On Surveys (and in the Context of Secular Judaism)

The rabbi’s opening message

On Surveys (and in the Context of Secular Judaism)

Sent on 25/7/2007

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On Surveys (and in the Context of Secular Judaism)

From an article by Kobi Nahshoni on Ynet:

http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3410876,00.html

The “Shulchan Arukh” is also found in homes that are not necessarily halakhically observant, and it is owned by 53% of traditionalists and 24% of secular people. The Gemara, which is actually the source text, is owned by 26% of traditionalists and only 8% of secular people.

Additional analysis of the results indicates that the Gemara and the “Shulchan Arukh” are more popular among the younger generation. 54% of respondents aged 18–24 have a “Shulchan Arukh” at home, and 39% of them own Gemara volumes. For comparison, among those aged 25–34 only 36% own a “Shulchan Arukh,” and only 19% of respondents aged 35–44 have a Gemara at home.

(The second paragraph apparently refers to the general public, so it is not really clear to me what it is saying. Is the difference between young and old among the religious or among the secular? The quality of surveys is often abysmal, but I have very serious doubts as to how much of this has to do with the quality of the articles reporting on the surveys—a subject on which it is better not to speak.)

For some time I have had the feeling that these surveys, as in other areas, are highly suspect (and I say this mildly). For some reason, I know several religious households that do not have a Gemara at home, but I certainly have not seen a quarter of the secular population with a “Shulchan Arukh” in the house (nor 40 percent among the traditionalists), or a Gemara among 8% of the secular population (and even more among the young—perhaps people from religious backgrounds who have since become secular?). As for the “Shulchan Arukh,” since I assume that a very large majority of secular people have never heard of it at all, the reference is probably to the Kitzur Shulchan Arukh, which in one way or another finds its way into many homes. And perhaps “Gemara” means some outdated, crumbling volume of a single tractate that came from a great-grandfather or from one’s school days.

I hear about findings that point to enormous percentages of people suffering from one illness or another, or deviants with one deviation or another, and for some reason I do not know any of them. With illnesses and deviations, of course, these things are more often in the private domain, but still I would expect to know at least some portion of these enormous groups.

I assume that another factor is the identity of the person or body commissioning the survey. For some reason, surveys commissioned by Likud, or by Makor Rishon, tend to the right, and those of the Alignment or Haaretz to the left. Surveys of homosexuals yield enormous percentages for that sexual orientation, and surveys by Yahadut La’am yield enormous percentages of Jewish identity among the general public, and so on. Sometimes the bias runs in the opposite direction: when people want to point to a problem, feminists will show that attitudes toward women are extremely bad and that there are discriminatory positions in the public, and the like.

I lost my trust in these surveys long ago (obviously speaking in general terms), and not only in politics. Can anyone testify from his or her own experience to more than a quarter of young secular households in Israel having a Shulchan Arukh at home? So what is going on here? Is it simply a lie? Is it simply a “survey” (= something commissioned to order)?

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Miky

Link added

Source (the “Stop Here, Think” forum): http://www.bhol.co.il/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=2250582&forum_id=1364