A tale of two communities

HE recent publication of the Jewish Americans in 2020 report by the Pew Research Centre offers not only insight into the largest Diaspora Jewish community, but also a rich dataset we can align with the Gen17 Australian Jewish Community Survey and better understand ourselves.

With carefully developed strategies for ensuring the datasets are representative of the US and Australian Jewish communities, we have a great opportunity to compare not just the two populations as a whole, but also to see whether there are any distinctive patterns when it comes to American and Australian Jews of specific ages, relationship statuses or kinds of Jewish identification.

At that granular level, are we more similar or different to American Jews? What are Australian Jewry’s distinguishing points of strength which we should celebrate and nurture to continue thriving? Are there insights from which we can learn?

How many Jews are there in the US and Australia?

The Pew Research Centre estimates that, as of 2020, there were 7.5 million people who identify as Jews in the US, making up 2.5 per cent of the country’s population (of which 6.7 million are Jewish according to Jewish law). David Graham, eminent demographer of Australian Jewry, estimated in his analysis of the Australian census that the number of Jews in Australia is 117,903, being 0.49 per cent of our country’s population.

By the Pew Research Centre’s estimation, the US continues to be home to the world’s largest Jewish population. Australia is currently home to the world’s ninth largest Jewish community. Both the US and Australian populations, based on earlier studies and current birth rates, are stable. As will be seen, however, their composition is changing.

What is the denominational mix of US and Australian Jewry?

Our communities are similar in having one-third identifying as Jewish but with no particular religious denomination. In all other ways our composition is different. Whereas Reform is the largest US denomination (37 per cent), our largest denomination is Traditional (29 per cent). Orthodox in the US is quite small (9 per cent), whereas in Australia it is more than double (22 per cent) as a proportion of the total community. Conservative is the third largest of the US denominations (17 per cent), whereas in Australia it is much smaller (4 per cent).

One pattern which is evident when comparing the communities by denomination is how significantly more engaged Australian Conservative, Reform and Secular (labelled ‘no particular [religious] branch’ in the Pew report) are compared to their US counterparts. The opposite pattern is evident when comparing Australian Orthodox Jews to their US counterparts, the former being significantly less engaged when it comes to the intensity and frequency of their religious beliefs and behaviours.

This difference may be attributable to differing proportions of Modern Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox sub-communities in both countries – in the US, the Ultra-Orthodox outnumber the Modern Orthodox, whereas in Australia the opposite is the case, these differences possibly altering the resulting picture of each country’s Orthodox population.

It is also possible that Australian Jews are more likely to identify as Orthodox because many choose to mark life-stage events and Jewish festivals within Orthodox institutions (despite other spheres of their lives not being entirely consistent with Orthodox living, as will be discussed below).

What sorts of changes

are apparent in both communities?

Breaking down the two communities by age and denominational groupings provides something of a teaser trailer of future patterns, with two main themes that are common to both US and Australian Jews.

The first is a shrinking of what American social scientists call the “middle”; namely those identifying as Conservative and Reform, whose numbers are larger among those aged over 65 and significantly smaller among adults younger than 30. Traditional Jews, found in Australia and not the US, also fit with this “middle” age pattern.

The second theme is the growth of both those with no particular religious affiliation and those identifying as Orthodox, who in both countries make up a small proportion in those aged over 65 and a significantly larger proportion among adults under 30.

What are the markers of Australian communal vitality?

Australian Jews are much more likely than Americans to report having received a Jewish day school education (51 per cent verses 24 per cent). More striking is that Australians are more likely to have received seven or more years of Jewish day school education (33 per cent versus 13 per cent). Australian Reform Jews were almost twice as likely as their US counterparts to have received a day school education (26 per cent versus 14 per cent) and Australian Secular Jews were more than three times as likely as their US counterparts to have received a Jewish day school education (48 per cent versus 14 per cent).

Others might point to Israel engagement as a marker of communal vitality. Australian Jews are more likely than Americans to have visited Israel more than once (76 per cent versus 26 per cent), more likely to report being “very” emotionally attached to Israel (74 per cent versus 25 per cent) and more likely to follow the news in Israel “very closely” (68 per cent versus 14 per cent).

Traditional Jews roughly resemble the Orthodox with respect to their high level of engagement when it comes to behaviours which express community and Israel connectedness; they appear, however, more similar to Conservative Jews when it comes to beliefs and behaviour which are more religious in nature.

With their own distinctive patterns of engagement, the Traditional share the same facilities as the Orthodox and, due to inhabiting common spaces, may at times define themselves in Orthodox terms.

What are the markers of Australian Jewish decline?

Australian Jews were less likely than US Jews to be married to a non-Jewish person (13 per cent versus 42 per cent). Focusing only on marriages in the decade prior to the Australian and US surveys, however, those percentages rise somewhat, with close to one fifth of Australians (22 per cent) and two-thirds of Americans (61 per cent) reporting being married to a non-Jewish spouse.

Given that the Orthodox overwhelmingly marry Jews, if the Orthodox are removed from the equation and only the non-Orthodox are focused on, one sixth of Australian Jews (16 per cent) and close to three-quarters of US Jews (72 per cent) who married in the decade prior to the surveys reported having a non-Jewish spouse.

No comparable Australian data is available, but it is worth mentioning that most US Jews raised by two Jewish parents (66 per cent) had Jewish spouses, whereas only a minority of those raised by one Jewish parent (18 per cent) had a Jewish spouse.

In the US, where marrying or partnering with those who are not Jewish is more normative, there are also much higher numbers of people raised by one Jewish parent who choose to identify as Jewish.

In Australia, where such marriages are comparatively not as warmly embraced, there are much smaller numbers of people raised by one Jewish parent who choose to identify as Jewish. Whereas some might argue that acceptance of such marriages normalises intermarriage, this goes hand in hand with the greater likelihood of the Jewish children of those marriages having opportunities to experience Jewish upbringing and a taste of communal life.

The reason for discussing intermarriage is that those married to a non-Jewish person are less engaged on every single measure across the two datasets, in terms of both their communal and religious beliefs and behaviours.

What is Australian Jewry’s distinguishing point of strength?

There are a group of questions in the two surveys for which Australian Jews register as significantly more engaged and involved than US Jews, the common unifying theme being community.

Australian Jews are more likely than US Jews to regard being part of a Jewish community as an “essential” part of what being Jewish means to them.

Australian Jews are also more likely to have attended a Passover seder and donated to a Jewish communal institution in the past year and are more likely to report that all or most of their friends are Jewish.

There are many social forces contributing to this strong value for community. During the largest migration of Jews to Australia prior and subsequent to World War II, government policies (although rigid and unfriendly, much like most other countries) enabled Jewish families and those from the same regions to migrate here together.

In addition, it was to our advantage, both then and now, that the overwhelming majority of employment opportunities in Australia happen to be in the same two cities to which Jews have migrated.

Take those social forces together with norms around Jews living in comparatively highly concentrated areas with low mobility and young adults not chasing university degrees and jobs across our enormous continent and you have a recipe for a Jewish community with deep roots.

Much like the aroma of chicken soup, our culture of communal involvement emanates from the broth of positive social forces and prescient leadership decisions.

What are the main take-aways?

Australian Jews are collectively more Jewishly engaged. Australian Conservative, Reform and Secular groups are significantly more engaged than their US counterparts, whereas the Australian Orthodox is significantly less engaged than the Orthodox in the US.

Both due to mazal and communal leadership which has nurtured and invested in Jewish education and Israel connectedness, we have a wonderful communal culture which inspires strong family, peer and kinship bonds.

We would be wise to continue nurturing this connectedness, for the benefit of our individuals, our families and the entire Jewish community.

Adina Bankier-Karp, PhD, is a research fellow at the Centre for Communal Research, Orthodox Union, and a research affiliate at the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Monash University.

A Jewish family heading off to school in Melbourne. Photo: Peter Haskin

Sydneysiders were among thousands of Jewish women worldwide who took part in communal challah bakes as part of the Shabbat Project a few years ago.Photo: Ingrid Shakenovsky

Photo: Liskonogaleksey/Dreamstime.com

The Pew report (left) and
The Gen17 report (right).

The Gen17 report.