Nevertheless, most of the teen-agers I interviewed believed in maintaining their Jewish identity and even envisioned joining a synagogue or temple. However, they were hostile to Jewish Orthodoxy, professing to believe in Judaism ``but in a moderate way.'' One boy said querulously about Orthodox Jews: ``It's the twentieth century, and they don't have to wear beards.''

The reason offered for clinging to the ancestral faith lacked force and authority even in the teen-agers' minds. ``We were brought up that way'' was one statement which won general assent. ``I want to show respect for my parents' religion'' was the way in which a boy justified his inhabiting a halfway house of Judaism. Still another suggested that he would join a temple ``for social reasons, since I'll be living in a suburb.''

Intermarriage, which is generally regarded as a threat to Jewish survival, was regarded not with horror or apprehension but with a kind of mild, clinical disapproval. Most of the teen-agers I interviewed rejected it on pragmatic grounds. ``When you marry, you want to have things in common,'' a girl said, ``and it's hard when you don't marry someone with your own background.''

A fourteen year old girl from the Middle West observed wryly that, in her community, religion inconveniently interfered with religious activities -- at least with the peripheral activities that many middle class Jews now regard as religious. It appears that an Orthodox girl in the community disrupted plans for an outing sponsored by one of the Jewish service groups because she would not travel on Saturday and, in addition, required kosher food. Another girl from a relatively large midwestern city described herself as ``the only Orthodox girl in town.'' This is, no doubt, inaccurate, but it does convey how isolated she feels among the vast army of the nonobservant.