The National Jewish Population Survey, funded for $6 million by the federation umbrella group United Jewish Communities, reported that the nation\’s population of 5.2 million Jews represented a decline of 2 percent from the 1990 survey, which reported 5.5 million Jews.
The National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) 2000-01, dubbed \”Strength, Challenge and Diversity,\” offers key findings on demographics, intermarriage, Jewish \”connections\” — that is, communal behavioral trends — and such \”special\” topics as the elderly, immigration and poverty.
The Jewish population is aging and shrinking, its birthrate is falling, intermarriage is rising and most Jews do not engage in communal or religious pursuits.
Yet a majority attend a Passover seder and celebrate Chanukah, Jewish education is booming, and many Jews consider being Jewish important and feel strong ties to Israel.
These are not dueling headlines, but parallel portraits contained in the long-awaited National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) 2000-01. Federations and Jewish communal leaders use these studies every decade for policy and planning decisions.
Jews for Jesus, Jews attending churches, low synagogue membership, astronomical rates of intermarriage — as complex as these issues are, there is at least one remarkably simple and inexpensive solution to encouraging Jewish participation. It\’s called a warm greeting.
A friendly smile, a warm greeting, an invitation to lunch. If you think that is silly and simplistic, think again. As part of their course work, I require my students to interview two Jews. Because many of them — all non-Jews, primarily from the South Bay — lead very narrow lives, they do not know how to find Jews and turn to familiar institutions, one of which is church. Lo and behold — as the most recent National Jewish Population Survey has finally shown — they find Jews there.
Jews have been migrating to Siberia from all over the continent for several centuries, lured by Siberia\’s relative isolation and, sometimes, the promise of wealth.
When Sandra Caplan, a Jew-by-choice, was dying, her husband promised her that he would work toward a unified conversion process for the Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements.
\”Intermarriage is a fact of Jewish life and it\’s time we opened our doors and made everyone welcome, not just Jews,\” said Monica Engel, who said that at her own synagogue that interfaith couples felt marginalized because of their ignorance of Jewish practices.
Results of the two new studies are mixed enough that translating them into policy recommendations will not be easy.
Regardless of whether the mother is Jewish, most interfaith families — even those raising their children as Jews — incorporate substantial Christian celebrations into their lives, often including more Christian aspects as the couple and their children age.
In the face of widespread popular Jewish acceptance of intermarriage and a sense that the Jewish community\’s leaders have given up any effort to oppose it, a group of 25 Jewish rabbis, intellectuals, lay leaders and communal affairs professionals is galvanizing to fight for change.
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