Upbringing has a more enduring influence on Jewish identity than education, report finds

“Given the relative importance of Jewish upbringing, supporting and empowering parents to create a strong Jewish home environment should be given serious consideration,” the report said.

Using data from its 2022 community survey, the authors looked at the effect of various types of Jewish education, including school, cheder, youth groups and study in Israel, on things such as religious practice, community engagement and attachment to Israel.

But noting the “mind-boggling” complexity of the subject, it said that “in many respects, we find that influencing Jewish identity outcomes is beyond the community’s control” and that most differences between people in their Jewish identification could not be explained by the data.

“Even siblings raised in the same Jewish home, exposed to identical experiences, often exhibit very different identities in adulthood,” authors Dr David Graham, Dr Adina Bankier-Karp and Dr Jonathan Boyd remarked.

Jewish identity outcomes, they cautioned, “emerge over time from a mosaic of influences across multiple settings and occasions rather than a single defining experience. Many of these factors are unmeasurable and random, limiting what can be assessed or deliberately influenced by programmes.”

According to JPR’s analysis, belonging to a university Jewish Society (JSoc) ‘seems to have a much greater impact than other programmes and experiences’

Rather than viewing individual educational experiences in isolation as “silver bullets”, they should be seen as part of a broader system. A car, they noted depends on many parts working together, the report noted.

But the study found that, statistically, involvement in a youth group had more impact than attending a Jewish school. “Since the cost of running peer-led youth movements is a fraction of the cost of running a Jewish school, in a world of limited resources, is there a case for greater emphasis on informal educational frameworks and systems?” the authors asked.

It also found that the impact of upbringing was stronger among 40- to 59-year-olds than among 16 to 39s.

The “best interpretation” of these difference was that “the impact of upbringing is somewhat overshadowed early in life when the Jewish educational experiences one has had are still relatively ‘fresh,’ but that as time passes, the impact of the key experiences diminishes, and the impact of upbringing comes to the fore.

“In other words, what endures over time is the impact of one’s upbringing, while the impact of key experiences erodes.”

According to JPR’s analysis, belonging to a university Jewish Society (JSoc) “seems to have a much greater impact than other programmes and experiences”.

This could mean there was something special about the campus Jewish experience, but it could also be product of circumstance, the report suggested. “Perhaps the result is telling us that those who choose to join a JSoc are the same Jewish adults who choose Jewish community life further down the line, which, in turn, suggests that the result was somewhat predetermined.”

After accounting for upbringing and other key experiences, Israel programmes had “a limited impact on Jewish identity outcomes”, JPR said. “However, participating in a yeshivah programme is more impactful than participating in a gap year programme which, in turn, is more impactful than participating in one short-term Israel programme.”

JPR executive director Dr Boyd commented: “The findings in this report challenge the notion that any single programme can decisively shape Jewish identity. Instead, they point to the cumulative power of multiple, overlapping experiences.

“Jewish identity isn’t delivered through one-off interventions, even though some experiences – and particularly those encountered at home – are more impactful than others.”

The report was commissioned by the Jewish Leadership Council as part of its Forge the Future initiative. The JLC will also be hosting a summit on young people in the community on Monday week.