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Professor Details COVID’s Impact on Local Jews
L OCA L
JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF
ABOUT A MONTH AGO,
Ilana Horwitz, a Jewish studies
professor at Tulane University,
joined a synagogue for the first
time in eight years.

The professor, 40, who grew
up in Northeast Philadelphia
and graduated from the Akiba
Hebrew Academy (now Jack
M. Barrack Hebrew Academy),
decided to return to her faith
after completing a paper last
fall on how the pandemic
impacted low-income Jews in the
Philadelphia area.

In June, the paper was
accepted for publication in
Contemporary Jewry, “the
only scholarly journal that
focuses on the social scientific
study of Jewry,” according to
its website.

Horwitz’s paper, titled “Ties in
Tough Times: How Social Capital
Helps Lower-Income Jewish
Parents Weather the Economic
Hardship of COVID-19,” has a
straightforward conclusion.

Building Jewish relation-
ships is the best way for Jews
to get through a difficult time.

And to build a strong Jewish
network, the best place to start
is the synagogue.

“Partly, yeah,” said Horwitz
on whether her paper convinced
her to join. “Maybe in some sort
of subconscious way.”
Horwitz came to the
research because, as she wrote,
“most studies of religious-
based disaster recovery focus
on churches.” She wanted to
explore those dynamics in the
community she grew up in, and
that had helped during her own
difficult time as a teenager.

After her family emigrated
from the Soviet Union, her
father died in a car accident.

The driver behind him suffered
a seizure.

The family had no idea how
to sit shiva. So every morning,
Akiba bussed Horwitz’s eighth-
grade classmates to her house
to say the Mourner’s Kaddish.

Then, the school bussed them
back to Merion Station, about
an hour away, for first period.

“The way Akiba supported
my family is what makes Jewish
institutions such vital sources of
support,” Horwitz said.

For her paper, Horwitz
interviewed “36 parents who
self-identified as Jewish, had at
least one school-age child and
earned less than the median
Jewish household income in the
Philadelphia area,” according to
the introduction.

“About half (47%) of families
were in a worse financial
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JEWISH EXPONENT
Ilana Horwitz
Courtesy of Avery White
It’s this connection between
“bonding” and “linking”
relationships that creates a strong
inner circle for a family, a strong
community for a region and a
strong social fabric for society,
Horwitz said. But as evidenced
by the people who didn’t receive
help during COVID, too few
families are building these
bonds. The synagogue, though, can
be an answer to the problem,
she said. It offers bonding
connections in the form of other
congregants and linking connec-
tions in the form of the rabbi,
who often has access to money
and ties to other institutional
leaders. “This study suggests that
involvement in some Jewish
organizations, especially
synagogues, can yield signifi-
cant dividends in unexpected
ways,” Horwitz wrote.

For low-income families, the
synagogue is not an unneces-
sary expense, as many people
think. It’s actually the opposite.

“Economic hardship may
be the best time to maintain
synagogue affiliation, since
synagogues can function as a
system of economic and social
support,” Horwitz wrote.

Horwitz took her own
advice, but she’s worried that
others in her generation are too
anti-institution. “Most people don’t recognize
the social upside of joining a
synagogue, even if the religious
dimension doesn’t resonate to
you,” she said.

The Jewish Federation of
Greater Philadelphia has the
same concerns, according to
Brian Gralnick, its director of
social responsibility.

Gralnick said to inform
younger Jews of Jewish
Federation services, the organi-
zation is planning on doing
more online advertising.

“They aren’t coming through
our synagogue doors,” he said. l
situation because of COVID-
19,” Horwitz wrote later.

And among the parents
surveyed, many received help
from local Jewish organizations,
though some didn’t. A little later
in the paper, Horwitz explained
how Jewish institutions helped
low-income parents.

“Jewish organizations
started delivering food to clients
and sent families gift cards to
supermarkets,” she wrote.

“Rabbis were able to support
community members using
discretionary funds,” she added.

“Several people told us
about receiving phone calls
from their rabbi asking if
they needed help, and then
receiving an envelope with
cash,” Horwitz concluded.

But those people had
existing relationships with
local Jewish organizations,
like the Jewish Family and
Children’s Service of Greater
Philadelphia or a synagogue,
often established through
family members or friends
who connected them to those
organizations. In the sociological language
in which Horwitz is fluent,
the horizontal ties with family
members and friends are
“bonding” relationships. And
they are most often the connec-
tions that lead to vertical
connections with commu-
nity leaders, called “linking” jsaffren@jewishexponent.com;
relationships. 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM