2022-23 Greater Portland Jewish Community Study
Matthew Boxer, Matthew A. Brookner, Adina Bankier-Karp, Alicia Chandler, Daniella Levine, Adam Martin, Raquel Magidin de Kramer, Ilana Friedman, Matthew Feinberg, Janet Krasner Aronson, & Leonard Saxe
June 2023
The 2022-23 Greater Portland Jewish Community Study is the first in-depth assessment of the size and characteristics of the Jewish community in Greater Portland and Southwest Washington since 2009. The study also includes a separate mini-report for Lane County, the first scientific study ever conducted of the Jewish community in the Eugene area. The study provides a comprehensive portrait of the 56,600 Jews in Greater Portland and Southwest Washington; their families; their Jewish attitudes, affiliations, and behaviors; their health and financial well-being; and other measures of their engagement in Jewish life.
Read the Portland main report
Read the Portland executive summary
Read the Portland technical appendices
Read the Lane County report
Download the comparison charts for: Portland, Lane County, and Willamette Valley
Among the findings:
- The Greater Portland Jewish community numbers approximately 75,500 people, of whom 56,600 are Jewish, living in 31,100 households.
- Twenty-nine percent of Jewish households in Greater Portland include children under age 18.
- The individual intermarriage rate (i.e., the proportion of married Jewish adults with a non-Jewish spouse) is 54%, higher than the national average of 42%.
- Fifty-two percent of Jewish adults in Greater Portland do not identify with any particular denomination. Twenty-three percent identify as Reform, 8% as Conservative, 5% as Orthodox, and 12% with other denominations.
- Jewish households in Greater Portland are divided geographically among seven regions. Twenty-four percent reside in Northeast Portland, 14% in Southeast Portland, 13% in Southwest Portland, 8% in Northwest Portland, 19% in the Western Suburbs, 17% in Southwest Washington and North Portland, and 5% in the Other Suburbs.
- Twenty percent of Jewish households in Greater Portland are members of a Jewish congregation.
- The barriers most commonly cited by Jewish adults in Greater Portland to greater participation in Jewish life are not finding Jewish activities of interest (30%), traffic or the location of events and activities (29%), lack of confidence in their Jewish knowledge (21%), and expense (21%).
- Eighteen percent of Jewish adults in Greater Portland reported having personally experienced an antisemitic incident in the past year.
- Twenty-six percent of Jewish adults in Greater Portland explicitly describe themselves as Zionists, 52% explicitly say they are not Zionists, and 22% either do not know or prefer not to say whether they are Zionists.
- Twenty-six percent of Jewish households in Greater Portland say either that they cannot make ends meet (4%) or that they are struggling to make ends meet (23%).