'I am very open about the fact that my intellectual framework is one of wishing Jewish culture to survive," says Sylvia Barack Fishman, professor of contemporary Jewish life at Brandeis University's Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department, and the author of The Way into the Varieties of Jewishness and six other books. "When I evaluate what's happening, that's where I'm coming from."

Sylvia Barack Fishman. 'Men really do like to have certain venues where it's "just the boys."'
Photo: Esteban Alterman

And what Barack Fishman has been evaluating lately is gender. More specifically, the male-female ratio and how its imbalance is affecting liberal Jewish life in the United States. Indeed, stressing that her observations and conclusions are based on and aimed at American patterns of Jewish behavior, Barack Fishman expresses concern over what her research and other studies indicating that Jewish boys and men need a little attention and a lot of tending to.

"What you're seeing in Judaism is a phenomenon we call 'feminization,'" she explains. "Feminization occurs when women move into an environment and men flee from that environment - and then the environment decreases in financial rewards and in social status."

As a result, she maintains, the atmosphere of places like the synagogue takes on a female flavor, which further alienates male congregants, for whom "touchy-feely" isn't all that attractive. In fact, it can even be a turnoff.

To remedy what she sees is cause for concern, Barack Fishman - who co-directs the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and is a faculty affiliate of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and the Steinhardt Social Research Institute - recommends getting the men back in the saddle of Jewish study, culture and heritage by getting them - literally - into a saddle. Or on a raft. "Venues where it's 'just the boys.'"

In an hour-long interview with The Jerusalem Post, Barack Fishman - here last month to attend the "Contemporary Reform Judaism" conference at the Van Leer Institute - discusses the research she is currently conducting on the impact of gender on Jewish family choices.

How can you make a gender distinction where Jewish life is concerned?

As a sociologist, I look at the way things are, not the way they should be. And what one sees from looking at the way things are is that boys and girls, and men and women, behave very differently from one another. These differences may be partially inborn and partially produced by society, but my task is not to discover how the differences are generated. My task is to observe and measure, systematically and scientifically, how they affect people's behavior.

What caused you to observe and measure the difference between men and women in relation to Jews?

Every statistical study of American Jews that's been done has shown dramatic differences between men and women. In a 2005 study of the Boston Jewish community, for example, when we looked at intermarried Jewish men and women, we saw that among Jewish women married to non-Jewish men, nine out of 10 said they wanted to raise Jewish children, and that they had talked about doing so when they were still dating their future spouses.

Among Jewish men married to non-Jewish women, only about half said they wanted to raise Jewish children.

That is one example of something in a systematic study that made me wonder, well, what does this sound like in real people's lives? I conduct research through interviews. So here what I did was to interview more than 300 men and women - Jewish and non-Jewish - in families in which two Jews were married to each other; families in which there was one Jew and one non-Jew; and families in which there was one Jew and one non-Jew who had converted to Judaism.

Then I went to the 2000 National Jewish Population Survey and reran all of the data, only looking at married couples who had children under the age of 17 living at home. The reason I looked at that group was because a lot of times religion doesn't start to matter to people until they have children, and then suddenly they discover it's much more important to them than they had thought it was.

Then I went back to my interviews to look at Jewish and non-Jewish parents, to see how they talked about three things: their feelings about organized religion in general; their feelings about Judaism specifically; and their feelings about the project of raising Jewish children.

What I found was that the differences I had seen in the Boston study were just as pronounced in the National Jewish Population Study and in the interviews.

Among families in which both parents are Jewish, do the women also have more of a desire and a say in raising Jewish children?

Where there are two Jews living together, the woman often has more of a say about it, but it's not as pronounced, because the husband usually shares her goals. In intermarried families, there often are two different goals.

The Jewish women I interviewed, for example, saw themselves as the makers of Jewish memories for their children. They actually talked that way; they used that language. They said they had to think of things they could do with their children to make them feel good about Judaism. So, the holidays were very important. Even among the Reform. They talked about lighting Shabbat candles and having warm and encompassing Shabbat meals. The men didn't talk like that.

The Jewish women said, "As soon as I realized [my future husband and I] were serious [about getting married], I began talking about how I needed to raise Jewish children."

The non-Jewish husbands interviewed told the same story. They said, "You know, we were dating, and she started talking about having Jewish children, and I thought, well, if I want to marry her and it's important to her, I'll go along with it."

Indeed, many of the men interviewed - both Jewish and non-Jewish - didn't think that organized religion was so important altogether, while their wives - whether Jewish or non-Jewish - said they wanted their children to have some religion.