Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

1% of Americans Believe Barack Obama Is Jewish

(JTA) — Thanks to a recent CNN poll and an article in Mashable that trumpets its findings, the word is out that 1 percent of Americans believe President Barack Obama is Jewish.

Of course, Obama is not Jewish. He’s Protestant and has attended several different churches in Washington, D.C. since becoming president.

Yet the CNN poll released on Sunday found that only 39 percent of Americans know the president’s religious denomination. According to the survey, 29 percent think he’s Muslim, 4 percent think he’s Catholic, 2 percent think he’s Mormon and 1 percent think he’s Jewish.

The poll’s 3-percent margin of error makes its finding on Obama’s perceived Jewishness insignificant. But that didn’t stop the Internet from reacting — often humorously.

Tablet writer Yair Rosenberg pointed out ironically that right-wing pundit Ann Coulter’s recent controversial comments on the United States-Israel relationship don’t seem to be getting through to the American people.

Even Atlantic columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, who famously called Obama the “first Jewish president,” weighed in.

Perhaps it’s not so surprising that some Americans may think Obama is Jewish. After all, the president has hosted seven White House Passover seders, appointed two Jewish chiefs of staff and has a first name that means “lightning” in Hebrew.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  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.