More than Gefilte Fish

April 17, 2025 Alan Feiler, Editor-in-Chief

(Photo by Lainie Berger on Unsplash.com)

On my first visit to Israel — a young adults’ mission with the local chapter of the Zionist Organization of America (now the Baltimore Zionist District) — I remember many of us walking up to the Kotel, the Western Wall, with a sense of awe and disbelief. Like so many others, we simply couldn’t believe we were approaching Judaism’s holiest site, an opportunity not afforded to generations of Jews before us.

After that experience, many of us in the group gathered for a powwow over falafel and hummus to schmooze about it. Some cried, while others said they felt something stir deep inside them while touching those ancient stones and examining the countless scribbled notes placed within the crevices.

But one of our fellow travelers seemed rather perturbed by the experience. In fact, she was downright irked with everyone’s reactions.

“It didn’t really do anything for me,” she said. “I just didn’t feel anything there.” Then, she paused and looked at the group and snapped, “You don’t have to feel something, you know?”

Over the years, I’ve learned that faith and spirituality — or sometimes the lack of it — is a very private kind of experience. What some people feel profoundly and fervently, others simply don’t. And sometimes it provokes a backlash and, well, awkwardness between people.

I once worked in an office where a co-worker put up a small Christmas tree. Another colleague walked up and said she thought the decorated tree was cute, but that she herself was not a religious person. Inexplicably, she then went on a seemingly endless diatribe about why she was an atheist and that organized religion is a sham.

Again, what someone does or doesn’t believe is a highly personal matter. History shows us time and again that foisting one’s religious beliefs on another is a foolish, obnoxious and futile endeavor.

At the same time, it seems to me that a world without something resembling faith or belief in a higher power — or whatever you want to call it — is a world without hope. And more than ever, we all need hope.

Among the string of dispiriting and demoralizing headlines lately, I saw one on the Jewish Telegraphic Agency website that shouldn’t have surprised me but did: “Many American Jews Say They Rarely or Never Pray, New Poll Finds.” Conducted by the Pew Center, the study found the proportion of American Jewry that prays on a regular basis is down sharply from a decade ago.

The poll found when asked about their “prayer frequency,” 58% of Jewish adults checked off “seldom/never.” That’s a significant increase from 2014, when the poll was last conducted, and much higher than that of adherents in other faith communities. The poll also found fewer Jews feel that religion is an important component of their lives.

So where does that leave us, that fewer Jews pray than ever before? After all, we know that you can be Jewish and still not adhere to a belief in the Almighty. There’s plenty of Jews who lead profoundly Jewish lives even if they never pray, buy into a belief system or ever step inside a shul.

But if being Jewish means nothing more than simply eating gefilte fish or understanding Yiddishisms or watching “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” what is it we’re preserving?

Believe me, I’m no rabbi or yeshiva bocher. But somewhere along the line we’ve lost our way, and it’s incumbent on the institutions and thought leaders of our community to grapple with this phenomenon and determine how to teach future generations a Judaism where God can be invited.

Sincerely,

Alan Feiler, Editor-in-Chief