Current Expressions of American Jewish Identity: An Analysis of 114 Teenagers

This chapter explores the characteristics of 114 American teenagers' Jewish identities using data from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR). The NSYR includes a telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 3,290 adolescents aged 13 to 17. Jewish teenagers were over-sampled, resulting in a total of 3,370 teenage participants. Of the NSYR teens surveyed, 141 have at least one Jewish parent and 114 of them identify as Jewish. The NSYR also includes in-depth face-to-face interviews with a total of 267 U.S. teens: 23 who have at least one Jewish parent and 18 who identify as Jewish. The following analysis draws upon quantitative data from the 114 teens who identified themselves as Jewish in the face-to-face interviews.

Lamb Bright Saviors [Excerpt: Noon Song & Mady]

Lamb Bright Saviors begins as an apocalyptically inclined itinerant preacher staggers across the Nebraska prairie. With his young assistant, Mady, in tow hauling a wagon stacked with bibles, it’s not long before the preacher finds he’s come to the final fulfillment of his self-proclaimed life’s work: to die in front of a group of strangers. Odd as his own end-of-days might be, the lives and struggles of the strangers attending this deathbed scene are even odder. As the dying preacher unleashes a barrage of hallucinatory ramblings and rantings in the hope of imparting wisdom, each ragtag member of this unlikely congregation must reckon with his or her own dark past. And, through it all, the irrepressible Mady lends the preacher’s strange performance a surprising and unforgettable dignity and humor.