What’s Next for the Baltimore Jewish Community? Two Studies of Pre-COVID Baltimore Provide a Baseline for the Future

Warning! This article is about statistics. As a grants and systems specialist, I work with numbers and statistics all day long, but I have noticed that statistics causes many people’s eyes to glaze over. (Some of them even fall asleep.) Yet statistics are important to the understanding of complex social realities. It is only when we know the facts and the numbers that we can plan for the future and decide on policies that will be beneficial to the community. I hope in this article to present a fascinating glimpse into the Baltimore Jewish community by way of the numbers.

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In the past two months, two studies came out that significantly update our understanding of the Baltimore Jewish community.

The first came out in May, when The Associated released its “Baltimore 2020 Jewish Community Study.” This is the first community study since 2010, and it gives updated numbers on the Baltimore Jewish community in terms of size, wealth, observance, community involvement, and more.

The second study came out in June, when I released the first ever report on “Trends in Maryland and D.C. Jewish Day School Enrollment.” My study documents changes in Jewish day school enrollment from 2005 to 2019, and includes projections for future day school enrollment through 2035.

Together, these studies provide a strong factual basis for discussions about the past, present, and future of the Baltimore Jewish community. They paint a picture of a Baltimore that has grown increasingly Orthodox over the past decade and is likely to continue doing so. They underscore the primary challenges faced by the Orthodox (managing and affording growth) and by the non-Orthodox (reversing decline) moving into the future.

And crucially, they provide a useful baseline for what the community looked like before COVID-19 struck. They will thus serve as references for future studies seeking to tease out the impact of COVID-19 on the Baltimore Jewish community.

The Baltimore 2020 Jewish Community Study

In April 2019, researchers from Brandeis University, led by seasoned Jewish community researcher Dr. Matthew Boxer, sent surveys to tens of thousands of Jews in the Baltimore area. Based on responses from 2,597 Jewish households and cutting-edge statistical methods, they compiled the “Baltimore 2020 Jewish Community Study” (available online at https://www.brandeis.edu/ssri/communitystudies/baltimorereport.html).

Many of their findings will come as no surprise. Baltimore’s Jewish community is:

·         Large, with an estimated 95,400 Jews (up 4% since 2010)

·         Heavily Orthodox, with 27% of Jews identified as Orthodox compared to 10% nationally^[1]

·         Concentrated in the Pikesville, Park Heights, Cheswolde, and Owings Mills areas

·         Less Intermarried, with only 45% of Jews married to non-Jews compared to 64% nationwide^[2]

One unexpected point in the “Baltimore 2020 Jewish Community Study” is that its estimate of the percentage of Orthodox Jews in Baltimore (27%) is lower than the percentage found in the previous, 2010 Baltimore Jewish Community Study (32%) conducted a decade ago. Can it be that the Baltimore Orthodox Jewish population with its high birth rate has actually gone down?

According to Dr. Boxer, principal author of the 2020 study, the Orthodox community has indeed grown since 2010. But the 2010 study’s methodology significantly overestimated the number of Orthodox Jews because it didn’t correct for the fact that Orthodx Jews are the most likely to respond to Jewish community surveys. “On average,” he said in an email, “Orthodox Jews are most willing to participate [in research studies on the Jewish community] than Conservative, then Reform, then those who identify as ‘just Jewish.’”

Based on a re-analysis of the survey results from the 2010 study, Boxer’s 2020 study estimates that the Baltimore adult Orthodox Jewish population has increased by about a fifth to a quarter since 2010.

Counting the Orthodox

So, if 27% of Baltimore Jews are Orthodox, that comes out to about 25,750 Orthodox Jews in the Baltimore Area. Does that number seem high, low, or just about right? A few weeks ago I discussed this with someone who has lived in Baltimore all his life and is well acquainted with the community. He thinks 25,750 Orthodox Jews in Baltimore seems too low. He estimates it’s closer to about 40,000.

Luckily, we now have some hard data on Orthodox day school enrollment to help us determine the total population. My new report on Jewish day school enrollment trends in Maryland and D.C. from 2005 to 2019 (read the full report at: greatconsultingllc.com/jewishenrollment) breaks down enrollment in the Orthodox and non-Orthodox Baltimore Jewish day schools. Using data from the Maryland State Department of Education, I concluded that there were 4,521 students in Orthodox Jewish day schools in the 2018-2019 school year. Does that number shtim (align) with the conclusion of the “Baltimore 2020 Jewish Community Study” that there are about 25,750 Orthodox Jews in Baltimore?

Extrapolating Jewish Population from Orthodox Day School Enrollment

It depends what assumptions you make. To get from Orthodox day school enrollment to total Orthodox population, you need to make four assumptions listed in Table 1.

If we work with these assumptions, then we could conclude that 4,500 Orthodox day school students in 2018-2019 translates into 29,400 Orthodox Jews in Baltimore. (Don’t like these assumptions? Try your own using an estimator tool I have made available at greatconsultingllc.com/estimator.)  

That is somewhat higher than the estimated Orthodox population cited in the “Baltimore 2020 Jewish Community Study.” But the study itself acknowledges its population numbers are just best estimates, and that the actual Jewish population could actually be as high as 107,200 Jews total (meaning about 28,000 Orthodox Jews) or as low as 83,630 Jews total (meaning about 23,000 Orthodox Jews). This range – called a “confidence interval” – reflects the statistical uncertainty in any study that relies on surveys.[3]

Since our estimate of Orthodox population based on the Orthodox day school enrollment (29,400) is not far off from the upper bound of the confidence interval of the “Baltimore 2020 Jewish Community Study” (~28,000), I think it’s safe to say the two studies are largely consistent and complementary with each other.

Jewish Day School Enrollment Trends

So, the “Baltimore 2020 Jewish Community Study” tells us about the Jewish community in Baltimore. What can we learn about the Baltimore Jewish day schools from my “Trends in Maryland and D.C. Jewish Day School Enrollment” 2005-2019 report? Here are some facts:

1) Enrollment in Orthodox schools is up, and enrollment in non-Orthodox schools is down. Since 2005, non-Orthodox schools have lost over a third of their students, and all but two (Beth Tefiloh Dahan Community School and Krieger Schecter Day School) have shut down. Meanwhile, enrollment in Orthodox schools has increased by over a third, and 10 new ones have opened up.

2) Negative attrition – students leaving the Baltimore Jewish school system mid-career – is no longer the problem it used to be. Historically, attrition was the serious issue in first and ninth grades, at the termination of early childhood and middle school programs, when families were most likely to switch schools. It’s possible that once a family was already switching schools, they were more likely to choose a non-Jewish or non-Baltimore school for their child. However, whereas from 2007 through 2012 about 3 to 4% of students enrolled in Jewish schools were leaving each year, this number declined to 0% by 2018. In 2019, the Baltimore Jewish school system actually attracted more mid-career students than it lost!

Why the change? There are probably many reasons, but from the enrollment data alone, two distinct possibilities present themselves:

·         Kindergarten closures: By 2013, most of the kindergarten programs attached to early childhood programs had already closed. If the students attending these kindergartens moved to non-Jewish schools instead, then we stopped “losing” these students mid-career because we stopped getting them in the first place.

·         New yeshiva high schools: In recent years, several new Jewish high schools have opened up in Baltimore. These include Mesivta Neimus Hatorah (2010), Mesivta Kesser Torah (2017), Yeshivas Toras Simcha (2017), Baltimore Torah School (2018), and Yeshivat Mekor Chaim (2019). Quite possibly, these schools are retaining yeshiva high school students who would have otherwise left Baltimore in ninth grade.

3) The third thing we learn about the Baltimore Jewish day schools from my report is that, if past trends continue, enrollment in Orthodox day schools is expected to continue rising for the foreseeable future. By how much? According to the projections in the study (taking into account several possible scenarios), I expect enrollment in Baltimore Orthodox schools will rise from 4,521 in 2019 to 7,600-8,700 by 2035.

That’s a big increase: 68% to 93% more than today’s enrollment! It raises questions about where the teachers will come from, where the buildings will come from, and where the money to pay for it all will come from. Tuition alone won’t pay for all this. After all, according to the “Baltimore 2020 Jewish Community Study,” the Orthodox are the least wealthy denomination, with nearly a third reporting household income below $50,000 per year, and two thirds reporting household income below $100,000 per year.

The non-Orthodox day school community has the opposite problem. While families are relatively wealthy, their day school enrollment will continue to decline unless they are able to attract more students and retain them. All this while more non-Orthodox Jews than ever are identifying as “secular” or “just Jewish,” according to the “Baltimore 2020 Jewish Community Study.” This is a challenge because only 5% of “secular/just Jewish” households send their children to K-12 Jewish day schools (compared to 89% for Orthodox households and 14% for Conservative households).

The COVID Question

Both the “Baltimore 2020 Jewish Community Study” and the 2005-2019 “Trends in Maryland and D.C. Jewish Day School Enrollment” report are based on data from before the COVID-19 pandemic. It is unknown what the long-term impact of COVID-19 will be on the trends and numbers in these studies.

For example, how many people will never return to shul because they prefer praying at home? How many Baltimore Jewish day school parents, having gotten a taste for homeschooling or remote learning during the school shutdown, will opt to keep their children at home even when school reopens in September? How many Baltimore Jewish families have lost their jobs or income due to the pandemic, and how many of those jobs are gone forever? What will be the subsequent effects on memberships, donations, tuition payments, and other financial support for communal institutions? How many Jewish nonprofits – including schools and synagogues – will close?

Our hope is that everything bounces back to as normal as possible as quickly as possible. But it would take an updated community study (a process lasting a year or more) and 2020-2021 school year enrollment data (expected to be published in February 2021) to know for sure. And even then, long-term effects of COVID-19 on the Baltimore Jewish community won’t be known for years or even decades.

Still, these two studies provide an important baseline for the pre-COVID Baltimore Jewish community. They give a good idea of where the community stood and where it was headed before COVID-19 struck – a snapshot that is absolutely crucial for any future research on the impact of COVID-19.

And they reinforce an idea that has been true for the Jewish people for millennia and is still true today: The primary challenge for the community remains finding the resources, resolve, and strategies to keep the next generation Jewish.

Gabe Aaronson is Grants and Systems Specialist for Teach Coalition, a project of the Orthodox Union laser-focused on securing state funding for Jewish schools. He is also a consultant for various clients, including the U.S. Department of Defense, and a Jewish day school researcher. He is making aliyah with his wife and three children in August.