What might Jewish women be like 20 years from now?

Women representing Chicago Jewish organizations took on those questions recently and came up with a fascinating variety of answers.

"Jewish women are independent thinkers, strong, and have always brought their unique gifts in their roles as women. They are able to balance their professional roles ranging from homemakers and rabbis to doctors and educators with their personal lives. Issues that have affected women could never have been mentioned 20 years ago and now are being addressed in society-from domestic abuse to low income jobs to health and spirituality," Becky Adelberg, Chicago community outreach coordinator for Jewish Women International, writes in an e-mail.

"In 20 years, Jewish women will be the same-empowered, educated and proud of their heritage. It is my hope that the diversity of Jewish woman's heritages will continue to be represented as we continue to evolve as a culture, religion and community," Adelberg writes.

Dawn Brent, president of the Chicago-North Shore Section of the National Council of Jewish Women, says that in comparing women today to 20 years ago, "what we're finding is that women are a lot busier, a lot more scheduled in their time. There are a lot more women in the workforce, but a lot of younger women seem to be staying at home with their kids, although they are involved in many other things."

Women today, Brent says, "are more involved in looking for ways to connect with other women in other situations, with Jewish women who have the same values. A lot of women are trying to reconnect with their Judaism. Maybe 20 years ago they were assimilating more. Now there are more ways they can bring their Judaism into their daily life."

Brent has a 13-year-old daughter and says she is "hoping she'll follow in my footsteps." But for Jewish women of the future, "it will depend on what kind of role modeling the women of today do for their daughters and other young girls," she says. "If they show a commitment to Judaism in their daily life and in everything they do, and continue to grow and be active, they will participate in life fully but will bring their Jewish values to whatever they do. There is so much more to do out there, but there won't be a lack of that need (for Jewish values) in the future."

Edith Margolis, a former national board member of Na'amat USA who is now president of her local club in the Greater Chicago Council, had much to say on the subject with many insights based on a long life (she is 82). Jewish women today, she says, "like other women are more affluent, more assertive. They are interested in careers they never thought would be possible for them - medicine, law. There is a whole change politically, with women having major, dramatic roles to play."

Modern Jewish women "have begun to bifurcate or trifurcate the time they have on this earth to do more than one thing," Margolis says. "Our Jewish cultural ethic says education, education, education, and at one time it was geared mainly to males. But in this country everybody got that chance. We have a different perspective now in what we think women can accomplish, and women have taken advantage of it in incredible ways."

As for the women of the future, Margolis predicts that "you're going to have two major streams of Jewish women. One is the traditionally religious, following a very old tradition, sticking to customs and rules."

The second stream she describes using a term she borrowed from a recent exhibit at the Spertus Museum: "post-Jewish." These women "don't have the traditional background. Some have been to Hebrew or Sunday school or have synagogue affiliation, but many do not. They come from assimilated or unaffiliated families. These are people who know they're Jewish but it stops there. They don't observe the holidays, don't go to synagogue, have no connection to Israel, the Holocaust is a page in a history book. They are going to be living a very different kind of Jewish life."

Jews of her generation, Margolis says, "lived in a Jewish neighborhood, we walked everywhere, we had the uncles, the aunts living near us. Now people, not just Jews but Christians too, are international, moving far away from their parents, their homes."

She sees these trends as problematic for Jews because "after centuries of oppression and vilification we really shouldn't even be here anymore, and we should cling to that identity, it's very precious and unusual. Unless you pay attention to these things and find them meaningful you get caught up in the day-to-day, become very materialistic."

Describing herself as "a post-Jewish woman who was transformed by my husband," who studied in a theological seminary for 11 years, Margolis says she worries about the future because "the world is getting more open, and it's hard to keep the cultural traditions very close and maintain (Jewish) identity. Those traditions are not gone, but they're getting shallow."

To Stephanie Pritzker, director of the Midwest region of ORT America, who focuses her answer on women volunteers, Jewish women "are not motivated any differently today than 20 years ago and will not be motivated differently 20 years from now as far as why they get involved in Jewish organizations. The motivations for getting involved stays the same.

"All the volunteers I work with, of any age, want to give back in a meaningful way to their community," says Pritzker, calling them "incredibly active, wonderful volunteers."

What has changed, she says, is the way in which Jewish women interact within Jewish organizations. "They used to stuff envelopes, have meetings, coffees, bake sales. Now they are more businesslike in their approach to fund-raising," she says. "They come to the table financially. It's not just about the time they contribute. They want their voices heard in the philanthropic arena, they want to be someone who donates their money as well as their time. There are many career women; some of them work at huge law firms, at financial institutions, who have gone into volunteer work."

As far as the future goes, Pritzker doesn't hold with the common viewpoint that fewer and fewer women will be going into volunteer work. "That hasn't been true in my experience. It isn't true of young people," she says. "But there has been a change in the traditional viewpoint. (Women) don't want to stuff envelopes, pick out the menus, have coffees. They do things differently, more like a business. You can do everything over e-mail, you don't have to have a big meeting. Women volunteers are very professional, they treat this as their job. They're not any less involved, just involved differently." These trends, she believes, will continue well into the future.

"These are positive changes," she says. Volunteers of the future "will operate within the volunteer world in a different way. They'll keep up with the times. Women are very good at adapting to situations. The needs don't go away. They are only increasing. Women are adapting to meet those needs and are doing it in a very professional manner."

Jane Ramsey, executive director of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, says that today "Jewish women are engaged in a broader range of professions and at higher levels. Opportunities have opened up. Women are going into non-traditional professions, from the sciences to rabbinical school, and that was also happening 20 years ago but it is much more tolerated today. There are many more women in the rabbinate and other non-traditional fields than 20 years ago." Jewish women are also represented in greater numbers in the leadership of Jewish, political and other organizations," she says.

Some areas, she says, remain the same for women now as then: "The importance of family and community has remained constant."

As for the future, Ramsey says that "20 years from now I would hope that Jewish women will be among our world leaders and our community leaders, our country's leaders, bringing the kind of sensitivity and insights that comes from a Jewish woman's point of view."