Monday 15 May 2017

Jews with most education are least religious, study finds

From RRW
 http://www.jta.org/2017/04/26/news-opinion/united-states/jews-with-most-education-are-least-religious-study-finds

2 comments:

micha said...

From the article, "The Pew Research Center study on religiosity and education in the United States published Wednesday found that the more years of schooling American Jews have, the less religious they are."

But to be more fair, the study equally "found that the more years of secular schooling American Jews have in excess of their years of religious schooling, the less religious they are."

The problem isn't that only uneducated Jews want to be religious, but that Jews who are not given religious answers of comparable depth to their general knowledge tend not to be.

Unlike the conclusion the JTA version draws from the data, my version also explains the rate of departure from O during non-Jewish college attendance.

Rabbi Ben Hecht said...

The reality is that one of the enduring values passed on from even the most basic Jewish involvement is the importance of education. This came naturally from the importance assigned to Torah study -- which reflected the necessary thought demanded to gain any appreciation of this presentation of the Divine Wisdom. As people started to move away in their commitment to Torah, though, at the same time they dismissed the need for intense study of Torah to gain insight in the Jewish religion (as evidenced by the North American Hebrew School system) seeing Judaism like any other religion. The only thing is that Torah actually needs thought so is it really surprising that individuals who, because of their Jewish upbringing, valued thought, would, upon increasing their study of secular wisdom, reject the childish religion with which they were brought up? There is nothing that could be portrayed as more foolish than a system of knowledge that demands intense study and thought to gain some insight into it, which is described and explained in a childish manner. This survey simply portrays these results.

Rabbi Ben Hecht