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The Impact of Communal Intervention Programs on Jewish Identity: An Analysis of Jewish Students in Britain

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Abstract

During the 1990s, Jewish communal leaders in Britain reached a consensus that Jewish education, in the broadest sense, was the principal means of strengthening Jewish identity and securing Jewish continuity. This belief motivated considerable investment in communal intervention programs such as Jewish schools, Israel experience trips, and youth movements. Twenty years on, it is pertinent to ask whether, and to what extent, this intervention has worked. The Institute for Jewish Policy Research’s (JPR) 2011 National Jewish Student Survey contains data on over 900 Jewish students in Britain and presents an opportunity to empirically assess the impact such intervention programs may have had on respondents’ Jewish identity by comparing those who have experienced them with those who have not. Regression analysis is used to test the theory based on a set of six dimensions of Jewish identity generated using principal component analysis. The results show that after controlling for the substantial effects of Jewish upbringing, intervention has collectively had a positive impact on all aspects of Jewish identity examined. The effects are greatest on behavioral and mental aspects of socio-religious identity; they are far weaker at strengthening student community engagement, ethnocentricity, and Jewish values. Further, the most important intervention programs were found to be yeshiva and a gap year in Israel. Both youth movement involvement and Jewish schooling had positive but rather limited effects on Jewish identity, and short-stay Israel tours had no positive measurable effects at all.

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Notes

  1. Jewish Continuity, the organization, was ultimately “a hostage to fortune” (Kahn-Harris and Gidley 2010, p. 72), being absorbed in 1997 into the Zionist fund-raising body JIA (Joint Israel Appeal) thus creating UJIA. This new organization took on both roles, i.e., fund-raising for Israel as well as addressing the renewal agenda work initiated by Jewish Continuity.

  2. Data for 2011 show that UJIA was the second largest British Jewish charity by voluntary income (after Jewish Care). Source: Charities Aid Foundation (http://www.charitytrends.org/Default.aspx).

  3. By 2005 about half of these came from the strictly Orthodox community which has exhibited very strong demographic growth since the early 1990s, and where it is assumed that the demand for Jewish schooling is universal (Graham 2013; JLC 2008, p. 7; Vulkan and Graham 2008). The proportion of children entering the Jewish school system also increased significantly but that is difficult to quantify accurately.

  4. In Britain, schools are funded in various and complex ways, but Jewish schools tend either to be privately funded (independent schools) or publically funded (state schools). Virtually all strictly Orthodox schools operate in the private sector where there is far greater flexibility with the syllabus, whereas most central Orthodox/Conservative and progressive schools operate in the public sector as voluntary aided schools. That is to say, the land and buildings are usually owned by a charitable foundation (the governing body) which is responsible for 10% of ‘capital works,’ employs the school’s staff and has primary responsibility for admission criteria; the remaining 90% is provided by the state (DfE 2012; Valins et al. 2001, p. 18).

  5. NJPS data suggested that the US intermarriage rate was 52% for those marrying between 1985 and 1989 (Kosmin et al. 1991, p. 14).

  6. It should be noted that although the Taglit (Birthright Israel) sample is very large, it does not contain a fully independent control group; as Saxe et al. (2009a, p. 41 fn2) note, “The pool of applicants does not perfectly mirror the total population of American Jewish young adults. Accordingly, the findings of previous studies, as well as the current study, do not indicate how the program might have affected those who could have applied but did not.” In other words, there may be justification for querying the results’ external validity.

  7. Calculations based on adjusted 2011 census data and assuming Haredim then made up between 15% and 25% of the cohort size (Haredim not being part of the target group for these programs). Tour and gap year data courtesy of Helena Miller, UJIA.

  8. For example, JPR’s 1995 national political attitudes study contained 111 respondents under 25 years of age (Miller et al. 1996) and JPR’s household surveys in London and Leeds contained just 62 respondents combined in this age group (Becher et al. 2002; Waterman 2003). Author’s calculations.

  9. Around 20% of Jewish 18 to 22-year-olds in Britain are Haredi (Graham 2013, p. 8) but the majority of this group does not enter the secular higher educational system. Moreover, Haredim are a separate case as far as intervention is concerned since they are universally educated in private, Haredi-controlled schools and experience an intense Jewish upbringing (Holman and Holman 2001).

  10. The question posed was: ‘Which of the following comes closest to describing your current Jewish identity?’ with the following responses: Haredi (strictly-Orthodox) (3%); Orthodox (e.g., would not turn on a light on Sabbath) (23%); Traditional (28%); Just Jewish (21%); Reform/Progressive (18%); Mixed – I am both Jewish and another religion (2%); and None (5%) (N=925). The precise labeling of these categories tends to vary from survey to survey.

  11. Twenty of these were based on four-point Likert scale responses (Strongly agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly disagree). A further eight were based on Yes/No responses and the remaining eight had scales consisting of between three and five response options (such as level of youth movement involvement being None, Occasional, Regular, or Leader).

  12. While dimension three at α = .66 is slightly below the .7 threshold, further analysis indicated that the removal of the item ‘Whether currently connected, in any way, with other (Jewish student) organizations’ would raise alpha from .66 to .68. The author considered this a modest gain at the expense of an important variable in this dimension which approaches, though does not achieve, the .7 threshold. It is therefore included in the remainder of the analysis.

  13. For example, in Dimension 1 – Cognitive Religiosity seven variables had factor loadings above .50. Each respondent’s score on each of these seven variables were summed together to give a ‘grand Cognitive Religiosity total’ for every respondent. An alternative approach using factor scores generated by the analysis was also examined producing similar findings but increasing the amount of ‘noise’ in the data and so reducing the overall level of variance explained.

  14. The standardized beta values indicate the effect a change of one standard deviation in the independent variable has on the dependent variable. Thus, increasing ‘Yeshiva/seminary’ by one standard deviation increases Cognitive Religiosity by .30 standard deviations, and increasing ‘Kosher meat’ by one standard deviation increases Cognitive Religiosity by .32 standard deviations (see further, Field 2011, pp. 239-40) i.e., Kosher meat at home during upbringing has a slightly greater impact on Cognitive Religiosity than yeshiva.

  15. In the NJSS sample, 82% of (British) respondents had participated in Israel tour, whereas it is estimated that up to 50% of the (non-Haredi) cohort participates annually, i.e., NJSS oversampled this group.

  16. For example, further analysis by the author indicates that respondents with a ‘Traditional’ upbringing do not necessarily exhibit higher scores than ‘Reform/Progressive’ respondents on many ‘religious’ variables.

  17. ‘Statistically significant’ should not be confused with ‘large.’

  18. In the non-Haredi community, the majority of Britain’s Jewish pupils come from non-Orthodox homes even if they attend Orthodox Jewish schools (as a majority does).

  19. For example, Israel tour participants are younger (age 16-17 compared with 18-26 for Birthright) and the tour is a longer program (typically three weeks compared with ten days for Birthright). It is also the case that Israel tour, though subsidized, is an expense born by participants whereas Birthright is free for those accepted on the program. Cohort penetration rates are also very different; as noted, the Israel tour attracts up to 50% of any year group whereas US Birthright probably attracts less than 5% (assuming 18 to 26 year-olds constitute about 10% of the total US Jewish population).

  20. Sample eligibility for NJSS was based on the following instruction: “please only complete the survey if you are Jewish and currently registered to study full- or part-time at a UK-based university or college” (Graham and Boyd 2011, p. 63).

  21. According to UJIA data, the annual average proportion of gap year enrolments is 12% of tour participants. This does not include those attending yeshivas in Israel which is an additional 12%. Note gap year uptake fell in 2011 with the increase of university tuition fees. Data courtesy of Helena Miller, UJIA, London.

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Acknowledgments

The author greatly appreciates the advice and feedback received on early drafts of this paper from Dr. Jonathan Boyd and Dr. Laura Staetsky (both of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research), as well as the helpful suggestions and comments from the three anonymous referees.

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  1. The Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), London, UK

    David J. Graham

  2. Department of Hebrew, Biblical, and Jewish Studies, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    David J. Graham

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Graham, D.J. The Impact of Communal Intervention Programs on Jewish Identity: An Analysis of Jewish Students in Britain. Cont Jewry 34, 31–57 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-013-9110-x

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