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The Reporter: How many U.S. Jews: 6.1 million? 6.7 million? 9.2 million? 13.3 million?!
Yigal Schleifer/New York

As the American Jewish establishment prepares for the release of the long-awaited National Jewish Population Survey, expected to be the benchmark in measuring the U.S. Jewish population, a separate study has come up with surprising results that contradict the anticipated findings of the NJPS.

According to a national survey conducted by the San Francisco-based Institute for Jewish & Community Research, the American Jewish population stands at about 6.7 million. The 1990 NJPS, the last major survey of American Jewish life, found 5.5 million American Jews, and many experts expect the next NJPS survey to put the total at close to 6.1 million. Conducted by the United Jewish Communities, its findings are to be announced in early October.

Casting a significantly wider net than previous surveys, the IJCR study also found, in addition to the 6.7 million, another 2.5 million Americans who are "socially or psychologically connected" with Judaism -- people who practice Judaism in addition to another religion, who were raised Jewish but now practice another religion, or who have a Jewish partner or spouse. And it found yet another 4.1 million Americans who have at least one ancestor, a grandparent or beyond, who is Jewish.

"The Jewish community is bigger than anybody ever thought," Gary Tobin, president of the IJCR, told the Report. "Jews are not disappearing, they are transforming."

Several leading demographers, though, have challenged Tobin�s numbers and methodology. "There are so many people today in gray areas that, depending on how you define who is a Jew, you will get different answers," said Ira Sheskin, a demographer at the University of Miami who served as a consultant on the NJPS. "I think [Tobin] stretched the definition of being Jewish further than most might."

But Tobin says it is the existence of those gray areas that requires new thinking in the organized Jewish world. "The kinds of language we used to describe populations in the past are useless and self defeating," he said. "We have to be more open to the idea that the Jewish community is broader and probably disconnected from Jewish life. I think the potential for a larger and even more vibrant Jewish community is huge."

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