{"id":72792,"date":"2013-10-10T13:13:24","date_gmt":"2013-10-10T18:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/2013\/10\/10\/event-transcript-changing-identity-of-jewish-americans-implications-for-social-and-political-engagement\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T04:13:20","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T09:13:20","slug":"event-transcript-changing-identity-of-jewish-americans-implications-for-social-and-political-engagement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2013\/10\/10\/event-transcript-changing-identity-of-jewish-americans-implications-for-social-and-political-engagement\/","title":{"rendered":"Event Transcript: Changing Identity of Jewish Americans \u2013 Implications for Social and Political Engagement"},"content":{"rendered":"

American Jews overwhelmingly say they are proud to be Jewish and have a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people, according to a major new survey by the Pew Research Center<\/a>. But the survey also suggests that Jewish identity is changing in America. One-in-five Jews now describe themselves as having no religion. More than 60% say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and\/or culture, while just 15% say it is mainly a matter of religion. And among Jewish survey respondents who have gotten married since 2000, 58% have non-Jewish spouses. At the same time, emotional attachment to Israel among American Jews has not waned discernibly in the past decade, with about seven-in-ten Jews saying they feel very or somewhat attached to Israel. Yet just 38% say the Israeli government is making a sincere effort to establish peace with the Palestinians, and that number is even lower for Jews under age 30. The survey also finds significant differences between Orthodox Jews and other Jews on some social, political and religious questions.<\/p>\n\n

What do the survey\u2019s findings mean for the future of American Jews and their broader role in American public life? What impact will the greater religious polarization within American Jewry have on social and political engagement of the U.S. Jewish community? Will younger Jews become more attached to Israel as they age, or will the U.S. Jewish population become less attached to Israel over time?<\/p>\n\n

On Oct. 10, 2013, the Pew Research Center brought together some leaders from the Jewish community for a round-table discussion about the latest data on American Jews. The edited transcript is below.<\/p>\n\n

Speakers:<\/b>\nAlan Cooperman<\/a>, Deputy Director, Religion & Public Life Project, Pew Research Center\nNathan Diament<\/a>, Executive Director of Public Policy, Orthodox Union Advocacy Center\nRabbi David Saperstein<\/a>, Director and Counsel, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism<\/p>\n\n

Moderator:<\/b>\nLuis Lugo, Director, Religion & Public Life Project, Pew Research Center<\/p>\n\n

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\"jewish-event-Luis2\"<\/figure>\n\n

[which was funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Neubauer Family Foundation]<\/p>\n\n\n

We\u2019re delighted to have as panelists for this event two very distinguished leaders of major Jewish organizations. They need little introduction, so I\u2019ll be brief. Nathan Diament is Executive Director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, where he develops public policy research and initiatives. Nathan has been called the public face of Orthodox Judaism in Washington, and The Forward named him among the most influential Jews. Speaking of Nathan\u2019s influence, if you\u2019re enjoying your meal this afternoon, you have Nathan to thank for advising us on the best kosher catering choices here in Washington. Thank you, Nathan. I think this was Kosher Kitchen that won the prize there. Rabbi David Saperstein is Director and Counsel of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, where he has represented the Reform Jewish movement to Congress and the administration. It says here, David, for more than 30 years, but that has to be a typo. Is that right? More than 30. My goodness. Like wine, David only gets better with age. Newsweek has called David the most influential rabbi in the country, and earlier this year David was also the highest-ranked rabbi listed on The Jerusalem Post\u2019s \u201cMost Influential Jews in the World.\u201d It\u2019s also my pleasure to introduce you to my right-hand man, Alan Cooperman, the Deputy Director in the Religion Project.<\/p>\n\n

ALAN COOPERMAN, PEW RESEARCH CENTER:<\/b> I\u2019m on your left.<\/p>\n\n

LUGO:<\/b> Yes, I know, but that\u2019s why I said, my right-hand man. I turned to you. He\u2019s also sitting on the left. Who will walk us through some of the – from their perspective – you\u2019re now on my right – who will walk us through some of the survey\u2019s relevant highlights. Alan\u2019s leadership was absolutely critical in making the survey and the report that\u2019s in front of you a reality. His work from the survey is far from over. This rock star \u2013 this survey is making him into a rock star \u2013 is about to start his U.S. tour pretty soon, and it will take him to discuss the findings to important groups around the country from New York to Florida to California. I\u2019d also want to acknowledge Greg Smith here to my left, who is our Director of U.S. Religion Surveys. He was the lead researcher on the survey and I cannot overstate his contributions to this project, so thank you, Greg. Now although Greg and Alan were the dynamic duo, as we call them, on this project, this was truly a team effort here at the Pew Research Center. I could go on for some time with all the names of people who contributed to this project, but with apologies to the others, many of whom are here, I\u2019ll only mention one. That\u2019s our former president, Andrew Kohut. Andy was a strong supporter of this project from the beginning and he helped convince the funders very importantly that the center was willing and able to undertake this difficult project. So, Andy, our thanks to you. The format for this event is very simple. We want to keep it informal. Alan, Nathan and David will speak for about 10 minutes each, and then we\u2019ll invite the rest of you to join in the conversation. I should point out that this event is on the record. We are taping it and plan to post an edited transcript on our website in about a week or two. Now, each of you should have, as I mentioned, a copy of the report in front of you. It is hot off the press and you are the very first to receive printed copies of the full report. If you can use more for your organizations, please let us know. We\u2019d be glad to be of assistance to you. Alan? I\u2019ll hand it over to you.<\/p>\n\n

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COOPERMAN: Thank you, Luis. Thank you very much. I think I\u2019m miked up here, so I\u2019m going to stand and it may be that in order to see the slides, the people up front may also want to slide over just a little bit. This was a huge survey, a massive survey by any standards. In order to do it, we completed more than 70,000 screening interviews. These were made by random digit dialing, by cellphone and landlines, in Russian and in English, in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. On the basis of the screening interviews, we conducted longer interviews averaging about 25 minutes with approximately 5,000, a little more than 5,000 people, who could be considered Jewish in some way, and about 3,500 \u2013 I\u2019m sorry \u2013 yes, just under 3,500 that we, for analytical purposes, describe as Jewish in the survey, deliberately preserving for other readers and analysts the ability to choose a different definition of who is a Jew. I\u2019ll talk a little more about those definitions as we go along.<\/p>\n\n

[1957]<\/p>\n\n\n

Now, it\u2019s difficult for us to compare this survey with previous surveys of Jews for a variety of reasons. The main one is methodological, and you\u2019re all probably familiar with the National Jewish Population Survey, so I just want to stipulate that this was not a repeat of the National Jewish Population Surveys, which have had some difficulties and been criticized in various ways yet also provide very valuable data. We are very cautious about making comparisons, direct comparisons, between the findings in this survey and the National Jewish Population Surveys, and we make a few of those cautious comparisons in our report, but I would like to say don\u2019t try this at home, because what you have to do to do that is go back into the National Jewish Population Survey data set and rejigger the categories they use to make them comparable to our categories. So, mainly, to try to see change over time in our survey, we look to data internal to the survey itself. One of the most interesting, I think, ways we can see the growth of the Jews of no religion is by looking at generations. And among the Greatest Generation, the World War II-era generation, 93% of Jews in that generation identify as Jewish by religion. Asked, \u201cWhat is your religion?\u201d they say, \u201cJewish.\u201d Only 7% say they have no religion but identify as Jewish nonetheless. In the latest generation \u2013 the youngest generation of American adults, the Millennial generation \u2013 fully a third identify as having no religion yet say they feel Jewish aside from religion and have direct Jewish ancestry. And it\u2019s a cascading pattern along the way. I think this is pretty good evidence of the growth \u2013 dramatic growth \u2013 of Jews of no religion, over time.<\/p>\n\n

We also asked in the survey whether Jews think of being Jewish as mainly a matter of religion or mainly a matter of ancestry or mainly a matter of culture, and a majority of Jews overall tell us that they consider being Jewish mainly to be a matter of either ancestry and\/or culture. Only about one-in-six, about 15%, say \u201creligion.\u201d And that\u2019s true even for Jews by religion, even those who identify their religion as Jewish — of them, only 17% say being Jewish is mainly a matter of religion.<\/p>\n\n

The secular Jewish community has long been accepted in Judaism. Many people will say that Judaism is inherently a religion of practice \u2013 of orthopraxis \u2013 rather than orthodoxy, a religion of belief, and I think to some extent, this is an important finding here. It accords with what Jews have often thought and said about Judaism, or confirming it, and it\u2019s an important one to bear in mind for some other findings in the survey that may seem paradoxical, and I\u2019ll get to that in a moment. Since the Jewish by religion population has been declining over time and Jews of no religion have been increasing, people who are concerned with Jewish continuity or assimilation could look at these figures and say, \u201cWell, nu<\/i>, what\u2019s the problem? One\u2019s going down, but the other\u2019s going up.\u201d I think it\u2019s important to see the differences between Jews by religion and Jews of no religion. One of those important differences is in the way that they are raising their children. Among Jews by religion who have a minor child in the household, more than 90% say they are raising their children Jewish in some way: 71% are raising their children Jewish by religion; an additional 15% partly Jewish by religion; an additional 7% in some kind of mix; and only 7% are raising their children not Jewish at all. While among those who do not identify their religion as Jewish but say they feel Jewish in some other way and have direct Jewish ancestry \u2013 the Jews of no religion \u2013 fully two-thirds say they are raising their children not Jewish at all<\/i>. Not only not in the Jewish faith, but not at all. Not culturally. Not in any way.<\/p>\n\n

Intermarriage is a related and, we say in the report, perhaps even a kind of a circular, reinforcing factor. Among Jews who are married to a Jewish spouse in our survey \u2013 respondents who have a Jewish spouse \u2013 fully 96% say they are raising their children Jewish by religion. Among those who are not married to a Jewish spouse, and I want you to hear this very carefully, more than half are raising their children Jewish in some way. So if you add these numbers up: 20% Jewish by religion, another 25% Jewish partly by religion, and another 16% in some sort of mix; more than 60% of respondents in our survey who have a non-Jewish spouse say they are raising their children Jewish in some way. But more than a third, 37%, are not raising their children Jewish in any way, which is a pretty sharp contrast with the 96% of those who are in-married who say they are raising their children Jewish by religion. Intermarriage also appears to be growing. Again, I\u2019m looking primarily not to comparisons with previous surveys but to internal data in this survey to try to show this. We can see that among respondents in our survey who were married before 1970, only 17% of them have a non-Jewish spouse, whereas among those who\u2019ve been married more recently, more than half have a non-Jewish spouse. And you can look at these figures and see that for the last two five-year periods, it\u2019s held fairly stable. I would not say that clearly it\u2019s leveling off, but I would say it could be<\/i> leveling off. That would be a possibility. I should also point out that this is based on current, intact marriages. There is some research that suggests that intermarriages in general break up at higher rates than in-marriages. If that research is accurate \u2013 it\u2019s not our research \u2013 then it could be that these numbers back some decades ago somewhat understate the percentage of intermarriages in those times. Nonetheless, I think it\u2019s pretty convincing evidence that over time, intermarriage has been increasing.<\/p>\n\n

In our survey, among all Jewish respondents \u2013 both the secular, if you will, the Jews of no religion, and the Jews by religion \u2013 35% identify as Reform. This isn\u2019t synagogue membership. It\u2019s just, \u201cWith what denominational stream do you identify?\u201d A third identify as Reform, 18% is Conservative, 10% is Orthodox and 30% no particular denomination within Judaism. The Orthodox figures, this is 10% of all<\/i> Jews again. The Orthodox make up 12% of Jews by religion. They make up 22% of the individuals in our survey who said that they are synagogue members. Also, this is only adults. The Orthodox, very dramatically in our survey, have much younger average age \u2013 median age \u2013 and many more children per household than other Jews. So if this were a figure including children, the Orthodox would make up undoubtedly a higher percentage of the Jews of all ages. And the survey would indicate they should be growing, the Orthodox should be growing, fairly rapidly based purely on demographic factors. But religion isn\u2019t just a matter of demography. There\u2019s also, among other things, religious switching. I think a number of you have probably seen already \u2013 I know they\u2019ve attracted a lot of attention \u2013 the charts in our survey report that talk about denominational switching. I\u2019m going to just go through them very quickly because I really want to get to some other measures that are more pertinent today, but I want you to see that in our survey . . . of all respondents who say they were raised Orthodox, 48% are Orthodox today; 52% have switched. Most of them are still Jewish by religion; a very small number have left Judaism. Among those raised Conservative, 36% \u2013 an even lower retention rate \u2013 are still Conservative; 30% have moved into the Reform movement, and a few are no longer Jewish or are Jews of no religion. And among Reform, 55% of those raised Reform are still Reform. Overall, the pattern that we see is movement down what you might think of as the ladder of traditionalism. Small numbers are moving in the opposite direction. For example, 1% of those raised Reform have become Orthodox and 6% of those raised Reform have become Conservative, but overall you can see there\u2019s a lot more movement down the ladder of traditionalism than up the ladder of traditionalism, and presumably this is one of the things that ultimately is resulting in more Jews of no religion. I should mention, and we might want to get into this, that if you look at these data by age, you see some very interesting patterns, and the retention rate among the Orthodox, for example, of the younger ages is far higher than among older Orthodox, and we can talk about why that might be, if that\u2019s of interest.<\/p>\n\n

The real heart of this survey in many ways was Jewish identity. What does it mean to be a Jew in America? We asked a battery of questions about this. One of the questions we asked was, we gave people a list of nine items and we said, \u201cPlease tell us which of these is essential to what being Jewish means to you, which is important but not essential, and which is not important.\u201d This chart shows only the percentage who say that various things are essential<\/i> to what being Jewish means to them. And, overall, both Jews by religion and Jews of no religion rated the Holocaust or \u201cremembering the Holocaust\u201d as the top item. More of them rated the Holocaust as being essential than any other item we asked about, followed very closely by leading an ethical and moral life, working for justice and equality, and so on down the list. Couple of things to note here: One is a finding that has tickled some people\u2019s fancy, I should say, and that is that roughly twice as many Jews say that having a good sense of humor is essential to what being Jewish means to them as say that observing Jewish law is essential to what being Jewish means to them. But another finding that\u2019s of some consequence, I think, is that caring about Israel is lower among Jews of no religion. Kind of an interesting pattern here. While lower percentages of Jews of no religion rank almost all of these things as essential, the rank order is roughly the same with the exception of where \u201ccaring for Israel\u201d falls, and so you\u2019ll see that there\u2019s a kind of an anomaly here, a significant difference \u2013 \u201ccaring about Israel\u201d is lower among Jews of no religion. When we look at age differentials on this question, we also see that younger Jews are less likely to say that caring about Israel is essential to them. I\u2019m just showing this one question, but we have more than a dozen questions about Israel in the survey, and on several of the questions, the same pattern is seen \u2013 younger Jews express less emotional attachment to Israel. Younger Jews are more likely to be critical of Israel in various ways. We have a question, for example, about U.S. foreign policy and we ask: \u201cIs U.S. foreign policy too supportive of Israel, not supportive enough of Israel, or about right?\u201d Among Jews 50 and older, 6% say U.S. policy is too supportive of Israel. Among Jews between the ages of 18 and 29, fully 25% say U.S. policy is too supportive of Israel. So this leaves a question that I think is something we all may want to discuss today, which is whether younger Jews are going to become more supportive of Israel as they age, or whether the U.S. Jewish population is going to become less supportive of Israel over time.<\/p>\n\n

[of the previous battery]<\/p>\n\n\n

[slide]<\/p>\n\n\n

[Laughter]<\/p>\n\n\n

COOPERMAN: <\/b>Thank you.<\/p>\n\n

LUGO:<\/b> I\u2019ve always told Alan that if he hadn\u2019t become a journalist, he certainly would\u2019ve become a college professor and you saw Professor Cooperman at work there. Thank you. OK. Nathan, please.<\/p>\n\n

<\/b><\/p>\n\n

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[Research]<\/p>\n\n\n

[Video clip shown at the event was from 2:00 to 3:05.]<\/p>\n\n\n