Q&A: Katz Center Fellow Uzi Rebhun on the Importance of Counting

Natalie Dohrmann (NBD): Uzi, tell us a bit about your broad scholarly interests, what drew you to them, and what especially excites you about them personally and/or intellectually.

Uzi Rebhun (UR): I'm a demographer. As such, I am interested in the study of human populations through quantitative data. My research is concerned with Jews in modern times in comparison with the general population or other religious groups around them. I have written on topics covering migration (both international and internal), the Jewish family, Jewish identification, Israel-diaspora relations, and antisemitism. Recently, I have also taken an interest in Jews and health—especially in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Jewish demography connects two fields of knowledge that have always interested me: social sciences—and especially people’s behavior—and the history of the Jewish people. In fact, Jewish demography in its broadest sense, as I approach it, is in constant correspondence with other scholarly fields including sociology, economics, political science, psychology, religious studies, public health, and, of course, area studies of the space in which Jewish people live and operate, be it the United States, Israel, Germany, or any other country or continent. My writing introduces Jews as a case study for assessing general theories and concepts in population studies.

Examining present-day Jewish demography is largely a living laboratory. I make use of old as well as new databases to trace changes in Jewish society, economy, culture, politics, and welfare. Given that demography is significant to other disciplines, this strategy provides me with opportunities to interact with a very diverse audience of researchers and students.

NBD: Your current project tackles the Jewish response to Covid-19. Can you tell us briefly some of the surprises you have found in the data, and some takeaways from your research to date?

UR: In my current research I explore several different but complementary aspects of this question, including social distancing, masking, vaccination, illness, and the impact of the pandemic on faith and religious identification. The study is comparative at two levels: over time (2020–2023), and interreligious (Jews vs. Protestants, Catholics, and those lacking any religious affiliation [“nones”]). 

Although this is a study in progress, I have already discovered three interesting findings. First, Jews were ahead of non-Jews in adopting protective measures such as masking in public places and being vaccinated. Although the differences have narrowed considerably over time, at least where vaccination is concerned, Jews have maintained their advantage in both initial and booster shots. Second, Jews are not cut from one cloth; rather, there are differences commensurate with degree of Jewish identification, measured by frequency of attending religious services. This observation suggests that ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews were the least careful to protect themselves from Covid-19. These patterns recurred in Israel, where Haredi infection rates were unusually high, as were, accordingly, mortality rates, especially among older followers. Thirdly, the strongest explanation for differences in Covid-19 protective behaviors is political inclination, those defining themselves as Republicans exhibiting low levels of masking and vaccination. Overall, religious identification and political orientation are the two most powerful determinants of how Jews take care of their own health and, in turn, help secure their environment. Future planning and policies to deal with pandemics and other health hazards will need to take this into account and direct special efforts to well-defined subgroups within the Jewish population.

NBD: You are a scholar of “contemporary Jewry.” Beyond the temporal frame, are there elements of this historical moment that are particularly or historically unique for Jews and Judaism? How have the parameters of the “contemporary” changed over the course of your decades-long career?

UR: I am not sure that I view myself as a scholar of "contemporary Jewry," nor even of contemporary Jewish demography. In fact, there is no Jewish demography; there is a demography of the Jewish people. Demography is a field of knowledge in the social sciences that has tools, methods, and measures that can be applied to different groups of people including Jews. But Jews, like any other religious, ethnic or national group, do not have their own toolbox. I make use of the same techniques as does any other demographer. 

Indeed, the concept of "contemporary" has altered over time. This may be best illustrated by the changes that have taken place in my academic home, the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The institute was established in 1959 as an interdisciplinary academic environment of research and teaching, focusing mainly on the period from the end of the nineteenth century until the establishment of the state of Israel. Today, however, "our time" is moving forward and much of the institute’s scientific activity centers on the state of Israel and the Jewish diaspora in the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is clear, then, that the issues being studied have also changed—for example, not only the study of the Holocaust per se but also of memory and commemoration of the Holocaust; not only Zionist thought but also its effective realization within the framework of a Jewish sovereign state; or Jewish migration, which originates not only, or mainly, from Eastern Europe but also from Muslim countries and plays out in the interethnic encounter that follows in the destination countries (mainly Israel). And of course, there are also totally new topics that reflect recent developments in Jewish affairs, such as new forms of antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Israelism.

Within my narrow area of Jewish demography, perhaps the most striking ongoing change is the definition of the "Jewish population." While in the past most Jews married among themselves, today there is an increasing number of intermarried couples, in which some offspring are not Jewish according to Orthodox Jewish religious law (halakhah) but consider themselves Jews, and vice-versa: people who are Jewish by matrilineal descent but choose to identify with the religion of their non-Jewish parent or with no religion at all. This also has implications for the Jewish identity of later generations. Likewise, people today may perceive Judaism not only as a religion but also in other terms such as ethnicity, culture, or nationhood. To make things even more complicated, people may have a dual religious identity—Jewish-and-something-else—or even a multiple identity. This poses new challenges not only for estimating the number of Jews in a given place or worldwide, but also for examining their demographic and social patterns. 

Still, if we maintain a consistent and coherent definition of "who is a Jew," we can note three major developments in Jewish demography since the end of World War II. First, we are now nearing the point where the Jewish people is returning to its pre-Holocaust size (of 16.5 million) and is expected to continue growing in the future. Second, after large influxes of international migration, almost all Jews currently live in the most democratic and advanced countries. Third, there is a sharp divergence between Jews in Israel and their coreligionists in the diaspora in a key demographic factor, fertility: an average of three children per woman and only one and a half children, respectively.

NBD: You are part of cohort that works collectively in a vein I’d call medical humanities. Has this collective conversation influenced your current project on pandemics and Jewish life in America? If so, in what ways?

UR: I am new to the field of health and am learning different aspects of the subject. In the Jewish context in particular, and for the sake of comparison with other groups, it is crucial to be familiar with aspects of health and care for the body including the theological, ethical, and historical aspects. This is exactly what I am gaining from the diverse group and daily interaction with the fellows at the Katz Center this year, which I could not find anywhere else.

Further, as I mentioned above, demography largely cuts across many fields. So, I believe, do the projects of many of my colleague fellows. Whether it's the plague in Prague in the eighteenth century or Linat Tzedek in Radomsko, not to mention the introduction of health and economic status into U.S. immigration legislation in the late nineteenth century, all of them incorporate quantitative or other dimensions of the social sciences that allow me to comment. Thus, I hope that I contribute to the weekly seminars and the informal discourse taking place in the hallways and dining area of the beautiful building of the Katz Center.

I would add that I benefit greatly from the direct experience of my American fellows who weathered the pandemic while living in this country. They witnessed the preparedness of American society and the Jewish community in view of the limitations posed by the health threat and have helped me to understand the real daily life of my target population. Many of them were pivotal for me in establishing contacts with professionals who were involved in adjusting the activities of local Jewish communities during this period. 

NBD: Each week you find yourself one of the only (and sometimes the only) quantitative researchers around the seminar table, often patiently explaining (and proselytizing for) numerical approaches to humanistic questions. Take a minute here and talk about why the work of demography is such an important piece of our knowledge of the past (and present), and what is at stake in ignoring or mishandling demographic data.

UR: The past few decades have witnessed growing emphasis on interdisciplinary connections. Historians, archaeologists, and literary scholars have adopted theories from the social sciences to suggest new interpretations of their subjects at stake. Often central to this, I believe, is also information about key demographic characteristics such as size, age, and economic attainments, which can help to understand the findings more thoroughly. Of course, this should not be done at any cost but only if it relies on reliable empirical infrastructures.