The St. Louis Jewish Community Study released in February leaves ample room for interpretation, as a program last week on Jewish identity and engagement proved. The event, held at Congregation B’nai Amoona, was the second of a three-part series featuring local Jewish community professionals discussing aspects of the study. 

“I can say that overall, I don’t think there were a ton of surprises but it is really interesting to see where the trends are,” said Rabbi Brad Horwitz, director of the Jewish Community Center’s Helene Mirowitz Department of Jewish Community Life.

Horwitz was one of three panelists who discussed various aspects of the study relating to marriage and the rearing of children after an initial presentation by Susan Scribner of Federation about the survey’s data. Scribner, who introduced the event and the panelists, said that Jewish households look very different than they did two decades ago during the last community survey with an increase in Jews who see themselves as trans-, post- or non-denominational and less connected to institutions and labels. About 11 percent identified as “partly” Jewish.

“The ‘partly Jewish’ is a phenomenon that we didn’t really see 20 years ago,” she said. “A lot of these individuals are children of intermarried households. When you ask them if they are Jewish, they say, ‘I’m partly Jewish’ or ‘I’m Jewish with my mother and I’m Christian with my father.’ That’s a growing number.”

The number of intermarrieds is growing as well with nearly half of all married respondents identifying a non-Jewish spouse along with about two-thirds of married Jews under age 35.

Just over half of children are being raised exclusively Jewish with others opting for partly Jewish, another faith or no religion at all. About 14 percent were undecided or didn’t know.

Scribner said that, for the most part, that latter category fit those with young children.

“You can see that in the 0-4 age range, 24 percent are being raised partly Jewish and 19 percent are undecided,” she said. “When you move up to the next age range and people start going to school, that’s when people start making decisions and the number of partly Jewish drops down to 5 percent. There may be an opportunity there to interact with these young families and help them along their Jewish journey turning that partly Jewish into Jewish.”

Horwitz said that the survey indicated that people were not as loyal to a given denomination as they once were.

“At the J, we find that if there is a program or activity they are interested in, people in the community are going to go to it regardless of if it is affiliated with any denomination or not,” he said. “People just want to be touched spiritually. They want to connect with the community.”

He suggested greater partnerships across traditions and finding ways to welcome people — including thinking about the language used to describe non-Jewish spouses.

“Even in our own survey, what do we call these people? Non-Jewish respondents,” he said. “Well, if I were in that category, I don’t want to be called a non-Jewish respondent. I want to be called somebody from another faith.”

Horwitz said though he was troubled by the fact that 41 percent of children were receiving no exposure to Jewish education, he still felt the survey was good news overall, particularly the statistic showing that only 13 percent of people were opting to raise children in another faith.

“The question really is now how do we engage all these people,” he said.

Panelist Leslie Wolf, director of the Deutsch Early Childhood Center at Temple Israel, was also concerned by the low numbers on Jewish education. While a clear majority of Jewish parents sent their kids to pre-school only 16 percent opted for a Jewish preschool.

“I think it is a huge opportunity for our community and I there is a lot that we can do to collaborate with all the synagogues to raise this dismal number,” she said.

She said that over the past few years, TI’s early childhood program had increased enrollment by more than four fold. The reason, she believes, is a comprehensive approach.

“Jewish parents want superior education for their kids. They want development,” she said. “They want to know that their kids are on-target. They want to know that the school they are going to is doing everything to address the total education of the children.”

The final panel member, Rabbi Yaakov Green, head of school at Epstein Hebrew Academy, struck a less optimistic note about the survey’s findings, calling the results “very scary” and saying they should prompt communitywide soul-searching. He said that while current intermarried families might still be open to Jewish life, earlier Pew surveys had found that second-generation intermarried families see engagement rates fall off very sharply.

“This is a full-on crisis,” he said, saying the community needed to acknowledge the seriousness of the challenge. “If we’re not willing to do that you are going to see one generation later where we do a new study, these numbers are going to be 20 percent higher on each and every single guideline – at the best.”

Green suggested that the community might approach respondents again to ask them what they really wanted, both as individuals and as families as well as for the community. He said he wasn’t sure if it was a foregone conclusion that people wished for greater affiliation.

“This is the part where I become unpopular,” he said. “Actions speak louder than answers on a survey. When you don’t actually engage, you don’t want to engage even if you say you do.”

Horwitz said the previous St. Louis Jewish population survey and study — conducted in 1995 — probably prompted similar thoughts of crisis but that he felt there was a need to focus more on opportunities.

“I agree with a lot of the things you are saying but I don’t think that’s a new issue,” he noted. “I think that’s an issue that’s been with us for decades. I think the question is ‘How do we respond?’”

During the audience question-and-answer session, there was a similar divide in views. One participant said he saw the numbers as a chance to reach out and engage 30,000 new people in the population.

“It is a wonderful opportunity and I think it would be a terrible mistake to view it as a crisis,” he said. 

However, another agreed more with Green saying that families don’t always know what they are looking for from the community.

“That is true of in-married families as well as inter-married families,” she said. “I think that’s an important question. It is a question we don’t have any context of having with families or families having a forum to be able to discuss that comfortably without any judgment.”

Wolff said that the question was a legitimate one, which might shed light on why some of the education figures were so low.

“Why are they choosing not to go to one when we have incredible Jewish preschools in our community?” she asked. “I think we have the numbers now. We have to take the next step to figure out what these families truly are looking for. If they say they don’t know, then we need to take a step further and delve into that.”

One question on how to duplicate good ideas from other communities prompted a response from Andrew Rehfeld, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation, who was in the audience. He noted that the most successful communities have strong relationships between the Federation and the congregations as well as solid platforms for secular engagement, noting that St. Louis needed to do more on both fronts. 

Rehfeld said he looked forward to the upcoming findings of a community development commission.

“Over the summer we’ll be coming up with actionable items,” he said. “Hopefully by fall…or certainly by the end of the calendar year, we’ll be coming up with concrete proposals that we’ll be able to put funding into and develop as a response to this.”