American Jews remain the diaspora’s largest community. But what are the present contours of American Jewry and what is its future? The Pew Research Centre’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study fills in some details.
Pew last conducted this survey in 2014. Its new study reflects data from 36,908 American adults in 2023-2024 and it shows 1.7 per cent of Americans identify as Jews by religion, matching 2007’s figure but slightly down from 2014’s 1.9 per cent.
Amid the study’s trove of data, Jews have a reasonably high retention rate with 76 per cent of American adults raised as Jewish still identifying as Jewish. This is fewer than the 82 per cent of Americans raised as Hindu and 77 per cent raised as Muslim but greater than the 70 per cent raised as Protestant and 57 per cent who grew up Catholic. Among those brought up as Jewish, 17 per cent are now “religiously unaffiliated”.
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