An Edah Resource
Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life plans to unveil a study this week that will indicate that more students than ever before have just one Jewish parent, date non-Jews, and see Judaism as a culture, not a religion. News of this phenomenon is likely to spawn conversations about how best to hit the bull's-eye of this target population through cultural programs and social action.
But what the study will not report is that the other fastest-growing Jewish population on college campuses comes from the opposite end of the religious spectrum. Recently, the number of Jewishly empowered, predominantly Orthodox, day school products who socialize mostly with their own kind and view Judaism as their religion has ballooned. Perhaps the focus should be less on one target and more on how to achieve a beneficial chemistry between two very different groups.
The recent surge of highly empowered Jewish students is easily discernible in Hillels across the country. Of the 20 top feeder high schools to New York University, the largest private university in the country, five are Orthodox. Four years ago, none even made the list.
This trend will only become more pronounced. The National Jewish Population Survey in 2001 found that roughly 10 percent of Jewish college students declare themselves Orthodox, while one third of Jewish students attend Hillel at least once throughout their college experience. According to the UJA-Federation of New York Jewish Community Study in 2002, more than half of the children in the metropolitan area (including the five boroughs, Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk counties) under age six being raised Jewish are members of Orthodox households. True, New York's Orthodox community is disproportionately large compared to the national average, and true, some Orthodox communities will not send their children to a secular college. But there is no question, anecdotally or statistically, that traditional Jews will constitute more and more of the Jewish campus population.
In addition, it will be difficult not to see them on campus. Unlike the growing numbers of students with one Jewish parent, graduates of day schools instinctively seek out and settle in dedicated Jewish spaces. They will make Hillel their home.
So the real question is not how Hillel should engage the growing numbers of students with one Jewish parent but, rather, what model might succeed in integrating a questioning, self-conscious and loosely connected set of individuals with an empowered, religious, and internally networked community.
The first step is sensitizing empowered students. Day school teachers, congregational rabbis, and Hillel professionals should assume the responsibility, given the contemporary reality, of educating their students about the fact that Jewish identity has religious and cultural dimensions. For example, just because some students have non-Jewish mothers does not prevent them from identifying as Jewish if they were so raised.
I often share with my students the deep pain that students with one Jewish parent feel when they hear someone tell them “Oh, so you're not really Jewish” or ask them to be their “Shabbos goy.” One such student broke down in tears when she decided to walk up nine flights of stairs to her room on Friday night, only to have an Orthodox student ask her why she didn't just take the elevator.
The second necessary step is the creation of safe, nonreligious spaces for students with one Jewish parent. Hillels will initiate more arts programming, social justice opportunities, and exposure to secular Israeli culture, but to truly succeed, these ventures will need to compete with the activities of emerging traditional communities in terms of numbers or content. The best way of sensitizing already empowered religious students is by showing them a compelling power of another persuasion. Otherwise, the imbalance of grassroots religious activity with staff-initiated, moderately attended cultural programming will only feed the stereotype that so-called Millennials adhere to a “less Jewish” version of Judaism.
Third, I hope what Hillel does not underestimate is the potential for the authentic, close-knit feeling of traditional communities to attract spiritually seeking students with one Jewish parent. Cultural and social action programs do not exist in a vacuum, with no growing religious community nearby. Some students I've met construct their own Judaism. Others deepen their cultural Jewish identity through arts programming, social action, or support for Israel. But the spiritual seekers among them tend to gravitate toward the intensely religious community and want to have their identity crisis resolved through religious activities.
Ignoring the emerging population of day school products will only make them feel unwanted and defensive. They're not going away. Why not embrace both sides of the spectrum?
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