Employment!

It's official -- I have a job lined up for the fall! Starting the day after Labor Day, I will be a full-time research associate at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University. For those who aren't familiar with the Cohen Center, they conduct cutting-edge scholarly research on the American Jewish community, and they're quickly becoming the center of Jewish social research in the United States. It's a perfect match with my interests and skill set, and I'm really excited.

I'll be doing mostly quantitative research on Birthright Israel, the free 10-day trip to Israel for young Jewish adults ages 18-26. (Yes, it's really free -- paid for by private donors like Edgar Bronfman and Sheldon Adelson, as well as various North American Jewish federations and the Israeli government.) What is the impact of the Birthright Israel trip? Does it strengthen the Jewish identity of trip participants, as it was meant to do? How can the trip be leveraged into long-term communal involvement? These are the big questions on the research agenda.