Good News For Kosher Market,

The kosher market may suddenly have an additional one million potential customers, according to the latest edition of the American Jewish Yearbook.

The widely quoted 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Surveyof the United Jewish Community(UJC) had concluded that the American Jewish population stood at roughly 5.2 million, but there was widespread amazement by the decrease of 300,000 Jews from the UJC's previous population survey in 1990. It came at a time when there were indications that record numbers of American Jews were buying kosher food for Passover, which represents nearly 40% of annual kosher food sales. Some critics claimed the UJC had used flawed methodology. The 2006 American Jewish Yearbook, which was released last month, claims that the U.S. Jewish population is roughly 6.4 million or 1.2 million more than the UJC study.

University of Miami professor, Ira Sheskin, and University of Connecticut professor, Arnold Dashefsky, admit that their figures might be a bit high but they totally disagreed with the 5.2 million figure. Their reasoning included the fact that independent studies in large cities like New York and Chicago showed little or no population drop. And over the past decade, the Jewish population in cities such as San Francisco and Las Vegas has exploded, Sheskin said.

In any case, a more in-depth survey set to be released in coming weeks says that even the 6.4 million figure may be low. There is also considerable disagreement among the researchers on how to count Jews. The opinions range from sticking to the strict criteria of halacha, which recognizes only a Jewish child born to a Jewish mother or someone who has been converted according to halacha, to the broader definition of counting every household where a Jew resides.

With soaring intermarriage, such a broad interpretation could dramatically increase the numbers of those counted as Jews. Nearly one million American Jews are believed to observe kashrus on a fairly regularly basis with as many as 4.5 million taking part in the observance of Pesach.

(www.koshertoday.com)

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