Jewish Survey of Yesterday: Studies from the 1930s and 1940s

Having commented on community enumerations in the 1930s and 1940s in an earlier post, I reproduce the sections from my dissertation dealing with these studies.

Minneapolis, 1936

The earliest use of lists by a Jewish organization to study a Jewish population is unclear, but apparently predates 1936, as Robison’s (1943a) account of the 1936 census of the Jewish population of Minneapolis refers to following "the methods outlined by the Council for Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds for gather Jewish population data in small communities" (p. 152). For this study she developed a master list from subscribers to the Minneapolis Jewish Federation campaign, members of Jewish women’s organizations, families known to the Jewish Family Welfare Society, Jewish families on public welfare, members of the Downtown Talmud Torah, and members of two (unnamed) large synagogues. To account for households not included on the list, "the 1935 Minneapolis City Directory furnished many additional names of families presumably Jewish which did not appear on organization lists" (Robison 1943a:152). This use of distinctive Jewish names does not cause problems for the sample, except with respect to cost and efficiency, as the Jewish status of each household was directly determined by an interviewer. In addition to these methods, Robison described a house-to-house canvas in the more densely populated Jewish sections of the city and, in the more sparsely settled sections, "a canvass of those households which were designated as Jewish" (p. 152). Beyond these methods, every surveyed household was asked to list the names of other Jewish families who lived in the neighborhood, presumably a labor intensive process for those with many ties. The proportion of households that did not respond is not given.

The feasibility of such an approach depends on factors specific to the time and place. Canvassing all houses and apartments in high density areas requires a ready supply of inexpensive but intelligent interviewers. Two factors came together to make this possible. First, the Depression must have eased labor costs and increased the supply of suitable interviewers. Second, although Robison does not say one way or the other, it is plausible that such studies drew on Jewish women as volunteers. As Sylvia Barack Fishman (1993) has noted, organizations like Hadassah furnished careers for married Jewish women, with a managerial hierarchy ascended by virtue of training, skill and seniority, considerable responsibilities, and long hours, differing from the rest of the workforce mainly in the matter of pay (or the lack thereof). The 1938 studies of Jews in Buffalo, New York and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, drew on another kind of cheap labor, using college and graduate students (Engelman 1943; Taylor 1943). Even with an inexpensive source of suitable labor, enumerating a large Jewish community would stretch virtually any organization to the breaking point, all the more so when a large central office staff would be needed for tasks that are now easily computerized: tracking interviewers, making sure all addresses are visited (but not surveyed multiple times), collating completed interview schedules, and maintaining and updating the master list of Jewish households. In addition, the research plan rested on a specific set of characteristics of the Jewish community. The community must be concentrated in certain locales, those areas must be very densely populated by Jews, and few Jews should live beyond these areas. Were the bulk of the Jewish community not to be found in a few neighborhoods, a much larger section of the city would have to be canvassed in its entirety, with concomitant increases in cost and difficulty. It is also necessary that Jews be strongly connected to Jewish organizations and fellow Jews--having "bonding social capital" in Putnam's (2000) terminology--otherwise the sampling scheme would be inadequate. Should a large number of Jews have not belonged to Jewish organizations or had social ties to other Jews, they would have gone unenumerated, causing serious bias. Finally, the use of Jewish names to identify otherwise unknown households assumed that a high proportion of Jews had distinctive names shared by few non-Jews.

While such a procedure may seem unscientific to contemporary eyes, it is important to recall that few alternatives then existed. Neyman's key papers on sampling had just been published and more accessible material would not be available until after the Second World War. Evaluating the adequacy of a contemporary survey is difficult enough, but nigh unto impossible at such a distance. Bearing in mind these limitations, it remains a worthwhile exercise. It is likely that the study was, in fact, quite accurate. Relying on a relatively tight-knit community was appropriate at a time when Jews were still excluded from large portions of non-Jewish society, were relatively close to the immigrant experience, and were concentrated in ethnic neighborhoods (including areas of second or third settlement). The study was well designed to take advantage of these factors, with multiple ways for household to be included (living in a high density area, belonging to any of a number of Jewish organizations, having a distinctive Jewish name, or having Jewish friends). Soon, however, the social environment would change again.

San Francisco, 1938

Similar studies took place in Trenton and Passaic, New Jersey, Norwich and New London, Connecticut, and San Francisco, California. The 1938 San Francisco study (Moment 1943) based its master list on 70 Jewish organizations, supplemented by Jewish hotel guests (presumably determined via their names), and names obtained from other Jewish households by a presurvey mailing and via interview. The study initially intended to enumerate all known Jewish households, but was forced to undertake a systematic sample of one in three Jewish households after the study was about halfway complete, due to financial difficulties. This was accounted for by assigning a weight of three to the sampled cases, the first known use of weighting in a survey of an American Jewish community. Weights are used in surveys to compensate for unequal probabilities of selection and to project to the total target population. In this instance, had these cases not been "weighed" (essentially counting each case three times), they would have ended up being underrepresented in the final sample, together with any characteristics that were more common among this group.

To understand undercoverage, complete enumerations were undertaken in ten groups of four blocks in different census tracts. How these tracts were assigned is not clear, although it does not appear to be determined by Jewish population incidence. In any case, relying on such a small sample introduces considerable uncertainty into the estimates of the total Jewish population, although the concept of sampling error was not widely appreciated among social researchers at the time. Indeed, no list-based study of a Jewish population included any reference to sampling error. Nevertheless, this was a sophisticated and ambitious community study by the standards of the day.

Trenton, 1937

The 1937 study of Trenton, New Jersey forewent a house to house canvass of high density areas, but added Jewish names on the check-lists of ward leaders (the political affiliation of the ward leaders is not mentioned), as were married sons and daughters listed by their parents as living in Trenton (Robison 1943c). The fact that no attempt was made to interview households of unknown status in high density areas is problematic, as the seed of the sample is limited to those with Jewish names or who were members of Jewish organizations. Nevertheless, the breadth of the list sample was likely enough for adequate coverage.

Passaic, 1937

The Passaic study of 1937 cut yet more corners, limiting the initial seed to Jewish names and contributors to the Jewish Welfare Fund (Robison 1943b). Rather than asking for the addresses of all Jewish families, Jewish households were only asked about families on their block. Instead of complete enumeration of blocks known to have Jewish households, only "two or three addresses at which no Jewish family was listed" were canvassed (p. 22). On streets with no known Jewish households, "three houses on each side of the block were canvassed and inquiry made in the stores" (p. 22). This design problematically mixes features of a census (complete enumeration of known Jewish families) with those of a sample (probabilistic sampling of unknown households). Absent weighting for the different probabilities of selection, the results will be biased toward the most connected Jewish households. Had a master list developed from many organizations been used the potential for bias would be mitigated somewhat, but this was not the case. The procedure for selecting households may also have been problematic, if left to the interviewers’ discretion, as they may have opted for the more inviting looking residences.

New London and Norwich, 1938

The 1938 study of New London and Norwich (Wessel 1943) went further in the direction of using the list frame by completely omitting any households not found on organizational lists or known to other Jewish households. Its major innovation was its use of multiple modes of contact, first mailing questionnaires to all known Jewish households and then following up in person with the 75 percent that did not respond.

Summary

The preoccupations of these studies remain true to the social welfare model of their predecessors. Migrant status and naturalization remained a key concern, as did occupation. The move of second and later generation Jews from trade to the professions was noted. Fertility was also of interest, with studies of this era typically noting the low Jewish birthrate. Other than brief mentions of intermarriage (Robison 1943c) and participation in Jewish schools (Moment 1943; Robison 1943b), the focus on Jewish behavior that is the bread and butter of contemporary population studies is entirely absent, speaking to insecurity about the community’s socioeconomic standing coupled with the implausibility of a serious decline in Jewish distinctiveness.

References

Engelman, Uriah Z. 1943. "The Jewish Population of Buffalo, 1938." Pp. 37-50 in Jewish Social Studies, vol. 3, edited by S. M. Robison. New York: Council on Jewish Relations.

Fishman, Sylvia Barack. 1993. A Breath of Life: Feminism in the American Jewish Community. New York: The Free Press.

Moment, Samuel. 1943. "A Study of San Francisco Jewry, 1938." Pp. 160-182 in Jewish Social Studies, vol. 3, edited by S. M. Robison. New York: Council on Jewish Relations.

Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Robison, Sophia M. 1943a. "The Jewish Population of Minneapolis, 1936." Pp. 152-159 in Jewish Social Studies, vol. 3, edited by S. M. Robison. New York: Council on Jewish Relations.

Robison, Sophia M. 1943b. "The Jewish Population of Passaic, 1937." Pp. 22-36 in Jewish Social Studies, vol. 3, edited by S. M. Robison. New York: Council on Jewish Relations.

Robison, Sophia M. 1943c. "The Jewish Population of Trenton, 1937." Pp. 22-36 in Jewish Social Studies, vol. 3, edited by S. M. Robison. New York: Council on Jewish Relations.

Taylor, Maurice. 1943. "A Sample Study of the Jewish Population of Pittsburgh, 1938." Pp. 81-108 in Jewish Social Studies, vol. 3, edited by S. M. Robison. New York: Council on Jewish Relations.

Wessel, Bessie B. 1943. "A Comparative Study of the Jewish Communities of Norwich and New London, 1938." Pp. 51-80 in Jewish Social Studies, vol. 3, edited by S. M. Robison. New York: Council on Jewish Relations.