American Jewish Year Book: Raising Jewish Children a Community Affair

NEW YORK, Dec. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new report on Jewish population in the U.S. indicates that some communities may do a better job enabling intermarried families to raise Jewish children, though intermarriage still poses an impediment to Jewish identity.

The report, published in the 2007 edition of the American Jewish Year Book, was prepared by Professor Ira Sheskin of the University of Miami and Professor Arnold Dashefsky of the University of Connecticut.

"The data indicate that some communities have been more successful than others in convincing intermarried families to raise their children Jewish, and/or in attracting such couples into the community," Sheskin and Dashefsky wrote in their report.

The Jewish communities with significantly higher numbers of intermarried families that report raising Jewish children include South Palm Beach (75 percent), Sarasota (74 percent), Cleveland (66 percent), St. Louis (65 percent), Baltimore (62 percent) and Boston (60 percent).

"It should be noted, however, that thirty-seven of the fifty communities studied contain intermarried families where fifty percent or less are raising Jewish children," the authors wrote in the Year Book. "It's clear that intermarriage has a negative affect on measures of Jewishness, and therefore on Jewish continuity."

Cities that contain the lowest numbers of intermarried families raising Jewish children are Phoenix (26 percent), Seattle (23 percent), San Diego (21 percent), Palm Springs (19 percent), and Martin-St. Lucie (18 percent).

The report, which focuses on individual Jewish communities, intermarriage, residency and Jewish identification, notes that America's Jewish population is a little more than 6.4 million. Overall, about 2.2 percent of Americans are Jewish, but the percentage is higher in New York (8.4 percent), New Jersey (5.5 percent), Washington, D.C. (4.8 percent), Maryland (4.2 percent), and Massachusetts (4.0 percent).

Additionally, eight states have a Jewish population of 200,000 or more: New York (1,618,000); California (1,194,000); Florida (655,000); New Jersey (479,000); Pennsylvania (285,000); Illinois (279,000); Massachusetts (258,000); and Maryland (235,000). The four states with the largest Jewish populations account for more than 60 percent of the more than 6.4 million American Jews.

Jewish communities in the U.S. that have experienced considerable growth include Volusia and Flagler counties (Florida), Durham-Chapel Hill (North Carolina), Greenwich (Connecticut), and Poughkeepsie-Dutchess County (New York). These increases tend to mirror increases in the general population.

Another feature of the report is a series of vignettes of recently completed local studies, which this year focus on the Jewish communities of Atlanta, Boston, Delaware, Detroit, Las Vegas, San Antonio, and Tucson.

The American Jewish Year Book is published by the American Jewish Committee.