The National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS), most recently performed in 2000-01, is a representative survey of the

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

ish population in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

sponsored by

United Jewish Communities The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), formerly the United Jewish Communities (UJC), is an American Jewish umbrella organization representing 146 Jewish Federations and 300 independent Jewish communities across North America, which rais ...

and the

Jewish Federation The Jewish Federation (JFED), is generally a secular Jewish non-profit organization, found within many metropolitan areas across the United States with a significant Jewish community. They provide supportive and human services, philanthropy, fi ...

system. Based on the results of the 2000-01 survey, the total Jewish population in the United States was estimated at 5.2 million, comprising 4.1 million adults and 1 million children. An additional 100,000 Jews in institutional settings were not sampled as part of NJPS but are included in the total. This total represents a decline from the 1990 NJPS, which estimated a total Jewish population of 5.5 million people. Jews who have married since 1996 have an intermarriage rate of 47%. There is disagreement about how to define who is Jewish. As part of the 2000 NJPS, a Jew was defined as a person: * Whose religion is Jewish, or * Whose religion is Jewish and something else, or * Who has no religion and has at least one Jewish parent or a Jewish upbringing, or * Who has a non-monotheistic religion, and has at least one Jewish parent or a Jewish upbringing. There were no survey performed in 2010 due to the lack of funding. The 2000-01 NJPS – which by some estimates cost nearly $6 million, far more than budgeted – was widely criticized, both for its findings and for its methodology.

, the survey’s sponsor, announced afterward that it would not sponsor future national population surveys.

Reception

The demographer Gary Tobin fiercely criticized the Survey, saying that the it severely undercounted American Jews due to methodological flaws and calling it "utter nonsense".{{cite news , last1=Wakin , first1=Daniel J. , title=A Count of U.S. Jews Sees a Dip; Others Demur , url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/09/us/a-count-of-us-jews-sees-a-dip-others-demur.html , access-date=12 December 2021 , work=The New York Times , date=October 9, 2002 He estimated that over a million more Jews were present in the United States than the 2000 Survey suggested. Tobin NJPS undercounting occurred due to Jews who do not declare themselves Jewish out of concern for antisemitism, due to under-weighing of West Coast Jews, and as a result of an overly-strict definition of Jews excluding self-described cultural or ethnic Jews.

Notes

External links

National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01: Strength, Challenge and Diversity in the American Jewish Population
Censuses Jewish society Population statistics Jews and Judaism in the United States