The JOI presented results from \”The Jewish Outreach Scan of the West Valley/Conejo Valley\” during a well-attended Jewish Federation/Valley Alliance board meeting at The New JCC at Milken in West Hills on Oct. 4. The survey was funded by the United Jewish Communities\’ Emerging Communities Project.
When 50-year-old Hector Ventura was a young boy growing up in El Salvador four decades ago, his mother would always talk about Jewish customs. Which was strange, because the Venturas were not Jewish. Like most of their neighbors, they were Catholic — not particularly devout but Catholics just the same.
Let\’s face it. Every marriage between two Jews is an intermarriage. I\’m not talking about the obvious ones, like a marriage between an Orthodox Jew and a Jew-by-birth who is not at all religious. Clearly if one spouse davens three times a day and the other spouse uses Mapquest to find her way to synagogue on Yom Kippur, a silver anniversary is not in their future. I\’m talking about the rest of us.
My resolution that High Holiday season? To find a congregational home by the following fall. I\’ve lived in this cluster of small towns for almost a decade: people know me on the street, at the grocery store, at the community-supported organic farm. It felt wrong to be so rootless when it came to religion.
The National Jewish Population Survey, funded for $6 million by the federation umbrella group United Jewish Communities, reported that the nation\’s population of 5.2 million Jews represented a decline of 2 percent from the 1990 survey, which reported 5.5 million Jews.
Results of the two new studies are mixed enough that translating them into policy recommendations will not be easy.
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