From its 2013 survey of American Jewry, the Pew Foundation has released newly analyzed data pertaining specifically to the Orthodox population. Pew notes the rapid growth of Orthodox Jewry relative to the overall American Jewish population, and the rapid growth of the ultra-Orthodox relative to the overall Orthodox population. It also finds that American Orthodox Jews are increasingly leaning to the political right. David Bernstein comments on what this means about the way Jews relate to both Israel and America:

[A]mong the non-Orthodox Jewish population, the percentage who don’t practice the religion and don’t meaningfully affiliate with the community is growing. The population of active Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist Jews is shrinking, especially among the young. It is . . . among the former unaffiliated group that lack of interest or hostility to Israel is concentrated. When you hear . . . that young Jews are increasingly disaffected from Israel, it’s not only inaccurate, but refers mainly to [these] secular individuals with overwhelmingly left-wing politics, not raised in the Jewish religion, who still consider themselves at least partially Jewish.

Given the likely demographic future of this group—bluntly, it’s destined to have few Jewish descendants—relative to the broader Jewish community, the upshot is that the American Jewish population, with the exception of the large anti-Zionist Satmar ḥasidic sect, over time will grow increasingly close to, not distant from, Israel. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this is happening already. . . .

[Furthermore], theological, social, and even economic conservatism is going to become an increasingly important element of American Jewish life. . . . For what it’s worth, I almost never saw a kippah at conservative or libertarian political or intellectual events twenty years ago, but I see them all the time today, for example, at Federalist Society events. So not only are Orthodox Jews a growing right-leaning demographic, they appear to be getting more involved in general American political culture.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.