Katz Center fellow Uzi Rebhun on the importance of counting

Uzi Rebhun is a professor in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, currently an Ellie and Herbert D. Katz Distinguished Fellow and Roberta and Stanley Bogen Visiting Scholar at Penn’s Katz Center. As a demographer who studies human populations through quantitative data with a focus on American Jewry and the population of Israel, he has trained his demographer’s lens on the Jewish American response to COVID-19.

“Jewish demography connects two fields of knowledge that have always interested me: social sciences—and especially people’s behavior—and the history of the Jewish people,” says Rebhun. “Jewish demography in its broadest sense, as I approach it, is in constant correspondence with other scholarly fields including sociology, economics, political science, psychology, religious studies, public health, and, of course, area studies of the space in which Jewish people live and operate, be it the United States, Israel, Germany, or any other country or continent.”

Rebhun’s current project tackles the Jewish response to COVID-19 on two comparative levels: from 2020–2023, and interreligious, i.e. Jews versus Protestants, Catholics, and those lacking any religious affiliation, or “nones.”

“Jews were ahead of non-Jews in adopting protective measures such as masking in public places and being vaccinated. Although the differences have narrowed considerably over time, at least where vaccination is concerned, Jews have maintained their advantage in both initial and booster shots,” Rebhun says. “Jews are not cut from one cloth; rather, there are differences commensurate with degree of Jewish identification, measured by frequency of attending religious services. This observation suggests that ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews were the least careful to protect themselves from COVID-19. These patterns recurred in Israel, where Haredi infection rates were unusually high, as were, accordingly, mortality rates, especially among older followers.”

“The strongest explanation for differences in COVID-19 protective behaviors,” he says, “is political inclination, those defining themselves as Republicans exhibiting low levels of masking and vaccination. Overall, religious identification and political orientation are the two most powerful determinants of how Jews take care of their own health and, in turn, help secure their environment. Future planning and policies to deal with pandemics and other health hazards will need to take this into account and direct special efforts to well-defined subgroups within the Jewish population.”

Read more at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.