Debate Rises Over Jewish Census

At Shalom Hunan, one of the newer restaurants in the mid-Wilshire district, the menu serves all the Chinese standards.

But in a twist, it's strictly kosher. The spring rolls? Vegetarian, not pork. And business is booming.

The kippah-clad crowds that jam into Shalom Hunan--particularly on Saturday nights, after the Jewish Sabbath ends--vividly illustrate a revitalization in recent years in the ranks of Los Angeles' Orthodox Jews. Other signs: a baby boom in Orthodox families, surging enrollment in Orthodox schools and an increase in the number of Orthodox synagogues.

But a census conducted by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles says that the proportion of Orthodox households actually has slipped over the last two decades, from 5.2% of the Jewish population in 1979 to 4.3% last year.

Released earlier this month, the federation's figures have sparked a furious debate in Orthodox circles--as well as in the broader Jewish community in Los Angeles and across the United States--over the present import of Orthodoxy and its future vitality.

The debate centers on politics and power, both in Southern California and on the national and international scene. It touches on matters as diverse as the allocation of money to local charities and the provocative "who is a Jew" issue relating to conversions.

The federation's survey shows not only that the Orthodox population is slipping, but also that the more liberal Reform movement is growing--from 37.2% of the area's Jewish population in 1979, the year of the federation's previous census, to 39.9% in 1997. The overall size of the Los Angeles Jewish population has remained roughly stable.

The survey also indicates that nearly half the households surveyed had shifted away from the denomination their parents favored; that shift, according to the survey, has had a "major impact" downward on the size of the Orthodox movement.

The dispute over the federation's numbers offers a telling lesson in the power of perception.

If the reality, according to the census, is that the Orthodox population is slipping, the perception in the Orthodox community is distinctly otherwise. Many Orthodox rabbis and lay leaders view the federation's findings with bewilderment or suspicion, some with outright hostility.

"I find it baffling," Rabbi Baruch Kupfer, head of an Orthodox school, Maimonides Academy, on the Westside, said of the census.