Rav Fisher has some interesting and some likely accurate things to say in his essay. But, like he claims the survey – and all surveys are – is, His data and analysis are deeply flawed.
A caveat – I have worked on both the programmatic and operational side of Kiruv, as a volunteer and a professional, with two of the largest international kiruv organizations around. I have volunteered and worked for both establishment and non establishment community organizations – inside and outside the federation world. I’ve been in advocacy and fundraising. And I’ve been doing it for almost 30 years. I’ve commissioned, written, analyzed, and used the analysis of surveys by and for both secular and frum organizations. So I’m familiar with the subject matter.
R’ Fisher confoundingly brings in the irrelevant issue that many surveys are done on and around shabbat, and therefore have a disproportionately small representation of Orthodox Jews. It is neither here nor there when it comes to THIS survey, which he is questioning. Aside from his assumption, we are talking about OTD Jews who are not necessarily shomer shabbos. Why he projects his reality on theirs, I can only speculate.
R’ Fisher also makes the confused (and confusing) inference that we are talking about university educated Modern Orthodox Jews, as if they were the only ones going OTD. He studiously ignores the increasing numbers coming from Chareidi backgrounds, who leave Kiryas Yoel, or New Square, or Monsey or Lakewood, who are literally running AWAY from their previous life, not running TOWARDS the attractions of the Frat House. Moreover, he makes these assumptions with no factual or statistical backup. None. He doesn’t know or doesn’t cite the data from the survey he is denigrating. But he “knows”.
R’Fisher gives short shrift to the women who have left frumkeit. They’ve written books, started assistance organizations, R’L they’ve ended their own lives because of the pain and trauma of their experiences – but to R’Fisher they don’t factor in to the equation, because they don’t fit in to his narrative. Aside from devaluing and dismissing their experience, it kind of kills one’s theory about statistics when one removes half of the potential population from one’s analysis.
R’ Fisher also hypothesizes about the motivation of Federations in commissioning surveys and using them to short change frum communities. And yet, the trend across North America is towards increased involvement in Federation leadership, increased donations from frum donors, and increased allocations to orthodox institutions by Federations.
R’ Yaakov Menken wrote about this in Cross Currents 10 years ago (June 2006), and the change has continued.
The community I grew up in counts a highly disproportionate number of frum leaders (Chareidi among them) among Federation and other broad based community organizations. This is the case in several other communities I have worked in and know about. Having been inside and outside those organizations, I can say that though there may certainly be outliers among the over 150 Federations in North America, making this claim comes close to being Motzi Shem Ra. Aside from my personal knowledge, to publicly make this kind of claim without facts and figures to back you up is reckless for anyone, but certainly for a Young Israel Rabbi.
So, R’ Fisher’s analysis is as I said, deeply flawed. But he is right that Taaivos play a role for some. He is right that some who say they are orthodox are so in name only (but what does that say about orthodox congregations who fail and fail again to engage these people so that they might be truly “orthodox”?) But hit the nail on the head? More like hit his thumb with the hammer.