Professor Cohen will argue that the number of middle-aged non-Orthodox Jews who are engaged in Jewish life is poised to drop sharply in the next 20-40 years. And, absent significant policy changes, their numbers will continue to drop for years to come.

He will argue that low rates of marriage and births, along with high rates of intermarriage among American Jews are generating a shrinkage of what may be termed the “Jewish Middle.” The "Jewish Middle" encompasses Jews located in the central region of the Jewish identity spectrum, approximately those identifying as Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist.

Effective policies need to achieve the following outcomes:
* Bring down the average age at marriage.
* Increase the rate of inmarriage.
* Raise the fertility rate of non-Orthodox Jews.
* Encourage more non-Jewish spouses of Jews to see themselves as Jews.


Steven M. Cohen is Research Professor of Jewish Social Policy at HUC-JIR, and Director of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive at Stanford University. In 1992 he made aliyah, and taught at The Hebrew University, having previously taught at Queens College, Yale, and JTS.

Among his books are The Jew Within (with Arnold Eisen), Two Worlds of Judaism: The Israeli and American Experience (with Charles Liebman), and Sacred Strategies: Transforming Synagogues from Functional to Visionary (with Isa Aron, Lawrence Hoffman and Ari Kelman, Isa Aron, Lawrence A. Hoffman. He was the lead researcher on the Jewish Community Study of New York: 2011, and consultant to the Pew studies of American Jews and Israeli society.

Prof. Cohen received an honorary doctorate from the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, the Marshall Sklare Award, and a National Jewish Book Award. He serves as president of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry.

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