Jewish Demographic Study Reveals Drastic Need for Jewish Demographers
Bleak: Since its peak in the Truman-era, opportunity for Jewish demography water-cooler chat has become starkly limited. Image by courtesy of rabbi mrs. Steven M. Cohen
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy!
According to today’s late-mid-morning Jewish Population Survey (#4 out of the day’s 19), the field of Jewish demographers has rapidly dwindled to just Steven M. Cohen.
“I am lonely — so very, very lonely,” says Cohen, of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. “Sometimes I put an elbow-patched tan jacket and glasses on my chair and pretend I’m at a mobbed ‘Jewish demography conference,’ but the fantasy rarely lasts.”
It’s a critical problem, say community experts, because demographics are one of the only two bogeymen left to motivate Jews to do anything. “It’s intermarriage and the Holocaust,” says one source, “And let’s just say we’re running out of Oscar-winning documentary ideas.”
Social scientist Leonard Saxe of Brandeis sees the trends differently, however. “Steven’s research biases prevent him from painting an accurate picture. I agree with him that there is one Jewish demographer left, but my studies clearly show that it is me, not him.”
“Of course, the sample size means that we have a margin of error in the region of a minyan,” he continued. “I do find Cohen to be standing on firm ground regarding the loneliness, however,” he concluded. “I wish he’d come up for a bagel sometime.”
Cohen locates grounds for hope in Jewish tradition. “Our Sages say that if there’s only one Jew at the Pesach Seder, he should tell the story to himself. Likewise, I’m preparing a humdinger of a survey for me.” Cohen pledges to keep us posted on the results, potentially thousands of times.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
