National Jewish Population Survey Research Articles

An Introduction to the National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01

Journal Article An Introduction to the National Jewish Population Survey 2000–01 Get access Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz * United Jewish Communities * Direct correspondence to: Laurence Kotler Berkowitz, e-mail: laurence.kotler-berkowitz@ujc.org. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 67, Issue 4, Winter 2006, Pages 387–390, https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/67.4.387 Published: 01 December 2006

Religious Identities in Contemporary American Life: Lessons From the NJPS

The appearance of this special issue marks a significant contribution to the sociological understanding of religion and highlights key issues facing the field as we move into a new century. We owe a debt of gratitude to the sponsors of the National Jewish Population Survey and to Harriet Hartman for making this issue of Sociology of Religion possible. A concentrated look at one religio-ethnic group is important both for the particular knowledge it provides about that group and for the way it raises ques tions about more general social processes that may be at work. This set of articles is exemplary of both those things. It adds to the impressive body of scholarship on Jewish life that has emerged out of the growing number of Judaic Studies departments and centers and programs now at over a hundred universities and colleges in the U.S. We learn about the particular differences among Jewish denominations and between U.S. Jews and Israeli ones. We learn about the effects of Orthodox gender expectations and the importance of Jewish federa tions. But we also learn about the significance of social networks in ethnic and religious continuity, as well as the multifaceted, intertwined, and changing nature of religious and ethnic identity not just for Jews. The changing nature of religious identity is a central theme to which we will return, but it is also important to note just contentious that fact has been in the very execution of this study. That difficulty is reflected both in the fine, com prehensive review of the literature provided by Hartman and Kaufmann at the beginning of this issue and in the long methodological discussions contained in nearly every article. The how of this project has needed to be explained. Each of these articles has made impressive use of the data, but each was constrained by decisions others had made.

The Direction of Denominational Switching in Judaism

This research note examines patterns of denominational switching and the characteristics of switchers within Judaism in the United States. Viewing orthodox, conservative, and reform Judaism and a fourth “nonspecific” group as categories that range from the most traditional to the least traditional, respectively, we focus on the movement of individuals toward or away from a more traditional denomination in comparison with remaining in the same denomination in which they were raised. The data were drawn from the National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) 2000–2001 (NJPS 2003). We found that 62 percent stay within the same group, 29 percent move away from tradition, and 9 percent move to a more traditional denomination. Multivariate logistic regression analyses show that a lower level of Jewish background, higher previous travel to Israel, a greater extent of organizational affiliation, and a higher level of spiritual feelings and beliefs are associated with moving to a more traditional denomination whereas a higher level of Jewish background, lower previous travel to Israel, and a lower level of spiritual feelings and beliefs are associated with moving to a less traditional denomination. In addition, a few sociodemographic factors (previously married, has a child at home, lives in a western state) are associated with movement toward tradition whereas others (older age, female, not living in the northeast or west) are associated with movement in the other direction.

The Earnings of American Jewish Men: Human Capital, Denomination and Religiosity

This paper analyzes the determinants of the earnings of American Jewish men using the 2000/01 National Jewish Population Survey. Non-response to the question on earnings is analyzed. Earnings are related to conventional human capital variables, as well as Jewish-specific variables. Except for the size of place and region variables, the standard human capital variables have similar effects for Jews and the general population. Jewish day schooling as a youth enhances earnings. Earnings vary by denomination, with Conservative Jews earning the most. The effect on earnings of religiosity (measured by synagogue attendance) is not monotonic. Earnings are highest for those who attend only once a week.

Was it the demography?: A reassessment of U.S. Jewish population estimates, 1945–2001

National Jewish population surveys in the United States provide comprehensive data and insights about the Jewish community’s development. Controversy accompanied the 2000–2001 National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) since inception and through release of the final report. This paper focuses on the plausibility of Jewish population size—namely, a decline since 1990—as estimated from the 2001 NJPS. While the size of the U.S. Jewish population is difficult to ascertain, growth momentum reached its peak around 1990, followed by moderate decline. Population aging and a decline in the wish to identify as a Jew underlie a decrease in the Jewish population. In retrospect, the 1957 Current Population Survey and 1990 NJPS probably better represented the total Jewish population, while the 1970 NJPS and 2001 NJPS better covered the more Jewishly identified sections. NJPS 2001, in any case, is an important and usable source.

NJPS 2000/01: A vehicle for exploring social structure and social dynamics in the Jewish population

The American Jewish population has undergone considerable demographic and sociological change in the past few decades. The 2000–01 National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS), a nationally representative sample of about 4,500 American Jews, represents a data collection effort uniquely appropriate for examining the structure and dynamics of the population and sub-groups within the national Jewish community.

Comparisons between local Jewish community studies and the 2000–01 national Jewish population survey

About 50 Jewish federations completed local community studies from 1985 to 2003. This paper provides guidance to researchers wishing to compare local community study results with one another and with results of the National Jewish Population Survey 2000–01. If these comparisons are to be properly interpreted, an understanding of the varying purposes and methodologies of local community studies and NJPS 2000–01 is necessary. This paper concludes that more can be learned by comparing local community study results with one another than with NJPS 2000–01 results.

Ethnicity and political behavior among American Jews: Findings from the National Jewish population survey 2000–01

Employing a theoretical and conceptual framework of ethnicity and using data from NJPS 2000–01, this article examines how structural, cultural, and psychological ethnicity among Jews are linked to partisanship, ideology, and political participation. Regression analyses show opposite effects for structural and cultural ethnicity on political behavior and no effects for psychological ethnicity.

National Jewish population survey 2000–01: A guide for the perplexed

The National Jewish Population Survey 2000–01 (NJPS) has been the focus of substantial controversy and misinterpretation. Because of both its design and implementation, there are numerous difficulties in using NJPS data to understand the contemporary American Jewish community. This “guide” analyzes key issues about NJPS, including its sampling design, response rale, assessment of Jewish identity, weighting, and structure of the instrument. Although NJPS provides valuable information for scholars and policy users, focusing on population estimates and ignoring methodological limitations makes misinterpretation likely. Estimates, to the extent they are offered, need to be discussed as ranges within confidence intervals and with caveats about their interpretation. A particular caution is that analysis of characteristics of the population must distinguish between the entire estimated Jewish population and those who are “persons of Jewish background.” The present guide outlines appropriate use of the NJPS data set, emphasizing multivariate analyses and investigations of relationships among variables. NJPS represents the most complex study of the Jewish population ever conducted, and while methodological limitations need to be taken into account, the study provides potentially important insights into the character of the American Jewish community.

The need for a systematic comparative approach to national population surveys of Jews

National counts of Jewish populations have been fraught with unpleas ant consequences for their sponsors since biblical times (see II Samuel 24:1-18). In those times they were unpopular because of the belief that unfair advantages and dangerous unnatural powers were conferred on the initiators of such projects. In the contemporary academic world, social scientists are taught that surveys have to be approached with cau tion because they famously are prone to error because of bad or fluctuat ing design, discrepancies in samples, and poor execution (Kosmin, 1979). Unfortunately, the National Jewish Population Surveys of 1970 01 and 2000-01 brought little naches (satisfaction) to their sponsors in part because they took place in an intellectual vacuum and ignored the historical and international comparative framework that should under pin all major social scientific studies of the Jews. Their sponsors also failed to recognize that the essence of science, especially as applied to national baseline data collection, is replicable data with standardized and detailed classification rules applied consistently. Rabbinical and biblical literature, as well as gentile authorities, tra ditionally viewed the Jews both as a nation and as a religious commu nity. After Emancipation during the 19th century, this fabric of unity began to unravel. In Western Europe, some Jews chose to define them selves solely as a religious group, eliminating the national aspect. In Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia, and also to some extent in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Jewishness was expressed by modernizers, such as the Bundists and Zionists, as a secular national category compa rable to other nationality groups dwelling in these multi-ethnic empires. Internationally, official Jewish population and social statistics reflect these historical developments. For instance, for more than a century the Jews of Switzerland and Ireland have been recorded as a religious or confessional group in their respective national decennial censuses. By contrast, the Jews of the USSR/CIS were recorded as a nationality on the basis of descent in censuses that provide a similar rich time series. North American Jews are heirs to three traditions: the pre-modern religion-nation; the Western modernizers who defined themselves as a group with a distinct religion and who maintained the nationality of their host country; and the East European modernizers who defined themselves as a secular nationality on the basis of Yiddish or Hebrew culture. Though largely of Eastern European stock, American Jews live in a society similar to Western Europe, a society of unitary nationality but with multiple religious groups. Contemporary Jewish identification

The occupational attainment of American Jewry: 1990 to 2000

This paper compares the occupational distributions in 1990 and 2000 of adult white men and women for Jewish-born Americans and non-Jewish Americans after adjusting for changes in occupational classifications over the decade. This paper extends a time series for men from 1890 to 1990 previously published in Contemporary Jewry. The data are from the microdata files from the National Jewish Population Surveys (1990, 2000-01) and the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Censuses of Population. Among both men and women, American Jews had a greater proportion in the high-level occupations (managerial and professional) in 1990, and the difference increased over the next decade. Among Jews and non-Jews, there only were small gender differences in the proportions in the high-level occupations. Thus, religion was more important than gender in explaining occupational patterns. American Jews of both genders experienced a continued decline in self-employment over the decade.

The Occupational Attainment of American Jewry: 1990 to 2000

This paper compares the occupational distributions in 1990 and 2000 of adult white men and women for American Jews and non-Jews, after adjusting for the changes in occupational classifications. The data are from the microdata files from the National Jewish Population Surveys (1990, 2000/01) and the 1990 and 2000 Censuses of Population. Among both men and women, American Jews had a greater proportion in the high level occupations (managerial and professional) in 1990, and the difference increased over the next decade. Among Jews and among non-Jews, there were only small gender differences in the proportions in the high level occupations. Thus, religion was more important than gender in explaining occupational patterns. American Jews of both genders experienced a continued decline in self-employment over the decade, and a continued shift among those in managerial and professional jobs away from self employment and toward being salaried workers.

Jewish Identification in Contemporary America: Gans’s Symbolic Ethnicity and Religiosity Theory Revisited

The author attempts to further the current understanding of the role of group identification among white Americans by reassessing Herbert Gans’s theory of symbolic ethnicity and religiosity. I focus on Jews, a small yet deeply integrated group in the social mainstream, using data from the 1970-1971 and 1990 National Jewish Population Surveys. A cohort follow-up over the 20-year period shows that intermittent and home-centered practices have sustained a fair amount of stability, but those requiring persistent religious behavior or participation declined significantly. Likewise, the importance attached to being Jewish has declined. Multivariate analysis reveals that when Jewish background and socio-demographic characteristics are held constant, the sense of group belonging is strongly and positively associated with religious behavior and affiliation; these relationships have strengthened between 1970 and 1990. Other factors, on the macro-level of the American scene, deter everyday behaviors while they maintain, and often increase, the levels of the intermittent ones.

Jewish Identity in America: Structural Analyses of Attitudes and Behaviors

Data from the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey are utilized through facet theory technique seeking to determine the interrelationships between different components, both behavioral and attitudinal, of Jewish identification. For different typologies of Jewish identity, including the "enlarged" Jewish population, "core" Jews, and "Jews by religion," we have found a coherent structure of areas, each of which includes several identificational variables in close proximity one to another. This is manifested in the partition of the space into several regions. Similarly, the structure of American Jewish identification attests to a rather clear distinction between the two major modes of attitudes and behaviors. The different sub-groups within the Jewish population share a common denominator of the total composition of Jewish identification. Identifying the was Jews conceptualize and organize the multivariate array of their group belonging can lay a better foundation for an evaluation and interpretation of trends in Jewish identification and its determinants. We suggest that this methodological approach be applied to other, non-Jewish, groups thus providing a useful insight into the internal structure of their specific identificational components; this will contribute to furthering the understanding of the nature of religiosity and ethnicity in present-day America.

Steven M. Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen. The Jew Within: Self, Family and Community in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. x, 242 pp.

Demographic studies and their findings have dominated research in to the American Jewish community since the first National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) of 1970. When it comes to Jewish identity, both national and community-based demographic studies have been criticized for providing only superficial portraits of the character of American Jewish institutional life and being even less revelatory of the inner life of American Jews. Yet, few fiscal resources and little public notice have been given to those who sought to describe American Jews and their Judaism in depth through the use of qualitative research methods. It took Steven M. Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen, professors of sociology and religion respectively to risk the development of a theory of Jewish identity for more than 50 percent of America's adult Jewish population based on 45 in-depth interviews and two focus groups. To be sure, the authors, both highly respected and prolific scholars, set their findings against a backdrop provided by surveys mailed back by 1005 Jews. Nevertheless, it is the insights derived from the three hour interviews that are critical to the analysis. Paralleling the work of students of American Protestantism such as Robert Bellah, Wade Clark Roof, and Robert Wuthnow, Cohen and Eisen seek to decipher the inner workings of the life journeys of moderately affiliated Jews.

From Institutional Decay to Primary Day: American Orthodox Jewry Since World War II

A number of works on American Jewry written during the early second-half of the twentieth century began with the contrast between the very pessimistic evaluations about the state of American Judaism at the end of the nineteenth century and the authors' more optimistic prognoses at mid-twentieth century.1 An even starker contrast can be made between the state of American Orthodox Jewry at the time of World War II and at the turn of the twenty-first century. The New York area has always been home to the majority of Orthodox Jews in the United States. According to the 2001 National Jewish Population Survey, 73 percent of those who identify as Orthodox Jews live in the Middle Atlantic states, i.e., New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. In the 1920s and 1930s, the overwhelming majority were in New York City proper, and as a result of immigration from Eastern Europe between 1881 and 1923-1926 the period was the "heyday of American Orthodoxy."2 The sense of elation and self-confidence dissipated rather quickly. Indeed, as Jeffrey Gurock's detailed analysis demonstrates, the first half of the twentieth century was the "era of non-observance" for American Orthodoxy,3 and Orthodoxy was increasingly viewed as doomed in American society. As Jenna Joselit put it, By the 1940s the English-speaking Orthodox rabbinate had suffered somewhat of a reversal and was forced to take stock of its future. Now muted, its characteristic buoyancy and optimism was succeeded by a barely disguised sense of thwarted expectations, especially pronounced among the second and third generation of RIETS [Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Yeshiva University] students, as the interwar years gave way to wartime and the fifties. To the modernized Orthodox Jews, once confident that their form of Judaism would become the dominant religious expression of second-generation Americanized Jews, it now seemed as if a true modernized [End Page 405] Orthodoxy could be found only in isolated instances, in "pockets," and that the anticipated orthodoxization of middle-class American Jewry would not materialize. "A lost cause," reflected a RIETS graduate of 1942, "Orthodoxy was not going anywhere."4 One of the problems was that when immigration was feasible, the most traditional and Jewishly-educated of Eastern European Orthodox Jewry, and especially its rabbinic-intellectual elite, were the most resistant to migration to the United States for several reasons. As a rule, the more traditionally religious are the most resistant to geographic mobility, in part perhaps because of its negative consequences on religious participation.5 Eastern European Orthodox Jewry was further discouraged from migrating to the United States because of negative reports about religious life there. For example, New York's Rabbi Moses Weinberger (1854-1940), who had immigrated from Hungary, wrote a sharply critical portrait of Judaism in New York in the 1880s.6 He viewed American society as totally materialistic, and he bemoaned the low levels of Jewish education and observance of dietary rituals in the country. His book was in large measure a warning to his fellows in Eastern Europe that the United States was a spiritual threat to religiously traditional Jews. In the early 1890s, Rabbi Israel Meir Hacohen (1838-1933) of Radun, Belarus, one of the most revered rabbinic authorities of his generation, who was widely known by the title of one of his works, Hafetz Hayyim, published his own warning to Eastern European Jewry about the dangers of immigrating to America. In the conclusion to Nidhe Yisrael (The Dispersed of Israel), which is a work that clarifies some of the basics of halacha (traditional religious law) for those who were in "distant countries," especially America, the author warned of the risks of leaving Eastern Europe, and asserted that the economic opportunities [End Page 406] were not worth the price of losing one's Judaism or that of one's children.7 Several years later, in...

The changing roles of human capital, state context of residence, and ethnic bonds in interstate migration: American Jews 1970–1990

AbstractMotivated by the gap left by the census, which does not enquire into matters of creed, this study examines the changing role of internal migration determinants among American Jews. Multivariate analysis of data from the 1970/1 and 1990 National Jewish Population Surveys, to which contextual measures were attached, shows a decline over time in the importance of human capital in explaining five‐year interstate migration, while environmental amenity receives increasing consideration; at the same time, ethnic concentration continues to deter migration between states. Ethnic processes have lost much of their power as predictors of future migration. I propose two alternative interpretations of these apparently contradictory findings, and discuss them in the wider context of white ethnicity in America. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Directions, Magnitude, and Efficiency of Interregional Migration, 1970-1990: Jews and Whites in the United States Compared

This study presents a two-dimensional comparison, over time (1970 and 1990) and intergroup (Jews and total whites), of interregional migration streams. Both lifetime and five-year migration are examined. Data from the 1970/71 and 1990 National Jewish Population Surveys and from the U.S. Censuses of the same years show that the directions of internal migration of Jews and total whites were similar, i.e., from the Northeast and Midwest to the Sunbelt. By 1990, however, net migration for each region-both for the gaining region and for the losing region-had a more significant effect on the Jewish population than on the white population. The initial differences in regional dis-tribution between the two subpopulations have narrowed. Multivariate analy-sis shows that Jewish migration can largely be explained by educational attainment and employment opportunities. Over time, Jewish migration has become less selective, as seen, inter alia, in the declining importance of denominational identification. The findings are discussed in relation to the integration of Jews into the host society and, more generally, to the geographic dimension of minority status in late 20th century America.

Jewish Identification in Intermarriage: Does a Spouse's Religion (Catholic vs. Protestant) Matter?

This article is concerned with whether Jewish intermarriage in the U.S. affects the religioethnic identification of the Jewish partner differently if the spouse is Catholic as compared to Protestant. Three working hypotheses are developed which take into consideration differences between Catholicism and Protestantism in the importance of religious practices and social interaction and theological positions towards interfaith marriage. Multivariate analyses of data from the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey show that while both Jewish-Catholic and Jewish-Protestant marriages have a statistically significant negative effect on Jewish identification it is more pronounced among the former.... The implications of these results are discussed in regard to the Jewish individual in intermarriage to the Jewish group as well as to the complexity of religious identification in America today. (EXCERPT)

How to think about mass religious conversion: Toward an explanation of the conversion of American jews to christianity

Mass religious conversion refers to the conversion of a society and of its institutions. Individual religious conversions follow from this social contextual change. This article is an exercise in developing social science concepts for the analysis of mass religious conversion. It draws on comparative historical, social survey and autobiographical materials. The conversion of the Copts of Egypt to Islam following the Arab conquests and the Christianization of Europe from medieval times illustrate the roles of social shock, the breakdown of communal authority and how a hegemonic religious system is adopted to restore social order to a subordinate community. The centrality of missions in the Christian case is illustrated. Data from the National Jewish Population Survey of 1990 permit an examination of the contribution of change in economic, social organizational and kinship institutions to change in religious institutions. Autobiographies of converts from Judaism to Christianity reveal some psychological mechanisms for dealing with societal and institutional religious changes. The article closes with a short exercise applying concepts developed here to understanding the conversion of American Jewry to Christianity.