Today, a very large proportion of American Jews—especially the young, and especially the non-Orthodox—consider themselves “culturally” or “ethnically” Jewish. Major Jewish organizations devote themselves overwhelmingly to pursuits not defined by the Jewish religion. To Elliot Cosgrove, the possibility of Jewish continuity without Judaism is unthinkable:
[A]s important as nonreligious expressions of Judaism may be, they are entirely insufficient to transmit the riches of Judaism from one generation to the next. In many cases, the secular commitments of American Jews serve as compensatory guilt offerings hiding paper-thin religious identities. In all cases, they presuppose a commitment to Judaism that, for much of American Jewry, is not as present as we would care to admit. My concern is that ramified effects of a Judaism without the foundation of religion will prove to be our undoing, a giant sinkhole into which the hard-earned superstructure of American Jewry will collapse.
It is only by way of mitzvot, the positive acts of Jewish identification, the language and behaviors of the Jewish religion, that Judaism will survive. Mitzvot are the mystic chords, the commitments and commandments by which one Jew connects to another—and, belief permitting, to God. When I put on t’filin, when I study Torah, when I refrain from eating from one side of the menu in favor of the other, I am, to use [Rabbi Abraham Joshua] Heschel’s language, taking a leap of action, giving expression to a vertical relationship to God.
Even for those to whom appeals to the divine are a leap too far, a life of mitzvot remains the most assured means to inspire individual and collective Jewish identity and continuity—a connection to the Jewish people by way of religious expression. We light the same Shabbat candles, we sing the same (or similar) prayers, we read the same books, and we observe the same festivals as the Jews who have come before us, those who are alive today, and those who will come after us.
Read more on Sapir: https://sapirjournal.org/continuity/2021/10/continuity-requires-religion/