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Downloaded from Brill.Com09/28/2021 10:30:27AM Via Free Access journal of religion and demography 6 (2019) 149-188 brill.com/jrd Demographic and Religious Dimensions of Jewish Identification in the U.S. and Israel: Millennials in Generational Perspective Ariela Keysar Trinity College,Hartford, Connecticut USA [email protected] Sergio DellaPergola The Institute of Contemporary Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem [email protected] Abstract The mutual relationship between demography and religion is explored in this paper through a comparison of the two largest Jewish populations worldwide: the U.S. and Israel. Special attention is devoted to the younger adult population – the Millennials – operationalized here as ages 18 to 29 and divided into three sub age groups. Data come from the Pew Research Center’s surveys of Jewish Americans in 2013 and of Israelis in 2015. After a short review of the main demographic differences between the two Jewish populations, the paper focuses on the multiple possible meanings and con- tents of Jewishness. The paper explores age-related differences regarding indicators of contemporary Jewish identity: religiosity, peoplehood and nationalism. We discover that young Jewish adults – the Millennials – in Israel and in the U.S., especially those 18–21 years old, are more likely than their elders to view their Jewishness mainly as a matter of religion rather than as a culture or ethnicity. Emerging similarities and dif- ferentials between Jews in Israel and in the U.S. are interpreted in the light of general theories of demographic change and religious identification, and are related to specific events and developments that have affected Jews in the two countries and their mu- tual relationships. Keywords Jewish identification – Israel – u.s.a – religiosity – demography – Millennials © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/2589742X-00601004Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 10:30:27AM via free access <UN> 150 Keysar and DellaPergola Religion and demography are significantly linked (Voas 2003). Levels of reli- giosity are considered a primary factor explaining demographic behaviors in many countries (Keysar 2014b), including the United States and Israel (Keysar et al. 1992; DellaPergola 2009; Okun 2013), which are the focus of this paper. In general, higher birth rates among the more religious may increase their share within a population, thus affecting the overall religio-cultural profile of society. In turn, a population with a larger share of religious people with high fertil- ity may develop a more youthful age structure, possibly affecting population growth rates in subsequent years. Mutual relations between religion and demography are explored in this pa- per regarding Jews in the U.S. and in Israel – the two largest Jewish populations (Pew Research Center 2015; DellaPergola 2018). We address ideational and de- mographic changes that have occurred across age groups among Jews in both countries, we focus on the younger adult population aged 18 to 29 – defined as the Millennials because of their coming of age at the turn between the 20th and the 21st century. A related question is whether changing Jewish identification patterns can contribute to distancing between the two Jewish populations or their rapprochement (Cohen and Kelman 2010; Sasson et al. 2010; DellaPergola 2010; Keysar 2010). Jews constitute a small minority of the world population (Pew Research Center 2012a). Beyond the generic Jewish label, a multiplicity of meanings of what it means to be a Jew in contemporary societies has been recognized by social scientists (Herman 1977; Ben Rafael and Peres 2005; Levy et al. 2002; Kos- min and Keysar 2013; Hartman 2014; Aronson et al. 2018). Such multiple options involve similarities and dissimilarities across Jewish communities in different countries and societal contexts globally. Historians have contributed histories of the Jewish people stressing its global and transnational character, hence the need of a comprehensive interpretative approach (Baron 1952–1983). Social studies however, more often than not, have not focused on the many histori- cal threads that link Jews in different parts of the world and have for the most dealt with situations at the local and national level. This has prevented a keen assessment of the net contribution of different country experiences to the re- ligious and otherwise identificational profile of Jewish communities overall (DellaPergola 2014). The critique about a dearth of truly comparative studies of Jewish identity is well founded (Cohen E. 2010). In spite of the transnation- al nature of Jewish identity, a truly global approach to its study has not yet been fully developed. The issue is not just comparing separate findings from different countries, but rather creating an integrated perspective that would examine the nature and variation of Jewish identity by addressing the same questions to respondents dispersed worldwide. In recent years, however, some journal of religion and demographyDownloaded from 6 Brill.com09/28/2021 (2019) 149-188 10:30:27AM via free access <UN> Demographic and Religious Dimensions of Jewish 151 important research projects have created the bases for such comparisons (Pew Research Center 2013; Pew Research Center 2015; fra 2013 and 2018), namely, understanding the complexities and transformations of Jewish identities in the U.S. and Israel. The U.S. and Israel are both home to large numbers of Jews – 5–6 million in the former and 6–7 million in the latter according to a somewhat restric- tive definition of the core Jewish population – encompassing together about 85% of world Jewry (Pew Research Center 2015; DellaPergola 2018). These two major Jewish populations are bound together by shared ancestral, social, and religious relationships, as well as parallel or intersecting immigration histo- ries and transnational Jewish organizations (Eisenstadt 1992; Chanes 2005; Sasson et al. 2010; DellaPergola 2013). A major difference is that Jews and their families constitute about 79% of Israel’s total population while Jews in the U.S. constitute less than 2% of the total population (Israel cbs; Pew Research Center 2013). In the U.S. the multi-faceted nature of Jewishness has been captured in large national surveys that targeted the Jewish population and allowed respondents to check multiple choices about the meaning of being a Jew: as a member of a religious group, an ethnic group, a cultural group, a nationality, a people, a part of a transnational entity, and more (Glazer 1957; Sklare and Greenblum 1967; Liebman 1973; Cohen 1983; Waxman 1983; Goldscheider 1986; Medding 1987; Kosmin et al. 1991; Fishman 2000; Mayer et al. 2001; Kotler Berkowitz et al. 2001; Berman 2009; Bokser Liwerant 2013; Pew Research Center 2013; Rebhun 2016). In Israel, too, Jewish respondents were investigated through several na- tional surveys that offered multiple group identification options stressing re- ligion, ethnicity, relational networks, and participation in civil society namely through learning in separate educational networks and voting in political elec- tions (Levy et al. 1993, 2002; Arian and Keissar-Sugarman 2012; Pew Research Center 2015; Winreb and Blass 2018). Within the general national context, members of younger generations are often harbingers of societal shifts whose consequences might arguably be reflected in the general population years or tens of years later (Keysar 2014). Here we operationally define the Millennials as younger adults aged 18 to 29 at the date of the respective Pew surveys, i.e., those born 1984–1995 in the U.S. and born 1986–1997 in Israel and who became teenagers and young adults around the year 2000. Specifically we focus on demographic, religious and other important group identification differences among Millennials versus other older age groups in the two main centers of world Jewry. We also stress subtler cohort differences within the broader Millennial age group in the two countries. journal of religion and demography 6 (2019) 149-188Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 10:30:27AM via free access <UN> 152 Keysar and DellaPergola Data sources In this paper, we utilize representative national data sets, the Pew U.S. Survey in 2013 and the Pew Israel Survey in 2015 (Pew Research Center 2013 and 2015). Pew Research Center 2013 and 2015 Surveys The 2013 Pew U.S. Survey was based on a nationally representative sample of U.S. Jews, utilizing random digit dialing on both landlines and cell phones. Fo- cusing on telephone exchanges for counties where previous surveys indicated that at least some Jews reside, it is estimated to have covered more than 95% of the U.S. Jewish population. More than 70,000 screening interviews were conducted in English and Rus- sian to identify Jewish respondents in all 50 states and the District of Colum- bia. The screening incorporated four criteria: Jewish-religious identification, Jewish parent(s), raised Jewish, and considers self to be Jewish. In all, inter- views were completed with 3,126 Jews, including 2,786 Jews by religion and 340 persons of no religion but attached exclusively to Judaism. These 3,126 con- stitute the Jewish sample for the purpose of this study. Moreover, there were another 2,006 persons with some Jewish background, attachment or affinity who were also investigated and are labeled here as persons with other back- ground. These included: 349 persons of no religion who identified as partially Jewish; 1,190 people who were raised Jewish or had at least one Jewish parent, but at the time of the survey
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