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September 20, 2002/Tishri 14 5763, Vol. 55, No. 4
Children of intermarriage lose their religion
JOE BERKOFSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Jewish college students in the United States attend fewer religious services than their non-Jewish peers, according to a new study.
Photo by Lloyd Wolf/Hillel
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The majority of Jewish college freshmen whose parents are intermarried do not consider themselves Jews.
This is one of the more dramatic findings of a new study that examines religious, political and social trends of teens transitioning from high school to college.
Among the other findings of the study, "America's Jewish Freshmen," believed to be the largest survey ever undertaken of young Jews in America entering college:
- The children of divorced intermarried couples whose mother is Jewish largely consider themselves to be Jews.
- Jewish college freshmen attend fewer religious services and feel less spiritual than their non-Jewish peers.
- Jewish students are more politically liberal and sexually permissive than their non-Jewish peers.
The study, conducted by Professor Linda Sax at UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute, is sponsored by Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life and funded with a $60,000 grant from North Carolina philanthropists Leonard and Tobee Kaplan.
The UCLA-Hillel project tracks trends among 235,000 Jewish freshmen from more than 5 million of their non-Jewish classmates who were surveyed at 1,200 colleges and universities nationally since 1971.
In 1999, the study split respondents into three main groups, including non-Jews, Jews, and those with no religious preference but at least one Jewish parent.
Of that latter group, 79 percent are the children of intermarriage.
Hillel officials say the study's focus gave them unprecedented insight into Jewish attitudes and behavior and validates the organization's drive to be pluralistic and appeal to a wide range of Jews.
Jeff Rubin, Hillel's director of communications, says the study shows that Hillel must appeal to Jews who lack a classic Jewish upbringing.
"The largest number of students we serve have not had a Jewish background in the way that is traditionally defined - through Jewish history, culture and commitment to Jewish observance," he says.
Rabbi Barton Lee of Hillel at Arizona State University agrees. He says he has a number of Jewish students in his Jewish studies classes who are there to learn about their "family's heritage."
"Jewish studies classes are great for learning about Jews and Judaism, but they are not appropriate for people to learn how and why to be Jewish," he says. "That's not the purpose of the academic study of religion - Judaism or any other religion."
Lee says many of the students feel more comfortable in the classroom than in a religious setting.
"The academic environment seems for these folks to be kind of safe and neutral ground, as opposed to a Hillel or synagogue which is seen, I think, as more partisan territory."
This leaves Lee and other staff members of Hillel with the challenge of "creating something programmatically that might interest or attract in some way kids who would be curious, but not committed Jewishly," he says.
Lee says that he and other representatives of Hillel spend a lot of time on campus just talking with students. Planned activities, such as a sukkah building on the campus mall, also attract students who may not be religiously involved.
"A lot of Jewish kids walk by the sukkah while we're building it and they'll say, 'I remember that. What exactly is that?' The number of Jewish kids who have never been in a sukkah, never built a sukkah, is pretty staggering," says Lee. "So we bring the sukkah to them."
Lee says one of the challenges is that some students are embarrassed by their lack of knowledge.
"We try to make it comfortable for kids to whatever they'll do," says Lee. "That's one more Jewish experience they've had because we were there in the middle of campus when they walked by."
Among the study's most dramatic findings are those involving religious identity and activity.
Of students with two Jewish parents, 93 percent identify themselves as Jews, though that figure dropped to 91 percent if their parents divorced.
But only 38 percent of the teens identify as Jews if just their mother is Jewish, and only 15 percent if their father is Jewish.
"It proves that intermarriage is a fact of life and we need to respond to that reality in some way," says Lee. "It certainly explodes the argument that (intermarriage) is a great thing and not worry about it."
Jewish identification stren-gthens among young people, however, if their mother is Jewish but divorced from a non-Jewish father. Of students from intermarriages whose mother is Jewish, 37 percent call themselves Jews, while 41 percent of those with Jewish mothers who had divorced from non-Jews consider themselves Jews.
"If you want to know in what intermarried families students will identify as Jewish, it's most likely to be when the mother is Jewish and the parents are divorced," says Sax, the study's author.
The biggest gap between those labeling themselves as Jews and those who did not list any religious preference in the study's survey center on the extent and nature of their religious lives.
Another key finding involves the practice of religion and attending religious services.
Seventy percent of freshmen who identify as Jewish said they attend religious services occasionally, 13 percent said they frequently attend religious services, and 17 percent said they never go.
Of those who claim no religious preference but have at least one Jewish parent, 62 percent say they never attend religious services; 37 percent say they do occasionally and 1.5 percent say they do so frequently.
Non-Jews say they are far more religiously active. In the non-Jewish group, 47 percent frequently attend religious services; 37 percent occasionally do and only 16 percent never do.
The study's findings show a distinct lack of Jewish experience among young Jews means Hillel may find it challenging to drag them into the tent.
Among those who have scrutinized the study is Larry Sternberg, associate director of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
Sternberg calls the study's finding about a big gap in religious identification between teens with two Jewish parents and a single Jewish parent "rather dramatic." Sternberg feels the study also lacks certain data, thereby making it difficult to draw other conclusions.
The study does not explain if there is any relationship between having a Jewish parent and being raised Jewish. The study asks students about their current religious preference, but not about what their religion is at birth.
That means students whose parents were Jews by birth or by conversion after intermarriage were treated the same, statistically speaking.
On the political and social attitudes, the study finds:
- Jewish students remain more liberal overall than their non-Jewish counterparts. Slightly more than half of Jewish students call themselves "far-left" or "liberal," compared with 25 percent of non-Jews.
- Forty percent of Jews call themselves "middle of the road," while 9.5 percent consider themselves "conservative" or "far-right."
- Forty-four percent of Jewish students say it is "essential" or "very important" to keep up with political affairs, compared with 28 percent of non-Jewish students.
- Jewish and non-Jewish students today feel that being wealthy is more important than "developing a meaningful philosophy of life." Seventy-three percent of Jewish students say being well-off financially is their top goal.
Staff writer Beth Olson contributed to this article.
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