2024 Maine Jewish Community Study
Matthew Boxer, Alicia Chandler, Daniella Levine, Adam Martin, Raquel Magidin de Kramer, Ilana Friedman, Janet Krasner Aronson, Matthew A. Brookner, and Leonard Saxe
June 2025
Jewish Maine: The 2024 Community Study is the first ever in-depth assessment of the size and characteristics of the Jewish community throughout Maine, and the first study to cover Southern Maine since 2007. The study provides a comprehensive portrait of the state's 19,000 Jews; their families; their Jewish attitudes, affiliations, and behaviors; their health and financial well-being; and other measures of their engagement in Jewish life.
Key Findings:
- The Maine Jewish community numbers approximately 28,100 adults and children, of whom 19,000 are Jewish, living in 10,600 households.
- The individual intermarriage rate (i.e., the proportion of married Jewish adults with a non-Jewish spouse) is 60%, above the national average of 42%.
- Fifty-three percent of Jewish adults in Maine do not identify with any particular denomination. Twenty-three percent identify as Reform, 16% as Conservative, 3% as Orthodox, and 5% with other denominations.
- Sixty-one percent of Jewish households in Maine reside in Southern Maine, defined as Cumberland, Sagadahoc, and York Counties. The remaining 39% are spread across the rest of the state.
- Twenty-four percent of Jewish households in Maine are members of a synagogue, independent minyan, or other Jewish congregation.
- The most commonly cited obstacles to greater engagement in Jewish communal life for Jewish adults in Maine are not finding programs of interest (32%), programs or activities in inconvenient locations (30%), lack of confidence in one's Jewish knowledge (17%), not feeling welcome (11%), and programs or activities being too expensive (10%).
- Forty-seven percent of Jewish adults in Maine have visited Israel at least once.
Sixteen percent of Jewish households in Maine say either that they cannot make ends meet (1%) or are just managing to make ends meet (15%). - Twenty-eight percent of Jewish households in Maine include at least one person with a chronic health issue, disability, or health need.