For several years in succession, I concluded a freshman lecture course on religion at Stanford University with an informal poll of the students enrolled. The final question asked for a show of hands on whether the students felt some obligation to their families to carry on the religious traditions in which they had been raised or regarded this as a purely personal choice that was entirely up to them. The latter, of course, won overwhelmingly ­a mere handful of the hundred-plus students in the room indicated any responsibility to family. They were generally of Asian ancestry.

Voluntarism, autonomy, that "sovereign self"­these are the rules of the game. As an informant told sociologist Steven M. Cohen and me when we interviewed American Jews on these and other questions in the late 1990s, "If you want to be involved in something that's very dear to your heart, that's fine, but don't sit there and tell me about something that is clearly an option in life, that I have to be doing it, and I should be doing it, because I am Jewish." If he doesn't like it, he will not choose it. If he changes his mind about it, he will leave.

This means that Jewish institutions have to provide reasons for observance on many levels at every stage to every participant; they must make accommodation for the widespread conviction that what Jews for centuries had regarded as obligatory ­and many of us still do regard it that way ­is "an option in life." What is more, we must contend with the view that what has long been seen as a responsibility of a community, a tradition, is entirely an individual matter of concern to the individual alone. We must also contend with the fact ­overwhelmingly evident in my polls of my students ­that many are now raised in multiple traditions, or in none. “What shall I do," one student asked me poignantly. "Choose a tradition at random?"

No tradition or community can long survive rampant individualism ­unless it proves so attractive, so compelling, so enriching, that individuals who had walked through its door proclaiming their autonomy get caught up in genuine community and undertake responsibilities as a result that they would previously have rejected. Many synagogues, schools, camps, and other Jewish organizations have successfully persuaded Jews, one by one, to do precisely that. It is no small part of our job at The Jewish Theological Seminary ­training ground for Jewish educators of all denominations and for clergy identified with the Conservative Movement in Judaism ­to educate Jewish leaders who are able to cope with this challenge and know how to turn it from a problem to an advantage. Commitment generated voluntarily may prove more long-lasting and fervent than commitment won as a matter of course.

Community offers gifts that individuals acting alone cannot imagine. The diversity and pluralism of America offer opportunities for faith and spirit that are unprecedented. This is not a time to bemoan the loss of the certainties that religion once took for granted, but to embrace the new reality with both hands and offer the sort of meaning and community that this generation of Americans, like countless human beings in many cultures, have regarded as an offer they cannot refuse.