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The North American Jewish Data Bank is pleased to make available the data set and report from the 2001-2002 national study of Heritage and Religious Identity (HARI), thanks to the kind permission of the study's authors and the Institute of Jewish & Community Research. Surveying the Jewish Population in the United States includes sections on the population estimate derived from the study and methodological issues and challenges facing surveys of the American Jewish population.
Sponsor: Institute for Jewish & Community Research, San Francisco
Principal Investigators: Drs. Gary Tobin and Sid Groeneman, Institute for Jewish & Community Research, San Francisco. Dr. Groeneman is also President of Groeneman Research & Consulting, Bethesda, Maryland.
Methodology
Data collection for the Survey of Heritage and Religious Identification (HARI) 2001-02 occurred in two parts. Interviewing for Part I took place from July 3, 2001 through November 7, 2001 and consisted of 5,100 interviews. Interviewing for Part II took place from March 4, 2002 through June 11, 2002 and consisted of 5,104 interviews. The data were gathered from 10,204 adults, 259 of whom were Jews. It is estimated in the report that there are 6.02 million Jews in the United States.
The sampling universe was the continental United States. The sampling design exclusively used random digit dialing, with an equal probability of selection across all areas of the sampling universe. Each number received at least 10 contact attempts before replacement.
Definition of Jewishness
HARI defined Jews in the following fashion (p. 4):
- Adults whose current religion is Jewish, including those who specify other religions, but does not include Messianic Jews;
- Adults who say they were raised Jewish or have a Jewish parent or formerly practiced Judaism and who specify no current religion;
- Adults who say their ethnic/cultural group is Jewish and who specify no current religion;
- Children in households where at least one adult specifies Judaism as their current religion and the respondent reports that the children are being raised Jewish, at least in part.
HARI also identifies two categories of people connected to the Jewish community, although they are not included in the population estimate: "Connected non-Jews" and "Persons of Jewish heritage" (see pp. 6-7 for full details). "Connected non-Jews" includes an estimated 199,000 adults who practice Judaism as their secondary religion (i.e. they gave another religion first and Judaism later), 1.105 million adults who were raised Jewish or had a Jewish parent or were formerly Jewish and practice a religion other than Judaism, 769,000 adults who are ethnically/culturally Jewish and practice a religion other than Judaism, and 695,000 adults with a spouse or partner with Jewish identity. The category of "Persons of Jewish heritage" consists of "non-connected non-Jewish adults who report having a grandparent or more distant ancestor who was Jewish" (p.6). It is estimated that there are approximately 4.2 million adults of Jewish heritage in the United States.
Publications: Surveying the Jewish Population in the United States, by Gary Tobin and Sid Groeneman, published by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in 2003. Also available is a second publication by Tobin and Groeneman, The Decline of Religious Identity in the United States.
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