MAURICE AND MARILYN COHEN CENTER FOR MODERN JEWISH STUDIES and the HADASSAH-BRANDEIS INSTITUTE Matrilineal ascent/ Patrilineal descent THE GENDER IMBALANCE IN AMERICAN JEWISH LIFE

Sylvia Barack Fishman, Ph.D. and Daniel Parmer, MA Brandeis University, 2008

This research and publication have been supported through a grant from The Harold Grinspoon Foundation Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life ii

Table of Contents List of Tables and Figures ...... iii Introduction: What Is Gender Imbalance, and Why Is It a Problem? ...... 1 Is Feminization of Religion “Natural” or Inevitable? ...... 2 The Problem Is “Patrilineal Descent”—Not “Matrilineal Ascent” ...... 4 The Other Jewish Gender Imbalance: Traditional Exclusion of Women ...... 6 Studying Gender Imbalance and Its Implications ...... 7 Triangulating Numbers, Interviews, and Cultural Context...... 9 One: Distinctive Jewish Gender Roles and How They Changed ...... 12 Historical Jewish Societies Reserved Public Religious Roles for Men ...... 14 Women as Historical Brokers for Modernization ...... 17 The 1960s Challenge Middle Class Mores and American Jewish Patterns ...... 20 Women Recent Brokers for Jewish Rituals, Ceremonies, Liturgical Skills ...... 22 Cultural Explorations of Jewishness Often Led by Women, or by Men Trained in Orthodox Settings ...... 27 Two: Gendered Thinking About Judaism in Jewish Homes ...... 31 Relationship with Organized Religion Varies by Marriage Type ...... 34 Women More Likely to Think Religion Is Necessary...... 36 Men More Likely to See Religion as Unnecessary ...... 37 Who Makes Decisions About Your Child’s Religion? ...... 42 Beyond the Judeo-Christian Blend: How Unique Is Judaism? ...... 44 How Important Is Being Jewish to You? ...... 44 Three: Doing Jewish—Synagogue and Ceremony as the “World of Our Mothers” 47 Religious Observances in Inmarried Families Reflect Judaism and Gender ...... 52 Gender Affects Ritual Observances in Intermarried Families ...... 53 Brit Milah in Inmarried and Intermarried Jewish Households ...... 56 Four: Peoplehood, Social Networks, Israel Attachments...... 57 Ethnic Social Capital ...... 57 Denominational Differences in Jewish Social Capital ...... 61 Goals for Raising Children and Brokering Jewish Family Connections ...... 64 Jewish Particularism and American Diversity ...... 66 Conclusion: Engendering Jewish Connections ...... 68 Growing Evidence for Gendered Needs ...... 71 Major Research Findings ...... 75 Women ...... 75 Men ...... 76 Men and Women ...... 76 Research and Policy Implications ...... 77

iii Fishman and Parmer, 2008

List of Tables and Figures

Table 1: Gender differences among Jews in 51 Nations ...... 3

Figure 1: Inmarried Jewish Parents by Importance of Religion “Very Important” ...... 40 Figure 2: Intermarried Jewish Parents by Importance of Religion “Very Important” ...... 41 Figure 3 Inmarried Jewish Parents in Current Wing of Judaism by Primary Decision Maker of Child’s Religion ...... 42 Figure 4: Intermarried Jewish Parents in Current Wing of Judaism by Primary Decision Maker of Child’s Religion ...... 43 Figure 5: Inmarried Jewish Parents in Current Wing of Judaism by Importance of Being Jewish “Very Important” ...... 45 Figure 6: Intermarried Jewish Parents by Importance of Being Jewish ...... 46 Figure 7: Inmarried Jewish Parents in Current Wing of Judaism by Frequency of Synagogue Attendance “Weekly of More” ...... 50 Figure 8: Inmarried Jewish Parents by Frequency of Synagogue Attendance “Never” ...... 51 Figure 9: Intermarried Jewish Parents by Frequency of Synagogue Attendance ...... 52 Figure 10: Inmarried Jewish Parents’ Ritual Observance by Affiliation and Gender ...... 54 Figure 11: Intermarried Jewish Parents’ Ritual Observance by Wing of Judaism and Gender ...... 55 Figure 12: Intermarried Jewish Parents in Current Wing of Judaism by Brit Milah for Male Child ...... 55 Figure 13: Inmarried Jewish Parents in Current Wing of Judaism by Proportion of Jewish Friends ...... 59 Figure 14: Intermarried Jewish Parents in Current Wing of Judaism by Proportion of Jewish Friends ...... 60 Figure 15: Inmarried Jewish Parents in Current Wing of Judaism by Ever Been to Israel ...... 62 Figure 16: Inmarried Jewish Parents in Current Wing of Judaism by Care About Israel “Very Important”...... 63

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 1

Introduction: What Is Gender Imbalance, and Why Is It a Problem?

hree decades ago writer William lower rates of ethnic and religious social Novak panicked American capital than Jewish women, as women with gloomy predictions characterized by involvement with T 1 of The Great American Man Shortage. distinctively Jewish activities and A few years later British feminist connections with Jewish social psychologist Lynne Segal asked, Is the networks. Ethnic social capital—defined Future Female?2 Their titles eerily either by non-religious, secular, or by foreshadowed the fact that today religious cultural activities and American Jewish boys and men have networks—characterizes American fewer connections to Jews and Judaism Jewish women far more than men. Men than girls and women in almost every are less likely to value Jewishness in the venue and in every age, from school age United States and worldwide as a children through the adult years. The distinctive culture, and less likely to visit descent of male interest is evident not Israel. Jewish women more than Jewish only in domestic Judaism, as expected, men have mostly Jewish friends and but also in public Judaism, religious describe themselves as affiliated with leadership, and secular ethnic one of the wings of American Judaism. attachments. In Fall 2005 women Jewish men have weaker family ties than outnumbered men two to one in the Jewish women, and are less likely to stay entering rabbinical class in the Reform in close touch with Jewish family movement’s Hebrew Union College- members than Jewish women. Jewish Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), men are less likely to self-identify with a for example.3 Nationally, girls and wing of Judaism, and far more than women outnumber men in weekly non- Jewish women call themselves “secular, Orthodox worship services, in adult “cultural,” or “just Jewish.” Men invest education classes, in volunteer less of their human capital into leadership positions, and in Jewish Jewishness, as we will shortly discuss. cultural events. Only in lucrative, high This is a matter of deep concern, because status executive positions in the Jewish minority groups with high amounts of communal world do men outnumber ethnic capital are much more successful women.4 at transmitting their culture to the next Perhaps most disturbingly, Jewish generation. men rank lower than Jewish women in The majority of American Jews secular ethnic, social, family or espouse equality as an important value, peoplehood connections as well. As we but Jewish life today is not gender equal. will show, Jewish men have measurably When it comes to gender equality or 2 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

gender balance, contemporary American quantitative study of religiousness Jewish life is caught between a rock and routinely includes sex as a control a hard place: Traditional public Judaism variable,” Stark articulates the was and is dominated by men, while supposedly universal assumption.5 While contemporary liberal American Judaism, some researchers assert innate although supposedly egalitarian, is psychological leanings are the basis for visibly and substantially feminized. female religiosity, others suggest Jewish activities from the broad differential socialization creates gender grassroots to the elite echelons of liberal differences, arguing: “men are assigned Jewish religious leadership have become [by society] roles that are more devalued, a typical result of instrumental than socio-emotional and feminization. Thus, boys and men as a thus are less concerned with problems of group value feminized Jewish activities morality,” but women are more and environments less, and have fewer relational in their development and more connections to Jews and Judaism. inclined toward religiosity.6 The theoretical assumption that Is Feminization of Religion women are innately more religious than “Natural” or Inevitable? men has led scholars and most policy The American Jewish community makers to virtually ignore the has been slow to react to the feminization of American Jewish life. feminization of Jewish classrooms, After all, their attitude seems to be, if synagogues, social networks and greater religiosity is universally “hard leadership positions in part because wired” into women, how can strategies female prominence in cultural and to increase male involvement make a religious realms seems “natural” on the difference? However, feminization is American scene. A preponderance of neither universal nor inevitable, an female worshippers is characteristic of important new study shows. Examining many American Christian churches, and the intersection of gender and religion popular cultural all-American imagery around the world, D. Paul Sullins (2006) often depicts men fishing and watching uses international data revealing that in football games while women attend to religions other than Christianity— church business. especially Judaism and Islam—men are In social scientific theoretical often equally or more religious than discussions as well, American scholars women. Outside the United States, have long asserted that women are more gendered approaches to religion are “religious” than men through essential diverse. Men, rather than women, are psychological differences or social often perceived as more religious. Most conditioning. “By now it is so taken for salient to our subject, “Worldwide, there granted that women are more religious is no measure of religiousness on which than men that every competent Jewish females

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 3

Table 1: Gender differences among Jews in 51 Nations

Jews in World Values Survey (WVS, 1995-97), N=1,183

% members synagogue or religious organization Men 63% Women 62%

% attending services weekly or more Men 69% Women 53%

% who say religion is important in their life Men 87% Women 87%

% who believe in God Men 94% Women 94%

% who believe in life after death Men 78% Women 71%

% who call themselves “a religious person” Men 91 % Women 93% Source: Adapted from Sullins “Gender and Religion: Deconstructing Universality, Constructing Diversity” American Journal of Sociology (2006, p. 845)

score higher than Jewish males. Jewish ignore men’s more activity-based men report significantly higher rates of expressions of religiosity. Researchers synagogue attendance and belief in life word questions in ways that direct “the after death than do Jewish women; respondent to ignore attendance at otherwise, there is no sex difference in religious services or ritual—probably the religiousness among Jews,” Sullins most basic form of participation in comments.7 almost all religions—in assessing his or If the international evidence her own religiousness.” This research demonstrates that women are not bias is particularly problematic when necessarily more religious than men, studying Jewish religious culture, which why do American social scientists traditionally places enormous emphasis continue to produce findings that on religious activities, and relatively “women are more religious than men on little, sporadic emphasis on belief. In the every measure of religiosity,” as Walter work of such prominent gender and and Davie (1998) put it? Part of the religion researchers as Stark and Miller, answer lies in their research bias. Many “only affective, personal piety, not recent studies focus on religious belief institutional participation, ritual practice, rather than on religious activities. Survey or the fulfillment of related norms is instruments are constructed in a way what count as religiousness,” as Sullins which emphasizes—and defines as points out.8 “religious”—women’s psychological Gender imbalance regarding expressions of religiosity. Meanwhile, religious activities is not innate. When questionnaires typically downplay or gender imbalance occurs in the 4 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

American Jewish community it needs to their reported commitment to raising be studied so that future policies and Jewish children. The 2005 Boston study plans can be based on targeted research indicated that almost nine out of ten data. Jewish mothers married to non-Jewish men said they intended to raise their The Problem Is “Patrilineal children as Jews, compared to about half Descent”—Not “Matrilineal of Jewish fathers married to non-Jewish women. The families least likely to raise Ascent” Jewish children are those in which the Gender imbalance is a critical Jewish parent self-describes as problem in American Jewish life not “secular.” Both local and national because women are more active but reports indicate that the fastest growing because men are less active. Men’s Jewish population that describes itself as decreased interest in Jews and Judaism “secular,” “cultural,” “atheistic” or walks hand in hand with apathy toward “agnostic” is intermarried Jewish men.10 creating Jewish households and raising As sociologist Steven M. Cohen remarks Jewish children, as well as lower levels about data from two Synovate/Market of Jewish education, less synagogue Facts studies, “women are more attendance, less organizational Jewishly engaged than men,” and there involvement, and lower participation is “a relative absence of men” in almost both in Jewish cultural activities and all Jewish environments.11 Jewish rituals. When dating non-Jewish Little serious research and men, Jewish women tend to pro-actively discussion have been addressed to the declare their intention to raise Jewish current gender imbalance in Jewish life, children. Jewish men, in contrast, tend to partially because such analysis can be be reactive in inter-dating and misinterpreted as a call for women to intermarriage, not talking about the retreat from Jewish involvements. religion of the household or the eventual Current patterns contradict thousands of children until children are born or ready years of Jewish history, during which for religious school. Although rates of men were the public and signifying intermarriage are now similar for Jewish Jews—and during which women were men and women, Jewish men often take often marginalized or shut out of the lead in dating non-Jews, articulating organized intellectual activities and negative attitudes toward Jewish women, public Judaism. For some, the current while Jewish women often turn to non- prominence of Jewish girls and women Jewish men in response to the perceived might seem to be a simple righting of negativity in men of their own religious millennia of wrongs. The increased group.9 activity of women in Jewish milieus also The gendered Jewish-connections seems “natural” because it conforms to gap between Jewish men and women American Christian norms of (1) married to non-Jews is most dramatic in

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 5

ethnoreligious attachment being defined ameliorate that crisis—and transforming by spiritual feelings and beliefs, rather contemporary Judaism for men and for than by activities; and (2) these spiritual women in the process. What feelings and beliefs being perceived as distinguished the Jewish women’s essentially female, rather than male movement was that it was both a grass- attributes. Thus, the growing roots movement and a leaders’ feminization of liberal Judaism has often movement, from which it derived great “slipped under the radar” of Jewish power and salience for broad spectrums communal attention because these of Jewish women. Those Jewish women patterns are typical especially among brilliantly succeeded in creating girls- Protestant populations in the United and women-only environments—“Bat States. Mitzvah—it’s a girl thing!”; Rosh Some observers have asserted that Hodesh Groups; Adult Bat Mitzvah; the retreat of men from American Jewish Women’s classes in reading Torah, life does not comprise a problem.12 Haftorah and the five Megilot; women’s Rabbi Rona Shapiro, among others, Talmud school and classes; and strongly asserted in a much-discussed numerous other activities. op-ed piece in The Forward (January 5, In contrast, Jewish men—with the 2007), that the so-called “Boy Crisis” in exception of Judaic scholars, artists and American Jewish life is a fraud, a kind musicians, and entrepreneurial religious of “crying wolf.” She asks rhetorically, leaders—were much less involved in Thirty-five years ago when similar grass-roots movements. women were not ordained as rabbis, Moreover, many suggest that when girls in the Conservative psychologically girls and women are less movement celebrated a bat mitzvah likely to feel self-conscious if they enter on Friday night, when Orthodox these classes as a tabula rasa. Boys and girls did not receive an education men, conversely, are much more likely remotely comparable to that of their to feel on display or uncomfortable if brothers, when women were not they perceive themselves as not called to the Torah for aliyot or competent where they think people will allowed on the bimah at all—where assume that they are competent. They were the headlines proclaiming a often shy away from the very classes girl crisis?13 that attract girls and women. As Rabbi In fact, thirty-five years ago in the Jeffrey Salkin notes, “both men and early 1970s, (as we discuss more fully in women are looking for meaning in their Chapter One) Jewish feminists in the lives. People don’t want to experience United States and Israel were doing the world as a chaotic mess; they want to exactly that—creating headlines see there are roadmaps out there.” proclaiming a girl crisis, working Women—because of their consciousness together on multifaceted fronts to of centuries of marginalization—worked 6 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

hard to create their own paths of access. The Other Jewish Gender But men have difficulty talking about Imbalance: Traditional these needs and seeking answers, he Exclusion of Women argues: The deep inner needs of men This feminization of American aren’t being taken as seriously in Jewish life reverses a patriarchal gender our Movement (Reform Judaism) as gap which characterized Jewish societies they need to be. Women, on the throughout most of Jewish history, as we other hand, are, in general, getting detail in Chapter One. By excluding more of their needs met in the women from public prayer and rabbinic synagogue context. Women have leadership, traditional Jewish societies Rosh Chodesh, where they can mark historically have silenced “half the the first day of the Jewish month genius of the Jewish people,” in Cynthia through study, ritual, and mutual Ozick’s words, “a loss numerically support. They also have numerous greater than a hundred pogroms; yet opportunities for public activism on Jewish literature and history report not 15 behalf of women’s issues. And there one wail, not one tear.” Not only does is a growing body of women’s the patriarchal system make little girls spiritual literature that would fill (and many bigger ones) feel excluded several shelves at a bookstore. and often alienated from the meaningful Jewish women have led us in a action, but women’s non-participation liturgical revolution that has has produced non-representational prompted a rethinking of the very venues for rabbinic decision making, names and attributes of God. In with sometimes tragic results (as in the comparison, what new rituals and case of agunot, women unable to texts have been created to express extricate themselves from marriage themselves as men?14 vows). In less liberal Orthodox The two-sided, gender imbalance synagogues women are often among American Jews is a critical—and sequestered in balconies or back sections painful—challenge in Jewish life today. where it is difficult to see or hear the Jewish communities navigate the shoals service and the Torah reading. Because between the Scylla of patriarchal they are not counted for the minyan exclusion of women from public prayer quorum, they are frequently Judaism that characterized the religion considered—and treated—as extraneous for most of its history, and the to the praying congregation, the kehillah. Charybdes of sweeping feminization in Gender issues have powerful almost every aspect of contemporary symbolic resonance. In Haredi (ultra- liberal American Jewishness. Orthodox) congregations the marginalization of women has arguably grown more extreme in recent years as a symbolic rejection of the putatively

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 7

alien, Western value of gender authority is an important motivator for egalitarianism. The view that feminist revitalizing patriarchal stringencies. demands are heretical has spread to However, these strategies have little some “Centrist” Orthodox environments appeal or salience for the vast majority as well. Yeshiva University’s Talmudic of liberal Americanized Jews, including scholar and Rosh Yeshiva (headmaster) many Modern Orthodox Jews. Rabbi Herschel Schachter, for example, compares Modern Orthodox, as well as Studying Gender Imbalance and Conservative and Reform expansion of Its Implications women’s roles to minim (historical The American Jewish community heretical groups) such as Sadducees and today includes two very different types 16 early Christians. American and Israeli of gender imbalance, with 17 Orthodox feminists attempt to alleviate disproportionate roles for one or the inequality by supporting policies that other gender in each. This monograph bring women closer to centers of argues that a healthy and vibrant Jewish halakhic public Jewish scholarship, society requires the active engagement worship, and decision-making. Their of both genders. We explore the attempts are often slowed by the fact that implications of contemporary liberal some rabbinical positions come with a American Jewish societies that comprise great deal of power but little in the way the vast majority of American Jewry, in of checks and balances and which men are often not invested in and accountability. Orthodox egalitarian engaged by their Jewishness. We begin efforts encounter substantial resistance by asking how we got from the and “pushback” from some Orthodox patriarchalism of the past to the rabbis and laity alike, both in Israel and feminization of the present. America. In Chapter One, to frame our In their efforts to resist cultural discussion, we briefly highlight salient assimilation, Haredi communities have aspects of male and female gender role used gender role construction as a definition in some traditional Jewish powerful strategy to counter what they societies, comparing the differing ways see as the erosions of Jewish tradition by Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors Western culture. They go beyond defined maleness and femaleness, previous gender role differentiations to exploring the way Jewish boys were emphasize differences and separations enculturated into Jewish religious life. between males and females. Haredi We highlight the roles Jewish women exaggeration of gender role differences played as brokers of modernity in not only maintains the male prestige of nineteenth and early twentieth century religious activities but also male rabbinic European life and then, conversely, as power and authority. Some observers brokers of traditionalism in recent speculate that the preservation of male decades within liberal American Jewish 8 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

communities. We ask why and in what male and female feelings of attachment ways men and women historically and to Israel and the Jewish people. American men and women today have In these chapters we present related differently to their Jewishness, statistical and systematic interview data tracing the ways in which Jewish gender to look at the impact of gendered role construction shifted and changed differences in the lives of individual with the advent of modernity. We note Jewish men and women, on the Jewish the trajectory of changes in gender roles character of American households, and precipitated by modern social trends, the on the raising of children within those ascent of women to public Jewish households. Many factors affect the leadership, and the social and religious extent to which a Jewish individual feels transformations facilitated by Jewish connected to Jews and Jewishness. For feminism in contemporary American American Jews, life cycle stage has long Jewish societies. We discuss the been one of the most profound enormous positive effect of women’s influences: rates of affiliation and involvement in Jewish religious and quantity and quality of connections communal leadership, as well as the increase when people find spouses or life disturbing decline of men’s involvement partners; they increase even more in these areas in liberal Jewish dramatically when children enter the environments. Our analysis also focuses household. In other words, if a Jew is on gender role constructions in more ever going to become involved in some traditional Orthodox environments in way to Jewishness, it is most likely to be which gender imbalance arguably leans when s/he has children at home. Because in the opposite direction. of this fact, and also because one of our Chapters Two, Three and Four deal primary research interests was the with the intersections of gender and impact of gender on raising Jewish secular ethnic and religious identity. children, our statistics and interview data Chapter Two looks at attitudes toward focus on married households with religion in general and toward Judaism children. specifically among men and women, and To paint the big picture of major among Jewish men and women who Jewish trends and behaviors, we have self-identify with particular wings of created a statistical data set of married Judaism or as secular Jews. Chapter Jews with children under 18 living at Three explores male and female home drawn from the National Jewish participation in synagogue life and Population Survey 2000-01 (NJPS). To Jewish ritual observances. Chapter Four look at voices, experiences and focuses on social networks— motivations, we re-analyze more than relationships with family, friends, 300 transcribed interviews (2000-2003, community and Jews worldwide—and American Jewish Committee ) studying differing types of Jewish marriages to

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 9

compare statements about Jewish determine the exact position of elusive feelings and connections and parental objects. Triangulation is a useful strategy goals made by both Jewish and non- in the social sciences as well, in which Jewish men and women who are multiple methods of information currently living in endogamous (two gathering are employed in order to more born Jews married to each other), accurately identify and analyze social exogamous (one born Jew married to trends. This study works with one current non-Jew), and conversionary quantitative, qualitative and cultural marriages (one or more of the spouses is data—triangulating these very different a Jew by choice, a convert into types of source materials. Judaism).a To further illuminate and While the intermingling of illustrate the phenomena we examine, statistical data, verbatim interview we incorporate cultural materials such as quotations, and content analysis of fiction, essays, film and popular culture literary and cinematic materials may that offer insights into Jewish attitudes seem unorthodox to strict and behaviors. disciplinarians, this strategy was already used by Jewish scholars a century ago to Triangulating Numbers, understand rapidly changing times. Interviews, and Cultural Analysis of multiple, diverse source Context materials was pioneered by Jewish scholars who wanted to understand the Analyzing shifting phenomena behaviors and motivations of the around us is always a complicated “everyday” Jew, rather than focusing as enterprise. Studying contemporary many of their predecessors had done Jewish life, we stand as participant exclusively on Jewish elites and observers in the center of flux and historical watersheds. Institutions such change, as social psychologist Simon as the Yiddish Scientific Institute Herman remarked in his landmark study (YIVO, 1925) and the Paris-based of Jewish identity.18 When a navigator or Annales d’histoire economique astronomer is having difficulty getting advocated using the tools of folklorists her bearings, she can employ a and ethnographers to analyze “costume, mathematical technique called religion, law, sport, music, food, triangulation. By measuring the angles calendars, sexual practices, work, between the points of a triangle, she can a. Quantitative data is mostly drawn from a new analysis of the 2000-01 National Jewish Population Survey (United Jewish Communities. 2003. National Jewish Population Survey, 2000-01. New York, NY: United Jewish Communities [producer]. Storrs, CT: North American Jewish Data Bank [distributor]). We created a data set of men and women who are parents of children ages 1-17 living at home, divided by gender, family type, and wing of American Judaism, if any, that they identify with. Within the 2000-01 NJPS we looked at what they said about who in the family decides the child’s religious identification, and how central Judaism is to their own lives, as well as at their Jewish attitudes, values and behaviors. Much of our qualitative discussion highlights data drawn from a new analysis of existing transcribed interviews, from two research projects originally designed to compare the factors leading up to and the religious behaviors within Jewish inmarried, conversionary, and intermarried households. The original analyses of these interviews, funded by the American Jewish Committee, were published in two AJC reports and a book, Double or Nothing? Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage (Brandeis University Press, 2004). We have returned to these more than 300 transcribed interviews to look at a new subject: the relative impact of gender and family type in connections to Jews and Jewishness and as regards parental ethnoreligious goals.

10 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

buildings, technology” and other values, behaviors, preferences and materials, along with statistical surveys. taboos that their social networks and the These methods were further developed societies around them invest in sexual by such Jewish thinkers as Jewish differences. 21 The American Jewish historical monolith Simon Dubnow, community will not be able to create Isaac Schiper, scholar of medieval effective strategies without using gender Jewish economic history, social historian as a tool for understanding what is Marceli Handelsman, and Emanuel happening and how to deal with current Ringelblum, all of whom sought to challenges. create multifaceted, nuanced pictures of the societies they studied.19 Endnotes to Introduction Finally, in our Conclusion, we 1 highlight our findings and explore policy William Novak, The Great American Man Shortage (New York: Bantam Books, Inc., implications. We also urge further, 1983). targeted basic and applied research on 2 Lynne Segal, Is the Future Female? (London: the intersection of gender and Virago Press, 1987). 3 Debra Nussbaum-Cohen, “Reform Jews contemporary Jewishness. The statistics Examining Ways to Retain Their Young Men,” and interviews we present demonstrate New York Times, February 4, 2006, p. A10. 4 Shifra Bronznick, Didi Goldenhar, and Marty that boys and men are being alienated Linsky, Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing from Jewishness from their early years Women in Jewish Organizational Life onward. However, little systematic (Cambridge, MA.: Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community and information exists about how, or why, or Cambridge Leadership Associates, 2008). what could make a difference for little 5 Rodney Stark, “Physiology and Faith: Addressing the ‘Universal’ Gender Differences boys, school age boys, young in Religious Commitment,” in Journal for the adolescents, teenagers, college students, Scientific Study of Religion 41, No. 3 (2002), pp. young and older singles, married men 495-507, p. 496. 6 Hart M. Nelson and L. K. Nelson, Black and fathers, divorced or widowed men. Church in the Sixties (Lexington: University We know little about how boys and men Press of Kentucky, 1975), cited in Hart Nelson make Jewish connections. and R. M. Potvin, “Gender and Regional Differences in the Religiosity of Protestant Understanding the impact of gender Adolescents,” Review of Religious Research 22, upon behavior and values is a field that No. 3, pp. 268-285. 7 D. Paul Sullins, “Gender and Religion: is literally in its infancy. Humankind has Deconstructing Universality, Constructing long admitted the powerful shaping Complexity,” in American Journal of Sociology effect of sexuality, but it is only in recent 112, No. 3 (November 2006), pp. 838-880, pp. 844, 846. times that similar attention is paid to the 8 Sullins (2006), p. 850. way diverse societies construct maleness 9 Sylvia Barack Fishman, Double or Nothing? and femaleness. 20 Although individuals Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage (Waltham, MA.: Brandeis University Press/ University may see themselves as the authors of Press of New England, 2004), pp. 17-64. their own destinies, they are influenced 10 Leonard Saxe et al, Jewish Population Study of Greater Boston (Waltham, MA.: Cohen Center in overt and subtle ways by the attitudes, for Modern Jewish Studies, 2005).

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 11

11 Steven M. Cohen et. al.., “The Slipstream conflicting definitions there is always space for Effect: How Marriage Closes Gender Gaps in negotiation and change although often differing Jewish Identity,” (University of California, interpretations are covered by a seemingly Davis, CA: Florence Heller/ JCCA, 2007) unified “common sense.” 12 Rona Shapiro, “The ‘Boy Crisis’ that Cried Wolf,” in The Forward (Jan. 5, 2007). 13 Shapiro, “The ‘Boy Crisis’ that Cried Wolf,” op. cit. 14 Jeffrey Salkin, “The Retreating Man,” in Reform Judaism 35, No 1 (Fall 2006), pp. 70-72. 15 Cynthia Ozick, “Notes Toward Finding the Right Question,” Lilith No. 6 (1979), pp. 19-29. 16 Herschel Schachter, “Can Women Be Rabbis,” The Torah Web Foundation 2004 (http://torahweb.org/torah/2004/parsha/rsch_dvo rim2.html). 17 Including, but not limited to, participants in Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA), Kolech, the Israeli Jewish Women’s Network, and numerous other social change organizations and artistic endeavors, including Orthodox feminist theater groups, filmmakers, and visual artists. 18 Simon Herman, Jewish Identity (New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2nd ed., 1989), p. 20. 19 Peter N. Miller, “What We Know About Murdered Peoples,” review essay on Samuel D. Kassow, Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive (Indiana University Press, 2008), in The New Republic 238, No. 4833 (April 9, 2008), pp. 34-39. 20 Sandra Bem, “The Measurement of Psychological Androgyny,” in Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 42, no. 2, pp. 155-162, created widespread acceptance for the concept of societally constructed gender differences. The Bem Scale measures the way individuals assess their own “masculine’ and “feminine” traits. 21 Lenore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (London: Hutchison, 1987), p. 29. Social psychologists look not only at the diverging ways different societies construct gender, but also at how individuals within those societies internalize those ideas and believe them to be “natural” and universal. As Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall defined the social construction of gender: “Masculinity” and “femininity” are constructs specific to historical time and place. These are categories continually being forged, contested, reworked, and reaffirmed in social institutions and practices as well as a range of ideologies. Among these 12 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

One: Distinctive Jewish Gender Roles and How They Changed

he social construction of gender being effeminate. Medieval Christians roles22 is an extremely important believed that Jewish men menstruated; Tkey to how American Jewish life 19th century intellectuals like the today differs from historical Jewish philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer societies. For centuries, Jews diverged constructed a scale of human behavior from their neighbors in how they with “Aryan” and “masculine” on the understood “maleness” and high end and “Jews” and “feminine” on “femaleness.” While Western societies the low end.23 Jews—and the non-Jews frequently constructed maleness around around them—perceived Jewish physical strength, battle prowess, maleness as something quite distinct. stoicism and lack of emotionalism, Of course the masculinities Jewish societies from the Middle Ages encouraged by Jewish societies were not onward created a different ideal, monolithic. As David Biale points out, masculinity which emphasized ritual Jewish men were not always powerless, piety, spiritual intensity, and intellectual and “the best-known Jewish military learnedness, as well as active roles figure of the Middle Ages was the poet within social networks such as the and communal leader Samuel HaNagid, family and community. Emotionalism who led the armies of Granada in the among men was not discouraged, unlike early eleventh century. He left an array many other cultures. The proliferation of of military poems describing his exploits Jewish legal obligations, along with in battle….[he urged] ‘Take risks when Jewish cultural and social mores, you aim for power and defeat the foe required men to attend to many domestic with the sword.’”24 Nevertheless, as and social welfare tasks that other Daniel Boyarin and others point out, for societies often delegated to women hundreds of years Jewish culture alone. preferred the non-violent, scholarly, and While Jews certainly were in many ways passive male. This ideal influenced by—and influenced—their Jewish male was defined by Jewish non-Jewish neighbors in many ways, societies as a sexual being, but his both they and their neighbors were sexuality was domesticated and seldom aware of the differences. Indeed, the described as accompanied by Jewish construction of maleness so aggressiveness. For example, Seder departed from that of many European plates depicted the “wise son” as a societies in which Jews were embedded Talmud scholar and the “wicked son” as as small minorities that Jewish maleness a militarily clad Roman soldier. In was often misunderstood and derided as Jewish folksongs young women yearned

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 13

for “a little bridegroom…fit for the Allen. As Harry Brod and others have Torah: pointed out, when popular culture And Torah as the Torah prescribes, chooses to portray overtly Jewish men, it He must learn day and night; often depicts them in ways that Let him write me a little letter, complement the old Jewish picture: Let him remain a good little Jew. “Since Jewish men are already seen as A German-Jewish ethical will from feminized by the culture, using them to a father to his two sons urges them to embody the more ‘sensitive’ traits emulate their mother: “Be meek and stereotypically associated with women is patient, and seek to acquire the character therefore both less threatening and more and patience of your mother.” Glickl of plausible….”26 Hameln praises her beloved husband’s Traditional Jewish ideals of lack of ambition, which she sees as a femininity also differed from non-Jewish Jewish characteristic. Not least, many societies. Thus, as Grossman, Jews regarded as “goyim naches (gentile Baumgarten, and other scholars have pleasures)…violent physical activity, recently demonstrated, Jewish women in such as hunting, dueling, or wars—all of medieval societies were often actively which Jews traditionally despised.” involved in economic and even Little wonder that a French writer in the educational pursuits.27 Boyarin 1920s mused that Jewish men were “half summarizes these findings: men, half women.”25 The Jewish While Jewish men were sitting paragon of masculinity was a nice indoors and studying Torah, Jewish boy, a kind and considerate speaking only a Jewish language, husband, a restrained and unaggressive and withdrawn from the world, community member. women of the same class were When the Western, assimilated speaking, reading, and writing the Theodor Herzl and other secular authors vernacular, maintaining businesses of Zionist theory created their images of large and small, and dealing with a “new”—and masculine—Jew, they the wide world of tax collectors and rejected the pious masculinity of the irate customers. In short, they were shtetl, which they perceived as being engaging in what must have seemed powerless, and thus effeminate. In its to many in the larger culture as place they proposed a new Jewish masculine activities, and if the men masculinity which incorporated all the were read as sissies, the women physical prowess and aggressiveness that were read often enough as phallic the old Jews lacked. American Jews, in monsters. their own way, also left the traditional These distinctive Jewish gender role Jewish understanding of maleness constructions are usefully described by behind—although a variant has certainly Cantor: been enshrined in the films of Woody 14 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

Male violence had to be culture. The elaborate Sabbath and eliminated. While Jewish male holiday rituals were well served by domination of the community was the combination of women’s upheld, male power was stripped of “freedom” to serve as facilitators the use of force and was redefined and men’s “obligation” to serve as as the power of the mind and performers, which in turn reinforced intellect….When masculinity was the facilitator/ performer dichotomy redefined as spiritual resistance, in the family, social, and political women’s enabler role was to realms. Children’s initiation into the facilitate it and to accept exclusion culture was premised on the mother from it….breadwinning, which having a flexible ritual schedule and defines masculinity under classic the father a more regularized one. patriarchy, was gender neutral in Rosman emphasizes: “There was no most periods of Jewish history. more pervasive factor than gender in Women functioned in the economic determining the structure of Jewish sphere of the public realm and were culture. Defining its parameters will go a neither marginalized there nor long way toward clarifying the nature privatized in the home.28 and dynamics of that culture.”30 Some contemporary observers have Traditional Jewish societies from argued that historical Jewish societies medieval times onward defined public fostered countercultural ideals of Jewish prayer, education, holiday and masculinity and femininity that have life cycle rituals and ceremonies, and much to recommend in their departures many leadership activities as the from Western norms.29 responsibilities of the broad spectrum of Jewish males. Expectations of men Historical Jewish Societies were, in their own way, relatively Reserved Public Religious Roles democratic. Not only male elites, but for Men ordinary males were instructed to pray at daily appointed times, within a prayer The historical Jewish male-female quorum (minyan) of ten males whenever binary was an important component of possible.31 The social ideal—if not the the matrix into which Jewish life was reality—that all fathers should teach all embedded. Judaism within its religious their Jewish sons to be Jewishly literate culture clearly distinguished between and active in public Jewish worship was religious “performers,” who were almost distinctively Jewish. Those girls who always men, and religious “facilitators,” received educations usually studied at who were typically women. Feminist home with relatives or tutors. historical scholar Moshe Rosman notes: Frequently, girls in the family were ….those roles interlocked to taught to read and write in an ethnic undergird the structure of meaning vernacular, typically Yiddish in and practice that supported Jewish

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European settings, while boys, who to obey all laws except those that are needed to function in public prayer time-dependent, females’ religious settings, were taught Hebrew, the obligations were placed in and modified language of Jewish prayer, as well. by the context of their relationships to To be sure, the lives of most Jewish their parents, husbands, children, and the men did not match the Jewish ideal of community at large. masculinity in every detail. Illiteracy While some women led other was common among the poor, and in women in their prayers, most Jewish impoverished social strata few boys got women—even well-educated and beyond rudimentary religious education. affluent women—assumed (often Socioeconomic inequities and erroneously, according to rabbinic law) hierarchies were always present. Elite they needed a Jewish male to help them Jewish males who excelled in Jewish fulfill many religious obligations. text study and/ or enjoyed higher Widows ran to the homes of nearby socioeconomic status certainly enjoyed married couples to listen piously to the higher social status as well. When Tevye recitation of prayers over the Sabbath the Dairyman in “Fiddler on the Roof” wine and the Havdalah candle. The birth echoed his progenitor, Sholom of a first son was greeted with joy: A Aleichem, “When you’re rich they think “kaddish’l” had been born—a baby who you really know,” his sardonic yet would grow up to recite the kaddish yearning comment reflected centuries of prayer in the synagogue for parents who folk wisdom and experience, the ideal— would eventually die. Widows and and how far the lives of most men fell daughters with no brother often paid from the ideal.32 yeshiva students to recite the kaddish in Nevertheless, even the most memory of their deceased parents or ordinary Jewish man enjoyed a certain husbands. prominence because he was expected to Tova Hartman, a scholar of gender fulfill public religious obligations that and Jewish studies, comments on the were understood as not incumbent upon way the peculiarly Jewish version of women. Women prayed privately at hegemonic masculinity marginalized home, or quietly in a separate women’s women by excluding them from the section in the synagogue. According to main action of the synagogue and the rabbinic law and Jewish tradition, the study hall: religious obligations of Jewish males are Torah study is perhaps the most incumbent on them except in cases of important value informing extremity, such as life-threatening traditional Jewish culture. It is more situations, while many of the religious than an intellectual pursuit; it obligations of women are modified by represents a primary religious their obligations to other human beings. moment of intimate encounter with Although rabbinic law obligates women divine revelation. Becoming a 16 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

scholar of Torah and especially of domineering mother who expounded on Talmud was the highest religious women’s subordinate status because of aspiration; it is no wonder, their lesser religious obligations, “What therefore, that the scholar became has a man to fear?” Long Serel warned the main authority figure in the her terrified daughter: community. The institution of the He’ll skim through a chapter of yeshiva—an intense, all- the Mishna, and at once six pages of encompassing environment—was his sins are cancelled. And when are created in order to produce and they ever called to account, these nurture this ideal type….In this men? Once a year, on the day of society, the exclusion of women Atonement! But woman—the poor from Torah study, more than thing—what does she signify? A anything else, meant the pitiful creature, no more than a marginalization of women. Because turkey-hen, the Lord forgive us. this culture was so immersed and When it comes to pregnancy, to influenced by the ongoing childbirth, why her life then actually interpretation of canonical texts, the hangs by a hair. And what do we institutional exclusion of women poor things have for the salvation of from yeshiva life and Torah study our souls?34 prevented women from becoming In these traditional societies young full and active partners in the life of boys were very effectively enculturated the community. (This exclusion is into males roles in their patriarchal analogous to the denial of cultures. That step by step training citizenship to women in the Greek socialized boys from toddlerhood polis where the life of the active onward to aspire to the world of male citizen was regarded as the highest Jewish identification. Much of that male fulfillment of human potential.)33 socialization is retained in Orthodox When Yiddish writers during the societies today, in which one can Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment that observe the following patterns: Pre- modernity brought to European Jewish school boys are brought the night before life during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th a newborn’s circumcision to cluster centuries, portrayed pious Jewish around his crib and sing the biblical societies, they captured the deep passage with which Joseph blessed his inferiority complex that afflicted many grandsons, Hamalakh ha-go’el oti mikol women as they regarded the many rah, “May that angel who saved me from religious obligations of men, which were all evil also save these boys.” The first seen as a privileged status. Thus, “real boy” haircut at age three, often Yiddish Enlightenment writer Y.L. called by the Yiddish term opsheren, Peretz (1851-1915), in his satiric, becomes a festive event. Primary school socially critical mode, created a boys walk around the men’s section

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waiting for the moment when they can centuries and offered them the open the ark. All the male and female opportunity to enter schools and congregants smile and beam gymnasia, the lives of both Jewish men benedictions on the seven or eight-year and women were transformed. Although old boys who have practiced and trained men in general received more education and mastered the lyrical but long Anim than women, within some traditional zemirot responsive hymn, as they lead societies elite strata of Jewish men were the congregation in the closing prayers sequestered in Talmudic academies, and of the Sabbath service. Jewish women sometimes preceded In Orthodox communities, by the Jewish men into the modern world. time boys learn to lead the entire prayer Indeed, the great writers of the Jewish service and chant both the Torah and Enlightenment or haskalah often entered Haftorah portions for their bar mitzvahs, modern culture through the reading they are poised to take the male habits of their mothers and sisters.35 In responsibilities of daily group prayer Germany, while Jewish men immersed accompanied by prayer shawl and themselves in commerce according to phylacteries, ta’alit and t’fillin. They— the middle-class pattern, and Jewish and they alone—can help create a prayer thinkers reformed and transformed quorum, minyan. They develop the synagogue life, Jewish women became loyalties of men in battle to their the designated agents of buddies—they feel responsible to embourgeoisement and the transmitters overcome considerable inconvenience to of Westernized lifestyles and forms of make sure there will be a minyan. Judaism to the next generation.36 Although it may seem troubling to Interestingly, even though early contemplate, the corresponding decline Reform Judaism rejected the of men in contemporary egalitarian subordination of women as a mark of Jewish worship environments seems to East European “Orientalism” and indicate that, in Orthodox congregations, backwardness, Jewish women were the fact that someone—girls and accorded few opportunities for religious women—are excluded gives male leadership and public religious religious responsibilities sociological expression in the Reform movement piquancy and power. until well into American Reform Judaism’s 20th century congregations. Women as Historical Brokers However, developments within German for Modernization Reform Judaism did set the stage for Sweeping social historical changes feminization in another extremely provided impetus and context for important way: the psycho-social transformations in women’s roles: In perception of the nature of religion and Western Jewish communities that spirituality as women’s responsibility. emancipated Jews in the 18th and 19th 18 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

As German Jews adopted bourgeois in appropriate community activities, and norms, hegemonic Jewish masculinity to attend a Westernized Reform no longer incorporated intense religiosity congregation often enough to establish and spirituality. Those attributes began his credentials as an upstanding member to be seen as female rather than male of society.38 qualities. This reformulation of male and It may be that the current pattern of female gender roles—which discouraged American Jewish male critiques of German Jewish women from the Jewish women were nurtured in this previous common Ashkenazi pattern of milieu as well. Ironically, secularization female marketplace activism—was often did not improve attitudes toward particularly well-suited to capitalist the female gender. Writer and researcher economies, as Segal explains: Carol Ascher remembers that her secular …there remains a neat fit German-Jewish psychoanalyst father, between success in capitalist “oddly taciturn about anything personal cultures and the type of single- for someone in his profession, was mindedness, competitiveness and clearly bitter about his own Viennese ambition which is still fostered and childhood.” She has vivid memories of celebrated at the heart of dominant his father’s “complaints about his competitive masculinities in the mother” and his conventional, West….The openness, sensitivity, patriarchal attitudes towards his and capacity to give—and keep on daughters: giving integral to successful caring He wanted to give me every in the home, remains completely at intellectual and artistic odds with the focused opportunity….Yet when I grew instrumentality required for most sufficiently confident to argue my types of successful working lives.37 own points of view, he became What the American Jewish afraid that I would alienate men and community today calls “continuity” was never find a mate. I was given seen as the task of the German Jewish lessons in painting, piano, violin, matron. German Jewish mothers—like and ballet; but as I began to take their Christian neighbors—were each in turn seriously, I was warned assigned the tasks of educating their of the precariousness of an artistic children morally and also imbuing them life, and in each case the lessons with just enough—but not too much— were withdrawn. I was to be religious feeling. The Jewish cultivated, but not ambitious for paterfamilias, like his Christian myself; clever, but not passionate counterpart, became a public but not about any pursuit or subject—in much of a private Jew. He was expected short, ornamental, a salon woman, to make a good living and support his perhaps, who could stimulate and family in respectable style, to be active bring together men.39

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With the immigration of millions of Jewish woman reminded established Europe’s Jews to the United States Jews that they might forever be found during the 19th and 20th centuries, Jewish wanting by America’s dominant women as well as men took advantage of Protestant majority.” To protect educational opportunities. While Jewish themselves from what seemed like a men received more secular education clinging Jewish curse, Jewish men tried than Jewish women in America, to distance themselves from what one especially in 20th-century America, might call the too-Jewy-ness of Jewish Jewish girls and women took advantage women. Jewish women became the of educational opportunities far more signifying Jews—the Jews who signal to than women of other ethnoreligious the world that they are Jewish—in groups: in New York in 1910, at a time American popular culture, in contrast to when Jews made up about 19 percent of the many centuries and countries in the population, 40 percent of the women which Jewish men had been marked as enrolled in night school were Jewish. By the signifying Jews.41 1934, more than 50 percent of New York However, although Jewish women female college students were Jewish.40 continued to pursue disproportionately In 1990, almost nine out of ten American high levels of secular education Jewish women aged 30-39 had gone to throughout the 20th century, their labor college, and almost a third had attended force participation did not immediately graduate school. follow suit, for they had thoroughly The intense educational and adapted to the Western bourgeois pattern occupational ambitions of men and of ceasing to work for pay outside the women who were children of home once they married and bore immigrants set the stage for Jewish children. This tendency to stop paid gender wars that have endured until the employment became a sociological present day. As Riv-Ellen Prell has characteristic of Jewish women, who compellingly demonstrated, Jewish men brought their high levels of education and working unmarried women in the and cultural bias toward articulateness early decades of the 20th century were and assertiveness into the Jewish Fighting to be Americans, and they often communal organizational world, where faced each other as enemies competing they created immensely effective unpaid for identical, deeply coveted prizes of working communities. In addition, assimilation. In the face of rising American Jewish women, especially in antisemitism, Jewish women, but more the Reform movement, flocked to the especially Jewish men feared that the “opulent” Temples, as Karla Goldman overt Jewishness of Jews of the opposite demonstrates. gender might stand in their way as they Offered a place in the sanctuary, strove to become real Americans. In Jewish women occupied the family Prell’s words, “the image of a ‘vulgar’ pews of these magnificent temples 20 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

in force, continuing a trend that had The 1960s Challenge Middle marked early nineteenth century Class Mores and American American synagogues. In a Jewish Patterns departure from the traditional pattern of synagogue worship, but in Expectations that religiosity would keeping with the attendance patterns be an attribute primarily of females and of most American Christian not of males had already begun to denominations, women quickly permeate the American Jewish came to dominate attendance at community during the period of rapid weekly Sabbath services, as men socio-economic upward mobility in the increasingly attended to business 1930s and 1940s. Nevertheless, concerns on the Jewish day of synagogues remained male bastions of rest..42 religious leadership until the middle of th However, through the 1950s women the 20 century. Many Jewish girls and sat in worship services primarily as women agreed with Herman Wouk’s passive recipients, rather than active 1955 novelistic protagonist Marjorie leaders, whatever the denomination. It Morningstar who, attending her younger was only in Jewish women’s brother’s bar mitzvah, thought wistfully organizations—Temple sisterhoods and that Judaism was a mysterious and male local and national Jewish women’s enterprise. Marjorie suffers a brief movements—that they could take moment of what we might call “tallis leadership roles. These Jewish women’s envy”: organizations became signifying Jewish ….today, despite herself, the institutions. The example of Hadassah, girl found awe creeping over her as the Women’s Zionist Organization of her brother’s voice filled the vault America, Inc., which grew to be one of of the temple, chanting words the most successful Zionist organizations thousands of years old, in an eerie around the world, is the epitome of melody from a dim lost time….Seth efficient organizational empires built by sang on, husky and calm, and it American Jewish women during the occurred to Marjorie that after all decades when most of them defined there might be a powerful propriety themselves as full-time “homemakers.” in the old way of separating the men The stereotypical Jews, instead of being and the women. This religion was a a man with a head covering and a long, masculine thing, whatever it was, grey beard, became a house-proud, and Seth was coming into his own. temple-attending, beautifully dressed The very Hebrew had a rugged male suburban matron raising money for sound to it, all different from the Hadassah. bland English comments of the rabbi….Her little jealous pique was lost in a rush of love for her baby brother….43

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What Marjorie—and Wouk—did not Together, activism and spiritual understand, however, was the role that searching helped produce a readiness to Jewish women had already played in experiment with new forms of religious transforming men’s lives, as well as their expression. The Havurah style of small own, and how much of a role they were worship and study groups emerged out soon to play with the arrival of Jewish of the Reconstructionist movement. In Second Wave Feminism in the late its beginnings, Havurahs were led almost 1960s and 1970s. exclusively by elite Jewish males who American social norms had been had received extensive amounts of epitomized by a “melting pot” pressure Jewish education. Soon, however, toward ethnic conformity during the “havuroid” groups sprang up within all years of mass immigration (1880-1924) the wings of American Judaism, and and in the decades immediately egalitarianism became one of the afterward. Ethnic groups had understood axiomatic values of the Havurah that only if they acculturated would the movement. On a scholarly level, Jewish promise of American opportunities be studies departments were established in open to them. Overwhelmingly they many non-sectarian universities. For abandoned their ethnic languages and many decades, these departments cultural mores that made them consisted almost exclusively of male distinctive and—as they were made to scholars, many of them European- feel—unAmerican. During the 1960s, trained. Thus, the Jewish awakening of however, the exploration of Judaism as a the 1960s and 1970s was, for men, religious culture was encouraged by the primarily an elite phenomenon. American Civil Rights Movement and However, as we shall see, for women it the Anti-Vietnam War protest became a grass-roots movement, along movements, and by a lively and often with Jewish feminism. transgressive youth culture, which The narrative of the perseverance advocated “doing your own thing,” and triumph of Jewish feminists, including the celebration of ethnic bringing women to the center of public differences. This Jewish awakening was Judaism, and public Judaism to the reinforced by Zionistic American Jewish center of women’s lives, is still intensely feelings of pride immediately after the meaningful to women who lived through 1967 war in the Middle East, during it and made it happen.44 Sweeping social which Israel defended itself against historical changes provided impetus and massed armies of the Arab states. In a context for transformations in women’s parallel development, American Jewish roles: These patterns began to change as intellectuals and artists had become Jewish women in the 1960s emerged as extremely influential and were the best known leaders of the American increasingly exploring and emphasizing feminist movement. Betty Friedan’s their own Jewishness. book The Feminine Mystique (1963)45 22 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

became the “bible” of the movement, The increased predominance of and feminist activists with Jewish names women in Jewish life over the past four like Gloria Steinem46, Bella Abzug, decades has paralleled Jewish women’s Shulamith Firestone47, and Vivian increasing labor force participation. Far Gornick48, among others, wrote critiques from having more freedom from of Western societies that shaped social domestic tasks, working women, as change. Arlie Hochschild has shown, are often Before Second Wave Feminism, carrying much of the burden of family Jews were the ethnoreligious group most responsibilities on their “second shift.”51 likely to acquiesce to the American Thus, assumptions that “women have middle class norm of homemaker- more time” do not explain the trend. If mothers, dropping out of labor force anything, women’s greater prominence participation with the birth of their first in the professional world is probably child. As the movement gathered force, directly related to the similar however, on a grass roots level, Jewish phenomenon in the Jewish world. women were among those most likely to Demographic realities such as join feminist “consciousness-raising” increased female labor force sessions and to change their lives in participation precipitate transformations accordance with feminist ideals of in gender roles even more than feminist independence, assertiveness, and self- ideology does.52 These changes in wider actualization. Rather than devoting their societal gender roles, in turn, have a excellent educations to volunteer work, profound impact on American Jewish which had been the previous American religious and communal life. The rise of Jewish pattern, in the 1960s Jewish women into prominence in Jewish life is women began to reverse that pattern, and closely tied to their changing roles in the Jewish women increasingly began to wider economic, intellectual, and take jobs for pay outside the home. By political scene. It is also tied to a the year 1990, paid outside employment renaissance in American Jewish life that was reported by three-quarters of Jewish began in the late 1960s as part of a new women aged 25-44 and two-thirds of celebration of ethnic and religious those aged 45-64.49 Today, the majority particularism. Feminism and Jewish of American Jewish women are feminism have each played a role in employed for pay even when they have bringing about these transformations. young children at home. Indeed, except for the most ultra-Orthodox, religiously Women Recent Brokers for traditional women are as likely as other Jewish Rituals, Ceremonies, groups of American Jewish women to Liturgical Skills have earned advanced degrees and to Feminism with a distinctive Jewish work outside the home in a professional focus became differentiated from the capacity.50 generalized movement both in the

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United States and in Israel in the late limited to: (1) marking women’s life 1960s and early 1970s. The growing cycle events with Jewish sacralizing interest in Jewish feminism was marked and/or celebratory rituals; (2) including by successive international conferences, women in Jewish public worship as bringing together Jewish feminist leaders and active participants; (3) scholars and activists from around the upgrading the Jewish education and world, and by the establishment of Jewish cultural literacy of girls and numerous Judaic studies academies women; (4) innovating and supporting established for women’s or co-ed sacred Judaic scholarship by Jewish women and text study. American Jewish feminists about Jewish females in classical Jewish began to turn their attention toward their texts and throughout Jewish history; Judaic cultural heritage, contemporary creating gender-inclusive synagogue Jewish societies, and Jewish institutions. liturgy and other prayers and rituals; (5) They were influenced by the publication reclaiming and publishing materials of Trude Weiss-Rosmarin’s “The about the experiences of Jewish girls and Unfreedom of Jewish Women,”53 which women historically and today; (6) examined “the inequality of Jewish examining Jewish religious texts, laws, marriage laws,” and Rachel Adler’s customs and culture through the lenses “The Jew Who Wasn’t There,”54 which of feminist theory and issues of equality; contrasted male and female models of (7) creating religious and secular Jewish piety. In the early 1970s Jewish legislation to end diverse unequal power women’s prayer and study groups were relationships and abuses against women, being formed in St. Louis, Baltimore, such as women who are agunot or Cambridge, and New York communities. m’sarevet get (women who have not Some women who participated in the been successful in obtaining desired New York Havurah were later influential religious divorces from their husbands); in creating Ezrat Nashim (a pun which (8) creating inclusive Jewish attitudes means both “women’s section” and “the and environments for Jews living in non- help of women”), an activist group that traditional households, such as single succeeded over the years in transforming Jews, gay and lesbian Jews, and single Conservative Jewish women’s scholarly parents by choice. and public leadership roles, and the more For adult women, preparation for direct incorporation of women into and celebrating the adult bat mitzvah—a synagogue services. ceremony unknown in historical Jewish Jewish feminists were not and are communities—generated a sweeping, not now a monolithic group, and have grass-roots phenomenon which became a had several different areas of primary powerful and meaningful motivator for interest. Some focused on leadership and continuing education. Many hundreds of some on the lives of Jewish girls and women acquired new levels of Jewish women at large, including but not literacy, including synagogue liturgical 24 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

skills, initially motivated by the desire to Reconstructionist congregations (and participate in an adult bat mitzvah these comprise the vast majority of (sometimes in conjunction with their American congregations) the names of daughters or granddaughters). Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah have Researchers studying Jewish education been incorporated into the central have remarked that women’s passion for Amidah prayer, along with the names of acquiring these skills often brought their Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. At Passover husbands into classes as well—a kind of Seders, an orange is often put on the conflagrating spark. Seder plate—although the origins of this Today, broad spectrums of Jewish symbol of Jewish feminist strivings is women have reclaimed many ancient life unclear—and some families set out a cup cycle rituals for their own use, and are of water for the prophetess Miriam in inventing other rituals to help them addition to the cup of wine for Elijah. sacralize life cycle events which are Many congregations have stopped using peculiar to the female experience. Many the pronoun “he” to describe God, people—male and female alike—seek opting instead for nouns that refer to out meaningful and satisfying rituals that God’s attributes or activities, such as reflect their personal, communal, and “Creator.” The use of gender-sensitive spiritual needs. For example, in the language has subtly and overtly changed United States it is now almost ubiquitous the prayer experience for men as well as in congregations across denominational women. These changes have affected lines for women to recite the kaddish some Orthodox environments as well: In prayer at services after the death of a some American modern Orthodox loved one and on the anniversaries of schools and synagogues, care is taken to that bereavement (yarzheit). Immersion give girls as high a profile as possible in the waters of the mikveh has enjoyed a within the boundaries of halakhah resurgence not only in Orthodox (rabbinic law). Tellingly, the Jewish communities but in liberal Jewish life as Orthodox Feminism Alliance (JOFA), well. Indeed, in some communities formed in 1997, with a membership of facilities have been built to thousands, has gone on to grow and accommodate new rituals created to thrive while some other modern utilize the mikveh, including rituals to Orthodox organizations have collapsed mark life cycle transitions including but during the same time period. not limited to divorce, abortion, The two most sweeping impacts of adoption, or menopause. changing women’s roles center around Women and women’s experiences the relationship of women to their are brought to the center of ritual life Jewish cultural and intellectual heritage: through changed liturgical language and (1) the inclusion of females in Jewish liturgical symbolism as well. In most education; (2) the inclusion of gender Conservative, Reform and and women’s issues in research. As late

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 25

as the 1960s, school-age boys were more Moreover, Judaic studies fields likely than girls to receive Jewish themselves have been transformed by education, especially in the Conservative insights provided when gender becomes and Reform congregations that an analytical tool. Paying attention to the comprised the majority of American lives and sometimes the writings of Jews, partially because preparing for the women in historical Jewish societies has bar mitzvah ceremony was a prime added more than an understanding of educational motivator for many families. women—it has deepened the overall By the 1970s and 1980s, that gender gap comprehension of the Jewish experience. had narrowed significantly. Rates of Feminist scholarship has illuminated the Jewish education for girls and boys critical importance of gender as a tool became more similar in response to the for historical understandings, and the spread of the bat mitzvah ceremony. centrality of Jewish domestic life to the Today, the gender gap has been transmission of Jewish culture reversed for American Jews in the liberal historically. movements, and American school-age For many observers, the impact of Jewish girls are more likely to receive Jewish feminist change has been Jewish education than Jewish boys. epitomized by the movement of women Differences in Jewish educational levels into public religious leadership roles: In of young girls and boys become 1972 the Reform movement ordained the enormous as they enter their teens: After first female rabbi, followed in 1974 by bar/ bat mitzvah girls are far more likely the Reconstructionist movement. In to continue in formal and informal 1985, urged on by Ezrat Nashim and a Jewish educational settings.55Jewish determined group of rabbis, the girls in college participate in Hillel Conservative movement’s first woman activities and take Jewish studies classes rabbi was ordained. Today, women in much greater numbers than Jewish comprise a large proportion of rabbinical boys, except for the Orthodox young and cantorial candidates, and serve as men who comprise a substantial client professionals in numerous Conservative, group for many Jewish studies classes Reconstructionist, and Reform American and Hillel Foundation facilities. congregations. On an elite level, increasing As one female rabbi suggests, the numbers of women have become Judaic entry of women has meant not only studies scholars, teaching and publishing women themselves in rabbinical in fields ranging from the Bible and positions—“Imah on the Bimah”—but Ancient Near East, Rabbinics, Jewish also the incorporation of women’s history, Ancient and Modern Hebrew experiences and insights into Jewish literature, Jewish thought, Zionism and religious leadership. “I hear God say, I Israel studies, and the sociology of call you because you are a woman. You contemporary Jewish communities. bring the pain and healing of your life,” 26 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

she reflects, suggesting that women of spiritual lives of Jewish men as well as “wrestle with God” in different ways and Jewish women. in different settings than men do. It should be noted that although Women encounter spirituality in “daily women have been brokers for routine and encounters with others….the traditionalism within liberal Jewish theology of the thorn bush: circles, within the Orthodox world, on transcendence in small gestures, the other hand, women often continue to revelations at the kitchen function as the brokers of Western table….constructing networks, not values. For example, one of the most hierarchies, bringing together diverse celebrated changes in recent years has voices and building consensus.”56 been the creation of “partnership The increasing involvement of minyanim,” traditional services with a American Jewish women in public mekhitzah (visual separation between Judaism, including synagogue and ritual male and female worshipers) but which settings, and their increasing access to nonetheless allow women to perform all Judaic texts, has generated new levels of prayer functions from which they are not excitement and participation for men as specifically prohibited by Jewish law. As well as women. Mature women studying Hartman explains in her account of the Hebrew, learning the trope (ritual formation of one pioneering Jerusalem chanting) for Torah and Haftorah, and congregation, Shira Hadashah in reading Jewish history in preparation for Jerusalem, women lead in many portions adult bat mitzvahs, for example, have of the service as well as read from and often been the impetus for innovative are called up to aliyah Torah honors. synagogue and communal educational (They do not lead during the Amidah programs which are open to males and services.)57 Partnership minyanim, females. Women in Reform temples sometimes called “Orthodox egalitarian” proudly donning Israeli hand-crafted services, have been proliferating. They kippot (head coverings) and talitot have especially attracted large numbers (prayer shawls) have reintroduced this of Jewish singles from Conservative and distinctive ritual garb in environments Reform backgrounds, as well as the core which discouraged them for decades. In of Orthodox men and women who tend sociological language, women have to create and maintain them. increasingly served as “brokers,” Sociologically, the growth of connecting not only other women but halakhic partnership minyanim is linked men as well with their Jewish cultural to the overall growth of independent heritage. Transformations in women’s congregations, despite the fact that relationship to Judaism have been Orthodox groups like to stress their profound in ways not yet fully differences rather than their similarities. acknowledged, and this transformed According to a recent study, 77 % of relationship has deeply affected the young Jews who attend “independent

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 27

minyanim” attend more than once a community with Ikar, her vibrant month—compared to 39 % attending worship, study and social justice conventional synagogue services.58 enterprise. These young Conservative and Reform Indeed, in many ways the “Jewish partnership minyan enthusiasts often cite renaissance,” incorporating not only the dynamism and spirituality of scholarship and text study but also partnership worship services as their Jewish film, arts, and literary enterprises, reason for attending. Like the Havurah while quite real, wears a predominantly movement before it, the independent or female face. Young novelists who write partnership minyan movement takes intensively about Jewish environments pride in its independence from organized and themes, such as Allegra Goodman, Jewish religious institutions and the Tova Mirvis, Dara Horn, Shifra Horn, Jewish denominational movements. Risa Miller, Pearl Abraham, Katie Roiphe, and others, along with veteran Cultural Explorations of writers such as Cynthia Ozick, Rebecca Jewishness Often Led by Goldstein, Katie Roiphe, Tova Reich, Women, or by Men Trained in outnumber distinguished male novelists Orthodox Settings such as Michael Chabon, Nathan Englander, Jonathan Rosen and Jonathan There is ample reason for optimism Safran Foer (not to mention the in new developments among America’s perennially prolific Philip Roth). younger Jewish population, including Moreover, the writings of such men as new worship opportunities and cultural Shalom Auslander and Gary Shteyngardt creativity and entrepreneurialism. convey a bleak, harshly critical attitude Emerging congregations/ Partnership toward Judaism. Jewish women minyanim have become a “happening filmmakers (Joan Micklin Silver, place,” attracting singles from across the Marlene Booth, Claudia Weill, Barbra denominational spectrum. In addition to Streisand), have often produced positive conventional classes, among innovative explorations of Jewish topics that female-fueled programs is a new use of counter the negativity of their male the concept of “Salons,” which have counterparts. Visual artists including but surfaced in journalist Mireille Silcoff’s not limited to Helene Aylon, Mierle Toronto Salon, a discussion forum for Laderman Ukeles, Tamar Hirsch, Judith “young, culturally savvy Jews”59; and Margolis, Siona Benjamin and Raquel Susan Weidmann Schneider’s similar Portnoy use Judaic symbols and motifs use of the concept across the United in diverse ways, including the attempt to States in Lilith Salons. The Hadassah- create consciousness about social justice Brandeis Institute has vibrant discussion issues. Other Jewish female painters and groups with trendy authors called HBI performance artists—often in a Conversations. Rabbi Sharon Brous has transgressive mode—including Judy shaken up the Los Angeles worship 28 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

Chicago, Anita Steckel, and many others, who use Jewish texts and ideas in Class and Culture (Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 1983); Gender and Power (Sydney, ways that surely shock conservative Australia: Allen and Unwin, 1987); R. W. viewers but demonstrate that Judaic Connel and J. W. Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic traditions can serve as a source of Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept,” in Gender and Society 19, pp. 829-859, p. 832. Gender 60 creative inspiration. theorists explore the ways in which social Where men are the prime movers in constructions of masculinity and femininity are influenced not only by the values of individual contemporary Jewish life, a societies, but also by historical trends and disproportionate number of them are changes. Recommended gender roles diverge not young men who received their training only from society to society but also from one historical period to another. In any given society in Orthodox environments. It is probably and historical period, R. W. Connel suggested, no accident that Hadar’s Ethan Tucker, the masculine ideal most valued by that society who champions the new egalitarian can be considered “hegemonic masculinity,” which is “the most honored way of being a participatory independent congregations, man.” While many men certainly will not live up received his ordination at the Orthodox to this social ideal, the dominant image of maleness nevertheless has a profound effect Israeli kibbutz yeshiva Ma’ale Gilboa. because it is shaped by—and helps to shape—the Similar backgrounds are shared by culture and its institutions. Hegemonic Orthodox artistic business entrepreneur masculinity affects both men and women in society, because it requires “all other men to Aaron Bisman, and Storahtelling’s position themselves in relation to it,” and “nonprofit musical and dramatic legitimates “the global subordination of women to men.” Like other aspects of human behavior, company” founded by Amichai Lau- these gender role constructions are affected by Lavie, “Israeli-born former yeshiva the shift of time, with new struggles “for student and member of one of Israel’s hegemony,” as “older forms of masculinity” are 61 “displaced by new ones.” most prominent rabbinic families.” The 23 Sander Gilman, The Jew’s Body (New York commitment of Orthodox and ex- and London: Routledge, 1991), p. 134. 24 Orthodox men is an important David Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History (New York: Schocken Books, phenomenon because it illustrates the 1986), p. 76. power of traditional environments to 25 Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the prove intellectually and spiritually Jewish Man (Berkeley: University of California compelling to men—discussed in more Press, 1997), pp. 68, 51,42, 3 26 detail in Chapter Four—even when those Harry Brod, “Of Mice and Supermen: Images of Jewish Masculinity,” in T.M. Rudavsky, ed., men reject Orthodoxy’s patriarchal Gender and Judaism: The Transformation of premise in their innovative Jewish Tradition (New York: New York University leadership. Press, 1995), pp. 279-293, p. 291. 27 Avraham Grossman, Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004); Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and Children: Jewish Endnotes Chapter One Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 28 Aviva Cantor, Jewish Women, Jewish Men: 22 R. W. Connel, “Class, Patriarchy, and Sartre’s The Legacy of Patriarchy in Jewish Life (New Theory of Practice,” in Theory and Society 2, pp. York: Harper San Francisco, 1994), p. 5. 305-320; Which Way Is Up? Essays on Sex, 29 Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct, op. cit..

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30 Moshe Rosman, How Jewish Is Jewish History Prell, ed., Women Remaking American Judaism (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2007, Civilization, 2007), p. 150. pp. 109-133, p. 111. See also, Karla Goldman, 31 Avraham Weiss, Women at Prayer: A Beyond the Synagogue Gallery: Finding a Place Halakhic Analysis of Women’s Prayer Groups for Women in American Judaism (Cambridge, (Hoboken, New Jersey: Ktav Publishing House, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2000). 1990), pp. 43-46. 43Herman Wouk, Marjorie Morningstar: A Novel 32 See Hillel Halkin, trans. and introduction, (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1983, rpt. Sholom Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman and The 1955), pp. 84-85. Railroad Stories (New York: Schocken Library 44 Sylvia Barack Fishman, A Breath of Life: of Yiddish Classics, 1987). Feminism in the American Jewish Community 33 Tova Hartman, Feminism Encounters (New York: The Free Press, 1993). Traditional Judaism: Resistance and 45 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New Accommodation (Waltham, Massachusetts: York: Norton, 1963). Brandeis University Press, 2007), p. 33. 46 Gloria Steinem, “Humanism and the Second 34 Y. L. Peretz, “A Marred Holiday,” reprinted Wave of Feminism, Humanist (May/ June 1987). from In This World and the Next (trans. Moshe 47 Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex Segal), Thomas Yoseloff, Inc.,1958, in Sylvia (New York: Morrow, 1971). Barack Fishman, Follow My Footprints: 48 Vivian Gornick, Women in Sexist Society: Changing Images of Women in Jewish Literature Studies in Power and Powerlessness (Canada: (Dartmouth, New Hampshire: Brandeis Harper Collins/ Basic Books, 1971). University Press/ University Press of New 49 Sidney Goldstein, “Profile of American Jewry: England, 1992), pp. 64-71, p. 67. Insights from the 1990 National Jewish 35 Iris Parush, Reading Jewish Women: Population Survey,” American Jewish Year Book Marginality and Modernization in Nineteenth- 1992 (New York: American Jewish Committee, Century European Jewish Society (Waltham, 1992), pp. 115-116. MA: Brandeis University Press/ University Press 50 Moshe Hartman and Harriet Hartman, Gender of New England, 2004). Equality and American Jews (Albany: State 36 Marion Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 219- Middle Class: Women, Family and Identity in 225. Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford 51 Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung, Second University Press, 1991). Shift (New York: Penguin Books, 1989). 37 Lynne Segal, Slow Motion: Changing 52 Rosanna Hertz, More Equal than Others: Masculinities, Changing Men (New Brunswick, Women and Men in Dual-Career Marriages NY: Rutgers University Press, 1990), p. 311. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 38Kaplan, Jewish Middle Class. p. 67. 53 Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, “The Unfreedom of 39 Carol Ascher, Renate Bridenthal, Marion Jewish Women,” in Jewish Spectator, October Kaplan, and Atina Grossman, “Fragments of a 1970, pp. 2-6. German-Jewish Heritage in Four ‘Americans’” 54 Rachel Adler, “The Jew Who Wasn’t There,” in Abraham J. Peck, ed., The German-Jewish Davka, Summer 1971, pp. 6-11. Legacy in America, 1938-1988: From Bildung to 55 National Jewish Population Surveys 1970, the Bill of Rights (Detroit: Wayne State 1990, 2000-01. University Press, 1989), pp. 179-198, pp. 181, 56 Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, “Celebrating Thirty 192. Years of Women as Rabbis,” in 40 Paula Hyman, “”Gender and the Jewish Reconstructionism Today 11, NO.1 Immigrant Experience in the United States,” in (http://www.jrf.org/rt/2003/women_as_rabbis.ht Judith Baskin, ed., The Jewish Woman in m), Autumn 2003. Historical Perspective (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), pp. 222-242. 57 Hartman, Feminism Encounters Traditional 41 Riv-Ellen Prell, Fighting to be Americans: Judaism. Jews, Gender, and the Anxiety of Assimilation 58 Steven M. Cohen, “The Growth of Emergent (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999), p. 26. Spiritual Communities, 1996-Present” (New 42 Karla Goldman, “Women in Reform Judaism: York: 2007 National Spiritual Communities Between Rhetoric and Reality,” in Riv-Ellen 30 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

Survey Report of Preliminary Findings, 2007), p. 20. 59 Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman, “The Continuity of Discontinuity: How Young Jews Are Connecting, Creating, and Organizing their Jewish Lives,” www.acbp.net, 21/64 . 60 Gail Levin, “Censorship, Politics, and Sexual Imagery in the Work of Jewish-American Feminist Artists,” in Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issue 14 (Fall 2007), 63-96. 61 Cohen, “Continuity of Discontinuity,” p. 11.

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 31

Two: Gendered Thinking About Judaism in Jewish Homes

ow do Jewish men and women the dating process, “She was so different today relate to organized religion from anyone else I had met.” The strength of Hin general, to Jews and Judaism finding common ground as an important specifically, and to the goal of raising element for inmarrieds was emphasized in Jewish children? Whatever their religious or many interviews like that of Gail Jacobs, secular orientation and viewpoints, Jews who grew up in rural Colorado, and is most agree about the salience of the Jewish married to a British Jew who, like her, grew culture or religion when they are married to up in an observant Jewish home that was far each other. They often disagree not only from a center of Jewish population: about specifics but even about how When we started to talk we already important ethnicity and/or religion are when had half a dozen things that were their spouses are not Jewish. The fewest exactly the same. I mean, virtually the gender differences are found in endogamous same in terms of importance of the love Jewish homes, where both parents are born of Israel, importance of knowing that to Jews and often have similar goals. be Jewish you have to work at it... One of the reasons for these When I went to his place the first time I commonalities among inmarried families, could go in and find his (dairy) dishes despite their diversity, is that as in the kitchen…. I mean, I could have intermarriage has become more common, gone to his freezer and taken out the inmarriage has become less common. same kind of thing that I had grown up Inmarried couples today are a far more self with in my freezer at home, the same selecting group today than they have been at kind of effort, the values that your any other era of Jewish history. If American family instilled in you. So within – and culture designates spiritual attachments I’m not kidding--a very short period of primarily to women, Jewish men who marry time, it had become obvious that there Jewish women today are more likely to were so many commonalities….they attach importance to ethnic and religious were things that you didn’t even have to identification, and thus to be countercultural. discuss. Judaism matters to them also, not only to This commonality during the dating their wives. process becomes a source of strength—and Even the modes of attraction are often Jewish strength—as the couple deals with different for inmarried than intermarried the challenges of daily married life. This is couples: Inmarried couples often describe especially true when husband and wife share their mutual attraction during their courting strong Jewish commitments, as Gail noted: days by saying, “We had so much in After 24 years, we think so much common,” while mixed marrieds talk about alike on many things that most of the the exciting differences they discovered in decisions aren’t complicated. I think we 32 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

believe in family values, primarily. went to Boston. She went the year that We’ve done a lot to make sure that our my son was a freshman in New York. kids have close relationships with their And for the high holidays, he was family. We also want them to feel close coming home. She wasn’t. She was to Israel, that’s a very high priority for feeling very isolated, but when she both of us. So when it comes to are stayed at BU and the kids that actually they going to do X or Y, and if it led the services were two kids from includes, or would exclude something Denver. I think a kid learns by not that has to do with family, we just count necessarily having things laid on for the other stuff and that becomes a them so easily. Even in Denver, where priority. When it comes to Jewish day it’s a million times easier than it was school, camps, all of those are kind of where I grew up, it still is hard work to questions that are not debatable. And I be Jewish. It still is – you can’t suppose some of the decisions that are automatically do anything. You’re still made are being made more because one in the minority here. And I think our of us just is tired of making them. You children probably have learned that if deal with it, whatever it is. You’ll be there is something important to you, fine…. I have a lot of faith and belief you work towards making it happen. that he would make the right decision. There is no such thing as perfect. And So the dumb stuff we might have more you can’t be criticized for, at least if discussions on it. Most of our decisions you make the attempt and you’re are pretty much commonality on values, willing to take the challenge on. You in terms of what you invest in your may not win. You may not succeed. children. I think probably the hardest But if you try to make a difference, or decisions are the amount of time you’re you try to make something better for willing to sacrifice to doing something. somebody, that’s important. The common values, including the In the Jacobs family, working at maintaining common Jewish values, that this type of Jewish commitments while living in an father and mother model for their children as open, diverse society was taught by both they grow up are often internalized by both father and mother and has become a three- male and female children once they are out generation phenomenon. Although Gail of the home and on their own in college and jokes that their values and lifestyle might be beyond. Gail Jacobs talked about her son thought to be outmoded—“We may be and daughter going to the East Coast for developing our children to be dinosaurs,” their college years, and discovering that the she laughs, “The truth is that I think that human and Jewish lessons they learned in there are people that have that value, and Denver gave them useful guidelines for new they are the ones that help to shape a challenges: community or an organization. The ones I think my daughter had an that all want it instantly aren’t the ones that interesting perspective on this when she make a difference usually.”

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Almost universally, inmarried families Typical of many interviews, Matthew with children say they are raising them as Gross, an inmarried Jewish father who Jews (96 %). As we will examine more affiliates with Conservative Judaism closely in Chapter Three, most inmarried explained: Jewish parents with children belong to Although Dori and I are in a very synagogues (77 %) and Jewish organizations different part of the spectrum in terms (54 %). The vast majority send their children of religious conventions, both of us to some type of Jewish religious education have extremely strong connection to (82 %). While the observance of Jewish (Jewish) things. Dori more to Israel, ceremonies, customs and holidays runs a peoplehood, to that, to some extent, but wide gamut among inmarried American also religiously. I suppose I would be Jews, from fervently Orthodox to virtually in the reverse position of my mother, if completely secular, not more than one in ten our children, for some reason, would (10 %) have Christmas trees—once much not continue Judaism. It has certainly more common among inmarried American been a major focus in our upbringing to Jewish families as a symbol of convey to them how important the Americanization. Jewish connection is. The most striking difference between I think it has been largely very inmarried and intermarried Jewish families successful. We did not do it by ever in terms of gender roles is that Jewish requiring of them. I was sensitive about fathers as well as mothers in inmarried forcing them to do things and building families often have extensive connections to up negative feelings. I felt it was much Jews and Judaism, and are committed to better to do the opposite of what most raising Jewish children, while Jewish fathers families do. They force their kids to go in intermarried families, as we will soon see to religious school and have a Bar in more detail, have limited or weak Mitzvah while they do nothing. I connections and are much less likely to be thought it better don't force them, and committed to raising Jewish children. As a show an example of our own result, ethnoreligious values and religious commitment to Judaism. If they have cultural and familial tasks are much more an example, then it really means shared and evenly divided in inmarried something. households than they are in mixed married Although it is much less pronounced, households. Inmarried Jewish fathers play a the feminization of Jewish gender roles is much more active role in the family’s apparent even in inmarried families. Jewishness and in familial relationships. Especially outside the Orthodox realm, More than three-quarters of both inmarried husbands often delegated many religious husbands and wives feel religion is activities to their wives, because both important in their lives and in the way they husbands and wives assumed that mothers raise their children. will be the ones responsible for implementing day to day Jewishness. In 34 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

some Conservative and especially in Reform choice were overwhelmingly attracted to settings, husbands and wives often assumed organized religion; their born-Jewish that the mother would be the person husbands included two-thirds who were routinely accompanying children to strongly in favor of organized religion and a synagogue for Sabbath services, for spectrum of more ambivalent feelings example. As Jack Gornack put it: among the remaining one-third. When we decided that we wanted In contrast, gender made a much bigger to affiliate with the temple, I was very difference in attitudes among men and uncomfortable at first going to a women in intermarried families as they Reform temple, because I couldn’t get talked about their relationship to organized used to the choir or to the organ and to religion. Women—both Jewish and non- the way just the whole thing was done. I Jewish—in intermarried families described don’t think it mattered so much that themselves as being much more pro- there was a woman cantor, but it just all organized religion than were male sounded so different. Of course, now informants. In intermarried households with that I have heard it doesn’t sound like, Jewish husbands, nearly half of Christian even though at first it sounds like a wives but fewer than one-third of their church, but when you hear a church, a Jewish husbands expressed themselves as church is different. And Jenny’s attitude being strongly in favor of organized was, “I am going to be the one religion. In intermarried households with principally responsible for taking them Jewish wives, well over half of Jewish wives and for being there, and I have to be but only 10% of their Christian husbands comfortable with it, and that is what I said they were strongly in favor of organized am going to be comfortable with. So get religion. Here is how Janine Marton, an comfortable with it.” And I am, it intermarried Jewish woman, describes her worked out. decision to marry a non-Jew and raise This is definitively an American pattern: Jewish children, and how her husband’s outside of America, in many cultures men hostility to organized religion has typically assume synagogue responsibilities. complicated that decision: At 35 I knew I wanted to have kids, Relationship with Organized and knew I was sort of at the end of that Religion Varies by Marriage Type part, and at that point I felt that it was Within inmarried households in our better to have kids as part of a family interview data, more than three quarters of than to try to do artificial insemination both Jewish men and Jewish women said or something else and be a single they were strongly in favor of organized Jewish parent. So, at that point, I religion. In conversionary households, those thought that a mixed marriage with a with male Jews by choice and born-Jewish clear commitment at the outset that it wives were almost universally in favor of was my intention to raise a Jewish organized religion. Wives who were Jews by family, and I am not going to fool you, I

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 35

was very up front, was better than the described his dating non-Jewish girls almost possibility of not raising a family at exclusively, although “there were plenty of all….Luke hates organized religion. He Jewish girls,” because “dating Jewish girls is hates any organized religion. He goes to not fun—it is work.” Jeremy, who married church to hear the Bach music, but this in a double Jewish and Christian ceremony, is a man who doesn’t believe in—he is emphasized that as an adult he has “had a man who believes in ultimate almost no contact with the Jewish religion as freedom, is own individual freedom to an institution.” Nevertheless, he made it do what he chooses, but any religious quite clear to his wife that their children system that has obligations doesn’t could not be raised as Christians; if they make sense to him because it is needed a religion, it needed to be Jewish. externally imposed….That piece of our Jewish men in the interviews repeatedly relationship has left me lonely in the expounded on the faults of Jewish religious ways I thought it would…I got exactly culture. They often reduced Jewishness to a what I expected in the Jewish piece. kind of stereotypical materialism, as Jewish men frequently spoke with exemplified by Jewish women, who were disdain about organized religion, in their described as “trying to act older than they case Judaism, which for many of them had really were, and instead of talking about consisted primarily of two years of pre-bar what they wanted to do with their lives, they mitzvah training. Many of them were bitter were always talking about what they about their Hebrew school experiences, and wanted…obsessed with material things,” as seemed convinced that all of Judaism could Jonathan Milberg explained. Jonathan was be encapsulated in those remembered not interested in having his 15-year-old environments. They were, as one of our daughter attend religious schools of any interviewers commented, examples of kind, but the family did participate in yearly “many Jewish husbands who retain their religious festivals and meals with their thirteen year old mindset about religion and extended families. Jonathan and his daughter never seem to be able to apply an adult attend Christmas church services with his perspective on it.” Such husbands often wife’s family, but he declared proudly, “I describe their children as being raised as never kneel.” Meanwhile, his wife Caitlin, “nothing” or “having both religions” or who thinks religion is important, especially “making a choice depending on who their for raising children, secretly went with her friends are.” mother and had their daughter baptized as an For Jewish men who say they are not infant. Caitlin reported in a hushed voice: interested in organized religion, their apathy When she was in fourth grade, our or dislike of Judaism and Christianity as daughter needed to get some X-rays at religious faiths is about equal—but their the hospital. I had to fill out a form that negative feelings about Jewish women carry asked about religion among other most of the emotional baggage. Many told things. I hesitated, and then I asked her stories similar to Jeremy Naiman, who what I should put down. She said 36 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

Catholic. I’m not sure if she said that was pretty frankly indifferent to what it just because I was there. Maybe if was. My husband didn’t really care Jonathan had been with her she would whether or not they were raised with have said Jewish. religion, but he said, “If there is going to be a religion, they got to be Jewish, Women More Likely to Think because I would feel weird having a Religion Is Necessary Christian child….My husband is in the In the interview data, women—both awkward position of feeling he should Jewish and non-Jewish—were more likely provide some leadership for something to describe themselves as “religious” than he really doesn’t believe in. That is true their husbands are. Women, both Jewish and of all these other couples [their non-Jewish, were more likely to describe friends]….Almost all these men who their intermarried households as relating to want their children to be Jewish believe one of the formal wings of Judaism, while in that for cultural reason—it’s a kind of men, both Jewish and non-Jewish, lean more very masculine, very interesting thing. toward calling the household Secular or Carol, most of her friends, and many Cultural, or Atheistic or Agnostic. It is the other non-Jewish women we interviewed mothers in these families, rather than the perceived their Jewish husbands as being fathers, who say they think it is important fundamentally uncomfortable with religion that their children have some type of in general—but opposed to having Christian religious orientation, and men are much children. Carol says her husband Jack would more likely to feel “secular”—and much less “love to” bring them up without religion. “It convinced that organized religion is the would make things a lot easier for him.” foundation of moral and ethical behavior. As However, she thinks bringing children up Judy Gewirtz, an inmarried Jewish mother, without religion “is a mistake,” and she remarked, “I think if my husband was explains why she feels that way very married to someone who was less interested eloquently: in being actively Jewish, I don’t think it Bringing up with religion to me would bother him.” means exposing your children to the Carol Neal Nagler echoes many, many myths and stories of your culture, and it non-Jewish wives of Jews when she means giving a very concrete way of complains, “I am in the weird position of understanding what values and where initiating activities in a religion that I don’t moral structure comes from. I think that know a whole lot about.” She remarks that is what faith is. Those are very “everyone we know who is interfaith—the important concepts even if you don’t mother is not Jewish—says the children are agree with the content it was taught primarily being raised Jewish.” Carol through. You hear people say, “If your remembers: child doesn’t speak a foreign language I wanted our children raised with by the time they’re five, they’ll never some kind of religious background. I have the right accent.”

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 37

Well, I think the same thing is true religious agenda. Janice Geldman, for with faith. The same thing is true of example, sometimes feels that she is in a developing a belief system. I think “mixed marriage” between someone who there’s something really quite wants religious activities in the home and extraordinary with the first time that someone who doesn’t—her Jewish husband you ask questions about who you are, Jack. Jack’s lack of enthusiasm for religious how you got here, and what the activities is similar to many Jewish fathers expectations are in your role in the in both liberal wings of Judaism and of universe. I think those questions, if Jewish fathers in intermarried households. they’re answered early can really Janice explains how she and her husband fundamentally affect the way you see differ: the world and your place in it. That’s When it came to certain things, like very powerful, and I think it stems— keeping a Kosher home, whatever that and I don’t mean that in a moralistic means to me, that is one thing that I way in terms of “my children need the have always insisted on, and that my fear of God so that they won’t steal a husband has begrudgingly at first, and gun from K-Mart”—I mean it in a ultimately I think comfortably accepted. broader sense, in “look how big the And in some respects, I think I felt early word is and what people have done to on that I was in a mixed marriage, even each other over history”….Even just though I was married to someone who reading these cute little Bible stories to was Jewish, because we came from very my children, my son says, “Oh, those different Jewish backgrounds. And people used to live in sin.” I mean, because I felt strongly about the Jewish that’s a real revelation to a three-year- background, it took on more of the old. context of a mixed marriage, because Carol’s words reflect a distinctively typically in a mixed marriage, you may Christian approach to “scripture.” It would have conflict between the two over be most unlikely for a person who had which religion, but for us it was a grown up in a Jewish environment to use the conflict over how we celebrated being concept of “living in sin.” She is typical of Jewish. And we had very different non-Jewish women raising “Jewish” ideas on what that meant. children in that she thinks religion is important, but, in the absence of any Men More Likely to See Religion as meaningful involvement by her Jewish Unnecessary husband, she has no choice but to fall back In contrast with the women’s frequently on the concepts and values that are voiced opinion that religion is the basis for embedded in the religious culture in which the formation of a moral and ethical she was raised. character, many Jewish and non-Jewish Jewish women also often find that they fathers, especially in intermarried families, are the parenting adults who are pushing a said they feel that religion is at best a 38 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

temporary crutch that can help people grow things I will do, even how often I use toward ethics and morality. Men are much the car. How I treat other people. more likely to feel strongly that leading a Ken rejected his sister’s claim that his good and ethical life is the only legitimate current ethical beliefs are the result of the reason for religion, that goodness and ethical fact that he grew up a believing Catholic: behavior are not dependent on religious My sister tells me that I have got belief, and that any person can be good and that because, “You grew up with that, ethical without religion. Gaby Gorelick, a and that is the reason that you should Jewish woman, reflected that her Jewish have your kids going to church.” But I husband “doesn’t care whether the kids am not convinced of that. I am not continue or not, and I do. I want my kids to convinced that I am the way I am if I marry somebody who is Jewish, am a good person because I grew up perpetuating the Jewish tradition.” She also with Catholicism. I don’t think that is notes a gender difference between her necessary. I also have learned a lot from teenage children: “Being Jewish is very Janie, who is Jewish. important to my daughter, and not as Ken and his Jewish wife Janie have important to my son.” While her daughter is decided to “raise the children Jewish,” but currently dating a non-Jewish boy, “I think when asked by the interviewer what that she would really be unhappy if she lost that means specifically in their family, Ken part of her life.” responded by describing a kind of Ken Malone was typical as he insisted universalistic ethicism, and also the absence that goodness and religiosity are unrelated: of Catholic rituals and ceremonies. They Nowadays I would say that whatever have some Passover and Hanukkah work God needs done he needs me to be observances. Their two daughters had no doing it here, and I feel like I’m doing it birth ceremonies, and do not attend Jewish almost by any standards. Raising a schools. No bat mitzvah ceremonies are family, trying to be responsible in my planned. Ken described their family’s civic duties. A lot of that ethical sort of ethicism to his father, feeling came in the last couple of years, Nominally, the children are Jewish. thinking about the environment and a We occasionally go to synagogue, and large population of human beings on the we tell them about God. And for my earth and environmental construction. Dad that is enough. And that was kind So that extends to other things too. It is of comforting to me. He said, ‘Well, not just nature and earth but it is also there is something more out there than humans and human society. I decided to themselves, and I don’t have any be a good person and I feel a very problem with that.’ I don’t have any strong ethical compulsion to do right. problem with the notion of God. I don’t And I do right! I may make the have strong feelings about doing what difference in decisions about the car I God is demanding of me. I don’t know buy and what house I will live in, the where it comes from, but I don’t call it

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 39

God at this point in my life. I have a time as she starts making her own strong sympathy for people who feel decision”—but later, although “She might that way…. I feel like my actions are decide to be Jewish all her life,” (and the directed by something larger than couple had agreed to raise their children as myself. It is not an individualistic Jews), Craig hopes that her horizons will be attitudes I have. broader, so that she can enjoy “The Craig Medwin—also a deeply maximum possibilities unfolding in her own philosophical man—adopted an eclectic, life, and also see her life as part of the larger universalistic spiritualism in place of one community of the world or the planet. particular religious approach to living. Having planetary responsibilities.” In that Today, Craig describes himself as “a mix, Craig thinks that for his daughter practitioner of yoga” who “deeply Judaism might—or might not—serve as her incorporates Judaism and Christianity and “anchor point.” Craig says he believes it is Hinduism into my life in terms of spiritual important to see “the relative value say of principles. Put me into a box, but I don’t fit Hinduism or Buddhism or Judaism.” into a box.” Like many non-Jewish parents A substantial minority of Jewish and of Jewish children, he emphasizes the non-Jewish fathers of “Jewish” children saw Jewish roots of Christianity, and the religion as a good framing structure for common core of the two religions. This pan- children as they grow up—but unnecessary religious approach began with his rejection for adults, something that could and should of the exclusivity of Catholicism: be put aside as people mature. Kirk I grew up Catholic. In ways I still Norwood, for example, was typical of men consider myself Catholic, but very who feel “disconnected from religion,” and loosely. I don’t feel like I belong to the says he will tell his children about his real Church anymore. But some of the early values during “their early teen years”: certainly teachings and formative pieces I don’t think of myself as a of Catholicism remain with me. But Christian. I believe in a higher power then I track myself back and I also and that’s pretty much it. And so, when consider myself Jewish facing the roots the time is right, I will sit down and of Catholicism. I worked this out in my explain to them what I think and what I own self is the best way to say it. I believe. I really want them to grow up began at an early age to have a sense of learning about other religions….from not having to be sort of stuck in one early on I want them to understand that religion. there are other religions out there, and Not surprisingly, when Craig thinks to me, religion is not a matter of right about his goals for his daughter, he says he and wrong, rather it’s an issue of raising is fine with Judaism as a kind of beginner’s inner peace. I want them to grow up not religion, a strategy for raising a child—“We being prejudiced against Indians or would probably raise her Jewish until such Buddhists or whatever. 40 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

Although their childhood religious much more reticent about providing Jewish backgrounds are often rather similar, religious or cultural content for their intermarried Jewish women and men create grandchildren. In conversionary households, very different religious profiles in their adult in contrast, it was much more common to households. These gender-based report that Jewish in-laws had pressured discrepancies in descriptions of the family’s toward conversion, and now provided religious profile were much smaller and in Jewish religious and cultural content to the general not statistically significant among family. our inmarried or conversionary informants. The National Jewish Population Survey In comparison with the active involvement (NJPS) 2000-01 data told a similar story of non-Jewish grandparents, both Jewish and about the relative importance of religion to non-Jewish spouses in intermarried families men and women, Figures 1 and 2, below. reported that the Jewish grandparents were

Figure 1

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 41

Figure 2

one parent was Jewish and one non-Jewish. The majority of American Jews, it Among unaffiliated imarried Jewish parents, should be noted, do not say that religion is women (25 %) were twice as likely as men “Very important” to them. However, among (13 %) to rank religion as “Very important” married couples with children in the NJPS to them. Similarly, within intermarried 2000-01 study, inmarried, affiliated families families, affiliated Jewish intermarried men and women are frequently “on the same mothers (32 %) were twice as likely as page.” Differences between men and women affiliated intermarried Jewish fathers (15 %) were far less pronounced in inmarried than to say religion was “Very important.” Not in intermarried or unaffiliated families. surprisingly, that answer was given by 9 % Thus, in Jewish families that affiliated with of unaffiliated intermarried Jewish fathers, a synagogue, a substantial minority among who seemed to have the lowest regard for Jewish fathers (35 %) and mothers (42 %) the importance of religion, compared to 27 stated that religion is “Very important” to % of unaffiliated intermarried Jewish them. Differences between men and women mothers saying religion was “Very were much more pronounced if (1) the important” to them. family did not belong to a synagogue, or (2) 42 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

Who Makes Decisions About Your said they made the decision themselves. Child’s Religion? (Their husbands apparently thought they were making joint decisions.) In One of the most suggestive but little intermarried families, most Jewish fathers analyzed questions in NJPS 2000-01 said they and their non-Jewish wives made explored the process of major familial the decision together. In contrast, almost decisions about the religion in which two-thirds of Jewish mothers married to children will be raised. Dividing parents by non-Jewish men said they made the family type, affiliation, wing of Judaism, children’s religious decisions by themselves, and gender, the interaction between these seen in Figures 3 and 4. The determination various factors becomes apparent. In of intermarried Jewish women to raise inmarried Orthodox and Conservative Jewish children with or without the help of households, both mothers and fathers their non-Jewish husbands, evident in the overwhelmingly reported they made interview data, is thus clear in the statistical decisions together. Within inmarried Reform data as well. households, one-third of Jewish mothers

Figure 3

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 43

Figure 4

The self perceptions of parents about proclamations, sociologically the Reform who makes religious decisions for the movement probably conforms most to the child(ren) are important, because they American pattern that perceives women as indicate which of the parents has “taken the religious actors in the household. This, ownership” for the task of raising children in rather than cultural holdovers from a particular religious cultural tradition—or traditional Jewish Matrilineal Descent, not. The fact that even in inmarried accounts for this attitude. households one-third of Reform mothers see themselves as the primary determiners of their child(ren)’s religious identity is striking, particularly in the face of the Patrilineal Descent decision that apportioned religious identity equally to Jewish fathers and mothers. Despite religious 44 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

Beyond the Judeo-Christian Blend: either. Within conversionary households, the How Unique Is Judaism? vast majority of informants subscribed to the belief that “Judaism and Christianity share Jewish men married to non-Jewish some values, but Judaism is based on more women in our interview population were than just common religious values.” One in much more likely than Jewish women five female converts expressed the even married to non-Jewish men to perceive stronger idea that “Judaism is uniquely Judaism and Christianity as mostly similar: good, and shares very little with other One-third of the intermarried Jewish men we religious traditions.” Thus, conversionary interviewed said that the two religions were households were very similar to inmarried “the same except for Jesus”, or that they households in their attitudes toward the “shared more than they differed”; or that “all distinctiveness of Judaism. Women who religions are essentially the same”. In converted into Judaism were especially comparison, one-fifth of intermarried Jewish similar to born Jews in seeing Judaism as women held these beliefs. Conversely, the distinctive—and distinctively good—in the belief that “Judaism is more than just a marketplace of American religious life. religion” was expressed by two-thirds of intermarried Jewish men, compared to three- How Important Is Being Jewish to quarters of Jewish women. You? These disparities between Jewish husbands and wives and their Christian The centrality—or lack of it—of being spouses are all the more striking when Jewish was also explored in NJPS 2000-01. compared with the attitudes of inmarried and In families with two Jewish parents the wing conversionary Jewish husbands and wives. of Judaism with which the family was The belief that Judaism is unique was affiliated was far more predictive than the expressed among inmarried couples in our gender of the respondent, as we see in interview population by four out of ten of Figures 5 and 6. There was little gendered both men and women. The idea that Judaism difference on the importance of Jewishness is based on more than just common religious between Orthodox fathers (92 %) and values was shared by six out of ten of both mothers (100 %) or Conservative fathers (69 men and women. None of the inmarried %) and mothers (71 %) who said that being couples saw Judaism and Christianity as Jewish was “very important.” There were very similar. more gender differences in answers from None of the conversionary couples— Reform fathers (42 %) or mothers (53%), or whether born Jews or Jews by choice—saw Just Jewish/ secular fathers (38 %) and Judaism and Christianity as very similar mothers (51 %).

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 45

However, in contrast, as we see in Figure 6 below, which depicts “the Put another way, intermarried Jewish importance of being Jewish” among mothers are twice as likely to see Judaism as affiliated and unaffiliated intermarried “Very important” as are intermarried Jewish families, gender differences are particularly fathers. Indeed, there is little difference revealing in intermarried families. Even in among intermarried Jewish fathers whether families that are affiliated with a synagogue or not they are affiliated, while there are or temple, Jewish women are almost twice great differences among affiliated and as likely as Jewish men to say Jewishness is unaffiliated intermarried Jewish mothers. “Very important” to them. The majority of With 24 % saying Judaism is “Not very intermarried Jewish women (54 %) who are important,” intermarried Jewish mothers affiliated with a synagogue or temple in any who do not affiliate with any wing of wing of Judaism say that being Jewish is Judaism may be a very alienated population “Very important” to them, compared to 27 indeed, Figure 6 suggests. % of affiliated intermarried Jewish men.

Figure 5 46 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

Figure 6

Rosh Hashanah’s probably one of my favorite holidays. Believe it or not I In this chapter we have discussed how love Passover—the food kills me, but I men and women feel and talk about religion. just love the Seder. Yom Kippur, it’s In Chapter Three we analyze interview the break-fast that we all look forward participants’ reports of their own religious to. But it’s really family, that’s what it and ethnic behavior. Although we have is to me. That’s why I keep saying, it’s separated ideas—the importance of religion not just about Judaism, it’s really about and of Judaism specifically—from my family. With the holidays, I know I institutional affiliation and synagogue get a kind of warm and fuzzy feeling attendance, and from social networks such when I go into temple. Even though I’m as connections to family and to friendship sitting there for three hours and I get a circles, all of these factors are intertwined in little bored, you know, I look forward to the lives of real people. Jewish mother it all. I look forward to Jared learning Gloria Grossman spoke for many when she more Hebrew, to raising my children, to described the interaction of feelings, beliefs having my Mom coming to temple with and activities in her Jewish calendar year: us as a Bohbe. How cool will that be!

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 47

Three: Doing Jewish—Synagogue and Ceremony as the “World of Our Mothers”

or much of Jewish history, the performed meaningfully. In contrast, synagogue was the place where little young men saw that….many other men Fboys left the world of their mothers remained largely indifferent to the to join the world of their fathers. The older activities of their congregation. It was they grew, the more the synagogue and relatively easy for many of these young formal classroom became the primary men to drift away.62 venues for religious behavior. Although to Today, including synagogue religious be sure there were many home based attendance and religious and lay leadership, religious experiences for boys and men as girls and women are more active than boys well, the social network aspects of their and men in almost every aspect of religious religious lives were constructed around the and educational Jewishness within liberal, synagogue. Men “made” a minyan (religious especially Reform American Judaism. The quorum of ten men) for each other. Without predominance of women has a each other they could not recite key prayers psychological effect, and becomes a self- in the service, nor could they recite the fulfilling trend. In the Reform movement, kaddish prayer fulfilling their obligation to girls outnumbered boys in all youth pay respect to departed loved one. Men’s activities, from 57 percent to 78 percent, religious social networks were thus according Rabbi Michael Friedman, director institutionally located. of junior and senior high school programs at Girls and women developed their the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ). religiosity primarily within the home and in Friedman graphically connects this connection to home-based social networks. demographic shift directly to the Women’s religious lives often incorporated movement’s ordination of female rabbis and deep spirituality, expressed in prayers the predominance of female cantors: specifically crafted for their quotidian and “Before it was always a man high up on a life cycle experiences, from baking bread to bimah wearing a big robe in a deep voice, a immersing themselves in the ritual bath to model of leadership that was male-only and gestating and giving birth. As Robert top down,” Friedman comments. “Those Wuthnow has noted, women’s home-based, synagogues now have everybody sitting in a rather than institutional connections, circle with someone playing a guitar and weathered the secularizing influences of sharing feelings….they are styles that modernity: women may be more comfortable with than If young women learned that theirs men…[boys] don’t necessarily see was to be a submissive role, they themselves there.” 63 These changes leave nevertheless saw in their mothers’ Jewish boys and men wondering what the activities that this role could be synagogue can mean to them. Harvard 48 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

University psychologist and author of the like, in literal Judaism, in Orthodox book, Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from Judaism, men don’t have a choice. You the Myths of Boyhood, William Pollock have to show up, so you do. Once that explains, “They [teenagers and young adult “you have to” piece disappeared in Jewish males] are struggling with who they liberal Judaism, men were like, “ok, we are, with what masculinity means, and what don’t have to, and they disappeared. So being a Jewish male means in American I think that the issue is not so much that society.”64 The decline of the synagogue as a the synagogue has gotten feminine—it’s venue for specifically masculine rites of that the men have retreated. I don’t initiation and life cycle passages leaves a know if this is a question for clergy. I lacuna. think this is a question for the men, Psychologists and gender theorists tell themselves: “What do you want? us that by middle school boys are beginning What’s not meeting your needs that to be impatient with mothers, sisters, and you’re not there? female educators, and by adolescence they One theory that I have is that in are ripe to feel themselves separate from American culture, it’s okay for women their mothers and to enter a male world. not to know things, or not to be good at Indeed, contemporary theorists like Joel things, and it is not okay for men. In a Kovel note that "much psychoanalytic synagogue like ours, which writing...read like a string of complaints attracts…attracts a lot of people who directed by a boy against his mother."65 aren’t Jewishly knowledgeable….it’s Western cultures, according to Nancy easier for a woman without a lot of Chodorow, often expect boys to, "repress background to sit in a service and say, and deny the intimacy, tenderness and “I don’t know what’s going on.” My dependence of the early symbiotic bond with guess is that for a man that is intolerable the mother if he is to assume a 'masculine' in our society…..it’s hard for men to identity." While this once was the province say, “I don’t know.” of the synagogue and the study hall, today Similarly, a 20-something young man young men complain, in contrast, about the interviewed by the same student reflected on “maternal vibe” of his liberal synagogue. the “maternal vibe” emanating from women This hardly increases the appeal Jewish rabbis and Jewish religious leaders: environments because, as Chodorow Mostly women have taken over the emphasizes, "masculinity is always defined power of the congregation. We have a negatively as that which is not feminine."66 female president, and a lot of the board A female Reconstructionist rabbi, is run by women….And it seems when interviewed by Brandeis student Mitzi you go to services, there’s less men Grossman, reflected on the way her every single time, and more women. congregation looks to her from the bimah: Sometimes it’s a little too lovey-dovey, Women are more present in more hugging everybody….Men don’t care. ways than they used to [be]. But I feel ….there are a handful of men who make

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 49

a concerted effort and do a great In the age of classical Reform, it job…..Beth El is trying to integrate was easier for men. People in the pews women, but at the same time, now that didn’t have to have expertise in they are doing that, women are kind of Hebrew; they basically relied on the overpowering. rabbi to have all the Jewish knowledge. I only had 3 male teachers in 13 The turning toward tradition with an years of Hebrew School.67 expectation of Jewish literacy is a direct Their words echo the concerns of challenge to men who grew up in the Reform Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, in his Classical Reform tradition.68 reflections on “The Retreating Man” in a Figures 7, 8 and 9, below illustrate dramatic recent issue of Reform Judaism. “Liberal gender differences between the men and Judaism is following the lead of liberal women in the diverse wings of American Christianity,” he notes. However, as Salkin Judaism. They show that how often Jewish correctly observes, by adapting to parents attend synagogue varies by four mainstream Protestant patterns Reform characteristics: (1) Whether they are married Judaism is adapting to a religious movement to a Jewish spouse; (2) What wing of which, while large, is shrinking in Judaism they affiliate with, if any; (3) comparison to more stringent Christian Whether or not they are synagogue movements. “Tough Christianity” does well members; and (4) Whether they are male or because it makes demands on its adherents, female. Gender makes the most difference especially men. Salkin asserts. Liberal among affiliated Reform Jews and among Judaism, like liberal Christianity, makes few intermarried Jews, whether affiliated or demands. Salkin describes a kind of “Catch- unaffiliated. 22” situation. On one hand, “demonstrating Among inmarried Jewish parents, if Jewish skills-- like davening, chanting they are Orthodox Jews, almost nine out of Torah, and putting on t’fillin--is a kind of ten men attend synagogue weekly or more, Jewish macho that fathers want to pass on to compared to four out of ten women. their sons,” a traditional Jewish pattern that Conservative men (14 %) and women (16 can be very engaging for boys and men. On %) have almost identical weekly attendance the other hand, these liturgical skills are rates. Reform women (17 %) are almost often not salient to men in the liberal wings twice as likely to attend services every week of Judaism—although, as we have noted, as Reform men (9 %). At the low end of the they have become desirable to many girls inmarried spectrum, affiliation or lack of and women in recent years. Perhaps even affiliation was far more important than more important, if men do not have the gender: unaffiliated Jewish fathers (15 %) skills, and are put into an environment and mothers (16 %) were half as likely to where they are expected to have them, the never attend services as unaffiliated Jewish experience can actually alienate men by fathers (37 %) and mothers (34 %). making them feel incompetent: Thus, comparing inmarried Orthodox and Reform men and women provides a

50 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

Figure 7

picture which is in many ways symbolic of attendance. Orthodox societies continue to the interface between Jewish denominational replicate communal norms of group prayer norms and gender role differences today: at least once a week. Conservative and Orthodox men attend weekly services twice especially Reform societies tend to lack this as often as Orthodox women. This reflects normative practice. the fact that traditional gender role Among affiliated intermarried Jewish construction posits that men are obligated to parents, gender makes a difference. Of try to pray in a group, whereas women are affiliated Jewish mothers who were married not. However, Orthodox women’s rates of to non-Jews, 14 % said they attend services attending weekly or more are far higher than weekly or more—almost the same rate as those of either Conservative or Reform men affiliated (non-Orthodox) inmarried Jewish or women. Reform women, in contrast, mothers! An additional 40 % of affiliated attend weekly services twice as often as intermarried mothers said they attend Reform men. The gap between inmarried services twice a month, again, rather similar Orthodox and non-Orthodox adults is more to the synagogue attendance rates of profound than differences in gender in affiliated inmarried Jewish mothers. For the regard to frequency of synagogue intermarried Jewish fathers, however, the

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 51

rates were strikingly different. Of affiliated intermarried fathers, 41 % said they never went to synagogue services. 16 % were there once or twice a year. Intermarried affiliated Jewish women are much more likely to attend synagogue on a regular basis than intermarried affiliated Jewish men. Rates of synagogue attendance were exceedingly low among intermarried, unaffiliated men and women.

Figure 8

52 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

Figure 9

looking at annual home-based ritual Religious Observances in Inmarried observances such as lighting Hanukkah Families Reflect Judaism and candles or attending Passover Seders, or Gender weekly home observances such as lighting Shabbat candles. These behaviors are Observers sometimes criticize research performed by individuals, but their reports for putting too much emphasis on performance is often in a family setting, and conventional Jewish religious rituals. While can provide information about the family’s religious observances do not tell us Jewish social capital. A ritual like fasting on everything about a family’s attachment to Yom Kippur can be grounded in communal Jews and Judaism, they tell us something. norms, although it sometimes primarily an Synagogue attendance statistics, for expression of personal religious or spiritual example, may or may not indicate piety, but sensibilities. Nationwide, for example, certainly tell us something about people who live in communities like attachments to communal social networks Baltimore where most Jews fast, regardless and to Jewish religious expression. Different of affiliation, are more likely to fast than types of attachment can be studied by those who live in communities like San

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 53

Francisco, where far fewer proportions of Hanukkah would be the two Jewish Jews participate in the fast. Thus, while holidays -- well, obviously, Rosh gender is often a factor in religious Hashana and Yom Kippur, so those are observance, gender is part of a complex web the two high holy days. So I would say of factors that have an impact on attitudes four Jewish holidays probably be and behavior. celebrated. Levels of activity involving Judaism as Passover and Hanukkah are indeed the a religious faith are, not surprisingly, most commonly celebrated Jewish holidays. connected not only to the community but Because their celebration is close to also to the type of family—inmarried or ubiquitous among affiliated families, the intermarried, and the wing of Judaism, if lack of their observance is extremely any, with which respondents affiliate, as significant. About one in seven inmarried well as to gender. Figures 10, 11, and 12 Reform fathers and one in ten inmarried illustrate ritual observances in inmarried and “Just Jewish” or “Secular” fathers said they intermarried families. Inmarried Orthodox never lit Hanukkah candles; one in ten men and women tend to report very similar inmarried Reform fathers and one in six levels of observance in most activities. inmarried “Just Jewish” or “Secular” fathers Inmarried affiliated non-Orthodox women said they never attend Passover Seders. report higher levels of observance than Their lack of participation in these inmarried affiliated non-Orthodox men, widespread communal norms may in some except for fasting on Yom Kippur, where cases be indicative of their alienation from men report much higher rates of fasting all Jewish social networks, as expressed by day than women do. Among inmarried those who reported, “I didn’t go to Seder families, most rituals are reported in similar because I wasn’t invited.” Alternatively, in rates by men and women. Lighting Shabbat some cases they may simply be an candles is universal among the Orthodox, indication of disinterest in religious rituals. and performed by more than half of Conservative Jews, and by one-third of Gender Affects Ritual Observances Reform Jews. The most common ritual in Intermarried Families observances in all Jewish families with Gender is much more of a key factor children are lighting Hanukkah candles and affecting ritual observances in intermarried attending Passover Seders. Sentiments like families than in inmarried families. Simply those of Joseph Katz, an inmarried father put, homes with Jewish mothers tend to have from Boston were shared by many Jewish much higher levels of ritual observance than families: homes which have Jewish fathers and non- We always do a Passover seder, so Jewish mothers, as we see in Figure 11 I would believe that we'll continue to do below. This is true both of widespread that. But I'm thinking, like, the minor annual rituals like Hanukkah candles, and holidays--those would probably go. less practiced weekly rituals like Sabbath Whereas maybe Passover and candles. Thus, of intermarried fathers with

54 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

Figure 10

children under 18 at home, 40 percent of whether Conservative (71 percent), Reform those who describe themselves as Just (69 percent), or Just Jewish/ Secular (84 Jewish or Secular say they never light percent). Among intermarried Jewish Hanukkah candles, compared to 15 percent mothers, in contrast, the norms of the Jewish of such mothers. Among intermarried movements they identified with were much Jewish fathers who describe themselves as more evident. “Never lighting” was reported Reform, 55 percent say they light Hanukkah by 39 percent of Conservative, 66 percent of candles every night, compared to 72 percent Reform, and 87 percent of Just Jewish/ of such mothers. Among Conservative Secular intermarried Jewish mothers. intermarried fathers 40 percent report that Unlike candle lighting, the incidence of they light Hanukkah candles every night. fasting on Yom Kippur among intermarried Conservative intermarried mothers are twice Jews was little affected by gender, and much as likely to say they light Hanukkah candles more reflective of the norms of the wings of (79 percent). Judaism with which they identified. Looking at Sabbath candles, reports of Moreover, men’s observances were “never lighting” were given by the great somewhat more rigorous, especially among majority of intermarried Jewish fathers, Conservative intermarried men.

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 55

Figure 11

Figure 12

56 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

of providing ritual circumcisions for their sons. As one father put it—reflecting many Brit Milah in Inmarried and interviews—“I just didn’t want to go to the Intermarried Jewish Households mat fighting over that issue.” The ritual circumcision of a male In contrast, the great majority of Jewish child—the Jewish brit milah—is arguably mothers see themselves as responsible for the most vivid symbol of differing their sons having a brit milah, whether or attachments to Jewish tradition not their non-Jewish husbands are thrilled demonstrated by Jewish men and women in with the idea. The lack of commitment that intermarried households. Ritual many intermarried Jewish fathers reveal for circumcision is still virtually universal a ritual that has always seemed among inmarried Jewish parents who quintessentially male—whatever other affiliate with any wing of American reservations people may have had about it— Judaism—Orthodox, Conservative, Reform. is a powerful symbol of gendered Only “Just Jewish/ Secular” inmarried differences in doing Jewish in American parents report about one in five not families today. providing their male children with a brit milah. However, among the intermarried population the picture is very different. Endnotes to Chapter Three About one-third of Conservative men and 62 well over half of Reform men married to Robert Wuthnow, Growing Up Religious: Christians and Jews and Their Journeys of Faith non-Jewish women report that their male (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999), p. 120. children have not had a brit milah. The 63 Nussbaum-Cohen, “Reform Jews Examining Ways to Retain Their Young Men,” p. A 10. pattern for intermarried Jewish women is 64 Nussbaum-Cohen, “Reform Jews.” diametrically opposite. Among Conservative 65 Joel Kovel, The Age of Desire: Case Histories of a women married to non-Jewish men eight out Radical Psychoanalyst (New York: Basic Books, 1981), p. 73. of ten and among Reform women married to 66 Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: non-Jewish men, seven out of ten report Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (London: University of California Press, 1978), p 181 their sons have had a brit milah. . The determination of intermarried 67 Both interviews conducted by Mitzi Grossman in affiliated Jewish mothers to see that their her unpublished Brandeis University Senior Honors Thesis, Perceived Feminization of American Liberal sons receive a ritual circumcision is Jewish Congregations, May 2008. counterintuitive according to popular 68 Jeffrey Salkin, “The Retreating Man,” in Reform psychological theories that say that fathers Judaism 35, No 1 (Fall 2006), pp. 70-71 like their sons to resemble them and have similar experiences to them. However, this finding is very much in keeping with our interview data. Our interviews showed that most Jewish fathers are not willing to battle with their non-Jewish wives over the issue

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 57

Four: Peoplehood, Social Networks, Israel Attachments

ewishness is not only (and for some music, arts and textual materials, and Jews not primarily) a religion, but ethnic ceremonies and rituals which may Jalso connection to an ethnicity and or may not be religious in nature. an ethnic culture. For some Jews, Ethnicity usually includes the sense of attachment to their ethnic group is an some relationship to an ethnic homeland. important aspect of their lives and their As we will see in this chapter, within the own personal identity. Some see their more traditional wings of Judaism, these Jewishness as a membership in the characteristics of ethnic religious and/or Jewish peoplehood. social capital are found among both men For most of human history and women. Within the liberal wings of identification with an ethnic group American Judaism, the Jews who are (sometimes understood as a racial group) most likely to have religious and/or was something one was born into and ethnic social capital today are female didn’t have much choice about. But Jews Jews. and other hyphenated white European ethnic descendents (Greek-, Italian-, Ethnic Social Capital Irish-Americans, etc.) in America today In Jewish culture, the ethnic and the usually have a choice about whether and religious aspects of social capital have how much they wish to associate with long been intertwined, and “secular” their “people.” The relationship Jewish ethnic social capital may be individuals have to others who share derived from and borrow much from their culture is sometimes called religious terms, history, concepts and “intersubjectivity,” that is, “to be activities. This is especially apparent in engaged in a conscious sense of sociality Israel, where fiercely secular Jewish with others,” to “see the essential writers freely use language, symbols and internal connections or bonds that concepts drawn from traditional rabbinic connect individuals together,” and literature. Jews around the world sometimes to engage in specific increase their ethnic social capital when activities that are expressive of those they learn Jewish languages, are 69 connections. involved with Jewish organizations, When intersubjectivity is an aspect including temples and synagogues, of ethnic identification, it is often participate in Jewish culture by reading supported by religious and/or “ethnic Jewish books, listening to Jewish music, social capital,” cultural expressions of and viewing Jewish films. Social capital ethnicity which typically include the deepens when Jews are engaged by ideas sharing of ethnic languages, ethnic of Jewish peoplehood, and when they cultural expressions such as foods,

58 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

make and keep many Jewish friends, misfortunes around the world, a visit Israel, and care about Israel. commitment to social action—including Jewish ethnicity is somewhat promoting tolerance and different than many others because the multiculturalism, and recognizable styles “homeland” in which the majority of of urban intellectualism and artistic Jewish grandparents (or great- creativity. grandparents) were born is usually not These aspects of Jewish secular the country that Jews regard as their identification remain virtually untouched “homeland” today—the State of Israel. by social scientific research. In assessing The daily language of Jewish the strength of Jewish ethnic grandparents or great grandparents was attachments, social scientists often look often a historical Diaspora Jewish at social networks and other local language like Yiddish, or Ladino, or markers of ethnicity, and also at Judeo-Arabic—but seldom Hebrew. attachments to Israel, the homeland Nevertheless although Hebrew was not a many American Jews have never visited. vernacular spoken language, it was the They examine the extent to which Jews virtually universal language of Jewish see themselves as a distinctive people, prayer. Hebrew words were often want to transmit Jewish culture to their incorporated into Jewish vernacular children, and want their children to languages, so it did function as a very continue their attachments to the Jewish specific ethnic passport of sorts. people and Jewish culture. Today, as the vernacular language Social networks such as friendship of the Jewish State of Israel, Hebrew has circles have repeatedly proved to be a become an ethnic language—but one very salient aspect of Jewish that is familiar to only a minority of connectedness. Statistically, family and American Jews. To many American friendship circles are one of the best Jews, Hebrew retains the flavor of predictors of Jewish values and religiosity, because they are still likely to behaviors, second only to population encounter Hebrew in a worship setting. density. One might say that, in a certain Thus, for American Jews the “secular” sense, social networks like family and ethnic language of Hebrew—one of the friends create their own bubble of foundation stones of secular ethnic population density. Social networks tend social capital—is experienced as part of to create and reinforce behavioral norms. the Jewish religion, not only or even They also construct attitudinal norms, primarily as part of secular Jewish especially establishing ideas of which culture. Instead, American Jews are activities are or are not worthwhile. Thus likely to think of “secular Jewish social networks can encourage members culture” as being comprised of edgy of the network to think that such Jewish humor, skepticism and irony, activities as jogging every morning or feelings of guilty responsibility for playing an instrument or reading

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 59

challenging books are—or are not— “all” Jewish were given by 31 % of worthwhile. In thinking about American inmarried Reform men and 42 % of Jewish life, diverse Jewish societies inmarried Reform women, with 22 % of make Israel visits or extensive Jewish men and 26 % of women reporting that education seem worthwhile—or not. The about half their friends are Jewish. These behavioral norms and shared attitudes of figures may be reflective of which parent social networks can have a profound primarily forms the social networks for effect on the behavior of individuals. the family—overwhelmingly the mother, As we see in Figure 13 and Figure rather than the father. The inmarried 14, inmarried Reform men and women Jack Gelbman, for example, remarked differ very little at the high end of that his Jewish wife Janice creates the Jewish friendship circles, but differ family’s social networks: strikingly at the low end. Almost half of Most of the circle of friends we inmarried Reform men (47 %) report have developed from Janice’s circle. that “some” or “none” of their close Josh is at a preschool and there’s ten friends are Jewish, compared to only other children in his class and so one-third of inmarried Reform women we’ve become friendly with some of (32 %). Reports of “mostly” Jewish or those parents. And some

Figure 13

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relationships with people I work “some” or “none.” with, but I’d say that Janice is Reform intermarried households responsible for bringing more of the report markedly lower levels of Jewish people that we spend time with than friends. Family type—rather than I am. gender—seems to be the salient factor in Wing of Judaism, as well as gender, Reform friendship circles. About two- makes a difference, and inmarried thirds of intermarried Reform Jewish Conservative Jewish parents have much men (64 %) and Reform Jewish women higher numbers of Jews among their (68 %) said “some” or “none” of their close friends than do inmarried Reform close friends were Jewish. Slightly more Jewish parents. Among inmarried than a quarter of both men (28 %) and Conservative Jewish parents, 57 % of women (26 %) said about half of their men and 55% of women report having close friends were Jewish. Only 8 % of mostly or all Jewish friends and only men and 5 % of women reported mostly about one-quarter (25 % and 22% Jewish friends. respectively) of men and women report

Figure 14

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 61

Denominational Differences in Poll,70 along with data from the NJPS Jewish Social Capital 2000-01 and other studies, suggest that in areas of non-religious, ethnic or One subtext of social networks is peoplehood identification, there are that they reflect a psychological state: substantial differences among Jews how closely one identifies as a member identifying with the various wings of of the Jewish people. As we see in Judaism as well. Figures 13 and 14 above, the NJPS

2000-01 data showed inmarried Jewish These statistics are very similar to parents having “Mostly Jewish friends” the comparable percentages on having among nine out of ten Orthodox Jews visited Israel. Looking at the most highly (87/ 93 %), slightly over half of Jewishly identified group, inmarried Conservative Jews (57/ 55 %) and about families with children, in the National a third of Reform Jews (31 % of Reform Jewish Population Survey 2000-01, men to 42 % of Reform women). Not American Jewish men and women who surprisingly, there are differences are married to Jews and have children, between Orthodox and non-Orthodox we see that visits to Israel are reported Jews when it comes to areas of Jewish by nearly nine out of ten Orthodox men connections that people define as (81 %) and women (91 %), well over “religious.” With activities such as half of Conservative men (55 %) and attending synagogue services and women (61 %), and one-third of Reform lighting Shabbat candles, the Orthodox men (32 %) and women (34 %).71 profile is much higher than that of

Conservative and Reform affiliated

Jews. However, the 2007 American

Jewish Committee Public Opinion

62 Fishman and Parmer, 2008

Figure 15

Another way to look at attitudes women. Orthodox men were at the same toward Israel is to see where respondents level as Conservative Jewish men and rank “Care about Israel” compared to women. As we can see from these other “Very important Jewish values” in figures, gender as well as denomination NJPS 2000-01. When asked to rank can make a difference in the centrality of values they thought were “very Israel to one’s Jewish identification. important Jewish values,” those who thought “Care about Israel” was “Very Caring about Israel is tied in important” included 55 % of Orthodox complicated ways to Jewish men and 78 % of Orthodox women, 50 identification. As we explored in % of Conservative men and 54 % of Chapter Two, questions about Conservative women, 42 % of Reform importance of Jewishness produced men and 38 % of Reform women. In descending results among those other words, the group of American affiliated with American Judaism, from a Jews most likely to have visited Israel high among Orthodox Jews to a and to rank caring about Israel as a very midpoint among Conservative Jews to a important Jewish value were Orthodox low among Reform Jews, with

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 63

Figure 16

significant variation between men and synagogue attendance. All of these women among Reform Jewish activities are textbook cases of the respondents. Connections to Israel are building of ethnic social capital. consonant not only with the likelihood of Although they take place in a religious having visited Israel but also with context, they build ethnic identification. connections to other Jews in their In certain ways Orthodox and non- American neighborhoods. Orthodox American Jews live in Moreover, the wings of American different Americas. There are many Judaism differ in terms of marital more Jews with substantial religious and status—what we might call “family ethnic social capital within Orthodox styles.” Orthodox Jews form their own Jewish communities than within non- Jewish family networks earlier in life Orthodox Jewish communities. Gender than non-Orthodox Jews. They get makes less of a difference among together with family and with Jewish Orthodox Jews: The social capital of friendship networks on a weekly basis in men and women within Orthodoxy is Sabbath celebrations, as well as equal—which may seem ironic to those

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who are critical of Orthodoxy because of Reform Jew doesn’t suddenly make one the obvious inequality of gendered highly identified and engaged—or religious roles. This is because Orthodox weakly identified and engaged—with Jewish communities invest more of their Jewishness. Men in liberal Jewish human resources as well as their movements are not alienated from financial resources into the creation of Judaism because of the denominational religious and ethnic social capital. label. But they may well be alienated Indeed, it is in these human resources partially because of the movement’s that the major differences exist. norms. American Orthodox Judaism has managed to create committed and highly Goals for Raising Children and engaged laity, including male and female Brokering Jewish Family lay persons, men and women who are Connections willing to sacrifice a great deal, when Each interview informant was asked they need to, in order to participate fully to discuss his or her goals in raising in Jewish life. The attitudes toward children—what qualities would their Israel, and the Israel-influenced attitudes children have as adults that would make toward American politics that are so the parents feel that they had succeeded evident in the 2007 American Jewish in raising them well. Almost universally, Committee Public Opinion Poll, are a men and women in our inmarried and symbol and reflection of those conversionary households felt it was commitments. “extremely important” or “very But this statement is not quite “the important” that their children grow up to truth,” because it simplifies, and in this be Jewish. All parents, of course, want case simplifications can distort. For their children to be happy, and the vast example, American Jews who call majority of our male and female themselves Reform Jews or Orthodox informants in every family type stated Jews today often grew up in another happiness as a parental goal for their Jewish movement. Looking at our data children. Inmarried men and women set of married Jewish with children were the most likely to articulate the under 18 living at home, about one- goal that the child should meet someone quarter of current Orthodox Jews say who could help them achieve a fulfilling they grew up as Conservative, Reform, life, but even among inmarrieds only a or Secular Jews. Well over one-third of quarter of parents mentioned this goal. current Reform Jewish parents grew up Men in various types of marriages were as Orthodox, Conservative, or Secular much more likely than women to Jews (NJPS 2000-01). There is nothing mention “to be successful” as a goal for magical about denominational labels. their children, including, interestingly Calling oneself an Orthodox or enough, about 40% of both intermarried Conservative or Reconstructionist or and inmarried Jewish men. Both men

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 65

and women (but not a majority in any pride in one’s religious heritage,” which case) spoke of diverse goals, such as was cited by 22% of intermarried Jewish “being a mensch,” being “independent,” husbands and 7% of their Christian and “accepting individual differences.” wives; 35% of Jewish wives and 6% of Parents seemed very much aware that their Christian husbands; 47% of their children would make their own inmarried Jewish men and 32% of choices—as they themselves had done. inmarried Jewish women. Other goals Ever since Marshall Sklare were not mentioned frequently enough established a scale for ranking “The to extract any patterns, although Image of the Good Jew in Lakeville,” “pursuing social justice” was mentioned sociologists of the Jewish community by women more often than men, as was have been using similar scales to “studying the Jewish heritage,” which measure evolving Jewish values. As was especially popular with inmarried Sklare explained, the utility of this Jewish women (22%) exercise is that it enables us to juxtapose Jewish women tend to think about the relative stress put on universalism the implications of being a Jewish parent versus Jewish ethnoreligious social well before children are born. If they capital. Most Jews embrace the date non-Jewish men, they often bring importance of “leading an ethical life”— their concerns up during the dating the question is, does that universalistic process, as Jenny Katz Mahoney ethicism obviate the need for Jewishness explained: as a distinctive religious culture and Then I said, “Look, if we’re civilization? going to think about marriage, we Among our interview population, need to take some steps.” There was we imposed a Sklare-like scale on our no opportunity for compromise as transcribed conversations, yielding an far as I was concerned. I wasn’t indication of the relative differences in going to have kids with Jewish and values within the differing family types, something else kind of thing. I just and, in some cases, of relative don’t think that works….I just kind differences by gender. “Leading an of see religion as you’ve got to pick ethical life” was highest on the hit one, and if you’re called to the parade for intermarried Jewish men Torah, you’re called to the Torah as (70%) and their Christian wives (80%) a Jew, not a Jew and something else. and Christian husbands (78%). It was Whether they marry a Jewish or a non- somewhat less so for intermarried Jewish man, Jewish mothers often see Jewish wives (55%). Within inmarried themselves as the editors and the families, 35% of Jewish men and 5% of transmitters of Judaism to the next Jewish women singled ethics out as a generation, as the inmarried Gail Jewish value. The second highest scores Gershon described that transmission: were garnered by the idea of “feeling

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When kids are little, they just reason—it’s a kind of masculine take all this in. When you’re so thing. young, it really does become a part What being a Jewish male does not of your life. My husband’s real seem to mean in American society is Conservative. I grew up Reform. being the parent in the household who We belong to a Reform temple now. brokers religion, spirituality, and social When he grew up, they lit the connections to an ethnoreligious group Shabbat candles. Growing up, for for the family. As we have seen, me, Judaism was a way of life. It’s especially within marriages that nice, it’s traditional, and it’s just incorporate more than one ethnoreligious something that’s so instilled in me, and/ or cultural heritage, the task of and I love it. And especially when relating to religion, religious culture, and we had the kids, we wanted to spirituality is seen as the task of the belong to a temple, because we just wife—no matter what her religion is. For -- we were just feeling that way. many couples, not only is religion “a girl We just wanted to belong to a thing,” so is the task of relating both to temple. And be part of the the older and the younger generation. community more. And lighting the Both Jewish and non-Jewish wives are Shabbat candles. often the parties in their households In contrast, Jewish men are often designated to maintain relationships with reactive, rather than pro-active. parents and in-law parents, aunts, uncles, Particularly those Jewish men who cousins. Since it is often in those homes marry non-Jewish women may not think that religious ceremonies and pro-actively about raising Jewish celebrations take place, the children, but instead react strongly to the responsibility placed on wives and idea of having a Christian child, as many mothers is even more significant. non-Jewish women who were interviewed suggested: Jewish Particularism and I wanted our children raised American Diversity with some kind of religious Within inmarried families Jewish background….My husband didn’t men seem to have found a place within really care whether or not they were Judaism. Both inmarried men and raised with religion, but he said, ‘If women tend to value Jewishness over there is going to be a religion, diversity. Significantly, inmarried men they’ve got to be Jewish, because I and women felt that their efforts in would feel weird having a Christian raising children should emphasize child….That is true of all our Jewish particularism, and diversity friends too. The men don’t want would take care of itself in open Christian children, for a cultural American societies. In contrast, intermarried Jewish men were suspicious

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of too much particularism. Intermarried more likely to marry non-Jews than to Jewish men were especially concerned marry Jews. that their children’s Jewish experiences Inmarried mothers and fathers not “ghettoize” them. Jewish men who tended to share values and goals for marry Jewish women—and Jewish men themselves and their children, although who marry non-Jewish women—are Jewish mothers tended to be more more different from each other, as Jewishly focused in their thinking and in groups, than inmarried and intermarried their social networks than their husbands Jewish women. Intermarried Jewish men were. Orthodox Jewish men and women, tend to be apathetic or ambivalent despite their more emphatic gender role toward Jewishness. Many would be definitions, were the closest of all the happy to drop religion altogether except groups studied in sharing Jewish values that they do not think they could tolerate and goals for their children. having completely Christian children. Interestingly, younger Orthodox married Inmarried Jewish men, on the other couples also have the highest rates of hand, often have strong positive feelings educational and occupational spousal toward and are actively engaged in equity—physicians married to Jewishness. physicians, lawyers married to lawyers, Jewish mothers, as a group, tend to etc. Today, inmarried families are much be committed to raising Jewish children, more differentiated from intermarried overwhelmingly in inmarried families, families—especially those with Jewish but also in mixed married families. The fathers—than they were in previous presence of a Jewish mother means there decades. is likely to be an attempt, at least by one parent, to raise Jewish children. The Endnotes to Chapter Four presence of a Jewish mother and a Jewish father most often indicates two 69 David A. Schultz, “The Phenomenology of parents with positive commitments to Democracy: Putnam, Pluralism, and Voluntary Associations,” in Scott L. McLean, et. al. eds., raising Jewish children. While there are Social Capital: Critical Perspective on certainly some inmarried Jewish men Community and “Bowling Alone,” (New York: New York University Press, 2002), pp. 74-98, and women who are Jewishly neutral or pp. 82-83, citing diverse definitions of ambivalent, uninvolved Jews, that type intersubjectivity. 70 comprises a smaller and smaller American Jewish Committee 2007 Annual Survey of American Jewish Public Opinion, proportion among younger inmarried New York, AJC, conducted by Synovate Jews, because, all other things being (formerly Market Facts, Inc.), 2006-07. 71 Unless otherwise specified all references to the equal, neutral or ambivalent Jews are 2000-01 NJPS are drawn from the data set of married Jews with children created for this monograph.

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Conclusion: Engendering Jewish Connections

eelings about Jewish cultures and attachments to Jewishness have the auxiliary societies are related to feelings about effect of increasing the likelihood that they FJewish men and women. Male role will marry non-Jewish women. The decision models, as well as male peer relationships, for intermarriage introduces an alternative are an important element in the construction ethnoreligious narrative into the household , of strong attachments to Jewishness among which Waters discusses as a factor that Jewish men. Jewish men with connections to weakens the strength of ethnic or religious Jewishness often had memorable male role attachments.72 Not only does the presence of models when they were growing up. a Jewish mother in the home dramatically Interview participants talked about fathers, increases the likelihood that the children will uncles, and family friends who embodied for be raised as Jews, her absence increases the them a positive male Jewishness. Sometimes likelihood that they will not. they remembered these men in religious The bottom line seems to be that when settings, such as synagogues or family Jews do not find Jewishness attractive, they religious festivities. More often their do not find Jews attractive. The tenuous memories had secular locales—card games, Jewish identification of intermarrying men Jewish resorts, basketball. Occasionally one precedes their intermarriages, rather than the mentioned a rabbi or teachers, but family intermarriage causing the weak Jewish members were much more frequent identification. Nevertheless, the touchstones. However, we do not know if intermarriages themselves then continue to these same men are providing positive male contribute to decreased connections, role models and memories for their own compared to the Jewishly reinforcing effect children, because few of them spoke about of inmarriages. Our research indicates that creating those memories. outreach programs aimed primarily at non- At the other end of the spectrum, Jewish mothers that do not also deal with the ambivalent feelings toward Judaism as a ambivalence or antipathy of their Jewish religion or Jewishness as an ethnic culture, husbands will have limited success. as expressed by many intermarried Jewish Intermarried men who have negative men, also extended to their negative feelings feelings about Jews and Jewishness are the about Jewish women. As we saw in the “weak link” in contemporary American interviews, many adult Jewish men— Jewish life. especially those who are attracted to and This is much less frequently the marry non-Jewish women—complained that scenario for Jewish women in the interviews dating Jewish women is “work,” not “fun,” who married non-Jewish men. Intermarried and that Jewish women are demanding, Jewish mothers overwhelmingly said that overbearing, and best escaped. The their original preference was to marry a alienation of Jewish men and their weak Jewish man, but that with the passage of

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 69

time other factors gained consideration. For those who find the synagogue’s “world (Jewish women who marry non-Jewish men of our mothers” too overwhelming, it is marry on average three years later than those possible that dating non-Jews becomes a who marry Jewish men.) Even when they way to escape from the ubiquitous Jewish marry non-Jews, women have higher levels woman. of Jewish social capital than men, as we American males are less attached to have seen. They are more likely to enter into Jewish life not because men are innately the many vibrant programs that exist for “less religious” than women in some girls and women specifically, or into co-ed essential psychological way, but because programs frequented largely by women. American culture and society value religious An additional factor that our monograph activities and behaviors for women but has explored is that Jewish boys and men are devalue them for men. Moreover, those in some cases alienated from synagogue life, aspects of religion that men are typically or at least apathetic to it. Synagogues do not more attracted to—namely religious seem engaging places. Other Jews may not activities—are not regarded as “religious” seem engaging either. Intermarriage may be by the Christian-shaped society that values related in unsubtle ways not only to the religious belief over religious behavior. continuing negative stereotypical depiction American Jewish males measure lower on of Jewish women in American popular self-perceptions of religiosity than Jewish culture, but also to the perceived domination males in many other countries. Weak of Jewish life by Jewish women. Reform, connections of Jewish men to Jewishness are Reconstructionist, and the majority of a multifaceted measure of assimilation into Conservative congregations have adapted American norms and values. their religious tenets to incorporate Secularism—which is statistically egalitarianism. In the liberal Reform, associated with estrangement from Jews and Reconstructionist and Renewal Jewish Judaism in America—is growing among the worlds the gender imbalance has already intermarried population, but is far less tipped, leading to feminization. prevalent in the inmarried American Jewish (Conservative congregations vary widely in population. Among all Americans— this regard, with the more traditional sharing including Jews—men are dramatically more some of Orthodoxy’s male strength and the likely to describe themselves as “secular.” more egalitarian sharing some of Reform’s Men who are secular, or who feel estranged female prominence of worshippers.) Liberal from Jewishness, also frequently perceive Jewish religious and communal leaders are stereotypical negative qualities to be increasingly women facing client groups characteristic of Jewish women. This composed primarily of women. Young negativity toward Judaism and Jewish Jewish males in the non-Orthodox world women on the part of single American report they feel uncomfortable with the Jewish men is one of the reasons that “maternal vibes”—as one young man put waiting for marriage to “fix” the problem is it—of contemporary religious institutions. not an adequate answer. By the time a large

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proportion of American Jewish men choose especially to re-engage boys and men— to marry, after many years of singlehood within their congregations. Many Jews find with few Jewish connections, they are far the exclusion of women from various more likely to choose non-Jewish partners aspects of traditional Jewish life to be a and wives who do not facilitate the family’s violation of the sacred ethical principle of moving in Jewish directions and making egalitarianism, basic to American values and Jewish connections. Thus, they do not tap extended to more and more American into a Jewish version of a phenomenon populations over the passage of time. Steven M. Cohen calls, “the slipstream However, just as Jewish women were effect.” While it is probably true that marginalized from the centers of Jewish life “marriage does more for men than for for much of Jewish history, for complicated women in socially and psychically social psychological reasons American connecting them to social networks, Jewish men now feel displaced from community and society,” it is not Jewish Judaism. While Suzannah Heschel is social networks, community or society that undoubtedly correct in her assessment that half of today’s single Jewish men will large numbers of men had already lost choose.73 The Jewish community must interest in Jewish prayer and text study by intervene well before the marriage years if it the 1950s, before feminism began making a hopes to have an impact. Systemic problems place for women in these activities in the require systemic solutions. late 1960s and 1970s75, it is also true that Both the Pew Forum on Religion and feminism continued the process of Public Life, the 1990 and 2000-01 National displacement and continued it onward into Jewish Populations Surveys, and the the next generation. This displacement American Jewish Committee Public Opinion roughly parallels the movement of feminism Polls of 2007 and 199774 show that as a social trend, as Lynne Segal describes American religious identification is Western feminism in general: amazingly fluid. While fluidity often moves When feminism first emerged in in the direction of fewer Jewish connections, radical circles at the close of the 1960s, sometimes it moves in the direction of more most men reacted with disbelief, often Jewish connections. Indeed, the Pew data turning swiftly to ridicule and anger. show that nearly half of Americans who Within a few short years, however, as define themselves as “Secular” during their women’s liberation went from strength college and young adult years start to to strength, a very different reaction identify with some religious group when emerged. The experience of being left they get a little older. Jewish data show that out, on the sidelines, was the new and time is often when they marry and think threatening reality for many a young about having a family. male radical, no longer feeling as The liberal wings of American Judaism certain as he had in the 1960s of his today face the great challenge of creating a own participation in the making of committed and highly engaged laity—and history.76

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 71

and outside the Jewish community, is still that of a sensitive, caring, responsible Growing Evidence for individual, rather than a Clint Eastwood type of rugged manhood. Gendered Needs Boys and men—like girls and women— Vibrant and dynamic Jewish life benefit from and enjoy having gender-peer involves both genders, men and women. activities. Some contemporary advocates, Resisting the American pattern that including family physician and single-sex- marginalizes men because “women are the education advocate Leonard Sax, show that religious ones” requires intellectual boys and girls may respond better to independence, countercultural attitudes and different learning environments and behaviors. Some models from historical strategies. He suggests that American Judaism can be instructive. Traditional classrooms have largely been brought into Jewish gender role construction was and is conformity with feminine styles of learning, organized differently than that of America and that these environments often alienate and many Western cultures. As we have boys, who then learn less well—and dislike discussed, males were systemically groomed the classroom even more. As David for active participation in Jewish religious Chadwell, coordinator of Single-Gender culture. Fathers, like mothers, were expected Initiatives at the South Caroline Department to be intimately involved with their children. of Education explained in a recent New York In toddlerhood, in the pre-school years, Times Magazine article: “You need to get during the school years, at and after bar them [boys] up and moving. That’s based on mitzvah, boys were repeatedly socialized the nervous system, that’s based on eyes, through a ladder of rites of passage into a that’s based upon volume and the use of male world in which male group prayer, volume with boys….You need to engage male exclusivity of many ritual observances, boys’ energy, use it, rather than trying to and male study of sacred texts defined say, No, no, no.” With girls, in contrast, the masculine identity. tendency to want to talk to each other which Traditional Judaism created (and still often generates teacher reprimands can be creates) its own gender imbalance, namely used in the service of education as well: “If the exclusion and marginalization of girls you try to stop girls from talking to one and women from most public religious another, that’s not successful. So you do a venues. However, on the positive side, in lot of meeting in circles, where every girl most traditional Jewish cultures boys can share something from her own life that typically did not reject familial warmth and relates to the content in class.”77 family involvements to "become a man." As Whether or not one agrees with single- Jews have become westernized, they gender learning advocates (and we believe have incorporated many Western notions of this is a far more complicated issue than Sax male gender role construction. Nevertheless, and Chadwell are willing to admit), their we can see cultural resistance in the fact that suggestion that there may be a need for the image of the Jewish male, both inside

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gender-aware activities, including some communal organizations need to find ways educational venues, is an intriguing concept to balance the moral principles of for the Jewish world. Without advocating egalitarianism with the psycho-social needs single-sex education, it is critical to of boys and men to spend meaningful recognize that programs geared to Jewish Jewish time in gendered peer groups. We boys and men—and to Jewish girls and have ample documentation that Jewish women—create positive connections to Jews education is very strongly related to Jewish and Jewishness, beginning with the pre- social capital. Special research and school years. and extending over the life programming efforts should explore cycle of the individual. Excellent co-ed and educational programs and techniques single sex programs and activities may be directly designed for boys and men, as well particularly important in the middle school as for girls and women. and teen years, when boys in liberal Jewish Nor is this exclusively a problem of the settings often grow most impatient with Reform movement. As we have noted, female religious and educational leadership. Orthodox Judaism—“literal Judaism,” as Ironically, the women’s movement— some have styled it—certainly has its own responding to great gaps in Jewish life—has profound gender challenges, and must often created successful materials and struggle, as surely as liberal Judaism, with programming for female teens, while the tension between the ethical demands of teenage boys have often been left behind. egalitarianism and the psycho-social realities We know little about what generates of gender. Complicating the discussion on adult connections to Jews and Jewishness. both ends of the spectrum is the fact that The Reform movement has already taken talking about gendered educational and some steps toward addressing gender issues, spiritual needs is regarded—for opposite notably in the 2007 Reform Biennial in San reasons—by many “literal” and by many Diego, where, as Sue Fishkoff put it, they liberal circles as a dangerous, politically began the process of “trying to figure out incorrect activity. how to lure men back into the synagogue Research and policy planning efforts without diluting the gains made by should be placed in the context of historical women.”78 The ground-breaking Jewish societies and values and in the organization “Moving Traditions,” under the broader American context, which leadership of Deborah Myers, is committed profoundly influences American Jews. to supporting research as well as publicizing Because of their high level of educational “best practices” programming and helping to and occupational achievement, and because create new educational strategies as part of of the high socioeconomic status they and their “Campaign for Jewish Boys.”79 their peers usually occupy, Jewish men The multi-dimensional problem—and avoid feelings of incompetence or the solutions needed, however—are both inadequacy. This makes it difficult to broader and deeper than these important increase men’s Jewish cultural literacy— beginnings. Synagogues and Jewish creating a downward, self-fulfilling spiral.

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Programs and educational ventures need to and text study, and joy and spontaneity take these sensitivities into consideration, during worship services, from Orthodoxy. while at the same time maintaining a high As both the more liberal and the more level of excellence. traditional forms of contemporary Judaism Jewish women have, in recent decades, struggle with gender issues and the need to emerged more and more as the brokers of increase levels of Jewish religious and Jewish religious and spiritual life, bringing ethnic social capital today—an enterprise excitement about and knowledge of Jewish which may well define the difference religious texts, customs, and celebrations between Jewish cultural transmission or its back into deeply Westernized Jewish failure—they can each gain much from communities. Their efforts not only acquired dialogue, and increased opportunities for for them substantial cultural literacy—it also cross-denominational interaction are created for them powerful, meaningful important. social networks of like-minded women. The alienation of boys and men from These new activities by Jewish women have Jews and Judaism is a critical and systemic not only brought Judaism to the center of problem in American Jewish societies, women’s lives, and women to the center of beginning early and persisting through many Judaic life, but have also served to ignite the areas of life. It affects not only religious religious sensibilities of the acculturated rituals and synagogue attendance, but also Jewish men around them. Jewish women’s attachments to Jewish peoplehood, in the transformative influences on contemporary form of friendship circles, marriage choices, Jewish religious life have been sweeping caring about Jews in Israel and around the and powerful. Now they face a new world, as we have shown. What we have challenge: working together with their sons, called here “patrilineal descent” has been fathers, brothers, husbands and friends to developing for many decades, but it has help these Jewish boys and men find their been virtually ignored. Today it has become own path to Jewish connections. sweeping and dramatic. The decline of male Valuable work has already begun in interest in Jews and Judaism is a crisis, and looking at gender-segregated peer needs to be recognized and responded to as environments that work to create social such. networks and also to nurture feelings of Research and policy discussions about connection to Jewish texts, culture, and gender imbalance must start with the secular and religious activities. In this work, knowledge that gender imbalance is not a the wings of American Judaism can learn foregone conclusion—and it is a critical much from each other. The Reform and problem in American Jewish life today. Reconstructionist movements have Jewish social history reveals that men need influenced Orthodox and Conservative not be distant from Jewishness—indeed for Judaism in regards to expanding roles of much of Jewish history men have defined women. Conversely, Reform Judaism has Jewishness. However, contemporary learned much about the importance of ritual, sociological research shows that American

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Jewish men are certainly alienated from great swaths of Jewish life today. Honest and open conversations that do not silence the need to talk about gender and its implications can provide a basis for future targeted research. That research, in turn, will help American Jewish leaders, educators and policy planners discover ways to honor egalitarianism as an ethical principle while at the same time honoring the now manifest need for gendered as well as gender neutral experiences of Jewishness, in all its multivocal diversity.

Endnotes to Conclusion

72 Mary C. Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 73 Steven M. Cohen, Ari Y. Kelman, and Lauren Blitzer, “The Slipstream Effect: How Marriage Closes Gender Gaps in Jewish Identity” (New York: The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies and the Florence Gl Heller/ JCC Association Research Center, August 10, 2007). 74 1997 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion and 2007 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion (New York: American Jewish Committee, Conducted by Market Facts, Inc./ Synovate, Inc.), 1998 and 2008. 75 Heschel, On Being a Jewish Feminist. 76 Lynne Segal, Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men (New Brunswick, NY: Rutgers University Press, 1990), p. 280. 77 Elizabeth Well, “Teaching to the Testosterone,” in The New York Times Magazine March 2, 2008, pp. 38-45, 84-87, pp. 42-43. 78 Sue Fishkoff, “Reform trying to lure men back,” JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People December 18, 2007. 79 http://www.movingtraditions.org/index.php?option=c om. Moving Traditions Boys Campaign.

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Major Research Findings

husbands that have few Jewish Women connections.  Women—Jewish and non-  Liberal synagogues and temples Jewish—are more likely than have become “the world of our men to say that religion is very mothers.” Women comprise important to them personally and many of the rabbis, cantors and for raising moral children. synagogue presidents, and the  Jewish women are more likely majority of the worshippers. than Jewish men to say the  Jewish girls and women attend religion of Judaism is “very synagogues more often than important” to them. Jewish boys and men, especially  Women retain closer ties to in Reform and other liberal family members than men do, congregations. and create social networks for the  Jewish females today get more whole family. Jewish women Jewish education than Jewish stay close to Jewish family males, from childhood through members, and create largely the teen and adult years. Jewish social networks for their  Jewish women tend to have more families. Jewish ethnic cultural capital  Intermarried Jewish women are than Jewish men. Jewish women usually “pro-active” about aim to be the editors and raising Jewish children. They say transmitters of Judaism to their they personally “are responsible children, and to “make Jewish for making religious decisions memories” for them. for their children.” They take  Jewish women are more likely personal responsibility for raising than Jewish men to have visited them as Jews. Their children are Israel, and ranked support of much more likely to receive Israel more highly as an Jewish education than the important Jewish value. children of intermarried Jewish fathers.  Non-Jewish wives in intermarried families often complain they are expected to raise Jewish children with Jewish

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Men  Jewish men who feel strongly  Jewish men have less Jewish connected to Jews and Judaism social capital than Jewish women often talk about strong male role do. Men are less likely to stay in models when they were growing touch with family members. up. These are usually fathers or Their personal friendship circles grandfathers, but sometimes include more non-Jews, uncles, teachers, or youth group especially in intermarried or camp counselors. These role families. models are often recalled in “males-only” settings, whether  Intermarried Jewish men are religious (synagogues) or secular more often “re-active.” They say (card games, etc.). that religious decisions for their children are made by them and  Intermarried Jewish families with their non-Jewish spouses Jewish fathers are the least together. Jewish fathers often engaged of all affiliated “Jewish” prefer no religion in the family, family types. but say they do not want  These Jewish fathers enter their Christian children, so if there is a interfaith marriages with weak religion it should be Jewish. Jewish profiles. While they often  Jewish boys and young men in say their non-Jewish wives make liberal congregations complain them “feel very Jewish,” they do that their synagogues are not promote Jewish activities or primarily places for women. One increase the Jewish connections used the terms: “too lovey- of their children. dovey” and have a “maternal  Jewish men with weak Jewish vibe.” social capital who are married to  Psychologists and gender non-Jews avoid conflict over theorists say that teenage boys religious issues when it comes to and young men crave activities raising their children. which separate them from their Men and Women mothers and establish them in a male world—a form of  Jewish fathers and mothers in socialization prevalent in inmarried families share goals, traditional Jewish environments. including Jewish goals, in raising  Many Jewish men are deeply their children. Their Jewish affected by toxic images of attitudes tend to be similar. Jewish women: “Dating Jewish  Jewish fathers and mothers in women is work—not fun.” intermarried families differ in their religious goals for their

Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life 77

children and their attitudes  Jewish social networks reinforce toward Jewish peoplehood. and support Jewish connections  Intermarried Jewish families that and activities, including holiday do not affiliate and call observances. Christian or mixed themselves “secular” are the least married social networks reinforce Jewishly connected, with few and support Christian-cultural differences between Jewish activities. fathers and Jewish mothers. Research and Policy Implications  Boys and men—like girls and principles of egalitarianism with women—benefit from and enjoy the psycho-social needs of boys having some gender-peer and men to spend meaningful activities. These activities can Jewish time in gendered peer help bond them to each other as groups. Jewish males, to Jewish  Jewish education is very strongly peoplehood now and historically, related to Jewish social capital. and also to Judaism culturally Special research and and religiously. Programs for programming efforts should Jewish boys and men are needed explore educational programs that create positive connections and techniques directly designed to Jews and Jewishness, for boys and men. beginning with the pre-school  Jewish men seem especially years, targeting the all-important sensitive about feelings of middle-school and teen years, incompetence or inadequacy. .and extending over the life cycle Programs and educational of the individual. ventures need to take these  New, targeted research is needed sensitivities into consideration, on Jewish boys and men. Some while maintaining a high level of of that research should be excellence. sociological and psychological in  Outreach programs aimed nature, and some should be very primarily at non-Jewish mothers practical: What programs that do not also deal with the successfully appeal to Jewish ambivalence or antipathy of their males? Why do they appeal? Jewish husbands will have How can these “success stories” limited success. Intermarried be replicated? men who have negative feelings  Synagogues and Jewish about Jews and Jewishness are communal organizations need to the “weak link” in contemporary find ways to balance the moral American Jewish life.

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 Emerging congregations/ Partnership minyanim have been especially popular with married men and women, but primarily Jewish single women. There is evidence, however, that when single men are exposed to this form of worship they find it dynamic and engaging. Since these groups are typically not affiliated with or supported by congregations, communal support and publicity efforts towards single Jewish men may prove valuable on several levels.  Secular Jewish venues such as Jewish film series, etc., are also attended by more single Jewish women than men. Jewish men are much more likely than Jewish women to call themselves “secular.” Publicity targeted at men would be a useful way to attract secular Jewish males into Jewish experiences they might find accessible and easy to relate to once they had experienced them.

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