Letter to the Editor About “An Empty Place at the Jewish Table: Why Are Young Jews Dropping Out?”

Letters to the Editors About: “An Empty Place at the Jewish Table: Why are Young Jews Dropping Out?

Steve Lipman’s article, “An Empty Place at the Jewish Table: Why Are Young Jews Dropping Out?,” in the most recent edition of The Lehrhaus is on the whole well-grounded, sensitive, and balanced.  But it contains at least two gaping omissions, which are at least partially related to each other.

The first omission goes to Lipman’s implicit definition of what it might mean to be ex-Orthodox.  His focus is on the child from an Orthodox home who decides at some point in his or her life to “no longer consider themselves Orthodox” and therefore “no longer keeps Shabbat, eats kosher, cares much about Israel, or identifies as Torah-observant.”  But this is a false dichotomy.  There are plenty of Jews, some with Orthodox upbringings, who might call themselves Conservative, “traditional,” “traditional egalitarian,” or just plain “observant,” who are not Orthodox, but who emphatically do keep Shabbat, eat kosher, care about Israel (along with many non-observant Jews), and follow a Halakhically-oriented Jewish life as they understand it.  These Jews’ commitment to religious observance oriented to the mitzvot is deep and sustained; it is simply that their interpretation of Halakhah differs, often only in some specific way, from the contemporary Orthodox consensus.  Lipman’s piece makes one passing reference to an ex-Orthodox Conservative family, but his anecdote comes nowhere near describing these observant non-Orthodox Jews.  Indeed, it’s worth noting that some Jews who fall into that “observant non-Orthodox” category are more halakhically observant in their personal practice and commitments than many Jews who have remained in the Orthodox fold institutionally but whose personal practice is decidedly more relaxed.   

This raises a couple of important questions.  One is empirical:  How many ex-Orthodox Jews fall into this category of “halakhically observant though no longer Orthodox”?  The number might be significant, or it might be trivial.  I would love to know, if only because it would tell us a good deal not only about the actual attrition rate in religious commitment, but also about the full texture of contemporary American Jewish life.

Another question is normative:  Can the Orthodox community appreciate the level of commitment displayed by these Jews, or will it simply lump them in indiscriminately with those who have actually fallen away from a halakhic life? 

The second gap in Lipman’s piece is, as I suggested, related to the first.  Lipman catalogs various reasons that the children of Orthodox families might leave the fold.  All those reasons — most notably that such folks “no longer believe … in the sanctity of the mitzvot” — are categorical.  But he ignores the possibility that some Jews might leave Orthodox for more specific, more granular, reasons.  The most obvious is that they cannot accept the standard Orthodox rejection of the equality of women in religious life.  Historically, some Jews left religious observance entirely because they could not live within those strictures.   But many Jews today find a home in settings that recognize the equality of women, and justify that equality through careful halakhic analysis, while maintaining and even enhancing their observance.  That is one reason that they end up calling themselves “traditional egalitarian,” “observant,” or the like, though no longer Orthodox. 

Mr. Lipman is entitled to whatever views he holds about the practices of religiously observant but non-Orthodox Jews.  That I can respect. But he should not implicitly deny the existence of such Jews.  Nor should he ignore the full range of reasons they might have for their religious choices.

An addendum:  Orthodoxy has chosen to draw a red line on more-complete women’s equality.  Indeed, some parts of mainstream Orthodoxy have been slow to accept even the movement to ordain women who seek to take on rabbinic or quasi-rabbinic roles while maintaining separation of the sexes and the traditional limits on women’s liturgical leadership.  Yet why that should be the make-or-break question, as opposed to all the other variations in Orthodox understandings of halakhah and religious life, is unclear.  So, imagine if Orthodoxy were willing to accept even more fully egalitarian Jews as within the fold, more broadly defined.  How might that change both Orthodoxy’s view of who is “off the derech” and the self-perception of some Orthodox young people struggling with their own place in the religious world?

I hope that Mr. Lipman might write a follow-up article addressing some of these important questions.

Sincerely,
Perry Dane