Dear Participant, Thank you so much for participating in my study.

Not only did this project help me complete my Adolescence class, but it also helped me develop a stronger understanding of the role that religion plays in adolescent development. Although this study will never be published, it has certainly sparked my interest, and this is a topic of research that I hope to pursue in the future. Let me tell you a little bit more about my study. As you probably noticed, almost all of my questions pertained to religion and your past experiences with it in different contexts. My initial hypothesis was that attendance at a religious high school would be the most important aspect of religious identity development. I thought that the act of learning about Judaism would be the strongest predictor of long term religious affiliation and practice. Over the course of my interviews, I realized that I was asking the wrong question. Rather than think about what religious experiences were most important, I attempted to tease out what parts of religious experiences were most impactful on broader identity development. Across my study, the results were extremely important. Every participant talked about the importance of relationships, and how important relationships with parents and friends are. Several participants also talked about how it is easy to be friends with Jewish students, because you start out with so much in common. From the interviews, I suggested that Jewish experiences served to facilitate relationship building, and provide a sense of belonging. It is important to note that this study had a very small sample size (8). As such, it is very difficult to make any broad generalizations without further study. However, I believe that the initial results of this study, combined with evidence from the literature, suggest that the most operative part of adolescent development, is the formation of strong reciprocated relationships across contexts. Thank you again for your participation. Please contact me if you have any questions about the study, or if you just want to keep in touch!