Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Part I Historical overviews
- Part II Themes and concepts
- Section 1 Religious Culture and Institutional Practice
- Section 2 Identity and Community
- 9 The place of Judaism in American Jewish identity
- 10 The Holocaust in American Jewish life
- 11 Long-distance nationalism
- 12 Life-cycle rituals
- 13 Choosing lives
- 14 The body and sexuality in American Jewish culture
- Section 3 Living in America
- Section 4 Jewish Art in America
- Section 5 The Future
- Afterword
- Further reading
- Index
- Series list
9 - The place of Judaism in American Jewish identity
from Section 2 - Identity and Community
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Part I Historical overviews
- Part II Themes and concepts
- Section 1 Religious Culture and Institutional Practice
- Section 2 Identity and Community
- 9 The place of Judaism in American Jewish identity
- 10 The Holocaust in American Jewish life
- 11 Long-distance nationalism
- 12 Life-cycle rituals
- 13 Choosing lives
- 14 The body and sexuality in American Jewish culture
- Section 3 Living in America
- Section 4 Jewish Art in America
- Section 5 The Future
- Afterword
- Further reading
- Index
- Series list
Summary
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 belong to a temple, synagogue or any other religious institution.
Fewer Jews than members of most other American religious groups agree with the essential proposition of religious belief that “God exists.”
These items were taken from one of the most recent studies on religious identity in the United States among contemporary Jews. Compared with other Americans, it appears that American Jews “are not a very religious lot.” The survey further reveals the following:
Vast numbers of Americans who regard themselves as Jewish or who are of Jewish parentage and upbringing simply have no faith in the conventional religious sense of that term. They adhere to an identity that is rooted in an ancient faith. But their claim to that identity implies little or no commitment to its religious roots.
The task of this chapter is to move beyond the survey data themselves to explore how social scientists come to their interpretative findings of the data. While doing so, we will discover that statements about religiosity and religion in the lives of contemporary Jews are not as straightforward as they might first appear.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism , pp. 169 - 186Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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