ONE MILLION MORE U.S. JEWS

New survey finds more U.S. Jews (JTA)
NEW YORK, Dec. 20 (JTA) — Just when you thought the American Jewish community was dying — or at least the debate about its size — a new study that finds nearly a million more American Jews than previous estimates has resurrected the discussions.

When the United Jewish Communities found in its 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey that the American Jewish population stood at roughly 5.2 million, the number was widely scrutinized. Most observers were dismayed by the decrease of 300,000 Jews from the UJC’s previous population survey in 1990, and critics claimed the UJC had used flawed methodology.

After two years of debating the accuracy of the 2000-2001 study, the discussion seemed to wane as Jewish communal professionals decided it had value even if it wasn’t perfect. But the 2006 American Jewish Yearbook, which came out Monday, claims the U.S. Jewish population is roughly 6.4 million.

University of Miami professor Ira Sheskin and University of Connecticut professor Arnold Dashefsky arrived at the 6.4 million figure from surveys conducted by local Jewish communities.

Sheskin admits that their survey was fundamentally flawed. In counting individual communities, the two professors were bound to overcount by several hundred thousand people because of Jewish “snowbirds” who have two residences. Also, they had to rely on estimates from smaller communities, which can be inexact.

But the 5.2 million figure from the NJPS just didn’t make sense, according to Sheskin, who helped conduct the NJPS and has conducted Jewish population surveys in 35 individual communities.

When larger cities such as New York and Chicago conducted individual population studies over the same period, they showed little or no population drop. And over the past decade, the Jewish population in cities such as San Francisco and Las Vegas has exploded, Sheskin said.

In any case, a more in-depth survey set to be released in coming weeks says that even the 6.4 million figure may be low.

Len Saxe, director of Brandeis University’s Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, is about to publish the findings of a meta-survey of the Jewish population. The scientific analysis and calibration of three dozen vaunted population studies, such as the American National Elections Study and the General Social Survey, was conducted within three years of 2001 and includes questions about religion.

“We believe that the number of Jews by religion is close to 6 million,” Saxe said, “and there is an additional population of individuals who are Jews by some other criterion — that could be between 10 percent and 20 percent more. The bottom line is that while I don’t endorse the methodology Sheskin used, the fact is that our conclusions are similar.”

Clarifying the NJPS findings is important, Saxe said, because the methodology not only gave a low estimate of the size of the Jewish population but drew an inaccurate portrait of who is Jewish.

The NJPS relied on early evening cold calls to households that were presumed to be Jewish. But because Orthodox Jews keep kosher and tend to have homebound children, they typically don’t eat out on weekdays, meaning there was a greater chance that those calling Jewish households would end up talking to Orthodox families, Saxe said.