The changing American Jew

11.05.2013                      02.Siwan. 5773                     Tag 46 des Omer; Bamidbar

Jüdische Welt:

The changing American Jew

Director of the UJA-Federation of New York’s Commission on the Jewish People, talks about the evolving federation world.

Jewish communal life is changing in the United States in dramatic ways. Jewish identity, sociologists like Professor Samuel Heilman of Queens College have noted, has become something of a “symbolic ethnicity” and no longer necessarily implies any Jewish weltanschauung or affiliation. With increasing intermarriage and assimilation and a rising ultra-Orthodox birthrate, the American-Jewish landscape will be significantly different in 20 years. These massive demographic changes have had an impact on the world of organized Jewry, especially the federation system that represents communities across North America….