Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Cleveland Population Stable at 80,000 Jews

A population study of the greater Cleveland area found that the Jewish population has remained relatively stable over the last 15 years.

The 2011 Greater Cleveland Jewish Population Study, the first comprehensive survey since 1996, found 80,800 Jews living in the greater Cleveland area, down slightly from 81,500 in 1996.

Among the findings:

  • 62 percent of married couples are married to other Jews and 38 percent intermarried;

  • 89 percent of children being raised Jewish have had some sort of Jewish education, as well as 43 percent of children being raised “Jewish and something else”;

  • the Orthodox community grew by 2,200;

  • 23 percent of Jewish Clevelanders are children up to the age of 17;

  • 36 percent of Jewish households are “just managing” financially and another 5 percent can’t make ends meet.

The study also found that the community did not spread out geographically as much as was thought anecdotally.

“We are a significant Jewish community in North America, not only qualitatively, but numerically as well,” said the study’s chair, Enid Rosenberg. “We have the collective power to have an impact on making the world a better place for all people. This is our mission, and we are poised now more than ever to carry it out.”

The study was conducted by the professional research firm Jewish Policy and Action Research, an alliance between Ukeles Associates Inc. and Social Science Research Solutions. Together they have conducted 22 similar Jewish community population studies, including recent or current studies in Baltimore, New York and Chicago.

The survey employed random digit dialing of land lines and cellphones. Survey respondents in the 1,044 Jewish households that were the subject of extensive interviews after a short screening questionnaire were self-identified as Jewish.

A message from our CEO & publisher 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 during this critical time.

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

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

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.