Life Stages And Our Jewish Involvement

By Barbara Pash

Jennifer Krinsky describes her Jewish upbringing as “very non-observant.” A New York native, she did not attend services and she did not go to religious school, although her parents at some point did form a chavurah with other couples they knew.

During college, says Krinsky, 38, a sales recruiter, the pattern continued. She did not belong to Hillel and she did not

attend Jewish worship services. Then she moved to Baltimore, where she met her husband Douglas, 37, a manager at Discover Network, through, ironically enough, a Jewish singles group.

“When we got married, we knew we wanted to belong to a congregation and to send our kids to a Jewish preschool,” says Krinsky, whose husband had been active in the Jewish community of Chicago, his hometown, even going through confirmation.

Now the Krinskys have two children, Jillian, 7, and Myles, 5, both students at Timbergrove Elementary School in Owings Mills. The family belongs to Har Sinai Congregation, and the children attended its preschool, the Children’s Corner at Har Sinai.Jillian currently attends the synagogue’s religious school and is a member of the shul’s youth education committee.

“We light Shabbat candles, which we didn’t do as single people. We love to go to the Tot Shabbats. We go to the children’s services for the High Holidays and other holidays,” Krinsky notes.

Krinsky’s path to religious involvement is not unusual. The consensus is, as young Jews move from college to newly married to families with young children, Judaism becomes more important in their lives.

Demographic studies of different age groups illustrate the point, according to Rabbi Jon Konheim of Beth Am, a Conservative congregation in Baltimore City.

“From the figures I see for JDate,” he says, referring to the popular online dating network, “there is a significant population that wants to date Jewish. But at the same time, there aren’t particularly strong [Jewish religious attachments] at that point. People in their 20s and 30s are more interested in personal identity than they are in communal identity.”

In fact, in Rabbi Konheim’s experience, it isn’t even marriage itself that changes a person’s outlook. It’s having children.

“That’s the real change — when they have kids and start thinking about how they’re going to raise them Jewishly. It doesn’t show up immediately, but when the kid reaches kindergarten age, that’s when they want a congregation,” says Rabbi Konheim.

Of course, there are variations in this scenario.

Marissa Herzog, 20, is a junior at Goucher College. A native of Boston, Herzog became a bat mitzvah in a Conservative congregation, then says she fell away from the religion in her teens. Later, she rediscovered Judaism, reading about its history and becoming proud of her heritage.

Now, Herzog belongs to Hillel and attends High Holiday services on the Goucher campus. She has chosen to learn Hebrew to fulfill her college language requirement.

Still, she doesn’t consider herself particularly religious. “Other Jewish kids — at school, at home — are more observant. I have friends at school who are shomer Shabbos,” she says.

Matthew Fox, 27, is a lawyer who lives in Pikesville. Fox is single but he belongs to a congregation, Beth Israel, where he attends High Holiday and other holiday services, and also goes for yarzheits.

In college, Fox, a graduate of Krieger Schechter Day School and Beth Tfiloh High School, joined Hillel, but “for the social scene, not in the religious sense.” Now, he does not keep kosher and is not shomer Shabbos, but he does identify with the Jewish community, cares about the state of Israel, and believes in tikkun olam.

“I consider myself culturally Jewish,” says Fox, who nonetheless would like to marry a Jewish woman (“It would make life easier”) and prefers that any future children be raised Jewish.

Diana and Daniel Vogelstein are newlyweds who attend services at Beth Tfiloh Congregation, where Daniel Vogelstein’s parents belong. The Owings Mills couple don’t belong to a congregation themselves.

Daniel Vogelstein has long been active in the Jewish community. A student at Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School and then at Chizuk Amuno religious school, he volunteered for a host of Jewish community activities while in high school and college.

“My mother was president of Levindale Auxiliary and then president of the Federation of Jewish Women’s Organizations, so I was always helping out at events,” says Daniel Vogelstein, 24, a computer technician.

Despite this activity, he says that, what with pressure from school and job, he “lost touch” with the religion for awhile. “I was just attending shul on the High Holidays and going to family events” like Passover seders, he recalls.

Then he married Diana, 23, a student, and things changed. As a child, she had immigrated with her parents from Ukraine and did not have religious training.

“She’d come to [family] holiday events but not know the meaning,” says Daniel Vogelstein, who took it upon himself to educate her in the religion and, it turned out, her parents, too.

“It’s been a great experience for all of us,” says Daniel Vogelstein. “We’re more into the religion than ever.”

Stacy and Keith Forman were married a year ago. The wedding was performed by Rabbi Steven Schwartz of Beth El Congregation, where Stacy Forman’s family has long been members and where she attended religious school through confirmation. Stacy and Keith Forman, both 29, are a dietician and an attorney, respectively.

Stacy Forman says a trip to Israel when she was in high school had a big impact on her feelings about Judaism, although she had minimal involvement with the religion during her college years. Even so, when her mother asked if she wanted a seat at Beth El for the High Holidays, Stacy Forman surprised her by saying yes.

“There is a religious/spiritual component to going to shul,” she says.

“In terms of synagogue life, I’ve seen all levels of involvement, depending on families’ needs,” says Rabbi Rhoda Silverman of Temple Emanuel, a Reform congregation in Reisterstown. That includes couples who join before they have children to empty-nesters who have the time they didn’t have when their children were home.

But she does agree with Rabbi Konheim that religious school is a big draw, not only for membership but for involvement as well.

“When they have kids of religious school age, families get more involved in the religious life,” says Rabbi Silverman, the mother of two young children herself.

Lauren and Charlie Kean were married in 2003. Lauren Kean, 33, a social worker by profession and stay-at-home mother, and Charlie Kean, 34, a WJZ-TV account executive, have a daughter, Hannah, age 4.

Lauren Kean grew up in Beth El. She became a bat mitzvah there, but in college, she says, she didn’t do much religiously besides attend High Holiday services. Charlie Kean converted to Judaism before their marriage. His conversion, says Lauren Kean, led her back to Judaism.

“We dated for eight years before getting married. I went every step of the way with him through conversion,” she says.

Lauren Kean says that having a child solidified their feelings about the religion. “It was important that [our children] be raised in a Jewish home,” she says.

The Kean family now celebrates all the holidays. They attend Tot Shabbats at Beth El. Lauren Kean has met other Jewish parents through Hannah’s preschool and summer camp there.

“I was involved in Beth El as a kid,” says Mrs. Kean. “But I see it now on a different level.”

How Important?

The Pew Research Center recently released a 2009 survey on demographics and religion. Of the roughly 3,000 adults surveyed nationwide, the organization found that about two-thirds of people 65 and older said religion is very important to them, versus slightly over half of those ages 30 to 49, and 44 percent of those ages 18 to 29. In addition, one-third of the adults 65 and older said religion had grown more important to them as they had gotten older.

September 2009