are many Israelis who are completely secular — are they not Jewish?

If you’re worried about the practice of the religion, OK then, I don’t know what to tell you — but I don’t foresee the Jews going away as a people anytime soon. (Neither did Frank Herbert, incidentally, if you’ve ever read Dune — I just re-read some of the later books.) And for survival as a people, self-identification is important.

I had a run-in with an anti-semitic signature gatherer for a divestment initiative last year — the first personal interaction I’d ever had with someone like that — and I felt it viscerally. That’s good enough for me.

The men are not generally decamping for the mainline churches, though. They seem to typically end up in very conservative evangelical or “bible” churches or, to a much lesser extent, the Orthodox Church, or, probably in at least half the cases, no church or other religion at all.

As PMAFT points out, this is often kind of invisible in some parts of the country due to the huge influx of mostly Catholic latino immigrants. It really does vary very much by region. There are parts of the country where Catholic churches and schools are being closed and consolidated, and others where new ones are being built — the latter tends to happen around the southern tier of the country, where there is a greater % of latino immigrants. If you go to the classic old-school Catholic states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts and so on, you’ll see more a case of consolidation and closure, rather than the boom in Catholicism you see happening in, say, Texas, Florida and California.

“Wouldn’t you rather have intermarriage in which the kids honored and identified with their Jewish heritage, rather than no intermarriage, but offspring growing more and more apathetic?”

Yes, that’s a nice thought, but most children of intermarriages DON’T identify with their Jewish heritage–in fact they most likely don’t identify with ANY heritage. Subsequent generations are even more diluted until the notion of Judaism fades away completely.

You say you “identify” as Jewish. Do you observe any rituals? Do you fast on Yom Kippur? Do you ever attend services or keep kosher?

I’m not going to pull rank and say that I do those things, but I’m not going to claim I’m closely adhering to the faith either. I used to belong to a synagogue and went regularly, but now I live in a fairly remote area with few Jews around.

Do you really think “Franken and Boxer represent by far the majority opinion among American Jews”? Yes, there’s only one conservative Republican Jew left in all of Congress, but Congress is notoriously unrepresentative of the way Americans really feel.

I do agree with you, however, about the futility of missionary work (except among secular Jews to encourage them to come back to their roots and resist intermarriage)

Now, if it weren’t for intermarriage, I wouldn’t be here!

What’s more important: purity of blood (there really isn’t such a thing), of practice, or of identification? It actually turns out that my Family Tree DNA test traces my Y chromosome back to the Middle East, meaning I really am part Jewish, but my father stopped practicing after he left home, and I was raised with no religion. I still identify as Jewish, though. Wouldn’t you rather have intermarriage in which the kids honored and identified with their Jewish heritage, rather than no intermarriage, but offspring growing more and more apathetic?

You’re wrong about the RCC. You’re falling victim to the frontman fallacy (a logical fallacy) and assuming that since the RCC leadership is exclusively male that it somehow represents male interests. The RCC is feminized just like other churches. Since RCC priests can’t get married, over the last few decades seminarians (guys studying to be a priest) have been becoming more and more gay. As a Catholic I have heard plenty of stories about straight men who thought that they wanted to be priests, but when they got to the seminary they eventually left since everyone else was gay. With an increasingly gay priesthood, the RCC is getting more and more feminized.

Lots of men are leaving the RCC. The only reason this isn’t obvious in terms of numbers or birthrates is that the pews are being refilled by (illegal) Mexican immigrants (who are mostly Catholic).

I can’t speak about the Southern Baptists, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a similar problem.

Actually Orthodoxy is not so small a share of American Jewry, but what’s more important is that it is growing faster than you think. Cf. Philip Longman’s 2006 article “The Return of Patriarchy” for a discussion of the trends of which you speak.

Lukobe–

Unfortunately, Franken and Boxer represent by far the majority opinion among American Jews. Consider this: where once Congress hosted Jewish conservative Republicans such as Rudy Boschwitz and Chic Hecht in the Senate and Steve Schiff and Sam Steiger in the House, today there is NOT ONE left in the Senate and only Eric Cantor in the House.

I do agree with you, however, about the futility of missionary work (except among secular Jews to encourage them to come back to their roots and resist intermarriage), and the need to make the conversion process a lot easier.

Considering also that those conservative groups, along with others such as the Mormons, have higher birthrates, one might conclude that we have seen the zenith of feminst power and influence in Christian religion.

The problem for Judaism is that Orthodox is just a small fraction of the total Jews in America.

Because Orthodox represents a much smaller percent of Jews in America, their conservative tipping point is much farther away after a much larger shrinkage period.