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The “Jewish Enterprise” (Mordecai Kaplan’s term) consists of all attitudes and actions, not just religious, which are held or performed by people who call themselves Jewish. This paper focuses on Pew 2020 variables that measure non-religious attitudes and behaviors of self-identified Jewish Americans. The Pew 2020 survey includes more non-religious indicators than did Pew 2013. We investigate how well these newer questions measure the “Jewish Enterprise,” and also identify important topics that are not measured by either Pew study. We characterize the distribution of non-religious attitudes and behaviors from the perspective of three different classifications of the Jewish American population (Jewish type, denomination, and Jewish engagement). The results of our analysis show important characteristics of the Jewish American population that are not made visible in the Pew 2020 report. This paper concludes with recommendations for changes in future national and regional studies that will enable the capture and display of additional important non-religious information over the entire self-identifying Jewish American population.

Although most people in sub-Saharan Africa are very religious, state support for religion (such as through policies legislating religious values and supporting religious institutions) is very low in the region. Why is this? This paper explores this phenomenon using data from Pew Research Centre and Religion and State Project. While population religiosity is ordinarily correlated with state support for religion elsewhere in the world, sub-Saharan Africa is indeed anomalous. Yet contrary to popular explanations, this is not explained by limited state capacity, weak democracies, religious and ethnic pluralism, or majority religion. Using case studies of Rwanda and Mozambique, the paper considers whether challenges to the moral authority of religious actors as leaders of “the nation” may help explain why state support for religion is so low in sub-Saharan Africa. Taken together, these findings challenge assumptions that high religiosity in sub-Saharan Africa is a threat to secular governance.

This study examines the agenda setting of candidates’ attributes and its relationship with polarized candidate evaluation among TV news viewers. Content analyses of candidates’ affective attributes during the 2012 presidential election indicate partisan imbalance from CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Fox’s Special Report. NBC Nightly News was relatively balanced. Watching a particular program was positively associated with attribute agenda setting by each program. Also, agenda setting by the Fox program was positively related to viewers’ polarized candidate evaluations, whereas agenda setting by the NBC program was negatively associated. Implications of the partisan TV news context for agenda-setting theory are discussed.

Differences of opinion regarding the numerical size of US Jewry are discussed in this article, with special reference to the 2020 Pew survey of Jewish Americans. Issues discussed involve understanding the theoretical assumptions, technical requirements, and accumulated body of knowledge of Jewish demography and population studies as a discipline; the different methods and biases of Jewish social survey research; the variety of possible Jewish population definitions in a world which is no more dichotomous; the essential role children's Jewish socialization in Jewish population estimates; the independence vs. circularity of existing Jewish population estimates. It is argued that different possible estimates can coexist side-by-side, provided assumptions, methods and definitions are fully transparent and amenable to clear common denominators. The study of US Jews cannot be severed from the study of Jews globally.

Education has traditionally been classroom-oriented with a gradual growth of online courses in recent times. However, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated the shift to online classes. Associated with this learning format is the question: what do people think about the educational value of an online course compared to a course taken in-person in a classroom? We address this question and present a Bayesian quantile analysis of public opinion using a nationally representative survey data from the United States. We find that previous participation in online courses and full-time employment status favor the educational value of online courses. We also find that the older demographic and females have a greater propensity for online education. In contrast, highly educated individuals have a lower willingness towards online education vis-à-vis traditional classes. Regional variations in the propensity to value online classes also exist. Besides, covariate effects show heterogeneity across quantiles which cannot be captured using probit or logit models.

Using data from the Pew 2020 Survey of Jewish Americans, this study argues that “Connections,” that is, social groupings between Jews—family, friends, and community—correlate with both traditional and contemporary expressions of Jewishness (Jewish “Engagements”), including interests and activities that might seem unrelated to social interactions on the surface. Contemporary Jewish Engagements, often favored by younger American Jews who have diverse relationships with their own Jewishness, offer the potential for enhancing the vitality of American Jewish life by engaging Jews who, for a variety of reasons, are not engaged by traditional Jewish practices. Furthermore, the presence of even one adult in a household who identifies as “Jewish by religion” is correlated with both more extensive Jewish Connections and Jewish Engagements. Endogamous Jewish families provide the strongest household contexts for both extensive Jewish Connections and traditional Jewish Engagements. Positive attitudes toward connecting with other Jews are highly correlated with both traditional and contemporary Jewish Engagements. This study shows that contemporary Engagements are valuable not as a replacement for traditional Engagements, but rather because they offer a broad spectrum of contemporary younger American Jews an accessible and appealing way of engaging with their own Jewishness.

The Pew Research Center’s survey, Jewish Americans in 2020, was designed to provide estimates of the size of the US Jewish population, sociodemographic data on issues such as intermarriage, child-rearing, engagement in Jewish communal life, and a description of American Jewish attitudes. A sophisticated sample design was employed to ensure accurate and generalizable assessments of the population. Because Jews are a small sub-group and the US government does not collect census data on religious groups, creating estimates is a non-trivial task. The focus of this paper is on the validity of Pew’s estimate of 7.5 million US Jewish adults and children, 2.4% of the overall US population. The estimate is an important standalone indicator and is the basis for assessments of current Jewish attitudes and behavior. This paper considers the underlying construct of Jewish identity and its operationalization by Pew and evaluates the convergent validity of Pew’s findings. The efforts to define “who is a Jew” in sociodemographic surveys is described, and a set of methodological challenges to creating estimates are considered. The results of this review indicate that Pew’s criteria for inclusion in the population estimate comports with long-standing views of how to assess the Jewish population. Furthermore, Pew’s estimate of 7.5 million Jewish Americans is consistent with other recent demographic studies of the population. Their conclusions about a growing US Jewish population suggest a new narrative of American Jewish life that reflects the diversity of ways in which Jewish identity is expressed.

It is unsurprising that the Pew Research Center’s “Jewish Americans in 2020” study and report emphasized politics, anti-Semitism, and coronavirus disease 22019 (COVID-19), but there were missed opportunities to collect data and analyze Jewish environmentalism. The Pew data indicated that high percentages of Jews find mining and fulfillment from “being outdoors and experiencing nature” (Pew Research Center 2019–2020 Survey of U.S. Jews Final Topline, 2021c, 3) and that they were concerned with the Trump Administration’s handling of the environment (Pew Research Center 2021c, 8). In addition, the growth of Jewish environmental organizations suggests that the younger generations of Jewish Americans are gravitating towards this work. The data from these surveys and scholarship on Jewish environmentalism will be analyzed alongside my own research on Jewish environmentalism and the Jewish community farming movement. I argue here that based on the data from Pew and other sources like the Public Religion Research Institute, a majority of Jewish Americans are invested in the environment and are concerned about the climate crisis, so future surveys of the Jewish community should incorporate more questions and deeper analysis on this critical contemporary issue.

The Pew Research Center’s 2020 survey of American Jews is a valuable resource to scholars of American Jewry, enabling interrogation of questions using data that no other source can reliably provide. One set of questions pertains to the reach and impact of Birthright Israel, the largest extant Jewish educational program targeted at Jewish young adults, on American Jews. Pew’s nationally representative sample provides important validation of previous findings regarding Birthright’s impact on participants and extends the generalizability of what has been learned. In this paper we use data from the 2020 Pew survey to assess the program’s “reach” into different segments of the American Jewish population and to extend the validity of existing findings regarding the program’s impact on participants’ attitudes and behaviors related to Israel and Jewish life. Pew’s data estimate that around 20% of American Jews ages 18–46 have participated in Birthright, and that among Jewish parents with a grown child, nearly 30% have an adult child who participated in the program. After controlling for preexisting differences between participants and those who have never been to Israel, Pew’s data also confirm that Birthright has a significant impact on a broad set of Jewish outcomes. These results support a more optimistic view of the future for US Jewry and suggest that the investment in large-scale educational interventions can substantially alter the trajectory of the American Jewish community writ large.

On the night of the 2000 presidential election, Americans sat riveted in front of their televisions as polling results divided the nation’s map into red and blue states. Since then the color divide has become a symbol of a culture war that thrives on stereotypes--pickup-driving red-state Republicans who vote based on God, guns, and gays; and elitist, latte-sipping blue-state Democrats who are woefully out of touch with heartland values. Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State debunks these and other political myths.