Jews of Color: A Wide-Angle Snapshot

Using all respondents with a Jewish parent in the Pew Research Center’s “American Jews in 2020” dataset, including the Jewish-background-only (persons of Jewish background (PJB)) population not classified as part of the “net” Jewish population, I profile three ethno-religious groups: (1) non-Hispanic whites (“whites”), (2) white Hispanics (“Hispanics”), and (3) Jews of Color (JoCs) who identified as Black, Asian, mixed race, or some other race. More than 70% of Hispanic and JoC respondents had a non-Jewish parent, and more than half were classified as Jewish background only (PJBs). They were excluded from the “net” Jewish population either because they said they did not consider themselves Jewish or because they identified with a religion other than Judaism (including identification as both Jewish and Christian). I show that Hispanic persons should be treated as a separate category because they are empirically different from both white Jews and JoCs. I hypothesized that Hispanic Jews and JoCs would have weaker Jewish connections because of the pull to identify with their respective non-Jewish ethno-racial groups and because other research has found that the most engaged of them experienced discrimination in Jewish settings. I found the opposite to be the case. Among “mixed ancestry” respondents (i.e., respondents with one Jewish parent), JoCs were the most Jewishly connected, followed by Hispanic individuals. Future research on Jews of Color, however defined, should explore their multiple identities.