“Modern Orthodox Jews have America’s highest rates of ‘spousal homogamy’…”

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Modern Orthodox Jews have America’s highest rates of “spousal homogamy”: a sociological term for husbands and wives who have attained similar levels of educational and occupational achievement. In turn, they provide their approximately three children per family—double the fertility rate of non-Orthodox Jews—with extraordinarily high levels of Jewish education. Modern Orthodox girls and women pray regularly, and many engage in the study of biblical and rabbinic texts; outside home, school, and synagogue, both men and women devote significant amounts of time to all sorts of Jewish activities. Although Wertheimer notes “defection to more liberal movements,” Modern Orthodoxy’s retention rates have more than doubled since the 1960s, climbing even higher among younger adults.

Sylvia Barack Fishman, “Let Us Now Praise Modern Orthodoxy”, Mosaic (August 2014) [http://mosaicmagazine.com/supplemental/2014/08/let-us-now-praise-modern-orthodoxy/]

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