Preserving Their Identity in a Modern Era : Yes, they feel a little alienated from their culture. But Jewish American women still long for that spiritual connection.

As much as American Jewish women feel alienated and sometimes even embarrassed by their culture, they are also fiercely attached to and proud of their identity, according to an unprecedented national study of Jewish women.

In focus groups held in cities from New York to Los Angeles, single and married women, secular and Orthodox, shared their views on topics ranging from their roles in the future of Judaism to how to find time for religion in busy two-career schedules.

An unmarried career woman from Washington, D.C., told researchers that while she believes Jewish women are “superior” to other women, some strike her as garishly materialistic and unappealing:

“I stopped going even to high holidays when I was in the seventh grade because it had become apparent to me that the mink coat was more important than the service--who had the biggest diamond, who had the most stuff.”

Another participant said she, too, is “turned off” by the “fashion show” at Rosh Hashana services and “people trying to see how fancy they could be.”

But while poisonous images of Jewish women were a common concern among single women, a larger one for the working mothers was their role as the 1990s version of the “Jewish mother.” Rather than some Woody Allen stereotype--hovering purveyors of matzo ball soup--these modern Jewish women see themselves as “transmitters and interpreters” of Judaism for their children. They were less interested in their own personal spiritual journey than in their children’s Jewish education.

“I try to teach [my children] values and ethics,” said one mother. “They know how important it is to us. They are picking up on that between traditions and teaching. They are getting it and there is a sense of love that I see growing in them.”

Another woman said that while she lights candles on Friday nights and keeps a kosher home, she considered “family, morality and charitable giving” more important to her Jewish identity than observance. “I can’t quite believe,” she added, “that there is really someone up there making decisions as to whether you are here next year or not.”

The study was one chapter of a mammoth report commissioned recently by Hadassah and the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University on the status of the American Jewish woman. It involved 14 focus groups constituted of 152 women, late 20s to age 45, from a variety of Jewish backgrounds and at different stages of life. Single career women met in 1994 in New York City, Los Angeles and Washington; stay-at-home moms met in St. Louis and Columbus, Ohio; women who identified with the reform movement met in Atlanta and Portland, Ore.; and women in dual-career families gathered in Long Island, N.Y., and Chicago.

Sylvia Barrack Fishman, a Brandeis professor of contemporary Jewish life who oversaw the project, titled “In Many Voices: Diversity and Commonality Among American Jewish Women,” said none of the findings were wildly surprising. But this was the first sociological study of American Jews to pay attention to gender issues, Fishman said. And it was the first time a qualitative study on the topic confirmed what many American Jews already understood among themselves.

In addition, Fishman said, the attitudes and attachments of Jewish women may also be true of second- and third-generation Japanese or Chinese Americans.

“We know other ethnic women feel similar to Jews in terms of being an outside culture that is tied to an ancient, well-developed, literary tradition,” Fishman said. “They also want to blend in here, but like the Jewish women they don’t want to lose their identity.”

In fact, despite busy lives, many of the working Jewish women said they carve out time to volunteer for Jewish groups but sought out “specific tasks.” One woman said she couldn’t just “come and chitchat.” Another said she “will only do things with a beginning, a middle and an end.”

What the groups of women represented in the study thought of each other varied. Single women, for example, had very mixed feelings about other Jewish women. But while they might sometimes point an accusatory finger at other Jewish women, saying, “look at what they’re wearing, look what they’re doing,” they realized someone could look at them and see the same thing, Fishman said.

Most others reported high “comfort levels” among groups, and they were particularly interested in associating with women in circumstances like their own--working mothers with working mothers, stay-at-home mothers with stay-at-home mothers, converts with converts.

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Whether secular or Orthodox, converts to Judaism or Conservatives, they all seemed to yearn for a sense of warmth in Jewish organizations. But most reported feeling disaffected by them. The women said Jewish organizations weren’t welcoming of “newcomers” and focused too heavily on fund-raising. The majority of women also wanted to make a difference in their communities but needed organizations to better prepare them to help do that.

Throughout the 32-page report is advice for Jewish organizations on how to become attractive to Jewish women of all backgrounds and lifestyles. One such item: “Jewish women’s childhood memories of Judaism often cast it as tedious, boring and irrelevant. The Jewish community needs to create programming to educate adult women toward an understanding of what is joyous and vital in their Jewish heritage.”

One secular participant who had grown up in socialist Jewish circles told researchers that she had strong connections to her religion through her political beliefs and activism. “I connected to the radical history and role that Jews have played in the United States and worldwide. . . . Being Jewish is being international. I think a lot of Jewish women are internationalists. That’s all part of my heritage.”

Women who had converted to Judaism--”Jews by choice,” as the study calls them--spoke of their religion in spiritual terms, more so than any other group. They tended to regard Judaism as a “spiritual treasure and their encounter with it as a thrilling journey,” according to the study.

“I like the sense that Judaism has of marking time,” said a woman in a New Jersey focus group. “You sort of keep checking back each year, each Shabbat, each week, each holiday. How are you progressing? Are you on the track that you want to be on? It is a sense of thought. You are not just on this treadmill zipping around, which I am sometimes guilty of doing.”

When asked about their religious identities, the Orthodox women were less likely than their Conservative counterparts to speak about passing on values to their children and less likely than reform women to talk about social action. Rather, the Orthodox women focused on Israel; they worried about the tidal wave of appealing secularism; they discussed their deep involvement in prayer and study.

“I would like to become disciplined enough to daven [pray] every day and to spend more time learning. . . . I see my husband and my daughter and how much their days revolve around these activities when they are not working or in school. I feel I have a lot of work to do in these areas.”

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Interestingly, the work ethic was ubiquitous across the board.

Orthodox women with young children uniformly said they expected to return to work soon. One young Orthodox mother began to introduce herself, then said with a laugh: “I guess that everything I say about myself is relational. But I’m not crazy about this change in my life. Things will get back to normal when I go back to work.”

The study also included a Los Angeles focus group of women born outside the United States; one in 10 American Jews is an immigrant. These foreign-born women were strongly oriented toward family and Israel, but less so toward Jewish organizational life--synagogues and social and philanthropic groups.

“I think that one of the things that is very sad to me is how many Jews in this country have assimilated or have discarded their Jewish roots and heritage or religion or identity without having explored it. I think what is both beautiful and troubling about Judaism it that it is very complicated. It takes work. . . . A lot of Jews just don’t give Judaism the effort that they put into various other aspects of their careers.”