by James Hyman A recent study by the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University found that there are over 6 million people who self identify as Jews in the United States. This is a lot more than we would have predicted there would be in 2011 thirty years ago. But we also know that their identity is thin, in the sense that they don't know very much about their heritage. They also don’t connect to the institutional Jewish community very much, so we call them “unaffiliated.” By that we mean that they don’t pay membership dues, or tuition, or make donations, to Jewish communal institutions. Why are so many drifting away from the institutional Jewish community? There are as many theories as there are Jewish professionals: poor quality education, not enough talented … Continue Reading
Who Are American Jews?
by Leonard Saxe As Jewish traditions go, conducting a decennial National Jewish Population Study under the auspices of the federation movement has a very short history, and it was broken when the Jewish Federations of North America decided not to support a 2010 study. For researchers, the absence of support for a study reflects the weakened state of the national Jewish polity and a lack of commitment to using systematic data. For leaders of the federation movement, the decision reflects frustration with what they perceive as quarrelsome researchers who can’t agree on whether American Jewry is flourishing or withering. More than 60 of these researchers and policy professionals gathered last week at Brandeis University for an extraordinarily open and productive discussion of how to study … Continue Reading
The 2011 Forward 50
Jane Eisner writing in The Jewish Daily Forward: Celebrate the 50 The Forward 50 is a snapshot in time, an impressionist picture of the American Jewish story during a given year. But because it’s an annual project, we also can discern subtle transformations in leadership and community over time. The Forward journalists who assemble this list pride ourselves on searching beyond the expected names and faces to elevate the impactful work of American Jews in arenas that might seem surprising. The baseball field. The concert hall. The scientific laboratory. The refugee camp. This year, the center of gravity in Jewish leadership shifted away from the conventional national lobbying groups and communal organizations and toward more innovative expressions of Jewish life. The culture category again … Continue Reading
The Innovation Sector and the Synagogue
by Ramie Arian Many who are concerned with the continued vibrancy of the Jewish community in North America will be heartened by the recent release of the 2011-12 version of Slingshot’s Resource Guide for Jewish Innovation. The Slingshot Guide highlights 60 innovative organizations - in the words of eJewishPhilanthropy.com - “that work to ensure that Jewish life isn’t left behind as the world moves forward.” Indeed, the Guide presents a rich array of exciting projects that span the diversity of the Jewish community, putting forward an inspiring portrait of the so-called “innovation sector” in Jewish life. Among the Slingshot Guide’s many notable features, one in particular stands out: the near-total absence of any mention of the synagogue. The synagogue has long been - and … Continue Reading
Socio-Demography Conference Opens Today
Leading researchers and policymakers gather today to discuss the current state of knowledge about the U.S. Jewish community and consider how the findings of socio-demographic research can be used. Bringing together leading scholars and policy makers for two days of intensive discussion of the state of the Jewish community, the Socio-Demography of American Jewry conference opens today at Brandeis University. The Conference, hosted by the Steinhardt Social Research Institute and the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis, is co-sponsored by academic research centers in Israel and the United States, the Association for the Scientific Study of Jewry and the Pew Forum on Religion and Policy. Previously, the Jewish community sponsored a decennial survey of American Jewry, both to assess … Continue Reading
New York City’s Power Synagogues
from the New York Observer: Big Machers: New York City’s Power Congregations New York City is unquestionably the metropolitan epicenter of Modern Jewry, a long way from the once humble home of generations-old immigrants who came from the “Old World” - as our grandparents tell us - to the one American city almost explicitly associated with the religion, its people, and its culture. Its place as such has been documented extensively in literature and all forms of pop culture - Where to start? - and is commonly the center of Jewishness and Jewish figureheads in the news. For many Jews, a trip to Manhattan is just as much a birthright as one to Israel, as this is very likely the place their ancestry passed through in order to continue having one. click image above for slide-show … Continue Reading
Are Jewish Sororities an Untapped Opportunity?
by Susan Weidman Schneider I’ve been revisiting a 1997 article in Lilith entitled “Jewish Latency,” featured on the cover as “The Jews We Lose.” It’s all about a project Lilith created with the help of a grant from New York UJA-Federation to engage New York Jews in their 20s, just out of college, who found no niche in the Jewish world after having felt very empowered in their campus years. David Cygielman, CEO of Moishe House, writing in eJP earlier this month declared that the Jewish community too often thinks of people this age as tools for solving “problems” in Jewish life; he noted that this approach “places young adults as unknowing subjects in an experiment they never signed up for.” But ownership is the key to engaging this cohort, concluded that Lilith … Continue Reading
Foundation for Jewish Camp Surveys the Future
by Abigail Pickus Enrollment in nonprofit Jewish summer camps in North America is steadily increasing - and there are more innovative Jewish camping experiences than ever before, according to the recently released strategic plan of The Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC). In addition to surveying past years, the plan focuses on the strategic direction for the next five years (2011-2016) with the goals of increasing affordability; fostering greater connections between camps and Jewish schools, communities and synagogues; increasing awareness and creating innovative programming. “Jewish summer camp is higher on the communal list today across the country than ever before and a lot of that is because of the great work being done by local Federations and synagogues,” said Jeremy Fingerman, … Continue Reading
The Emerging Debate about “the Jewish Vote”
by Steven Windmueller, Ph.D. Over the past few days, in light of recent polling results, the election outcome in New York’s 9th Congressional District and a myriad of articles in such publications as New York Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, a national discussion has resurfaced related to the status of the Jewish vote. Are Jews likely to vote Republican in the 2012 election? One can track predictions of such a voting shift since the 1950’s. In past presidential elections, including the Carter-Reagan contest of 1980 and the Bush-Kerry race of 2004 as well as the 2008 Obama-McCain election, we were regularly introduced to this question. Five elements ought to be considered in making any forecasts or projections about voter behavior within the Jewish community. … Continue Reading
New Initiatives Channel Masa Alumni into Activism and Leadership Roles
With 11,000 participants this year - up from 3,000 in its inception year in 2004 - Masa Israel Journey has opened a new alumni division, and has placed regional representatives in cities throughout the United States in partnership with local Federations. The alumni division's goals, which include a special focus on Birthright alumni, who make up 56% of post-college participants, are to pipeline these Jewish young adults into leadership positions in their communities and empower them to become lifelong advocates and activists for Israel. These goals were created following a June 2011 survey of Masa Israel alumni in which 86% of those surveyed expressed interest in attending Jewish and Israel-related events, 82% in advocating for Israel, 81% in volunteering in a Jewish organization, and 59% in … Continue Reading
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