"I Am Chabad"
Rabbi Tzvi Nightingale - Aish South Florida (Originally published October 2013)
There is a lot of hand-wringing and distressed looks going on right now in the American Jewish world. According to a recent article making the rounds concerning the state of American Jewry by the Pew Research Center's Religion and Public Life Project, things are looking pretty grim. The intermarriage rate, a bellwether statistic, has reached a high of 58 percent for all Jews, and 71 percent for non-Orthodox Jews - a huge change from before 1970 when only 17 percent of Jews married outside the faith. Two-thirds of Jews do not belong to a synagogue, one-fourth do not believe in God and one-third had a Christmas tree in their home last year. Oy. Now while I agree there are some very disturbing issues and trends in the Jewish world regarding unaffiliated Jews - Hey, this is what I do for a living! - I find this study somewhat skewed and almost worthless. Why? Because they left out Chabad. As the article goes on to say: Reform Judaism remains the largest American Jewish movement, at 35 percent. Conservative Jews are 18 percent, Orthodox 10 percent, and groups such as Reconstructionist and Jewish Renewal make up 6 percent combined. Whoa, hold on a second. I don't see any mention of Chabad in there. Chabad you ask? You betcha! According to the Union of Reform Judaism website, there are 875 Reform synagogues in the United States and Canada. But Rabbi Motti Seligson from Media Relations for Chabad.org told me that there are 959 Chabad centers (part of over 1500 Chabad institutions) just in the United States alone. That is more than the so-called strongest branch of Judaism in the USA. And this is precisely why this study is practically meaningless. It is based on a completely outdated model and mentality and has totally ignored the most dynamic movement in Judaism in recent years. Furthermore, the folks at Pew are using categories of Jews from the 50's and 60's that have almost wholly changed since then. To illustrate, let's talk about my niece who is in her first year at Wi
