Riv-Ellen Prell
“Religion and the Public Square” raises the critical question of how Jews understand their relationship to the United States. Steven Cohen's comparative study of attitudes toward the place of religion in public life reveals that Jews strongly engaged in community relations efforts seem to envision the relationship between religion and public life differently from his sample of American Jews, who in turn differ from their non-Jewish counterparts. The survey allows us to glimpse those competing ideas that, at their most polarized, postulate wholly different visions of the place of religion in society.
The activists understand the public square to be built upon a democracy that advocates religious neutrality in order to preserve mutual tolerance. Those who favor a more central role for religion in the public sphere assume that religious values can be shared, and that the majority will not harm minority rights. Each of these points-of-view implies contrasting ideas about how and with whom Jews should form alliances, and what conditions allow Judaism to thrive.
Cohen, then, discovered a rather profound difference among American Jews about what that public square is and should be. These data, as I am sure he would be the first to acknowledge, do not tell us what created these differences nor what motivates them. They do not allow us to guess at either “moral” stands or cultural anxieties held by American Jews. The data, rather, pose questions for analysis, and historical changes and continuities over the last half-century may be helpful for answering them.
Cohen's comparisons are illuminated in interesting ways by a series of events that occurred in Brooklyn, New York in 1949 within the Jewish Community Council, an agency engaged in Jewish community relations work. These events reveal the ideological underpinnings of the attitudes espoused by their late twentieth century counterparts surveyed by Cohen. In those early years of the postwar era, their actions and activism aimed to create a deep sense of Jewish pride and integrity within a nation whose wholly secular public realm they envisioned as the best vehicle to safeguard freedom.
The Community Council received a complaint from three representatives of a local group of Jewish War Veterans. The veterans turned to the Council because it was a Jewish defense agency to solve their problem with a kosher delicatessen and restaurant on Nostrand Avenue that was run by an Italian and Spanish Catholic couple. The veterans believed that the venture was certainly “unethical,” and likely “illegal.” S. Robert Patt, a staff member, reported, “It was the feeling of the Jewish War Veterans' representatives that a gentile cannot run a strictly kosher store, and that the store owner should take out the Hebrew National emblem from the window.” Among their complaints were the fact that the proprietors' sold unkosher pies, and that their children went to a Catholic parochial school.1
The Community Council passed the complaint on to its kashrut committee, which in turn called the Kosher Division of the State Department of Agriculture headed by Frank Gottlieb. The inspector reported that he found “everything in order and so far as he could see there was absolutely no violation of kashrut.” The owners had already made changes prior to the visit because of other complaints. Inspector Gottlieb also advised those assembled at the meeting that non-Jews had the legal right to sell kosher products.2
Initially, the veterans and their wives who attended the meeting were not satisfied. They “hinted” that they might well organize a Jewish picket of the delicatessen. They persisted in arguing that something was wrong about non-Jews being allowed to sell kosher products. Gottlieb made it clear that he found this a problematic position. He told those assembled that “it was more satisfactory having this type of legislation. Without it,” he continued, “a ruling might be passed permitting only non-Jews to sell non-kosher products.” Patt concluded his report by noting that “everyone agreed that it was advisable to let the matter drop.”
This appeal to the principle of the neutral marketplace clearly parallels a vision of America constructed upon a series of neutral public spaces -- school, economy, politics -- all insulated from religious belief. Jews were free to engage in commerce of any sort precisely because their Catholic neighbors could buy and sell Hebrew National products. American Jewish interests were tied to creating a society where tolerance of difference was guarded vigilantly by constitutional principles of separation of church and state.
Jewish communal relations activists in no sense understood the public sphere to cut Jews off from other groups. Neutrality did not imply either deracination or isolation. Jewish community relations activists were devoted to that sphere as the locus of coalitions and shared political interests. The Brooklyn Community Council, for example, developed a Youth Council following World War II to encourage Jewish youth to learn, among other things, how to cooperate with Christian youth as well as with young men and women of color. The Youth Council became a member of the NAACP and cooperated with other organizations in charitable programs. The Adult Council created liaisons to the same groups. Adult advisers were aware that some young Jews had never interacted with non-Jews before, and they believed that the message of World War II was to fight for understanding and peace among all groups.
As a site for building alliances, the public square made it possible to discover common interests with other ethnic groups and minorities who shared with Jews the desire to advance a society good for all citizens. As one leader said in 1950 at a plenary session, “Whatever is good for us as Jews in the community is good for us in our relations with Christians.”3 Like the Jewish war veterans who learned that tolerance was the best policy for Jewish self-interest, leaders in some ethnic and minority communities found issues on which they could work together for their common good. Without denying the complexity of the racial dynamic between ethnic groups and people of color, or tensions between Catholics who were committed to parochial education and Jews who cast their fate with public education and fought against any public support of the former, the more remarkable fact was the degree of cooperation among them.
Cohen's survey revealed that Jewish communal relations activists are the most committed to a neutral public square at the same time they are committed to Jewish practice. They saw no contradiction between a strong commitment to democracy and pride in Judaism. Those connections were forged in the postwar period, and the continuity between their attitudes over the past half-century is striking.
Their commitment to democracy and Judaism is nicely illustrated in the Brooklyn Community Council's active campaign to introduce Hanukkah into the lives of Brooklyn Jews in 1949 and 1950. Not only was its celebration apparently infrequent, but rabbis and activists were alarmed by Jews celebrating Christmas as a “secular” holiday. The Council sent letters to all synagogues to encourage them to place electric menorahs in front of their institutions. They urged parents to give gifts nightly, to buy Hanukkah cards and gift wrapping, and to introduce decorations in the home. They praised apartment house residents in Flatbush and on Eastern Parkway who gave gifts to their superintendent before Christmas, and suggested that tenants admonish them “that it was unnecessary to erect a Christmas tree to collect the annual gifts.” Their strategy was clear -- “to counteract the spread of Christmas in Jewish homes.” They also proposed to link the Jews of Brooklyn to the Jews of Israel by inventing a ceremony in which a representative would bring a light from Tel Aviv with which to kindle a menorah in front of the Community Center in 1950.
In the same years, then, that Jewish community relations activists promoted the neutrality of the public sphere, they encouraged the observance of Judaism in Brooklyn with calls to attend synagogue on Jewish holidays, make Hanukkah an important holiday, and to feel pride in Israel and in their Jewishness.4
Steven Cohen's research suggests that in the half century that elapsed since these events took place in Brooklyn, fewer American Jews share the community relations activists' worldview. While they do not embrace as close a relationship between religion and civil society as their non-Jewish counterparts, neither are they as liberal as activists. Their increasing tolerance for silent prayer, for singing seasonal music, and for displaying religious symbols suggests that to some extent they believe that the public sphere need not necessarily be radically secular.
It is clear that liberal activists are at the opposite end of the continuum from religiously and politically conservative activists . Liberal Jews' commitment to a secular civic sphere draws them to alliances built on protecting tolerance. Conservative Jews want the civic sphere to promote a certain morality which they believe is “religiously” derived. One worldview envisions a neutral public culture as the best way to promote religious tolerance. The other perspective advocates for the public sphere to serve as a site to encourage a more religious culture, and assumes that religion should influence culture, and a dominant religion will not endanger a minority one.
To conservatives, the community relations activists' worldview appears full of paradoxes, if not contradictions. The activists strongly support religious leaders speaking out on political issues, while at the same time they want to preserve public culture from displays of religious symbols. Conservatives explain this vigilance for neutrality as motivated by Jewish shame or even self-hatred, or liberal Jews' inability to embrace a moral outlook.
Rather than presenting a paradox, however, the activists' view rests on a vision of the nature of democracy that associates neutrality with tolerance. Jews have never prospered in societies whose governments controlled morality or dictated beliefs. Cohen's survey demonstrates that Jewish activists strongly support the right of faith communities to advocate positions; they simply reject the mandatory expression of those points of view within the public square. Religious groups can be partisans as long as they share a commitment to public neutrality in the decision-making process.
When the public square's neutrality is threatened, Jews' coalitions are most effectively made with other groups threatened by the dominant culture. It is here that the most dramatic cultural shifts were detected in Cohen's work. Despite ongoing anxieties about antisemitism, and ones not shared with activists as he learned, ordinary American Jews seem less inclined to perceive that their fate is tied to those with less access to the nation's rewards and advantages. Certainly, the rightward drift of the Democratic party beginning in the late 1970s, to which most Jews still pledge allegiance, reflects that change.
Rather than assuming that Steven Cohen's findings are explained by a Jewish penchant for self-hate or lack of values, we are better served by understanding that following World War II, the neutral public square stood for the democratic principles for which the U.S. had fought in Europe. Jews built and joined coalitions whose strategy was to move “outsiders,” like ethnics and minorities, to the center of society. However, recent trends toward religious fundamentalism and Jews' increased privilege have led, from both ends of the political spectrum, to a redefinition of the relationship between religion and civic society.
The vision of liberal tolerance embraced by activists may no longer dominate, but it is anything but outdated. Their advocacy for mutual respect based on neutrality rather than shared religious views continues to uphold the fundamental principle of separation of church and state -- tolerance. Indeed, on most issues, the vast majority of American Jews are far closer to the activist leaders than they are to non-Jews and the even more conservative religious right which now counts some Jews among its followers.
Those of us who believe that tolerance is a straightforward concept are well-advised to note the following events that occurred in Brooklyn as reported in the New York Times on June 2, 2000. In Borough Park, two groups of Orthodox Jews separated by different interpretations of Judaism were engaged in a struggle over the legitimacy of an eruv (a boundary created by wire that makes possible a greater range of activities on the Sabbath). The groups were in pitched battle, including attempts by the group opposed to its presence to sabotage the line. When New York State Assemblyman Dov Hilkind asked the group opposed to the eruv simply to ignore it, to imagine, as it were, a public sphere of mutual tolerance, they recoiled. They could not coexist with the eruv, their leaders insisted, because it was a sin, even if they did not observe or use it. Such are the battles ahead of us within a society that embraces a worldview lacking a neutral sphere of mutual tolerance. The neutral public square, so obviously central to the American political process, can no longer be assumed in the twenty-first century. It can easily be lost without the very vigilance embodied in the worldview of the community relations activists.
Notes
- Brooklyn Jewish Community Center memorandum from S. Robert Patt to Arthur J.S. Rosenbaum, August 26, 1949. “Complaint by Jewish War Veterans, Major I. Brimberg Post,” p. 1. American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio. Manuscript Collection 164, Box 4, Folder 6.
- “Complaint,” pp. 1-2.
- Summary of the Plenary Session, Bi-Annual Convention, Brooklyn Jewish Youth Council, March 26, 1950, p. 3. American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio. Manuscript Collection 164, Box 4, Folder 4/3.
- Dr. A. Fedder, Monthly Report, Community Relations, December 10, 1949–January 10, 1950.
Leonard Fein
A Side Street Beckons Along the Way to the Public Square
After all the talk about the decline of liberalism, about the opprobrium that attaches to the “L word,” it turns out that all three of the sampled groups report that they are more liberal than their parents -- and especially their fathers. (One wonders how many “moderates” might have tumbled into the left-most group had “progressive,” the current less maligned term, been used in place of “liberal.”) Moreover, the activists -- that is, the JCPA sample, for which, as I shall argue below, the term “leaders” seems inapt -- know quite precisely where their parents stood on the right-left spectrum, whereas in the other two samples, a fifth of the respondents tell us they are “not sure.” This suggests, quite obviously -- no surprise here -- that the activists came earlier to political consciousness and were raised in homes that were politically more engaged.
Note as well that the long-standing estimate that Jews are some 20 percent “more liberal” than the general population is here not born out. There is a difference, to be sure, and in the expected direction, but it is only about half the traditionally estimated size -- at least as far as self-description goes. At the same time, the Jewish sample is nearly twice as likely to “think of self as a Democrat” and, on substantive issues, for example, a favorable attitude towards the ACLU, or attitudes towards abortion and towards lesbians and homosexuals, the differences are far larger than the self-descriptive terms would indicate. Henry Roth once described Jewish poor people as “Jewish middle class people without money.” The data presented here may lead us to conclude that Jewish “moderates” are really Jewish liberals without the label.
Other incidental findings tease the imagination: One might, for example, have expected that the Jewish activists would be rather more cosmopolitan than they appear to be. While we have no direct data, it is safe to assume that on conventional socioeconomic measures, they are at a much higher level than the general Jewish public. Yet fully 91 percent of the activists report that all (32 percent) or most (59 percent) of their closest friends are Jewish. This compares to 46 percent -- 7 percent all, 39 percent most -- of the general Jewish sample. Admittedly, the activist sample is drawn from that rarefied group that attends conventions, and it catches them while they are actually at the convention, the fact of their Jewish associations therefore immediately in mind. Still, one wonders whether age may be a part of the explanation for this unusual insularity.
Then, sadly, there is confirmation of the regular finding in Jewish public opinion research that America's Jews continue to regard antisemitism as a live threat. It was Samuel Johnson who, remarking on a gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage yet married immediately after his wife died, said that this was “the triumph of hope over experience.” As well one might say of America's Jews that their view of antisemitism is an instance of the triumph of fear over experience. Respondents were not, after all, asked about antisemitism in Poland or Austria, in Russia or Argentina; they were asked whether they believe “antisemitism is currently not a serious problem for American Jews.” Some 87 percent of the Jewish public, as well as 50 percent of the activists, disagree. (Indeed, 56 percent of the public “strongly disagree.”)
One is reminded of the ingenious 1982 study by Daniel Yankelovitch, in which a sample of Jews was asked whether or not they thought that a majority of non-Jews agreed with various statements, and then a non-Jewish sample was asked whether or not they in fact agreed. One such statement, for example, was simply, “Jews have too much power in the United States.” Fifty-three percent of the Jews thought that most non-Jews would agree with that statement. In fact, only 20 percent of the non-Jews agreed with it. Would non-Jews be bothered if their political party were to nominate a Jew as its candidate for president? Seventy-eight percent of the Jews thought they would be bothered, but only 21 percent of non-Jews said they would be. True, the activists are rather less paranoiac in their assessment, but the fact that even half of them persist, in the radical absence of supporting evidence, whether in the news of the day or, more pertinently, in their own lives, in believing that antisemitism is currently not merely a problem but a “serious” problem, confirms the suggestion made a while back that the true interior homeland of the Jews is the Holocaust.
Finally, even allowing for the fact that the JCPA is an organization with a rich liberal tradition, one cannot let pass without comment the remarkable disparity between the Jewish public and the Jewish activists in their views on key social issues. JCPA convention attendees are perhaps halfway between self-selected and delegated representatives of local and national community relations agencies. Formally, the JCPA is an umbrella organization. Its members are not individuals but agencies, and it is formally as representatives of those agencies that people attend the annual plenary convention. Yet convention attendance is a burdensome financial expense and many, if not most, of the delegates bear that expense themselves. Accordingly, those who attend, other than the professional employees of the member agencies, are essentially those who choose to attend a convention noteworthy both for its high-minded debates and for its liberal tradition.
That said, it is still rather startling to learn that while 17 percent of the Jewish public oppose the death penalty, 66 percent of the Jewish activists do; that while 65 percent of the Jewish public oppose affirmative action (“We should make every possible effort to improve the position of blacks and other minorities, even if it means giving them preferential treatment”), 70 percent of the activists endorse it. Against that dissensual background, it is equally startling to learn that there are only trivial differences between the two groups on abortion and on gay-lesbian issues, on gun control, and that the differences in approval of tuition vouchers are modest.
Entering the Public Square
As we enter the public square, whom do we encounter there? Jews, non-Jews, and -- just who are these so-called leaders? They are no doubt good people one and all. But lest the disparities in the views of the leaders and the general Jewish population be taken as a rebuttal of the leaders' leadership, it is important to note that whomever it is that the leaders lead, it is not the Jews-in-general. Were we to conduct a simple test of leadership, such as the frequency with which the purported “followers” recognize the names of those who ostensibly lead them, we would doubtless find that less than 5 percent of the followers know their leaders' names. Indeed, one of the curiosities of American Jewish life is the abandon with which the term “leader” is used, as against the anarchy that characterizes the community. If leader is, as we are inclined to think, a relational term, then the Jewish community is by and large leaderless, and we are wise to describe the JCPA cohort as a group of “activists” rather than leaders.
Cohen, who has not only mined these rich nuggets but also cleaned and polished them, argues “separationism is very much a Jewish trait,” and the data amply confirm his argument. But the finding dangles tantalizingly before us, begging explanation. Is it merely a carryover from the olden times Cohen accurately describes at the beginning of his report, a time when Jewish fears of state-sponsored antisemitism were still fresh and when the wall of separation had not yet been so solidly constructed? It seems to me, and to the “high level professionals” whom Cohen quotes at length near the end of his report, that something considerably more thoughtful is at play here, something that goes well beyond the “ideology, recruitment, and socialization” Cohen proposes. That something is, plainly, the radical distinction between society and government, between religion as a personal and societal phenomenon (free exercise) and religion as a function of the state (establishment).
Cohen comes to this, but comes to it late, given that it is rare, indeed, that a survey instrument picks up so fine, even sophisticated, a distinction. It bears underscoring: The “most Jewish” Jews, the activists, who themselves score remarkably high (given the JCPA's image as an essentially secular organization) on personal religious devotion, who have no reluctance to endorse a more religious society, who despite their fear of antisemitism do not agree that “a more religious America means a more antisemitic America,” who have no objection to their clergy discussing political candidates or issues from the pulpit, who believe that “belonging to a church or synagogue makes one a more aware and engaged citizen” and that “religion should play an important role in shaping American values,” are adamant in their opposition to any hint of governmental involvement in religion. By “hint” I mean more than the expected opposition to “a city government putting up a manger scene on government property for Christmas,” an action endorsed by 81 percent of the non-Jewish public, by 43 percent of the Jewish public, and by only 5 percent (!) of the activists. I mean the more embedded expression of what Robert Bellah called our “civic religion,” elements by now so ritualistic as to seem beyond controversy. Take, for example, the statement that “It's good for Congress to start sessions with a public prayer.” That statement is endorsed by 72 percent of the non-Jewish public and is opposed by 72 percent of the Jewish activists (and by 51 percent of the Jewish public). There is a similar distribution in responses to the question of whether public schools should be allowed to teach Christmas carols as long as they also teach Hanukkah songs. Similar results appear again and again for virtually the entire list of issues that deal with governmental involvement in religion.
It is as if the activists understand -- as perhaps in fact they do -- that there may be a link between the high wall of separation that characterizes the American arrangement and the extraordinary religiosity of American society. The people of no Western democracy -- not Poland, not Italy, not any -- approach Americans in their profession of religious belief or in their attendance at religious services. Angels, a personal God, heaven -- name it, and Americans outscore all others -- this in a nation that ties itself up in knots over whether the Ten Commandments shall be allowed to be posted in public school classrooms and forbids a level of governmental involvement in religion -- indeed, subsidy of religion -- that is routine in many other nations.
It is too facile to suggest that the one is the cause of the other, that separationism is the precondition for religious fervor. But the link, if any, between the two remains an intriguing phenomenon, inadequately studied, inadequately understood -- except, so it seems, by the activist respondents to Cohen's fertile study.
Elliott Abrams
Steven Cohen's essay and research are extremely interesting and provide a rich set of data about American Jewish attitudes. While he does not contradict the broad outlines of current understandings, he adds a good deal of texture -- and raises some difficult questions.
The first of these arises from the very high levels of fear of antisemitism found among American Jews and what Cohen calls “minority-status insecurity.” What explains this level of fear? The question is beyond the scope of Cohen's research here, but strikes me as important. Is it life experience? This seems doubtful, given the views of Jewish leaders that antisemitism is a smaller problem. Why should their life experiences differ so much when it comes to availability of jobs, housing, or schools? An alternative theory is bigotry, in particular, bigotry against Christian conservatives and, in particular, “fundamentalists” and “Southern Baptists.” The gap between survey research about actual levels of antisemitism in these groups and Jewish perceptions of that level does no credit to the Jewish community and should be a matter of concern for the very community leaders whom Cohen interviewed here.
The second question arises from the curious combination of views -- he calls it a “mystery” -- that Cohen finds among Jews on “religion in the public square” matters. For example, Cohen notes that Jews are more comfortable with moments of silence than with other expressions of religiosity in the public schools; and they are reasonably comfortable with the singing of Christmas carols and Hanukkah songs, so long as the program is balanced. One theory that would explain such findings is this: Jews want their religious identity to remain secret, or at least they want to be able to choose when and to whom to reveal it. Thus moments of silence or of communal singing, where all students are treated equally and without any visible religious division, are acceptable. This conclusion merges well with the high levels of perceived antisemitism, for if “exposure” of one's Jewish identity can be expected to lead to trouble or disadvantage it is not surprising that parents wish to spare their children this impact. (At a recent American Jewish Committee conference, one participant recounted an interview with a Jewish respondent living in the Far West. She happily explained that by living where she does, she can always determine when to “come out” as a Jew and when to keep that characteristic hidden.)
There is a more unhappy explanation, however. Cohen quotes one critic of separationism to the effect that “in a more religious society, Jews would be better off because they would be forced to confront their own Judaism.” Perhaps it is less a fear of antisemitism than a desire to escape the strictures of Judaism that explains some of this separationism; that is, Jews wish to separate not only religion and the state but religion and their own lives. If this is correct, these Jews prefer above all a non-judgmental attitude about life -- especially their own lives. This would explain Jews' support for the voluntaristic expressions of religion and opposition to any “forced” expression: for example, opposition to prayer in the schools but support for the use of classrooms by religious clubs after school hours. This would explain in part why Jews oppose anything in the public square that reminds them of their Jewishness, such as a menorah in a city hall park. It would also explain Jews' views on “legislating morality,” where they are, in Cohen's words, “less inclined to believe that government ought to legislate what they regard as personal morality.” Cohen suggests that “perhaps they hold a more suspicious view of government, one bred by centuries of living under governments that were not their own.” Perhaps; but another theory is that they simply do not wish to be governed by any moral standards at all, Jewish or Christian, public or private, and his data about Jewish views on personal morality seem to support this.
A third issue raised by Cohen's essay is the views and influence of the Jewish leadership elites. Much here is familiar, but Cohen rightly emphasizes the gaps between elite and mass opinion, particularly when the elites are not -- as expected -- more “liberal” than the average Jew. Three findings are particularly striking. The first is the fact that “leaders are more separationist than the Jewish public but also less troubled by church involvement in political affairs.” Presumably this is because they are themselves engaged in precisely this activity. They are too honest to protest conduct by Christians that is acceptable which the JCPA, ADL, or another Jewish group undertakes as its bread and butter. The Jewish public, by contrast, seems to think it fine that rabbis promote U.S. aid to Israel or regulation of gun ownership, but outrageous when pastors oppose abortion.
Second, it is remarkable that liberal elites do not fully share broader perceptions of what we might call right-wing or Christian antisemitism. No single figure is more striking than that “Just 9 percent of the public could agree that 'Anti-semitism is currently not a serious problem for American Jews,' as contrasted with 45 percent of the leaders.” One wonders what explains this gap, and perhaps it is that the elites are better informed about survey data or have more interaction with the Christian right. In any event, it is equally noteworthy that they have not managed to move the “masses” to a more accommodating view of the Christian right. Here, there has been no leadership, or no effective leadership.
Third, Cohen's overall data showing that very often the Jewish public is located between non-Jews on one side and Jewish leaders on the other make one wonder about the views of that leadership as an independent explanation of non-elite opinion. That is, one cannot help wondering about the impact of leadership views and wondering whether they constitute an independent variable in explaining Jewish opinion. To the extent that Jewish “mass opinion” is more liberal than non-Jewish opinion but less so than that of Jewish elites, have those elites “warped” mass opinion toward liberalism? Would Jews be less separationist if they were not urged, prodded, lectured, cajoled, and perhaps, most importantly, scared into such a posture by at least some of their leaders?
The answers are impossible to find because a controlled experiment -- polls of Jews who have lived on an island, isolated from elite views -- are not possible. One is entitled to wonder if elites are not contributing to the fear -- of Christians and their intentions, of fundamentalists and conservatives, of the inevitability of a slippery slope once any accommodation is allowed -- that keeps separationism high even though they do not fully share that fear.
But one is equally to wonder if separationism is not part of a broader desire by many American Jews to be left alone -- by the state, and by the synagogue. It is a commonplace that Jews who emigrated to the United States were a self-selected group fleeing not only the Tsar's repressive officials, but the strictures of the Orthodox rabbinate. Perhaps this sentiment lives on today, producing resistance to the setting of moral or religious standards not entirely wrapped in and based on voluntarism. Of course, such a position, while at variance with both traditional Judaism and much of modern Judaism, is supported by the non-judgmentalism of modern liberalism.
Such a conclusion is undercut by Cohen's data suggesting, for example, that leaders are both more liberal on matters of sexual morality and more observant religiously. But the data presented here are inconclusive; the “religiosity” of the elites, as measured here, may be ethnic solidarity as much as personal religiosity, and may also be disproportionately (as compared with averages for the Jewish community at large) Reform, a denomination which encourages non-judgmentalism on many matters of sexual morality. So the question remains: how much of the attitudes set forth in this study are explained by Jewish fears of the results for Jews of religion in the public square, and how much by a liberal (rather than particularly Jewish) desire to escape the imposition of public standards for private behavior? The best answer emerging from this data is that both are at play: real (if irrationally exaggerated) fears of what religion in the public square might mean for Jews, and a desire to escape the imposition of any particular identity or morality on the individual.
If there is anything at all to such theorizing, it presents an unattractive portrait of the American Jewish community, one mobilized by fears rather than hopes, and by desires to escape Jewish identity rather than embrace it. But Cohen's data also show the complexity of America Jewish opinion. He notes that there is a “slight movement” or “a scent of a shift” toward accommodationism or away from liberalism, a significant minority who are more religious and more acommodationist, and a “shrinking of the middle” that is most committed to separationism. Future surveys must thus be awaited with great interest.
