By all outward appearances, the JFS applicant, identified only as “M” in court papers, is Jewish. But not in the eyes of the school, which defines Judaism under the Orthodox definition set out by Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Because M’s mother converted in a progressive, not an Orthodox, synagogue, the school said, she was not a Jew — and neither was her son. It turned down his application.

As we say in my home town, oh no you DIDN’T!

However irritating the school’s selection criteria are to me and some other liberal, progressive, Reform, unaffiliated, Conservative, take-your-pick-of-non-Orthodox Jews, this is hardly the first time that non-Orthodox Jews, especially non-Orthodox converts, have been classified as “insufficiently Jewish.” So the situation is hardly surprising.

What is surprising, at least to me, is a) that the court ruled that the policy was against British law and b) their rationale for that decision. While religious groups in the U.K. are allowed to practice discrimination based on religion, the ruling classified this school’s policy as race- and/or ethnicity-based discrimination, which is illegal.

To wit:

The court ruled that it was an ethnic test because it concerned the status of M’s mother rather than whether M considered himself Jewish and practiced Judaism.
“The requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act,” the court said. It added that while it was fair that Jewish schools should give preference to Jewish children, the admissions criteria must depend not on family ties, but “on faith, however defined.”
The same reasoning would apply to a Christian school that “refused to admit a child on the ground that, albeit practicing Christians, the child’s family were of Jewish origin,” the court said.

Fascinating.

Nonetheless, it cracks me up to read that Charles Bronfman, of all people, is

worried that Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is hurting the country’s relationship with young Jews in the Diaspora.

That’s right, Bronfman’s considering tweaking his position on Israel because might just be getting in the way of the only thing more important to him than Zionism – Jewish survival!

“We turned from David to Goliath in 1982, with the invasion into Lebanon, and the Arabs became David,” he told the Israeli daily Ha’aretz last week. “Now everybody’s worried about the Palestinians. Now we’re occupiers, oppressors, who live by the sword. That’s what you see in the media, and it festers and has effects on the general population and on Jews as well.”

Goldberg takes Bronfman’s seeming reconsideration of his position on Israeli politics as a sign that the Establishment is finally “younger Jews are more ambivalent about their ostensible birthright than their parents are [and] don’t share past generations’ automatic support for Israeli policies.” She seems to take J Street as representative of the positions of these elusive “young Jews,” which is an improvement – I suppose – but doesn’t begin to show the diversity of critiques of Zionism and of Israeli policy that exist among Jews (not all of us young, either.)

I would have liked to see Goldberg look at more grassroots, localized engagement by young Jews (since they/we seem to be her object of study) with Israeli policies and politics, and with their relationship to Zionism as a philosophy and a movement. J Street and other lobbying groups may be a useful counterweight to the efforts of AIPAC & co. in Washington, but they don’t represent the extent of the discussion, and can’t alone be the basis for political or communal change.

(it seems like there are many more radical purim extravaganzas going on all over the country, though, and i’m posting this announcement in part to encourage folks to think big and exciting for next year…)

this year’s eighth-or-so edition of the Workmen’s Circle/arbeter-ring & Jews For Racial & Economic Justice purim extravaganza is fast approaching!

28 Condos Later: A Zombie Purim!

will be a ridiculously elaborate and raucous party
that talks about displacement, gentrification, housing, and zombies
to feed resistance and organizing in our communities.

SEE zombie buildings devouring our neighborhoods! HEAR schemes of eviction – and worse!
SMELL the bitter scent of betrayal! FEEL the the terror of a city without public spaces!
TASTE the growing resistance!

it’s been created under the wings of the arbeter-ring and JFREJ
by jewish performance rockstar Jenny Romaine
and the evolving group of artists and cultural workers known as the Spectacle Committee
with the guidance and collaboration of members of the NYC section of the Right to the City coalition:
Mothers on the Move (kick-ass anti-poverty organizers fron the South Bronx)
Picture the Homeless (innovative local organizers with a global vision)
FIERCE (queer youth of color organizing around public space in the West Village)
Good Old Lower East Side (keeping it live in the alte heym)

TERRIFYING performance! HORRIFYING costumes! DEVELOPERS that go bump in the night!
SPINE-TINGLING drinks! RAVENOUS food by Domestic Workers United!
MONSTERS! DANCING! MAYHEM!

music by:
The Rude Mechanical Orchestra – street brass for the movement!
Rebel Diaz – radical hip-hop!
Michael Winograd & Friends – the hotshots of the next klez generation!
DJ Doom Dub – till morning…
…and more…

spectacle & performances by:
Jenny Romaine – the spectacular spectacle creator
Adrienne Cooper – reigning diva of yiddish song
The Spectacle Committee
(Daniel Lang/Levitsky, Ariel Federow, Killer Sideburns, Aleza Summit, Michelle Kay)
Alessandra Nichols
Sam Wilson
Talya Husbands-Hankin
…and many many many more…

and the details for my fellow new yorkers:

saturday march 22 – doors open 7:00 pm (show starts early, don’t be late!)

45 east 33rd street (park avenue) [6 train to 33rd; everything else to 34th]

$12 – no one fed to zombies/turned away for lack of costume or cash

dress up – everyone else will!

Jspot tips us off to JCPA’s blog, and Jewish voter disfranchisement in Nevada.

Over at Jewlicious, Y-Love tackles incendiary comments found on the NY Daily News website after they published an article about New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind’s (D-Brooklyn) inauguration of the “Blacks & Jews Together” alliance (JBA). themiddle chomps on antisemitism in an op-ed written by Arun Gandhi and published in the Washington Post, in which Gandhi, surprise surprise, conflates all Jews with Israel, and writes that “Israel and Jews are the biggest players” in creating a culture of violence. Gandhi later wrote an apology, although, arguably, the apology is still lacking.

Now, I am feeling themiddle on tackling this op-ed and what’s become of when folks try to talk about antisemitism, but what I’m still thinking about is…can we really be surprised to see people conflating Israel with Jews, or being Jewish?

I mean…we don’t know anyone who does that, do we? Hem, hem…No, no, I mean, the latest study by Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman–BEYOND DISTANCING:. Young Adult American Jews and Their Alienation from Israel–wasn’t completely framed around the idea that to be a young Jew in the U.S., and be distanced from Israel, was a bad thing, was it? Nah, nah…I mean, we didn’t see an op-ed published, right after the report by it’s main funder, Charles Bronfman, touting Birthright as THE answer to what the mainstream organized Jewish world loves to call “Jewish continuity,” did we? Nah…(I should say it’s more like a full-length essay with how much space Bronfman was given to write).

Before anyone starts, let’s be clear, I’m NOT condoning what Gandhi wrote. What I AM saying is that the issue of Jews and Israel being conflated, thus at times making it difficult to talk about antisemitism in necessary and critical ways, isn’t only imposed on us by the outside. We’ve got some cleaning up to do in house on that one.

Over at Jewschool, BZ posted a moving post by guest blogger Shira Levine on her time in Hebron, and Rooftapopper Rav is outraged that Bush is costing Israel $25,000 an hour.

Mixed Multitudes gives us a lesson of the Jews, from Roseanne nonetheless, and exposes, if you didn’t already know, Ron Paul’s deep-seeded bigotry. From the looks of Jewlicious’ poll on the elections, looks like there are quite a few who don’t.

one.

i’ve been meaning to write something about the destruction of temples, and whether it’s something to mourn. partly because i have a soft spot for some aspects of tisha b’av despite my secularism, and partly inspired by a friend’s experience being told by a progressive jewish organization that a drash she wrote for them could not include even the implication that having a hereditary priesthood might not be such a good thing. and then i realized that the month of the christian calendar in which tisha b’av fell this year is dotted with observances which are in some ways part of the same story.

231 years ago, the reigning member of the hanover family was told in a letter that the lands and people who formed his inheritance were not his to treat as he saw fit.

218 years ago, the reigning member of the bourbon family was given the same message by popular direct action.

28 years ago, the reigning member of the somoza family stopped disputing the same argument, which had involved bullets and explosives for several years.

we celebrate all these dates as victories, however limited, for human freedom, and steps, however small, towards a just world. in each case, there are things to dislike and to struggle against in the results. and in each case, there are too many dead to mourn: both those who died fighting these monarchies and those whose freedom these revolutions did not strive for.

but in every case, the downfall of a ruling class determined by birth, and the weakening of a hereditary caste system is a cause for joy.

we do not choose july 4 to fast in remembrance of the north american majority who 1776 did not make independent, much less free.

we do not select july 14 to sit on the floor and recall the french colonization drive that followed 1789.

we do not designate july 19 as a day of worn-out clothes and unwashed bodies to remind us that indigenous and african-descended nicaraguans were still marginalized after 1979.

on each day, we rejoice in the end of blood aristocracy, and let its defeat inspire us to complete the unfinished business of all these revolutions.

why should tisha b’av be different?

it is, after all, a holiday defined by What Happened That Day. unlike yom kippur, rosh hashana, or shavues, it is not primarily a religious observance. along with pesakh, purim, and hanuka, it’s a historical commemoration of a particular event. like them, it has accumulated other historical events to reinforce its message, making the dates work by using careful selection, calendrical manipulation before and after the fact, and occasional numerological adjustments. so in thinking about it, we must take seriously the meaning of the history it marks.

the conquest of the city of jerusalem was awful and bloody in 70 AD*, as it had been in 586 BC (not to mention the various other times the city was conquered, before, after and inbetween, on down to 1967). it’s as worth commemorating as any other massacre, from troy to tenochitlan.

but alongside it came the end of the hereditary rule of the high priests; the end of the blood aristocracy of the b’ney amram.

this is a good thing.
in fact, a very good thing.

i’m inclined to think that anyone who’s inclined to disagree and defend the idea of a family-run theocracy isn’t likely to be persuaded by any argument i can make, so perhaps i’ll leave it at that.

or, better, leave it with a question: how long should a community sit shiva for an unjust and exploitative system simply because it was once their own?

what would we think of a russian who mourned the fall of the tsars?

[ * i use BC and AD because a dating system that uses the mythical birthyear of jesus as its zero is a christian system, and changing the letters to disguise that just makes it a hypocritical christian system.]

two.

what does tisha b’av mourn?

it mourns the event which made possible any form of jewishness we can recognize – the ones we hate as well as the ones we adore. it mourns the single fact which has made the survival of jewish cultures, jewish identities, and jewish people possible.

are these things to grieve over?

the existence of jewish people in the world has depended, since centuries before the romans had managed to sack more than an occasional pigsty, on geographical dispersal. from the myth of the wandering aramaean to the jewish majority who refused to ‘return’ from babylon, this was sometimes the silver lining of a disaster, and sometimes a more active choice. it’s a commonplace to point out that this dispersal is the main, if not the only, thing which makes jewish history different from that of the many other small ethno/religious groups which wandered and then settled in the space between the tigris & euphrates and the nile in the time of the first agricultural empires.

but it was not until the roman capture of jerusalem that the communities spread from basra to alexandria to rome to the crimea became a diaspora, and diaspora became the definition of jewishness. many autonomous jewish cultures existed before 70 AD, in egypt, babylonia, and elsewhere, but that date marks the point at which those urging centralization and uniformity lost their legitimacy and strength. from then on, the urge to create a single defining standard of jewishness or exert control over jewish life from a single point would be the property of ultra-conservative religious and political movements rejected by most jews of their time – from the followers of bar kosiba* in the 130s AD to those of the seventh lubavitcher rebbe in the 1900s.

the strength of jewish history and identity has been precisely its inability to be one. beyond the large divisions of jewish culture marked by language, religious practice, folklore, and music, even the smallest community is likely to have its own traditions: a commemoration of a victory over anti-jewish attacks; a repertoire and style of singing; a particular word for sorrel soup. and what makes jewish cultures remarkable is that their differences are understood as parts of their jewishness – a ‘local purim’; a minhag; “loshnenu�? – not as deviations from some transcendent definition.

that strength is a result of diaspora. we’re accustomed to using the word for two very different phenomena – one which is a periphery centered on a single anchoring ‘home’ population, like the irish, filipin@, or south asian diasporas; one in which the dispersion IS the home population, like the roma or jewish ones. the latter have their mythical homelands, but the communities which live there are better understood as part of the diaspora than as a ‘core’ or anchor. in the jewish case, this is perhaps particularly blatant. the jewish israelis whose families arrived over the past hundred or so years who identify most with their particular location in place and time (as opposed to those whose relation to the land they live on is triangulated through past or future ‘Temple Times’) often have an ambiguous relationship to jewishness. few are as explicit as the Canaanite movement of the 1930s-50s, which explicitly opposed a local ‘hebrew’ identity to a diasporic ‘jewish’ one, but i can attest to the many current phrasings of “i’m not jewish; i’m israeli�?. the israelis whose identities link them most strongly to other jewish communities, by contrast, are those who innovate within diasporic cultures, from traditional religious observance in the moroccan, polish or yemeni styles to secular commitments from communist to liberal.

tisha b’av is the day we mark as the beginning of the diaspora. if we value jewish culture – which is to say, jewish cultureS – it is not a day to mourn. i should say: if we value jewish cultures in a real and grounded way. if we value them as the living, complex and ambiguous things they are, not as a matter of nostalgia, through a veil of hipsterhayt irony, or in a kitschy reduction. if we value their diversity and contradictions. If we value them enough to fight to change them, to defend the versions and aspects of them that we love and against what we hate in them. if we value them from within, with a commitment to their continued strength, and a refusal to allow them to be turned into the pseudo-diverse veneer on the past century’s innovation of Blut und Boden nationalism with a jewish face.

those of us who don’t, who wish to reject and destroy two thousand years of history and life, should find another name to call themselves. as the yiddish proverb has it: a yid iz in golus – ‘to be jewish is to be in diaspora’. keyn golus, keyn yid – no diaspora, no jew.

[ * better known in recent writings by the praise-name his followers used, “bar kokhba�? – ‘son of a star’ – and in the traditional literature by the critical pun “bar kozeba�? – ‘son of a lie’.]

for poetry month (why april, by the way? ‘the cruelest month’? ‘with his shoures soote’? please.), here’s the text of a talk by irena klepfisz – a fantastic poet in yiddish, english, and both at once, as well as an insightful essayist and deeply committed radical – from a 2006 conference at barnard college called “Jewish Women Changing America: Cross-Generational Conversations”. at the bottom is a poem from one of klepfisz’s books. a complete transcript of the “Changing Culture” panel that klepfisz spoke on (and the rest of the conference) is available online here.

Irena Klepfisz:

I think it’s one of the great achievements. I think it’s wonderful that Bridges is able to last this long and have this wonderful reward where they actually just edit and Indiana just publishes it. They just have to do the battles.

I don’t trust myself these days to talk ad-lib, so I’m going to read a statement that I wrote.

There was a time when Yiddish criticism had only one aesthetic criteria, and by which a work of art was judged. A criterion embodied in the question, “Is it good for the Jews?�? If it was, well, then it was good art. A work of art was good for the Jews if it didn’t reinforce Jewish stereotypes, fan flames of anti- Semitism, and if, in general, it showed Jews in the best light possible. In short, Jewish artists were supposed to be the unofficial image protectors of the Jewish people.

Contemporary Yiddish criticism has almost completely abandoned this fear that Jews must always be careful and make sure that what we say and do won’t be a shonda far di goyim, a disgrace in front of the gentiles.

But as “ordinary users�? of art—I couldn’t think of a better term—Jews, on the whole, have not moved far away enough from this aesthetic. To cite a famous Yiddish phrase or saying [speaks in Yiddish – now, why couldn’t the conference folks ask for the words, or at least try to transcribe them?], the question itself—�?Is it good for the Jews?�?—remains as problematic as it ever was, since there’s not much agreement on exactly what is good for the Jews.

One of the most destructive and sad effects of maintaining this aesthetic, which, by the way, is a deeply political one that supports the status quo, is that it robs the viewer or the reader of the opportunity and deep pleasure of responding spontaneously and directly with a work of art.

I have seen this operate in the classroom. I have taught Jewish women’s studies courses all over the country—California, Michigan, North Carolina, Vermont and now, at Barnard—and repeatedly, I have faced Jewish students who are afraid of engaging directly with the text. The first questions about a work are not, Does it move me? If so, what is its power, its art? Does it make me see the world and Jews with new eyes? Does it show me something about my own life, or someone else’s life that I had not known before? Instead of these questions, I hear, What will non-Jews think about this? Why doesn’t this novel portray a typical Jew or a happy Jewish family? Won’t this just feed anti-Semitism and show how mean and ugly Jews are?

Art is dangerous material to these Jews. And one of our many challenges as teachers of Jewish texts, as well as those of us who teach the creation of those texts, is to address this Jewish response to Jewish art. History and personal experience as a Jew and as an artist has shown me that what is dangerous or uglier and not good for the Jews today can become the everyday and the norm ten years later. Sometimes 100 years later.

And so, very reluctantly over the years, I have tried to aspire towards patience, both as an activist, a teacher, an artist. But artists by nature are not patient. And certainly, as a poet, I have shamelessly yearned for recognition, especially recognition from my community of origin.

This has been granted to me only in parts. I say, in parts, because I am aware how compartmentalized responses to Jewish artists can be. We revere what you have to say about the Holocaust experience: good for the Jews. We like what you have to say about Yiddish, in Yiddish: also, not so bad for the Jews. We’re “take it or leave it�? about work and class: not really relevant to the Jews. We don’t like so much that stuff about feminism and lesbianism, but it’s okay. We really hate what you have to say about Israel and the Palestinians: very bad for the Jews. And we despise what you say about the politicization of the Holocaust: really bad for the Jews.

Of course, such compartmentalization occurs in the Jewish reader, and not in me. I can, in the same poem, use Yiddish and talk about lesbians and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with total ease. In my mind, there are no compartments or boundaries. They are all connected because I have internalized them. As a Jewish poet, I need to reaffirm that unity or connection whenever I write. I have to dampen my desire for the pat on the head from my community, even my alternative community. As a Jewish artist, I need to struggle with what I believe to be true for Jews and for others, rather than what is good for Jews only.

In doing so, I don’t assume I’m infallible. I expect and want to be challenged. I want to be a part of a culture of debate where art does what has always done—at least, good art—which is confront the status quo, rudely, crudely, sometimes very unmusically. And what I also want is to have a reader who reads my words not through the eyes of some never-to-be-rehabilitated anti-Semite, but rather, who reads them through her open mind and her open heart.

[further throughts during the question/answer period]

I’m sort of stumped about what to say. One of the things that we should maybe think about is, Who is invested in this dialogue not taking place? What is the payoff for this silence within the Jewish community? We never think about that. In some ways, tragically, Jews have a history of being pawns in various situations. And to some degree, that’s playing a part in this conflict, because I’m not very optimistic about officially Jewish institutions allowing this dialogue to take place, either through cultural events or just very openly and directly on the issue itself.

There’s a reason for that. And we have to really look at it in a much larger context than just within the Jewish community. There’s some kind of payoff here, for us not being able to resolve this conflict, even if there is an absurdity about it. That it’s gone on this long, that it’s been this bloody. And it doesn’t look to me very optimistic about the future. Like I said in my talk, I think we compartmentalize to such a degree that we divorce ourselves from being able to even see connections between issues.

You’re allowed to talk about this, but you can’t talk about that. I want to give a personal example: I was invited, a number of years ago, to do a reading someplace, in an academic setting. There was a Judaic studies teacher there who I learned was very interested in my poetry on the Holocaust and wanted to read with me. I said, fine, let’s do a reading together. You bring in your people, I’ll bring in my people; it will be a good event. Then I got the message that that would be great, except he had to ask me not to mention Israel. And I thought, here’s somebody who taught my work, he discussed my work, and he put that kind of a condition on my appearing at this university?

Of course, I said no. I ended up reading alone. But it was very interesting to me that somebody who could take these poems and not take these poems, could be so strict in separating things out, when in fact, how could you talk about Israel and not talk about the Holocaust? The connections are very important. And we need to learn to make the connections. I don’t know, this is not ending anywhere, but I’m going to stop.

[a poem included in the conference website]

’67 Remembered

From A Few Words in the Mother Tongue by Irena Klepfisz

for Khane

In ’67 you visited with your sister.
I was in Chicago. Richard Speck had just murdered
seven nurses. We were scared. The war was only
a few days over and everyone said
how well you and Gitl looked. Who would
have thought you’d just come
from a war-torn country
dressed chic in late ’60s fashion
smiling easy relaxed
confident the worst was over?
I still have the photographs.

How different that war
from that other in your life:
Siberia the Germans at your heels
your father chopping tress in the forest.
You learned Russian in the street
spoke Yiddish at home wrote Polish
in the segregated schools. You were
a linguist at eight ready to master
even more tongues for the sake of survival.

But in ’67 you’d already mastered
it all. You were so relaxed so easy.
It was a joke this war despite
the casualties. It was a joke
how relaxed you were.

And wasn’t I too? Weren’t we all?
Didn’t we all glow from it
our sense of power finally achieved?
The quickness of the action
the Biblical routes
and how we laughed over
Egyptian shoes in the sand
how we laughed at another people’s fear
as if fear was alien
as if we had known safety all our lives.

And the Bank?
I don’t remember it mentioned
by any of us.
We were in Chicago – it was hard to imagine.
But twenty years later
I hear how they picked up what they could
place it on their backs
how they marched through the hills
sparse coarse grass pink and yellow flowers
rough rocks defying cultivation
how they carried clumsy packs
clothing utensils images of a home
they might never see again.
A sabra told me who watched
their leaving as she sat safe
in an army jeep: it looked no different than the newsreels at school
of French Belgian roads. It was simple
she said: people were fleeing and
we egged them on.

Time passes. Everything changes.
We see things differently.
In ’67 you had not married yet and we all
wondered why never worrying about
marriage laws or rabbinic power.

And now more than 20 years later
you live in Jerusalem ruling
from your lacquered kitchen and sit
in that dream house trapped:
enough food in your mouth
in your children’s and enough warm things
for winter (coats shoes woolen stockings
good for Siberia)
and there’s no way out no one to call
about a bad marriage. It’s simple:
a woman without bruises
your lawyer says there’s not much hope
and you accept it:
I can’t say I’m happy but
I’ve got a truce.

Things fester. We compromise.
We wake up take new positions
to suit new visions failed dreams
We change. Power does not so much corrupt
as blur the edges
so we no longer feel the raw fear
that pounds in the hearts
of those trapped and helpless.
In ’67 in Chicago we though we’d be safe
locking the windows til Speck was caught.
We did not know there was a danger
in us as well that we must remain vigilant
and open not to power
but to peace.

Check it out and I’d love to hear what others think. It’s interesting writing op-eds–the limitations of space (800 words or less) and the question of what arguments one chooses to get people to think about it differently. Ultimately, what I kept thinking was enough. Of course if I had just written about it for JVoices, I’d take a very approach, one that includes talking about economic challenges while also interrogating the pervasive narrative today that speaks more so to white middle class fears than addressing the pervasive poverty that has existed in this nation for a very long time. That isn’t to say that the policies being implemented, like minimum wage increases, only impact white people, but overall the policies that are being put forward don’t go very far in addressing the wealth and income divides between white people and people of color. If people really don’t want to see people hungry or without homes, then they must acknowledge that poverty is very much a part of a capitalist economy, and that to speak about economic equality is, in many ways, an oxymoron within a capitalist society.

Obviously, this argument wouldn’t go far in JTA, and what I really wanted, what I really wanted was for people, particularly older members of Jewish institutional life, to just f**king stop. Stop judging what it is that they may no longer recognize, and to stop expecting that we’ll all just “wisen” up and become like them. Not only is it patronizing and paternalistic, it’s not happening. It’s obnoxious. It’s overplayed. It’s a waste of resources and a waste of time. They need to embrace us for who we are. Or not. Either way, we’ll still keep doing and being who we are, and creating Jewish communities that speaks to our needs and desires.

We’re at it again, defining the lines of who’s in and who’s out as the debate on Jewish continuity in America rages on.

Steven M. Cohen’s latest sociological study on intermarriage, titled “The Tale of Two Jewries,�? argues that intermarriage is the single greatest threat to Jewish continuity. His report should raise concerns in its underlying premise and reliance on contested findings in the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey. Using these findings frames the debate as one where Jewish communities are shrinking. Rather, we’re growing.

The Steinhardt Social Research Institute at Brandeis University recently confirmed claims that the NJPS numbers were too low. Rather than 5.2 million, the Steinhardt institute found that there are 6 million to 6.4 million American Jews, and potentially as many as 7.5 million if we include Americans who have Jewish family backgrounds but are not Jewish “by religion.” The institute found that undercounting was highest among Jews in their 20s and 30s and the non-Orthodox due to how the NJPS was conducted.

Ironically, the institute’s findings recognized what Cohen’s research on Jewish culture and engagement confirm — that there is a larger, more diverse Jewish body out there, and we’d be stronger and smarter to embrace that diversity.

Undercounting in the NJPS also reflects Cohen’s findings that younger Jews express their identity in new ways outside of synagogues, JCCs and the federation system — outside of how institutions often gather statistics.

This younger culture “on the outside�? also reflects the growing economic divide in America.

Full piece.