BACKGROUND

For many years people have been asking about the efficacy of Yeshiva high school education. In recent years the question has taken on greater urgency with skyrocketing tuition alongside anecdotal reports of students “flipping out” after graduation, going “off the derekh,” or getting caught up in the temptations of campus life. This research study intends to provide a snapshot of the religious portrait of graduates of (Orthodox) Yeshiva high schools beginning with their post-college years.

This portrait is composed of two core areas, practice and belief. Regarding practice, the meaning of the contemporary picture becomes apparent when compared to the worlds from which those students came – whether and how they are different from the homes in which they were raised. And while there is no way to accurately gauge the level of religious behavior in their childhood homes, their self-perception of whether and how they are different from those homes is significant. Do they see themselves as being like, more religious, less religious, or just different from their parents?

Regarding belief, many of the minutiae of Jewish belief are introduced through education. The typical Yeshiva high school experience is one which focuses not only on halakhic practice but on areas of Jewish faith. As such, the current ideological positions of the participants in this survey are compared with the ideological messages they remember being taught in their schools. Again, perhaps as important as to whether they are aligned with the messages they were taught is whether they are aligned with the messages they think they were taught.

This survey was undertaken as a private research project by the author after 35 years of work in and for day schools. It was not sponsored by any granting organization and not influenced by any agenda other than my own desire to find out where the graduates of Yeshiva high schools are. I am grateful to Rabbi Dr. Shalom Berger who was helpful in the formulation of some of the questions. Rabbi Dr. Chaim Waxman was helpful in offering his guidance and support.

Since this survey was a private venture, work on administering and processing it, as well as on producing this report, was done on private time. As a result, there was a delay of a little more than a year between the administration of this survey and the publication of this report. In the interim, an important survey of the Modern Orthodox community was conducted and published by Nishma. There is some overlap between the two and it is possible that some populations were better represented in one of the two surveys, reflected in some differences between the conclusions. There are also areas that the Nishma survey probes that this does not, as well as areas that this survey explores that were not included in the Nishma study.

Methodology

A survey questionnaire was designed to assess markers of gradation of observance and ideology which are markers of identity in the Orthodox, and specifically in the Modern Orthodox, community. One set of questions regarding observance asked about their recollection of practices in the home in which they were raised; a second set of questions related to the same markers in the respondents’ current lives. Similarly, in the area of ideology, one set of questions focused on the messages they believed the schools were delivering and a parallel set asked the same questions about respondents’ current beliefs.

The survey was developed using Google Forms to collect the data and distributed through social media, primarily Facebook. The nature of social media is such that individuals intersect with many different circles, and those circles in turn with others. As such, recipients in the author’s inner circle were encouraged to distribute the survey their own circles.

Response to survey

Because the survey was distributed through social media and not through individual contacts there is no way to gauge response rates. A number of people contacted me individually – some to complain over the length of the survey (it took 15-30 minutes to complete), of the difficulty in completing the survey using a smartphone, or of the perceived bias in questions which did not specifically probe the LBGTQ community in greater depth. Others contacted me to thank me for the survey which forced them to think about their religious identities or for giving them a voice. One optional question asked if respondents would be willing to be interviewed for an in-depth understanding of heir their religious lives and their education, and if so, to leave an e-mail address. Of 1257 respondents, 524 (42%) indicated a willingness to be interviewed and recorded their names and e-mail addresses. I hope to be able to follow up this quantitative study with a qualitative one involving personal interviews.

Response demographic

The survey was released on Nov 17 2016 and closed to further responses on Dec 14 2016. Respondents grew up in 267 different zip codes from 20 geographical areas including Greater NY/NJ, Boston, Toronto, Montreal, Virginia, Los Angeles, Houston, Rochester (NY), Indiana, Atlanta, Chicago, Florida, San Diego, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Ottawa, Providence (RI), Cleveland, Columbus, St. Louis, Dallas, Denver and Seattle. The 800 respondents who chose to identify their high schools attended 80 different schools. Those who attended post-high school Yeshiva/seminary programs in Israel identified with 37 different programs. The diversity of geography and educational institutions suggests that the survey indeed reached a broad population.

There are limitations to this survey. The method of its distribution does not guarantee a representative sampling, even though it is clear that it did reach multiple segments of the population with equal opportunities for distribution through each respondent. There is a population which does not use social media, specifically the Haredi population. As such, those participants who became Haredi are less likely to be represented in this study.

The overwhelming majority of respondents (84%) identified currently as being Orthodox, divided as follows:

INITIAL DATA AND ANALYSIS

Demographic background

51.1% of respondents were female, 48.9% were male. 95% of the respondents identified as straight; 4.9% of respondents identified themselves as LBGTQ, half as open LBGTQ and half still in the closet. 89.8% identified as Ashkenazic, 7.1% identified as Sefardic. Most of the others were from mixed parentage.

Geographic distribution

69.2% of respondents grew up in the NY-NJ metropolitan area. The remainder came from a wide range of locales – Chicago (4.8%), Silver Spring (2.7%), Baltimore (2.5%), Toronto (2.5%), South Florida (2.4%), LA (2.4%), Philadelphia (2.4%), Atlanta (1.8%), Cleveland (1.2%). Smaller numbers of responses came from Seattle, Detroit, St. Louis, Memphis, Montreal, Virginia, Houston, Rochester (NY), Indiana, San Diego, Ottawa, Providence (RI), Dallas, and Denver. These numbers are not surprising given the demographic of the American Orthodox community, although the Los Angeles community may be underrepresented.

Marital status

36.8 % of the respondents had graduated high school prior to 2004. The rest of the respondents were evenly divided as graduating between the years 2004 and 2011. Among the older cohort, 86% are married, 3% are divorced, 9% are single. For the younger cohort, 52% are married, 3% are engaged, and 43% are single. In this sample, the marriage rate jumps from 34% to 65% eight years after graduation from high school.

Supplementary Jewish education

The plurality of respondents (43.4%) did not participate in youth groups while in high school. The two most highly attended youth groups were NCSY (31.1%) and Bnei Akiva (19.8%).

62% attended Jewish camps, of which 95.5% were Orthodox camps.

79% attended Yeshiva (men) or seminary (women) programs in Israel post high school. Of those, 67% of respondents chose to identify the Yeshivot/seminaries they attended. Of those, the mostly highly attended Yeshivot included Har Etzion, Eretz Hatzvi, Mevasseret, Shaalvim, Hakotel, KBY, Or Yerushalayim, Torat Shraga, Reishit, and Orayta. The mostly highly attended seminaries attended included Lindenbaum, Harova, MMY, Midreshet Moriah, Migdal Oz, and Orot.

Religious background

The overwhelming majority of the students came from homes which would fall into the spectrum of the mainstream Orthodox community, with 13.3% identifying their childhood homes as Right-wing Orthodox and 76.5% identifying as Modern Orthodox. It is valuable to note that some groups, like Sefardic and Chabad respondents, did not identify as either of the above. It is also worth observing that, offered the category of “other”, there were 54 (!) different write-in alternatives.

90% of respondents indicated that their families never drove on Shabbat, 94.5% indicated strict separation – including waiting periods – between milk and meat in the home, 93.9% indicated a requirement for some kind of certification on kosher products.

The spectrum of observance was apparent in some of the nuances. While 90% never drove, only 80.5% reported abstinence from turning on electrical devices at home and only 77.1% percent indicated that they never watched television on Shabbat, likely reflecting a disparity between public (driving) and private (using electrical applicances) observance. Similarly, while 93.9% required rabbinic kashrut certification for products in the home, only 76.4% indicated the same requirement for restaurants, suggesting that communal norms on having a home that others could eat in was more important than the personal observance of the restrictions.

On the other end of the Orthodox spectrum, 21.2% refrained from using non-prescription medications on Shabbat (a rabbinic restriction) and 47.1% refrained from tearing toilet paper on Shabbat. These families represent the strictest observances measured. Related measures of personal observance reflect a significant percentage of families in which active religious life and halakhic obligations were taken seriously. 32.9% indicated that their parents always recited blessings on food; 26.1% indicated that their fathers studied Torah daily while another 23.6% that their fathers studied Torah weekly. 51.4% indicated that they observed halakha strictly with no exceptions, and 47.3% indicated that their parents were extremely active in Jewish communal life. 35.6% indicated that Shabbat zemirot were a regular feature of the Shabbat experience, 44.5% reported that their father went to synagogue daily, 20.4% reported that their mother covered her hair all the time. The number of families with these intensified observances is greater than those identifying as Right-wing Orthodox (13.3%), indicating that there were a considerable number of families identified as Modern Orthodox whose halakhic practices fell within the guidelines of strict halakhic observance.