Survey: Region
Has 23,000 Jews

Statistically the number of Orthodox Jews in Greater New Haven is growing, according to demographer Ira Sheskin. But you can’t sell that idea to Len Honeyman the president of Bikur Cholim Shevet Achim, an Orthodox synagogue on Marvel Road that has seen its numbers decline.

The interchange occurred Thursday night at the Conservative Beth El-Keser Israel (BEKI) synagogue in Westville where Honeyman and about 40 others gathered to hear highlights of what is being dubbed the first-ever ​“scientific” population survey of the Jewish community. The area covered by the study stretches approximately from Milford to Madison and from Wallingford to the East Shore.

The results were based on 833 20-minute interviews. Participants in the survey made 30,000 phone calls to find 297 Jewish households at random, supplemented by contacts with 536 households with Jewish-sounding names.

“We stepped back from our strategic planning” for the needs of a future Jewish community in order to have the facts and the data, said Sydney Perry, the president of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, which commissioned the study.

Chief among the findings: The area has about 23,000 Jews in 11,000 households. That’s down from 13,700 households in 2005 (although that comparison may be an overstatement, coming from different sources).

Jewish households make up 4 percent In Greater New Haven. The largest concentration — 9 percent of all Jewish households — live in the 06515 zip code, New Haven’s Westville, Beverly Hills, and West Hills neighborhoods. A full quarter of the total have 06515, 06525, and 06511 zip codes.

And Greater New Haven’s Jews are graying. Median age: 51. The elderly account for 27 percent of the population.

“The 65 and over [population] is highest in the country except for the Florida retirement areas,” said Sheskin, a University of Miami professor who has conducted similar studies of Jewish communities around the country.

There are 12 Orthodox, six Conservative, five Reform, and four ​“other” synagogues in the area. Some 43 percent of the community belong either to a synagogue or to the Jewish Community Center, the two major centers of affiliation.

Sheskin, who conducted the survey using a technique called random digit dialing, called Greater New Haven statistically ​“average.”

That descriptive profile includes the 78 percent over 25 years old with bachelor’s degrees (as compared to 28 percent nationally); median household income of $104,000 (compared to $50,000 nationally); and the median value of Jewish-owned homes at $370,000; although 209 households, or 2 percent of the total, fall below federal poverty levels.

Perry parried Sheskin’s conclusions by arguing that the study showed that Greater New Haven’s Jews like the Lutheran denizens of Lake Woebegone: clearly ​“above average.”

But steps have to be taken, she said, so the Jewish community of five years from now will be transformed.

In particular, Jewish education both at the day schools and at synagogue after school programs need to be made more attractive to students and their families, said Perry, a longtime educator.

Perry said that the statistics in the study put her in mind of the old joke: A father drags his kid to Hebrew school. ​“I hated it, and you will too,” the father says. ​“Now go.”

“No, [Jewish education] has to be fun, not the performance art of a bar mitzvah,” Perry said.

Click here for the full blizzard of statistics contained in 880 slides of the 1,000-page document called ​“The 2010 Greater New Haven Jewish Community Population Study”; and here for highlights of the major findings.

They include such tidbits as: About 17 percent of Jewish children age 6 to 17 experienced anti-Semitism in Greater New Haven in the past year, mainly at school. And while 65 percent of households have a mezuzah on the front door, 15 percent of the total also always, usually, or sometimes have a Christmas tree in the home.

After the data is reviewed and a strategic planning study undertaken, the next step is to formulate a list of 20 projects. The projects are prioritized, said Rena Cheskis-Gold, the federation’s chair of the population study committee.

So does that mean the Jewish community will build another day school or an assisted living facility?

Noted Perry, ​“Our Jewish home for the aged will be soon be sold or go into receivership.” (Click here to read about that.) There’s talk about expanding or building a facility for seniors in Woodbridge and expanding at-home care.

Combine that with a low birthrate of 1.7 and that likely means not nursery schools but perhaps assisted living facilities and ways to help aging Jewish Boomers stay in their digs.

Perry said that people already knew these trends anecdotally. ​“Now we have the numbers,” which will also guide the federation as to where in the sprawling geographical area new facilities should be built

Those numbers interpreted in various ways — which brings us back to the Orthodox.

Roughly a quarter of the 4,217 surveyed households belong to a Greater New Haven synagogue. Of that group, 41 percent belong to Conservative synagogues, 32 percent to Reform, 24 percent to Orthodox (and 3 percent to ​“other”).

Sheskin said that 24 percent number represents growth over the last five years.

But to Orthodox synagogue members present Thursday night, the reality is different. Longstanding established Orthodox synagogues have seen their numbers dwindle in New Haven; some struggle to gather the minimum ten men required for a daily prayer minyan.

“It ain’t true that the Orthodox are holding their own, “ said Perry. Honeyman concurred, saying his congregation is declining.

How to explain the discrepancy?

Chabad, an international sect within the Orthodox world,h has a fast-growing outpost in New Haven’s Beaver Hills neighborhood. Sheskin said ​“membership” is loosely defined in Chabad, not the same as being a dues-paying member of other Orthodox congregations.

Perry suggested some of New Haven’s Orthodox synagogues will have to merge or fail.

Honeyman didn’t go that far. He suggested Orthodox synagogues can remain discrete but combine marketing efforts to, for example, attract young religious families from New York.

Sheskin said he tells his students that statistics are ​“as much an art as a science, and a lot better than guessing.”