Most American Jews say they rarely or never pray, up 29% from a decade ago
Pew poll finds percentage of Jews who say they don’t pray – 58% – is far higher than among those who identify as Muslims, Christians; 31% of US Jews say they lean Republican
JTA — The proportion of American Jews who pray on any regular basis is down sharply from a decade ago, according to a new poll of American religion by the Pew Research Center.
In 2014, 45 percent of Jewish adults chose “seldom/never” to describe their prayer frequency. When Pew asked the question again in 2023 and 2024, the proportion was 58%. The increase exceeds the polls’ margins of error — 5% for Jews in this year’s study — meaning that it is considered statistically significant.
The poll also found that fewer American Jews say religion is important in their lives.
The findings are in line with anecdotal reports from Jewish institutions, which beyond the country’s Orthodox minority are largely struggling to engage and retain Jews. Many are seeking to capitalize on a so-called “surge” in feelings of Jewish affinity in the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught and a subsequent spike in antisemitic incidents.
The proportion of US Jews that hardly if ever pray is far higher than among other religious communities. For Muslim Americans, the corresponding figure was 18%, while for evangelical Christians it was 7%. Among religious groups, only followers of the New Age movement had a larger proportion of people who seldom or never pray, at 62%.
The Pew survey’s most prominent finding is that a longtime decline in Christian affiliation in the United States appears to have stopped.
About Jews, it also found that:
Thirty-one percent say they are Republicans or lean Republican — in line with what polls showed after the 2024 presidential election.
Ninety percent of American Jews identify as white — about the same as a decade ago, and lower than what some advocates for Jews of color have argued.
Jews remain the largest non-Christian religious minority in the United States, making up 1.7% of the population.
About 3% of US adults did not identify as Jewish religiously but did identify as Jewish for reasons “aside from religion,” such as being married to a Jewish spouse, or having Jewish parents.
Half of the people in that last segment — those who identify as Jewish, but only for reasons “aside from religion” — identify religiously as Christians, in keeping with an emerging dynamic that at times has confounded American Jewish institutions.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.