Who's A Jew In An Era Of High Intermarriage? Surveys, Operational Definitions, And The Contemporary American Context

The old ways in which surveys of Jews handled marginal cases no longer make sense, and the number of cases involved is no longer small. The author examines in detail the public-use samples of the two recent national surveys of Americans of recent Jewish origin - the National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) and the American Jewish Identity Survey (AJIS) - and also explores the implications for the American Jewish Committee annual surveys of Jewish political opinion. When Jews are defined by the question "What is your religion, if any?" the effect is not primarily to eliminate secular or culturally oriented Jews.