The Jewish Identity Triad of Religion, Peoplehood, and Culture: Conceptual and Empirical Interconnections

Religion, peoplehood, and culture are the three major substantive dimensions of Jewishness. In classical Jewish thought they are interwoven, and in pre-modern Jewish life they embodied one another. Modernity, both ideologically and structurally, attempts to separate them. This paper first explores the major theoretical and behavioral implications of the effort to separate these three facets of Jewishness. It then examines the indicators customarily used to measure them and identifies methodological issues in those indicators. Finally, data from three national studies (the National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01, the Bronfman Foundation Survey of American Jews 2007, and the Pew Research Center Survey of U.S. Jews 2013) and six recent local community studies (Baltimore 2010, Chicago 2010, Cleveland 2011, Miami 2014, New York 2011, and St. Loius 2014 (are used to explore the empirical interrelationships among religion, peoplehood, and culture in the identity patterns of contemporary American Jews. Despite the current tendency to see the aspects of Jewish identity as separable, they seem to be highly associated with one another in actual Jewish identity.