Leonard Saxe

Notwithstanding the increasing alignment between social and political identities, political divisions exist within social groups as well as between them. Despite their shared traditions, American Jews face similar political divisions as Americans in general. But could the perception of a common threat, such as antisemitism, alter the dynamics of political polarization within a social group? American Jews' concerns about antisemitism might themselves be filtered through political identities, with liberal Jews more concerned about "traditional" antisemitism (long-standing anti-Jewish stereotypes) emanating from the political right, and conservative Jews concerned about "Israel-related" antisemitism (blaming individual Jews for the actions of Israel) associated with the political left. Using a sample of over 2000 Jewish young adults, we find that, although liberal and conservative Jews are equally concerned about traditional antisemitism, conservatives are significantly more concerned about Israel-related antisemitism than liberals. We also find that, after a series of high-profile attacks on American Jews related to the 2021 Israel-Hamas conflict, liberal and conservative Jews' concerns about Israel-related antisemitism increased at similar rates. These results suggest that, although concerns about antisemitism are influenced by political identity, rising antisemitism is unlikely to exacerbate political polarization between liberal and conservative Jews.

The Pew Research Center’s 2020 survey of American Jews is a valuable resource to scholars of American Jewry, enabling interrogation of questions using data that no other source can reliably provide. One set of questions pertains to the reach and impact of Birthright Israel, the largest extant Jewish educational program targeted at Jewish young adults, on American Jews. Pew’s nationally representative sample provides important validation of previous findings regarding Birthright’s impact on participants and extends the generalizability of what has been learned. In this paper we use data from the 2020 Pew survey to assess the program’s “reach” into different segments of the American Jewish population and to extend the validity of existing findings regarding the program’s impact on participants’ attitudes and behaviors related to Israel and Jewish life. Pew’s data estimate that around 20% of American Jews ages 18–46 have participated in Birthright, and that among Jewish parents with a grown child, nearly 30% have an adult child who participated in the program. After controlling for preexisting differences between participants and those who have never been to Israel, Pew’s data also confirm that Birthright has a significant impact on a broad set of Jewish outcomes. These results support a more optimistic view of the future for US Jewry and suggest that the investment in large-scale educational interventions can substantially alter the trajectory of the American Jewish community writ large.

The Pew Research Center’s survey, Jewish Americans in 2020 , was designed to provide estimates of the size of the US Jewish population, sociodemographic data on issues such as intermarriage, child-rearing, engagement in Jewish communal life, and a description of American Jewish attitudes. A sophisticated sample design was employed to ensure accurate and generalizable assessments of the population. Because Jews are a small sub-group and the US government does not collect census data on religious groups, creating estimates is a non-trivial task. The focus of this paper is on the validity of Pew’s estimate of 7.5 million US Jewish adults and children, 2.4% of the overall US population. The estimate is an important standalone indicator and is the basis for assessments of current Jewish attitudes and behavior. This paper considers the underlying construct of Jewish identity and its operationalization by Pew and evaluates the convergent validity of Pew’s findings. The efforts to define “who is a Jew” in sociodemographic surveys is described, and a set of methodological challenges to creating estimates are considered. The results of this review indicate that Pew’s criteria for inclusion in the population estimate comports with long-standing views of how to assess the Jewish population. Furthermore, Pew’s estimate of 7.5 million Jewish Americans is consistent with other recent demographic studies of the population. Their conclusions about a growing US Jewish population suggest a new narrative of American Jewish life that reflects the diversity of ways in which Jewish identity is expressed.

To what extent is it possible for American Jews to maintain a deep emotional connection to Israel while criticizing the actions of the Israeli government? This long-debated question echoes earlier investigations of different forms of patriotism toward one's home country. Drawing on two 2019 surveys of American Jews, we find that, like Americans in general, Jewish liberals and conservatives express different forms of patriotism toward both Israel and America. Jewish conservatives tend to oppose criticism of Israel and America for any reason, while Jewish liberals view criticism as an important part of “caring” about both countries. Both forms of patriotism are positively associated with stronger emotional connections to the relevant country. These results suggest that emotional connection to Israel represents a form of social identification with Israel and that lower levels of connection to Israel among some American Jews are driven more by apathy than active criticism or hostility.

The present study tests the validity of a data synthesis approach to population estimates of religiously defined groups. This is particularly important in places like the United States, where there is no definitive source of official data on its population's religious composition, and researchers must rely on costly, large‐scale surveys, or congregational membership studies. Each approach has limitations, especially for estimation of small religious groups and for estimation within small geographic areas. Without official statistics, the degree of bias in estimates is unknown. Data synthesis, specifically Bayesian multilevel estimation with poststratification, offers a useful alternative that maximizes the utility of data across all sources to estimate multiple groups from the same sources of data. This method also facilitates comparison of groups. This study provides evidence of the validity of the approach by synthesizing data from Canada, a country that includes questions about religious identification in its national census.

Marshall Sklare Award Lecture given by Leonard Saxe and published in Contemporary Jewry. Although there is diversity and division within the community of social scientists who study contemporary Jewry, there is a shared commitment to rational scientific analysis. The paper describes the author’s positivist social psychological orientation and its roots in the theorizing/empiricism of three seminal psychological thinkers, Daniel Kahenman, Kurt Lewin, and Donald Campbell. The application of these meta-theorists’ work on cognitive psychology, action research, and experimentation is illustrated by research on Taglit-Birthright Israel, an effort designed to alter the trajectory of Jewish identity development. A number of ‘‘common ground’’ principles are then drawn for the development of social scientific research on Jewry. The principles concern the need to control bias, to develop generalizable knowledge, and to direct research to solving actual problems. Contemporary Jewry (2014) 34:3–14.

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in
Daubert v. Merrell
Dow Pharmaceuticals
(1993) modernized the long-standing
Frye
(1923)
precedent and requires courts to make scientific
judgments. Courts, however, are not well-equipped to parse
scientific arguments. To illustrate the difficulty of applying
Daubert,
this article focuses on the controversy over
admissibility of polygraph test evidence ("lie detectors").
Reliability and validity are discussed in relation to polygraph
testing and the
Daubert
criteria. Although the validity of
polygraph test results has been examined across many studies, none
satisfy necessary methodological criteria and accuracy rates are
unpredictable. This analysis points to the need for social
scientists and courts to develop a mutually understood language to
assess validity claims. Courts must have the ability to weight
scientific evidence and, although they need not become amateur
scientists, they must become sophisticated consumers.

Lies are considered bad, immoral, and reprehensible. Yet there is considerable evidence that prevarication is a ubiquitous feature of human social interaction. Psychologists, as well as others in society, often use deceptive techniques for the "social good," and there are a number of conditions under which lying is seen as acceptable. There are also numerous situations in which the "truth" cannot be discerned. This article argues that a psychology of lying needs to be developed that is focused on understanding how actors and observers come to view the world and particular situations, rather than on the detection and punishment of lying.