Honey, I Shrunk the People

Shrinking the Jewish community.
Aren't we a small enough minority? Do we really have to reduce our numbers?

NEW YORK, NY, September 11, 2003 – Where have all the people gone? According to the long-delayed National Jewish Population Study, released earlier this week by United Jewish Communities, there are nearly 1 million fewer households with someone who is Jewish; 3 million fewer people living in those households; and significantly lower rate of intermarriage — as compared to the important and unchallenged American Jewish Identity Survey (AJIS 2001), conducted by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

AJIS 2001, which was republished this summer by the Center for Cultural Judaism in an effort to share its vital findings, also found that nearly one-half of American Jews identify themselves as secular or somewhat secular. Indeed, the word "secular" does NOT appear anywhere in the NJPS report. The cover illustration for the NJPS publication is of a large, ornate, silver mezuzah with a child's hand reaching for it. The symbolism is clear. NJPS attempts to further marginalize non-religious, secular, and cultural Jews, which comprise nearly one-half of the American Jewish population.

The long-term and expensive undertaking of NJPS 2001 has discrepancies too significant to ignore, according to Myrna Baron, executive director of the Center for Cultural Judaism. “Our work seeks to identify and engage the non-religious, secular, and cultural Jewish population, and those who remain disaffected and unaffiliated because of the lack of programs that welcome their secular beliefs. Yet, after all these years of holding onto the NJPS data, the current announcement does not even include any information on self-definition or identity. We’re told that will come later. At this time, only synagogue membership is disclosed — which, at best, provides an incomplete understanding of the population. It appears that this is another attempt to downplay the significance of the non-religious Jewish population in the United States.”

The Center for Cultural Judaism’s vision of the Jewish population is an inclusive view of the Jewish family — as opposed to the exclusive and restrictive view, as seen in NJPS 2001, that limits itself to people who are Jewish by religion or fit some other more traditional definition of Jewish membership. According to Ms. Baron, “we are particularly troubled by this narrow view taken by a major Jewish organization that presumably speaks for the entire Jewish population. AJIS 2001, which is a methodological replication of NJPS 1990, provides a comparative view of the population along with the inclusive picture that NJPS 2001 avoids. In addition, one of the consequences of the specific methods used to validate this narrower view is the lowering of the intermarriage rate, which makes it impossible to compare to 1990.”

Egon Mayer, chairman of the Brooklyn College Sociology Department, Professor of Jewish Studies at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, and leading sociologist on AJIS 2001, explained, “There appear to be three major differences in methodology that add up to lowering the NJPS count against AJIS and the results they found in NJPS 1990. The first is that this time the Northeast was over-sampled while regions with fewer Jews and more marginal Jews were under-sampled; the second is that in intermarried households, AJIS 2001 spoke with any adult who answered the phone, while NJPS insisted on speaking only with the Jewish partner, which, inevitably, led to a loss of households (and particular households) by switching interviews. The third major difference is the theological distinction the survey drew when counting those who have Jewish parentage but are now some other religion. Both AJIS and the 1990 NJPS included anyone who stated that he or she had Jewish parentage. However the current NJPS only included those whose other religion is not a monotheistic religion. Therefore, someone who answered, ‘I have a Jewish mother and I am now Buddhist,’ was counted, while someone who answered, ‘I have a Jewish mother and I am now Catholic,’ was not. This theological distinction therefore skews the data on this issue.”

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