Jews and the American Religious Landscape

Uzi Rebhun

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9780231541497
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: North American History

Jews and the American Religious Landscape explores major complementary facets of American Judaism and Jewish life through a comprehensive analysis of contemporary demographic and sociological data. Focusing on the most important aspects of social development—geographic location, socioeconomic stratification, family dynamics, group identification, and political orientation—the volume adds empirical value to questions concerning the strengths of Jews as a religious and cultural group in America and the strategies they have developed to integrate successfully into a Christian society.

With advanced analyses of data gathered by the Pew Research Center, Jews and the American Religious Landscape shows that Jews, like other religious and ethnic minorities, strongly identify with their religion and culture. Yet their particular religiosity, along with such factors as population dispersion, professional networks, and education, have created different outcomes in various contexts. Living under the influence of a Christian majority and a liberal political system has also cultivated a distinct ethos of solidarity and egalitarianism, enabling Judaism to absorb new patterns in ways that mirror its integration into American life. Rich in information thoughtfully construed, this book presents a remarkable portrait of what it means to be an American Jew today.

1

POPULATION SIZE AND DYNAMICS

RELIGION AND DEMOGRAPHY

RELIGION AND demography are strongly interrelated. Religious affiliation influences demographic patterns of fertility, mortality, and migration. Religion figures importantly in the pace and trajectory of demographic changes not only directly but also indirectly, through its effect on intervening factors such as age at marriage and family stability. Likewise, denominational preference, or the nature of group belonging, be it religious or ethnic, irrespective of the extent of religious involvement and practice, may attest to an individual’s willingness to heed religious rituals, including those that aim to influence demographic fundamentals. Accordingly, in religiously diverse societies such as that of the United States, religious groups are experiencing unique changes in their size and, in turn, their share in the general population and their structural characteristics (Ebaugh 2003; Hout 2003; Hout, Greeley, and Wilde 2001; Mueller and Lane 1972; Park and Reimer 2002; Roof and McKinney 1987; Weber 1991 [1922]).

At times, religious groups remain stable even though they exhibit high or low levels of the demographic patterns that determine pace of growth. This may allude to another factor that affects group size: accession to or secession from the group. In a society that emphasizes principles of pluralism and individualism and has high rates of interfaith marriage, religious switching has a strong effect. Thus religious changes mirror broader social and cultural processes and are part of the American way of life (Emerson and Essenburg 2013; Schwadel 2013).

This chapter exploits a broad range of data from the 2007 Pew survey to analyze and discuss the demographic characteristics of American Jewry per se and in comparison with the patterns of other religious groups. Also, where possible, changes over the past fifty years are tracked with the help of data from the 1957 Current Population Survey. The issues discussed are population size, fertility, international migration, religious switching, and age composition.

POPULATION SIZE

The size of a religious group, i.e., the number of people who identify as belonging to a specific religion, is of prime importance in determining the group’s visibility in the general environment, its social and political power, and its demographic patterns of fertility, mortality, migration, and identity changes (accession/secession). Occasionally, a group may be small in number but will stand out if characterized by high social and economic attainments by which it is situated at a major crossroads of the society at large. That exception aside, the size of a group is important in intergroup relations on the national scene and in the planning of the group’s own community institutions and educational, cultural, and religious services. If members of a group share their religious faith with peers elsewhere, size will affect transnational relations, distribution of resources, and competition over center and periphery—all of which are carrying heavy ideological loads.

Much sociodemographic research on contemporary Jewry tends to define as Jewish all people who identify themselves as such, whether they consider their connection with Judaism religious, ethnic, or cultural, along with people of Jewish origin who express no religious preference. This group also embraces Jews by choice, i.e., those who adopt Judaism via formal conversion or otherwise. This highly inclusive approach is more reflective of subjective feelings rather than of rabbinic or any other legal definitions. It accepts a person as Jewish regardless of her or his commitment or behavior in terms of religiosity, beliefs, familiarity with Jewish sources, communal ties, and so on. This collective, known in the literature as the “core Jewish population,” is the estimated pool for determining the size and characteristics of the Jewish population (DellaPergola 2014a; Kosmin et al. 1991).

The National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS), carried out in 2000/01, estimated the core Jewish population at 5.2 million persons (Kotler-Berkowitz et al. 2003). Some social scientists and community professionals criticized the NJPS for not having sampled the target population comprehensively, especially among those somewhat removed from Jewish involvement and commitment; for partial loss of survey-related information at an early screening stage; for a high nonresponse rate; and for counting as Jews some one million persons whose relation to Judaism is questionable, i.e., who reported having a Jewish background but were currently affiliated with a religion other than Judaism, provided it is not a competing faith (i.e., nonmonotheistic) faith (Kadushin, Phillips, and Saxe 2005). This new estimate, however, was found to be highly compatible with the number of American Jews found in the previous NJPS from 1990 along the assumptions of continuity in demographic patterns and the large-scale emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union (DellaPergola 2005). Using this as a basis for yearly updating of the evolution of the Jewish population, and after upwardly correcting the original NJPS estimates for some undercounts, it was suggested that at the end of 2007 there were about 5.4 million Jews living in the United States (DellaPergola 2013a).¹

Another way of estimating the size of American Jewry is by compiling local Jewish community surveys and tallying the results to yield a nationwide profile. This approach suffers from differences in the timing of the surveys (raising the risk of the double-counting of people who moved between communities) and inconsistency in defining the target population and in sampling techniques. Since not all Jewish communities have carried out a survey—this is said especially of small and isolated communities—their size can only be estimated on the basis of nonsurvey sources of unclear credibility. Based on such an approach, the number of Jews in America toward the end of the first decade of this century was estimated at 6.4 million (Sheskin and Dashefsky 2008). Still others employ a meta-analysis approach of general social surveys that include a question about religious faith and integrate these samples to form an estimate of the number of Jews in the country (Tighe et al. 2010). This method is susceptible to impediments similar to those of the community Jewish surveys: variations in timing of the data collection and different wording of questions about religious identity. Further, the general surveys do not ask about nonreligious types of belonging and therefore omit persons who identify only ethnically as Jews. These drawbacks, along with very small sample size (several dozen Jews in any given survey), create the risk of skewing the results severely. The combining of many surveys to obtain a large total sample does not necessarily surmount the separate biases of each survey. Moreover, these surveys concern themselves with adults only; they base the estimate of children (and of Jews not by religion) on other sources and assumptions. The meta-analysis elicits a population of approximately 6.5 million Jews in the United States in recent years (Saxe, Tighe, and Boxer 2014).

The difference between the lowest and the highest estimates, about one million people, is definitely meaningful. It may be resolved, reliably if not totally, with the help of the 2007 Pew survey. An analysis of the data (weighted) found 1,515 respondents who, when asked “What is your present religion, if any?” answered “Judaism” (hereafter “Jews by religion”) and 261 respondents who professed no affiliation with any religion but indicated that one of their parents is Jewish (hereafter “ethnic Jews”). The tally yields 1,776 Jews out of the total of 88,292 respondents or 2.0115 percent. It must be remembered that only people aged eighteen and above took the survey.²

In 2007 the country had 301,621,000 inhabitants (U.S. Census Bureau 2008). Among them, 227,719,000 were adults aged eighteen and over (75.5 percent). Multiplying this number of adults by the percentage of Jews (227,719,000*2.0115/100), one obtains an adult Jewish population of 4,580,005 that year.

A Jewish population projection from 2000, based on that year’s NJPS (which assumed the persistence of the recently prevailing levels of demographic factors), estimated the zero to seventeen age group in 2005 at 19.5 percent of the total Jewish population (half a percentage point lower than their share in 2000). There is no reason to believe that this proportion changed dramatically between then and 2007. Hence the U.S. Jewish population in 2007 may be estimated at 5,690,146 (4,580,568/80.5* 100). Obviously, any other assumption regarding the proportion of children would decrease or increase the total number of American Jews.³

To put it more conveniently, the sundry estimates of American Jewry range from a minimum of 5.4 million to a maximum of 6.5 million. The Pew survey finding, 5.7 million, falls into the lower half of the range. Given the many complexities that polltakers face when measuring a rare population, and the sampling errors that characterize any sample-based survey, it may be useful to suggest not a fixed number of the American Jewish population but rather a range of 5.5 million to 6 million toward the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. No less important is the observation that, apart from minor fluctuations, the number of American Jews has remained fairly stable in the past fifty years and may even have increased a little. This demographic stagnation reflects a balance among factors of erosion, including low fertility, population aging, and assimilation among one segment of American Jewry, and the growing share of the Orthodox due to higher fertility, an increase over time in the (initially quite low) proportion of children of mixed parentage who are identified and raised as Jews (chiefly due to more marital exogamy among Jewish women, the main predictor of the religious identity of children of intermarriage), greater willingness to self-identify as Jews in America’s multicultural and individualistic climate, and large-scale immigration of Jews, mainly from the former Soviet Union and Israel (DellaPergola 2013a).

The numerical size of American Jewry is unquestionably the main issue on which demographers who concern themselves with this population disagree. This dispute has three different but complementary aspects. The first aspect is one of scientific methodology, i.e., the appropriate way to sample a rare population such as Jews. The answer may be a countrywide survey that enumerates people who have some present or past connection with Judaism, using an inclusive set of definitions of belonging. Or one may gather local Jewish surveys and merge them to yield an overall national estimate. Still others may rely on general surveys, each including a small number of Jewish respondents, conducted at different times, using different methods, and with partial coverage of the targeted population, adding them together to form a large enough sample of self-defined Jews, with the addition of estimates of the number of persons who defined themselves Jewish in terms other than religion and children. While some devotees of the first approach are critical of each of the other two methods, it does not work the other way around, i.e., the strength of the countrywide surveys is affirmed by a broad consensus.

Accordingly, it comes as no surprise that when the results of the Pew survey of the American Jewish population of 2013 were released, they were broadly accepted. The survey found 5.7 million Jews in the United States—4.7 million adults (82.5 percent) and 1.0 million children (17.5 percent). Among the adults, eight of ten were Jews by religion; the others defined themselves Jewish but with no religion.⁴ In 2013, however, an additional million people reported no religious affiliation and defined themselves “partly Jewish,” boosting the “Jewish population” to 6.7 million. Some of these partial Jews grew up as Jews or had two Jewish parents; most had one Jewish and one non-Jewish parent. Therefore different researchers adopt different numbers to argue for (i.e., similarity) or against (dissimilarity) the other approaches, those elicited by community or meta-analysis that correspond to the Pew 2013 findings. Expressed differently, “one survey for all, with everybody happy with their newly found proof that they were right” (DellaPergola 2014b:33).

This leads to a second controversial element in gauging the size of American Jewry, namely, who is a Jew? Traditionally, surveys considered as Jews only those who unequivocally defined themselves as such—either by religion or, among those who profess no religion, reporting themselves Jewish. Obviously, under circumstances of pluralism and the multicultural context that typify contemporary America, a dual group identity, be it racial, ethnic, national, religious, or ambivalence, is possible if not commonplace. Furthermore, a large majority of the partial Jews (eight out of ten) profess pride in being Jewish (DellaPergola 2014b). This in itself strongly reinforces the claim that such people are more Jewish than they are members of any other group. Conversely, only 4 percent of the partly Jewish stated that it is very important for them to be Jewish (leaving open the possibility that many others also find it important, but less so). Notably, the proportion among Jews with no religion who deem it very important to be Jewish is 20 percent. Generally speaking, among the various indicators, the religioethnic identification of partial Jews is weaker than that of Jews by religion or Jews without religion (DellaPergola 2014b). Even though partial Jews are definitely a fringe group in the Jewish population, they have some level of Jewish awareness. Bear in mind that NJPS 2000/01 included as Jews those individuals of Jewish background who did not define themselves as Jews and professed another faith, provided it was not antithetical to Judaism, i.e., not monotheistic.

The partial Jews put paid to the dichotomy of Jews and non-Jews (DellaPergola 2014b) by falling in between. Given their background, their eschewing of any other religion, and their identificational markers, they are closer to Jews than to non-Jews. At the present writing, with the Pew 2013 data not yet available, one can only suggest that this group should be treated differently from those who define themselves exclusively as Jews. A loose group identity should be judged through the lens of religious identification of attitudes and behaviors. When someone says he or she has a Jewish background, is proud to be Jewish, maintains important Jewish practices, and takes part in Jewish community activities, she or he should be included in the Jewish community for the purpose of estimating the community’s size. Some partial Jews may even have stronger Jewish identification than some counterparts who profess Jewishness, but with no religion. Other partial Jews, who have a weak to nil Jewish background, display no particularistic Jewish interest, and partake of no Jewish activities, should be considered distant adjuncts of the core Jewish population and outliers from the Jewish collective, in a neutral zone but unaffiliated with any other religion.⁵ Were such an approach applied, American Jewry would number somewhere between the low estimate (5.7 million) and the high one (6.7 million).

Painstaking assessment of partial Jews’ affiliation is essential for the additional reason that American Jews are not discussed in a vacuum. Rather, they are often presented within the broad context of world Jewry. This introduces the third aspect of controversy among demographers who take an interest in the Jews: comparing the number of American Jews with that of their counterparts in Israel, more generally the number of Diaspora Jews versus those in Israel and the demographic patterns of each population group. It involves insights about the Jews’ status as a minority versus majority in their country of residence, self-confidence contrasted with alienation, group vitality as against assimilation, and the environment that can best assure Jewish survival and hence valuable meanings. Size also matters for the distribution of Jewish public resources and the planning of educational and social services. In this regard, non-Jews by local official definitions who nevertheless have some connection with Judaism exist in other countries as well. The most representative group of this kind is that composed of former Soviet Union (FSU) immigrants who settled in Israel under the Law of Return but do not qualify as Jews under rabbinical law and, accordingly, are defined in Israel not as Jews but as “lacking religion.” Many of them might have chosen to convert to Judaism, if this process in Israel, governed by Orthodox requirements, were easier. Still, their decision to immigrate to and live in Israel puts them through a “sociological conversion” (Cohen 2006). If social scientists include all partial Jews in the United States in the Jewish population, they should do the same for the FSU immigrants in Israel with no religion, augmenting Israel’s Jewish population by half a million people. In fact, if only partial Jews in the United States who practice some form of Judaism were counted as American Jews, the “lacking religion” in Israel should also be included in that country’s Jewish population. Paradoxically, these American partial Jews cannot immigrate to Israel if they lack a Jewish parent or are currently not married to a Jew. It is illogical to consider them Jews while those of no religion in Israel, who have some kind of Jewish kinship relationship, would not be counted in the Jewish population. The other extreme among the possibilities, if one were to maintain maximum uniformity among communities in defining “who is a Jew,” would be neither to count the partial Jews in America nor any of the FSU immigrants of no religion in Israel as Jewish.

Either way, Jews are a small ...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents 
• Preface
• Introduction: Religion in America
• 1. Population Size and Dynamics
• 2. Spatial and Socioeconomic Stratification
• 3. Interfaith Marriage
• 4. Religious Identification
• 5. Political Orientation
• Epilogue: Jews and the American Religious Landscape
• Appendix A1. Religious Identificational Variables Used in Analysis
• Appendix A2. Loading of Questions on Religious Identification Factors: Principle Component Varimax Rotation
• Notes
• References
• Index