Abstract
In 2021, the Pew Research Center issued a report Jewish Americans in 2020. It is a landmark study of the state of the American Jewish community in 2020 covering such topics as Jewish population size, Jewish identification, the nature of Jewish feelings, Jewish practices and customs, synagogue attendance and membership, marriage, family and children, Jewish community and connectiveness, antisemitism, Israel, political views, diversity in the Jewish community and demographics. This chapter contains the executive summary highlighting many of the major findings.
Released May 11, 2021.
(Reprinted by permission of Pew Research Center, Washington, DC. Reformatted by Arnold Dashefsky, Amy Lawton, and Ira M. Sheskin, eds.)
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Notes
- 1.
The household is defined as everyone living with the Jewish respondent, including people who may not be Jewish. See Chap. 9 of the full report for additional analyses on this topic.
- 2.
The terms branch, stream, movement and Jewish denomination are used interchangeably in this report. They include Orthodox (and subgroups within Orthodox Judaism), Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and others (including Humanistic Judaism, Jewish Renewal, etc.). The survey also included a separate question about participation in services or activities with Chabad (see Chap. 3 of the full report).
- 3.
Orthodox Jews, of course, are not a monolithic group. There are many different traditions within Orthodoxy. However, the survey did not include enough interviews with subgroups of Orthodox Jews (such as Modern Orthodox, Hasidic and Yeshivish) to analyze their responses separately.
- 4.
Fully 79% of “Jews of no religion” do not identify with any particular branch of Judaism, and two-thirds (65%) of Jewish adults who do not identify with any particular branch of Judaism fall into the “Jews of no religion” category.
- 5.
The term “Jews of no religion” (or, sometimes, “Jews not by religion”) has been in use by demographers and sociologists for decades. More colloquial terms include cultural Jews, ethnic Jews and secular Jews. However, those terms mean different things to different people and might also apply to Jews by religion who consider themselves culturally and ethnically Jewish or broadly secular in outlook. Seeking a more positive and affirming label for Jews of no religion, some sociologists recently have suggested “Jews for other reasons.” For consistency’s sake, this report uses the same terminology as the 2013 study.
- 6.
These two groups – Orthodox Jews and Jews of no religion – are categorized through different survey questions, although there is virtually no overlap between them. Fewer than 1% of Jews of no religion identify as Orthodox, while 99% of Orthodox Jews identify as Jewish by religion.
- 7.
The 2020 question includes a new item – “Continuing family traditions” – that was not part of the question in 2013.
- 8.
Cronbach’s alpha for this scale is 0.66.
- 9.
These questions were asked slightly differently in 2013 and 2020. The 2013 survey asked whether there is “a lot” of discrimination against various groups, and respondents could say yes or no. The 2020 survey asked respondents how much discrimination there is against various groups, and respondents could say “a lot,” “some,” “not much” or “none at all.” Despite these differences, the broad patterns in responses are similar.
- 10.
The survey was conducted from Nov. 19, 2019, through June 3, 2020, which was after the Trump administration moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem but before the administration announced agreements for the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize relations with Israel.
- 11.
Race and ethnicity were measured in this way partly for methodological purposes. To ensure that the sample of respondents is representative of the broader U.S. population, all respondents (not just the respondents who qualify in the screener as Jewish in some way) are asked questions about their demographic characteristics, including age, gender, education, race, ethnicity and more. The data is then weighted so that the demographic profile of respondents matches the demographic profile of the overall U.S. population as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau. See the Methodology.
- 12.
Because of the long diasporic history of Jews, many customs are difficult to trace with precision. Nevertheless, these categories reflect the migration and settlement patterns of Jews over many centuries. Sephardic Jews trace their heritage to the Iberian Peninsula (present-day Spain and Portugal) before the expulsion of Jews from that region in 1492. Ashkenazi Jews follow customs and liturgies that developed among Jews who lived in Central and Eastern Europe, though many moved elsewhere to escape pogroms and persecution. Mizrahi Jews have ancestral ties to North Africa and the Middle East, including the areas now called Iraq and Iran; many moved to Israel or the United States in the second half of the twentieth century.
- 13.
This analysis is based on current, intact marriages. It does not include past marriages that ended in either divorce or the death of a spouse. It reflects how Jewish respondents describe the religion of their spouses at present, not at the time of marriage. Variation between the two studies may reflect relatively small samples of respondents who got married in each decade.
- 14.
Most people in this category were not raised Jewish at all, but some say they were raised in another religion and also as Jewish aside from religion.
- 15.
This pattern was also found in the 2013 survey data. Sasson, Theodore. Nov. 10, 2013. “New Analysis of Pew Data: Children of Intermarriage Increasingly Identify as Jews.” Tablet.
- 16.
These polls were conducted online from Aug. 3–16, 2020, and Feb. 16–21, 2021, each among more than 10,000 members of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel. Jews are defined in these surveys solely on the basis of their present religion.
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Alper, B.A., Cooperman, A., Dashefsky, A., Lawton, A., Sheskin, I.M. (2022). Overview of Jewish Americans in 2020. In: Dashefsky, A., Sheskin, I.M. (eds) American Jewish Year Book 2021. American Jewish Year Book, vol 121. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99750-2_1
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