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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Posted on 10/08/2002 7:39:59 AM PDT by RCW2001
RACHEL ZOLL, AP Religion Writer
Tuesday, October 8, 2002
©2002 Associated Press
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/10/08/national1033EDT0582.DTL
(10-08) 07:33 PDT NEW YORK (AP) --
A once-a-decade report that shapes how American Jews work to keep their religion vital found the population has declined and grown older since 1990, according to statistics released Tuesday.
The 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey found 5.2 million Jews live in the United States, compared to 5.5 million a decade ago. Their median age rose from 37 to 41 in the same period, fueling concern that the faith is not being passed down to a younger generation.
The study sponsored by United Jewish Communities, an international social service federation based in New York, is being released in two stages, with figures on the rate of intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews to be presented sometime next month.
Among the most complex issues the researchers faced was defining who is a Jew for the purposes of the study. The survey included people who identified themselves as Jewish, were raised Jewish, or had a Jewish parent and did not convert to another religion. Using a broader definition that includes anyone with a Jewish background would increase the total population figure to 6.9 million, the survey's authors said.
Researchers found Jews are having fewer children than needed to keep the population stable. Half of Jewish women age 30-34 have no children, compared to 27 percent of all American women. Nearly half of American Jews are age 45 or older.
The report is among the most influential studies of U.S. Jews.
Its 1990 finding that 52 percent of American Jews marry outside the faith has transformed Jewish community work in this country, redirecting tens of millions of dollars and other resources to programs that build Jewish identity, including religious day schools and trips to Israel.
The report also intensified a debate that continues today, over whether the best way to preserve Judaism in America is to reach out to Jews on the fringes of religious life or strengthen links with those already active.
"I don't think you can underestimate the cultural impact of the 1990 study," said Steven Bayme, national director for Jewish communal life at the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy and social service group. "It was a wake-up call to Jewish leaders telling them that their most critical challenge was encouraging Jews to lead a Jewish life."
According to the 2000 study, Jews remain concentrated in the Northeast, with 43 percent living in the region. The Midwest has the smallest share, 13 percent, while the South and West have 22 percent each.
The survey also found that more than half of Jews have earned a bachelor's degree, compared with 28 percent of non-Jews, and 24 percent of Jews have earned a graduate degree. The median household income for Jews is about $50,000, compared with $42,000 for all U.S. households.
About 4,500 Jews were interviewed between August 2000 and August 2001 as part of the research.
Information about the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey:
www.ujc.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=60346
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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An amazing statistic, but sadly believable.
I know several attractive Jewish women in this age group, and they are all so picky about men that no one was ever good enough for them. Likewise, several married Jewish women I know are this age and are still putting off motherhood for career purposes.
Unreasonable expectations and rampant feminism, not intermarriage, seem to be the problem.
Maybe they shouldn't have made all those phone calls on Saturday morning.
P.S. That's a joke -- :-)
My wife is Jewish, I'm Catholic. Her sister is a "Jews for Jesus" who married an Evangelical Christian. They have two daughters, the eldest married a Christian boy. My brother-in-law married a Jewish woman, they have one daughter who is becoming a classic Jewish-American-Princess. So, of my mother-in-law's 6 grandkids, only one is being raised Jewish.
The "excessive self-esteem" problem among women is not limited to Jewish women. There are lots of educated, professional women who will not be satisfied with anything less than unattainable perfection. There are lots of people who laugh at guys who engage in fruitless persuit of Britney-Spears-types while ignoring the girl-next-door, but few who laugh at the pretensions of women who think that millionaire businessmen are going to come along eventually to carry them off to their castles.
P.S. That's a joke -- :-)
Actually, it is not. Many of the calls WERE made on Friday night or Saturday. The initial screeners were TELEMARKETERS who called people at dinnertime and asked if they wanted to participate in the survey "which will only take a few minutes of your time"--in reality, 45 minutes AT LEAST to answer questions from a stranger about your most deeply held religious convictions and practices and family life. This survey was almost scrapped because of the number of hangups and people who refused to take part. Never mind how they ever verified that all the answers given were accurate.
How accurate do you think this telephone survey really is?
So how do you explain 8 kids per Orthodox family+low dropout rate=dwindling community size?
Another Marxist outed.... Groucho that is :)
Really, what would that be? Tell us.
Isn't it amazing that though the numbers have declined a bit, Jews still have so much "influence?" Heck, we are even poised to take over the GOP. :) I wager some of these Jews went to Israel, which is great for the demographic situation over there.
My observation as well, here in NYC.
Also, Orthodox shuls tend to be smaller than Conservative or Reform ones, so data on synagogue numbers can be misleading.
Good example is a woman who was office manager at a small consulting company I used to work for. Very pretty, early 30s, looking for a millionaire business man. She refused to accept that she was in competition with 25-year-old MBA's who could wear such a guy out in bed while setting up his IPO. She would up 40 and unmarried, working as a waitress in a bowling alley after the company went under
My local Catholic High School is very politically incorrect. They groom their female students to be housewives, and discourage the idea of being a career-oriented woman
There was an unintentionally funny article in the NY Times a few weeks ago, interviewing NYC single women about how they evaluate men based on their briefcase/attache/shoulder bag/backpack.
Very very clearly, the ONLY criteria the females used, was extrapolating gear to income. It was sad and sick and I got more than half way through it before I realized it was NOT a parody.
These women are going to be miserable, but I feel no pity for them. Any guy they snare will be even more miserable, and better shield his assets and find a divorce lawyer before the honeymoon ends.
BTW, *some* New York men deliberately dress down and funky so as not to attract undue attention of n'ere-do-wells. That guy in the Mets polo shirt, jeans, sneakers and a backpack can easily be a multi-millionaire.
I married a Lutheran.
Feh.
I think that the method used to select respondents for the survey was outcome-oriented to exclude families from very heavily-Jewish-populated areas.
This is the actual survey script that was used.
It goes on like this for 10 pages. Now you read the whole thing and tell me honestly if you would go over this whole thing with a total stranger who interrupted you while you were eating supper.
Rush Limbaugh once dedicated an entire segment of his show to callers from New York City -- I think he was specifically discussing an issue pertinent to New York City at the time. The stark contrast between the intelligence and telephone manners of these callers (and they were mostly conservative) and those of his usual callers was amazing.
Gimmie a break. I find that to be quite insulting. I am a French Canadian married to a Jewish woman...and comparing my marriage to the holocaust is out of bounds.
The problem is actually fairly easy to solve: The Jewish community needs to stop treating us (by us, I mean the gentiles in the mixed marriages) as some sort of "problem" to be solved or a "communicable disease" that needs to be treated or prevented.
Judaism needs to open up, drop the ban on intermarriage, and actively welcome folks like me into their community. By doing this, they would drastically increase the chances that the children in these mixed marriages (I have 2) will be involved in the Jewish community and religion.
That's not to say we don't have more jerks in this town than there are people in most states, but a Rush call-in is far from a fair sample.
The sampling methology was fundamentally flawed. The random-digit-dialling program was filtered so as not to dial TOO MANY numbers within particular area code and exchanges. BTW I do not live in the NYC area. Nobody I know got one of these survey calls (at least, that they could not distinguish from any other annoy-you-at-dinnertime nuisance call) even though our synagogue passed out flyers begging people not to hang up on the survey if they are one of the "lucky chosen." It's like winning the freakin' Powerball.
Then it gets me crazy when these experts claim that families like mine DO NOT EXIST because the evidence is "anecdotal." What the hell are my 9 children, all my neighbors' 10-12-and-14-member families, urban legends?
What made that segment most interesting was that it was probably the only time I can remember Rush Limbaugh getting aggravated with callers throughout the course of his show.
Yeah? You wanna make something of it?
:)
:)
If they *double* the undercount for your demographic, does it radically shift the overall numbers?
Speaking personally, I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn in the 60s. EVERYONE I knew was Jewish, Irish, Italian or Black. I didn't even MEET a WASP until I met my college roommate.
Several points:
1. Judaism is more than just a religion. It is also an ethnic-based culture that has non-religious aspects to it. I know many many Jews who are not religious, yet who consider themselves to be very Jewish. So a child may be Jewish and may be involved Jewish cultural life and community without necessarily being religious.
2. I agree with the Jewish leaders' analysis of the potential effects of intermarriage...I just completely disagree with them on how to best address the issue. They cling to a medieval view of things that essentially holds that intermarriage should be prevented and discouraged because it will destroy Judaism.
I think that that attitude is 180 degrees wrong. For Judaism to survive in America, it must learn to flourish with large amounts of intermarriage (as there is no way, short of a bigtime resurgence of anti-semitism, that intermarriage will go away). Specifically, I think that Judaism should:
a. Drop the ban on intermarriage, since it is insulting to both the Jewish and Gentile members of the relationship.
b. Openly encourage the Gentile member of the marriage to participate in Jewish cultural life...and even encourage them to convert. (currently, the atmsophere is so poisoned by the initial frowning on the marriage, that many of the gentile spouses simply want to avoid the whole scene).
c. Actively encourage outside conversion. I'm not talking about Jews riding bikes around and ringing on doorbells....but I am talking about dropping the clannish, medieval seige mentality and opening up the community to interested outsiders (currently, outsiders wishing to convert are generally discouraged from doing so). This will puff up the numbers substantially, and may just save American judaism.
In my own experience....my wife's rabbi since childhood refused to perform the marriage ceremony, and some of her extended family members (though, not her immediate family) were less than thrilled. This left somewhat of a bad taste in my mouth, and decreased the chances that I will actively encourage my 2 kids to be active in the Jewish community. That is not a good strategy, from Judaism's perspective.
Anyone who has ever heard "vintage Frank from Queens" on Bob Grant's radio show knows exactly what a New York caller is all about. I'll never forget one of the calls he made in the wake of those robbery/murder sprees in Florida a few years back.
"Did you see the picture of those two suspects on the front page of the newspaper? That's 450 pounds of food stamps there, Mr. Grant!"
Unless the non-Jewish parent is willing to convert, how can you expect that the children will be raised Jewish and will continue to practice it as adults?
Jewish Demography -- 5759 (1999)
by M. Samsonowitz
Part I
An Orthodox reader of contemporary Jewish demographic studies better come equipped with a good sense of humor and a large dollop of disbelief, otherwise; the somber reports about the future of Orthodox Jewry are liable to send him off to his local funeral home to order a set of shrouds while the supply lasts.
Even though every year we know that we have to chase after principals whose schools are overflowing to accept our children, even though almost monthly we're informed of a new housing project going up for another religious neighborhood in Israel or in New York, and even though kosher food services and Orthodox publishing houses have burgeoned beyond belief in the past few years -- the demographic savants are still predicting that we're on the way of the dinosaur.
How can the university statisticians and sociologists make such a grave error when all one needs to disprove their conclusions is to just walk through Williamsburg or Monsey, Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Ashdod or Kiryat Sefer -- or dozens of other such communities?
To a large degree, the experts were misled by the conclusions of the National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) carried out by the Council of Jewish Federations (U.S.) in 1990, which until today is the most authoritative source for statistics about the American Jewish community. The study's findings showed that while 11% of the respondents came from Orthodox homes, only 7% are Orthodox today. The obvious conclusion: the Orthodox are decreasing. For instance, in Jewish Choices, published by the State University of New York in 1998, the distinguished authors (who include a professor emeritus of Sociology at Bar Ilan University, professor of sociology at Connecticut College, and professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut) conclude:
"The major problem for the Orthodox denomination is how to stem its historically heavy losses to other denominations, especially to the Conservative movement." (p. 133)
How are the savants so off-base in their analysis of the situation?
We feel that their unfamiliarity with our communities is only partly responsible for their inaccurate findings. The real problems are rooted in the inadequacies of a population survey in general, and with the NJPS in particular.
Inadequacies of Population Surveys
There are so many problems with surveys that it is possible to produce findings widely divergent from the reality, even with a serious sincere effort. These are some of the reasons why:
1. Inaccurate representation
In contrast to a census in which every person is counted, a survey only takes a small sampling and projects it onto the whole.
When they started, those conducting the NJPS randomly phoned some 125,813 randomly selected homes throughout the U.S. Based on the responses of those who claimed they were Jewish or "Jewishly affiliated," which totaled 5,146 households, they re-contacted them and tried to ask them detailed questions about themselves. The got a total of 2,441 completed interviews, which yielded information on 6,514 persons in those surveyed households. Based on these replies and "using a process of scientific weighting procedures, utilizing all 125,813 Stage I interviews," he concluded that the sample represents 3.2 million American households nationally. Using similar weighting procedures, they determined that the total number of people represented was 8.1 million, including many not Jewish (as per the mixed composition of many of the households). With this, they made projections for the entire Jewish community.
We wonder -- how many of those targeted included religious Jews in Williamsburg, Monsey, LA. or Baltimore? Maybe none? Maybe they did target one Williamsburg Jew and when they started asking him detailed questions about his convictions, the man answered, "Iz doh a nudnik oif di telephone, [There's a jerk on the phone]" and hung up?
Religious Jews have a tendency to be circumspect about giving out private information which is well known to the poll- takers in Israel. Moreover, religious Jews tend to be heavily concentrated in certain geographical areas because of their need to access shuls within walking distance on Shabbos, and to maintain their day-to-day involvement in many community institutions (shuls, yeshiva, chesed organizations, youth groups).
2. Undefined categories
Those conducting the survey said quite clearly that they asked for no supporting documentation or even provided no standard definitions of the categories that they proposed.
Respondents were asked if they are: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or secular. But what do these categories mean? To a secular Jew, his grandmother was Orthodox because she lit candles Friday night and wouldn't eat pork, even though she may have driven a car on Shabbos. A Reform Jew might call her Conservative, and an Orthodox Jew might have termed her Reform.
What is the difference theologically and practically between one who defines himself as nondenominational, and one who defines himself Reform?
When the categories are undefined, whatever findings one obtains are unreliable. As they noted themselves in their official summary of the NJPS: ". . . in the United States, religion and ethnicity are voluntary expressions of identity. . . . Consequently may people exhibit inconsistencies in their behavior with respect to normative expectations."
This is certainly a valid point, but since it directly relates to the definition of Judaism in terms of religious and secular senses I'm probably the least qualified person on this thread to discuss it. I'm sure there's enough controversy about this among different sects of Judaism that you wouldn't need my input anyway. LOL.
I agree with the Jewish leaders' analysis of the potential effects of intermarriage ... I just completely disagree with them on how to best address the issue. They cling to a medieval view of things that essentially holds that intermarriage should be prevented and discouraged because it will destroy Judaism.
The opposition to intermarriage among Jewish leaders is not unique -- in fact, at one time almost any religious group held a similar dim view of intermarriage. Speaking as a Roman Catholic, I can say that the Catholic Church strongly discourages intermarriage between Catholics and non-Christians primarily because the two spouses belong to "incompatible" religious groups (for example, by definition one cannot be a Christian and a Jew at the same time). The Church will only marry two such people if the non-Catholic one agrees to allow their children to be Baptized and raised as Catholics. I can imagine that this would not sit well with a Jewish religious leader, for the same reasons that the Church insists on it -- the children must be raised as one or the other.
One look at modern America would seem to indicate that both Jews and Catholics have every reason to oppose intermarriage on religious grounds -- under these circumstances, each succeeding generation becomes increasingly secularized. I can't speak for Jews, but the Catholic Church has no qualms about intermarriage on "non-religious" grounds -- If religion isn't that important to either spouse, then there is no reason to get the Church involved except for silly, sentimental reasons.
Documenting that underemployment is rife among American Jews, virtually the norm among young adult U.S. Jews.
Comparison to "all U.S. households" means largely to people who aren't unemployable - illegal aliens who don't speak English and never finished fifth grade, the high percentage of working-age blacks who are dropouts, convicted felons, hard-dope addicts, etc.
When a subculture that is so disproportionately so credentialed only averages $8,000 more yearly (before taxes) than the U.S. average, it says a lot about the U.S. economy.
I can't. But I CAN assure you that clinging to insulting attitudes about gentiles marrying jews will make it a heck of a lot less likely that the gentile parent will encourage his kids to practice Judaism.
In a nutshell, I am addressing a "clannish" mentality that exists within the Jewish community. This mentality makes it difficult for judaism to deal with intermarriage.
Since intermarriage is more or less a permanent fixture in american judaism, attitudes and policies must change. The "extinction risk" springs not from intermarriage per se...but rather from the lack of participation in judaism on the part of the gentile parent and the kids. All of the resources that judaism now expends on preventing dreaded intermarriage (which, is doomed to fail anyhow) should be targeted at the gentile parent. The more welcome we feel, the more likely we'll participate. The more alienated we feel...the less likely.
Actually the "extinction risk" stems from the lack of participation of even non-observant Jews who are not intermarried.
For years, the Reform organization had "outreach" programs for intermarried families, with the intention of "widening the circle." What it did was simply obliterate the circle, because what they ended up with was a bunch of basically secular liberals practicing secular political correctness with a touch of Judaic "flavoring."
People who are sincere about converting to Judaism, who believe in G-d and are ready to accept the full responsibility of observance of ALL the commandments, not just the rituals that are convenient or popular or fun, are welcomed into the fold of Judaism. Jews have a right to preserve G-d-given commandments that have been handed down lovingly from generation to generation without being scoffed at and denigrated as "clannish."
We have sacred laws that we have observed since the Torah was given to Moses. Those who choose not to follow our laws, become lost to our people. Those who wish to join, must accept and observe our laws, not order us to redefine or change or abolish them. It's as simple as that.
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