Walk down the hallway of any long-established suburban Reform or Conservative synagogue where the photographs of each year’s confirmation class are mounted and you will be reminded of the dramatic changes that have taken place in these institutions over the past half-century. Fifty years ago, in many of the larger congregations, ninth and tenth grade classes regularly exceeded one hundred students and sometimes even reached two hundred. By the late 1960s, the students’ hair was getting longer, and by the mid-1970s the classes started getting smaller. Today, if a Reform congregation of a thousand families can muster a confirmation class of thirty students, rabbis and educators are not only relieved but feel a small sense of victory.

This is but one reflection of an undeniable reality. With the exception of a number of Orthodox communities and a few other bright spots in or just off the mainstream of Jewish religious life, American Judaism is in precipitous decline. Not only is enrollment in non-Orthodox Jewish religious educational programs down, so is synagogue affiliation. Philanthropic giving in the religious sector of the Jewish community is also declining. For rabbis, Jewish educators, and communal leaders, it is a difficult moment. Jews are flourishing in America, but organized, institutional Judaism is in deep trouble, particularly after the recent economic crisis.

Why is this happening? Can anything be done to remedy the situation or are today’s non-Orthodox synagogues on the same path to obsolescence as the Jewish labor unions of a century ago or the old Borsht Belt resorts? Are Day Schools the answer or should the broader Jewish community concentrate on welcoming and retaining the ever growing mixed married population? Can Jewish communal and institutional efforts really do anything to control long-term American, Jewish, and global historical processes? Before one attempts to address these questions, as Dana Kaplan does in his new book, Contemporary American Judaism: Transformation and Renewal, one needs to know how we arrived at this historical moment.

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