Judaism in Transition: How Economic Choices Shape Religious Tradition by Carmel U. Chiswick, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA; ISBN 978-0-8047-7605-9 ©2014, $22.95, p. 201, plus Reference material
By Fred Reiss, Ed.D.
WINCHESTER, California — Words to an old folksong read, “If religion were a thing that money could buy, then the rich would live and the poor would die.” Carmel Chiswick, a research professor at George Washington University’s School of Economics, in her book Judaism in Transition asserts that the preference for our religious experience and that of our family actually turns on what most people consider to be personally scarce commodities, time and money.
In the first of four parts, Cheswick presents the fiscal state and demographic background of American Jewry, noting that although two-thirds of all American Jews live in just nine large urban centers, they still represent a diverse lot. By drawing on the results of three national surveys of Jews, Cheswick confirms that American Jewry is by and large a well-educated group, pointing out that both Jewish men and women are three times more likely to have an advanced degree than non-Jewish men and women.
In 1948, nearly half of all Jewish men were working in some managerial position, and only one in seven worked in a professional field, such as medicine and law. Fast forward to the turn of the twenty-first century and we find the opposite: about one in seven Jewish men work as managers and more than fifty percent in the professions.
Jews live in poverty, too. They include the elderly and the “voluntary” poor, people who choose a way of life that relegates them to low-wage jobs. The “voluntary” poor include ultra-orthodox, who stress religious education and observance at the expense of a secular education and the ability to secure a high-wage occupation. Their “human capital,” in short, is worth less than an individual with greater secular education. In addition, the ultra-orthodox, which tend to have large families, generally do not provide an education for their children worthy of a large salary, thereby perpetuating the family’s lower socioeconomic status.
Part II explains how economic constructs provide meaningful tools for analyzing the religious affiliations of American Jewry, where the cost for religious observance and training is more than just the money spent. In the decision-making process on synagogue affiliation and religious education, a family surely considers money, but it also deliberates on “commitment time;” thereby defining the full price of religious participation as the sum of actual dollars plus the value of the time spent driving to and from religious school, attending religious services, participating in required synagogue activities, etc.
The various Jewish movements require different commitments of time and money. For example, in Reform Judaism, religious services and classroom instructional time for religious training is in general shorter than required by Conservative Judaism. Here is where individual family decisions making comes into play: families allocate different amounts of money toward religious affiliation and each family uniquely places a value on its time. Chiswick drives home this point by way of an example in which a family has to make a decision to send their children to public school followed by afternoon and Sunday religious school, or to send the children to a Jewish day school; thereby weighing time and money. She postulates that high-wage earners value their time much more than low-wage earners and thereby will opt for memberships that minimize time obligations. She writes, “Modernization and economic development raised real wages and incomes in many countries, increasing the value of time and discouraging time-intensive religious customs.”
Chiswick, in Part III, looks for economic cause and effect linkages with respect to “important aspects of American Jewish behavior,” such as the trend of young Jews to stay in school longer and marry later, have smaller families, and marry outside the religion, which some believe to be as high as fifty percent. In the fourth and final part, Chiswick examines how these changes, and others, like the Great Recession, intermarriage and divorce, changing demographics, and new employment and educational opportunities can act as catalysts, affecting the future of American Jewry’s religious movements and family associations.
Judaism in Transition is based chiefly on the economic and demographic history of the Jews in America. Many of its conclusions are generalizations, as one might expect from survey data and a macroeconomic approach. Nonetheless, Judaism in Transition offers many insights into the relationship between family expenditures, in its broadest sense, and affiliation with organized Judaism. Additionally, Judaism in Transition provides a firm base on which Jewish religious leaders can support new ideas for rethinking and minimizing total cost of membership and broadening programs for their constituencies; thereby maintaining a committed and vibrant Jewish community.
*
Dr. Fred Reiss is a retired public and Hebrew school teacher and administrator. He is the author of The Standard Guide to the Jewish and Civil Calendars; Ancient Secrets of Creation: Sepher Yetzira, the Book that Started Kabbalah, Revealed; and a fiction book, Reclaiming the Messiah. The author can be reached via fred.reiss@sdjewishworld.com.