Trends show more Jews connecting with tradition

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From staff and wire reports

During the 10-day period bookmarked by Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, which began Monday at sundown, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which begins at sundown Wednesday, many Jews will observe the High Holy Days in more traditional ways than their parents ever did.

It’s a trend, some say, that highlights a growing hunger for spiritual guidance, especially among the young.

No one is sure how extensive this trend toward religiosity is. Quantifying it is difficult because levels of observance vary widely even within denominations.

“We know that definitely there has been a trend, but how do you define it?’’ says Yitzchak Rosenbaum, a spokesman for the National Jewish Outreach Program.

A 2000 study by the Jewish Demography Project at the University of Miami found that the majority of U.S. Jews remain in the denominations of their childhood — 81 percent stay Orthodox, 66 percent continue Conservative and 75 percent remain Reform. More than 70 percent who grew up nonreligious stay that way, too.

Rabbi Ilan Emanuel of Lincoln’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun said he hasn’t seen a Lincoln trend of younger Jews becoming more Orthodox because there is no Orthodox congregation here. Lincoln has two Jewish congregations: Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, a Reform temple; and Congregation Tifereth Israel, a Conservative synagogue.

However, it’s certainly happening elsewhere, Emanuel said.

“It’s really all across the board,” he said of Jewish denominations. “There are people who are very attracted by the pluralism and tolerance of Reform Judaism. But on the other hand, there’s no question that there’s been an upswing in young people being attracted to more traditional, stricter forms of religious practice. We find that in the Christian world with the Evangelical churches. We find that in Islam, and we see that in Judaism as well.”

The trend toward Orthodox Judaism, Emanuel said, comes in part from the feeling that “the world is a very complicated place, and there is a desire among many to return to something simpler, more straightforward, something with more clarity.”

Jean Cahan, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln instructor and adviser for Hillel, the university’s Jewish student organization, said she believes far more young Americans are affiliated with the Reform denomination of Judaism because of its more liberal nature.

“It’s much easier to live as a Reform Jew,” she said, “than it is as the other Orthodox movement. And I would say that contemporary young Americans are looking to a globalized world, and it’s more difficult to do that as an Orthodox Jew.”

Sari Jael Raber, a 22-year-old UNL student from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, is a Conservative Jew and regularly attends the Tifereth Israel synagogue. She’s Conservative because that’s the group she grew up in and, she said, it “feels more comfortable.”

But, she noted, for a Jew, there are an unlimited number of ways in which you can define yourself.

“A lot of it,” she said, “depends on what you’re looking for.”