Boomers, Millennials and the Shape of American Judaism

Abstract

Fall 2017 marked the 100th anniversary of Max Weber’s essay, “Science as a Vocation,” which has greatly influenced the way a host of scholars, including me, have approached the study of religion in the modern West. One cannot imagine the work of Peter Berger, Talcott Parsons, or Marshall Sklare, without Weber’s notions of disenchantment, charisma, or religious virtuosos. It is also impossible, a century after Weber confidently declaimed on these matters, not to notice how wrong he was in key respects. My own work has been less interested in the processes of modernization and secularization that have shaped Jews in the modern period than in the ways Jews have responded to those challenges with new modes of thought and observance; for that reason and others, I find quantitative evidence less useful than qualitative reports and observation. The question facing those of us committed to the study and the practice of Judaism in 2018, I believe, is whether those patterns of thought and observance, honed over two centuries of encounter with modernity, will require further adjustment in coming years. Will the “solutions” arrived at my baby boomers like me—who grew up in, and responded to, the sociological situation Sklare described so perceptively—“work” for millennials and the cohorts that follow? The essay that follows suggests that both continuity and change are likely to prove decisive.