American Jews See Selves Mostly as Cultural Group : Sociology: Extensive survey of U.S. Jewish poulation also finds that fewer than 10% say they are Orthodox. The greatest shift is toward the Reform branch.

The largest-ever survey of the U.S. Jewish population shows that most American Jews see themselves primarily as a cultural group, rather than as an ethnic or religious group.

And fewer than 10% of U.S. Jews say they prefer Orthodox Judaism, despite impressions that there has been a significant resurgence of traditionalist beliefs, said sociologists who released the report this week.

“We are tapping a dynamic change--what has been called the desacralization of Judaism,” said Barry Kosmin of New York, research director for the Council of Jewish Federations and the survey’s principal researcher.

“I was surprised that religious identification didn’t come up higher, but ‘culture’ embraces more and you don’t have to believe in Judaism to belong,” Kosmin said.

A total of 2,441 interviews were conducted last year, giving the best picture yet of the 8.2 million Jews in America, Kosmin said. The survey results will be used by the nearly 200 metropolitan Jewish federations in North America to assist their planning for community needs.

The study projects that 5.5 million Americans are “core Jews,” those who have not abandoned their Jewish heritage through conversion or intermarriage. Three-fourths of the core group say they practice their religion.

The survey report allowed respondents to pick more than one answer to the question about “what it means to be a Jew in America,” and many did. But slightly under half of the “core Jews” considered “religious group” to be part of their identity; about 60% picked “ethnic group” and about 75% included “cultural group.”

When asked which branch of Judaism they preferred, 41.4% of the respondents named the liberal Reform movement, 40.4% picked the moderate Conservative wing and 6.8% named the religiously strict Orthodox groups, the study showed.

Another 3.2% answered “traditional,” which sociologist Bruce Phillips of Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles said could mean either Orthodox or Conservative practice. (Another 8.2% responded “just Jewish” or gave other answers.) The new survey confirms the results of polls in the 1980s showing that Orthodox Judaism embraced only about 10% of American Jewry, said Phillips, who was one of many technical advisers on the national survey.

“Whenever I present those findings to a lay audience, I have been challenged,” he said.

“The Jewish community tends to overestimate their numbers because Orthodox Jews tend to be more visible and are geographically concentrated, such as in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles,” Phillips said.

Both Phillips and Kosmin also noted that bearded, black-hatted Hasidic rabbis and Torah-studying young professionals are often articulate spokesman who have been able to attract news media attention--adding to the image of a resurgent Orthodoxy.

Orthodoxy did slightly better and Reform slightly worse when the survey asked about synagogue membership. Orthodox Judaism claims 16% of U.S. Jewish households, but Reform (35%) and Conservative (43%) synagogues still attract nearly eight of every 10 religious Jews.

But the study said that shifts from one branch to another are predominantly toward the Reform side. “Nearly 90% of those now Orthodox were raised as such, thus indicating any movement toward Orthodoxy is relatively small,” said the report.

“There is a flow from right to left, as it were, and that has been a historic trend for 200 years among Jews,” Kosmin added in an interview.

Orthodox Rabbi Daniel Landes in Los Angeles, while not disputing the survey’s findings, said the statistics nevertheless miss the intensity and strength of the Orthodox communities. “A small percentage is highly involved in Jewish life and the infrastructure is becoming stronger,” said Landes, who teaches at Yeshiva University in Los Angeles.

The shifting preference for cultural identity should be “a pretty scary scenario for the Reform and Conservative movements,” cautioned Landes. If adult education, pro-Israel sentiments and non-religious activities are enough to sustain Jewish identity, then synagogue affiliation may not be seen as so necessary for liberal-to-moderate Jews, he indicated.

In other survey findings, 79% of Jews perceive anti-Semitism to be a serious problem in the United States today, although only 5% say they have personally experienced discrimination in the work force.

The survey also found that converts to Judaism were estimated to be about 185,000--slightly less than the 210,000 estimated to have left the faith to join another religion. Both Phillips and Kosmin said that U.S. Jewish leaders had thought previously that conversions into Judaism were greater.

“The majority of converts out of Judaism had only one Jewish parent,” Kosmin said. Most conversions--either way--were among women of marriageable age, indicating that family adjustments account for many conversions, he said.

The survey also found that since 1985, fewer than half of Jewish marriages involved two partners who were born Jewish.