January 31, 2012 | 4:38 pm

Lost Positives: Estimating the American Jewish Population

Posted by Bruce Phillips

In a recent Blog entry my colleague and co-blogger, Pini Herman, questioned Len Saxe’s estimate of 6.4 million Jews, arguing that the over-estimate was the result of “false positives,” meaning non-Jews who report Judaism as their religion. In the 2004 San Francisco study we did weed out some false positives.  More importantly, however, we also did not interview (and thus did not count) many more persons who had a Jewish parent but answered no to this screener question: “Do you consider yourself to be Jewish, either ethnically or by religion?” It could well be that if we pushed further (an effort the San Francisco Federation was not willing to underwrite) they might have considered themselves Jewish in some other way, and there would be even more Jews in the Bay Area. So Pini is wrong on that one, but correct in focusing on the extensive screening needed to identify Jewish households.

The basis of Saxe’s argument is that the refusal rate in telephone surveys is getting higher and Jews are more likely to refuse than others.  In his meta-analysis Saxes emphasizes that the lower the refusal rate in the 51 surveys he examined, the higher the percentage of Jews, and he provides some other evidence as well. Saxe makes a valid argument. It should also be noted that other eminent social scientists such as David Marker accept the lower 5.4 million estimate of the 2000 NJPS. 

Going back to a time when conducting Jewish population studies was easier, Sid Goldstein (truly the father of American Jewish demography) estimated that the American Jewish population to close to six million in 1970, but he did not expected Jewish numbers to increase because Jewish fertility was well below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children per woman. The estimate of 5.4 million Jews in 2000-2001 would be a logical outcome of this low fertility. So how could the Jewish population have remained stable or even increased?  Intermarriage is one answer. Almost twenty years ago two sociologists at UC Berkeley asked “How 4.5 Million Irish Immigrants Became 40 Million Irish Americans” (American Sociological Review, 1994, 59:1). The answer was that generations of intermarriage had produced 40 million persons who listed “Irish” as one of their ancestries.  Along these same lines, Sergio DellaPergola of the Hebrew University has recently estimated that 12 million Americans of Jewish ancestry would qualify for immediate Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return.

Regardless of the debate over the size of the Jewish population, all Jewish demographers agree that the Jewish population in the midst of a sea change. Jews are more dispersed, and soon there will be more Jews with a non-Jewish parent than with two Jewish parents. These important changes have gotten lost in the Jewish press. It is easier to complain about the lack of consensus among Jewish social researchers than to grapple with the unquestioned consensus among them: this isn’t your father and/or mother’s Jewish population any more.

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Bruce Phillips is a Professor of Jewish Communal Service in the School of Non-Profit Management, HUC-JIR/Los Angeles and USC. Bruce is among the leading sociologists studying the contemporary Jewish community, specializing in the sociology and demography of American Jewry.  Bruce can be found playing banjo, mandolin and other stringed instruments in the Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills Shabbat Unplugged live Bayit (House) Band on many Friday nights.pini00003@gmail.com

January 31, 2012 | 11:56 am

Demographic Dueling by the Duo

Posted by Pini Herman

My colleague Bruce Phillips has decided to take up the gauntlet that I threw down questioning the new US Jewish population estimates produced by two academic groups Back East at Brandeis, Florida and Connecticut of over six million Jews that they feel they have the evidence of existing in America today.

I called Professor Len Saxe about the 6.4 million Jews estimate and questioned his experience with and abandoning the use of a Jewish screener questionnaire and relying only on the “What is your religion?” question.  The only response from him was that over 150 studies were used and they were undertaken by the foremost social scientists in the country.

I look forward to the arguments that Bruce will bring as I have heard no more from any of the Back East estimators regarding my shot over their bow.  Unfortunately, the only argument that Len Saxe raised was that 150 studies were done by leading social researchers in the country.  The studies were not fielded by Saxe and those who did field them would never claim that any of the studies could be relied on to give an accurate picture of the Jewish population in the U.S.  I myself had a conversation over a decade ago with Tom W. Smith, principal investigator, of the General Social Survey, the backbone of Saxe’s Jewish estimates, about how useful it might be for population estimation for Jews and he waved me off saying that it was not designed for that.  So one leading social researcher told me not to do what Saxe has done, I’m sure that the others wouldn’t attempt to do with their surveys what they weren’t designed to do. 

That’s why Jewish population studies are so costly and when corners are cut, it comes back to bite you.  So stayed tuned for Bruce Phillips’ response to “A Million Jews Mistake.”

Pini Herman, PhD. has served as Asst. Research Professor at the University of Southern California Dept. of Geography,  Adjunct Lecturer at the USC School of Social Work,  Research Director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles following Bruce Phillips, PhD. in that position (I was recently notified that with 40,000 visitors this year the 15 year old study of the LA Jewish population was third most downloaded study from Berman Jewish Policy Archives in 2011) and is immediate past President of the Movable Minyan a lay-lead independent congregation in the 3rd Street area. Currently he is a principal of Phillips and Herman Demographic Research. To email Pini: pini00003@gmail.com To follow Pini on Twitter: Follow @pinih

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January 27, 2012 | 10:31 am

Jewish Identity, It’s Less Holocaust Centric

Posted by Pini Herman

It’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day today, Jan. 27, 2012, 67 years after the liberation of Auschwitz. 

My read from over 220 responses of the survey attached to this blog is that the Holocaust is of the least interest of many Jewish topics to people.  While the survey may not be absolutely representative of the general and Jewish population specifically, as a random sample survey may be, I think its not far off.

While the theme “REMEMBER” or z’chor in Hebrew is the central theme of many Holocaust “remembrances” the theme of “Never Again” has become much more militantly popular as we grow more distant in time and memory from the actual events and the horrors.

What is the source of the Holocaust disinterest?  Is it a result of Holocaust fatigue or that the dissonance that the Holocaust evokes is something that many Jews and non-Jews want to avoid?  Is it just that historical phenomenon just fade from memory and so too will this Holocaust of World War II?

Please join us Today, Friday, Jan. 27 at noon sharp (its only scheduled for 15 minutes) at the corner of Robertson and Burton Way, or any other location on map for the Mapping Auschwitz border Flash Event being organized by the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. My mom who shared her story of survival will be there.

Pini Herman, PhD. has served as Asst. Research Professor at the University of Southern California Dept. of Geography,  Adjunct Lecturer at the USC School of Social Work,  Research Director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles following Bruce Phillips, PhD. in that position (I was recently notified that with 40,000 visitors this year the 15 year old study of the LA Jewish population was third most downloaded study from Berman Jewish Policy Archives in 2011) and is immediate past President of the Movable Minyan a lay-lead independent congregation in the 3rd Street area. Currently he is a principal of Phillips and Herman Demographic Research. To email Pini: pini00003@gmail.com To follow Pini on Twitter: Follow @pinih

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January 25, 2012 | 11:47 am

A Blessing for Hitler? May His Memory Be Eradicated

Posted by Pini Herman

Demographers are always looking for classifications and categories.  I mistakenly assumed, as many sons do, that because of what I thought were some unique circumstances, my mom was in a class by herself. Pondering about it, I also wondered how, using Jewish standards, how at the time she would have classified her encounter with a person that almost definitions defines wickedness in our time.

As Holocaust survivors are dying off and their stories are lost, a only a handful of media organizations are putting attention and resources into recounting the tales of the survivors.  Its not a popular topic.  My research has shown me that interest in the Holocaust is waning, even in the Jewish community.

My 88 year-old mother had never publicly shared her story of survival in a public forum, so I pitched it in an email to journalist Jane Ulman, saying among other things that my mom is probably the last living person in the U.S. to have personally seen both Hitler and Pope Pius XII in the flesh.  Well, I stand corrected.  As it turns out, a personal acquaintance, journalist Tom Tugend, who lives and works here in Los Angeles emailed me that he saw Hitler twice while living in Berlin (once with Mussolini) and Tom had an audience with Pope Pius XII while stopping in Rome after serving as a volunteer in Israel’s War of Independence. Tom says that he still living—He thinks…

This gave me an insight as to how penetrating and far reaching to audiences personages such as Hitler with his mass rallies and triumphant parades and the Pope with his numerous mass blessings and audiences were even before the penetration of mass media technology.  As was said, even a cat may look on a king.

I too had an encounter with a pope, Pope John Paul II on his way from his secret helicopter landing on the USC campus to Mass at the LA Colosseum in 1987.  I was about to cross an intersection and a USC security guard stopped me and a limousine turned the corner.  I was face to face, not a foot away from the highly recognizable face of John Paull II looking at me directly from his limousine.  With a kindly smile, John Paul II raise his hand, either in a wave or perhaps a blessing.  So. I did what one is likely to do when waved to be someone in close proximity, I waved back at him.

When I recounted the story in an Jewish Orthodox setting, someone told me I should have said a blessing as the Pope leads millions of people. He turned to the middle of the Art Scroll Kol Yaakov Siddur on page 228 and showed me the blessing upon seeing an lawful ruler who could not be overruled and who has the power of life and death.

This brings me to the blessing upon seeing Hitler.  When my mother saw Hitler, he was the lawful ruler with all the required attributes.  When I put the question to a rabbi there whether a blessing would have been appropriate, he replied that much discussion about bad kings has taken place in the Talmud, but that a blessing for the leader, regardless of the leader’s politics would have been appropriate.

I guess in the Jewish tradition, as long as he was living, even a person as wicked as Hitler had a chance to redeem himself.  In Proverbs 17.23 the radical concept that God can even be bribed by the wicked is introduced and it is hard to imagine a person more wicked than Hitler.

The moment Hitler died, all chances of his redemption were over and we could and should proceed to eradicate his “name” or rather, any memory of him.  Perhaps that process of memory atrophy has begun.

If you had a personal encounter with both Hitler and Pope Pius XII or personally know of someone living who did so, I would appreciate you informing me of the circumstance of the occasions at pini00003@gmail.com. Please join us on Friday, Jan. 27 at noon at the corner of Robertson and Burton Way, or any other location on map for the Mapping Auschwitz border Flash Event being organized by the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.

Pini Herman, PhD. has served as Asst. Research Professor at the University of Southern California Dept. of Geography,  Adjunct Lecturer at the USC School of Social Work,  Research Director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles following Bruce Phillips, PhD. in that position (I was recently notified that with 40,000 visitors this year the 15 year old study of the LA Jewish population was third most downloaded study from Berman Jewish Policy Archives in 2011) and is immediate past President of the Movable Minyan a lay-lead independent congregation in the 3rd Street area. Currently he is a principal of Phillips and Herman Demographic Research. To email Pini: pini00003@gmail.com To follow Pini on Twitter: Follow @pinih

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January 19, 2012 | 1:25 pm

The One Million Jews Mistake?

Posted by Pini Herman

Two new independent studies have found that there are between 6.4 million and 6.6 million Jews living in the United States today, representing about 1.8% of the population. One study out of Brandeis by Leonard Saxe, the 6.4 million figure and another study out of the University of Miami and University of Conneticut by Ira Sheskin and Arnold Dashevsky are creating a debate which is the newest tempest in a teapot. With all the pronouncements about the newly found million Jews, we don’t know anything more about one single Jew in the US than we did before this “PEGGING” of US Jews at the over 6.4 million mark rather than the previous 5.2 million which would have made Israel at 5.8 million Jews the largest Jewish population in the world.

It all hinges on how hundreds of thousands of US respondents answered the generic religion survey question on dozens of general surveys in the US and whether Jewish screening questions were properly applied in more specialized Jewish population studies.  In both cases, as an experienced demographer, I would worry before I made a rash announcement of an million extra Jews in the U.S.  There are other serious issues as to estimation assumptions, such as using 3 to 10 year old surveys which provide no household members information to estimate current Jewish population figures based on current population estimates.

Its a reach to use the methodologies that Saxe, in the Brandeis study, and the Sheskin and Dashevsky study use to estimate U.S. National Jewish populations.  If my experience with false positives, that is non-Jews claiming to be Jewish, in local Jewish surveys in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Houston is ramped up to a national scale and ignored then I would expect a number much higher than it actually is.

As described in a recent Forward article:

Daunted by the steep expense and lengthy time required by random digit dialing, Saxe and his team ferreted out data that already existed to reach his conclusion. This included information from more than 150 government surveys on topics completely unrelated to Judaism, such as health care or education. Each study had a sample size of at least 1,000 people, and each study asked the question: What is your religion?

So, as long as US Jews don’t actually do a needed $10-14 million scientific survey, we retain bragging rights over Israel on the basis of guesstimates.

Now that we’ve cheaply built this Jewish demographic castle in the air…when do we move in?

Pini Herman, PhD. has served as Asst. Research Professor at the University of Southern California Dept. of Geography,  Adjunct Lecturer at the USC School of Social Work,  Research Director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles following Bruce Phillips, PhD. in that position (I was recently notified that with 40,000 visitors this year the 15 year old study of the LA Jewish population was third most downloaded study from Berman Jewish Policy Archives in 2011) and is immediate past President of the Movable Minyan a lay-lead independent congregation in the 3rd Street area. Currently he is a principal of Phillips and Herman Demographic Research. To email Pini: pini00003@gmail.com To follow Pini on Twitter: Follow @pinih

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January 12, 2012 | 1:52 pm

Cohabitation and Intermarriage - What will Jewish Parents Think?

Posted by Bruce Phillips

A report issued by the Pew Research Center at the end of 2010 revealed that marriage in America was at an all-time low, with only 51% of American adults 18 and older currently married as contrasted with 72% in 1960.  Many trends contribute to the decline of marriage including later age at marriage, higher divorce rates, more people choosing to never marry, and a rise in cohabitation. Some cohabiting couples are simply not ready to get married, others regard marriage an obsolete institution, and still others are cohabiting in interracial non-marital unions.  Demographers refer to couples living together as “non-marital unions.” They have long noted that non-marital unions are more likely to be inter-racial than are marital unions (i.e. married couples).  Up until 1967 anti-miscegenation laws in 15 states outlawed black-white marriages leaving non-marital unions as the only option for these couples.  Family pressures currently explain the current high rate of interracial unions among cohabiting couples.  A young person living with a person of a different race does not have to apprise his or her parents of this fact.  If and when they choose to marry, however, the parents are more likely to become involved. At some point mom and dad will want to meet their new son or daughter-in-law. This is why, according to Stanford demographer Michael J. Rosenfeld, interracial couples and same-sex couples are more likely to live away from the community in which their parents reside.

Does this apply to Jews?  Let’s look at non-marital unions in the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey.  For this analysis a non-marital union was defined as a household in which the respondent indicated a partner, fiancé, boyfriend, or girlfriend was living with them. Only about 6 percent of all Jewish households were non-marital unions, because non-marital unions are linked to age: 16% of all respondents 18-24 and 13% of those 25-29 were cohabiting, as compared with only 6 percent of 30-39 year old respondents and 3 percent of those 40 and older.

The table below compares the percentage of cohabiting and married respondents with a non-Jewish partner controlling for ancestry. Only respondents under 30 are analyzed, as these are the most likely to be cohabiting. As I have pointed out in an earlier blog, persons of mixed Jewish ancestry are far more likely to intermarry than those of single Jewish ancestry (i.e. two Jewish parents).  Almost all of the mixed ancestry respondents under 30 had a non-Jewish partner, regardless of marital status. Among single Jewish ancestry respondents, however, those who were cohabiting were almost two and half times as likely to have a non-Jewish partner as those who were married (73% vs. 30%).

I am struck by how much Jewish cohabitation resembles interracial cohabitation.  For both Jews and African Americans, non-martial unions are more likely to be interfaith/interracial than are marriages. Interracial couples are hesitant about family reactions and possibly have doubts about the viability of interracial marriage. Young Jews in cohabiting interfaith unions apparently have their own reservations about their parents’ reaction and/or the complications that arise from an interfaith marriage.

Percent of Respondents in a Union with a Non-Jew by Marital Status and Ancestry (Respondents 18-29)

                                                   

	Ancestry - Mixed (One Jewish parent)	Ancestry - Single (Two Jewish parents)
Marital Status - Cohabiting	97%	73%
Marital Status - Married	95%	30%

Bruce Phillips is a Professor of Jewish Communal Service in the School of Non-Profit Management, HUC-JIR/Los Angeles and USC. Bruce is among the leading sociologists studying the contemporary Jewish community, specializing in the sociology and demography of American Jewry.  Bruce can be found playing banjo, mandolin and other stringed instruments in the Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills Shabbat Unplugged live Bayit (House) Band on many Friday nights.pini00003@gmail.com

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January 5, 2012 | 6:56 am

Sticky Fingers Pointing at Us Dampened My Holiday Cheer

Posted by Pini Herman

I haven’t seen many shoplifters, but I’m was told in a widely published piece by the Associated Press’ Sarah Skidmore that I wasn’t looking hard enough and that there was going to be an increase of 6 percent.

I like to think that I’m living in an environment, despite Winona Ryder, where the majority of people identify with being honest. Even Winona is basically honest and just needed and hopefully benefited from therapy. The FBI’s preliminary Uniform Crime Report data for 2010 shows continuing crime decreases.  Violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault) fell by 5.5% and property crimes (burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, arson) fell by 2.8% from the year before.

How is it that news stories are trumpeting an increase?  It turns out that a private company, Center for Retail Research, which sells security consulting to companies asked a very small and inadequate sample of retail companies’ theft reduction departments what they felt their their experience with theft will be this season.  This survey has been done for years and I can’t find where these estimates of future crime were ever reviewed to see if they panned out with with actual crimes.

Interestingly, when one checks back to the data another picture of company employees and vendors stealing far more retail goods emerges. It turns out that a third of expected theft is by customers, half of theft is by company employees and vendors and about a sixth is lost to company internal error.

The above description of the retail world may pretty well sum up the recent sub-prime mortgage crisis, except the customers didn’t even have to shoplift. These sub-prime customers were convinced by “money retailers” to use purchase loan plans that the lenders knew most couldn’t afford at terms contracted. Ironically, most sub-prime borrowers try or tried valiantly to pay because they see themselves as honest people who signed a contract that they are beholden to.

The AP shoplifting story came out the same week Bank of America Corp. settled to pay record $335 million to compensate borrowers who were charged more for discriminatory home loans based on race and national origin. Still, not one sub-prime corporate executive is sitting next to convicted shoplifters populating our jail cells.

Pini Herman, PhD. has served as Asst. Research Professor at the University of Southern California Dept. of Geography,  Adjunct Lecturer at the USC School of Social Work,  Research Director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles following Bruce Phillips, PhD. in that position (I was just notified that with 40,000 visitors this year the 15 year old study of the LA Jewish population was Third Among The Top Ten Publications Downloaded from Berman Jewish Policy Archives in 2011) and is immediate past President of the Movable Minyan a lay-lead independent congregation in the 3rd Street area. Currently he is a principal of Phillips and Herman Demographic Research. To email Pini: pini00003@gmail.com To follow Pini on Twitter: Follow @pinih

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