The Jewish American Landscape

so tonight we're looking at the american jewish landscape and i think the best way to do that is to take you through a study that was done about eight years ago by the pew forum on religion and american life it's called a portrait of jewish americans and i was all excited to take you through this study until i got an email this week that said guess what the 2020 pew study is coming out next week so all of the numbers i'm going to quote for you tonight and show you are going to be moot in a week because they're going to release the new version of the numbers but if nothing else the new numbers are probably going to be derived in the similar way the old numbers were and if nothing else getting a sense of where american jewish life was in 2013 will give you a good way to understand where it is now in 2021 when we get updated numbers you'll understand the categories and what the issues were they were focused on and sometimes it's very interesting what issues they focus on what issues they don't focus on what issues they present and what issues they sort of hide in the data okay so the first question you always have to ask when people are telling you about what they know about american jewish life is how do you know it did you just sort of talk to your neighbors and decide that's what american jews are like did you do some studies do you interview people if so how did you find them how did you define who's do it and one of the nice things about this pew study is they were very um transparent about how they got their numbers what the questions they asked were and what their methodology was so here at the very bottom of the opening page they described who they interviewed they actually called 70 000 people to identify jewish respondents in all 50 states they wound up doing longer interviews that were completed with 3 400 jews including 2 700 jews by religion and 689 jews of no religion and we'll have a chance to see a little bit more about what they mean by those and there were also about 1100 non-jews of jewish background as they defined it and about 467 of people who called who they considered jewish affinity but one of the i think stumbling blocks to understanding any study of jewish american life is the perennial question that they also start with in the pew study which is who is a jew because if you want to count what jews are and what the jewish community is like you have to define who's in and who's out now you could follow the most restrictive definition try to find out if their mother is jewish or not and then only count people in that population but as many demographers will tell you you'll be leaving out a large number of people who self-identify as jewish maybe because they have one parent who's jewish who's their father or they've done a genetic test and identify as jewish because they found they have jewish genes or who knows what their background is or they converted to being jewish by a reform congregation as opposed to an orthodox congregation who do you recognize in the end most demographers will go with this self-identification metric and be candid about the fact of letting people self-identify but what pew did that was interesting is they actually broke it down into a flow chart of how they put people into different categories so imagine how you would answer these questions if you got a survey person calling you and i will say at the outset there's a real challenge in doing phone surveys surveys these days for a couple of reasons one is phone surveys are based on a reality where people are a at home with a home phone line b will answer that phone line and c will spend time talking to the person on that phone line that they don't know and d will tell the truth to people on that phone line they don't know that they're spending all this time talking to we know that many households no longer have landlines and so that might skew the data into an older population if you're only talking to landlines and we know that people are less likely to give time to surveys and so you actually have to talk to a lot of people before you get people who will complete the survey and they don't want to use partial survey results because that skews the later questions in the survey so doing surveys itself is a really hard business i don't envy them at all i'm very interested to see the methodology section in the 2020 version because these trends have only accelerated about not answering the phone and not talking to strangers not telling the truth and not even having a landline to begin with so the first question they asked is are you jewish by religion and if you said a yes or no there were different options if you said yes they counted you in their category of jews by religion if you said no to are you jewish by religion they would say were you raised jewish or did you have a jewish parent the answer is yes they say what's your religion today i'm not religious i don't have a religion then they would say well aside from religion do you consider yourself to be jewish or partly jewish yes then they fit in the category of jews of no religion but if they said no then they were people of jewish background so may have another religion maybe no religion but they don't self-identify as jewish they're of jewish background now if they were not jewish by religion and not raised jewish and did not have a jewish parent do they consider themselves jewish or partly jewish that's people with a jewish affinity you know maybe they were always attracted to jewish culture or they did a genetic test and decided they're connected to being jewish that way their jewish affinity but not self-identifying as jewish and that's how they tried to break down the population what kind of jew are you well it turns out that 22 percent of american jews as a whole as of 2013 identified as jews of no religion 78 said they were jews by religion based on that flow chart but notice the age breakdown of the older generations overwhelming over 80 percent including baby baby boomers defined their jewishness as jews by religion but fully a third of millennials define themselves as not religious when answers asked are you jewish by religion they said no were you raised jewish you have a jewish parent yes do you consider yourself jewish in some way yes that's that 32 percent among those millennials and they asked them as well what is being jewish about mainly and notice the numbers that said it's mainly about ancestry and culture are the overwhelming majority even the majority of jews who define themselves as jewish by religion very few jews of any category said jewishness is mainly a matter of religion they were much more likely to say it's a matter of religion or a con a religion ancestry and culture combined or simply a question of ancestry and culture obviously jews of no religion were more likely to say jewishness was a question of ancestry and culture and so here we have some general demographics of american jews and this is one of those cases where you can see the demographers putting their thumb on the scale so they want to talk about jewish demographics things like how old is the jewish community what is their economic profile where do they live what's the number one topic they put in this chapter intermarriage are jews marrying jews or are jews marrying people who aren't jewish that's been a demographic obsession in some ways of the american jewish community for many generations unfortunately and you know sometimes the results are the opposite of what they want because you get people paranoid about intermarriage and then when somebody does marry someone not jewish they're pushed away from the jewish community when they could in fact be encouraged to stay connected but notice how the numbers have changed historically for those respondents who were married before 1970 83 percent of them had a jewish spouse and even more so those who identified as jewish by religion but notice how the numbers shift as you get into more recent years by those married in the 1990s or the 2000s you have fully over 50 percent of those whose spouse is not jewish and even among jews who identify their jewishness as religion around 50 their spouses are not jewish 45 50 depending on the cohort so that's a substantial change in the american jewish community and notice that that can have all kinds of ripple effects in terms of what it means to be jewish how you define your jewishness what kind of communities are popular in the jewish community and we'll see that very much so uh the reform movement has grown for example because of the relative openness to intermarried families compared to the conservative or the orthodox worlds although they have their own demographic challenges so notice the inner marriage by religious denomination of those who are currently married 98 of those who say they are orthodox their spouse is jewish again that's currently orthodox um but still about a quarter of conservative jews have a non-jewish spouse and fully 50 of reformed jews have a spouse who is not jewish and so what does it mean to say you're part of the tribe when it's a marriage question and not an ancestry question what does it mean to make jokes and yiddish at a congregational event when a good chunk of your audience may not have any ancestral connection to that language let alone the jews who do not speak yiddish for any number of reasons they could be from german jewish backgrounds or sephardic mizraki jews or they could simply have not been born jewish and have joined the jewish family by marriage now i find the age question of course that's a basic demographic question why aren't they starting with that but they wanted to start with intermarriage so you notice some interesting things about the age distribution of jewish adults the general u.s public 22 percent are 18 to 29 of jews 20 or 18 okay so that seems to make sense but notice for jews by religion is slightly less and jews of no religion are again weighted toward that younger cohort middle-aged jews are 28 compared to 34 for the overall population and then the older populations are somewhat higher among jews so 13 of jews are 65 to 74 or were eight years ago whereas 11 of the general population and 11 of jews are 75 plus compared to 7 of the general population but when you put those together the 65 plus cohort all the way up you've got 24 percent of jews are 65 plus so that's a full quarter whereas 18 percent or about a fifth of the american jewish general population is over 65. so that's why you notice the median age for adults is going to be somewhat higher for jews it's 50 for jews as a whole a little bit higher for those who identify as jewish by religion notice conservative jews are the highest median age of all the groups where orthodox is somewhat lower at 40 in fact it's the lowest almost of all the groups except for hispanic catholics which are also a median age of 40. but uh evangelical protestants 53 mainline protestants 52 they're all sort of a little bit older than jews but not that much in that 50 year old age range notice the unaffiliated median age is 37. younger people are much more secular than the older ones and the fertility rate again is not going to be a surprise jews as a whole or about 1.9 average number of children born per adult where the general public is 2.2 but orthodox jews are 4.1 where reformer conservatives are more like 1.8 1.7 this shouldn't be shocking in terms of the household size again generally jews are in a 2.2 person per household uh they don't have a comparison to the general population but again orthodox a little bit larger nothing radical here this is also fascinating when you talk about demographics of the american jewish community and that is education and earnings again why isn't this higher up than intermarriage on the list but these numbers are really stark in comparison to the general population so the general u.s public only 29 percent is a college graduate compared to 58 of american jews whereas 42 percent of the general population has a high school degree or less where only 17 percent of the american jewish population has this notice as well when you combine the high school or less and some college which means didn't finish college didn't get a degree 42 percent of american jews is that right no 30 yeah 42 percent of american jews have high school or some college but 71 percent of the general population has high school or some college think now about the dynamics of political issues like college debt forgiveness for example that 42 percent has no interest in college debt forgiveness because they didn't go to college so again when we're trying to understand our neighbors trying to understand the american uh place in the uh sorry the jewish place in the american landscape these kind of numbers are really important to understand why our priorities may be different from other population groups also notice the question of household income household income 150 000 or higher fully 25 percent of american jews one quarter earn 150 000 or more compared to eight percent for the general population on the bottom end there are still one-fifth of american jews 20 percent many of them seniors earn less than 30 000 a year compared to a full third 36 percent of the general u.s population so uh america jewish earnings is skewed upward same if you combine the top two if you added 150 000 plus and 149 000 you're talking 42 percent of the american jewish population earning a hundred thousand or more compared to 18 percent of the general population education and income combined well here we again have notice the breakout by jews by religion or jews of no religion notice by the way only 39 of the orthodox american jews are college graduates compared to 60 plus percent of our former conservative jews so again the splits within the jewish community also begin to become clear in terms of fertility rates in terms of income levels notice the income levels 150 000 plus income 28 of the orthodox jews but 37 percent of modern orthodox jews so that's a split even within that community and a higher number of reformed jews have that higher income compared to conservative or non-denominational jews again comparing it to the general population or other religious groups it's very striking the emphasis on college education and the resultant higher incomes that are available employment and not employed again you'll see similar kind of results are you immigrants or born here for jews 86 percent were born in the u.s compared to 83 percent of the general population and 14 of jews were born outside versus 17 again relatively comparable but a good chunk of those jews born outside of the us are former soviet jews which are about five percent of the jewish population some from europe and some from canada mexico and about two percent coming from israel to the u.s whereas the america's number is much higher for the general population obviously that's the hispanic latino born population plus some canadians seeking their way into one of the more contentious issues is the question of race and jewish identity there's been some debates in the last few years over whether this undercounted jews of color there are a number of factors and arguments about that that'll be one of the interesting details to focus on in the new study coming out in the next week or so and that is what proportion of the american jewish population identify as uh black or hispanic or some other kind of non-white identity uh compared to so-called white jews um and you'll notice again it's a much larger proportion than the general public in this survey identified as white but even the highest numbers that you'll find in these surveys and studies of statistical data are 10 maybe 15 percent jews of color still 85 not jews of color compared to the general population which is simply getting more and more uh pigment pigmentated i don't know if that's a word but you get the idea and finally you have geographic distribution where do jews live isn't that interesting wouldn't that be interesting to know yes 43 of american jews live in the northeast so we're talking philadelphia i don't know if they count washington dc as the northeast or not but certainly philadelphia boston new york new england more broadly that would all count as northeast only 11 percent are in the midwest uh we in chicago are a small proportion of the american jewish population um only 23 percent live in the south compared to 37 of the general population and a comparable population live in the west about a quarter of american jews and a quarter of the u.s population live in the west as well but notice the commentary on the pros at the side the vast majority of jews live in either urban areas 49 or in the suburbs 47 just 4 of us jews live in rural areas compared to 1 in 5 americans overall so 20 of americans as a whole live in rural areas but only four percent of american jews live in rural areas okay so our next one is where they explored questions of jewish identity um and you'll notice at the top they say six in ten say being jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture as we said as we saw before how did you identify by denomination how do they describe themselves well 35 percent of all jews identified as reform 18 identified as conservative now this is fascinating because if you went back 50 years ago those numbers might have been flipped the conservative movement was a much higher proportion of american judaism 30 40 now it's down to 18 in this study and maybe even less than the next one we'll have to see but you'll notice that an appreciable number of those jews of no religion still identify with a denomination like reform or conservative because of how they were raised or if they had to go somewhere they'd go there but they don't really go anywhere there's all kinds of other ways to fit this in there's also other denominations which is about six percent and no denomination just jewish culturally jewish agnostic whatever that's about 30 so actually the second largest denomination is none of the above is no denomination at all i'll also point out that that orthodox number of 10 percent has been relatively stable over the last several national jewish surveys in america where it was i think nine percent in 1990 it was about 10 percent in the 2000 2001 study this is about 10 and people have been predicting for a long time that the orthodox would overwhelm american judaism because of all the kids that these families have we noticed the fertility rate right 4.1 compared to uh 1.8 or 1.9 in the reformer conservative uh settings but the proof is in the pudding in terms of how many people stay identified with that with that identity so they have a chart here they have chart in the earlier document that highlights the fact that orthodox jews don't always stay orthodox that is about half of the people who were raised orthodox wind up identifying as some other variety of jewish compared to those who are raised conservative who may become more reformed there are some conservative jews who become more orthodox and some reform jews that become conservative or orthodox but they're actually a much smaller number than people think um it's a much more common phenomenon to become more liberal and less traditional and that by the way is one of the reasons why the conservative movement has shrunk because younger jews in particular those who are interfering don't have as comfortable a home in a conservative congregation as they might in a reform congregation it's beginning to change slowly but as is often the case the conservative movement changes much more slowly than the reform movement where the reform movement was willing to accept the child of a jewish father as jewish without any kind of conversion in the 1980s in the early 1980s in fact officially the conservative woman is still having that conversation and how willing are they to allow their rabbis to even attend an intermarriage let alone officiate in some capacity where reformed rabbis have been able to do it even if it's against their formal policy there's been no punishment for them for a long time um so it's it's really been reflected in that shift in denomination where you see um of those who identify with the denomination reform is much larger and people suspect it's in large part because of the both secularization process and because of the results of pushing away those who choose to marry someone who's not jewish how important is being jewish in your life is it very somewhat not at all you don't know again ask yourself how you might answer that question overall for jews 46 said it's very important in their life 34 said it 34 said it's somewhat important and 22 20 said not that important or not at all important uh it's who they are but not a big part of who they are you'll notice these numbers shift by age cohort if you're jewish by religion it's a little bit higher if you are a jew of no religion where they're still jewish but don't identify as jewish religiously or you know as an easy answer it's sort of a second or third tier down answer as we saw on the flow chart notice that being jewish is not too important to them or maybe not at all important to them again denominationally you'll notice that uh it's higher on the list for orthodox and conservative jews it's more middling for reformed jews or no denomination jews again a chunk of the no denomination say it's not that important to them but asking the question differently are you proud to be jewish 94 are proud to be jewish but notice 46 percent said it's very important to them but 94 are proud to be jewish so they might not do a lot of jewish but they are proud to be jewish and those 90 numbers run all the way down the line you'll notice even conservative and reformed jews scoring the 90 and score very highly on have a sense of strong sense of belonging to the jewish people um and even on having a sense of special responsibility to care for jews and need that's in the 60 for up to the 80 um and uh you know that's very high across the board now here's that question we saw before about is being jewish mainly a question of ancestry or culture or religion or both religion and ancestry or religion and culture again you'll notice the numbers are generally in the high 60s on ancestry and culture all the way down although you'll notice the orthodox jews are more likely to say it's primarily a matter of religion and it's the conservative and the reform and the no denomination jews who are much more likely to say it's ancestry or culture or a combination of the two but we are the vast majority again the orthodox represent 10 in this 2013 study then they asked what's essential to being jewish this is the doing jewish question what are things you do that should be part of your expressing your jewishness and the answers to this are both hilarious and sad it's in different ways of looking at it remembering the holocaust is seen to be a very important thing leading an ethical and moral life is high on the list for both cultural jews and religious jews working for justice and equality is over 50 percent being intellectually curious outscores caring about israel having a good sense of humor far outscores being part of a jewish community and observing jewish law or eating traditional jewish foods is way down on the list of what's essential to being jewish compared to having a sense of humor being intellectually curious and working for justice or equality none of which are uniquely jewish because you can be non-jewish and be funny you can be non-jewish and be curious and you can be non-jewish and work for justice and equality let alone leading an ethical and moral life so it's really fascinating to see that the distinctively jewish things sometimes score lower than the universal things that we think of as being part of our jewishness and then this breaks it out by age cohort and so on this again you can get very granular in the data data now in terms of defining boundaries of course it's not just a question of what the demographers say counts as someone who is jewish but it's also what the jews themselves say is compatible with being jewish so they ask is it compatible if a person is jewish and they work on the sabbath 94 say yes fine no problem five percent still have an issue with that what if they're strongly critical of israel well that's a little bit more of a red line for some people but again 89 say sure you can be jewish if you're strongly critical of israel what if they don't believe in god the question humanistic jews have gotten for 50 plus years how can you be jewish if you don't believe in god 68 of american jews say someone can be jewish if they don't believe in god so we have two-thirds of the people on our side but one-third of the people still have trouble with you know secular jews of any variety now the last question is a really interesting one can you be jewish if you believe jesus was the messiah well i know a lot of jews would say what of course not but 34 of this study said yes because if jewishness is primarily a matter of ethnicity and ancestry that you can be jewish by ancestry and believe jesus was the messiah so interesting details about how other people draw the line but also again how you might answer these question questions and draw the lines and again denominational splits on these um are sometimes predictable but believing jesus was the messiah again you'll notice the numbers are much smaller but even 35 percent of orthodox jews say a person can be jewish if they believe jesus was the messiah because from the orthodox perspective they're jewish because they were born jewish their mother is jewish their mother doesn't stop being jewish if they decide something silly like jesus was a messiah after all there are plenty of lubaviter jews who think menachem mendel schneerson was the messiah and they still are accepted as jewish notice though that the numbers actually go down for conservative and reformed jews who are less likely to allow you to believe jesus was the messiah the orthodox jews who are following at least the consistent matrilineal definition there although again a majority of them would say no still the numbers are a little bit higher they're interesting circumstance okay are you a participant in jewish causes or organizations this is where the rubber hits the road do you actually join anything or do anything with the organized jewish community again the numbers here are fascinating are you a member of a synagogue 31 of all the jews surveyed said they are a member of a synagogue that means 69 are not members are they members of other jewish organizations another 18 percent so that would be a total of 49 who are part of a jewish community center or a jewish book group or the national council for jewish women or hadassah or some other kind of organization and 56 made a donation to some kind of jewish organization but notice even jews by religion 39 are members of synagogues but again a majority are not members of synagogues 67 percent of them however made donations to jewish organizations of the age cohort again the younger ones are less likely to be members and older ones that's predictable higher incomes are more likely to be members than lower incomes given the dues structure in most congregations that's also predictable if your spouse is jewish 60 of those whose spouse is jewish are members but only 14 of those spouse who is not jewish are members now the chicken-and-egg question that jewish demographers ask is is that because the non-jewish spouse makes them not be a member or is it because they have a non-jewish spouse that the synagogues don't welcome them as members which is the cause and which is the effect now you'll notice that 69 of orthodox jews say they're members of the synagogue but notice that means maybe a little bit less than a third of orthodox self-identified orthodox jews are not officially members of the synagogue they do it on their own about 50 of conservative jews only a third of reformed jews say they're members of the synagogue so this is a sea change if you went back again 50 years you would have found the majority of american jews as members of synagogues and so now that is the minority experience and the ripple effects of that in organized jewish community and in bar and by midfield experiences and all kinds of other key questions for jewish identification remain to be seen but we're going to see the ripple effects of that over time they even asked about jewish friendship networks what percent of your close friends are jewish about a third said all or most 20 said hardly any or none and the balance of about 50 was somewhere in the middle um again it shifts a little bit by whether you're in the northeast versus in the west and the far west by the way notice very few jews say all or most and the majority say some are hardly yeni it's a much more dispersed experienced living as a jew out in the west they also asked about do you know the hebrew alphabet only about half of jews know the hebrew alphabet and half said they don't know can they have a conversation in hebrew only 12 so think about the massive failure of our hebrew schools where you've got a huge cohort of people who learned how to read but have no idea what they're saying because they can't have a conversation in hebrew and even if you add up the sort of conversation that's 17 that means another 35 percent or a full third of those who went to hebrew school learn the alphabet have no idea what they're saying so that's sad in many ways now i'll be honest i don't know that our students coming out of our program would be more than sort of have a conversation and we focus on hebrew as a language not just as reciting prayers but we get it one day a week for a few years you know there's only so much you can do in that framework of jewish education um and so this talks more about uh how whether you people converted or were they raised jewish and so on which we're going to move forward past that for now and how are children being raised this is also one of those 64 thousand dollar questions the jewish community always wants to know the answers to among those who are parents or guardians of minor children here's how they're choosing to raise their children so of all jews 59 are raising their kids as jewish by religion 14 said they're raising it partly jewish by religion eight percent said they're raising a jewish not by religion that is jewish as culture or some kind of mixed which could be jewish and something else multi-faith etc and 18 are not raising the kids jewish at all of the whole jewish population now you'll notice jews by religion are much more likely to raise their kids as by religion but some of them are raising them partly jewish or culturally jews of no religion about 30 percent are raising them as uh some variety of jewish but two-thirds of them are not raising them as jewish and then of those whose spouse is jewish a large proportion raising their kids as jewish by religion of those whose spouse is not jewish this is actually record high numbers for these because if you add up jewish by religion partly jewish by religion and jewish not by religion or mixed you get over 60 percent of the children of intermarried parents are getting raised some variety of jewish and that's only because of the last 30 years of work trying to get the jewish community to open and welcome intercultural families more it's also because the broader population is secularizing and the non-jews these jews are marrying are much more secularized and so they're not taking the kids to church because they don't go to church so there's less competition on sunday morning so to speak if they decide they want to raise the kids something they might just choose to raise the jewish because the non-jewish partner may not be identified as a christian anymore but you'll also notice that uh 20 of those who call themselves reform are raising their kids partly jewish by religion and nine percent are raising it jewish not by religion at all or some kind of mixed and then this also talks about what kind of educational programs they're sending the kids into so what do jews actually believe in america well how important is religion in your life we saw how important is judaism the numbers were somewhat surprising only 25 said it's very important here is 29 say somewhat important but here we have the u.s general public hopefully you can see that at the bottom of this chart for jews 26 say religion is very important in their life for the general u.s public 56 percent say it's generally important in their life for self-identified christians 69 say it's very important in their life of jews saying it's not at all important religion is just not important to them at all or not too important 44 of jews say that only 20 of the general population only 8 of those who call themselves christians say religion is not that important so the general world is much more religious than the jewish world the jewish world is much more secularized in fact if you want to find a parallel for us you got to look at the unaffiliated people because of that for them 18 say religion is important compared to 26 for us 23 percent say it's somewhat important compared to 29 for us and where we're 44 not that important it's 59 for the unfil we're much more like unaffiliated than we are like any other religious group what about belief in god 34 of american jews believe in god or universal spirit and i actually like the way this question is framed because it gives you the option of god or some other vocabulary if you don't like the word god it also gives the option of absolutely certain maybe not certain and do not believe so if you have the option for i don't know do not believe is a stronger statement and notice 23 percent of american jews said they do not believe and only 34 are absolutely certain look at the general public 69 percent are absolutely certain only seven percent do not believe so we are much more secularized in belief as well as the statement of how important religion is if you go down to those unaffiliated people that's where we really are almost exactly the same 30 of unaffiliated religious people are absolutely certain compared to 34 for us 38 believe but are not certain exactly the same as the jewish number and 27 of unaffiliated do not believe compared to 23 so we are almost exactly on the belief question like those unaffiliated with mainstream religions we are a very secularized population the same thing is true for attendance at religious services so do you attend at least once a week once or twice a month a few times a year like the high holidays 22 percent of american jews never attend services not even high holidays but let's look at that compared to the general population here 23 percent of jews attend at least monthly 50 percent of the general population attends monthly a few times a year seldom is 54 for jews it's only 36 for the general public 22 of us never attend 13 of them never attend and only five percent of self-identified christians say they never attend services compared to 22 percent of self-identified chips now what you notice about this survey is how much they're privileging a religious sense of jewishness even that first question are you jewish by religion that was the first sorting line where if you'd asked the question differently and started with the ethnicity questions you might have had very different reactions further down the flow chart and further down these kind of questions as well what kind of jewish practices did jewish do jews do 70 participated in a seder 53 fasted for yom kippur but only 23 percent always are usually like shabbat candles 22 keep kosher in the home and only 13 percent avoid handling money on the sabbath but you notice those numbers are much higher denominationally for the orthodox compared to conservative where it's less and reform where it's much less because those aren't part of their sense of jewish identity but doing a passover seder even fasting on yom kippur those are both important symbols but notice passover is even higher because it happens in the home it doesn't happen in a synagogue setting it involves positively eating food instead of choosing not to eat food there's all kinds of attractions by passover might be more done than uh fasting on yom kippur they also ask questions about mixing faith traditions one-third of jews including a quarter of jews by religion said they had a christmas tree last year it could have been for their spouse but they did it and a smaller percentage attend religious services a few times a year here again you'll see reflected that the christian partners in these mixed faith households are much more about the christmas tree in the home than they are about the religious service in the church or the mosque or the hindu temple or something so i want to jump forward now to the last section which has to do with social and political views because that again has an interesting insight into the american jewish population so party and ideology 70 percent of american jews call themselves democrat or lean democratic the vast majority actually are solidly democrats where 22 identify as republicans including uh 13 full and eight percent leaning and so on um and then eight percent are independent or some other preference liberal moderate again you've got 49 percent liberal 29 moderate only 19 conservative now you'll notice the jews by religion are slightly more conservative and the jews of no religion are more liberal but again notice the difference with the general public 70 of all jews are democrat or lean democratic but it's 49 of the general population and similarly reversed for republicans and even for independents or non-aligned and same thing for liberal moderate conservative double the proportion are conservative in the general public compared to the jewish population now when you break this down by different categories it makes sense for example college graduates tend to be more liberal that maps out but notice the denominational split here 36 percent of orthodox jews identified as democrat or lean democrat were 57 percent identified as republican whereas conservative and reform and no denomination jews the vast majority are democrat or lean democrat but notice the flip there for the orthodox population being much more likely to identify as both conservative on the ideology question and republican on the party question and my guess is these numbers have only gotten more extreme in the trump era and we'll see that again when the study comes out that was done conducted in 2020 last year unfortunately everybody was home to answer the phone so maybe they got really good results from that 2020 study again notice the general population the numbers are very different from the jewish population but the split among orthodox and the non-orthodox jews in terms of party and ideology uh is very striking and something that we see reflected as well in jewish communal dynamics jews are they registered to vote well large numbers of them are registered to vote and certain to vote compared to the general population again 74 is not bad but the jewish population is much higher in that category and a much smaller percentage are not at all registered to vote obama's job performance remember this was done in 2013. uh 65 of american jews approve of his performance and even a higher number of jews of no religion younger jews more likely to approve than the older ones but again notice the flipped numbers in the orthodox population 54 disapproved compared to 33 approved compared to conservative and reform where over 60 percent of both approve and only 30 disapprove so a really wide split there um and again discussing uh issues and how he handled these issues um approval of the economy nation's policy toward israel dealing with iran again the orthodox disapproval numbers are much higher the approvals are lower among conservative reform the approvals are much much higher even though the iran question it was a much more uh divisive issue and remain so in the organized jewish community on social issues uh homosexuality and the question of uh the uh size of government here's again where you might see why the orthodox populations identify as much more conservative and republican so overall uh should this be accepted or discouraged by society or neither 80 82 of american jews say it should be accepted and should not be discouraged only 13 states should be discouraged um notice jews of no religion or even more secular on that question both men and women at 80 percent are higher college graduates almost 90 percent republicans versus democrats even a majority of republican jews would accept homosexuality in society and would not discourage it but then notice again the denominational split orthodox jews only 32 say it should be accepted and 58 disapprove including an even higher proportion of the ultra orthodox compared to conservative and reformed jews who are in the 80s or 90s on acceptance and very small numbers on rejection and again notice how different we are from the general public where the jewish total 82 accepted only 57 of the general population only 13 of american jews discourage it where 36 percent of the general population discourage it and even higher among other religious groups so again you'll see we are very much like the unaffiliated here the unaffiliated in the general population 83 support compared to 82 discouraging 13 compared to 13 it's almost identical what about the size of government this is again often a proxy for liberal or conservative well jews as a whole 54 prefer more government bigger services compared to 38 but it's it's a closer split because remember there's a proportion of jews who are moderate liberals uh you know not all the way on the liberal and they're on the moderate side of that scale and again you'll notice the orthodox would say prefer uh bigger government no they prefer a smaller government because they don't want the government telling them what to teach in their schools or you know how to handle their gay kids and continuing to promote conversion therapy and all kinds of other issues like that where the reform movement is the higher audience for wanting larger government services but even there the numbers are much more tepid than you think for the overwhelming democratic support that the liberal jewish denominations provide they're less willing to support a bigger government and more services compared to a smaller government and fewer services do you have a positive view of your neighborhood are you satisfied with where the country's going um again in 2013 there was a lot of dissatisfaction but that was comparable to the general public a little bit slightly more satisfied but that's about it and then in asking are jews discriminated against um compared to other people uh and also um is there are there is there a lot of discrimination against each of these groups are you willing to accept that there's discrimination against gays and lesbians american jews were very willing to accept it even more so than the general population against muslims more so than the general population against blacks more so than the general population against hispanics again against jews jews were more likely to think there was discrimination against them than the general population but notice 54 of american jews said no there isn't really a lot of discrimination against jews these days interesting analysis there is a discrimination against atheists a lot of people say no again remember american jews are living in urban or suburban settings they're not living in rural settings where you would experience that the most and so uh that's one of those areas where our setting influences our politics and our perception of whether people are persecuted against or not and did they have personal experiences with discrimination again a relatively small number have been personally called offensive names or snubbed in a social setting compared to what we might expect that number to be if society were as anti-semitic as certain organizations trying to raise money would lead you to believe well so this is a whirlwind tour through the american jewish population through the lens of this particular study which is a snapshot in time with its particular issues and agenda but i think it gives you a nice framework to understand where jews live what their earning proportion is what their education levels are what some of the important issues are to their community how they relate to each other and how they differ from each other and uh whether we're one community or several communities uh remains up remains to be seen and there's a number of interesting trends that i just want to end with in terms of looking forward to the release next week of the 2020 study it'll be very interesting to see for example where those uh intermediaries numbers go and the raising of children of intermarriage with some kind of jewish identity i think will be up because things have only gotten better in the organized jewish community since that 2013 study there are all kinds of new initiatives whether it's pj library which is free books for families or jewish outreach programs something called honeymoon israel trying to reach out to recently married couples congregations being more welcoming more rabbis willing to do weddings i mean there's all kinds of positive steps that have been done so i think that number will be up and the number of intermarried families identifying with some kind of jewish community may be higher um than we saw before um the jewish affiliation rate may still go down simply because that was the trend and that trend may continue that may change after the pandemic when people feel the need for community they may find more people coming to congregations and more congregations changing their due structures to be welcoming and inclusive as koharas has we may also find that the total number of jews has actually gone up we're used to hearing the jewish number go down because people think of inner marriage as a dead end once they married someone out forget it it's over but the more children of inner marriage identifying as jewish and i get a lot of them by the way coming to me to do their wedding because they want a rabbi at the wedding even if they had one parent that was jewish and one parent that wasn't they're choosing a jewish connection for their family going forward so there may be many more jews who identify as jewish because the loss rate has decreased and the retention rate is going up i'm really interested to see that denominational question the people who are raised orthodox are they still leaving in large numbers or are they doing a better job at retention in that community are jews actually becoming more traditional or are they simply moving laterally are those people leaving the conservative movement becoming more reformed or are they becoming what's called non-denominational and they're part of what are called independent minyanim and prayer circle so they're still actively jewish in a traditional vein but they're not part of any denominational category and maybe the denominations themselves are beginning to fade away in favor of flavors or styles or a spectrum instead of a b c or d we just don't fit in those silos as easily anymore and of course the top line number for us that will be fascinating is jews of no religion how many are there and what proportion are they and what do they do and uh how do we find them and how do we teach them about what we do in humanistic judaism so that they might decide that we are better than being nothing because i like to say this is one of our joke slogans we're better than nothing we're not just better than you know nothing but we're better than being nothing than doing nothing than having no community and we find meaning out of finding like-minded people and hopefully other jews have no religion or cultural jews or secular jews whatever label they put on them in this survey will also find us as a warm and welcoming home for them well so i noticed obviously it didn't say humanistic in any of the categories were not there as a choice but that's why i'm very curious to see what the new um how it was done this time also because so there's so much that isn't reflected and i think about all the stuff that we do so we as individuals who are very involved let's say in kohadas or humanistic judaism like you like me but uh it doesn't really the survey is sort of showing you know if you're an atheist then that sort of goes along with not being very involved there weren't as enough choices and under like practices and traditions that you do right what about if you have a whole bunch of you know there's so many other ways to form community that don't fit any of that the people and it might be a strong jewish tie so it's interesting and i don't know how they pick what they're gonna do yeah uh i mean there are uh these are sort of the summary reports sometimes they'll ask more questions like they might ask about hanukkah candles and a passover seder and uh reading jewish newspapers or listening to jewish music or you know they might ask some of those more cultural questions um it just depends on you know which report we're presenting this was sort of the overall headline survey they might have got they had a sub report on jewish practices where they detailed those more uh clearly i mean for us the top line number is actually not just the jews of no religion category which is about one-fifth of the overall population because the way they asked it i find very convoluted you know to start with uh are you jewish by religion there's going to be a lot of people who might be like us who fit in that category you know because they say yeah i'm jewish by religion you know that if i'm filling out a survey i click category jewish because that's what that's where i fit you know they don't often offer jewish as an ethnicity you know as something to fill out on a survey so they might have said jewish by religion when they're really more cultural when they ask that do you or not believe in god and they had the option of yes maybe or no 23 saying no i do not believe in god that was really interesting and that population might be more amenable to a humanistic jewish message although some of those people who don't believe go to synagogue and some of those people who never go to synagogue believe you know it's not a neat map of they're all the same people here because there are non-believers in pews at synagogues because they go because they have a friend there or they like the rabbi or they like the view of lake michigan from out of the window um or whatever the the variable might be and um we uh you know so our appeal is going to be hitting a little of this initial little vest and that that that niche and so on uh but you're right how they ask the questions and who they ask them to is really makes a big difference and i also i wanted to start with highlighting the numbers they only talked to 678 jews of no religion that's you know that was the raw number that they wanted up completing the interviews with and only about i think 1700 uh jews by religion so i mean i know it's a lot of work and i i don't envy them calling 70 000 people to try to get you know 2500 completed interviews here um but you know you could really skew those numbers you you hit a clutch of you know reconstruction as jews and you're going to get a whole very different answer for a particular population um so it'll be really interesting to see how they approach that question of finding jews for this latest survey um i actually was part of a meeting of the chicago board of rabbis with some of the consultants for the uh this study and we talked through with them those questions of cell phones and and also by the way if you're finding jews just by last names in a phone book because certainly if you have intercultural families that get married and take on names like rotten swami or you have people who choose to identify as jewish and come with not jewish names in their conversion process you know you're not going to find them in the old-fashioned ways the jewish community is a lot more diverse now than it was before and it's going to require a lot different ways of finding these self-identified jews and it'll be interesting to see what they managed to find i again i couldn't i wish i had you know scheduled this program in two weeks and i would have had the 2020 results handy but this at least gives you a framework of understanding where we were in 2013 to be able to compare it and understanding what they're talking about in terms of categories to understand how it fits in and how you might fit into those categories please um i wonder whether the reported rise in anti-semitism will be reflective in in the new survey yes that number of did you have personal experience or not might be higher that's true and what's your perception of how much jews are discriminated against no i it was a majority said that jews were not discriminated against maybe that number will be higher um but i'm not positive because i do know there are jews in charlottesville in fact we have uh members of our national movement who are in charlottesville virginia um but there's not a lot of jews in charlottesville and there are a lot of jews in new york city and there are a lot of jews in chicago and there are a lot of jews in jewish areas in jewish neighborhoods and jewish suburbs who are very unlikely to hear them i mean i don't know i could ask my kids if they've ever heard any kind of anti-jewish rhetoric or had an experience like that in their school experience my guess would be no or very rare and if anything it might have come from other jewish students like you know playing uh playing with language with each other um but i i highly doubt they would have had like a a very strongly anticipate i mean the the hullabaloo from the school district and the parent you know cohorts in highland park specifically would be through the roof i would have heard about it um they might find it on the internet that's true somebody comments um but in terms of personal interaction it's unlikely um where you know you might find it elsewhere but you get cities like new york you get a very diverse population i mean it's been really shocking to me to see um a number of these attacks on asian people particularly asian women have been have been done by african-american men and women this latest attack with a hammer and there's a lot of tension within minority communities it's not just white populations that are oppressing all people of color equally and so it depends on where you live and who your neighbors are and what their issues are there was a case just last year in philadelphia where the head of the naacp in philadelphia tweeted out the most obnoxious anti-semitic image that he said uh i mean he was trying to defend it even after it was posted to their credit the national naacp removed him from his position there was a whole clergy alliance across the nominations who were telling him he was wrong and he had to leave it was a really nice moment of solidarity um for the organized communities of both uh blacks and jews and black jews as bridges and all kinds of groups working together um but the fact that it happened was really disconcerting um so i think you're right that the rise of more visible anti-semitism particularly on the internet would have stronger numbers in response to that but the problem with some of the anti-semitism surveys is they'll say have you heard of anyone who had an issue with something like this and then they report them all and don't zero them out for doubles you know so the last kind of campus have you heard of someone who had an issue like this and it could be two issues but if that those two people have the same 30 friends who answer the survey it sounds like 60 issues you know because because the same thing is being reported multiple times so it'll be interesting to see how those numbers come out i think you're right that they will be higher um but i don't think they'll be as high as people have feared um simply because of you know the urban uh setting and victoria points out as well how recent was the issue or have you ever heard this at any point in your life you know then again the older you are the more likely it's just going to add up at some point you'll run into some jerk i mean i can think back to when i was in uh middle school i went to a tennis camp and i hit a shot that hit the net and barely dribbled over you know as happens um and the person across from me said oh that's a jew shot and i pointed out to him this was uh that was a problem but and he had just never thought about it as you know that's just what he'd always heard people say uh so i i would count i haven't heard anything in you know probably 40 years in my life but you know if it was an ever thing then that would have to count in the uh in the list you

Channel: IISHJvid

Views: 159

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Secular Humanistic Judaism, Humanistic Judaism, American Jews, American Judaism, Adam Chalom

Id: goVw57sgBrk

Length: 59min 19sec (3559 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021