Financial Insecurity Adversely Impacts the Quality of Jewish Student College Experiences | |
Jewish students with financial struggles start college less prepared than their more affluent peers, although most are able to graduate. However, even with academic success, financially struggling Jewish students may be missing out on college opportunities that are associated with better career and life outcomes such as internships, and they are less involved with Jewish life on campus.
Although mental health struggles were common among all respondents, helping those from the most financially insecure families manage financial stress and mental health struggles will be especially important in alleviating disparities in other areas of college life.
Learn more about financial insecurity among Jewish young adults in our new report, Financial Insecurity and College Success Among Jewish Young Adults by Graham Wright, Sasha Volodarsky, Shahar Hecht, and Nicole Samuel
| Jewish Women Are More Likely to be Involved in a Variety of Forms of Jewish Life Than Jewish Men | |
Research has long found that, among Americans in general, women are more involved in religious and civic life than men. These patterns also appear in the Jewish community. Despite significant debate about a “feminization” of Jewish life, there has been no new research on this topic in more than a decade.
Because the differences we see between men and women with respect to Jewish engagement mirror those between men and women with respect to religious, communal, and civic engagement in the larger society, it seems likely that these differences are at least partly driven by larger sociological forces in American religious and cultural life, as opposed to factors specific to Judaism or Jewish life. However, the Jewish community does not need to wait for the role of gender in US society to change in order for it to respond to gender disparities in Jewish contexts.
Learn more about gender and Jewish life in our recent report, Gender Dynamics and Engagement in Jewish Life: A Comprehensive Review and Analysis of Existing Data by Graham Wright, Shahar Hecht, and Nicole Samuel.
| Almost Half of US Jewish Adults Likely to Attend High Holiday Services This Year | |
Do you wonder how American Jews are celebrating the High Holidays? Over the past 10 years, 46% of Jewish adults attended High Holiday services, and 47% fasted on Yom Kippur at least part of the day. About one third of Jewish adults did both. Not all of the individuals who attended services were in synagogue pews—many attended pop-up and independent services that did not require membership; others joined by Zoom from the comfort of home. In fact, about one quarter of Jews who were not members of a Jewish congregation attended High Holiday services. What are the trends in your community?
To learn about Jewish life in the United States, the CMJS research team combined survey responses from more than 60,000 respondents in over 30 Jewish communities in the past 10 years. Learn more about the CMJS Combined Dataset project.
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Graham Wright and Leonard Saxe's oped, Faculty are not the Enemy (Inside Higher Ed August 18), draws out the implications of their recent study (with Shahar Hecht) of university faculty which found that, overwhelmingly, faculty who teach undergraduate students (across disciplines) neither express antisemitic hostility to Jews nor to Israel. In light of the government's efforts to sanction universities, the oped calls for engaging faculty, most of whom have sat on the sidelines, in efforts to address antisemitism and other forms of hatred.
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Piercing the solitude of the financially insecure Jewish college student, ejewishphilanthropy, Rona Sheramy and Graham Wright, Opinion, August 11
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Leonard Saxe testified before the MA Commission on Combating Antisemitism, August 7
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Leonard Saxe gave a paper at the Congress of the World Union of Jewish Studies, August 2025.
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How We Talk About Jewish Young Adults’ Connection to Israel: The Evidence or Lack Thereof, The Trouble with Litmus Tests, What is Zionism? It Depends on Who You Ask, Evolve, Matthew Boxer, summer 2025 series
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Latin-Jewish Los Angeles: A Secondary Data Analysis of the 2021 Study of Jewish LA, Jewtina, July 31
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Right-Leaning Faculty Likelier to Be ‘Hostile’ to Jews, Report Finds, Insider Higher Ed, July 30
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New Brandeis Study Challenges Narratives about Political Bias and Antisemitism among Faculty, Brandeis Stories, July 25
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Antisemitic Beliefs Rare Among Faculty, Brandeis University Study Finds, Higher Ed Dive, July 24
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Have Classrooms Been "Captured"? Rick Seltzer, Daily Briefing: The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 23
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New Brandeis Study Finds University Faculty More Heterodox, Less Anti-Israel Than Generally Presumed, ejewishphilanthropy, July 22
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Janet Krasner Aronson, PhD, has been appointed the interim director of the CMJS/SSRI, where she has worked since earning her PhD in social policy at the Heller School for Social Policy. Janet has been Associate Director for Research at CMJS/SSRI since 2016 and led the local Jewish community studies research team.
On behalf of the entire CMJS/SSRI staff, Janet extends her deep appreciation to Leonard Saxe for his years of leadership of CMJS/SSRI and his mentorship and support. CMJS is grateful that Len will continue in his role as Klutznick Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Social Policy and base his program of research, including his groundbreaking work on Israel and antisemitism, at CMJS. To learn more about Len's tenure as director of CMJS/SSRI and his views on the field, please see his interview with the Berman Archive.
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