Typically, The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore performs a community survey that covers demographics and other data every 10 years.
This year, it released a survey conducted from early June to late July of 2025, outside of the usual once-a-decade release pattern.
Ruth Miller, The Associated’s chief planning officer, explained the significance of this move.
“This is a departure from our broad scale community study,” she said. “The last study we did was in 2019, that was pre-COVID. So a lot of the data that we are seeing now has a very different flavor than it did then.”
At a time when the ADL reports more antisemitic incidents than it has ever recorded and the world’s only Jewish state is constantly in the news, gauging the temperature of Baltimore’s Jewish community is important.
Andrew Cushnir, president and CEO of The Associated, said that the data obtained from the 900 respondents will be vital in shaping policy and programming centered around Baltimore Jews moving forward.
“We are deeply committed to ensuring the health and vitality of Jewish Baltimore. Our goal in investing in this survey was to give our community organizations and leaders the data they need to make effective decisions that keep Jewish Baltimore as strong as it can be. Many of the issues explored in the survey align with the work already underway across our Associated network,” he said.
Perhaps one of the most alarming statistics found by the survey is that 84% of Jews in Baltimore are concerned about antisemitism in the non-Jewish community.
Perhaps no figure represents the reality of these concerns than The Associated’s increase in security spending. In 2015, the organization spent about $200,000 a year on security. Currently, it spends about 10 times that, around $2 million.
Miller said the increase can be attributed to additional security personnel, physical security infrastructure and cybersecurity measures.
“What has evolved in our world has necessitated us spending more,” Miller said.
The Associated works on behalf of all Jews in the Baltimore community, which is a varied one. The survey respondents were 29% Orthodox, 24% Conservative and 15% Reform. Fourteen percent of respondents self-identified as secular and 14% said they’re “just Jewish.”
“That is a multi-dimensional group of people, so [we’re] representing a lot of different folks and a lot of different ways of practicing. As one of the most prominent rabbis in our community once said many years ago, ‘The Associated is like the family table, where everyone is welcome,’” Miller said. “Everyone can come around the table, we don’t have to agree with each other — we don’t have to agree with each other but we can work together, and that is still the case.”
The political spectrum is as diverse as the worship style in Baltimore Judaism — 18% of respondents said they are very liberal, 17% said somewhat liberal, 37% said moderate, 17% identified as somewhat conservative and 11% stated they are very conservative.
In 2021, the Pew Research Center released data that shows that Orthodox Jews tend to skew more to the political right than their fellow Jews. Baltimore’s high percentage of Jewish population identifying as Orthodox could speak to the spread of Jews across the political spectrum in Baltimore. Miller said this data doesn’t change the mission of The Associated at all.
“We can bring people together for a common purpose, which is to care for the most vulnerable in our community and build Jewish life and continuity for now and for the future,” she said.
Unfortunately, a sizable percentage of respondents reported that their households are among that vulnerable section of the community. Twenty-four percent of folks who participated in the survey said they are “just managing or cannot make ends meet.” About 19% of respondents said that they “cannot engage in Jewish activities at the level they would like.”
The most commonly identified activities that people struggle to afford are travel to Israel, synagogue membership and membership to other organizations, and philanthropy, among others.
The last study that The Associated conducted in 2019 indicated that just 15% of the community fit this description.
“That equates to over 20,000 people,” Miller said. “The stigma of asking for help is one of the barriers for people in our community … as Jews, we are socialized to help others rather than ask for assistance, so that is one of the areas that we are tackling.”
The Associated is seeking to build upon its initiatives and start new ones in the areas of food insecurity, reducing stigma and enhancing awareness of financial vulnerability and inaccessibility to participating in Jewish life.
That’s one example of how the study will be used going forward. Cushnir said that, from here, The Associated is going to take what it learned and apply it to how they shape their work. In addition to what The Associated does for Baltimore Jews, it has several partner agencies like the Baltimore Jewish Council, the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore, Jewish Community Services and the Jewish Library of Baltimore.
“Over the coming months, we will review the findings and use them to guide us in making strategic, data-informed decisions that will strengthen our Jewish community today and over the long term.”
