That Taglit-Birthright, the program that sends young Jews to Israel for a short, fun trip, has an impact on these youngsters is a well known fact. There would be no point in having Taglit if it had no impact. Just last week, I wrote about a study that showed how Taglit impacts the way young Jews in America interpret the Gaza war. But there is a new study out, a more important and more interesting one. It is more important because it deals with the long-term impact Taglit has on its participants, on the way they lead their Jewish lives years after their Taglit experiences fade into distant memories.
The most tantalizing discovery in this study concerns marriage. The study, as its authors mention, “appears in the context of renewed concern about the future of the American Jewish community, prompted especially by last year’s Pew Research Center study… The Pew findings, as interpreted by some, suggest that high rates of assimilation and intermarriage have continued and will lead to the diminishment of the size and vibrancy of the American Jewish community”. What the new study says doesn’t necessarily contradict this conclusion, it just amends it in the following way: the more youngsters go on Taglit, the less intermarriage will be a challenge.
Why? That’s easy: Taglit participants marry Jewish in much higher percentages than non-participants. “Overall, the likelihood of inmarriage for participants is 72 percent, while for nonparticipants, the likelihood is 51 percent”. Particularly “striking”, the authors say, is that even among “participants whose parents are intermarried” the probability of finding a Jewish partner becomes much higher if they attend Taglit: “55 percent, compared to 22 percent for those nonparticipants who are children of intermarried parents”.
Over the weekend, I peppered Prof. Len Saxe of Brandeis – one of the six authors of this study (Leonard Saxe, Michelle Shain, Shahar Hecht, Graham Wright, Micha Rieser, Theodore Sasson) – with questions about the findings. I wanted to understand the impact of Taglit on the community at large, so I asked if we should expect the program to grow from (currently) taking about a third of every age cohort to Israel to taking more than a third. Saxe says that “yes, the proportion of bogrei Taglit should continue to grow”. It is true that the “annual % growth has moderated, but each year an increasingly large proportion of those who turn 27 years of age (the limit for Taglit) have participated”. This is important because the rate of intermarriage is much lower among Taglit participants than it is among other Jews.
I was wondering about those “other Jews” to which Taglit participants are compared. The study has two groups that are measured – Taglit participants, and Taglit applicants that did not ultimately participate in the program. This makes for a good way to demonstrate the impact that is clearly related to the program. But what if all applicants for Taglit are much different from non-applicants? If they are, maybe as Taglit continues to grow it will not have the same effect on the young Jews out there who didn’t even bother to register with Taglit. Is that the case?
Saxe doesn’t seem to be bothered by such a possibility. Applicants, he says, “reflect the diversity of young adult Jews” with only few differences. Children of intermarriage “are slightly underrepresented” as are “the most highly [Jewishly] educated (principally, Orthodox)”. But he thinks that this doesn’t change the overall picture. Saxe’s mission is clear – to measure the impact of Taglit, and “comparing participants to non-participant applicants is a conservative test of Taglit's impact”, he says. “At the time of application, there were very few differences between participants and non-participants”. But by the time they were asked about their lives ten years later, the differences were real.
They are real because the marriage factor is important in predicting a Jew’s level of Jewish engagement. Leaving aside questions of religious propriety (it is inappropriate to marry a non-Jew) and the uneasiness of many Jews with sending the message that marrying Jewish is preferable (it is racist to say that it is inappropriate to marry a non-Jew), leaving aside the many anecdotes that prove otherwise (our intermarried friends have a great Jewish home) – the numbers speak loud and clear. As Saxe puts it: “The non-participants who marry a Jew (about 50%) begin to look like Participants”.
This means that “Panelists with a Jewish spouse were far more likely than panelists with a non-Jewish spouse to be raising their children Jewish”. This means that inmarried participants will be more likely to have a “special meal” on shabbat, that more of them will celebrate the Holy Days, and that more of them will have close Jewish friends. This isn’t about moral judgment of marital preferences, it is about getting the facts straight: inmarried Jews behave – on average – more Jewishly than intermarried Jews. Taglit participants, those born to inmarriage and those born to intermarriage, are more likely to inmarry than non participants. Hence, Taglit participants behave – on average – more Jewishly than non participants.
* * *
One short note on Taglit and the Gaza war. Last week I wrote the following paragraphs:
What do they think about Gaza, Israel, and the war? If you want your glass half full, you could focus on the fact that “half of the nonparticipants and 60% of participants believed that Hamas was responsible for the conflict, compared to 21% of all U.S. 18-29 year olds”. Almost half of Birthright participants think that Israel's “response” to the conflict was “about right” – much more than the 31% who believe Israel's response was “about right” among US youngsters.
But you can also look at your glass as half empty: that is, if instead of taking a comparative approach to the numbers – instead of being satisfied with the fact that Birthright does something to make young US Jews more supportive of Israel – you just look at the bare numbers. 25% of Birthright participants think Israel has “gone too far” in its response to the conflict. That is a lot… 20% of participants think that Israel's actions in the war were “mostly” or “completely” unjustified. 9% of Birthright participants are “estranged” from Israel. 19% more are “somewhat estranged”. 23% more are “a little estranged”. A majority of participants do not feel completely connected to Israel.
You will probably not be surprised to hear that Saxe has little patience with half-full interpretations:
“I don't think the response of bogrei Taglit is a cup ‘half full’. The difference between them and other American young adults is too large (note, in particular, the 80% who see Israel's actions as justified, compared to 67% of the non-participants and 25% of the American sample). If the difference were any bigger – given that the Jewish sample is more liberal to start than their American peers – one might suspect the data. Given the media that they're exposed to, and the views of many of their peers, it is more surprising that they are as supportive of Israel as they are.
More important than their reactions on the day we surveyed them is the fact that they are anxious/motivated to learn about the situation. The Jewish community here, and Israelis who care about American attitudes, should see this as an opportunity — not to do hasbara, but to engage young American Jews educationally. If we fail to act, it will be a missed opportunity”.
Amen.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.