{"id":1175,"date":"2013-10-05T18:09:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-05T18:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/10\/a-portrait-of-jewish-americans.html"},"modified":"2013-10-05T18:09:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-05T18:09:00","slug":"a-portrait-of-jewish-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/10\/a-portrait-of-jewish-americans.html","title":{"rendered":"A Portrait of Jewish Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><div style=\"border: 0px;line-height: 25px;margin-bottom: 1.25em;padding: 0px;vertical-align: baseline\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">American Jews overwhelmingly say they are proud to be Jewish and have a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people, according to a major new survey by the Pew Research Center. But the survey also suggests that Jewish identity is changing in America, where one-in-five Jews (22%) now describe themselves as having no religion.<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"border: 0px;line-height: 25px;margin-bottom: 1.25em;padding: 0px;vertical-align: baseline\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"jew-overview-1\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17249 alignright\" height=\"434\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pewforum.org\/files\/2013\/10\/jew-overview-1.png\" style=\"border: 0px;clear: right;float: right;font-style: inherit;font-variant: inherit;height: auto;line-height: inherit;margin: 5px 0px 15px 15px;padding: 0px;vertical-align: baseline\" width=\"294\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">The percentage of U.S. adults who say they are Jewish when asked about their religion has declined by about half since the late 1950s and currently is a little less than 2%. Meanwhile, the number of Americans with direct Jewish ancestry or upbringing who consider themselves Jewish, yet describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or having no particular religion, appears to be rising and is now about 0.5% of the U.S. adult population.<span class=\"footnote\" style=\"border: 0px;font-style: inherit;font-variant: inherit;line-height: inherit;margin: 0px;padding: 0px;vertical-align: baseline\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewforum.org\/2013\/10\/01\/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey\/#fn-17239-1\" id=\"fnref-17239-1\" style=\"border: 0px;color: #bc7b2b;font-style: inherit;font-variant: inherit;line-height: inherit;margin: 0px;padding: 0px;text-decoration: none;vertical-align: baseline\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">1<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"border: 0px;line-height: 25px;margin-bottom: 1.25em;padding: 0px;vertical-align: baseline\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">The changing nature of Jewish identity stands out sharply when the survey\u2019s results are analyzed by generation. Fully 93% of Jews in the aging Greatest Generation identify as Jewish on the basis of religion (called \u201cJews by religion\u201d in this report); just 7% describe themselves as having no religion (\u201cJews of no religion\u201d). By contrast, among Jews in the youngest generation of U.S. adults \u2013 the Millennials \u2013 68% identify as Jews by religion, while 32% describe themselves as having no religion and identify as Jewish on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity or culture.<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"border: 0px;line-height: 25px;margin-bottom: 1.25em;padding: 0px;vertical-align: baseline\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"jew-overview-2\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17250 alignright\" height=\"406\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pewforum.org\/files\/2013\/10\/jew-overview-2.png\" style=\"border: 0px;clear: right;float: right;font-style: inherit;font-variant: inherit;height: auto;line-height: inherit;margin: 5px 0px 15px 15px;padding: 0px;vertical-align: baseline\" width=\"312\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">This shift in Jewish self-identification reflects broader changes in the U.S. public. Americans as a whole \u2013 not just Jews \u2013 increasingly eschew any religious affiliation. Indeed, the share of U.S. Jews who say they have no religion (22%) is similar to the share of religious \u201cnones\u201d in the general public (20%), and religious disaffiliation is as common among all U.S. adults ages 18-29 as among Jewish Millennials (32% of each).<span class=\"footnote\" style=\"border: 0px;font-style: inherit;font-variant: inherit;line-height: inherit;margin: 0px;padding: 0px;vertical-align: baseline\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewforum.org\/2013\/10\/01\/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey\/#fn-17239-2\" id=\"fnref-17239-2\" style=\"border: 0px;color: #bc7b2b;font-style: inherit;font-variant: inherit;line-height: inherit;margin: 0px;padding: 0px;text-decoration: none;vertical-align: baseline\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">2<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"border: 0px;line-height: 25px;margin-bottom: 1.25em;padding: 0px;vertical-align: baseline\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">Secularism has a long tradition in Jewish life in America, and most U.S. Jews seem to recognize this: 62% say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture, while just 15% say it is mainly a matter of religion. Even among Jews by religion, more than half (55%) say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture, and two-thirds say it is not necessary to believe in God to be Jewish.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>American Jews overwhelmingly say they are proud to be Jewish and have a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people, according to a major new survey by the Pew Research Center. But the survey also suggests that Jewish identity is changing in America, where one-in-five Jews (22%) now describe themselves as having no religion. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Portrait of Jewish Americans<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"American Jews overwhelmingly say they are proud to be Jewish and have a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people, according to a major new survey by\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/10\/a-portrait-of-jewish-americans.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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