How Jewish Community Surveys Measure Up

...One quote from a leader of a national Jewish community organization calls Tobin "the most insightful analyst of contemporary America on anti-Semitism " Has this leader not seen the excellent volumes by Charles Glock prepared under ADL sponsorship' Samuel Z Klausner is professor of sociology and an associate of the Energy and Middle East Centers at the University of Pennsylvania His article, "Anti-Semitism in the Executive Suite—Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," appeared in the September 1988 issue of MOMENT...

...It is obvious that the proportions shown in Table 4-6 would have been different had the leference to "anti-Semitism" been replaced by "rabidly anti-Semitic" or "Jew haling" or "uncomfortable around Jews...

...The information has intrinsic, though ephemeral, interest...

...The acceptability of "quick and dirty" head counting is expressed in the penurious budgets agencies have allocated for these studies...

...115...

...Gary Tobin holds a Ph D in city and regional planning from the University of California at Berkeley That program is respected for its models or the social ecology of the city Somewhere between graduate school and employment in the Jewish sector, Tobin abandoned the sophistication in measurement and data analysis that characterizes his graduate education Has he succumbed to the research vision of his organizational sponsors' Why should research that would be snubbed by his colleagues in regional planning, and which he would not submit to their scrutiny, be acceptable to the Jewish community...

...In my opinion, Jewish organizational officials are quite correct in their program judgment...

...Thus, while the statement looks like an empirical proposition, it is no more than a tautology Tobin writes, "The fear of right wing extremist groups is sometimes coupled with a general fear of the religious right and conservative politics in general " We are referred to Table 4-6 in the back of the book This table is headed "Jewish Perceptions of Anti-Semitism among Non-Jewish Groups" and shows the responses by Jews to this question, "In your opinion, what proportion of each of the following groups in the U.S is anti-Semitic' Most, many, some or few'" The table does not, however, display a correlation between fear of the religious right and fear of conservative politics, as Tobin told us in his text that it would...

...The dust jacket displays the term anti-Semitism but the book itself, including the title page, prefers the unhyphenated form of the word) Tobin assembles relevant findings of community studies, citing 24 of them dated between 1979 and 1988, and buttresses these findings with the results of recent polls on American anti-Semitism, interviews with Jewish community leaders, with officials of Jewish community agencies and with members of the Jewish press Tobin reveals a pervasive belief among American Jews that anti-Semitism, though it may ebb and flow, cannot be completely eradicated Even those who believe that it has almost disappeared call for wariness...

...More confusing is the fact that the universe from which these samples are selected is not clearly defined...

...Sponsors of these surveys have shown little interest in measurement validity— whether the responses to the questions really measure what they are intended to measure...

...The reports consist,of raw distributions of responses to polling-type questions, stopping short of a responsible analysis and interpretation They catch ephemeral opinions but miss the deeper attitudes that produce those opinions Most sponsors have sought a picture of the future size and location of the local Jewish community...

...This book should be read as an "Op-ed" contribution, a polemical statement by a knowledgeable observer, not as a scientific inquiry...

...He recognizes that Jews are wary of political conservatives who, among those supporting Israel, are associated with "dangerous ideologies" that could break down church-state separation He is also wary of the left, which has used anti-Israelism to cloak anti-Semitism More important than the current politics is the fact that contemporary anti-Semitism is an outgrowth of traditional Christian theology.* Any battle against anti-Semitism must involve abandonment of the charge of Jewish deicide and belief in Christian superses-sionism (the notion that the New Testament supercedes the Old Testament— the Christian term for the Hebrew Bible—as Christianity supercedes Judaism) Cooperation, even confrontation, with these groups is essential Tobin, though, shows little appreciation of the historical roots of anti-Semitism in the Western world...

...He finds the degree of fear of anti-Semitism associated with the degree of assimilation of the individuals...

...A little calculation shows that 24 individuals picked education and 21 picked church-state relations Were but two persons to have made different choices, the figures would have been 22 and 23 respectively and presumably, Tobin would have read the opposite result from this meaningless difference Sometimes Tobin engages in what is, at best, pseudoanalysis...

...Interestingly, Tobin's analysis is of Jewish perceptions but all of his recommendations refer to the objective attitudes of Christians ) Tobin's exposition of his sampling methods gives his work a patina of science Questionnaires were sent to 215 officials of Jewish organizations and 73 replies were received...

...Also, little interest has been shown in analyzing and interpreting these data...

...For instance, he writes, "Concern with extremism, particularly right wing extremism, is a function of collective Jewish wariness and vigilance" (p...

...Therefore, they are viewed, as a threat because of their attempt to Christianize America " The religious and political right are not identical Some political ughtists aie simply laissez faire capitalists who belong to mainline Protestant churches or even to synagogues Whether the respondents make this distinction is something that must be tested, not simply asserted Tobin could have avoided some of the vagueness in the wording of the questions and the unceitainty in their meaning by developing a scale measuring the degree of anti-Semitism perceived Such a scale could have been based, for instance, on a series of items about the measures these groups might take against Jews...

...Indeed, 34 percent select Jewish education compared to 29 percent who select "separation of church and state" (Table 5-2...

...This view justifies their program emphases on intermarriage, Jewish identity, and so forth In a final chapter on combatting and containing anti-Semitism, Tobin calls for political action, particularly coalition formation...

...On the surface, however, it looks like a correlation between the degree of Jewish "concern" with anti-Semitism and a variable called ' 'wariness and vigilance " Actually, wariness and concern are both inferred from the same observation of perceived anti-Semitism...

...We never learn why ^he religious denominational groups, the socialist, religious and general Zionists or other Israel-oriented groups or even the mass* Stanley Bigman's study of the Jews of Washington, D C (1957), was one of the earliest social-scientifically conducted studies Bigman established a model for studying residential distribution, participation in Jewish community affairs, Jewish education, religious practices and rates of intermarriage, among other topics Marshall Sklare and Joseph Goldblum's Lakeville study (1967), sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, was the most sociologically sophisticated of these early studies Steven M Cohen and Paul Ritterband's survey of the population of the Greater New York area (1981) had more respondents than any other survey A technical lour de force, it demonstrated the use of "random digit dialing" to estimate the distribution of Jews in the city and a cost-consctous way of obtaining interviews The Philadelphia survey by William Lancey and Ira Goldstein (1984) is perhaps the most competently executed demographic analysis of an American Jewish population BOOKS membership Hadassah were not consulted on these matters...

...It is difficult "to believe that social scientists outside readers for Plenum Press's editorial board would not have arrived at the comments in this review The dust jacket carries the usual superlatives, but none from professional survey researchers...

...Jewish Perceptions of Anti-Semitism focuses on one element the perception by Jews of the extent of anti-Semitism...

...The most assimilated American Jews tend to deny the existence of anti-Semitism while the least assimilated perceive it as a continuing danger He reports that officials of the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL), Community Relations Councils and the Simon Wiesenthal Center agree with the Jewish public on the pervasiveness of anti-Semitism but refuse to follow this observation with programs explicitly designed to fight it...

...The researchers, most of whom know better, collude with the sponsors to obtain contract support and to enjoy a sense that they are contributing to the Jewish community Gary Tobin's book bears the earmarks of such collusion and can be used to illustrate several problems of these Jewish community surveys...

...Typically , these surveys have been monitored by federation officials who have understood some of the technical requirements of sampling but whose social scientific background was insufficient to enable them to understand methods of measuring and interpreting social and cultural processes...

...198& 355 pp, $1995 Reviewed by Samuel Z Klausner Local Jewish philanthropic federations have sponsored social research on American Jewish communities for more than 30 years...

...How do the origmal 215 officials relate to all Jewish organizational officials, or how do * Rosemary Ruether and other Christian theologians have demonstrated this logically and historically, Charles Glock and his associates have demonstrated it empirically the 114 targeted journalists relate to all American Jewish journalists' Further, tables presenting 73 or 40 cases broken into four or six or eight cells do not allow for tests of the statistical significance of differences between cells Tobin conceals this by not telling us how many cases are represented by his various tables Some of the percentage differences in Tobin's tables could have occurred by chance One example of a lack of fit between the language of the text and the meaning of the numbers in the corresponding table involves opinions of organizational officials regarding the single most important issue facing American Jews "Jewish children receiving a Jewish education" is said to be the single most important issue selected by the greatest proportion of respondents (p 145...

...Nevertheless, Tobin goes on to offer plausible reasons why such putative correlations should hold, saying that these groups, ' 'Together are viewed as a collectivity that attacks the fundamental principles of church-state separation...

...Of these, 56 were usable for Tobin's quantitative comparisons Of 114 questionnaires sent to Jewish journalists, 40 responded This obtained sample is too small for any convincing quantitative arguments...

...Tobin has isolated anti-Semitism and treats it as a thing in itself The officials of these organizations avoid that conceptual trap, rightly viewing anti-Semitism and the Jewish response to it as woven into a multi-faceted Jewish life...

...If we look closely at this, we will see that it is simply a tautology...

...Thirty-five percent ofjewish respondents consider most or many conservatives anti-Semitic while 46 percent consider most or many fundamentalist Protestants anti-Semitic There is no way of telling from the table whether those who found the political conservatives anti-Semitic were the ones who would find the fundamentalists anti-Semitic, the correlation implied by the proposition...

...Currently director of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University, Tobin has probably conducted more such studies, nine of them, than any other single person...

...Tobin calls this "institutional denial " With the exception of the Wiesenthal Center, these organizations, he argues, are more concerned with intermarriage, assimilation, Jewish education and Jewish identity These five secular and non-Zionist organizations are, of course, not the whole of the organized Jewish community...

...Yet, the studies have rarely obtained information on fertility, mortality and residential migration needed for such population projections...

...These studies assist the federations and the Jewish community agencies to design policy for fundraising and for disbursement of those funds among community needs * Regrettably, most of the community surveys have resulted in a stream of lifeless, sometimes even invalid, reports Few have met professional standards of sampling and data analysis...