Antisemitic incidents spur 10-fold increase in 2022 Jewish giving, survey finds

U.S. Jews who experienced antisemitism gave almost 10 times more to charity in 2022 than those who did not encounter anti-Jewish sentiment or acts, a survey reported Tuesday.

The survey was conducted by the market research firm SRSS for the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and the Ruderman Family Foundation, a Jewish philanthropic group based in Newton, Massachusetts. The “American Jewish Philanthropy 2022: Giving to Religious and Secular Causes in the U.S. and to Israel” study notes charitable giving for a variety of Jewish causes.

Donors who had experienced antisemitism gave more than six times as much to nonreligious institutions and organizations than those who had not. Jewish households, on average, gave $10,588 versus $8,025 for non-Jewish households, a 32% difference.

One-quarter of American Jewish households give to charities in Israel, with those donations averaging $2,476 for each household.

Members of Generation X (27%) and millennials and adults in Generation Z (both 25%) were the demographic groups who donated most to Israel, the researchers said.

The study, conducted last March, is believed to be one of the first major reports on Jewish giving trends in America in the past decade. It comes amid rising antisemitism in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on southern Israel and as Israel’s war against the Palestinian militant group nears its fifth month.

“Given how the rising threat posed by antisemitism has been a prominent concern for the American Jewish community not only during the current war in Israel but in the years immediately preceding it, we believe that our study’s findings present key insights that can inform the organized Jewish community’s activities in both the short- and long-term future,” said foundation President Jay Ruderman, whose organization commissioned the study.

The survey found that Orthodox Jews — many of whom are identifiable as Jews due to their distinctive dress — experienced antisemitism “at significantly higher levels than other Jewish survey respondents.” Of those with children under 18 at home, 20% said they had experienced antisemitism, while 17% of those without young children at home reported such incidents.

Twenty-eight percent of U.S. Jews in the West reported the highest level of antisemitic experiences, followed by 20% in the Midwest, 20% in the South and 15% in the Northeast.

“American Jews are a minority group in the U.S. under 2.4% of the American population,” Hanna Shaul Bar Nissim, deputy director at the foundation who co-led the study, said in a telephone interview. “But they are a very, very generous group and their philanthropy in the last almost 150 years or even more in the United States.”

The data shows “a huge difference between organized Jewish institutional giving, which is a significant mechanism when it comes to American Jewish philanthropy, versus Jewish household giving,” she said.

Patrick Rooney of the Lilly Family School at Indiana University said the involvement of younger Jews in giving is a hopeful sign.

“I think there’s a lot there’s several things to be optimistic about for Jewish congregations,” Mr. Rooney told The Washington Times. “One of them is the fact that Jewish households with kids give three times as much as those without kids. There’s an intergenerational opportunity there. We also see [that] intergenerational opportunity with the generosity of Gen X and millennials exceeding that of boomers and older-than-boomers.”

The study is based on a survey of 3,115 households (two-thirds Jewish, one-third non-Jewish) conducted in March 2023. Researchers did not disclose a margin of error for the results.