Who needs rabbinic leadership?

The other day I quoted a 2007 survey performed by YU’s Center for the Jewish Future (in its Community Growth Initiative) on the way that young couples choose a community.

According to the CJF's published report, they surveyed 100 “young families” from Riverdale, Washington Heights, Teaneck, University of Pennsylvania, Einstein, Kew Gardens Hills and Holliswood.

The participants were from early 20s to early 30s, from newlyweds to families with 2-3 children under the age of 5. The great majority of the participants had grown up on Long Island (16.4%) or in Queens (14.4%); the highest-ranking non-NY/NJ hometowns were Chicago, LA and Philadelpha, each with 3.4% of the participants. There was no small community with 2% or more of the results.

As I explained in that previous post, these families ranked the importance of 12 factors for choosing a community. The overall result was:

1. Hashkafa
2. Choice of Day Schools
3. Affordable Housing
4. Job / Higher Education
5. Young Couples
6. Eruv
7. Values
8. Mikvah
9. Convenience
10. Proximity to Family
11. Rabbinic Leadership
12. Kosher Restaurants

Which led one commenter to note how low rabbinic leadership ranks in the survey results. To me, though, this makes perfect sense, for several reasons:

• As the study authors noted, younger families usually have not experienced a need for real pastoral involvement, as in helping people through severe illness or marshaling community resources in a crisis;

• As the study authors also noted, the families interviewed still had strong connections to their rebbeim from yeshiva and may not have seen the need for a communal posek or pastoral authority;

• The study authors also noted that a great percentage of the young families surveyed lived in apartment communities, without any substantive rabbinic presence. [Similarly, many of them ranked eruv and walking-distance mikvah low on the list; presumably they felt they could always build one easily enough, with or without rabbinic leadership?]

• I would also add that the young families surveyed likely had little awareness of what a rabbi does in a community, particularly a small community. Coming from Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens and Teaneck, their experience with community organization and growth would be entirely theoretical. Speaking for myself, I had no clue about the role of a rabbi in a non-New York community.

• And, finally but perhaps most crucially, good rabbinic leadership generally takes place behind the scenes, so that these families, and most families, would likely not be sensitive to it. If a rabbi does his job well – organizes help for people in need discreetly, works well with committees, arranges for shul and community decisions to flow properly – then no one knows what he has done.

So, no, I’m not that surprised by the result. I’m curious, though, as to what those same couples will say if they are re-surveyed five and ten years down the line.