How Do Jewish Millennials Express their Identification with the Jewish People?

• In Event: Towards Global Jewish Peoplehood: What Can We Learn from Jewish community studies Around the World

Abstract

Growing evidence indicates that the millennial generation of Jews in the United States express their Jewishness in very different ways than their parents’ generation. They are the first generation to grow up in period of acceptance and outreach to interfaith families and they are the first to have had the “birthright” to receive a gift of an experience in Israel. Using surveys of over 3,400 respondents ages 18-35 from community studies conducted in Boston, Pittsburgh, Seattle and Washington, DC, the presentation will describe the ways in which millennials identify with the Jewish people through comparisons across these four communities as well as comparisons to older Jewish adults within each community. For example, among Pittsburgh Jewish adults ages 18-34, 16% feel very connected to the local Jewish community and 26% feel very connected to the worldwide Jewish community. Three-quarters (76%) have been to Israel and 40% feel strongly connected to Israel. Among Boston Jewish adults ages 18-34, 28% feel very connected to the local Jewish community and 31% feel very connected to the worldwide Jewish community. Three-quarters (74%) have been to Israel and 21% feel strongly connected to Israel. The second focus of the presentation will be on patterns of Jewish engagement with a variety of Jewish behaviors, from traditional measures such as Jewish rituals to new behaviors such as visiting Jewish websites. To understand what peoplehood means for Jewish millennials, we will examine the correlations of Jewish engagement with feelings of connection to local and global Jewish communities, to Israel, and to Jewish friends. Our thesis is that connections to the Jewish people continue to be strong in the millennial generation despite changes in forms and patterns of Jewish engagement. There are a host of implications of the new patterns of engagement of the next generation of adult Jews, both for how we study the Jewish community and consider what it means to be Jewish in the modern era.

Authors

• Janet Krasner Aronson, Brandeis University

• Leonard Saxe, Not revealed