Expert: Study Overhyped N.Y. Orthodox Population
A leading Jewish demographer is disputing the findings of a recent widely cited survey on New York Jewry.
Len Saxe, a demographer at Brandeis University, told the New York Jewish Week that the survey overestimated the number of Orthodox Jews in the city.
He agreed with the finiding that the city’s overall Jewish population has grown.
The survey found that about 1.5 million Jews live in New York City and two surrounding counties, and that about one third of those are Orthodox.
The survey was commissioned by the UJA-Federation of New York and titled “Jewish Community Study of New York: 2011.” It was released last month.
Saxe said that data on the Orthodox clashed with data reported by the Avi Chai Foundation in 2009 on the number of Orthodox children in day schools.
“Key outcomes of the study don’t seem to reconcile with ‘hard,’ non-survey data,” Saxe told The Jewish Week.
Steven M. Cohen, one of the study’s authors, told the Jewish Week that “the main contours of our findings” were correct.
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’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
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. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
