Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Actually, Commentary, There Are Tons Of Jews Who Are Also African-Americans

The latest edition of Commentary magazine, published online Friday, has already generated widespread criticism for its cover and its feature articles. The theme is “African Americans vs. American Jews,” set in all caps against a blood-red background.


But there is a sizable number of African America Jews who may feel ignored by Commentary. According to estimates from the Pew Research Center’s 2013 “Portrat of American Jews,” 2% of America’s Jews describe themselves as black. By comparison, Pew’s study also found that 2% of America’s Jews were born in Israel.

Black Jews hail from many different parts of the Jewish world, from Orthodoxy, from the Hasidic world, from liberal denominations and from the Hebrew Israelite group.

Altogether, black Jews number about 106,000 people, according to Pew’s estimates.

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aefeldman

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.