Americas Jews

6. Taking Stock: Contemporary America's Jews

6. Taking Stock: Contemporary America's Jews Reliable data on the American Jewish population are very difficult to obtain. The doctrine of separation of church and state has been interpreted to preclude questions concerning religious affiliation in surveys conducted by the United States Bureau of the Census. In the mid-1950s the Bureau of the Census did conduct a survey of about 35,000 households in which respondents were given the opportunity to respond to a question concerning religious affiliation, and a brief report of that survey was subsequently issued (U. S. Bureau of the Census, 1958). This report and two later studies derived from data in the report were, for many years, the only sources of national information on the religious characteristics of the American population. Given the many changes in American society and culture during the last quarter of a century, it is doubtful that these data can be utilized at the present time for anything more than broad speculation about the religion of the American population in general and American Jews in particular. Also, since the bureau does not identify Jews as an ethnic group, its data cannot be utilized as a source of information about Jews. For more or less current information on the Jewish population in the United States, there are three main sources. The most widely used and quoted, and probably the most reliable for the decade of the 19705, is the National Jewish Population Study (NJPS), sponsored by the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds. This study, the most scientifically valid national sample of American Jews ever obtained, 13S 136 America's Jews in Transition provided a wealth of previously unavailable information. A complete report of the findings was never published, however . For a variety of reasons, only a series of brief reports that summarized data of concern in community planning within local Jewish federations was issued. Since the data for the study were collected during the late 1960s and very early 1970s, there is some question as to their current reliability. It seems reasonable to assume that significant changes have taken place in the characteristics of American Jewry during the 1970s. Another source of information on the American Jewish population is in the series of community surveys periodically conducted by local Jewish federations. The quality of these surveys, in terms of social research techniques, varies widely. Also, how representative they are, even for the local community , has been questioned in many cases, since they frequently survey only those Jews affiliated with local Jewish institutions. Questions have also been raised about the degree to which a particular community is representative of American Jewry as a whole. Yet in this respect Goldstein reported that his review of the community surveys revealed surprisingly uniform patterns (Goldstein, 1971). A final source of information is the limited number of specialized studies conducted by social scientists and reported in academic journals. Many criticisms directed at the community surveys are applicable here as well, especially since the number of Jewish cases in many of the samples is extremely small. Given the limitations of reliable data, the following composite portrait should be taken as tentative. Yet, since the data come from a variety of sources and many findings are more or less similar, we can assume that the picture that emerges is close to being true. Size The most educated estimates of the Jewish population in the United States place it between 5,500,000 and 5,690,000 in 1981. These estimates are based upon the 1970-71 National Contemporary America's Jews 137 Jewish Population Study estimates of the number of non-Jews in "Jewish households," which are then deducted from the estimates of persons in Jewish households (Chenkin and Miran, 1982, p. 165; Schmelz and Della Pergola, 1982, p. 283). Accordingly, Jews were between 2.39 and 2.47 percent of the total United States population which in 1981 was estimated at 230,000,000. When these figures are compared with those of the 1930s, when the Jewish population was 3.7 percent of the total population, obviously the Jewish component of the American population is becoming smaller. Not only is it decreasing relative to the total population, it is decreasing in absolute terms as welL because the estimated American Jewish birth rate is even lower than the 2.1 that is generally accepted to be replacement level. The reasons for the negative Jewish...