Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies

2005 Boston Community Survey: Preliminary Findings

Leonard Saxe, Benjamin Phillips, Charles Kadushin, Graham Wright, Daniel Parmer

March 2006

2015 Boston Report CoverEvery 10 years since 1965, Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) has sponsored scientific surveys of the Jewish population of the Greater Boston area. Like the four previous surveys, the 2005 study seeks to understand who the Jews of the Greater Boston area are, how those individuals participate in Jewish communal life, and what the community members’ needs are for programs and services

Key Findings:

  • The Jewish community of Greater Boston is larger, perhaps substantially so, than that estimated in 1995
  • The Jewish community is highly educated, generally secure financially, although some are at risk of poverty
  • The Jewish community consists of a diverse array of Jewish households that contain an increasingly large number of non-Jews
  • The Jewish community is engaged and connected, with Jews connecting to their identity in many different ways