Running the Numbers

(These findings brought to you by the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey of jews in North America)

• Among Jewish college who are dating, a little over one-third of students with two born-Jewish parents date only Jews, and more than half date both Jews and non-Jews.

• Fertility among Jewish women is lower than fertility for all US women, whether we look at the number of women who are childless or the average number of children ever born. And the NJPS goes on to echo the alarm on the Jewish birthrate first sounded in the 1970’s: that overall Jewish fertility is too low to replace the Jewish population.

• “Moreover,” the survey goes on, “a sizeable fraction of children raised by Jewish women and men in interfaith homes are not raised as Jews.” Thirty-one percent of all Jews now married are intermarried. (Intermarriage refers to a marriage between a Jew and someone who is not Jewish at the time of the survey. A marriage between a born Jew and someone who has converted to Judaism is not considered intermarriage.)

• While adoption has satisfied the desire of people to become parents, it has “not significantly augmented” the declining Jewish population in North America.

(You can see more findings from the National Jewish Population Survey at www.UjC.org)