Is American Grace Good for the Jews?

The Economist has a fascinating review of the findings of a new book, Robert D. Putnam and Robert E. Campbell's American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. According to the review, Americans are mostly religious (we already knew that), but within certain limits this unifies them rather than divides them. If you can't read the book, you really ought to read the review.

The reality described in the review is one in which Jews, mainstream Protestants and Catholics have accepted each other fully, with Evangelicals slightly on the side, Mormons more so, and others not really accepted; Muslims, predictably, come out worst. For the individual Jews of America this is great, and also an extreme and historically unprecedented abnormality. It's probably also very good for Israel. What's not clear to me is if it's good for American Jewry: in a society which totally welcomes marriages across denominational lines, indeed, celebrates them, a religion which has long defined it's perimeters through who marries whom will need radical adaptation, perhaps more than can be contained. We've had this discussion on this blog before, and the topic is unlikely to go away.


Jeffrey Goldberg recently posted a hilarious example of the degree to which Jews are part of the very fabric of American society; here also, such a story would have been inconceivable in any society worldwide before the 2nd half of the 20th century in the US, and anywhere else to this very day.

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