JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Since the 1990s, American presidents have provided Israel the military capacity and diplomatic immunity to control millions of Palestinians who lack basic rights. Yet, at the same time, American presidents have insisted that Palestinians deserve those basic rights — that, in the words of George W. Bush, “it is untenable for Palestinians to live in…
Last week, we reported in these pages that based on current age contours, the next 40 years will see a large expansion of the Orthodox population, alongside deep declines in the number of Conservative and Reform Jews. To take one startling statistic, of many: For every 100 Orthodox Jews 60-69, we have 575 children under…
The Public Religion Research Institute (PPRI) released a report last week on “America’s Changing Religious Identity.” Many of the findings were of particular interest to the Jewish community. Below are the 10 most fascinating things we learned about the changing nature of the American Jewish landscape: 1: Jews Are No Longer The Most Educated Religious…
An article appeared a couple of weeks ago in the Federalist, “Why Men and Women Can Never Be ‘Just Friends’”, that inspired a lot of pushback at the time. While its author, Hans Fiene, is a Lutheran pastor, the topic the piece deals with — demographics — couldn’t be more connected to Jewish life. Fiene,…
The 2013 Pew Forum “A Portrait of Jewish Americans” posed the question, “What does being Jewish mean in America today?” On the final day of a free, 10-day Birthright trip to Israel, 39 Jewish Americans participants (ages 21-27) were asked the same question. Six young Jewish Israelis, who also participated in the entire trip and…
If the math is right, then Jews and Arabs will number about the same in Israel and the Palestinian territories next year, according to a survey from the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics. According to the report, Israeli Jews and Arabs — including those who are citizens of Israel — will both total to 6.58…
Recently I was waiting to chow down on some beef stew at a Jerusalem restaurant in the city’s iconic Mahane Yehuda market, often called “the shuk.” That’s when I saw them. Hordes of Americans in the their early 20s. The best new winter jackets. Young, robust, happy. They were chatting about how “cool” Jerusalem was….
The overall American Jewish population size is stable and growing, but its character is shifting dramatically. The Orthodox population (Haredi, centrist, and modern) is exploding. The non-Orthodox are in sharp decline. We can chart the rapid growth of the Orthodox by looking at their numbers in the Pew Research Center data over three generations, each…
