{"id":15517,"date":"2013-10-02T12:30:02","date_gmt":"2013-10-02T19:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=15517"},"modified":"2013-10-02T12:30:02","modified_gmt":"2013-10-02T19:30:02","slug":"who-is-a-jew-the-pew-research-center-tackles-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/who-is-a-jew-the-pew-research-center-tackles-the-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Is a Jew? The Pew Research Center Tackles the Question — And Gets Some Answers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Pages<\/a>
Pages in Hebrew and Aramaic from a Jewish prayer book prepared by Dr. J. Bleichrode and published in Frankfurt in 1923. Photo by BF Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

Who is a Jew? Before it could undertake its 2013 survey of U.S. Jews<\/a>, the Pew Research Center had to think hard about what makes you Jewish in twenty-first-century America.<\/p>\n

(It turns out that believing in God is not essential to Jewishness, and neither is being married to a Jewish spouse. Having a sense of humor helps a lot, however. And, too \u2013 a huge majority of Jews say they are proud of their Jewishness.)<\/p>\n

The Pew researchers told a gathering of the Religion Newswriters Association<\/a> meeting in Austin last week that before starting their survey they had to settle on a series of questions about Jewish identity<\/a> in order to screen potential interviewees.<\/p>\n

They decided to start with the question: Are you Jewish by religion? Anyone who said yes fell into the Pew survey\u2019s \u201cnet Jewish\u201d category.<\/p>\n

If you said you were raised Jewish or had a Jewish parent, you too would be counted as Jewish \u2013 but not if you said you practiced another religion or stated that, no, you really weren\u2019t Jewish.<\/p>\n

The resulting study came up with some fascinating results. For starters, it found that a full 22 percent of self-identifying American Jews say they are not religious. That figure is very similar, by the way, to the increasing number of Americans in general \u2013 20 percent \u2013 who say \u201cnone\u201d when asked their religion.<\/p>\n

As for the number of Jews in America, the Pew Center estimates, based on its telephone survey, that the U.S. population of Jews<\/a>, by religion and by identity, is something like 5.3 million \u2013 or 2.2 percent of the U.S. population.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a sampling of other survey results:<\/p>\n