The Jewish Outreach Institute

Legitimate concern about unaffiliated Jews in general has tended to create an unfortunate invidious distinction and unnecessarily competitive atmosphere surrounding the issue of what some call "in-reach versus outreach." JOI has examined the 1990 National Population Survey (NJPS) data available on these two populations, with some startling results.

Research on the subject of affiliation must be limited to formal synagogue or Jewish organizational affiliation as other data are highly subjective and imprecise. Fortunately, the 1990 NJPS has yielded many useful insights about the demographic profile of the unaffiliated and the intermarried.

A close analysis of the demography of those two groups suggests that the distinction between them is significant, indeed. But, focussing outreach efforts on the non-intermarried unaffiliated is likely to have a modest impact on the future of American Jewry. The main reason for this should be evident from the two tables shown here:

TABLE 1: Age Profiles of Married Jewish Households				TABLE 2: Age Profile of Unaffiliated Jewish Households
Married Households	Under 35	35-54	55 or older	Type of Households	Under 35	35-54	55 or older
Total Number	329,430	632,620	424,590	Number of Households	491,180	545,470	370,220
% Intermarried	56	48	21	% Intermarried	61	66	24
%Unaffiliated
If Intermarried	87	76	88
If In-married	44	34	34

Source:NJPS 1990

In both tables, the intermarried constitute the largest segment of the population within each bracket of under 55. Concentrating efforts on such large populations is likely to of greater beneficial consequence for the Jewish community than focussing on, perhaps easier to reach, but less numerous segments of the unaffiliated population. Moreover, outreach efforts that are tailored to the unaffiliated Jews living in all-Jewish households are likely to have very limited appeal to intermarried families.

THE UNAFFILIATED

The majority of the unaffiliated who are not intermarried are either young singles, young couples without children, or older adults. For these two major groupings of the unaffiliated, who reside in all-Jewish households, lack of Jewish affiliation does not appear to be a chronic life style condition.

A large proportion of the older indicate previous affiliation, suggesting that they have become post-affiliated due to life cycle circumstances.

A large proportion of the younger (under 35 set) are either single, or, if married, are DINKS (dual income, no kids). They are what one might call pre-affiliated. As the numbers indicate on Table 1, among the in-married the proportion who are unaffiliated drops from 44 percent to 34 percent as one moves from the under 35 age cohort to the 35-54 year old age cohort. Based on the past experience, the great majority of such people will become affiliated with very little encouragement from any outreach effort, simply due to natural life cycle tendencies (i.e. young Jewish families with middle class or better incomes and professions tend to be joiners). Although the proportion of intermarried who are unaffiliated also drops from 87 percent to 76 percent as one moves from that younger to older age cohort, that proportion remains more than double from what it is for the in-married.

THE INTERMARRIED

The only group that appears to be chronically unaffiliated, regardless of life cycle stage, are the intermarried. When young, these people are un-affiliated for the same reason that most young Jews are. Synagogue and organizational membership does not appear to be a desirable much less necessary component of their life style. As they mature, however, they seem to be left untouched by the gravitational forces that pull their in-married counterparts into Jewish communal affiliation.

Despite the lack of affiliation, about half of the intermarried attend a synagogue service at least once or twice a year, and about that many participate in Jewish home practices in the context of their families. It is this substantial group that ought to be a prime target of Jewish outreach efforts.