4 I r
Reeling In
The Numbers
I CLOSE-UP I
Jewish
demographers'
findings have a
ripple effect
nationwide.
ARTHUR J. MAGIDA
Special to The Jewish News
22
FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 1992
IF
or all the breast-beating over
a recent national Jewish pop-
ulation study, with its worri-
some data on the rapid
increase of assimilation and
intermarriage among Amer-
ican Jews, little attention has
been paid to who did the study
and the validity of their interpretations of
its data.
That is the domain of a small group of
sociologists and demographers who, as it
turns out, have hotly debated among
themselves the fmdings and techniques
used in the National Jewish Population
Survey (NJPS), the largest population
study ever done of American Jewry.
Since last fall, Steven M. Cohen, a
Queens College sociologist, has been lead-
ing the lone charge against NJPS, which
was commissioned by the Council of Jew-
ish Federations (CJF). Among his claims
are that the study's inclusion of people who
did not even consider themselves Jewish
produced some wildly inflated numbers.
Among these, for example, was "a man
who had a Jewish father, yet was raised
Catholic, married a Catholic, and is rais-
ing Catholic children."
Mr. Cohen disputes the NJPS's conclu-
sions that intermarriage rates have
reached 52 percent, that 75 percent of the
children of these marriages are not being
raised as Jews, and that the Jewish com-
munity is losing more members through
conversion to other religions than it gains
by gentiles converting to Judaism.
By re-calculating the NJPS data, Mr.
Cohen discovered a less catastrophic Jew-
ish world. More people, he said, convert to
Judaism than convert out of it; 45 per-
cent of Jews intermarry; and only one-
third of the children of intermarriages are
raised as gentiles.
By now, the general consensus in the
small community that wrestles with the
numbers in Jewish population studies is
that the NJPS data is credible — and open
to interpretation. As Barry Kosmin, CJF's
research director who was one of the sur-
vey's authors, said, "The Council of Jew-
ish Federations did not want an
Establishment version of the truth.' Steve
Cohen wants an official account. But as
social scientists, we are always refining
our conclusions. This is a linear develop-
ment of the art."
But the fracas over the NJPS has high-
lighted some broader questions about such
studies:
•Just who conducts them?
•Do they have their own agenda? If so,
does their work reflect this agenda?
•How much power do these demogra-
phers, planners and sociologists wield in
the Jewish community?
•And why does the community depend
so heavily on these studies?
Mr. Cohen's assault on NJPS ignited
the first public rupture between some of
the more prominent number-crunchers in
the American Jewish community. From
this usually collegial group has come some
nasty off-the-record name-calling that
questions the competence of colleagues.
But publicly, the experts are more dis-
creet. Brandeis University planner Gary
Tobin said NJPS's definition of "who is a
Jew" is "fuzzy."
Brooklyn University sociologist Egon
Mayer faulted the Council of Jewish Fed-
erations for "spending about $370,000 on
the study, and not one cent on analysis."
Meanwhile, Brown University demog-
rapher Calvin Goldscheider dismissed the
flap over the study as "trivial."
"NJPS is first-rate," he said. "It includes
groups the researchers wanted to define
as Jewish. To get the widest range of Jews,
they asked the widest questions of people.
They wanted to get some people who are
not only marginal, but do not even con-
sider themselves to be Jewish."
And Gerald Bubis, founding director of
Hebrew Union College's School of Jewish
Communal Service, said, "The only dif-
ference an intermarriage rate of 45 per-
cent or 52 percent makes is whether you
spend 15 minutes or 20 minutes wringing
your hands."
Purveyors of Numbers
I
f the numbers, reputations and com-
munity dollars at stake were not so im-
portant, this in-fighting among Jewish
sociologists might be farcical. But it is
serious — and little-discussed. For the
most part, national Jewish organizations
and community federations spend large
sums of money — and make major plan-
ning decisions — based on the informa-
tion provided from studies done by a small
group of professionals — the hired guns —
whose findings go largely unchallenged.
Since 1975, more than five dozen soci-
ologists, planners, and demographers have
produced population studies of 67 local
U.S. Jewish communities. Fourteen of
these communities commissioned a sec-
ond study of themselves anywhere from
five to 14 years after the first study was
completed.
These studies paint by numbers. What
they reveal is a broad portrait of modem
Jewish life: How many Jews there are,
where they are and where they might be
in a few years; their present needs and fu-
ture wants; their relationship to Judaism,
to the organized Jewish community, and
to each other. They help determine
whether such services as day care for chil-
dren or the elderly are needed, or where
new community centers should be built.
What they don't reveal, say critics such
as Prof. Mayer, is something more subtle,
more nuanced, perhaps more valuable:
Emotions, attitudes, temperaments.
"They give you a general sense of the
economics or the geography of a commu-
nity," said Prof. Mayer, whose expertise
is intermarriage data. "But they yield no
insight into motivation and feelings."
Jewish population studies may be "es-
sential to neither social science nor to Jew-
ish Studies," as Steven Cohen says, yet
they have attracted some of the nation's
best demographers, including Joseph
Waksberg, a former deputy director of the
U.S. Census who directs the New York-
based North American Jewish Data Bank
and was an author of the NJPS.
There is also a cadre of sociologists and
planners who federations hire for com-
munity studies. The most peripatetic is
Gary Tobin, who seems to be everywhere:
New Orleans, Baltimore, Kansas City,
St. Louis, San Francisco, Omaha, and
points north, south, east and west.
Since 1981, Mr. Tobin has done 13 pop-
ulation studies, more than anyone else in
the nation. As ready with a quip as he is
C r,
C--