Perception of Representation

Overall, community organizations are most closely associated with working to help Jews in need and providing required help and support for Israel. Both these items had a mean score above 3 in 2019 as well as 2021. In addition, these institutions are not seen as generally unwelcoming specifically to Jews of color or members of the LGBTQ community. But, as explained below, there is still some expectation of these organizations to be more welcoming, more open, and more diverse.

A somewhat different picture emerges when distinguishing between the results by engagement. For the 60% who are not engaged in community activities, the scores are less positive and offer less differentiation. Among the unengaged, only “helping Israel” gets a score above 3.0, and only barely, indicating that it is at least descriptive of Jewish institutions and organizations.

Some of the biggest differences in how the unengaged and unengaged perceive community institutions on these attributes are representativeness, being too focused on Israel and too involved in partisan political issues. Still, even among the unengaged, the positives are generally more descriptive than the negatives, and the same items about helping Israel and Jews in need rise to the top.

Regression analysis reveals how these perceptions and other factors are connected to engagement. The single biggest predictor of engagement is synagogue attendance. The higher the level of synagogue attendance, the more likely Jews are to feel connected to community institutions and engaged with them. Among the synagogue members and engaged Jews, over half give money often, and many volunteer time. Parents with children at home are more likely to do so than those without.

The next strongest predictor of engagement, after synagogue attendance, is how well Jews feel that community institutions represent them and how much they see the organizations as too focused on Israel. The next most important factor that emerges from the regression analysis is “not open to members of the LGBTQ community.” The more Jews perceive the institutions as not open to LGBTQ participation, the less likely they are to be engaged.

Most see institutions as generally welcoming and representative to some degree

Overall, 81% see the community institutions as welcoming, with 45% feeling that these institutions are only somewhat welcoming and 36% feeling that they are very welcoming. This lukewarm assessment is even more pronounced among the non-engaged, a majority of whom

(54%) feel that community organizations are only somewhat welcoming – more than double the 25% saying “very welcoming.”

This estimation was slightly higher in 2019 (85%) than in 2021 (81%) but the drop is small and is not characteristic of any particular demographic. Non-denominational and Reform Jews are more likely to see the community as less welcoming. Over a quarter of the non-denominational Jews (25%) see the community as unwelcoming.

How welcoming do you feel Jewish institutions and organizations are to people like you?

Smaller donors are also less likely to feel institutions are very welcoming. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of those reporting annual charitable contributions over $10,000 see the institutions as very welcoming. That goes down to 44% of those giving $1,000-10,000 a year; and to 31% of those giving less than $100 a year.

In 2019, with a large enough sample size to look at many of the smaller, potentially marginalized groups, we found that contrary to natural assumptions they were relatively less likely to see institutions as unwelcoming. Less than one-in-ten Jews of color felt the community is unwelcoming, slightly lower than the 15% overall. The 39% of non-white Jews who saw the community as very welcoming is a point higher than Jews overall. Nearly half of Jews with disabilities (47%) felt the community was very welcoming and were no more likely than other groups to feel it is unwelcoming (15%).

In the 2021 survey, these demographics were less likely to indicate that community institutions are “welcoming.” The smaller sample restricts the ability to do much with subgroup analysis, but since this is a recontact survey of previous respondents, we can look at the results at the individual level.

Regarding Jews with disabilities, the changes were quite small and leaning only slightly toward negative. Five percent of the respondents moved into the response category of feeling the community institutions are welcoming, whereas 7% moved into feeling they are unwelcoming with a net shift of 2% — a small shift, in line with the 2-point negative shift for the entire community. For Jews of color, the change was slightly more significant, 7% toward feeling the community institutions are welcoming.

In general, these potentially marginalized demographics are no more likely to feel excluded than the community as a whole. As noted below, this is a community that places a premium on diversity, inclusion and openness.

A similarly positive response characterizes views on how much the institutions care about their views and represent people like them

Just over two-thirds feel community institutions care about what “people like you think about the priorities, policies, and activities of these organizations and institutions,” 19% feel the institutions care a great deal, with 50% feeling they only care “some.” A majority (54%) say the institutions represent their point of view well, but only 8% feel they do it very well.

On both these metrics, the engaged and the Orthodox Jews are more likely to feel positive but