Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

Bigger Population Estimate Means Wider Definition of Jewishness

If the United States had 6.7 million holders of a doctorate, and 1 million of these hold a doctorate partly, how many Ph.D.s are there in America? Or, to use another analogy, what’s the meaning of a partly democratic government, or of being partly pregnant?

Few among the leading intellectuals in this country will object to the Pew Research Center survey’s new finding of 6.7 million Jews in the United States — a figure that includes 1 million people who say they have no religion and are partly Jewish. This makes for 5.7 million who are Jewish — by religion or not — to the exclusion of something else. Pew relies on survey data, and most people are sincere when they answer surveys. If they tell you they are Jewish and something else, let us believe them and not force them to give up on that something else.

There are a few million more Americans who say they are not Jewish but do hold Jewish family associations or have some other Jewish background. For some of them, these are meaningful attachments. For many others, Jewishness is not so meaningful. An enlarged constituency evolves day by day; some days some are in, and some days some are out. Many non-Jews do Jewish things; many Jews do non-Jewish things. It may look confusing, but this is the best portrayal of the complex mutations in Jewish identities under way. This is Americanization at its best.

Jewish identity in the United States and elsewhere boils down to meaning. Overall population size trades off with intensity and with relevance of belonging to the Jewish collective. One million more Jews in the United States mean an intermarriage rate that is 10% higher. The more numerous, the more diluted.

Sergio DellaPergola is a professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.