Before relating to the provocation of the Reform Jews, their progressive attempts to change Judaism while actually uprooting everything of value from the Jewish people, and the methods which must be taken to fight their dangerous goals, we sought to understand, once and for all, if the enemy against whom we are pitted is, indeed, the bulk of the Jewish people.
To research this, we did not seek the help of any chareidi organization. The body which did the research was The PEW Research Center, a nonpartisan American think tank which is based in Washington, D.C. that provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the world. It not connected in any way to any Jewish organization whatsoever. This institute surveys a spectrum of goals and trends within the American society in every possible area. It also makes political surveys whose findings are considered extremely reliable in defining the public opinion.
From time to time, in the course of appraising various societies and minorities within the American society at large, the institute carries out research studies whose purpose is to profile the Jewish public in America. In 2013 Pew conducted a Survey of U.S. Jews, and in August 2015 it published a special report reanalyzing that data entitled, "A Portrait of American Orthodox Jews."
It should be noted that all surveys of these types rely (as they must) very heavily on the ways the people describe themselves. If someone considers himself or herself Jewish, then they will count them as Jewish. Similarly, if a Jew describes himself as Reform, he or she will be counted as Reform even if they do not belong to any Reform organization or participate in any Reform activities.
According to these findings, 35% of American Jews today consider themselves Reform; 18% consider themselves Conservative; 30% are not affiliated religiously in any way and 10% are Orthodox. Of the Orthodox, 62% are chareidi and 31% are Modern Orthodox. 6% are "Other."
However a deeper analysis of the above figures from 2013 presents a different reality altogether: of the 35% of Jews who defined themselves as Reform, only 34% are members of a Reform congregation and of the 18% who identified as Conservative, 50% belong to a Conservative synagogue. Working out the arithmetic, only 12% of the total American Jews as defined by the survey are members of a Reform congregation, and 9% are members of a Conservative congregation. By this measure of commitment, which is not such a high bar, the real estimate of Reform and Conservative Jewry in the U.S. stands at only just over a fifth of the Jewish population in the country.
Many people affiliated with Reform congregations are not Jewish by anyone's definition, having undergone no conversion whatsoever. As an official Reform statement has it: "You are welcome in Reform synagogues as a friend of the Jewish people. You do not have to convert."
"One must differentiate between those who defined themselves in the study as Reform or Conservative Jews and those who are actually affiliated in those communities or congregations," Rabbi Pesach Lerner, Vice President of Young Israel of America, explains to Yated Ne'eman. Rabbi Lerner has gained the sympathy and trust of gedolei Yisrael and promotes various battles for the sake of Torah-true Jewry in their name, mission or approval.
Rabbi Lerner, one of the leading figures in the struggle of Orthodox Jewry against the Reform movement in America, is expert in the various statistics which are presented to the public all the time. "It is very accepted in America to affiliate oneself, as if headlined," he clarifies. "There exists a certain trend of the need to publicly show affiliation and belonging. In actuality, however, as figures indicate, the percent of Reform and Conservative Jewry combined is much lower than what we are led to believe. There is no correlation between the headlines and the true figures. The most important factor is how many members there are within each congregation and according to those numbers, only 12% of American Jews are Reform affiliated.
If this data is accurate, where does the rest of Jewry fit in?
"Only 9% actually belong to a Conservative congregation; 10% or a bit more are Orthodox Jews, mostly chareidi, and beyond that - the rest do not belong to anything. Many consider themselves connected to Chabad but there are no statistics on this.
"Sadly enough, most of American Jews are not affiliated with anything. They are not members of any synagogue or congregation. From among these, the percent of those who do not identify themselves as Jews at all reaches 30% of those under 50."
The Jewish population of America is the second largest in the world, after Israel. In estimation, as of 2012, the U.S. had a Jewish population of close to six million. Canadian Jewry boasted, as of 2010, some 375,000 Jews. In Canada, Rabbi Lerner adds, the division between the various streams is similar to that in the States.
In other words, the combined number of Reform and Conservative Jews in all of North America may be 1,600,000 at best but beyond that, they hardly exist anywhere else in the world.
"The numbers of Reform in Jewish congregations outside the U.S. and Canada are very low," says Rabbi Lerner. "There are very few temples, Reform or Conservative, in European communities or elsewhere, and all the less so in Israel where their numbers are altogether negligible.
"Most European Jews belong to an Orthodox congregation where these exist but otherwise, they don't belong to any community. Altogether, it can be said that in Europe, Australia and Great Britain, there are very few Reform Jews, though we don't have precise information regarding this. The bottom line is that all in all, the proportion of this segment is far lower than a quarter of the world population of Jews.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, leader of Reform Jewry in America, stated in relation to the recent law of mikvaos presently under discussion in the Knesset, "The Jewish People is hostage, so to speak, to the manner in which chareidi Jewry presents itself. Not only does it disqualify the majority of Israeli and world Jewry but also blackens the face of authentic Jewry as we practice it." This complaint is belied by the numbers we quoted above.
Jacobs, as Rabbi Lerner testifies, is a courteous and pleasant person, except he has a dangerous agenda whose whole aim is to undermine the fundamentals of Jewry which he and his cohorts advance through a willing ear and direct access to the Prime Minister.
Mordecai Plaut adds: This is a topic that I wrote about in some detail many years ago. One of my points was that for many purposes, the number of interest is not the number that is reported by social scientists, but rather what I called "hardcore Jews" meaning those who see themselves as part of the historic Jewish community and see their purpose as advancing the task of Klal Yisroel in enhancing kovod Malchus Shomayim in the world, and certainly not those who create the opposite effect. See my article, "There Are Only 2,300,000 Hardcore American Jews." Also of interest is
"The Demography and the Reality of the Jewish People."
