Jewish Americans in 2020

Key Findings:

The 2020 survey paints a portrait of Jewish Americans in 2020 that is not dramatically different from 2013. Counting all Jewish adults – young and old, combined – the percentages who identify as Orthodox, Conservative and Reform are little changed. The size of the adult Jewish population is also remarkably stable in percentage terms, while rising in absolute numbers, roughly in line with the total U.S. population.

Pew Research Center estimates that as of 2020, 2.4% of U.S. adults are Jewish, including 1.7% who identify with the Jewish religion and 0.6% who are Jews of no religion.

Politically, U.S. Jews on the whole tilt strongly liberal and tend to support the Democratic Party. But Orthodox Jews have been trending in the opposite direction, becoming as solidly Republican as non-Orthodox Jews are solidly Democratic. In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, 75% of Orthodox Jews said they were Republicans or leaned Republican, compared with 57% in 2013.

The new survey continues to find that Jewish Americans, on average, are older, have higher levels of education, earn higher incomes, and are more geographically concentrated in the Northeast than Americans overall. There is also evidence that the U.S. Jewish population is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. Overall, 92% of Jewish adults identify as White (non-Hispanic), and 8% identify with all other categories combined. But among Jews ages 18 to 29, that figure rises to 15%.

In the wake of a series of murderous attacks on Jewish Americans – at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018; Chabad of Poway synagogue in Poway, California, in April 2019; and a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey, in December 2019 – the 2020 survey posed many more questions about anti-Semitism than the 2013 survey did.

Concerns about anti-Semitism have risen among American Jews. Three-quarters say there is more anti-Semitism in the United States than there was five years ago, and just over half (53%) say that “as a Jewish person in the United States” they feel less safe than they did five years ago. Jews who wear distinctively religious attire, such as a kippa or head covering, are particularly likely to say they feel less safe.

Among those who perceive an increase in anti-Semitism over the last five years, relatively few (5% of all U.S. Jews) think it has occurred solely “because there are now more people who hold anti-Semitic views.” The vast majority say that anti-Semitism has increased in the United States either because people who hold anti-Semitic views “now feel more free to express them” (35%) or that both things have happened: The number of anti-Semites has grown and people now feel more free to express anti-Semitic views (33%).

More broadly, young U.S. Jews are less emotionally attached to Israel than older ones. As of 2020, half of Jewish adults under age 30 describe themselves as very or somewhat emotionally attached to Israel (48%), compared with two-thirds of Jews ages 65 and older. In addition, among Jews ages 50 and older, 51% say that caring about Israel is essential to what being Jewish means to them, and an additional 37% say it is important but not essential; just 10% say that caring about Israel is not important to them. By contrast, among Jewish adults under 30, one-third say that caring about Israel is essential (35%), and one-quarter (27%) say it’s not important to what being Jewish means to them. The same pattern – lower levels of attachment to Israel among younger Jewish adults than among older ones – also was present in the 2013 survey.

Finally, just under half of U.S. Jewish adults (45%) have been to Israel. Among Jews in the survey ages 25 to 34, one-quarter say that they have been on a trip to Israel sponsored by Birthright.