THE
Education
JEWISH LIGHT
National Survey On Youth And Religion Raises Concern About Gen-Z Jews — And Questions About How To Understand Them By Asaf Shalev and Ella Rockart
Members of USY, a Jewish youth movement, visit Millennium Park in Chicago. (Screenshot from YouTube)
(JTA) — A massive survey conducted over the past year found that even as young Americans are rejecting traditional organized religion, they are still embracing faith and spirituality, broadly defined. The pollsters behind the Springtide Research Institute, a new nonprofit dedicated to research about the “inner and outer lives” of young people, say their poll, of more than 10,000 Americans between 13 and 25, is without recent precedent in its size and breadth. They also said Jewish respondents — 215 in total, a
sample size they identified as statistically significant — appeared to be among those thriving the least in their religious and spiritual lives. The Jewish results, shared exclusively with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, confirm some elements of conventional wisdom about Gen Z Jews in America and challenge others. They also raise longstanding questions about whether Jews can effectively be studied the same way as people from other religious backgrounds. It’s difficult to study how Jews compare to other religious groups because some individuals may identify as culturally, but not religiously, Jewish, according to Richard Flory, a sociologist serving as the executive director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California. “A person can say ‘I’m an athe-
ist, but I’m a Jew,’” Flory said. “Well, how do you deal with that? It’s a problem.” The Springtide researchers opted to sort survey respondents into a wide range of categories: Jewish appears alongside other religious identities, as well as agnostic, atheist, “nothing in particular” and “something else.” The respondents who identified themselves as Jewish stood out from their peers from other “major religious groups” — Protestant Christians, Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus — in several ways, the Springtide poll found. Young Jews, more than members of any other group, said they were “not flourishing” in their relationships with friends, family, teachers, or other trusted adults. The same was true when asked about their physical health, mental health, social and online lives, and “faith lives.”
Young Jews also led the pack with the highest percentage rejecting the sentence, “In general, I feel very positive about myself.” And some 40% of young American Jews in the study said they do not need “a spiritual community,” the highest rate among major religions — a potential point of alarm for those who are hoping to increase young Jews’ engagement with synagogues and other Jewish institutions. “This should be a call for greater urgency for those positioned to care for young Jews, including teachers, employers, coaches, and especially leaders of synagogues,” said Springtide CEO Josh Packard. “There is real need and opportunity to start leading with relationships to help young Jews flourish.” See GEN-Z JEWS on Page
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