‘Americans don’t know much about Judaism’
US Jews know more about religion in general than their non-Jewish neighbors, while Americans who are not Jewish don’t know a lot about Judaism, according to a survey. Americans also like Jews more than any other religious group, but they think there are more Jews in the country than there actually are.
The new survey also found that the more nonJews know about Jews, the more they like them.
The data comes out of a new survey on what Americans know about religion published on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center. The survey asked a group of diverse Americans a set of 32 questions about religion, ranging from knowledge of the Bible and Christianity to knowledge of Judaism and other religions.
Ten of the questions related to Judaism in some way: four asked directly about Jewish history, practice and texts; five were about the Hebrew Bible; and one was about the size of America’s Jewish population.
Here are three takeaways from the survey. Americans don’t know a lot about Judaism. Out of four questions on Judaism, non-Jewish Americans received a dismal score, averaging less than one out of four correct. Besides Jews themselves, atheists did the best on the Jewish questions, averaging 1.3 correct answers.
None of the questions on Judaism received a majority of correct answers:
• 29% of respondents knew that the Jewish Shabbat begins on Friday night.
• 27% knew Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) was associated with Judaism.
• 24% knew that Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year.
• 13% knew Maimonides was a Jewish scholar. Older Americans did better on all of these questions: 40% of those 65 and older, for example, knew that the Jewish Sabbath begins on Friday night, compared with 18% of respondents aged 18 to 29.
Jews did much better on these questions than non-Jews, averaging 3.1 correct out of four. Nearly 90% knew that Shabbat begins on Friday night, almost 80% knew Kabbalah is Jewish, 82% knew Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, and 58% knew that Maimonides was Jewish.
Americans as a whole also didn’t know how many Jews live in the country. Fewer than one in five knew that Jews are less than 5% of Americans. A quarter thought Jews were more than 5% of Americans, and the rest of the respondents didn’t know.
But Jews know a lot about religion.
Jews not only outscored their non-Jewish counterparts when it came to Jewish knowledge, they outscored everyone when it came to general religious knowledge.
Besides the questions on Jewish practice, history and text, seven questions were about Christianity, nine were about the Bible including the New Testament, nine were about “world religions,” two were about atheism and agnosticism, and two were about religion in the United States.
Jews were the only religiously affiliated group to get a majority of the questions right. On average, Jews got 18.7 questions right out of 32, as opposed to a national average of 14.2. Atheists and agnostics also got a majority of questions right, but the closest religiously affiliated group was evangelical Christians, who got an average of 15.5 correct.
Jews scored highest, the survey said, “even after controlling for levels of education and other key demographic characteristics such as race, age and gender.”
Jews also scored high on world religions and on knowledge of atheism and agnosticism: 90%, for example, knew that atheists don’t believe in God, and more than 85% knew that Ramadan is an Islamic holy month and that Mecca is an Islamic holy city. (JTA)