Is Being Jewish Worth the Money?

A labor economist has written a new book subjecting Jewish identity to a formal cost-benefit analysis. Attempting to sort through the decisions made by American Jews about synagogue membership or whether to send their children to day school, she proceeds on the theory that such abstractions as community and religion are themselves “goods” (like toasters and televisions). She even applies the same measurement to make sense of the resurgence of Orthodoxy. Steven I. Weiss writes: