HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
AMERICAN JEWS?
DRAFT
Charles Kadushin
Graham Wright
Michelle Shain
Leonard Saxe
Abstract
The degree to which Jews are or are not integrated into non-Jewish societies and the
consequences of this integration or the lack of it has been debated at least since the emancipation
of Jews in the 18th century. As a contribution to this discussion, the present paper examines the
social integration of young adult Jews into American society. Findings are based on social
network analysis of data collected in the 2010 Jewish Futures Study as well as comparative data
from other sources. First, ego network data are compared to a more conventional survey question
about Jewish friends, revealing substantive differences in interpretation and distribution. Second,
homophily index scores for young adults Jews are compared to those for young adults of other
religions and are found to be similar. Third, the settings in which young adult Jews meet Jewish
and non-Jewish friends and spouses are examined. It is found that non-Jewish settings
predominate, particularly as young adults grow older and separate from their Jewish family of
origin. Non-Jewish spouses are more commonly met in college, graduate school or the
workplace, while Jewish spouses are more commonly met through friends and family and in
childhood. The authors conclude that the creation of forums for meeting other young adult Jews
should be a high priority on the Jewish communal agenda.
Keywords: social networks, homophily, Jews, intermarriage
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HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
AMERICAN JEWS?
DRAFT
How Socially Integrated into Mainstream America Are Young American Jews?
“The walls came tumbling down” with the emancipation of Jews in Western countries
beginning in the late eighteenth century. Gradually, over the course of the last two centuries,
Jews gained equal rights in the political sphere and began to become socially integrated into
mainstream society. In the United States today, barriers between Jews and non-Jews have all but
eroded. Jews have been elected and appointed to key political positions, are on the boards of
prominent cultural organizations that had once barred them, and enjoy unparalleled financial and
professional success. Not only have Jewish quotas at prestigious and highly select universities
disappeared, but many Jews now serve as presidents of such schools. Integration, however, has
led directly to the challenge of assimilation. The Jewish community now finds itself struggling to
maintain its distinctiveness and social cohesion in the wake of its success in integrating into
American culture. This concern intensified when the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey
indicated that 52 percent recent marriages of Jews were to non-Jews (Kosmin 1991; Goldstein
1992).1
The present paper describes an empirical assessment of the extent to which American
Jews of the post-college generation (ages 23 to 36) form social connections with other Jews.
Intermarriage is a distal focus of this inquiry and our emphasis is to inquire about dating patterns,
as well as where and under what circumstances young Jews met their current spouses or
significant others. Although many current Jewish educational programs have the explicit goal of
influencing the social choices and environments of young adult American Jews in the hope of
ensuring Jewish continuity, there is a paucity of empirical data on the way those choices are
1
Following criticism from Cohen (1994), the figure was revised downward to 43 percent
following the 2000-01 National Jewish Population Survey (Kotler-Berkowitz et al. 2004).
3
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
AMERICAN JEWS?
DRAFT
made. A key question is whether or not the social network patterns of young adult American
Jews differ from those of their non-Jewish peers. The answer has potentially important
implications about the nature of contemporary Jewish identity and policy to engage this
population.
The framework for this inquiry into social cohesion of young adult Jews is based on
social network analysis. The analysis begins with the standard question contained in Jewish
population surveys and similar studies: “How many of your close friends are Jewish? None, A
few, Half, Most, All.”2 This is, however, a subjective estimate and we compare it with more
objective measures based on more detailed questions about respondents’ networks. We then
examine the extent to which Jews have other Jews in their social networks, and how that
proportion compares to other religious groups. Finally, we inquire about the contexts where
young Jews meet their friends, including those of the opposite sex, and compare this with nonJews.
Social Networks
The emergence of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have put “social
networking” on the mainstream cultural map, but the academic study of social networks dates
back at least to the 1930s (Moreno 1953 [1934]). In Moreno’s framework, a network consists of
a set of relationships between objects. The objects can be almost anything: people, organizations,
2
Wording from the 2010 Jewish Futures Study. Other examples are the National Jewish
Population Survey 2000-01, Q229 (“How many of the people you consider to be your closest
friends are Jewish? Would you say…None, Some, About half, Most, or All are Jewish?”)
(United_Jewish_Communities 2003, North American Jewish Data Bank [distributor],
http://www.jewishdatabank.org/study.asp?sid=17980&tp=1) and the National Jewish Population
Survey1990, Q117 (“Among the people you consider your closest friends, would you say
that…None are Jewish, Few are Jewish, Some are Jewish, Most are Jewish, All or almost all are
Jewish”) (Council_of_Jewish_Federations 1991, North American Jewish Data Bank
[Distributor], http://www.jewishdatabank.org/study.asp?sid=17977&tp=1).
4
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
AMERICAN JEWS?
DRAFT
nations, power stations or brain cells. The objects in social networks are usually “social,” but
much has been made of other kinds of networks, such as power transmission grids (Barabási
2002). The relationships between the social objects range from being in the same place at the
same time, to being in love, to exporting goods from one country to another.3 Social networks
can be graphed in sociograms that show connections between one object, such as a person, and
the other objects in the universe under consideration.
Since one cannot map the entire set of relations of American Jews, or even a limited set,
the present focus is on “ego networks.” Such ego networks consist of the people who surround a
given individual—his or her friends, acquaintances and relatives—the immediate influences on
an individual. Since there are many kinds of connections between people—advice, discussion,
help with problems ranging from watching one’s house to fixing one’s computer—in practical
research terms, only a limited set of connections can be investigated involving a limited set of
other individuals. Since these individuals can be connected to the respondent in a number of
different ways, social networks researchers use the word “alter” as shorthand for a “person in the
respondent’s social network.” Given a selection of connections to a limited set of alters,
researchers can uncover the attributes of these individuals and their relationships to one another
(in addition to their relationships to the focal person). Methods to study ego networks using
sample surveys were developed in the 1970s (Wellman 1993). They have since been used in a
number of different contexts, but rarely in studies of Jews.
3
For an introduction to social networks, see (Kadushin 2011). For a discussion of the application
of social networks to Jews, see (Kadushin 2010).
5
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
AMERICAN JEWS?
DRAFT
The 1985 General Social Survey4 was the first nationally representative survey of the
U.S. population to collect ego network data, and was an important step to developing a
standardized instrument to collect such data (Marsden 1987). The 2004 General Social Survey
replicated many of the questions from two decades prior. Both surveys elicited the first names or
initials of the respondent’s alters with the question: “From time to time, most people discuss
important matters with other people. Looking back over the last six months—who are the people
with whom you discussed matters important to you?” (italics in the original instrument).5
Respondents were then asked additional questions about the first five alters named. Each alter’s
sex, race, education, age and religious preference were collected, as well as each alter’s
relationship to the respondent in terms of role (spouse, co-worker, etc.), frequency of contact and
duration of acquaintance. In addition, the relationships between the alters were examined with
the prompt: “Please think about the relations between the people you just mentioned. Some of
them may be total strangers in the sense that they wouldn’t recognize each other if they bumped
into each other on the street. Others may be especially close, as close or closer to each other as
they are to you.”
Many of the most pressing questions about contemporary Jewish life revolve around
issues of integration, assimilation and social cohesion. The methods of social networks analysis,
particularly the well-established ego networks paradigm used by the GSS, have the potential to
shed new light on these critical issues. The present report is based on the first survey of
4
The current data set and codebook contains all the GSS questions and data 1972-2010 (Smith et
al. 2011, http://www3.norc.org/GSS+Website/)
5
For a discussion of the characteristics of this particular name generator and why it is
appropriate for general purposes, see (Marsden 1987, 123)
6
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
AMERICAN JEWS?
DRAFT
American Jews to go beyond assessment of the number of Jewish friends and collect ego
network data: the 2010 Jewish Futures Study (JFS) (see Saxe et al. 2011a; Saxe et al. 2009).
Method
The JFS is a longitudinal panel study that seeks to understand how Jewish identity and
engagement with the Jewish community develop and shift during the critical years of young
adulthood and beyond. The investigation builds upon a long-term impact study of a large scale
Jewish education program, Taglit-Birthright Israel (Saxe et al. 2011a; Saxe et al. 2009).6
Respondents to the initial wave of the study, the 2009 JFS, were drawn from a panel of 2,373
randomly selected U.S.-based Jewish young adults who applied to a Taglit trip between 2001 and
2004. The 2010 JFS added 675 Jewish young adults who applied to a Taglit trip in 2005.
Although the frame excludes Jewish young adults who were ineligible for Taglit or did not
apply, the diversity of the sample reflects the diversity of American Jewry: Taglit applicants
include young Jewish adults from across the spectrum of Jewish life, including those with no
formal Jewish education and those who were raised in Orthodox homes (see Saxe et al. 2009).
In the 2010 JFS, interviews were conducted between June and November of 2010 with
1,683 respondents. The study achieved a high response rate: 60.8 percent overall, 68.5 percent
for Taglit participants and 47.6 percent for nonparticipants (Saxe et al. 2011a)7. The survey
6
Taglit provides free ten-day trips to Israel to young Jewish adults aged 18-26 who live outside
of Israel and have never had a peer group educational experience in Israel. Among those who
apply and are eligible participation in the program is more or less random and analyses have
generally found little pre-trip differences between participants and nonparticipants. See Saxe et
al. (2007) for more information on the program.
7
The data used here are the result of the same study as reported in Saxe et al. 2011. However,
there were a small number of respondents (n<30) who completed the survey too late to be
included in the weighting process for the released report. These cases have now been included
and weighted, and consequently, the response rate and number of cases reported here varies
slightly from the figures reported in Saxe et al. 2011. In addition, because Saxe et al. 2011 was
7
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
AMERICAN JEWS?
DRAFT
instrument was based on the 2009 survey of this population and included questions about Jewish
identity and questions about involvement with Jewish organizations and activities. In addition to
asking the conventional question about the number of close friends who are Jewish, the 2010 JFS
included a special, one-time module that replicated many of the social network questions from
the GSS. The same language of discussing “important matters” was used to elicit alters and
asking many of the same follow-up questions. GSS data, however, are obtained in hour-long
face-to-face interviews, while the JFS was a mixed-mode phone and Web survey in which
brevity was key to ensuring respondents’ cooperation. Thus, the 2010 JFS capped the number of
alters at “4 or more.”
The 2010 JFS ego network question asked, in line with the GSS, “who are the people
with whom you discussed matters important to you?” The list of alters elicited by this prompt
included a diverse array of relationships. Parents, siblings and other relatives were mentioned, as
well as spouses or significant others, friends, neighbors and co-workers. Some respondents
included alters with whom they had a professional relationship, such as doctors, therapists or
clergy. Of the 1,696 respondents to whom the network question was addressed, 6 percent listed
no alters. Those who listed at least one alter named 5,360 alters in total. About 200 alters had
multiple relationships with the respondent (e.g., both friend and neighbor).8
Although the diversity of relationships allows examination of a rich array of issues, the
present analyses are limited to those alters whose relationship with the respondent is based on
focused on measuring the impact of the Taglit program, respondents raised Orthodox were
omitted from all analyses, since they have very low variance on most outcome measures of
interest. However, such individuals are included in all analyses reported in this paper.
8
For analytic purposes, we removed 7 respondents who gave more than one significant other
(spouse, fiancé/e, etc.). If an alter was listed as both a spouse and a friend, only the spousal role
was considered.
8
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
AMERICAN JEWS?
DRAFT
social choices rather than kinship. Alters who are parents, siblings or other kin (but not spouses)
were removed and analyses were conducted solely on the sub-network of non-family alters. This
leaves 3,529 alters who are the basis for the analyses describe below. There are essentially no
significant differences in the answers to the ego network questions between participants and
nonparticipants in the Taglit trips, allowing us to group them together to create a profile of
Jewish Americans between the ages of 23 and 369.
Results
Subjective Versus Network-Based Measures of Jewish Friendship
As noted, the literature on social cohesion within the American Jewish community
discusses respondent estimates of the proportion of their friends that are Jewish. Analyses of this
question are considered critical to understanding the Jewish engagement of American Jews. For
example, Goldscheider (1990) poses the proportion of Jewish friends as an important measure of
Jewish cohesion, especially among those with weak religious ties. Looking specifically at the
younger generation, Cohen and Kelman (2008) argue that Jewish friends play a critical role in
the identities of single Jewish adults in particular. In those studies, the proportion of one’s
friends who are Jewish is the only item available to measure the interpenetration of Jews and
non-Jews. So it is important to know how well this question compares to more standard ego
network based questions used in surveys of non-Jews.
9
There was no significant difference between Taglit participants and nonparticipants in regards
to the number Jewish, non-family alters, and no significant difference between Taglit participants
and nonparticipants on virtually all of the dozens of measures detailing how specific types of
alters were met, discussed below. The only exceptions were in regards to how the respondent
met his or her spouse. Taglit participants were significantly more likely to have met their spouse
on a Taglit trip. In addition, Taglit participants were significantly more likely to have met their
spouse in “some other way” that was not categorized. In all other respects Taglit participants and
nonparticipants were not significantly different at the traditional 95% confidence level.
9
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
AMERICAN JEWS?
DRAFT
Dividing the number of Jewish non-family alters in the ego network by the total number
of non-family alters yields the proportion of a respondent’s closest non-family relations that are
Jewish. This is compared to the more subjective question asked earlier in the JFS survey.
Table 1
Subjective Versus Objective Measures of Jewishness of Social Networks
“How many of your close friends are Jewish?” Proportion of Jews in non-family social network
None
4.5%
None
35.5%
A few
31.2%
1/4 or 1/3
11.1%
Half
21.4%
Half
14.8%
Most
34.4%
2/3 or 3/4
11.8%
All
8.7%
All
26.9%
Note: numbers do not add to 100% due to rounding.
As can be seen in Table 1, the results are very different for each variable. The subjective
question has much lower proportions of respondents with exclusively Jewish and non-Jewish
networks. Although 8.7 percent of respondents claimed that all of their close friends were
Jewish, 26.9 percent named only Jewish non-family alters. There are a number of potential
explanations for this difference. One possibly is that social desirability bias may be at work, with
respondents feeling pressure to report a “diverse” social network on the subjective question, but
reporting more honestly when asked to list specific alters. It is also possible that the objective
measure is measuring a closer, more intimate network of friends. Because most respondents
reported at least one family member as an alter, the objective measure is generally based on a
sub-network of only two or three alters, whereas the subjective measure that refers to “close
friends” may be interpreted by the respondent to refer to a wider circle. Finally, respondents may
be answering the subjective question in terms of a general sense of Jewish identity, making the
correlation between identity measures and subjective number of Jewish friends perhaps a
foregone conclusion. It is of course also possible that all three of these issues are at play
simultaneously.
10
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
AMERICAN JEWS?
DRAFT
Although the two items have substantive differences in their interpretation and
distribution, they behave remarkably similarly when used as predictive elements in multivariable regression analysis10 of various measures of Jewish identity and engagement, including
connection to Israel, synagogue membership and donation to Jewish causes, though the
subjective measure has somewhat large effect sizes.11 The interchangeability of social indices in
relationship to other variables is not an uncommon phenomenon and has been noted for years
(Horwitz and Smith (P.F. Lazarsfeld) 1955). At the same time, the two Jewish friendship
variables appear to be measuring somewhat different constructs. When both are included as
independent variables in a regression on key measures of Jewish identity and engagement, both
are significant, though the subjective measure again has a larger effect size. 12 The subjective
measure may function as a proxy for strength of Jewish identity, in which case its causal impact
on the dependent variables is questionable.
More differences appear when Jewish background measures are used not as outcomes,
but as predictors of subjective and objective social network composition in a regression.
Although some key variables—such as a scale of high school ritual practice, hours of Jewish
education and having inmarried Jewish parents—were strong predictors of both variables, there
were other variables that worked differently for the two measures. Participation in Taglit was a
significant predictor of the subjective measure (although the effect size was small, odds
10
A regression model isolates the impact of a single independent (“predictor”) variable on a
given dependent variable while holding constant the effects of all other independent variables
included in the model. In this case, both the “subjective” and “objective” measures of Jewish
friendship circles were included as independent variables in a series of regression models.
11
Marriage to a Jew was not included because the respondent’s spouse was invariably an alter in
his or her non-family social network. Marriage to a Jew was therefore collinear with the
objective social network variable, meaning that the two variables are measuring the same thing
and should not be used to predict the other.
12
For regression models, see Appendix.
11
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
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DRAFT
ratio=1.23) but not the objective one. A possible explanation is that Taglit participants are likely
to have met close Jewish friends on the trip, but these friends are unlikely to be the participant’s
two or three closest. Taglit participants might also be more sensitive to social desirability
pressures to report higher proportions of Jewish friends. Conversely, age was a significant
negative predictor of the objective measure of Jewish friendship, but not the subjective one. This
might be related to a trend, discussed below, of Jewish alters being met at earlier life cycle stages
than non-Jewish ones. Finally, it is important that both measures suggest that while there is an
association between having more friends who are Jewish and various Jewish activities and
sentiments, almost all committed Jews have at least some friends who are not Jewish.
The bottom line is that for many purposes, the simple subjective question appears to be
adequate as a general measure of the “Jewishness” of a respondent’s social network. It can be
used to demonstrate the correlation between proportion of Jewish friends and other Jewish
attitudes and behaviors, or as an independent or dependent variable in predictive models.
However, for the more detailed and comparative analyses that we describe below, such as
examining the proportion of Jewish friends met in Jewish settings, only the ego network
questions will suffice. Observe that neither the subjective question, nor the ego network
questions directly address what it means to be “Jewish.” Whether the respondents intend
“religion,” “ethnicity,” “culture,” “nationality” or some combination is unknown and without
tedious inquiry probably unknowable.
Jews in Comparative Context
All survey questions must be understood in a comparative context. Knowing the
proportion of Jewish friends is of limited utility unless one also asks, “In comparison with
what?” The distribution of answers in response to “How many of your close friends are…?” as
12
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
AMERICAN JEWS?
DRAFT
interpreted in the literature often has an implicit comparison to an imagined distribution of the
answers in a Shtetl population in which 100 percent of the respondent’s friends are Jewish, or for
the Orthodox in National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01 in which close to 80 percent said
that most or all of their friends are Jewish (authors’ tabulation).13 The regressions summarized
above are also a form of comparison in which it was found that the more “religious” Jews were,
by various measures, the more likely they were to say that all or most of their friends are Jewish.
Another kind of comparison is external to the Jewish community. Since U.S. Jews live
and work, except in case of Haredi communities, alongside Americans who are not Jewish, it is
useful to examine Jewish interaction patterns in comparison with those of other Americans.
There is no equivalent question in national U.S. surveys which asks the respondent how many of
their close friends are, say, Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish [to use Herberg’s classic formation
(Herberg 1983 [1955])]. Rather, some form of ego network questions are used to ascertain the
religious composition of respondents’ alters. So to see how Jewish networks compare with those
of non-Jews, we must resort to the ego network data. The question is: are Jews more or less
exclusive in their friendship formation than other Americans? The ambiguity of what is meant by
“religion” and how respondents interpret this of course remains but this is true of almost all
surveys that use some variant of the question, “What is your religion?”
The key concept needed to evaluate this question is the network concept of homophily—
the extent to which people with like characteristics associate with one another (colloquially,
“birds of a feather flock together”) (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook 2001). We have to take
into account that as a small minority, Jews are less likely to run into coreligionists at random
13
Recent Israel Census Bureau surveys that dealt with religion (2008, 2009), do not ask this
question.
13
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
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DRAFT
than Americans who profess more popular religions (Blau and Schwartz 1984). Among white,
college-educated respondents ages 25 to 36—the group most comparable to the JFS
respondents—in the 2004 GSS which asked the same ego questions as the JFS, Protestants are 45
percent of the population, and 71 percent of their non-kin alters are Protestant; Catholics are 24
percent of the population, and 53 percent of their non-kin alters are Catholic; “Nones”—a
recently growing category—are 17 percent of the population, and 32 percent of their non-kin
alters have “no religion.” For college graduates in this same age group the GSS estimates Jews as
5.5 percent of the population, but the number of cases is very small. Consequently, we use a
somewhat lower 3.9 percent estimate for Jewish incidence in this sub-population in 2008 based
on a cross-survey analysis conducted by Tighe et al. (2010). It should be noted that the
proportion of Jewish in this sub-population is significantly higher than the proportion in the
American population overall, which most sources estimate at around 2 percent . In the 2010 JFS,
49 percent of the non-family alters are Jews.
The Coleman homophily index (Coleman 1958) accounts for the proportion of a group in
the population and allows one to compute a normalized measure of the tendency of a given group
to associate with others of that group. The index is referred to as Hi and is calculated using the
formula:
Hi =
Proportion same (religion in our case) – Proportion in population
1 – Proportion in the population
If social connections were formed purely by chance; that is, if individuals were neither more nor
less likely to form social connections with coreligionists than with people of other religions, the
Hi would equal zero. If individuals formed social connections only with coreligionists, the Hi
would equal one, while if they avoided all social connection with coreligionists, the Hi would
equal negative one. Thus, a higher Hi score indicates a higher likelihood of forming social
14
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
AMERICAN JEWS?
DRAFT
connections with coreligionists. The Hi scores for Jews (based on 2010 JFS) and other religious
groups (based on GSS2004) are as follows:14
For Jews Hi = (0.49-.039)/(1-.039) = .47
For Protestants Hi= (.71-.45)/(1-.45) = .47
For Catholics Hi= (.53-.24)/(1-.24) = .39
For Nones Hi = (.32-.17)/(1-.17) = .18
It appears that young adult Jews have similar homophily index scores to Protestants in their age
bracket.15
Olson and Perl (2011) demonstrate that geographic variations in the religious
composition of population influence have an effect on the proportion of same-religion friends.
Therefore, the 3.9 percent figure that represents the proportion of Jews in the college educated
American population may be misleading, since American Jews are not homogeneously
distributed geographically. A large proportion of American Jews live in a few key metropolitan
areas where the “local” Jewish population density (which includes most of the individuals that a
respondent is likely to meet in day-to-day life) may be substantially higher than 3.9 percent
14
GSS 2004 asked for the religion of up to five persons named in the ego network question.
Using similar procedures used to analyze friends in the Jewish Futures Study we matched same
religion as the respondents for friends, excluding spouse and relatives, and calculated the mean
who were Protestant, Catholic, or None. For Jews, we relied on our own survey that had a
sufficient number to make the calculation. Only GSS respondents who were 23 through 36, white
and college-educated were studied.
15
The 1988 and 1998 GSS using a somewhat different format also asked about the religion of up
to five friends. Jews in our age bracket cannot be compared with current figures because there
was only one respondent. For all Jews (n=52) Hi was .70. The Hi score for Protestants was lower
at .33, Catholics were higher at .51 and “Nones” were also higher at .24. Jews today may
generally be more socially integrated into the United States than they were 20 years ago.
Protestant fundamentalism may have lead to somewhat greater homophily today while Catholics
are following the Jewish tendency towards greater integration. GSS 1988 and 1998 asked the ego
network questions slightly differently than GSS 2004, so these reported differences may also
reflect differences in question format.
15
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
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DRAFT
(Tighe et al. 2010, 75). The most extreme example is New York City, which is home to
approximately 22 percent of 2010 JFS respondents and has a Jewish population density of 12
percent (UJA 2004, Exhibit 2-5). Using 12 percent as the population density instead of 3.9
percent (which would be the highest it would likely be for any large metropolitan area) would
push the Hi score for Jews down. Even if one assumes that all of our respondents lived New
York City, however, the overall Hi index (and thus the “lower bound” of Hi estimates for the
Jewish community) is .42, still in the same range as Protestants and Catholics. Thus, Jews are
about as likely as other Americans to have friends of the same religion.
Settings in which Alters Are Met
Although young American Jews are no less likely than young Americans of other
religious groups -- given their size in the population -- to have friends of the same religion, most
Jewish observers still decry what they perceive to be the growing lack of Jewish involvement of
young Jewish adults (Wertheimer 2009; Cohen and Wertheimer 2006). In order to understand
potential avenues for influencing the Jewish social networks of Jewish young adults, it is
necessary to understand the settings in which these young adults meet their friends and
significant others. Below, general friendships and then marriage partners are examined. There
appears to be no comparable non-Jewish data on meeting friends, but such data do exist for
marriage partners.16
2010 JFS respondents were asked to describe, in an open-ended text box, how they first
met each alter. They were also asked whether they considered the meeting to have occurred “in a
16
In addition, meeting friends and potential marriage partners is affected by the density of Jews
in particular settings (Horowitz and Solomon 1992). This introduces an additional variable that
we cannot directly take account of, though the density of Jews in different settings is part of the
very character of these settings and is so noted.
16
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
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DRAFT
Jewish context” . Responses were coded into 15 broad categories, which were not mutually
exclusive:
1. Friends/family: Introduced by friends or family.
2. College: Met in college or graduate school.
3. Childhood: Met during childhood (e.g., in primary or secondary school, camp or youth
group).
4. Work: Met at work or at a professional event.
5. Organization: Met through some organized group or activity (e.g., in an exercise class,
as volunteers on a political campaign, at a Jewish Federation Young Professionals “happy
hour” event).
6. Jewish religious activity: Met while doing a Jewish religious activity (e.g., at a Shabbat
meal, in synagogue).
7. Party: Met at a party or social event, or while doing a leisure activity (e.g., attending a
concert).
8. Abroad: Met while travelling or living abroad, in Israel or elsewhere.
9. Online: Met online, usually on dating sites (both Jewish and general).
10. Bar/restaurant: Met in a bar, club, restaurant or coffee shop.
11. Mentor: The alter was a teacher, rabbi, therapist or other mentor-type figure.
12. Children: Met through parenting activities (e.g., at a child’s school or in a prenatal
class).
13. Birthright: Met while on a Taglit-Birthright Israel trip.
14. Other: Met in some other idiosyncratic way (e.g., in a chiropractic office, “in an alley
because my car was stuck in the snow and he helped me dig my car out and we’ve been
friends for three years”).
15. Family: The alter was a family member (e.g., cousin).17
Some respondents also gave vague or otherwise unusable answers, such as geographic locations
(“in Florida”) or, more commonly, “school” with no indication of whether that meant primary,
secondary or post-secondary school.18
Figure 1 shows the percentage of non-family alters in the dataset who were met in each setting.
Multiple sources were coded so that the sum adds to more that 100 percent.
17
Because family members were excluded from this analysis, this category is not reflected in the
figures or discussion below.
18
These responses are excluded from this analysis.
17
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Figure 1.
Meeting Setting of Non-Family Alters
Two of the three most common ways of meeting alters—through friends or family and
during childhood—are expected, and related to the respondent’s intimate circle and therefore not
easily affected by policy decisions. The other contexts, however, are indeed subject to influence
by programs or initiatives that aim to foster Jewish interpersonal connections. To understand
how such trends might be influenced, we examine contexts in which different groups of alters
were met: Jewish versus non-Jewish alters, and opposite-sex alters versus same-sex alters.
Because the random odds of meeting another Jew are low, it is not surprising that
respondents reported that over half of their Jewish alters were met in a Jewish context, while
18
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only about 2 percent of their non-Jewish alters were.19 Jewish alters were also more likely than
non-Jewish alters to have been met during childhood (18 percent for Jewish alters versus 11
percent for non-Jewish alters). In general, it appears that the intimate circle of childhood and
family of young adults Jews is still predominantly Jewish. Nevertheless, 21 percent of nonJewish alters were met at a work setting compared to only 6 percent of Jewish alters. This is
expected since American workplaces are generally religiously integrated. Jewish and non-Jewish
alters were equally likely to be met through friends or family, in college or graduate school and
at parties, the other most popular categories. Overall, close relationships with other Jews tend to
be formed at an earlier stage in the life cycle than close relationships with non-Jews.
Respondents meet alters of the opposite sex in different ways from those of the same sex.
An estimated 19 percent of same-sex alters were met during childhood compared to only 7
percent of opposite-sex alters. For alters met at work, the difference was much smaller: 13
percent of same-sex alters versus 11 percent of opposite-sex alters. In contrast, 22 percent of
opposite-sex alters were met via friends or family compared to only 14 percent of same-sex
alters, and 9 percent of opposite-sex alters were met at parties compared to only 4 percent of
same sex-alters. The childhood differences are in line with the general network findings that,
especially in primary schools, friendships tend to be of the same sex (Schaefer et al. 2010). The
modern workplace, it would seem, is not only integrated in terms of religion but also in terms of
sex since respondents are more or less equally likely to meet same as opposite sex friends at
work. On the other hand, the traditional role of friends and family to make opposite sex
introductions seems to hold.
19
See (Kelner 2002, 14) for a similar finding for adolescents.
19
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Meeting Spouses, Making Friends
The major reason that analysts of Jewish friendship patterns are interested in the topic is
policy concerns about intermarriage. A recent review confirms the general importance of
homophily and context for endogamous marriage.
[T]he more homogeneous the contexts in which the parents are embedded, the higher the
chances that their children will marry endogamously. Parents are often engaged in
contexts that provide opportunities for their children to marry endogamously. Important
examples are friendship networks, churches and other ethno-religious organizations,
schools and geographic areas such as cities and neighborhoods. Such settings are
typically not intended as a meeting place for marriage partners, but they may promote
ethnoreligious endogamy as a by-product by providing a homogeneous pool of
candidates to choose from. Such contexts are particularly important for groups that are
very small in a society because the costs of finding someone within the group rise
tremendously with declining relative size (Kalmijin et al. 2006, 1348).
Given the importance of context, how do Jewish young adults (45 percent of whom are now
married) meet their spouses? It is once again important to view these contexts comparatively, so
following the analysis of the contexts in which young Jews meet their partners, the comparable
data for Americans at large of the same age will be introduced.
Figure 2 shows whether meetings for romantic partners that took place in various settings
were considered by respondents in the JFS survey to have occurred “in a Jewish context.” The
most frequent setting is the traditional one: friends and family make an introduction. The second
is college or graduate school. About tied for third place are work, parties and the Internet. Note
that non-Jewish settings seem to predominate.
20
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Figure 2
Meeting Setting of Spouses, Fiancé/es and Significant Others by Jewish Context
Spouses in Comparative Context. A recent study of the general population focused on
where Americans meet their spouses and significant others (Rosenfeld and Thomas 2010). Data
were gathered online by Knowledge Networks, whose online survey panel is built through
addressed-based sampling, largely avoiding the coverage issues that plague
nonprobability/volunteer online panels (AAPOR 2010). The study coded open ended responses
to the question “Please write the story of how you and [Partner_Name] first met and got to know
one another and be sure to describe ‘how’ and ‘where’ you first met.” That question was
21
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
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DRAFT
followed by the prompt “Please add more details, we want to understand your story” and, if the
response was less than 100 characters, the prompt “Is there anything else you could add? Every
detail helps us.”
There were 3,009 partners, of whom 2960 provided useable answers. Multiple sources
were coded so that the sum adds to more that 100 percent. The analysis below is limited to white
college graduates ages 23 to 36 (n=263) so as to approximate the demographic characteristics of
the JFS sample. Since only 12 Jews (3.6 percent) were in this category (of 106 Jews in the
sample, 1.95 percent), the analyses were further restricted the data to non-Jews (n=251) so that
we could see how non-Jewish Americans met. Some categories were combined so as to match,
where possible, the way our own study was coded (see Figure 3 ).
22
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
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Figure 3
Meeting Setting of Spouses and Significant Others: White, College Graduate Non-Jews, Ages 23
to 36 (Couples Study)
Comparing Figure 3 to Figure 2 above gives a sense of how the meeting places of young Jewish
couples compare to those of young adults of other religions. Although the absolute magnitudes
of the categories in these two charts are not comparable—the coding was somewhat different—
the relative sizes are similar. Friends and families are the leading context for both Jews and
others, and college is next. Large differences between the two surveys relate to meeting in
church, equivalent to Jewish religious activities, and online. Church is more important in the
national survey, while online meetings are less important. The greater importance of online
23
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DRAFT
dating sites for Jews could be because Jews are a minority population; those who would prefer to
meet Jewish partners avail themselves of the Internet as a way to find other Jews because the
religion or the ethnicity of a potential partner can be specified in general dating sites and, for
example, there is an entire site, JDate, that is confined to Jews.20 Overall, however, there are
more similarities between the experiences of non-Jewish young Americans and young Jewish
Americans than there are differences.
Intermarriage. Thus far, the analyses have examined any partner, spouse or significant
other, Jewish or not. Now we distinguish between Jewish and non-Jewish spouses to arrive at a
picture of the differences in the way Jewish or non-Jewish spouses were met by contemporary
young Jewish adults. Figure 4 presents the findings from the 2010 JFS in answer to the question
of how you first met your spouse. Because the survey asked specifically about spouses in
questions not included in the ego questionnaire, the tabulation includes all spouses, whether or
not they were mentioned in the ego questionnaire. Again, multiple sources were coded so that the
sum adds to more that 100 percent.
20
JDate advertises itself as an “[A]n ideal destination for Jewish men and Jewish women to
make connections, and find friends, dates and soul mates, all within the faith. With hundreds of
thousands of members, fun and easy online features, fantastic offline activity options (including,
travel and events), JDate is the number one place for Jewish romance in the world!”
[http://www.jdate.com/]
24
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Figure 4
Meeting Setting of Spouses by Religion of Spouse
Religiously integrated work places are an obvious source for non-Jewish spouses. 21
percent of non-Jewish spouses were met in a professional context versus only 3 percent of
Jewish spouses. College and graduate schools are also more common meeting places for the
intermarried, and of the respondents who met their spouses in college or graduate school, only
one-fifth mentioned Hillel as a factor in the meeting. On the other hand, Jewish spouses are more
likely to be met through friends and family and in childhood, settings more closely tied to the
Jewish family of origin. Jewish spouses are also more likely to be met online, for reasons noted
above.
25
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Discussion and Conclusion
The findings of this exploration into Jewish social cohesion among young American Jews
are of the half-full, half-empty variety. Based on two ways of measuring friendships, a majority
of young Jews have mostly Jewish friends, and the more religiously involved they are, the more
likely are they to have mostly Jewish friends. So this understanding of the social integration of
Jews as reported in the literature seems to be true. Given the principles of homophily, being
committed Jewishly leads to having Jewish friends and having Jewish friends leads to being
more committed Jewishly. There is no easy way to sort out the causal sequence either
theoretically or statistically.21 Nevertheless, even the most involved Jews in both our sample and
a national sample do have non-Jewish friends and this point is often overlooked. Except in the
case of Haredi Jews, very few of whom are present in survey data, contemporary Jews are not
socially isolated from the rest of America. Furthermore, comparatively, given their small size in
the American population, Jews are not more likely to have Jewish friends than Protestants are
likely to have Protestant friends or Catholics are to have Catholic friends.
The same is not true about the social settings in which friends, especially of the opposite
sex, and marriage partners are met. Although Jews meet their friends and spouses in roughly the
same settings as other Americans, close examination of the settings is instructive. The integrated
workplace, college, and the bar scene are places to meet non-Jews. American Christians, unlike
21
Snijders in an email circulated to the Social Networks Association list (reproduced with his
permission), notes that “Disentangling selection and influence is possible only under the
assumption that the available observed networks and individual variables contain all the
variables that play a role in the causal process, and if moreover a number of distributional
assumptions are made. . . The sensitivity to the distributional assumptions is a serious question,
and this is a topic that should and will be investigated. The assumption that all relevant variables
are observed is always questionable, but statistical inference very often is done under such
assumptions. . . As the great statistician R. A. Fisher said when asked how to make observational
studies more likely to yield causal answers: ‘Make your theories elaborate’”.
26
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Jews, tend to attend houses of worship, and many meet their spouses in that setting. Given the
general American norms, creating successful Jewish settings and cultural forums for meeting
friends and spouses ought to be among the highest priorities, though not an easy task and one
which calls for considerable resources. The recent demise of JDub records22 is instructive in
terms of the willingness of funders to support this kind of activity which seems an indirect means
of supporting Jewish continuity. Making synagogues attractive for young people is a frequent
refrain,23 though whether or not these appeals to the young have been successful has not been
evaluated. Similarly, Hillel attendance is dominated by already committed Jews. Interesting
“networking” programs such as REBOOT seem to have had limited reach, though the Internet as
meeting place may be more successful. An exception is Taglit, which has attracted a large
number of Jewish young adults with little to no prior connection to Jewish communal life.
Although Taglit participation had only a small impact on the “Jewishness” of respondent’s social
network (being a significant predictor of the subjective “Jewish friends” measure, but not
network composition) the program has been shown to impact marriage choices of participants
(Saxe et al. 2011b; Saxe et al. 2011a). Although the program may cause a shift in participant’s
attitudes towards marriage, it is likely that networking effects also play a part.
The tension between assimilation and distinctiveness is apparent in many current efforts
by the Jewish community to foster Jewish involvement. Programs such as NEXT Shabbat,
Gesher City and Moishe House aim to provide Jewish experiences to young unaffiliated Jews
22
http://blog.jdubrecords.org/2011/07/13/jdub-to-close-up-shop/
“Synagogues at the forefront of Jewish life have rightly become concerned about the
changeover from the baby-boomers to their children, the twenty- and thirty-year olds whom
sociologists call Gen X and Gen Y. At stake is Jewish continuity, particularly in the liberal
sector, that 90% or so of Jews are not necessarily committed to significant Jewish identity.
Coordinating a sustained and successful engagement strategy to the next generation is the next
frontier in synagogue life.” http://www.synagogue3000.org/invitation-next-synagogue-frontier
23
27
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DRAFT
who may have lost touch with their Jewish identity, but they do so by situating Jewish culture in
broader society, away from distinctively Jewish institutions such as synagogues. Jewish youth
groups and organizations like Taglit aim to cultivate close friendships between Jews, while at the
same time the Federation of Jewish Men’s club’s keruv initiative and the “Introduction to
Judaism” classes offered by many Reform synagogues, aim to reach out to intermarried couples.
In a world where universalism is ascendant, the Jewish community appears anxious to find ways
to promote strong Jewish communal relationships without undermining the desire for integration
in the larger American community.
Understanding the ways in which young Jews balance the Jewish and non-Jewish aspects
of their social lives is critical to resolving this issue and to understanding how individuals
navigate the particularistic and universalistic domains of their lives. The present data provide the
basis for developing such an understanding by showing the ways in which Jewish and nonJewish friendships are formed and how the social networks of American Jews compare to those
of other religions. A more robust analysis of these trends can help the Jewish community
establish programs and organizations that can more effectively impact the lives of young Jews
and help create a Jewish community that is simultaneously integrated and distinct. Such analyses
may have ramifications beyond the Jewish community itself, as the tension between assimilation
and integration is likely felt by many other ethnic and religious groups struggling to find their
place in American society.
The extent to which religion is divisive or integrative in American society remains
contested. In a review of American grace: How religion divides and unites us (Putnam,
Campbell, and Garrett 2010), Sherkat observes that the authors claim that “religiosity facilitates
bridging social capital to individuals of other faiths. This is a very controversial finding and
28
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seems to contradict the conclusions of more sophisticated analyses conducted by DiPrete and
colleagues (DiPrete et al. 2011). “(Sherkat 2012, 1265). Without attempting to resolve the
controversy, we note that at issue is both the perception and reality, as variously measured, of
social networks of persons of different religions and degree of religiousness. Much more
research and detailed analyses such as the kind conducted here are clearly necessary.
29
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the sponsors of the Jewish Futures Project whose support made the
study possible: the Robert K. and Myra H. Kraft Family Foundation, the Andrea and Charles
Bronfman Philanthropies, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation, Taglit-Birthright
Israel and donors to the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies. We also thank our research
team at the Cohen Center and the Steinhardt Social Research Institute who make our work
possible.
30
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Appendix
Objective Versus Subjective Measures as Predictors of Jewish Engagement
Table 2. Ordered Logistic Regressions on Connection to Israel.
Objective Measure Subjective Measure
Odds Ratio (Std. Err.)
Objective Measure
1.34 (0.06)***
Subjective Measure
1.7 (0.12)***
High School Ritual Practice Index 1.36 (0.1)***
1.33 (0.09)***
Hours of Jewish Education
1.15 (0.05)**
1.12 (0.04)**
Inmarried Parents
1.7 (0.28)**
1.33 (0.2)
*** p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05
Both Measures
1.16 (0.06)**
1.62 (0.15)***
1.34 (0.1)***
1.11 (0.05)*
1.37 (0.23)
Table 3. Logistic Regression on Synagogue Membership.
Objective Measure Subjective Measure
Odds Ratio (Std. Err.)
Objective Measure
1.28 (0.07)***
Subjective Measure
1.65 (0.13)***
High School Ritual Practice Index 1.3 (0.1)**
1.28 (0.1)**
Hours of Jewish Education
1.17 (0.04)***
1.16 (0.04)***
Inmarried Parents
4.85 (0.9)***
3.56 (0.6)***
*** p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05
Both Measures
1.12 (0.07)
1.54 (0.15)***
1.25 (0.1)**
1.14 (0.04)***
4.07 (0.76)***
Table 4. Logistic Regression on Donation to Jewish Causes.
Objective Measure Subjective Measure
Odds Ratio (Std. Err.)
Objective Measure
1.31 (0.07)***
Subjective Measure
1.81 (0.14)***
High School Ritual Practice Index 1.19 (0.09)*
1.2 (0.09)*
Hours of Jewish Education
1.19 (0.05)***
1.15 (0.05)***
Inmarried Parents
3.1 (0.61)***
2.43 (0.43)***
*** p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05
Both Measures
1.12 (0.07)
1.64 (0.15)***
1.15 (0.09)
1.15 (0.05)**
2.54 (0.51)***
31
HOW SOCIALLY INTEGRATED INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA ARE YOUNG
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DRAFT
Predicting Objective Versus Subjective Measures
Table 5. Predicting Objective Versus Subjective Measures.
Objective Measure Subjective Measure
Odds Ratio (Std. Err.)
High School Ritual Practice Index 1.15 (0.06)***
1.14 (0)***
Hours of Jewish Education
1.12 (0)***
1.32 (0.12)***
Age
0.95 (0.1)***
0.98 (0.09)***
Intermarried Parents
0.48 (0.05)**
0.5 (0.04)**
Taglit participation
1.19 (0.28)**
1.24 (0.2)
Student
0.96 (0)***
0.77 (0)***
*** p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05
32
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