Ohio Jewish Chronicle, 1991-06-27

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VOLUME 69
NUMBER 26
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,D6VpTED   TO   AMr^fCAN-ANfJfJEWISH   IDEALS
'New World Order'
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page 2
Tracing relatives
through personal ads
page 3
Busche to be honored
by City of Hope
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page 4
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Grandparents, crowned
page6
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EARLY DEADLINES
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CJF NATIONAL POPULATION SURVEY
Survey pinpoints successes, problems
in American Jewish life
The most comprehensive
survey of the American Jewish community in two decades
reveals that the way American Jews live and the people
they live with have changed
dramatically in recent years.
One of the most striking
findings of the study, whose
highlights were released recently by the Council of Jewish Federations, the continental organization of almost 200
Jewish Federations, including
the Columbus Jewish Federation, is that American Jews
are now more likely to marry
non-Jews than Jews.
Over half of Jews married
since 1985 are wed to gentiles.
And nearly one-third of all
married Jews are wed to people who were not born Jewish.
Twenty-eight percent of
married Jews are wed to gentiles, and another four percent
are married to what the survey calls "Jews by choice."
But while the pace of intermarriage has picked up in recent years, conversion to Judaism is still not popular. Only
five percent of marriages
since 1985 involved a gentile
who became a Jew by Choice.
Moreover, there appears to
be growing acceptance, if not
approval, of intermarriage
among American Jews; 87.5
percent of Jews surveyed said
they would accept the marriage of their child to a non-
Jew.
Among some of the other
more significant findings of
the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey are that the
American Jewish population
is highly educated, overwhelmingly American-born,
politically liberal, consists in
great part of the baby boom
generation, is extremely mobile, lives increasingly in the
South and West, has a strong
attachment to Israel and to a
substantial extent is secular
rather than religious.
Columbus'own Jewish Population Survey, conducted by
the Columbus Jewish Federation, was released several
months ago. The timing of the
two surveys offers ari opportunity for central Ohio Jewry to
see how they compare with
national statistics.   .
The national survey found
there are just over 5.5 million
core Jews—those who reported themselves Jews by religion (born Jews or Jews by
choice) or" as secular Jews
(those born Jewish who report
having no current religion);
this represents a slight increase in the Jewish population since the 1970 CJF national survey which put the popu-
Jation level at 5.4 million.
The stability of the core population over a 20-year period
goes against some predictions
made after the previous study
of a rapidly declining Jewish
population.
The total population-in the
survey, however, numbers 8.2
million living .in 3.2 million
households in which there is at
least one member who is Jewish or had a Jewish parent.
The Survey's significant
findings include:
• More than 90 percent of
American Jews were born in
ttvis country; *
• The stereotype of the nuclear family, with two Jewish
parents and children, is present in only 17 percent of 2.7
million households containing
a core Jew; the Jewish fertility rate" is; lower than that of
the U.S. white population as a
whole;      '•'' :a
• There is a high proportion
of elderly among the core
Jews (15 percent), which is
one-third higher than in the
general U.S. population;
• There is a high level of education, with over 50 percent
of Jewish men being college
graduates, compared to 24
petcentof the population as a
whole. As far as women are
concerned, 45 percent of Jewish women are college graduates, compared with 17 percent in the general population;
>• Recent Jewish immigrants, primarily those from
the Soyiet Union, have settled
mostly on the East and West
coasts;      •
• Of the 8.2 million people in
a household where a Jew is
present, 6.1 million are in the
work force, with 70 percent in
the private sector and nine
percent in the non-profit
sphere; 16 percent are self-
employed;
• Over the years, the number of Jews in family businesses has declined dramatically, to only three percent, an
indication of the increasingly
professional status of the community;
• There are four times as
many Jews who practice the
religion as there are secular
Jews: 4.4 million to 1.1 million;
• There has been recent
growth in numbers of children
receiving a Jewish education,
particularly among younger
children;
• 80 percent of the Jews by
religion population have a denominational preference for
the Conservative and Reform
synagogue movements;
• There is a surprising level
of residual Jewish behavior
even in households beyond the
core population, for example,
attending Passover seder,
fasting on Yom Kippur, light
ing Chanukah candles or
never having a Christmas
tree;
• • 79 percent of Jews across
the spectrum perceive anti-.
Semitism to be a serious problem in the United States today; only five percent have
personally experienced discrimination in a job situation;
• 45 percent of the Jewish
population defines itself as liberal or very liberal, 20 percent
conservative or very conservative, with 30 percent calling
themselves middle of the
road. In addition, American
Jews vote: over 80 percent of
adults are registered voters,
while 35 percent contributed to
a political campaign in the
past three years;
• 80 percent of Jewish
households give to' charities,
including Jewish and non-
Jewish causes; 50 percent of
the adults serve as volunteers..
The Survey was based on
2,441 completed interviews in
49 states drawn from an initial
sample of 126,000 randomly
selected Americans. The pro-
, cedure allowed for an equal
probability of Jews to be selected from every state
whether in small towns or in
major metropolitan areas so
that a national picture could
emerge.
Dr. Barry A. Kosmin, CJF
director of research and director of the Mandel! L. Berman
Institute-North American
Jewfeh Data Bank of ..the City
University of New York Graduate Center, directed the survey along with CJF Research
Consultant Jeffrey Scheckner.
The entire survey was overseen by the CJF National
Technical Advisory Committee on Jewish Population Stud-
sec SURVEY pg. 2