New research project aims to counter US Jewish activist groups that hold minority views
The Jewish Majority releases first poll on community’s attitudes toward campus protests, anti-Zionism; leading demographer questions its methodology
Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.
A new initiative aims to collect data on the majority views of American Jews to counter Jewish activist groups that espouse less popular positions on issues such as anti-Zionism, support for Israel and university protests.
The Jewish Majority, based in Washington, DC, launched in September and released its first batch of data on Wednesday, said founder Jonathan Schulman.
“We’ve seen for a long time a coordinated effort of groups claiming to speak as Jews in the name of Jews,” Schulman said. “The Jewish Majority was actually founded to help make sure that the majority opinions, the majority views of the Jewish community are also being heard.”
“People who are claiming to speak in the name of the Jewish people that actually represent very fringe views, we want to provide a counterweight,” said Schulman, who was a longtime staffer for AIPAC before leaving to found the Jewish Majority.
Schulman pointed to Jewish activists who have participated in anti-Israel protest activities, such as blocking transportation. The activists sometimes bear Jewish religious signifiers such as shofars. The survey released on Wednesday was framed as a rebuttal to the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace.
“You look at the mainstream media coverage, and often the story was ‘Jews opposing Israel,’” Schulman said. “To most people, they can’t distinguish between what is a fringe group that represents almost nobody and what is actually the position of the Jewish community.”
Schulman said the group has secured funding but declined to discuss details. He said he is planning to hire more staff, and the group will focus on research to “demonstrate where the Jewish community is.”
A Jewish student at Columbia University, for example, when asked about the campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, which plays a prominent role in protests, could cite Jewish Majority data indicating that the group is not representative of the majority view in the Jewish community.
The poll released on Wednesday found that 70% of American Jews believe anti-Zionism is antisemitic by definition, and three-quarters of respondents said last year’s anti-Israel campus protests were antisemitic. A majority opposed protest tactics, including blocking traffic, protesting the homes of government officials, and wearing masks to conceal identity.
The survey also found widespread support for, or membership in, mainstream US Jewish groups. For the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish National Fund, 79% were supportive or members; 74% for the American Jewish Committee; and 73% for the Jewish Federations of North America.
A majority — 71% — said that, for an organization to speak for American Jews, it must be almost entirely made up of Jews.
The poll was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, a research firm in Virginia, on behalf of the Jewish Majority. The researchers said they polled 800 Jewish adults in December and that the margin of error was 3.95%.
Ira Sheskin, a professor at Florida’s University of Miami who studies Jewish community demographics, questioned the survey’s results, saying there was little information on methodology and it had likely oversampled for religious Jews. Public Opinion Strategies is an established survey firm but does not appear to work with Jewish clients, he said, adding that some of the survey’s questions should have been framed differently for Jewish respondents.
“Usually, an organization is into a topic, let’s say, care for the elderly or antisemitism or Israel or any one of those, they’ll commission surveys using survey experts,” he said. “Doing Jewish surveys is different from doing other types of surveys, and they have no experience in that.”
Sheskin said that some of the survey’s questions were covered by polls from other groups, such as the ADL, while others appeared to be new. He added that “everything is different since October 7th,” so some data preceding the Hamas attack on Israel might be outdated.
“The more data we have, the better. On the other hand, if we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it as close to right as you can, and you can’t get it exactly right. No one ever will,” said Sheskin, who serves as the president of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry research group.
Sheskin said he was not aware of any Jewish groups specifically dedicated to conducting surveys like the Jewish Majority and that such an approach could limit bias.
“Sometimes when an organization sponsors, like the Democratic or Republican Party, the Democratic Party seems to come out with results that are somewhat more democratic, and the Republican Party, the same thing. You do lose that if you’re doing it independently of a specific organization,” Sheskin said.
