How many Jews are there in the 11 Western states — or, for that matter, in the whole country?
Well, that depends on who’s counting and what methods they used in their surveys.
The much-heralded 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey, which was released last week, claims the number of Jews in the United States has dropped from the 1990 total of 5.5 million to 5.2 million, with only 1.14 million Jews living in the Western region.
However, Gary Tobin of San Francisco, a veteran of Jewish demographic surveys, says a study he just completed indicates there are 6.7 million American Jews, 1.68 million of whom live in the Western states.
Tobin’s recent study sampled 250 Jewish households. The 2000-2001 NJPS surveyed 4,500 Jewish households, the most expansive — and expensive — Jewish survey yet.
Did the $6 million NJPS study sell the country short, particularly the Western states, as Tobin alleges? Or is Tobin stretching too far to uncover Jews, as NJPS supporters contend?
“Something in the [NJPS] sampling methodology has missed significant portions of Jews in the West,” said Tobin, president of the S.F.-based Institute of Jewish and Community Research, who believes the NJPS missed 600,000 Jews in the 11 Western states — California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Nevada.
“If you add up the Jewish community just in California, it’ll be well over a million people. Then there’s Las Vegas, Phoenix, Seattle and Tucson, all of which are rapidly growing communities. My guess is something in their sampling methodology didn’t allow them to capture the size of the Jewish community of the West.”
Tobin’s claim is emphatically denied by proponents of the NJPS, which was sponsored by the United Jewish Community, the umbrella organization of local Jewish federations.
“In terms of specifics, 5.2 million is consistent with numbers from local federation studies over the past 10 years. So Gary would have to prove not only that the 2000 study is an undercount but that federation studies from 1990 to 2000 are undercounts,” said Steven Bayme, New York-based director of contemporary Jewish life at the American Jewish Committee.
“Gary was one of the most instrumental people behind federation studies of the 1980s. You’d have to go back to him and say, ‘Do you think your own studies involved undercounts? If so, why didn’t you report those?'”
Added Jim Schwartz, the NJPS research director, “We’d like to know more about the methods Gary Tobin and others use.”
In addition to passing over Western Jews, Tobin accuses the NJPS of seriously undercounting Jews from the former Soviet Union and Israel as well as ignoring those who identify only as “ethnically Jewish.”
But Sidney Goldstein, professor emeritus at Brown University and a member of the NJPS technical advisory committee, said, “I think Gary’s all wet there too.
“The survey went out of its way to use Russian speakers and interview Russian households. There’s no reason to believe more Russians than average didn’t cooperate with the survey. Checks were made with independent organizations that have statistics on the numbers of Russians entering the U.S., and there are no discrepancies there.”
Yet no matter what language a phone interviewer is speaking, Tobin said a good proportion of Soviet-born Jews would never reveal their religion to a strange caller. He also criticized the NJPS questionnaire — which Schwartz acknowledged asks about religion by the fourth sentence — as touching on a sensitive subject quickly enough to alienate large numbers of Jews.
In his study, Tobin marked self-styled agnostics or atheists of Jewish heritage as Jews, arguing that one’s current position on religion may change in time.
Bayme believes Tobin is “overly optimistic in counting Jews who have stopped being Jewish.”
He also believes Tobin is unduly hopeful in his prognostications for children growing up in multifaith households. In addition to being a “theological travesty,” Bayme believes far more of such children will gravitate to the majority faith of Christianity than Judaism.
With the aging Jewish population declining by 300,000 between the past two NJPS studies, Tobin worries the findings will be used to push through a “batten down the hatches” agenda.
“The trend of Jewish households to be increasingly diverse — religiously, racially, behaviorally — continues. So it behooves the Jewish community to think more expansively as opposed to inclinations that come from a declining, aging, shrinking community, which is to circle the wagons,” he said.
Such a move, he added, “says, ‘Let’s concentrate on the really important Jews, the ones we know are Jews, the ones who behave like Jews, the ones we identify with.'”
Yet only a person “carrying a chip on his shoulder” would devise the exclusionary policies Tobin fears, according to Goldstein.
The sociology professor isn’t certain what steps the Jewish community should take — encouraging people to have more children would be futile; “Just look at France!” — but he is sure the 2000-2001 NJPS was a responsible and accurate study.
“You have to understand, the committee that ran this study is made up of the top experts in the U.S. in the field of Jewish population,” he said.
“The Jewish community is fortunate to have such excellent talent on this committee to give guidance to this study and should accept the results.”