The Jewish Family

Abstract

The family remains central to the continuity of the contemporary American Jewish community. But how the Jewish family is Jewish (and ‘how Jewish’ Jewish families are) varies widely and touches on fundamental assumptions about Jewishness, even as the family shapes the very Jewishness to which it contributes. Today’s Jewish family is faced with important challenges in its effort to fulfill its functions, both traditional and contemporary. Confronted with declining rates of marriage, delayed marriage, low fertility, and interfaith marriage, contemporary family patterns appear to contribute to a shrinking Jewish population. Jewish engagement promotes healthier family-oriented behaviors. Yet some families, marginalized by the mainstream Jewish community, find it difficult to be engaged Jewishly on a communal level, because of their special needs or conditions, such as economic vulnerability, immigrant status, multiracial/cultural diversity, and sexual orientations. Family profiles vary across Jewish communities, adding to difficulties in meeting diverse needs. It is therefore important to understand the American Jewish family today, its dilemmas and challenges, as well as its major sources of diversity. This chapter reviews the research about contemporary American Jewish families and discusses implications of cutting-edge studies for the contemporary Jewish community.

Appendix: Data Sources

1.1 Pew 2013

The Pew Research Center Survey of US Jews was conducted February-June, 2013 among a nationally representative sample of US Jews. Interviews were completed with 3475 Jews, including 2786 Jews self-identified by religion and 689 self-identified Jews of no religion. Details on the survey can be found in Pew Research Center (2013). The data set is available for public use, and unless otherwise noted, calculations presented are by the author. For those calculations, the sample was defined as someone who self-identified as Jewish by religion (JBR) or as someone with no religion who had at least one Jewish parent. This criterion was adopted to make the statistics comparable to calculations made by the author from the NJPS 1990 and NJPS 2000–2001 (Hartman and Hartman 1996, 2009).

1.2 Decade 2000

The Decade 2000 data set was compiled by Ira M. Sheskin, combining data from the 22 Jewish community studies conducted by Sheskin as the principal investigator from the completion of NJPS 2000–2001 through 2010. This data set includes 19,800 20-minute interviews, and is a random sample of 547,000 Jewish households in the 22 communities. More details on the data set can be found in Hartman and Sheskin (2012).

1.3 ORANJ BOWL

The ORANJ BOWL (Ongoing Research on Aging in New Jersey: Bettering Opportunities for Wellness in Life) survey was conducted by the New Jersey Institute for Successful Aging between November 2006 and April 2008 using random digit dialing (RDD). A sample of 5688 community-living adults ages 50–74 included 527 of Jewish religion. In comparison to the Pew 2013 survey and the three New Jersey community samples conducted during 2001–2010 (Atlantic County, Bergen County and Middlesex County), the Jewish sample had a comparable percentage of women, comparable marital status distribution, was slightly younger, slightly less likely to be living alone, and of somewhat higher household income. Education and employment status was comparable to the Pew distribution but more educated than the community study samples in Decade 2000. Respondents self-identified by religion, which means that those who identified as Jewish but not by religion were not included in the Jewish sample. More information on the study can be found at http://rachelpruchno.net/OB.html.