Research and news about American Jews
Updated 3/17/26
COMMUNITY RESEARCH
American Religiosity: A new Gallup poll finds just 47% of Americans say religion is “very important” in their lives — the first time that number has fallen below 50%. Weekly service attendance has dropped to 31%, down from 44% in 1992. Jewish and Catholic Americans are among the few groups that have not seen significant declines. [3/4/26]
Americans on Hamas: The American Jewish Committee (AJC) poll found American adults under 30 increasingly view Hamas as “militant resistance” rather than a terrorist organization. [2/24/26]
Thought Leadership: New research by Dr. Valerie Ehrlich of Mission Bloom Consulting examines Jewish thought leadership in America. The study identifies high barriers to entry to break into the sphere of Jewish thought leadership, leaving many qualified people on the sidelines, and notes there is very little infrastructure to support Jewish thought leaders. The research was commissioned by the Jim Joseph Foundation and Maimonides Fund. Read a summary of the research by Stacie Cherner of the Jim Joseph Foundation in today’s eJP. [2/20/26]
Campus Concerns: AJC and Hillel International released a new survey looking at campus-specific manifestations of antisemitism including classroom dynamics, social exclusion, and institutional responses. This follows AJC’s annual survey released last week, which found that 93% of American Jews see antisemitism as a problem and 1 in 3 experienced it directly. [2/17/26]
Boston Study: Combined Jewish Philanthropies’ 2025 Greater Boston Jewish Community Study is out with fresh data and analysis on demographics, engagement, belonging, and the communal needs of Jewish Bostonians. The research was led by Rosov Consulting and offers an in-depth, comprehensive look at Jewish life in the region. [2/13/26]
Anti-Zionist Dialogue: For the Sake of Argument, a non-partisan organization committed to fostering healthy arguments surveyed a group of anti-Zionist Jews in an effort to validate and complicate assumptions that pro-Israel leaders and organizations had about anti-zionists. [2/12/26]
The State of Antisemitism: The AJC just released the findings of their annual survey of American Jews. Most respondents (93%) see antisemitism as problem while 1/3 report having experiences antisemitism directly. [2/10/26]
The Zionist Gap: The Jewish Federations of North America has new survey data out about American Jews. While most support Israel (nearly 9 in 10), only 1/3 call themselves Zionists. Why the gap? Mimi Kravetz*, JFNA’s chief impact officer, says this likely has more to do with “definition creep” around the term Zionist than it does about perceptions of Israel.
*In the Berman Archive: Read our interview with Mimi Kravetz from 2024 where she discusses JFNA’s commitment to research. [2/5/26]
AI Antisemitism: The ADL just released its AI Index which aims to determine which LLM service has the strongest protections against antisemitism. The best AI for antisemitism guardrails? It’s Claude. Grok is the worst. [1/28/26]
Antisemitism Studied: Stand with Us is out with a report surveying Jewish K-12 educators, 61.6% of which reported experiencing or witnessing antisemitism at work. Blue Square Alliance released a survey in December showing antisemitism leveling off in the US, but at a worryingly high level. [1/26/26]
Secular Sectors: The newly launched Blue Compass Network just released a study on Jewish professionals working in secular nonprofits. 35% of those Jews are seeking new jobs due to antisemitism or Jewish stereotyping. [1/9/26]
Notes on Camp: The Foundation for Jewish Camp released a census report showing record attendance at Jewish camps this past summer. This year saw 200,000 Jewish campers. That’s a lot of bug juice. [12/19/25]
Roadside Attractions: The aggressive JewBelong billboard campaigns are hard to miss in the cities they target. This year they released an impact report attempting to quantify the public opinion effect of this campaign in Kansas City. [12/19/25]
American Religiosity: Pew has some new analysis of the broad religiosity of Americans. Not much has changed in terms of folks moving more towards religion. And the younger generations are less religious than their parents. [12/17/25]
We Heart Hebrew: #OnwardHebrew is out with a survey of synagogue education programs. The kids seem to like their Hebrew education! The survey’s co-authors share their findings in eJP. [12/8/25]
ACADEMIC RESEARCH
Indian Jewish Identity: In Modern Judaism, Benjamin Steiner examines the postwar competition between American Orthodox and Conservative movements for the affiliation of India’s Bene Israel Jews. [3/17/26]
LA Day Schools: A new article in the Journal of Jewish Education by Sara Smith examines the history of Jewish day schools in Los Angeles through the lens of the court-ordered busing controversy of the late 1970s, exploring how race, property taxes, and shifting Jewish identity shaped the community’s relationship with day school education. [3/6/26]
Haredi Tally: A new study in Contemporary Jewry by Daniel Staetsky and Robert Brym proposes two methodologies for improving estimates of Haredi community size in diaspora cities — one based on community directories, the other on official counts of Haredi schoolchildren — applied to Montreal and Toronto. [3/6/26]
Emotional Testimony: In Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Robin Judd examines how Jewish survivor-military couples observed, recognized, displayed, and rationalized emotions in their wartime and postwar testimonies. Their stories “offered clues to how they made sense of their nuanced, messy presents, and later, their complicated pasts.” [2/25/26]
Spicy Jewry: In the Jewish Quarterly Review, Katalin Franciska Rac examines how paprika and culinary culture shaped Jewish integration in modern Hungary, highlighting food’s influence on minority-majority relations in Hungary and challenging the historiographical approach that distinguishes between the roles culture played in the integration process of merchants and intellectuals. [Winter 2026]
HUC at 150: The latest American Jewish Archives Journal celebrates the 150th anniversary of Hebrew Union College with an issue dedicated to compelling histories related to the insituttions. Jason Kalman traces the life of David Joseph Solomon, the first student from India’s Bene Israel community to attend Hebrew Union College (1896–1902). The article examines how transnational Jewish networks, American liberal Judaism, and colonial educational ambitions intersected in Solomon’s journey from Bombay to Cincinnati and back. [Winter 2026]
Teachers’ Identity: In the Journal of Jewish Education, Ketty Granite and Shosh Leshem explore how Hebrew teachers in North American Jewish day schools perceive their professional identity. The findings highlight that teaching Hebrew in the Diaspora “extends beyond language instruction, involving deeper ideological, cultural, and identity-based considerations.” [2/23/26]
Rabbis for Equality: In Jewish Culture and History, George Y. Kohler examines three nineteenth-century Reform-oriented rabbis who invoked Talmudic rulings to justify granting women equal rights within Judaism: “Their aim was not to abandon halakah, but rather to modernize it, adapt it to their new ethical convictions, and express these convictions in legal terms.” [2/13/26]
False Poets: Asher Shallah traces the invention and afterlife of a fictitious fourteenth-century poet: first fabricated by sixteenth-century Italian humanists, then mistakenly absorbed into the Jewish literary canon by nineteenth-century Jewish scholars seeking to demonstrate longstanding Jewish contributions to European literature. A smart window into historiographical practice, emancipation-era discourse, and the ideological uses of literary forgery. [2/13/26]
Perceptions of Safety: The Journal of Modern Jewish Studies has a new report by Tahir Abbas on the security, antisemitism and synagogues in Europe. The research includes a comparative approach to gauging safety concerns, observing “that Jewish respondents perceive significantly higher levels of anti-Semitic hostility and hate crimes than non-Jewish groups perceive regarding their own communities.“ [2/6/26]
Lost Memory: In Eastern European Jewish Affairs, a new paper drawing on first-hand testimony, argues that later exterminatory practices in Eastern Europe obscured earlier refugee geographies, contributing to the absence of a collective memory of flight, a crucial dimension of Polish Jewish experience during the Second World War. [1/28/26]
Nazi Terror: In the latest issue of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Kobi Kabalek examines the impact of Nazi violence and terror on its German Jewish victims during the 1930s. [1/28/26]
Haredi for Love: In the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, a new qualitative study investigates the transformative impact of digital media on traditional matchmaking (shidduchim) within Israel’s insulated Haredi community. [1/23/26]
Start the Presses: Jewish History has posted its latest edition, including an interesting exploration of print and rabbinic authority. The article reframes standard approaches in the history of the book and shows how rabbinic culture shaped modes of knowledge production. [1/9/26]
NEWS OF NOTE
Iranian Jewish History: Jews have lived in Iran for over 2,700 years — a history that looks very different in the context of the current U.S.-Israel war on Iran. Project Mosaics has developed a free set of curriculum modules tracing that history from antiquity through the Iranian Revolution and the emergence of the Tehrangeles* community in Los Angeles, including the story of the crypto-Jews of Mashhad, who lived a double religious life for over a century, and the Polish-Jewish Holocaust refugees who passed through Iran in 1942.
*In the Berman Archive: Read our interview with Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh, a Tehrangeles-born Iranian Jewish rabbi, on what American Jews are missing about this moment. [3/19/26]
Poll Position: Jewish Currents reporter Josh Nathan-Kazis examines the methodology behind the Jewish People Policy Institute’s monthly surveys of American Jewish opinion, which have been widely reported as showing strong support for Israel’s war on Iran. The problem: JPPI polls a self-selected panel of “connected” Jews that skews significantly more religious and politically conservative than the broader American Jewish population — and doesn’t weight results to match it. [3/17/26]
Refugee Advocacy: Over 1,100 Jewish clergy from 45 states signed a HIAS-organized letter calling on leaders not to “wrong or oppress the stranger,” released ahead of HIAS’ annual Refugee Shabbat. Signatories include Amy Eilberg, Irving Greenberg, and David Wolpe. The letter follows earlier Jewish mobilization in Minnesota against ICE enforcement and comes as HIAS has contracted operations after the Trump administration moved to end refugee admissions.
*In the Berman Archive: Kurt Grossmann and Arieh Tartakower’s The Jewish Refugee (1944), published by the American Jewish Congress and World Jewish Congress, examined the Jewish refugee experience from WWI through WWII — tracing demographics, relief structures, and the politics of Jewish displacement across the U.S., France, Britain, and the Soviet Union. [3/12/26]
Faithful Left: The Forward covers the second annual U.S. conference of Smol Emuni (“the faithful left”), held at B’nai Jeshurun in Manhattan — a gathering of religiously observant Jews, Zionists and anti-Zionists alike, organized to foster an alternative to the prevailing right-wing discourse about Israeli and American politics in the Orthodox world. [3/10/26]
Burnout on the Bema: Writing in JTA, cantor and Boston University doctoral candidate Laura Stein argues that clergy burnout is structural and rooted in how seminaries train rabbis and cantors before they ever enter the field. Stein calls on institutions to integrate research on burnout, formation, and well-being into both training programs and ongoing professional development. [3/9/26]
Identity Framework: Dr. Benji Davis, Rabbi Michael Unterberg, and Rabbi Alan Goldman propose a framework for Jewish education centered on three dimensions that make Jews a people: land (Israel integrated throughout education, not just one unit), language (Hebrew as “our language” cultivating ownership and belonging), and culture (Judaism as collective folkways, not abstract traditions). [2/24/26]
Los Angeles Mayor: The Forward looks at Nithya Raman, the just-announced candidate running to replace LA Mayor Karen Bass, offering a wide-ranging assessment of how Raman has navigated Jewish community engagement as a progressive council member. Of note, the article’s framing differs from the Forward’s newsletter version, which used more sensational language about the race in what reads as an attempt to capture the intensity of the American Jewish response to Mamdani’s campaign for NYC Mayor. [2/19/26]
Synagogue Protest: Jewish Currents examines New York City’s proposed synagogue protest bill as the first major Jewish community showdown of the Mamdani era on the City Council. The proposed legislation would restrict protests near synagogues, raising questions about balancing Jewish safety concerns with free speech protections. [2/18/26]
Iconic Reuben: The Sword and the Sandwich explores the reuben sandwich‘s role in American Jewish culinary identity and assimilation. [2/17/26]
Skate Expectations: The Forward profiles Kamryn Lute, exploring how the speed skater’s Jewish identity shapes her athletic career and personal life as she competes in the Olympics. [2/16/26]
Light Reading: A lovely piece on how Jewish memory travels through everyday objects, specifically yahrzeit glasses. Yiddish for “year-time,” yahrzeit candles come in a stubby glass holder and burn for 24 hours, to remember and honor a person lost. The little glasses are often repurposed as a kitchen tool or cup. Jewish historian Hasia Diner shares her traumatic and moving experiences with the little glasses. [2/13/26]
Resistance Rabbis: Rabbis converge in Washington, DC this week to participate in T’ruah’s convening on peaceful resistance. “This is about how moral leaders can stand up to protect democracy and to protect our neighbors,” said T’ruah CEO Rabbi Jill Jacobs. “That includes, of course, standing up to ICE and standing up to protect immigrant neighbors on the street, but it also includes how to take actions to protect democracy.” [2/10/26]
Laws and Prayers: There’s a movement afoot to reinstate public school prayer, despide a 1962 Supreme Court ruling, siding with Jewish plaintiffs, codifying the separation of church and state. [2/9/26]
Blue Square: The anti-antisemitism Super Bowl ad that launched a thousand takes aired Sunday. The ADL surveyed viewers and claimed it was a successful approach while others were more critical of the effort. [2/9/26]
