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The Conversation
The Conversation
Laura Yares, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Michigan State University

Many Americans are moving away from congregations, but not necessarily from religion – movies, plays, art and social media fill the gap

Theatergoers arrive for 'Leopoldstadt,' a play about several generations of a Jewish family in Vienna, at Wyndham's Theatre in London in 2020. Isabel Infantes/AFP via Getty Images

“Emma,” a young Jewish woman who we met in 2019, didn’t belong to a synagogue. She didn’t have a Jewish partner. She didn’t observe Jewish rituals regularly. On most surveys about religion, she would not seem very engaged with Judaism.

But as Emma talked about what she did in her free time, a very different picture began to emerge. She visited Jewish websites and enjoyed listening to Jewish music. She read books about Jewish topics and had recently attended a retreat for young Jewish adults to learn Torah while also doing yoga.

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