Financial Constraints on Intensive Jewish Education: The Interactive Effects of Financial Capacity and Jewish Connections

Abstract

This paper examines the independent and interactive effects of financial capacity and Jewish connections on reported constraints in purchasing two intensive forms of Jewish education, day school and overnight summer camp. The analysis is structured around three hypotheses: (1) financial capacity is inversely related to constraints on Jewish education; (2) Jewish connections increase or decrease the level at which financial capacity determines financial constraints on Jewish education; (3) the strength of the inverse relationship between financial capacity and financial constraints on Jewish education varies by the strength of Jewish connections. We merge data from 13 local Jewish community studies to test the hypotheses with bivariate crosstabulations and multivariate logistic regression models. We assess the empirical evidence as showing moderately strong, though admittedly variable, support for our three hypotheses. The most robust support for the hypotheses comes in the case of financial constraints on Jewish day school education, with less consistent support when modeling constraints on Jewish summer camp. A final section highlights and integrates the main findings and concludes with several strategic and normative considerations.