Young Ph.D. candidate to lead groundbreaking national research on Jewish women
They're 20-and 30- somethings-single, educated, transient and largely unaffiliated, and they are hungry for a sense of belonging.
They are young Jewish American women, a vibrant demographic group that has so far eluded Jewish organizations. But that is about to change, thanks to a new project launched by Tobin Belzer, a 29-year-old doctoral candidate in sociology, housed in the the Women's Studies Research Center.
Belzer was recently awarded a Joshua Venture Fellowship for Young, Jewish Entrepreneurs, a grant supported by the Righteous Persons Foundation, among others. It identifies "movers and shakers" in the Jewish community-young people whose optimistic projects, creativity and determination drive social change and open up new avenues of possibility in the Jewish community.
One of eight fellows selected, Belzer will use her grant to fund The Joining the Sisterhood Project, a community-building effort that will also create a much-needed body of research on young Jewish women.
For years, the American Jewish community tended to focus programs almost exclusively on senior citizens and families with school-age children, ignoring a growing population of people in their late twenties and early thirties choosing to postpone marriage and children. "Young Jewish women's overwhelming lack of institutionalized Jewish affiliation has made them invisible to researchers," says Belzer. "At best they are characterized as 'Jewish singles'; at worst, they are overlooked completely."
Belzer will interview young women from diverse populations in major cities across the country, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. Her goal is to provide a definitive portrait of young Jewish women's lives and identities "that can drive the agenda for engaging this generation in the life of Jewish America."
Sherry Israel, associate professor in the Hornstein Program in Jewish Communal Service, says Jewish identity in America in general has become increasingly complex, multilayered and diverse. "There are an astonishing variety of ways in which people attach themselves to contemporary Jewish communities and Jewish life, and change in the expression of Jewish identity over the course of a person's life is now the norm. Current attempts to support a strong and meaningful Jewish presence in America demand that we understand all this, yet we know almost nothing about the evolution of these possibilities in the lives of younger Jews," says Israel, who is also a member of the National Technical Advisory Committee for the 2000 National Jewish Population Study.
Belzer believes the Jewish community will be strengthened by knowledge of young women's beliefs, experiences and aspirations. "A thriving sub-culture of Jewish life has developed among unaffiliated women between 21 and 35. Their thoughtful, complicated and provocative voices need to be heard," she says with conviction.
She plans to publish and disseminate her research findings to Jewish organizations and policy makers nationwide in about two years.