Project Head: Shmuel Rosner
Participants: Ghila Amati | Nadia Beider | Ariel Bendor | Eliran Carsenti | Shimrit Cohen-Barbi | Janan Danial | Dana Fahn-Luzon | Shlomo Fischer | Shuki Friedman | Avi Gil | Yehonatan Givati | Noa Israeli | Eli Kannai | Dov Maimon | Robert Neufeld | Tamir Pardo | Rivka Ravitz | Daniela Regev | Yael Ribner | Lipaz Rotkovsy | John Ruskay | Jonathan Saidel | Roy Schondorf | Amit Shoval | Noah Slepkov | Yedidia Stern | Shalom Salomon Wald | Haim Zicherman | Eldar Zilber
As part of the Jewish People Policy Institute’s Cohesion and Pluralism Survey, respondents are asked each year about the degree to which they feel “comfortable being themselves in Israel.” This recurring question provides indications of year-to-year change in how Israelis from different sectors and subgroups are affected by social and political developments. This year, for the first time, we decided to ask the question twice: once in the regular survey administered in February 2023, when the crisis was already underway but still relatively new, and again six months later, in mid-July, in the days just before legislation limiting the use of the reasonableness standard in judicial review was passed. During this period there was an increase in the intensity and passion of debate for and against the legislative changes proposed for the judicial system.
The same terms were used in both surveys. But not only that, both were administered to the same respondents (in the Jewish sector). Posing the same question twice to the same people made it possible to measure fluctuations at the individual respondent level between the first and the second surveys.
Several important findings emerged from the surveys. It is, of course, impossible to definitively identify cause and effect, or to say why changes in the comfort level of Israelis occurred. Nevertheless, it appears that this year, perhaps more than in past years, the ability to connect events to emotional outcomes is stronger than usual.
Finding 1: Not surprisingly, Israelis’ sense of comfort being themselves in Israel eroded significantly over the six-month interval. The fluctuations recorded during that period were greater than the average year-on-year fluctuations. For instance, the share of those who felt uncomfortable (“somewhat” or “very”) rose from 20% to 32%, while the share of those who felt comfortable (“somewhat” or “very”) dropped from 76% to 65%.
Finding 2: When the results were broken down by political affiliation, a decline in the sense of comfort was found for all groups. That is, there was a drop in comfort level among both supporters of the right (the share of those who feel “very comfortable” fell from 55% in February to 43% in July) and centrists/leftists. The steepest decline was found among those who identify as centrist or as center-left.
Finding 3: The decline in the sense of comfort over the six months between February 2023 and July 2023 is the most dramatic recorded since the question was first posed in 2016. A certain downward trend has been evident since 2020, perhaps in response to the frequent election cycles, or to the Covid crisis, or both. However, the total Jewish comfort rate of 65% in July 2023 represents a 10% drop compared with February 2023 and a 20% drop since 2020.
Is it possible to be “partially Jewish”? For methodological and principled reasons, the 2013 Pew Research Center survey of Jewish Americans included a “partially Jewish” category, but the organization’s 2021 survey omitted it. This does not, of course, mean that there are no longer Jews who identify themselves, or the way they were raised, as “partially Jewish.”
In the following table from JPPI’s Voice of the People platform, which surveys public opinion in the Jewish world, we can see that a substantial number of Jews have an answer to the question of whether they grew up “partially Jewish.” Furthermore, most Jews who grew up in homes with one Jewish parent, as opposed to two Jewish parents, identify the homes they grew up in as “partially Jewish” or “non-Jewish.” We emphasize that the sample panel currently includes Jews of different streams and various perspectives, yet compared with the general U.S. Jewish population this is still a population that is connected to the community. That is, it can be assumed that in the present reality of American Jewry as a whole, the data on mixed families will lean toward the “partially Jewish” or “non-Jewish” classifications even more than the numbers presented here indicate (the data shown here do not include Orthodox Jews).
