Many Varieties Found in L.A. Jewishness : Study Shows Ethnic and Cultural Emphasis Rather Than Religious

Only a generation ago, most Jews in Los Angeles would say that being “Jewish” meant being a member of a religious group. Now, a study indicates, they are more apt--by a 3-1 margin--to say it means being a member of an ethnic and cultural group.

About one-fourth of Los Angeles Jews are affiliated with a synagogue, a smaller percentage than in other major U.S. cities, according to the study.

Furthermore, said sociologist and community leader Neil C. Sandberg in a book analyzing the study, the religiously affiliated are “very selective” about traditional forms of observance:

“Rituals and holidays that require the least ongoing obligation or sacrifice are the most kept, including attendance at high holiday services and Passover seders, fasting on Yom Kippur and lighting Hanukkah candles. Religious requirements calling for frequent and regular observance are performed less often, including lighting Sabbath candles, buying kosher meat and keeping separate dishes” for certain foods in accordance with Jewish law.

The most visible form of “passive” Jewish identification, Sandberg said, is placing a mezuza , a parchment of biblical inscriptions contained in a small tube--an act done by half of those interviewed.

Reason for Optimism

Yet, for all the inroads that secularism has made into the second-largest Jewish community in the nation, Sandberg finds reason for optimism.

“Both the religious and the non-religious aspects of Jewish expression are needed,” wrote Sandberg in his just-published “Jewish Life in Los Angeles: A Window to Tomorrow” (University Press). Sandberg is Western regional director of the American Jewish Committee and teaches sociology at Loyola Marymount University and Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles.

The data for Sandberg’s assessments of Jewish life in Los Angeles came from interviews with 413 people in 1978 and 1979 in a project funded by the University of Judaism. Some findings were published in articles in the early 1980s. Sandberg said this week that he believes that the replies given seven years ago still reflect attitudes today because the questions dealt with deep-rooted matters.

Los Angeles’ Jewish community of 500,000, once uneasy about the “offbeat” Southern California image, is now more indifferent to outside views and, in fact, provides increasing amounts of national leadership to U.S. Jewish organizations, Sandberg said.

“Being Jewish means different things to individual Jews in Los Angeles,” Sandberg said, noting that for some their involvement may be limited to philanthropic, or even gastronomic, activities.

‘Individual Prescriptions’

“There is a tendency to mix jogging, feminism, careers and meditation into individual prescriptions for Jewish identity,” Sandberg observed.

“But most Jews share a sense of oneness with other Jews in Los Angeles as well as throughout the country and abroad. Jewish needs and interests are in the forefront of their agendas and, despite some erosion, Jews try to take care of their own as they have for centuries,” he wrote.

In an interview, Sandberg said that, regardless of generation, religious beliefs or participation in community affairs, “Los Angeles Jews have an abiding and profound concern for the security of Israel.”

While concern for Israel is important, Sandberg said a strictly “survivalist” view of protecting Jewish interests wherever threatened “tends to exclude the question of Jewish values and the importance of going beyond ethnic considerations to a special outlook on God, man and the world.”

“We have to ask ourselves whether we are merely a social group or a people with a religious heritage,” Sandberg said.

Higher Affiliation Rates

Sandberg said the survey showed higher rates of affiliation among fourth-generation Los Angeles Jews--”a stronger ethnic than religious upswing, yet both trends are present.” The revival of religious interest is in both traditional and non-traditional forms, he said.

“Irving Howe, author of ‘The World of Our Fathers,’ says that the further away from the immigrant generation, the less Jewish people become,” Sandberg said. “I find it very hopeful that the assimilationist tendencies (into non-Jewish culture) described by Howe have leveled off and we find an upturn in various forms of Jewish expression among the great-grandchildren of the immigrants.”

Call for New Ideology

At the same time, Sandberg’s book criticizes Jews who tend to label as “assimilationists all Jews who do not measure up to a standard of Jewish identification that includes both Judaism as a faith and Jewishness as an ethnic identity.” He said such standard-setting excludes those not attracted to Jewish religious institutions or those whose emotional ties to the tradition are still undefined.

Sandberg calls for a new ideology of American Jewish life that can leave the door open for some kind of community commitment “even from those who are theological agnostics but who can accept a Jewish moral or ethical perspective.”

Sandberg’s collaborator on the survey of Los Angeles Jewry, UCLA sociology professor Gene N. Levine, recalled this week that in making a special effort to reach young and single Jews, their study was slightly weighted with fourth-generation interviewees. “But this is actually an advantage because Neil has something significant to say about the future of Los Angeles Jewry,” Levine said.

The Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles sponsored a survey about the same time, designed by Bruce A. Phillips of Hebrew Union College “but asking different questions,” Levine said. The UCLA professor recommended Phillips’ article summarizing the demographic findings, published in the 1986 American Jewish Year Book, “for anyone seeking to understand Los Angeles Jewry.”

Phillips, one of several Los Angeles Jewish academic and community leaders to commend Sandberg’s analyses in book-jacket comments, called Sandberg’s conclusions “valid” and termed it “the first sociological study of this community.”

The finding that Los Angeles Jews tend to identify themselves ethnically more than religiously rings true for Tom Tugend, a UCLA public information officer and a frequent writer for Jewish publications. “There is a strong feeling of (Jewish) ‘peoplehood’ among students. We tend to see on campus students who are 90% unaffiliated (with synagogues) but with a fairly strong sense of ethnicity.”

Sandberg’s survey indicated, at least in the late 1970s, that one-fourth of the respondents considered themselves atheist, agnostic or secular in outlook. Of those who identified with either the Orthodox, Conservative or Reform traditions of Judaism, 29% were members of synagogues.

Unlike churches in which the frequency and amounts of contributions are up to the individual, Jewish congregations normally set membership fees for households or individuals. Nearly half of those surveyed believed that synagogue membership is too expensive; only 19% disagreed with that statement, Sandberg said.

Fewer Professionals

Indeed, membership in congregations increased significantly among people earning more than $40,000 a year in the late 1970s. Jewish professionals were less likely, however, to affiliate with a congregation or to give to Jewish causes than those in business.

About half of the interviewees said they regularly attended High Holy Day services, which culminate in Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).

The most popular Jewish observance in Los Angeles is the Passover seder, the ritual meal commemorating the ancient Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. In contrast to High Holy Day services, open only to dues-paying members or those who have purchased tickets, Passover seders are held primarily in private homes.

“The high level of seder involvement among the unaffiliated suggests that seders may be more an ethnic than a religious phenomenon with the gathering of family and friends also a motivating factor,” Sandberg wrote.