Have a million lost Jews really been discovered in the United States? And, if so, where have they been until now? And how is "Jew" even defined?
The publication of the American Jewish Committee's Year Book last week prompted widespread debate. In one article, Ira Sheskin of the University of Miami and Arnold Dashefsky of the University of Connecticut, summarized studies and estimates of Jews in various U.S. cities and reached the surprising total of 6.4 million. By way of contrast, in another article, I argued that the best studies indicated that there are currently "only" 5.2-5.3 million Jews living in the U.S. today. The data is based on the total number of people who consider themselves Jews, in addition to Jews who did not state their religion and children of Jews, or those who grew up as Jews and do not have a different monotheistic religion. How can the difference of more than a million people between the two estimates be explained?
A review of the number of Jews living in the U.S. and in the entire world is interesting from three main perspectives: the research methods used to define and identify Jews; the nature of majority-minority relations in the world's countries, including the U.S.' and the changes in reciprocal relations between the Jews in the Diaspora and the Jews in the State of Israel. However, such a demographic study is not at all simple: the task is to isolate a small minority, the borders of whose identity is gradually disappearing among the majority, and on top of that, Jews are usually not recorded separately in censuses or population registries. In addition, surveys rely on community membership lists that are far from accurate.
Much ado over numbers
The ideal study would rely on a random sampling, which provides everyone with a chance to be included in the Jewish population, from the active Jew who is identifiable as such, to the marginal and hesitant member of the fold. Telephone surveys provide what is sought on the basis of a sampling of the overall American population, from which the relevant households are sorted out. The selection of the participants in an in-depth survey must reflect the broadest possible criteria in order not to omit a single person, even the most marginal one in terms of his identification with Judaism and Jews in any way, subjective as that may be.
However, the questioning method needs to be more sophisticated than: "Hello? Is there a Jew in the house?" There has to be some relationship of trust established between the interviewer and the interviewee before getting to questions that may be sensitive, that relate to religious or national identity or to personal beliefs and behavior patterns. This was the method used to conduct the 2001 National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) of the American Jewish population, which followed two similar surveys in 1970 and 1990.
Six senior researchers, headed by Lawrence Kotler-Berkowitz and Steven Cohen (who is today among the survey's critics), signed the NJPS released in 2003, which estimated that a total of some 5.1-5.2 million Jews resided in the U.S., a figure that was 300-400,000 lower than the figure published in the 1990 survey. The uproar sparked by the survey results led to the appointment of a professional committee to review the research methods.
The committee reached several conclusions: the rate of response was low but not low enough to necessarily affect the essence of the results; the population estimate was somewhat lower than other social surveys; there was excess coverage of Jews with "a strong identity," i.e., a rosier portrait than warranted by the actual situation was presented. But, in the end, the survey was accepted as professionally kosher.
In 2001, three senior researchers conducted a competing national survey of Jewish identity (AJIS). This study provided a similar result, 5.35 million Jews, also around 150,000 lower than the 1990 survey result.
Of course, different definitions of "who is a Jew" can create dramatic differences in the results. So in the NJPS survey only 4.3 million people declared Judaism as their religion, while a million or so others were included in the overall calculation as having an ethnic-cultural Jewish identity or another indirect or direct Jewish context. In addition, there were 1.5 million non-Jewish Americans by their own declaration who are the offspring of Jewish parents, but grew up as non-Jews or converted sometime in their lives. The total number of eligible candidates under the Law of Return, which defines eligibility using broad criteria, including even the grandchildren of Jews and their spouses, is estimated at over 10 million. The differences between the various population estimates stem primarily from the decision to include or not include non-Jewish relatives in the total count.
Starting in 1790, the U.S. has conducted a national census every 10 years (which does not mention religion). It is not a summary of data from local authorities, rather it is a new stock-taking that is done from scratch each time. The summary of data from local Jewish communities with regard to the number of Jews provides a very problematic factual basis: This way, approximately one-fifth of the 6.4 million figure of American Jews does not stem from any research in the field, but from "personal knowledge" of informants in the Jewish communities, who threw out a number to the best of their knowledge.
Other numbers are derived from various studies that are spread out over 10 years; a stunning weakness given the scale of internal migration among American Jews, among whom every five years some 25 percent change their city of residence. The chance that the same Jew is counted twice, once in his city of origin and once in his new city, is high. Local studies are conducted using different research methods and definitions of who is a Jew, which sometimes include the non-Jewish household members and also rely partially on membership lists of Jewish institutions, whose accuracy and how up-to-date they are is are hard to assess. And another big problem with them is that commercial entities, and not university departments, conduct most of them.
Not the number, the trend
Another challenge to the NJPS and AJIS recently came from a group of researchers at Brandeis University's Steinhardt Social Research Institute, headed by Leonard Saxe. The institute is about to publish a study of national social surveys of a general nature. In these surveys, only 5 percent or so of the American public does not answer the question about any religious preference, whereas both the NJPS and the AIJS, which focus specifically on religious affiliation and affiliation to Judaism, the omission of any religious affiliation reaches some 15-20 percent. This variation offers an interesting clue on the different perception of religion in the U.S. as a factual characteristic that everybody must have, or as a meaningful part of a person's identity. It is important to note that the estimated number of Jews obtained again and again from those general surveys is 5.1 million people, and, after adding the 5 percent who did not state their religion, it is 5.3-5.4 million. The argument that another 15-20 percent should be added to those surveys as was done in the NJPS and AIJS seems most surprising.
The really important matter is not the number, but the trend that generates it. The number of Jews in the U.S. does not emerge from outer space, but stems from the size of that population on a previous date, plus-minus changes that occurred. Clearly, the number of Jewish immigrants entering the U.S., even though today it is relatively low, exceeds the number leaving for Israel and elsewhere. Clearly also the low Jewish birth rate, which for 30 years has stood at 1.5 Jewish children to the average woman, creates a sharp aging trend, at the end of which the number of Jews dying exceeds the number of Jews born. Low Jewish birthrates reflect widespread non-marriage, postponement of births, and out-marriage rates above 50 percent of those born Jewish, and most of whose children are brought up without any Jewish identity.
Likewise, the balance of converts and other new members of the Jewish faith (which is on the decline) and those who convert to Christianity and others who assimilate (which is on the rise) is very close and apparently ends with a deficit on the Jewish side. In total, the Jewish population of the U.S. stopped growing around 1990 and since then has been in the process of a moderate decline. This critical point is hardly disputed.
It is possible that in the wake of the debate over the results of the NJPS survey, there will not be a similar survey in 2010. But that would be like shooting the messenger instead of dealing seriously with his message. Failing to see the trends in American Jewry from a national perspective, using uniform methods and integrating demography, sociology, economics and social psychology may take the status of research back to the level of the 1960s, while erasing the achievements of the last 40 years.
And it is impossible not to involve politics. There would have been no debate had the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (JPPPI) report, which was presented to the Israeli government several days ago, not included the determination that due to the various demographic trends in the U.S. and Israel, for the first time it was highly likely that the number of Jews in the State of Israel is slightly higher than the number of American Jews (proper disclosure: I was responsible for this distinction). This report, whether it is true for the moment or for another few years, is unacceptable to certain circles abroad. One thing is clear beyond a shadow of a doubt: Today there are 1.8 million Jews under the age of 20 in Israel, as opposed to 1.2-1.4 million in the U.S.; and over 800,000 Jews above the age of 60 in Israel, compared to 1.2-1.4 million in the U.S. - and the implications are clear.
Even if Israel in the future becomes the center of the largest Jewish population in the world, that does not justify demand for more aid and resources from foreign sources. On the contrary, more responsibility is to be expected from the Jewish community in Israel, less dependence on the Diaspora and more allocation of resources to maintaining Jewish life in communities throughout the world.
Professor Della Pergola holds the Shlomo Argov chair of Israel-Diaspora Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute.