What The New Pew Study Tells Us About The 7.5 Million American Jews

It is impossible to summarize all the details contained in a 250-page report within a short article. It is also impossible to summarize the state of American Jews within a short article. So this article will try to do neither; it will merely touch upon the most worthy and urgent headlines from the latest Pew report on American Jewry. Like its predecessor, the 2013 Pew report on American Jewry, the 2020 study will be the basis for every discussion about this community for the next decade. So, headlines today, but more to come in weeks and months.

According to the Pew report, there are 7.5 million Jews in America. This is slightly more than the 2013 survey, but considering methodology differences and other factors — such as the never-ending debate concerning who should be counted as Jews — this number is pretty much in line with what we know.

Three out of four of these Jews are Jews “by religion.” This means that when asked, they say their religion is Jewish. About a quarter (27%) do not identify with Judaism as a religion; they consider themselves to be Jewish “ethnically, culturally or by family background and have a Jewish parent or were raised Jewish.” This group of Jews without religion is growing. Among the youngest cohort of Jews (age 18-29), 40% identify as having no religion.

Looking at nonreligious Jews is meaningful not only because it is a growing demographic, but also because nonreligious Jews present different values. For example, roughly six in ten Jews say it would be very important (34%) or somewhat important (28%) for their grandchildren to be Jewish. But when we focus on the two groups, Jews by religion are fairly likely to say it is very important to them for their grandchildren to be Jewish (45%), but for Jews of no religion, it is not likely at all (4%).

But looking at Jews of no religion is just one pole of the Jewish spectrum. On the opposite pole is a growing Orthodox demographic. Seventeen percent of Jews under the age of 30 are Orthodox. So younger group are more polarized, and the so called “Jewish middle” is gradually shrinking. As the Pew team says, “Meanwhile, the two branches of Judaism that long predominated in the U.S.,” that is, Reform and Conservative Judaism, “have less of a hold on young Jews than on their elders.” Although these denominations are still around — the Reform more so than the Conservative — they are losing ground.

The Pew report reveals polarization on more than one front. Jews behave in different ways, believe in different things and do not feel that they share much in common. Surely, most Jews of no religion feel they have little or nothing at all in common with Orthodox Jews. But Reform Jews also report that they share little with Orthodox Jews, and many Orthodox Jews do not feel that they share much with Reform Jews.

Indeed, their experiences as Jews in America seem quite different. Orthodox Jews feel less safe because of anti-Semitism than Reform Jews do. Conservative Jews had been to Israel almost twice the rate of Reform Jews, and Reform Jews had been to Israel three times the rate of Jews of no religion. More Orthodox are poor, with just a quarter saying they live “comfortably.”  Two-thirds of Reform Jews and half of Jews of no religion, by contrast, believe they live “comfortably.” Religion itself is very important to most Orthodox Jews, a third of Conservative Jews and 5% Jews of “no particular branch.” For a seven of ten Conservative Jews, being Jewish is very important. For Reform Jews, this number declines to forty percent. For 55% of Jews of no religion, being Jewish is not important.

Does any of these findings surprise you? I posed this question last week to the scholars of the Pew Research Center. Alan Cooperman, the director of religion research at Pew, responded in a a slightly disappointing but apt way: When one studies a community one knows, surprises are more often a sign that something is wrong with the survey than a sign that the community is not what we thought it is. Eight years had passed since Pew 2013, and grand changes should not be expected. The new study is mostly a way for us to track the slow moving trends and look for nuance.

But nuance is everywhere because, as the Pew study puts it, “U.S. Jews do not have a single, uniform answer to what being Jewish means.” Some things most of them do, such as having a Seder (62%). Some things very few of them do, such as keeping Kosher (17%). Jews agree that some things are essential, such as remembering the Holocaust (76%). But there are other things on which there is no such broad agreement, such as caring for Israel (45%). Four out of ten Jews “regularly mark Shabbat in a way that is meaningful to them.” But eight out of ten have a Menorah at home (81%).  

Nuance is everywhere because, as the Pew study puts it, “U.S. Jews do not have a single, uniform answer to what being Jewish means.”

What can we learn from this grand pile of new data? We can learn that American Jews are who we think they are. We can learn that American Jews are not a monolith but rather a mosaic of many shades. We can learn that the Jews of America did not yet find the key for long term cultural survival — but also that predictions of inevitable doom are probably premature or false.

We can learn that there is still much to debate: Is a group with such high rate of interfaith marriage culturally sustainable? You will get more than one answer to this question, even if the data is undisputed (seven of ten marriages of Jews in the last decade). Can a group for which members share an ancient religion but have little else in common still consider itself a group? Maybe yes — the proof is that they all still call themselves Jews. Maybe no — the proof is that many of them say there is no shared culture. Is a group that is politically polarized — in an era in which politics is in many ways the dominant American religion — still viable as a group? Consider that Orthodox Jews, the group that is most Jewishly engaged, stand out as a small subgroup (one in ten) whose political profile is “virtually the reverse of Jews as a whole.”

That’s the benefit and disappointment inherent to all baches of new data. Oftentimes new data is not a tool to close important debates and settle old questions. It is a tool to better argue for one’s previous position and address the positions of the other side with more acuity. What is the state of American Jewry? Suffice it to say there are still enough of them to be counted, and there is still enough interest in them to conduct a study. The rest, as the Elder Hillel said, is interpretation. Go study!

Shmuel Rosner is an Israeli columnist, editor, and researcher. He is the editor of the research and data-journalism website themadad.com and is the political editor of the Jewish Journal.