Brainiac’s dilemma: will a PhD make you less Jewish?
A NEW report has warned of a potential “brain-drain” from the British Jewish community with research showing that Jews with postgraduate degrees have weaker religious belief, support Jewish charities less and are more likely to marry out than those without university qualifications.
Jews with masters degrees or doctorates also take a far more dovish stance on Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and are more critical of its government than those without a degree.
High achievers and younger adults are “less attached to Israel and less supportive of its current position than Jews generally”, says the report, written for the Institute of Jewish Policy Research by Stephen Miller, emeritus professor of social research at City, University of London.
“The most academically qualified Jews are, on average, the least engaged,” he concludes.
If present trends continue, the proportion of academically gifted people within the engaged Jewish community is “likely to decline”, he says — though a continuing brain drain over time is “not a certainty”.
Jews with higher degrees, Professor Miller found, are “about half as likely as non-graduates to see their fellow Jews as a source of natural support or to express concern about Jewish continuity”.
The findings “reflect a tendency to see the community as being less committed to equality, less open and less moral than do other respondents — and yet these are the very qualities highly educated Jews tend to associate with their personal status as Jews”. Their lower engagement with the Jewish community can “largely be attributed to their more critical evaluation of the Jewish community rather than any weakness in their personal identity as Jews”.
British Jews are estimated to be three times more likely to have masters degrees or doctorates than
other faith groups.
The tendency towards progressive and liberal values among high academic achievers in general is “statistically sufficient to explain why they are less well disposed towards the concept of an ethno-centric Jewish community, less supportive of Israel’s current policies and conduct and less strongly engaged practically in Jewish life.”
The report, “Academic Achievement and Engagement in Jewish Life”, culls data from four previous JPR surveys since 1995.
While half of Jewish non-graduates in 1995, for example, believed that Jews have a special relationship with God, only 25 per cent of those with postgraduate degrees did. Shul membership also declines the more academically qualified Jews are (although in non-Orthodox synagogues, postgraduates attend more than those without degrees).
High academic achievers are more than twice as likely to identify as secular than those without a degree.
Those without a degree are roughly twice as likely to have predominantly Jewish friends as those with postgraduate degree.
Jews with a higher degree are twice as likely to have a non-Jewish partner than those with no degree.
On Israel, more than half the academic high-fliers — 52 per cent — said its treatment of the Palestinians has weakened their attachment to the country, compared with 21 per cent of those without degrees.
Whereas a large majority of those postgraduate degrees, 86 per cent, believe Israel should trade land for peace, the figure is lower for those without degrees, 63 per cent.
Nearly a third, 32 per cent, of those with postgraduate degrees would support some form of sanctions against Israel compared with 18 per cent among those without degrees.
Those who hold postgraduate degrees, however, are more likely to see their own personal characteristics as a “reflection of their Jewishness” than those with no degree, Professor Miller says. “The key areas that distinguished postgraduates from others was a stronger perception that their Jewishness had created a concern for morality, a desire to avoid prejudice and a love of learning.”
Commenting on the report, Jonathan Boyd, JPR’s executive director, said, “We are, in effect, losing some of our collective intellectual resources”.