A groundbreaking study from the Orthodox Union’s Center for Communal Research (CCR) sheds light on the lives of individuals who choose to leave the Orthodox community, while also prompting crucial conversations about the community’s approach to religious engagement and inclusion.
The CCR aims to help the OU, and beyond, to better understand and serve the Jewish community through both qualitative and quantitative data. In the winter of 2023, the CCR team, together with Dr. Moshe Krakowski, Director of Doctoral Studies at the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education, conducted the first of a two-part study, and collected qualitative data via interviews with 29 “religious switchers”—15 women and 14 men, ages 18 to 43, who left Orthodoxy. Participants came from Modern Orthodox, Yeshivish, Chabad, and Chasidic backgrounds, and live in the U.S., Europe, and Israel. The interviews averaged over an hour in length.
In an effort to strengthen Orthodoxy and to better support community members who have left, or are considering leaving, the study, “Attrition and Connection in American Orthodox Judaism: Journeys Within and Out of Orthodox Judaism,” explores the experiences of individuals who leave or shift within Orthodoxy, how people’s social connections impact attrition, and at what life stage people start considering leaving.
“The phenomenon of attrition from the ranks of Orthodoxy raises many questions about the extent to which our families, schools, and communities are succeeding in meeting [the] goals [of assuring] Jewish identity, engagement, and continuity,” writes OU Executive Vice President Rabbi Moshe Hauer, in the study’s foreword.
“These questions,” he adds, “are essential to the work of every one of the OU’s programmatic departments, all of which focus on enhancing the current religious experience of Jews and supporting the education and engagement of the next generation. They are also the questions that preoccupy parents, educators, and communal leaders seeking to understand our successes and failures.”
Rabbi Hauer expressed gratitude on behalf of the OU to the study’s participants, whose insights, he hopes, will raise communal awareness.
Although an in-depth qualitative study of this kind cannot demonstrate how common any factor that impacts religious trajectories may be, Dr. Krakowski notes that the interviews do allow us to see the mechanics of leaving in a way that a more superficial survey would likely miss.
“Our deep dive into these participants’ lives allows us to build a range of ‘models’ of leaving, unpacking their disparate experiences to better understand how those experiences shape their lives,” he says. “This gives us something called ‘analytic generalizability’—a way to gain a conceptual understanding of the phenomenon of leaving Orthodoxy that can be applied to a wide variety of contexts and cases.”
Dr. Krakowski adds, “For example, most of our participants began questioning Orthodoxy before completing high school—some as early as middle school. Because we understand how and why this was the case in our subjects’ lives, we can identify other people and other contexts where it makes sense to assume early questioning is present.”
Among the concerns participants frequently raised were their perception of Orthodoxy’s insularity, rigidity, and intolerance, concerns about feminism and Orthodoxy, and the consequences meted out for social and religious deviations.
“I will never forget the conversation I had with my mother,” one participant shared. “I said to her, ‘I don’t think you have to have a beard and wear a white shirt to be a good person.’ I asked her, ‘If I would come to your house wearing jeans, would you still love me?’ She said ‘No.’”
Many participants experienced conflicting parental beliefs or rapid religious changes during their childhood. Dr. Krakowski explains, “One parent might have been charedi, while the other didn’t keep Shabbos, or parents changed their religious orientation quickly, leaving other members of the family scrambling to keep up. For example, a family might barely keep kosher one day and keep Chalav Yisrael the next.”
Dr. Krakowsi adds, “These types of religious misalignment, which are not just on a more-or less-religious scale, but also on a differently-religious scale, destabilize and create dissonance for people, leading them to explore other types of religious possibilities and ways of living.”
Participants largely felt different from their peers socially, religiously, or financially, leading to a sense of exclusion. Many switched communities or schools, which either contributed to, or exacerbated, their sense of isolation.
One participant recalled the community’s response when her children switched schools: “We ended up putting our kids in public school, and that completely changed how the community responded to us, connected with us… people wouldn’t let their children play with ours. People were not inclusive…[they] stopped saying good Shabbos…they didn’t want to socialize with us.”
Dr. Krakowski notes that although he didn’t ask about religious authority figures, almost all participants touched upon experiences with religious leaders that significantly impacted their connection to Orthodoxy.
“They spoke about both uplifting and deeply negative experiences, primarily with rabbis, but also with female religious leaders, which had a lasting effect on them,” he says.
Negative experiences included rabbis who bullied, belittled, or excluded them due to perceived deviance. Some participants also cited unethical or inappropriate behavior from rabbis, which often intensified their negative views of Orthodoxy. Some rabbis were dismissive or reluctant to address participants’ religious inquiries.
One of the study’s main takeaways for rabbis and educators is the imperative to identify those who are questioning as far in advance as possible.
“Questioning starts early,” says CCR Principal Researcher Dr. Rachel Ginsberg. “Waiting until the end of high school to evaluate whether students are connecting is too late. Listening, validating concerns, and offering space for exploration is critical.”
The findings suggest that supporting families with religious misalignments, especially ba’alei teshuvahand converts, may also prevent attrition. As for how these families may be supported, Ginsberg notes that the study is the first step in a broader communal conversation.
“One of the primary goals of the study is to provide data that can inform our understanding of why individuals leave the Orthodox community,” she says. “Sharing this critical information with the Jewish community and shining a light on the issues that need addressing is a critical step in advancing communal solutions. The data points us in the right direction, but it does not leave us with concrete, detailed solutions; for that, we look to the entire Jewish community to partner with us to develop innovative, and effective programming and support to ensure Orthodox continuity and a thriving Jewish future.”
Despite its sobering findings, the study also reveals promising news: of the 29 participants, some returned to Orthodox observance and many maintain strong ties with Orthodox family members, friends, Jewish traditions, and texts despite leaving Orthodoxy. Some continue to keep Shabbos, daven, and attend Orthodox shuls. Others wish for their children to pursue an Orthodox lifestyle, should they be inclined, and some even send their children to Orthodox schools.
“The fact that many who leave the Orthodox community still feel connected to Orthodoxy is an important insight,” says Dr. Ginsberg. “It has the potential to reshape the way we engage in discourse around this topic. Talking about attrition in a much more inclusive and sensitive way could keep people closer, as opposed to pushing them further away.”
The study recommends that Orthodox institutions, like shuls and schools, adopt a more inclusive mindset and foster tolerance for others’ differences, welcoming those who leave and keeping the door open for their return.
Rabbi Hauer emphasizes that the question the Orthodox community must address is: What are we prepared to do differently?
“If we truly want to make meaningful, positive change regarding American Orthodox Jewish attrition, our community will need to pursue the data that will inform that change and commit to act based on what we find,” he says. “All of us will do well to read this report, study it, and take a long and honest look in the mirror.”
To read the full CCR study, “Attrition and Connection in American Orthodox Judaism: Journeys Within and Out of Orthodox Judaism,” visit https://research.ou.org/attrition/
