My family's journey may reflect modern Judaism in America
By Chloe Rose Lewis
I am the descendant of 17 consecutive generations of rabbis.
My Jewish ancestry is so pervasive on both my mother and father’s sides of the family that I never once questioned whether my theological faith, or lack thereof, was tied to my Jewishness.
After my grandfather Rabbi Emanuel Rose’s death in 2019, and my uncle Rabbi Joshua Rose’s retirement from leading a synagogue shortly thereafter, there were no longer practicing rabbis in the Rose family. This change raised questions about my personal identity as a Jew.
Suddenly, my lack of religious faith joined forces with a lack of tradition and practice. I looked around and recognized that I no longer had a Jewish community. For the first time in my life I was left wondering, how Jewish am I really?
My family’s departure from practicing Judaism is part of a deeper cultural shift away from religion in the United States. In the past 30 years, the U.S. has seen a 30% decline in the percentage of people who self-identify as part of the nation’s largest religious group: those who say they are Christian has dropped from 90% in the early 1990s to around 65% in 2022. Pew Research Center reports that if current trends continue, the third of the U.S. population which is now “unreligious” will grow to more than half of the population by 2070.
Transposing such statistics onto Judaism can be hard because there are religious Jews, cultural Jews, ethnic Jews, and those who identify by various combinations of those identifiers.
Though the percentage of Jews in the U.S. has remained relatively stable in recent years – having grown proportionately to the population from 2.2 million in 2013 to 2.4 million in 2022 – they are far less likely to be religious than other Americans. Jews who are unaffiliated to a specific branch of the religion or are non-religious instead identify as Jewish “culturally, ethnically or because of their family background,” according to Pew.
Perhaps my ancestors would be disappointed that today, much of my family seems to fall into that category. For most of my family members, their Reform Jewish affiliation lacks any traditional faith in God. When we attended services led by my grandfather Rabbi Emanuel Rose, the moral teachings and process of partaking in ritual were most important. My greatest takeaway from those services was not theological exaltation but his sermons’ ethical teachings. When I asked my family members about their experiences going to synagogue, they agreed. Maybe my inability to understand the Hebrew prayer portion of the services disconnected me religiously but increased my connection to the ethical and moral teachings of Judaism.
My saba’s “freedom of the pulpit” and ability to preach his beliefs is a key aspect of Reform Judaism. Described by the Union for Reform Judaism, this principle is Rabbis’ right to “express freely their views and their interpretations of Jewish doctrines in the light of contemporary life.” He used this freedom to the fullest extent, sermonizing to the congregation on pertinent issues of the day including the Vietnam War and gay rights among other topics.
Just a few generations ago, most of my ancestors were Orthodox Jews. My two grandmothers, Lorraine Rose and Carol Schnitzer Lewis, told me about their upbringings and how their parents, in London and Portland, respectively, broke from generations of conservative Judaism. My paternal grandfather Ken Lewis was Bar Mitzvahed and went to a Reform synagogue on holidays growing up, but his Jewish life grew stronger upon marrying Carol. As Reform Jews, the couples balanced religious life with other aspects, utilizing Judaism as a vessel to discuss other topics like social and political issues.
Carol Lewis, Lorraine and Rabbi Emanuel Rose
How Did We Get Here?
Lorraine Wilson was born in London, England and lived there until 1959, when she and her twin sister Angela got on a boat to New York City and never moved back. Lorraine is my grandmother.
Shortly after she took her job as assistant to Rabbi Herman at the Union for Reform Judaism, she says, a strikingly handsome man with tan skin and piercing green eyes walked in from Temple Emanu-el across the street; it was Rabbi Emanuel Rose.
Lorraine and Rabbi Emanuel Rose
She tells me this over the phone, but I can sense my grandmother’s smile as she lets out a deep laugh and describes how “saba,” as most of my family refers to him, sheepishly placed a note on her desk and asked her to dinner. Soon after their first date they got serious. Just after celebrating her 21st birthday in 1960, Lorraine Wilson became Lorraine Rose, and Emanuel her doting spouse.
Family members and their community expected them both to marry Jews, but their level of devotion to Judaism synced seamlessly. Lorraine was far more interested in Judaism than her parents who, she says, “wanted nothing to do with it” after other family members’ Orthodox practice depleted her father’s interest.
In contrast, Emanuel’s rabbinic heritage was still strong after 15 generations, even if it had evolved into a Reform Jewish lifestyle common to a growing number of Americanizing Jews, even if Reform didn’t surpass Conservative Judaism in the U.S. until 1980.
When Rabbi Emanuel accepted a job at Temple Beth Israel in Portland, he and Lorraine moved across the country for what would be a 50-year role leading the congregation. Lorraine was more than pleased to become a rebbetzin —Yiddish for the rabbi's wife. They became acquainted with congregants Carol Schnitzer Lewis and Ken Lewis.
Lorraine, Carol, Emanuel and Ken became fast friends, and both couples, with growing families, raised their children alongside one another. The Rose and Lewis families were closely tied, building strong kinship around Jewish life and otherwise. Ken served as President of Temple Beth Israel under Emanuel’s leadership, and their children attended Sunday school together.
Over time, the families became like one. They traveled together and celebrated holidays in each other’s company. Together, they comprised a large group within the city’s Jewish community.
Larry Lewis and Laura Rose observe Passover Seder together in 1968
The Rose and Lewis children were best friends, but that relationship evolved until in 1993, Laura Rose and Scott Lewis married. They gave birth to two boys, Zachary and Elliot. Then, in 2000, they welcomed their third child and only daughter: me.
My brothers Elliot and Zach stand next to me and my father
Growing up, we attended Sunday school and Wednesday night school at Temple Beth Israel. We shared ShabbatShabbat (שבת): Weekly day of rest and celebration essential to Jewish practice dinner with our family some Friday nights, always with grandfather or my uncle Rabbi Joshua Rose leading prayers. In my mother’s upbringing, Shabbat dinner was non-negotiable, and Judaism was more prominent.
Jumping to today, though, my brothers identify as non-denominational, cultural and ethnic Jews rather than Reform, and I am lost somewhere in between.
Our Judaism Today
Regardless of where we fall on the Jewish spectrum now, my brothers and I agreed over the phone that the religious services we often attended — however begrudgingly — were valuable.
Inherent in our upbringing was learning how to behave in the world guided by the Reform Jewish tenet of Tikkun Olam: to repair the world. Jewish precedent informed our worldviews. My brothers have both dedicated their adult lives to social justice, working for labor unions after college and dedicating themselves to workers’ rights to help establish a more equitable class structure in America.
But, is the effort to live by values of Tikkun Olam, and those of social justice and political activism which saba preached in his sermons, enough to constitute good Judaism? Though Tikkun Olam is unique to Judaism in name, trying to be a good person and heal the world is not exclusive to being Jewish.
I have reckoned internally with this conflict throughout my years in college, feeling embarrassed to tell my family that despite living in Los Angeles, the second largest Jewish community in America with over 500,000 Jews, none of my close friends were Jewish. I wasn’t moved to attend services, even on the high holidays, because it felt unnatural to celebrate them alone.
My uncle Joshua explains that throughout his religious journey, in which he has evolved from the Reform upbringing he shared with my mom and aunts, to more conservative Judaism, the most important aspect was the community he shared it with.
“Jewish observance only really can be fully appreciated in community with other people,” he says over a Zoom call from his home in Portland, where he and his family have returned to live. His assertion is supported by the very foundation of the religion, which calls for unity among Jewish people as a primary doctrine.
After finishing his degree in Hebrew Letters from Hebrew Union College, my uncle and his wife Channah, who bears my own Hebrew name (חנה), lived in Jerusalem for the first year of his Master of Theological Studies. It was there that they began observing Jewish ritual more intensely, adhering to principles like abandoning technology each week for Shabbat, and he prayed with an Orthodox community. Later in New York and Colorado, they maintained various levels of Halachic observanceSet of Jewish laws and rituals, including maintaining a Kosher diet, consistent and proper Shabbat observance before coming back to Portland and returning to a more relaxed religious lifestyle.
My uncle’s life as a young adult and into his middle age was entirely structured around Judaism. It was “very beautiful and very transformative,” he says, and consumed him completely. Interested only in reading Jewish texts, he became fluent not only in Hebrew and Aramaic,Semitic language used in many Jewish texts and recitations but also in reading ancient and medieval Jewish texts, and he studied KabbalahDiscipline and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. “I’m kind of an all or nothing person in some ways,” he says. So when he decided to retire from being Rabbi at Portland’s Congregation Shaarei Torah, it was a departure from an occupation, and also from a lifestyle of ritual obligation.
Ari Y. Kelman, who is an Associate Professor at Stanford Graduate School, called me from Oakland to discuss the Jewish experience. He noted that today is a great time to be a Jew, because we can be Jewish however we want. As evident in my uncle’s journey, there are endlessly varying ways to exist as a Jew.
Judaism is more focused on education and transmitting knowledge, Kelman says, than it is on conforming to certain expectations, though those still exist in different sects and communities. Our religious texts are interpreted in different ways, and even the earliest rabbis who wrote the TalmudTerm for the documents that comment and expand upon the Mishnah (the first work of rabbinic law) were scholars of their time. Kelman’s research focuses on American Judaism and the transmission of knowledge through ritual, which, he points out, is the most essential aspect of Judaism.
16 generations ago, when the first of my rabbinic ancestors was alive, it would have been around the year 1200. Kelman explains that at that point and up until around 200 years ago, the question I’m exploring now – whether or not I’m a good Jew – wouldn’t have existed. In our ancestral communities, they didn’t have a word for what being Jewish was (a religion, ethnicity, et cetera), because it was “just who you were,” he says. Judaism was “totalizing,” although that broke under modernity.
Finding Meaning
In February, I visited my saba's grave for the third anniversary of his passing. I vividly remember the morning three years ago when I flew from Los Angeles to visit him in Portland. He was in rapidly declining health due to heart disease, and had been living with oxygen tubes and using a wheelchair to get around for the better part of a year. I was warned that he was growing weaker by the day, and I arrived as quickly as I could, hoping to hold his shaky hands one last time.
Rabbi Rose and Cantor Judy Schiff, courtesy of The Oregonian
Photo courtesy of The Oregonian
Photo courtesy The Oregonian
Rabbi Rose at Occupy Portland rally, courtesy Getty Images
Upon landing, I turned on my iPhone to a text from my second cousin apologizing for my loss. In a tunnel of despair, I recall standing at the PDX curbside pick-up spot, where my mom and I held each other, crying. A religious leader like Emanuel Rose carries a certain weight — when he died, we not only lost our saba but our religious and spiritual grounding.
Our family quickly prepared for his burial and funeral, as Jewish law mandates within 24 hours. Some of my family members, I noticed, were in crisis. They asked questions about whether or not Saba was okay - desperate cries inquiring of the universe whether he was safe. In a way, he was responsible for the turmoil. The Judaism he taught us never attempted to concretely answer the existential questions some religions try to answer. Instead, it probed intellectual debate regarding social justice issues and the way Jewish text demanded we respond to them.
Those crises, Joshua says, “kind of speak to a certain construction of Judaism we had. We weren't really prepared, necessarily, to deal with it. We didn't have a religious language in a sense. And what's funny is I think Saba did, but that's not how he talked or taught.”
My grandmother Lorraine, and my mother Laura, each reflected on this uncertainty, recalling how for whatever reason, saba taught the vague, interpretable message that “the soul lives on.”
My grandmother was able to find peace with his passing.
Voice of Lorraine Rose
“I accept the reality that you’re not coming back to us as you were. But you are here with me every day. Our four wonderful children show me daily. You are indeed in spirit here with me. They are so full of kindness, caring, thoughtfulness and love since you departed. I see in them –- even if they stop for a short visit, or if they fly in to see me and spend a week or two –- that you are there in spirit. Man, you left them with so much of you inside, and they really take care of me in so many ways. And I know they have my back as you did. So I feel your presence in all of our children, and it gives me great comfort.”
If his sermons had provided concrete answers to questions about “life after death,” their value may have been lost on my family, whose intellectual prowess and dedication to science deters from theological certainty. All of my family members confirmed a lack of theological belief, but a dedication to Jewish culture and practical teachings, and as my uncle confirms, that is somewhat expected. “Certainly in the progressive Jewish movement — it’s so weird for people who aren’t Jewish to get this — you don’t hear a lot of God talk.”
It is unclear whether dedication to the moral and ethical aspects of Jewish life are enough to bring future generations into Judaism: when prayer and practice become unimportant and only the practical expectations are “doing good in the world,” maybe more secular, modern ethics replace a need for Judaism.
Moving Forward
My brother Elliot, who will marry his religiously unaffiliated fiancée Whitney in July, is next to determine our family’s Jewish fate. While Whitney is considering converting to Judaism, Elliot shared his uncertainty regarding how they will raise their children, telling me he will raise them Jewish in some ways, focusing on the important holidays and cultural aspects. “If there were progressive synagogues that were more worthwhile than having them do other things like secular camps,” he says, then he might introduce them to more organized Judaism.
For our eldest brother Zach, the pull to remain active in Jewish life is different. He is less focused on the teachings and potential for social change, which he feels are accessible elsewhere. Instead, he believes that the value of Judaism is in the fun —- celebrating holidays and eating good food: namely, lox and bagels.
Through the lens of sociological scholarship, he sees modern society as having progressed beyond the need for religion to build a community of like-minded individuals. Other organized groups may be more likely to foster such collectivism. While he recognizes some value in the cultural traditions that bind us, he qualifies that with the belief that ultimately separating ourselves based on our ethnic heritage doesn’t fulfill any modern societal need and is even potentially counterproductive, leading to parochialism and xenophobia.
Sociologist and scholar Richard Flory confirms some of Zach’s inklings over a Zoom call from his home in Los Angeles. Flory says that since 2016, there has been a sharp decrease in religious affiliation, and many young people are finding meaning in their immediate family and close friends’ circles where they might have turned to religious institutions for that fulfillment in the past.
Elliot’s perception of Judaism’s future value for his family as an analysis of whether it will provide necessary tools for “productiveness,” and Zach’s assertion that it should really just be for enjoyment both simmer inside me, but these outlooks are heavily supplemented by my individuality.
I am led, first and foremost, by my emotions, and value most the ineffable things in life. So, when my uncle Joshua opened up to me about the intricacies of his journey from reform Jew to conservative rabbi and to now being the founder of Co/Lab (an inclusive, non-traditional space to explore Judaism), I was filled with veneration. His lighthearted exterior, reminiscent of my brother Zach’s façade, is unrepresentative of the profundity within.
His religious journey took him down the path of self exploration and realization.
Voice of Rabbi Joshua Rose
“So how did it affect my identity? I mean, it's a great question, but it's hard to answer because, I mean, I just saw everything through that lens of trying to elevate myself as a human being.”
Studied closely, Jewish texts tell us “how to adjust psychologically, ethically, how to relate to other human beings,” he says. “Trying not to be led through the world just by my desires or my ego, but to try to make good decisions about how to move through the world and trying to live in a state of openness so that I could connect on the deepest level with the world around me and, for want of a better word, with God.”
For those who don’t study so intensely, there are still benefits of participating in religious rituals. Kelman explains that because Judaism doesn’t have a concrete understanding of Hell, and no concept of moral retribution, the incentive to partake is unique to each person but may be more compatible with modern life than other doctrines. Traditions give us an outline within which we can freely enjoy an event. Like on a birthday, Kelman explains, we don’t need to worry about what we will do —- buy a cake, sing happy birthday and blow out the candles —- so we can focus on enjoying the time celebrating. If we say the KiddushA blessing said before certain meals before eating a meal, it grants us the opportunity to practice gratitude for our food and offers grounding, meditative benefits like popular "mindfulness" practices.
“Jewish culture has this incredible apparatus for rituals,” Kelman says, “you don’t have to think about what to do but instead why you’re there.” During Passover Seder,the ritualistic meal in which Jews eat specific symbolic foods in a guided process, the HaggadahA Jewish text that guides the Passover Seder and tells the story of the biblical Exodus provides a template for us to reflect on historical and current injustices. The holiday grants us a day to spend cooking with our family, hours to spend discussing the state of the world, and the satisfaction of a meal worth waiting for.
Kelman shared with me an excerpt of Jewish sociologist Emile Durkheim’s work. The writer explains that the true function of religion is not to “make us think” or “enrich our knowledge,” but ultimately, “its true function is to make us act and to help us live.”
Even without practicing rituals, being Jewish is just a part of our being, my parents Laura and Scott say. “I feel like it is one of the biggest parts of my identity, and I’m the least religious person I know,” my mom says over Zoom from their living room in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Sitting next to her, my dad agrees. “It’s definitely the major defining aspect of my identity also. I somehow feel like deep down there, the fact that I care so much about things like the environment, social justice, has to do with my Jewish heritage.” They both emphasize the comfort in Jewish community, too.
Joshua taught me about the term Klal Yisrael, which refers to the whole of the Jewish people. It is not an ethnic designation, he says, but a term with ethical and theological implications. “Ethically, it means that we are to see ourselves as part of a larger community of the present and the past. Theologically it implies that we are a community that carries on a divine imperative for goodness and justice.”
If I am one of Klal Yisrael -- and I am –- then my Judaism never should have been in question. My status as a Jew is inherent and secure, and the discovery of what it means to me unending.
