For the past century, American Jews have consistently leaned to the left of most other Americans. Exceptions, like Orthodox Jews or recent immigrants, are dwarfed in size and influence by the majority of American Jews who identify as liberal and whose politics have shaped both the modern Democratic Party and the national political culture.

Today the preeminence of this Jewish-liberal alliance is threatened not from the right, but by the rising power and increasing population of Jewish progressives. While their numbers are still small relative to the overall community, left-wing progressive Jews are organized, vocal, engaged, and disproportionately influential on the national political scene. These progressive Jews are appreciably less engaged in Jewish life and with historic Jewish institutions than their more moderate liberal and centrist counterparts. Additionally, they lack the traditional pro-Israel sentiments that have been a hallmark of the Jewish American community for decades. As such, this growing bloc of progressive Jews may fundamentally alter the political priorities and preferences of the Jewish community going forward, with radically new views about social justice and Israel and notably anti-institutional and anti-religious inclinations.

The year 2018 may mark the start of a distinctive wave of progressive organizing and popular identification, both in the larger American society and among American Jews. It was 2018 when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib all ran for Congress and formed the progressive political bloc known as “the Squad.” That same year saw the revival of Jewish Currents, a magazine founded in 1946 and which, in its latest progressive incarnation, has sought to both preserve and transcend its origins as an organ of the Communist Party.

Since 2018, several new or growing Jewish communal groups also signal the rise of the progressives. Repair the World, Truah, Jewish Voice for Peace, Bend the Arc, and If Not Now have all benefited, despite their many ideological and stylistic differences, from a surge in Jewish ideological engagement on the left.

For religious traditionalists and cultural conservatives, this is a self-evidently disturbing phenomenon. Jewish progressives are seen as placing undue emphasis upon the tikkun olam—social justice—dimension of Jewish life, while downplaying other valued aspects of Jewish tradition. They may also be seen as unduly critical of Israel to the point of undermining the political legitimacy of the Jewish state.

But among Democrats the rise of the progressives is a more complicated phenomenon that is interpreted largely based on whether one sees progressivism as merely a more exaggerated and radicalized version of mainline liberal politics or an altogether different and oppositional ideology. The confusion about the meaning and implications of Jewish progressivism derives in part from conceptual ambiguity among progressives themselves. Like many well-established political terms—including conservative and liberal, Republican and Democrat—progressive has changed its meaning over time. It certainly means something different today than it did to Teddy Roosevelt, and his seeking to improve working conditions, advance health and safety standards and labor laws, promote women’s suffrage, counter government corruption, expand land conservation, and curb the power of corporations. Much the same can be said of followers of Wisconsin’s Robert La Follette, a contemporary of Roosevelt’s and a powerful member of Congress who ran a strong third-party campaign for president in 1924.

For many people today, “progressive” simply constitutes a preferred alternative to “liberal” and not much more. Some liberal Democrats identify themselves as “progressive,” using it as a near-synonym for “liberal.” The fact of the matter is that in the political climate of the present, the idea of being “progressive” means “different things to different people” and is used sloppily without precision or a set of coherent beliefs and policy preferences.

There is one area, however, where progressives are especially low scoring: their connection with Israel. As compared with liberals, progressives are less likely to have visited Israel (21% vs. 34%). They are also less likely to feel at least somewhat emotionally attached to Israel, and by quite a large gap—31% vs 50%. The largest difference on Jewish engagement items between progressives and all the others is with respect to saying that “The U.S. is too supportive of Israel”—an answer given by 42% of progressives vs. 10%-11% of the other political groups.

While progressives trail all the other political identity groups in most forms of conventional Jewish engagement, they do exhibit many signs of Jewish identification strength. Illustratively, three-quarters feel a sense of belonging to the Jewish people, most do fast Yom Kippur, and 23% belong to synagogues as compared with 35% of all others. In terms of Jewish engagement levels, then, progressives may be “down,” but they’re not “out.”

And not only do progressives keep pace in some areas, but, with respect to less conventional Jewish activities, progressives actually outscore most others. They read Jewish news and literature more than others. They engage in spiritual experiences, listen to Jewish music, and mark Shabbat, albeit, in all likelihood outside the synagogue. As one might expect, they are “off the charts” with respect to having participated in a social justice activity in the last three months (39% vs. 16% for liberals).

Table 6: Alternative Jewish Activities by Political Identity

The distinctive Jewish engagement patterns for progressives—low scores on conventional measures of Jewish engagement, several of which signify collective activity, alongside high levels in several other areas that are less conventional and more personal—speak to a long-standing question in the study of American Jewry and its patterns of change. For decades, social scientists and community leaders have divided into two camps over some fundamental questions regarding Jewish social change and its implications for the future. In one camp are the “assimilationists.” They interpret the major trends in American Jewry as pointing to diminished engagement in Jewish life and fewer points of distinction between Jews and others. The other camp, dubbed “transformationists,” construes matters differently. They certainly see change and the diminution of forms of Jewish engagement. But they also see the rise of alternative and innovative ways of expressing Jewish ties and commitment.

The rise of Jewish progressives and their patterns of Jewish engagement lends credence to both perspectives. Certainly, as a group, progressives exhibit many signs of assimilation, with far lower rates on a wide variety of Jewish identity indicators. At the same time, they do score higher on several personal measures.

Almost a quarter century ago, a monograph on changing patterns of Jewish identity in America, The Jew Within, observed a turn away from more collective and communal ways of being Jewish and toward expressions that are more private and personal, if not highly idiosyncratic. Thus, one could anticipate declines in such measures as synagogue affiliation, organizational membership, Israel attachment, charitable giving, and other ways in which Jews traditionally act together and express group solidarity. In contrast, other expressions—the kind done on one’s own or in the home such as lighting Shabbat candles and performing particular mitzvot that do not require a community—should hold steady or maybe even increase. Indeed, the decline of the collective and the rise of the personal has arguably fairly well-characterized trends in Jewish identification over recent decades. And they speak to many of the differences between progressive Jews and liberals, moderates, and certainly conservatives.

The key takeaway from the current research is that progressives constitute a political camp distinct from liberals. While progressives are less engaged in almost all aspects of conventional Jewish life, they are more attuned than those with other political identities to Jewish cultural engagement. They are more distant than others from collective- and institution-based Jewish action and they are more engaged in personal Jewish activities undertaken at home or in “third spaces” (outside the home and workplace). Among their most distinctive features is that Jewish progressives are very distant from Israel—even to the point of expressing what some would see as anti-Israel views.

The patterns of Jewish engagement implied by the progressives are noteworthy. For practitioners and policymakers, they suggest an increased emphasis on encouraging the music-news-literature-Shabbat Jewish culture—on its own terms, not as a way of promoting the synagogue-UJA-AIPAC version that progressives and others appear to find alienating.

With increasing numbers of American Jews assuming the progressive label, and with developments in Israel proceeding as they have been recently, the difficulties of navigating the politics of Jews and Jewish life will only intensify. For progressives, Israel is on the wrong side of the narrative and even of history, becoming a key test of ideological purity and commitment. Being highly critical if not overtly hostile toward Israel is not simply one stance among others for Jewish progressives: It is a defining feature of their political identity.

Looking forward, the progressive tendencies that have emerged in schools, workplaces, and the public sphere over the past decade may be slowing. While progressives may be well-organized, and be generating a lot of noise, they are only a small minority in the overall population and surveys are regularly showing that Americans are embracing conservative economic and social positions at levels that have not been seen in more than a decade. Support for progressive hot button issues like Black Lives Matter has widely dropped and more Americans disapprove than approve of colleges considering factors like race and ethnicity in admissions decisions.

Yet, despite the overall course correction, it’s clear that Jewish progressives continue to exert an outsize influence over the mainstream liberal establishment. Moreover, there is little question that the relative influence and numbers of Jews in powerful roles from cultural institutions to higher education and public affairs are in steep decline, and Jewish progressives today are leading the entire Jewish community down that path. This is not an inevitability and the relative numbers here are small, so the rest of the Jewish community—liberals, moderates, and conservatives—must engage now if they do not wish to see their collective power eroded further. This is a textbook example of tyranny of the minority, and like mainstream American politics being dominated by the extremes rather than the large and moderate center. If that center can reassert itself remains an open question.