The stereotypical seder with the “man of the house” leading may seem strange to the next generation of liberal Jews.
Outside the Orthodox world, men are becoming less and less engaged in every aspect of Jewish life.
Numerous studies show that fewer boys than girls go to non-Orthodox youth groups, schools or camps; fewer go into the rabbinate and cantorate; and fewer serve on synagogue or federation committees.
In contrast, women and girls in the liberal movements are benefiting from many programs and initiatives aimed at increasing their involvement, from gender-neutral prayer books to the popular identity-building program for teenage girls, “Rosh Hodesh: It’s a Girl Thing.”
Some are calling it the feminization of liberal Judaism — but few say so out loud. “It’s not politically correct,” said Brandeis University sociologist Sylvia Barack Fishman.
Her new report “The Growing Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life” gives statistical backing to anecdotal evidence accumulating for several years in liberal Jewish circles. The report was published this month, and it will be available online June 1 at www.brandeis.edu/hbi.
Fishman notes that some experts reject the notion of a “boy crisis” in liberal Judaism. It’s a particularly touchy topic for feminist scholars.
“Thirty-five years ago — when women were not ordained as rabbis, when girls in the Conservative movement celebrated a bat mitzvah on Friday night, when Orthodox girls did not receive an education remotely comparable to that of their brothers, when women were not called to the Torah for aliyot or allowed on the bimah at all — where were the headlines proclaiming a girl crisis?” wrote Rabbi Rona Shapiro, senior associate at Ma’ayan: The Jewish Women’s Project, a program of the JCC in Manhattan, in a January 2007 op-ed.
“Given the history of women’s exclusion within the Jewish community, approaching equality should be something to celebrate, not a crisis in the making,” she wrote.
For Fishman, “As soon as you say that women dominate certain aspects of Jewish life, it sounds as if you’re saying, ‘Let’s go back to the way things were.’ That’s not the point of my research; but we need to look at what’s happening and be honest about it.”
Fishman goes further. As Jewish men outside the Orthodox fold become increasingly estranged from religious and communal life, the more likely they are to marry non-Jewish women, her report suggests.
Because women usually set a home’s religious tone, even if non-Jewish women are open to raising Jewish children, they will rarely do so because they are not encouraged by husbands are who are “ambivalent at best, if not downright hostile” to Jewish tradition, she said.
She concludes that the boy crisis is leading to a continuity crisis that will not be resolved until liberal Judaism finds a way to engage boys and men.
Using hundreds of interviews she conducted for the American Jewish Committee and two of her previous books, plus data from the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Study, Fishman and student co-author Daniel Parmer describe an American Jewish life increasingly populated by women.
Ironically, this increased involvement of women in liberal Jewish life does not extend to the highest levels of Jewish organizations, where top professionals remain overwhelmingly male.
The dominance of women is especially apparent in the Reform movement, where decreasing numbers of boys in its post-bar mitzvah religious schools, youth groups and camps has caused concern.
This absence goes to the top levels. More than half of recently ordained Reform rabbis are women, as are all this year’s entering cantorial students.
To help re-engage Reform men in religious life, the Men of Reform Judaism has sponsored men’s worship services at the last few movement biennials, and published a “Men’s Haggadah” that more than 250 congregations ordered for Passover.
“We have women’s seders, we have Rosh Hodesh groups. When do we create safe space for men to talk about their fathers, their sons, their brothers, their lives?” asked Doug Barden, the executive director of Men of Reform Judaism.
But waiting until adulthood isn’t good enough, Fishman said. Efforts must begin in early adolescence.
Orthodox boys go through “rites of passage where they feel better and better about their Jewish engagement. That furniture is not being installed in the minds of non-Orthodox Jewish males,” Fishman said.
Liberal Jewish teenage boys don’t have models of adult male commitment to Jewish life as do their Orthodox peers. This sets up a cycle that repeats from generation to generation.
Some groups are more successful than others at attracting Jewish boys. One is B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, which claims that 47 percent of its 23,000 participants are male.
The group’s director, Matt Grossman, says this is because BBYO chapters have always been single-sex. This model is gaining ground in liberal circles, although not without criticism.
“We can target programs to boys without throwing fake stuff out there,” Grossman said. “We have guys doing what guys like, and girls doing what girls like.”
While most non-Orthodox youth groups report declining membership, Grossman said BBYO has been growing by 20 percent a year.
Jason Wachs, BBYO’s 18-year-old international president for the boys’ chapters, says the concept works.
“It’s not cool for boys to be in touch with their emotions or care about the environment or religion when girls are around,” he said. “BBYO allows them to open up.”
The Orthodox world has always promoted single-sex group activities. It may be time, some adolescent experts suggest, to revisit the notion.
Moving Traditions, the non-profit that runs Rosh Hodesh: It’s a Girl Thing, has launched “Where Have All The Young Men Gone?” This three-year research and action campaign is studying groups that have been most successful at attracting and holding young men, from BBYO to Boy Scouts.
Many of those groups are for boys only, said Deborah Meyer, executive director of Moving Traditions.
“Seeing what Rosh Hodesh has done for girls, hearing the feedback from the girls and their parents and educators, why not do something like it for Jewish guys, who are dropping out from Jewish life more than girls, and are less satisfied with Jewish life than girls?” said Meyer.
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