Director's Letter
January 15, 2021
Dear Friends,
Every week seems to bring a new level of trauma to our country. The pandemic’s surging death toll and the inability of our health system to efficiently distribute vaccines are crises of epic proportions. One would think that the country would coalesce, but instead, the insurrection at the US Capitol last week and the threat of further violence suggest the opposite effect. I am saddened by these events, but also hopeful that we are at the beginning of the end of a health and political nightmare.
Since the spring of 2020, we have been involved in studying the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Jewish community. Our latest report examines how Jewish young adults have managed the health, economic, and social-political crisis and investigates how their views evolved during summer 2020. The sample for the study is a group of Jewish young adults (ages 18-32) who applied to participate in summer 2020 Birthright Israel trips but could not go because the trips were suspended.
Through September 2020, only a small proportion (13% of respondents) reported having been infected with COVID-19 themselves, but over 45% of respondents reported that someone close to them had been infected. Although politically liberal and conservative respondents had very different concerns about recent events in the United States, both groups were more likely to express concerns about issues related to the recent political turmoil in the United States than anything related to the virus. Confirming earlier research, we learned that the pandemic has taken a toll on the mental health of many respondents. About 20% of respondents at both time points reported that mental health difficulties impeded their day-to-day life “often” or “all the time” in the past week, and only 22%-25% reported that they were “never” affected by such serious mental health difficulties.
In other research updates, our article “Is Criticism Disloyal? American Jews’ Attitudes toward Israel” was just published by the journal Politics and Religion. The findings of the study (a survey of Jewish young adults) challenge the idea that criticism of Israel is disloyal and a driver of lower attachment to Israel. For liberal Jews, criticism is a way in which they “care” about Israel. Many of those with lower levels of Israel attachment are driven more by apathy than by criticism or hostility toward Israel. The article is open access so we hope you take the time to read what we believe contributes to the scholarly discussion of patriotism and, in particular, how Jewish liberals and conservatives express different forms of patriotism toward Israel and the United States.
In this difficult moment for all of us, be safe and stay well.
L’shalom,
Leonard Saxe, PhD
Klutznick Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Social Policy
Director, Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and Steinhardt Social Research Institute at Brandeis University