AJC 2012 Survey of American Jewish Opinion

22 Comments / 22 Comments

1. @ Samuel Fistel:

   JEWS SHOULD MARRY JEWS

   BLESS YOUR CHILDREN

   Israel is the Last hope of Jews in the diaspora remaining Jews.

2. @ Samuel Fistel:

   How exactly do you poll American Jews?

   First question should be who is really Jewish and how is it determined.
   
   FAQs on American Jews Comparative Tables: American Jewish Demography

   Jews in North America today face a “silent holocaust” of ttheir own making, stemming from within their very own communities and their very own households. About 2 out of 3, either do not identify themselves Jewishly or maintain an affiliation with a synagogue. North America’s Jewish population has experienced an internal breakdown of both the family unit and the concept of community, that have unified the Jewish people for so long. As these ancient practices and rituals disappear, so do the number of Jewish people in North American continent who consider themselves Jewish. So powerful is this meltdown of Jewish life, that Judaism in America, as we have known it for the last 300 years, will likely cease to exist in 2-3 generations.

   Of 5.6 million Jews, 2 million American Jews live in households identified as non-Jewish

   60% of Jews below 40 years of age live in households identified as non-Jewish

   20% of Jews over 60 years of age live in households identified as non-Jewish

   1 million, or 54% of all American Jewish children under the age of 18 are being raised as non-Jews or with no religion.

   The average fertility rate of American Jewish women is 1.4 children per household. The replacement level is 2.1 children.

   Currently 72% of the Jewish people today are intermarrying.
   We lose approximately 100 Jews everyday to intermarriage and assimilation.

   50% of all Jewish college students have one Jewish parent

   “Our grandparents prayed for a melting pot. What they got instead was a meltdown!” – Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald, Founder, National Jewish Outreach Program

3. How exactly do you poll American Jews?

   The answer is that you can’t. Polling of American Jews is done by assuming that the old myth, that all Jews (including American Jews) are monolithic and clannish, is true.

   Torah-true (Orthodox) Jews are indeed monolithic and clannish. Because they must live within walking distance of a synagogue, they cluster in fixed neighborhoods. Since they are clannish, they tend not to participate in polls.

   The large majority of American Jews are not orthodox. Those who maintain a weak attachment to Judaism live somewhere in the vicinity of synagogues. Those who have no attachment to Judaism, but still claim “somehow” to be Jews, live anywhere they want, and finding them is like looking for a “Jewish” needle in a gentile haystack.

   The latest poll of American Jews that claims to be “meaningful” was published by something called the American Jewish Council. They hired an outside polling firm. This firm realized that randomly calling telephones all across America to find Jews is hopeless. They thus limited their calls to “areas felt to have a higher percentage of Jews living there”. They asked people willing to talk to them if they were “Jewish”, and took their word for it if they said so. These people were spread out all across the country, and were impossible to visit in person, so they were asked to answer a questionnaire over the internet. The resulting answers were then declared to be “significant and representative” of American Jews.

   So, randomly selected people who said they were Jewish, and were willing to answer an internet survey are supposedly representative of all American Jews. What do you think? (And I would not be surprised if the “impartial polling agency” asks the people paying them “What answer do you think will emerge?”, and voila, an answer resembling that is found to be “scientifically valid”.) (Lies, damn lies, and statistics.)

   That said, we see once again that Torah-true Jews poll like conservative white Republicans, and “Jews” who do not follow the Torah poll like atheistic white liberal Democrats. Currently, the non-Torah Jews form a majority, but they usually intermarry with gentiles, have few children, and those children assimilate into non-Jewish society and disappear from the Jewish people.

4. Squall Said:

   Orthodox jews represent only 8% of the panel –> trash.

   The Orthodox only represent 8% because that is about the percentage of Orthodox in the US. The Orthodox actually got a fair representation based on the actual numbers.

5. @ dave:

   Cognitive Dissonance is exactly what this survey reveals about us.

6. I still can’t believe that after that disgusting display of Anti-Semitsm at the Democratic convention and President Obama’s negative attitude towards Israel and its leaders, according to that poll, most Jews still support Obama and the Democrats. If Obama and the Democrats win, and no longer needing the Jewish vote, Obama turns on Israel, I’ll say to those Jews who supported him when they start complaining about it,”You grew it; you chew it.” However, I don’t believe in these polls. I have my own which consists of talking to the people I know, “the Jewish street”, and believe you me the percentages would be different.

7. “…Israel should go it alone and wean itself away from the big empty tits of American jewry.”

   Reminds me of Rabbi Kahane (or his son, I forget exactly whom) saying that Israel’s Jews should trust in the burning bush instead of George Bush.

8. Orthodox jews represent only 8% of the panel –> trash.

9. FPI National Foreign Policy Initiative
   http://www.foreignpolicyi.org/content/fpi-national-survey-foreign-policy-matters-2012

   Who is Americas best friend?
   Total by %
   ENGLAND/GR BRITAIN 540 54.0
   ISRAEL 159 15.9
   CANADA 87 8.7
   CHINA 23 2.3
   FRANCE 19 1.9
   GERMANY 9 0.9
   RUSSIA 7 0.7
   ALL OF EUROPE 6 0.6
   EGYPT 5 0.5
   JAPAN 5 0.5
   INDIA 2 0.2
   HOLLAND 1 0.1
   GREECE 1 0.1
   IRAN 1 0.1
   ITALY 1 0.1
   KENYA 1 0.1
   MEXICO 1 0.1
   NORWAY 1 0.1
   SAUDI ARABIA 1 0.1
   SOUTH AFRICA 1 0.1
   DON’T KNOW 123 12.3

10. 15A. Who do you think is mostly to blame for the failure to achieve an Arab-Israeli peace?
    The Israelis 4.3%
    The Palestinians 43.6%
    The Israelis and the Palestinians are equally to blame 43.4%
    Someone else 7.9%

    Considering that Abbas snubbed the 10-month freeze in settlement activity, how come that assigning the blame to Palestinians is not close to 100%, instead of the 43.6%?

11. @ pinchas:
    JUST CANT BELIVE SO MANY JEWS ARE CRAZY MAYBE CONVERT TO MUSLIM DONT WANT TO SAY JEWS KILLED ME WITH STUPIDITY

12. These data are unnerving; it would be of-interest to compare them with anything acquired a month hence…noting how BHO has behaved in the interim.

13. @ Tony Jacobs:

    We seldom agree Yamit82, but in this instance we sadly do.

    Who the hell is we?

    
    Do you believe you need community support to agree with me?

14. Question 19 asked if caring about Israel is a very important part of being Jewish. “Approve strongly and approve somewhat” combined for 70.6% of the total response. Questions 7A,7B & 7C asked how important U.S-Israeli relations are when voting in the upcoming Presidential election. The results were 4.5%, 4.2% and 6.1% of the total response. This is Cognitive Dissonance. How can Israel be an important factor in being Jewish, yet not be more than a 6.1% factor in voting for the next President? Fellow Jews, President Obama is wildly unpopular in Israel. Check out the polls. Ask yourself why a Democrat is out of favor with a key ally. Answer: calling continued settlement activity illegal or the unwillingness to call Jerusalem the undivided capital of Israel are two reasons. Several “leftists” in Israeli academia, journalism, pollsters, politicians, and, most of all, citizens, are frightened by American foreign policy towards Israel. Facebook and YouTube are replete with videos and articles making a strong case to vote for Romney. My liberal and Democratic friends, please hear the other side and make the most informed vote you can. Baruch Hashem!

15. This poll shows American Jews to be programmed to have a knee-jerk reaction of support for the Democrat party no matter what. Either that or it reveals American Jews to be totally disconnected from reality. What else to account for their belief that the Democrats are better at handling national security, Iran and the Israeli/US relationship than the GOP? The politics of American Jews are stuck in the 20th century.

16. yamit82 Said:

    Based on the above poll I would say that American Jews are priority and identity confused and dysfunctional.

    But then so are Israelis in similar polls.

    We seldom agree Yamit82, but in this instance we sadly do.

17. Stanley J. revich Said:

    Very interesting poll. Hopefully it is accurate. I am not sure about the designation of what the word “somewhat” means to most people. I personally think that for most of those interviewed it means that they prefer to lie than to tell their true feelings.
    Basically it shows that for most marginal Jews their own personal well-being matters more to them than does any actual existential danger to the Jewish people as a whole — even to their own nation as a whole, let alone the Jewish nation, Israel. This is a highly narcissistic attitude and very dangerous to American national cohesion. I think this is happening because of the increasing use of “identity” politics, especially on the part of the Democrat party. People are becoming increasingly divorced socially from each other. This reflects the increasing dissolution of the family as the underlying focus of social organization in the United States. it reflects the increasing dependency of the populace upon a centralized government rather than upon local social organizations for assistance and guidance. It reflects the end of the concept of America being a “melting pot” for assimilating its citizens and newcomers and, instead, now being merely an amalgam of selfish and often alien identities. The fruits of the swing to an ethos of multiculturalism in the United States are ripening dangerously. As Reverend Wright proclaimed in a different context, “America’s chickens are coming home to roost”.

    Stanley, I’m sorry to say that what you’ve written is true of most of the diaspora, not just the US contingent. I speak to holocaust survivors here in London and they say that it feels like the mid to late 1930s again.

18. The real question is: most members of AJC are liberal and therefore, this survey is biased in many ways. Like other surveys done by the liberal press… it tilts to to left. This does not prove the truth of the survey without analyzing the people chosen in the survey and the list where Jews were contacted from. This only favors AJC’s reputation with Debbie Wasserman Schultz, DNC and brown noising the current Presidents Party… not the Jewish people. SOMETIMES I WONDER WHY THE JEWISH LEADERSHIP FAILS AND LIES AS THOUGH JEWS ARE SHEEP.

19. Very interesting poll. Hopefully it is accurate. I am not sure about the designation of what the word “somewhat” means to most people. I personally think that for most of those interviewed it means that they prefer to lie than to tell their true feelings.
    Basically it shows that for most marginal Jews their own personal well-being matters more to them than does any actual existential danger to the Jewish people as a whole — even to their own nation as a whole, let alone the Jewish nation, Israel. This is a highly narcissistic attitude and very dangerous to American national cohesion. I think this is happening because of the increasing use of “identity” politics, especially on the part of the Democrat party. People are becoming increasingly divorced socially from each other. This reflects the increasing dissolution of the family as the underlying focus of social organization in the United States. it reflects the increasing dependency of the populace upon a centralized government rather than upon local social organizations for assistance and guidance. It reflects the end of the concept of America being a “melting pot” for assimilating its citizens and newcomers and, instead, now being merely an amalgam of selfish and often alien identities. The fruits of the swing to an ethos of multiculturalism in the United States are ripening dangerously. As Reverend Wright proclaimed in a different context, “America’s chickens are coming home to roost”.

20. predictably pathetic results which show that most jews are in Obama’s pocket and therefore that Israel should go it alone and wean itself away from the big empty tits of American jewry.

21. Not brainwashed…..Just plain blind to what is going on here and in the mid east.
    I am blown away that after 4 years the Jews (smart people that they are) are so
    taken in by this empty suit. He said it better than anyone else could: “EYE CANDY”.

22. Based on the above poll I would say that American Jews are priority and identity confused and dysfunctional.

    But then so are Israelis in similar polls.