Nearly a quarter of Americans raised Jewish have left

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Almost one in four US adults raised Jewish do not identify as religiously Jewish anymore, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center.

The study, published Wednesday, surveyed “religious switching” around the world, and found that significant percentages of people raised in religious homes in the United States and internationally are now religiously unaffiliated. Smaller numbers have converted to another religion.

Among Americans raised Jewish, 17% now describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated. An additional 2% now identify as Christian while 1% now identify as Muslim. An additional 4% identify with another religion or didn’t answer.

The survey also found that 14% of Jewish adults in the US had converted into the religion. Of that population, half were raised as Christians while most others grew up religiously unaffiliated.

In contrast to the US findings, survey data from Israel found that 100% of those raised Jewish remained Jewish as adults, and only 1% of the adult Jewish population had converted. Virtually all Israelis raised Muslim also still identify as Muslim in adulthood.

One in five Israeli Jews had switched between Jewish religious sectors
But Pew also found in a separate survey that more than one in five Israeli Jews had switched between Jewish religious sectors — going from secular to religious Zionist, for example, or traditional to haredi Orthodox.

That survey found that the secular population had gained more members than it lost due to religious switching, while the reverse was true for the religious Zionist community. Religious switching did not have an effect on the numbers of traditional or haredi Israeli Jews. (Those numbers do not account for differing birth rates among the groups.)

Wednesday’s survey found that retention rates were similar among Americans raised Jewish, Muslim and Christian.

Among those raised Jewish, 76% are still Jewish, while the corresponding figure is 77% for American Muslims, and 73% for American Christians. Other religious groups in the United States have higher rates of attrition: Just 45% of those raised Buddhist, for example, are still Buddhist.

The rate of religious switching among Jews has remained constant:

Another Pew survey of American Jews in 2020 sought to answer the same question, and found that 88% of people raised Jewish continued to identify as Jewish in adulthood.

The key difference? The 2020 survey measured both religiously affiliated Jews and those identified as “Jews of no religion” — people who may identify as culturally or ethnically Jewish but not religious. In that survey, if someone stopped affiliating religiously as Jewish, but still identified as a Jew of no religion, they still counted as Jewish — leading to a higher retention rate.

U.S. data was taken from the 2024 Religious Landscape Study which surveyed 850 American Jews and had a margin of error of 5%. The Israeli data was taken from a sample of 591 Jewish adults and had a margin of error of 4%.