Matt Brookner

The values that begin to solidify during adolescence can be steered by experiential education programs designed to inculcate a set of attitudes and behaviors in their participants. One such program, Jewish Youth Philanthropy, socializes adolescents into recognizing the importance of donating both to Jewish causes and within a Jewish framework. This paper examines the relationship between these programs and the development of Jewish and donor identities during adolescence. It suggests that surveyed Jewish youth philanthropy participants are more likely than non-participants to perceive themselves as donors, but that their Jewish identities are viewed as justifications for prosocial behavior, not drivers of it.

This article discusses methodological challenges to the study of Jewish philanthropy. Based on a study of US Jewish-founded grant-making organizations between 2000 and 2015, the article examines existing and recently developed methods used in research about the philanthropic organizations of the Jewish community and the structure of their philanthropic activity. The authors discuss methodological dilemmas concerning the inclusion and exclusion of data and the double-counting of grants, and explore the methodological implications of the growing importance of donor advised funds. The article proposes a new methodological approach for the study of Jewish institutional philanthropy, emphasizing the identities and backgrounds of the funders in identifying Jewish philanthropies rather than limiting the definition of Jewish philanthropy based on the goals and activities of the recipient organizations.

Although researchers have long recognized the multidimensional nature of Jewish life (e.g., Hartman in Studies in Contemporary Jewry, Oxford University Press, New York, 2014; Himmelfarb in Understanding American Jewry, Brandeis University, Waltham, 1982), most sociodemographic studies examine Jewish behaviors and attitudes in isolation rather than considering their complex interactions. Examining each of these behaviors and dimensions separately provides only limited understanding of the meaning and enactment of Jewish identity. The present study presents a statistical method to understand the patterns of Jewish engagement across multiple dimensions. Based on data from a survey of the Greater Boston Jewish community, latent class analysis was used to combine 14 behavioral measures into a typology of Jewish engagement. The results were a “partially ordered” set of 5 classes representing distinct behavior patterns. Three of the classes followed a low-to-high continuum. Two classes did not follow this order and represented distinct but parallel patterns of engagement. Most notably, the study identified a category of Cultural Jews who do not regularly practice Jewish rituals or affiliate with synagogues but do feel strong connections to the Jewish community. A simple continuum of Jewish identity disguises the multidimensional nature of engagement and provides too simplistic a tool for policymakers. This approach suggests not only a new method of measuring Jewish engagement, but, more importantly, a new way to understand contemporary Jewish identity.