Orthodox Judaism: From Declining to Rising?

Orthodox Judaism in the twentieth century was thought by many to be declining. Nevertheless, in the twenty-first century, it is rising, as a proportion of the American Jewish population, owing in part to early marriage and high levels of fertility in the Orthodox community. In the twenty-first century, the tensions within Orthodox Judaism, based on the polarities of Cultural Guidelines reflecting the primacy of Jewish Tradition over Western Modernity and the Structural Focus of religion rather than ethnicity, illuminated in the divergence between Modern and Haredi Orthodoxy, which resulted in a “multiplicity of voices.” According to the latest Pew national survey of Jewish Americans (2021), 9% of American Jewish households are Orthodox. While this proportion has remained constant for several decades, the percent that Orthodox Jews as a whole represent of the total of US Jews is expected to grow, owing in part to early marriage and high levels of fertility. The institutional history of Orthodoxy is divided into four phases: (1) the origins of American Jewry beginning with the migration in 1654 of traditional (Orthodox in practice) Sephardic Jews (Phase I, 1654–1880); organization of Orthodox Judaism in response to the challenge posed by Reform (Phase II, 1880–1925); definition and delineation of Orthodox Judaism (Phase III, 1925–1975); and the resurgence of Orthodox Judaism (Phase IV, 1975–Present). Four forms of research provide the basis for the depiction of how the Orthodox Jewish laity dealt with the two fundamental questions posed earlier about Cultural Guidelines and Structural Focus.