Dr. Arnold Dashefsky

By Cindy Mindell

STORRS – Two years ago, the American Jewish Committee published the final edition of the American Jewish Year Book (AJYB) which, for 108 years, was widely regarded as the authoritative record of demographics and trends in Jewish communities in the U.S. and throughout the world.

This year, two academics have picked up where the AJYB left off. Prof. Arnold Dashefsky of UConn and Prof. Ira Sheskin of the University of Miami had been working together on a Jewish population report to be published in 2009 when the AJC announced its decision to discontinue its publication. This year, the pair posted the study on the website of the Mandell L. Berman Institute North American Jewish Data Bank (NAJDB) at UConn, the central depository of social-scientific studies of North American Jewry.

Dashefsky is director of the NAJDB; Sheskin serves on its board. For their 2010 Jewish population study, the scholars enlisted the co-sponsorship of Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) and the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry.

He spoke with the Ledger on trends in American Jewish population and what they may indicate for Jewish continuity.

Q: What were some of the more surprising findings in your study?

A: The most challenging thing is our claim that there are approximately 6.5 million Jews in U.S. The forthcoming world Jewish population study counts 5.2 million Jews in the U.S. So how do you reconcile this apparent contradiction? The answer is that the world estimate is based on the number cited in the National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) of 2000-01, sponsored by JFNA, which is 5.2 million. Our estimate is based on an aggregation of many different population estimates from 1,000 different communities. Larger communities have carried out population surveys which are representative of the great majority of the Jewish population in the U.S. But there are many more communities for which there are no surveys, so together those numbers add up to more than what the NJPS found.

Our estimate is probably an over-count because not all the communities gather their data on the same one date, like the U.S. Census Bureau does, and there is some mobility among the population. So, for example, someone who was counted in Boston in 2005 may have moved and been counted in New Haven in 2010. We don’t include people living in one place nine months of the year who winter somewhere else.

Most of my colleagues tend to suggest that there was an under-count in the NJPS. One reason might be that it was conducted by a market research organization as opposed to the North American Jewish Data Bank, so people may have felt reluctant to share their religious background. Also, an element of the younger portions of the American population is abandoning landlines and only landlines were called, using the Random Digit Dialing method. The NJPS surveys 4,500 Jews, and more than 200,000 calls had to be made to reach that number. In our study, to reach 2,000 Jews, 100,000 calls had to be made.

It’s possible that nine to 10 percent of the Americans surveyed didn’t answer the question on religious background.

Q: What do your findings say about how the size of the American Jewish community is changing?

A: Many American Jews may not be aware of the fact that our population is not growing, even though 6.5 million is larger than the number found a year or two ago. That number is larger because people have been more helpful in identifying smaller Jewish communities that we hadn’t tallied before.

But what most American Jews don’t appreciate fully is that, while the population of American Jewish communities is relatively stable, the share that Jews represent of the total American population is half what it was at its peak in the 1930s. In the ’30s, the total American population was between 100 million and 150 million, of which Jews represented 3.7 percent. Now, Jews represent between 1.8 and two percent of the total population. That tells us that the rest of the American population is growing at a much faster rate than the Jewish population, due to a higher birthrate among non-Jews and non-Jewish immigration from abroad.

Q: You previously did a study on intermarriage. Tell us about it?

A: “Intermarriage and Jewish Journeys in the United States” involved a variety of couples in four major metropolitan areas.

People who raise the questions about intermarriage are concerned about Jewish continuity.

On one hand, intermarriage could be a boon to the Jewish population. If the non-Jewish spouse decides to become Jewish or if the couple raises its children as Jews, they might actually increase the Jewish population. Intermarriage, at this point, is not necessarily contributing to a growth in the Jewish population, but it is contributing to the growth of Jewish households in which Jews are living. Another issue that motivated us to do the study was a recognition that there is a portion of the Jewish population that is intermarried that is also committed to living a Jewish life, even if the spouse hasn’t converted. In our interviews – and I stress that they do not constitute a representative sample of all intermarried couples – in many dimensions, some couples had Jewish behaviors similar to or exceeding the larger Jewish population.

Q: How are those behaviors similar or different among intermarried Jews and in-married Jews?

A: In our sample, there were only two variables that had any significance, where intermarried couples were much lower down than the 2000-01 NJPS: two percent of intermarried couples keep kosher, vs. 21 percent of the general Jewish population; and two-fifths of our sample regarded being Jewish as “very important,” vs. 50 percent of the NJPS respondents.

In other areas – synagogue membership, lighting Shabbat and Chanukah candles, participating in a Passover seder – intermarried couples actually exceeded the American Jewish population as a whole, because our sample was more child-focused, whereas the national sample included a high percentage of older respondents. Fasting on Yom Kippur was identical among the two samples.

Q: How might you use these findings?

A: We believe that the Jewish community should offer encouragement to those members of intermarried couples who wish to affirm their Jewish identity and give the non-Jewish spouses support and recognition that this is something they want to share in.

For more information: www.jewishdatabank.org