 FEBRUARY 20 • 2020 | 15

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are Jews of color. A 2018 Brandeis 
University study found that 1.9% of the 
estimated 7.4 million American Jews, or 
about 150,000 people, identifies as black 
and non-Hispanic. 
However, a study released in 2019 
by the Jews of Color Field Building 
Initiative, a San Francisco Bay Area-
based national effort to advance the 
Jewish professional status of Jews of 

color, estimates that figure to be much 
higher. According to the group’
s find-
ings, between 12-15% of American Jews 
are Jews of color, defined as anyone 
identifying as non-white. 
“American Jewish population studies 
have neglected to systematically and 
consistently ask about the racial and 
ethnic identities of American Jews,” the 
organization concluded in its findings, 

which analyzed numerous Jewish popu-
lation studies dating to 1970. “The result 
has been that we know little about the 
composition and size of the population 
of Jews of color. This has been due, in 
part, to the working assumption that the 
vast majority of American Jews identify 
as white.”
The study also found that the number 
of multiracial and non-white Jewish 

At Adat Shalom, when Re’
uvein Rickman performs Hagbah, lifting the Torah 
after the final reading, he spreads the scrolls wide for all to see. 

JERRY ZOLYNSKY

