May 24, 2012 | 12:44 pm

Blinding Ourselves Intentionally

Posted by Pini Herman

Are we, the U.S., going the way of Lebanon where no official census has been taken since 1932 due to the sensitive confessional political balance between Lebanon’s various religious groups where the the President, for example, has to be a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim, the Speaker of the Parliament a Shi’a Muslim, the Deputy Prime Minister, and the Deputy Speaker of Parliament Greek Orthodox.  Unfortunately the Shi’a population has grown exponentially and the Maronite Christian have mostly left after devastating civil wars and conflicts brought about by huge population shifts and a frozen political system. 

An accurate, descriptively detailed census is conducive to a more tranquil society as most democracies have discovered.  Billions of dollars of federal, state and local funding are distributed based on detailed census information which won’t exist now.

Thomas Jefferson built in a decennial census in the U.S. constitution to reapportion the representation to Congress every ten years.  Its worked and it’s often revealing of uncomfortable demographic truths.  The Republican have suffered under recent reapportionment and they are determined to blame the messenger.

Last week, the Republican led U.S. House of Representatives debated H.R. 5326 and by a vote of 232-190 ELIMINATED funding for the American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS replaced the decennial census long form in 2005 and is the only source of representative, timely, and objective information about the nation’s social, economic, and demographic characteristics down to the neighborhood level.

Additionally The funding elimination will “devastate” the nation’s economic statistics. Specifically, the legislation will, in addition to terminating the American Community Survey, it will cancel the 2012 Economic Census.

The U.S. will be flying blind if these censuses are not re-instituted.  I’ve written my congressperson.  Hope you will.

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 (and author of the “most recent” 15 year old study of the LA Jewish population which was the 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

May 14, 2012 | 11:22 am

Jews: Top Ranked Attractive, Alluring, Winsome, Charming, Fetching…..

Posted by Pini Herman

Why do they say Jewish people aren’t attractive? Young American Jews are highly attractive and perhaps their elders are too.

The National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a gold standard health survey interviewed face-to-face over six thousand randomly chosen high school students in the U.S. The interviewer was asked to rate the student they were interviewing by physical attractiveness on a scale: Very unattractive, Unattractive, About average, Attractive and Very attractive during the 1994-95 school year.

When looked at by religion and percent of religious group ranked as “very attractive” Jewish teens ranked on top.  (Friends/Quaker, National Baptist, Hindu, Baha’i, Christian Science teens were numerically too small in this sample to rank).

When looked at by percent of religious group rated “very attractive”:

Rank

1. Jewish-Conservative/Reform/Orthodox/Reconstructionist
2. Episcopal
3. Islam/Moslem/Muslim
4. Unitarian
5. Jehovah’s Witness
6. Other religion
7. Adventist
8. Eastern Orthodox
9. Presbyterian
10. AME/AME Zion/CME
11. Catholic
12. other Protestant
13. Methodist
14. Baptist
15. Later Day Saints (Mormon)
16. Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
17. Pentecostal
18. Lutheran
19. None as Religion
20. Assemblies of God
21. United Church of Christ
22. Buddhist
23. Holiness
24. Congregational

Interestingly, when looked at by gender and percent of religious group rated “very attractive,” Jewish females ranked 18th out of 24 religious categories and Jewish males ranked number 1.  It seems that very attractive Jewish males are what put Jews on top, though when only the “attractive” rating is looked at, Jewish females are the highest ranked among females for all the religious categories, so Jewish female teens are keeping up the standards.

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 (and author of the “most recent” 15 year old study of the LA Jewish population which was the 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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May 10, 2012 | 12:12 pm

Israeli Passport Should be Granted to Michele Bachmann in addition to her Swiss Passport,

Posted by Pini Herman

An Israeli passport should be granted to Michele Bachmann in addition to her Swiss passport which she obtained in 1978.  She did live on a kibbutz as a teen after graduating high school.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was facing a challenge last year : He was having having trouble raising money from some Jewish donors who mistakenly believed one of his opponents, Michele Bachmann,was Jewish.  Of course when when the “man” at the end of her surname is spelled “mann” it’s clear she belongs to the Christian far right.

But Bachmann is engaged in a Jewish pastime, collecting passports.  According to the Pew Center’s Faith on the Move study 25 percent of all Jews are living in countries that they weren’t born in.  The majority of foreign born Jews are now living in Israel.  Ironically, of native born Israelis, Sabras, only 4 percent, or 330,000 are living outside of Israel.

A 2009 survey by the Jerusalem-based Menachem Begin Heritage Center reportedly found that 59% of Israelis had approached or intended to approach a foreign embassy to ask for citizenship and a passport.

Like Bachmann, most Israelis, as reported in the Begin Heritage Center study, wouldn’t consider leaving their country of residence. Only 22% of Israelis reportedly acknowledged actually considering leaving the country for even a limited period of time.

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 (and author of the “most recent” 15 year old study of the LA Jewish population which was the 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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May 1, 2012 | 2:48 pm

Willful Blindness in Israeli Demography

Posted by Pini Herman

Is Willful Blindness Catching?

Willful blindness has been with us as a legal concept since Victorian England. It is a legal concept that argues that when there is information we could have, and should have, but somehow manage not to have, we are nonetheless responsible. In the U.S. it is often termed as “recklessness” when used in legal cases. While it is being used to describe Rupert Murdoch’s behavior by a British parliamentary commission, the term is particularly apt for the type of phenomenon that I have observed regarding the phenomenon of Israelis emigration.

For decades, some academics and Israeli government statisticians published on the relatively low numbers of Israelis leaving Israel. I recently published an article on that low numbers of Israeli emigrants naturally translates into a numerically modest Israeli community in the United States. For years Israeli politicians and official government representatives have made public declarations of large numbers of Israeli emigrants without any basis, without any attempt to check truth or accuracy with their own statistical agencies.  Unfortunately, I fully expect the “willful blindness” may continue on the part of Israeli officialdom. 

A recent example was an Interview of Israel’s President Shimon Peres in the April 4 issue of Time magazine. The interviewer quoted the often-cited number in suggesting that 1 million Israelis live outside their native country: “It’s not as if Jews are flocking there [to Israel]. What do these demographics say about Israel’s future?” Peres, without disputing the reporter’s figure, responded: “Maybe we are swimming against the stream.”

It can be assumed that Rupert Murdoch engaged in “willful blindness” for personal enrichment and political power.  What is the motivation of generations of Israeli politicians and officialdom’s “willful blindness” to over-represent the scale of Israelis leaving Israel?  The ideological import of migration away from Israel may be somehow linked to its numerical scale as a recently published piece by Jewish Ideas Daily entitled The Move That Dare Not Speak Its Name seems to emphasize, again without citing any contemporary data sources on which they base their contemporary demographic descriptions.

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 (and author of the “most recent” 15 year old study of the LA Jewish population which was the 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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