Rachel Mosteller at Blogging Baby is understandably very concerned about this phenomenon. She wonders "What can we do to make sure that our kids keep an interest in their religion and religious heritage?"
I remember from my own brief tenure in Jewish youth organizations (B'nei
Akiva and USY) that they tended to be female-heavy. Or female-dominated, yet in my region we always had a male president. In fact, I don't think that there has ever been a female USY International President. My father thinks that these boys are, as he so diplomatically phrased it, "idiots." When he picked me up from a B'nei Akiva event early in high school we had the following conversation on the way home:
Dad: Boys must be idiots. (He says this on a fairly regular basis)
Me: Um, what?
Dad: There were what, five girls there?
Me: Yeah, I guess.
Dad: Five attractive Jewish girls. What are these boys thinking? It's like shooting fish in a barrel.
Me: Thanks, Dad, that is a really flattering assessment.
Akiva and USY) that they tended to be female-heavy. Or female-dominated, yet in my region we always had a male president. In fact, I don't think that there has ever been a female USY International President. My father thinks that these boys are, as he so diplomatically phrased it, "idiots." When he picked me up from a B'nei Akiva event early in high school we had the following conversation on the way home:Dad: Boys must be idiots. (He says this on a fairly regular basis)
Me: Um, what?
Dad: There were what, five girls there?
Me: Yeah, I guess.
Dad: Five attractive Jewish girls. What are these boys thinking? It's like shooting fish in a barrel.
Me: Thanks, Dad, that is a really flattering assessment.
2 comments:
Yawn to the Jewish Week, the people they quote, and their zero-sum framing. The organized Jewish community does so much to alienate Jews of both sexes, and if they fix those things, they'll get more participants of both sexes. If they're going to be focused on numbers (which I don't advocate anyway), then better they should be focused on overall numbers than on ratios -- isn't it better to have 100 men and 300 women (unbalanced though that may be) than 50 men and 50 women?
BZ- while I agree in principle, I think that in practice it is problematic. There are two discrete problems:
1) that programs suck, and are underattended
2) that those who DO attend are predominantly female, and that turns off males from attending
The solution needs to be a subtle one, and we know how good the organized Jewish Community is at subtlety.
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