From Jerusalem to New York: Researching Jewish Erosion and Resilience

Abstract

This paper tells two stories, one of Jewish erosion and one of Jewish resilience. It weaves together a research topic, intermarriage, with the personal stories of a researcher who has conducted Jewish demographic studies in the United States and Israel. To illustrate the connectedness of the personal and the professional, a state-of-the-art research project with a longitudinal design is discussed: how the project came to life as well as its various components, purposes, methodology, and sponsors. Second, the paper delves into the personal narrative of the researcher, showing how the area of study, the assumptions, and the questions she asks reflect personal roots, and are affected by life experiences and personal aspirations. The researcher’s career has been devoted to questions of deep personal interest and relevance. The paper demonstrates how personal and professional lives have enhanced each other. The Longitudinal Study of Young Conservative Jews 1995-2003 provided a valuable opportunity to examine how young people’s perceptions evolve from their adolescence in their middle school years through high school and into young adulthood in college. A key finding was that young Conservative Jews do not in general share their parents’ anxiety about inter-religious dating. Only a small minority said they dated only Jews, but most of them remained committed to Judaism, and to marrying fellow Jews. Thus, their stories reveal both Jewish erosion and Jewish resilience. The researcher’s professional life bled over into her personal life as she experienced the challenge of raising a Jewish child who grew from an infant to a teenager over the course of the longitudinal study.