The challenge to American Jewry 
 
By Sergio Della Pergola 
Ha'aretz
October 13, 2002 
 
The Jewish population of the United States currently stands at 
5.2 million - down from 5.5 million in 1990 - according to the 
estimate of the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey, 
sponsored by the United Jewish Communities, an international 
social service federation based in New York. However, hundreds 
of thousands of immigrants entered the United States in the 1990s,
a development that should have driven up the number of Jews 
there to 5.7 million. What happened to the missing 500,000 Jews? 
Did the major research project, which cost some $6 million, fail 
in its efforts to find them? 

True, it is very difficult to survey a population that is 
scattered and integrated into the general public, as is the case 
with the majority of American Jews. Still, a prodigious effort 
went into the new survey: about 5.5 million attempted phone calls 
led to conversations with a representative sample of 180,000 
respondents throughout the United States, and of these, 4,500 
in-depth interviews were conducted, which included more than 
300 questions, with Jewish families or families with a Jewish 
background of some kind. 

The survey defined various circles of Jewish identity: 
a consolidated core of 3.9 million, who consider Judaism their 
religion in differing degrees of tenacity or knowledge, and 
another 1.3 million Jews without religious attachment, who consider 
themselves connected to Jewish identity in different ways. There 
are another 1.5 million family members of Jewish origin, 
who do not view themselves as Jews, and another 1.4 million 
family relatives without any Jewish background of any kind. 
In practice, then, the 5.2 million people are part of a public 
of 8.1 million people who live in households with some sort of 
attachment to Judaism. 

The number of Jews in the United States declined in the past 
decade, whereas the country's population increased by 33 million, 
with the result that the proportion of Jews and their public 
weight decreased. This constitutes a genuine demographic problem. 
The main reason for the new findings has to do with the erosion 
of the young generation, in two senses. One is that the majority 
of the women aged 30 to 35, and the overwhelming majority of 
younger women, have no children. The low fertility rate, which 
has been ongoing for the past 20 years, is insufficient to 
produce a succeeding generation for today's adults. And when 
young people are few in number, the community ages and a deficit 
is generated. 

The second problem involves the desire to belong. 
A not insignificant number of people, who in 1990 were in some 
way identified as Jews, "disappeared" in 2000. Most of them are 
probably living with non-Jewish partners. Their spiritual and 
intellectual world lies elsewhere. When a person gives a negative 
reply to the question of whether he considers himself a Jew, 
in terms of Jewish collective usefulness, at least in the 
American context, he no longer exists. 

Confronted by these two processes, American Jewry faces a serious 
dilemma. One challenge is how to persuade those who wish to be 
part of the Jewish way of life that a cultural collectivity 
cannot exist in the long term without primary biological 
foundations of family and children. The second challenge is how 
to penetrate the margins of those who can't be bothered or who 
don't want to belong in order to confront them with a renewed 
spark of historical memory and mutual responsibility. 

In the absence of success in these two missions, the Jewish 
community in the United States will still continue to be large 
and influential for many years to come; however, its reduced 
weight in the majority society and its intensified aging will 
have a deep adverse effect on its ability to protect its 
self-interests in the 21st century and to assist other Jewish 
communities, as it did with great success in the 20th century. 

Nevertheless, there is another side to the overall quite gloomy 
findings of the new survey. If the Jews of the United States 
are a smaller community than what had been thought, this means 
that less time will go by before the Jewish population of Israel 
exceeds that of America. From the point of view of concern about 
the centrality of Israel on the world Jewish map, this can be 
reason for satisfaction. However, it would be preferable if the 
Israeli society were to flourish thanks to its own power of 
attraction and not because of the existential weakness of 
Diaspora Jewry. 
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Professor Della Pergola, of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry 
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is currently at the 
Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.