The disappearance of young men from America’s church pews has been ongoing for some time now, but recent reports indicate that it is not only Christian denominations that are losing males due to a new, feminist orientation, but the more liberal Jewish sects – Reform and Conservative Judaism – as well.

Young Jewish men and adolescents complain of indoctrination and a stifling atmosphere at the activities organized by their synagogues, and are voting with their feet by leaving at the first opportunity.

Orthodox Judaism, which has so far successfully resisted feminist encroachments, is notable for not having this problem.

Jewish boys are opting out of leadership programs, which are becoming almost exclusively female:

Jewish programs training the next generation of Jewish leaders are seeing the impact. According to a new study by the not-for-profit organization Moving Traditions, “Engaging Jewish Teenage Boys: A Call to Action,” of the 15 interns enrolled in Hillel’s Tzedek advocacy program six years ago, there were no young men. The following year, just two of the 14 interns were men. That same program year, 2005–06, the organization Avodah: The Jewish Service Corps enrolled nearly six times as many young women as it did men. And the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion has seen a steady decline in the rates of young men applying to become rabbis.

In fact, as the article points out, barely a third of new rabbis in liberal sects are male:

In May 2006, HUC-JIR’s Los Angeles campus ordained 14 new rabbis. Only four were men, and of the 20 new rabbis ordained at its New York campus, just seven were men. With some fluctuation, the paucity of men has remained among the New York campus’s ordinees. In 2009, 43 rabbis were ordained there. Just 13 of them were men. In 2010, of the 44 new rabbis, 16 were men.

In order to bring boys back in the fold, some congregations are advocating mimicking Orthodox institutions, which have always had exclusively male spaces. The liberal sects, on the other hand, have created a great number of exclusively female spaces and programs while neglecting to provide anything for boys.

According to one young Jewish man who left his congregation:

At day school there was such a focus on female discovery of spiritual self rather than a focus of male discovery of self. I felt as though I was neglected in terms of being able to grow spiritually.