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Survey of Allegheny County and some outlying communities shows some surprising numbers

Friday, October 04, 2002

By Gary Rotstein, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The number of Pittsburgh area residents identifying themselves as Jewish may be declining, but a new survey of that population suggests that it is younger and includes more newcomers than community leaders realized.

The United Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and Jewish Healthcare Foundation yesterday released results of the first extensive study of the local Jewish population in 18 years.

They found positive news in the general stability of the population and in Squirrel Hill's continued role as a longtime urban Jewish hub, unlike virtually any other in the country. Community leaders have fretted that the Jewish population was both shrinking and aging in a way that the data did not bear out.

At the same time, officials expressed concern about a population of elderly individuals and refugees from the former Soviet Union living in low-income households.

They also said they welcomed the challenge of reaching out to the growing number of Jewish suburbanites who are unaffiliated with synagogues and other core institutions of Pittsburgh's community.

"There are lots of assumptions we made about our Jewish community in Pittsburgh that, frankly, are different" from what the study showed, said Howard Rieger, president of the United Jewish Federation.

The random telephone survey of 34,095 households in Allegheny County and some outlying communities found 1,426 in which at least one adult identified himself or herself as Jewish.

Those results produced estimates by Ukeles Associates Inc., author of the study, that greater Pittsburgh has 20,900 Jewish households, up 10 percent from a 1984 study, with 54,000 people living in them, a 14 percent increase.

Those numbers grew even though the estimated Jewish population locally decreased 6 percent in 18 years, to 42,200, similar to declines in Allegheny County's population.

The study's authors said the number of Jewish households and the population could grow because of new families moving to Pittsburgh and because the increasingly high rate of intermarriage by Jews is spreading that population around.

One in six Jewish households is new to Pittsburgh in the last 10 years. The median age of the Jewish population, 40, is the same as for Allegheny County overall, and so is its proportion of population 65 or older, 18 percent, said Jacob B. Ukeles, president of the firm.

"This is not by any stretch of the imagination an elderly community," compared with the rest of Allegheny County or with other Jewish populations in Northeastern cities, Ukeles said.

He said the lack of decline or aging in the Jewish population came from a combination of families moving to the South Hills and other suburbs, and from Squirrel Hill's influx of Orthodox families who generally have many children.

Respondents did not necessarily have to be religious to identify themselves as Jewish. The Reform branch of Judaism claimed the most Pittsburghers, as has traditionally been the case here, with 41 percent. Thirty-two percent said they were Conservative, 7 percent were Orthodox and 2 percent Reconstructionist.

The Orthodox percentage was less than in the 1984 survey, which Ukeles called "counter-intuitive" and probably a reflection of flawed methodology in the previous survey that overcounted the Orthodox population at that time.

Squirrel Hill and its adjacent neighborhood contain 47 percent of the 20,900 households in which a Jewish person resides. The South Hills had 14 percent; Monroeville and other eastern suburbs, 13 percent; Fox Chapel and adjacent communities, 9 percent; and western suburbs, 5 percent.

More than half of the local Jewish population still lives within the city's boundaries, which Ukeles said may be unparalleled for a metropolitan area.

"Squirrel Hill was the hub of the Jewish community 40 years ago and it's still the hub of the Jewish community," he said. "You go to other cities where the Jewish community has moved four times since World War II."

Gary Rotstein can be reached at grotstein@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1255.