An article in the New York Jewish Week claims that in recent years, boys over the age of barmitzvah have been dropping out in noticeable numbers from Jewish activities.
As a result, many Jewish programs for teens and young adults are disproportionately filled with girls...
“Boys consider bar mitzvah their graduation from Jewish life, more than girls do,” says Deborah Meyer, executive director of Moving Traditions, which recently started a three-year research project to identify what boys need.
“Not only do fewer boys participate, but boys have more complaints about Jewish programming,” Meyer says. “As a community we’re clearly not meeting boys where they are.”
The imbalance continues, apparently, through the teenage years (camps, youth groups etc) to college (participation in programmes like birthright) and even in rabbinical school, particularly in the Reform movement, but also increasingly in the Conservative.
It would be interesting to see some proper research on this topic, as well as some figures for the UK -- perhaps community professionals could weigh in and tell us whether a similar trend is observable here. In addition, I would love to know whether the same process seems to be happening in the modern Orthodox world (which is virtually unmentioned in this article). From what I see, it's not, which might suggest that the trend has as much to do with family and community expectations as with the quality of programming or anything else; or perhaps because these boys are more likely to attend Jewish schools?
When it comes to rabbinical school, the article suggests that men are being put off by the increasing trend towards touchy-feely spirituality, which seems too 'feminine.' I would suggest, however, that the rabbinate no longer seems like a good career path; rabbis are often under-paid, over-worked and synagogues are often highly politicised (and thus, for the rabbi, a tense and unstable workplace). While many women are still excited by the opportunity to enter a profession which was, until relatively recently, closed to them -- and, in any case, often end up in jobs with poorer renumeration and conditions -- the rabbinite is no longer a job for a good Jewish boy, as it were...
This post was written by Miriam Shaviv
