Just how significant is it that at a wedding held outside a Jewish agency, someone in a passing auto shouted “Heil Hitler!” at the celebrants?
And what might it mean that the number of children enrolled in Milwaukee Jewish educational programs declined by three percent — from 1,898 to 1,838 — between the previous school year and this one?
One of the valuable uses of a large-scale study of a population is that it can help crosscheck and put into context smaller studies of a community.
Thus the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s “Jewish Community Study of Greater Milwaukee 2011” can shed some light on two smaller reports about the community for 2011, both released in February:
• The “2011 Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents” prepared by the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and shared with national agencies like the Anti-Defamation League.
• The “2011-2012 Milwaukee Jewish School Census” prepared by the Coalition for Jewish Learning, the education program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
In the first report, the JCRC reported “a slight rise” in anti-Semitic incidents in 2011 over previous years, according to the press release accompanying the report.
Moreover, according to the release, written and oral expression remains the most commonly reported anti-Semitic activity. In addition to the wedding incident mentioned above, others included:
• A local radio talk show that mentioned anti-Semitic canards about the power of some local Jewish businesspeople.
• A Wisconsin vanity car license plate that said “SS PANZR,” that the Wisconsin Department of Transportation promised to recall.
• A Sauk County supervisor who used the phrase “jewed them down,” and who was eventually compelled to apologize for it.
• Anti-Semitic comments responded to an online Milwaukee Journal Sentinel blog post about a college instructor who reportedly lost his job for complaining about anti-Semitism.
The audit also reported four vandalism incidents: Three swastika-painting incidents in various parts of Wisconsin and a defacing of Israel on a map on a college campus.
Under hate group activities, the report mentioned one incident, the neo-Nazi rally held in West Allis this past September.
Finally, the audit includes three incidents of “harassment, threats, and assault.” A community activist received a threatening, anti-Israel Facebook message; an eighth grade middle school student reported anti-Semitic bullying; and anti-Semitic harassment at some North Shore high schools included throwing coins at Jewish students.
These last two items are troubling, according to the release. “Anecdotal evidence suggests there may be a disturbing increase of anti-Semitic harassment and verbal expression among middle and high school students,” it states.
“In response to the apparent phenomenon of increased anti-Jewish expression at middle and high schools, we are working to provide educational opportunities for teens to identify and develop tools to counter anti-Semitism,” said Elana Kahn-Oren, director of the JCRC.
Yet how significant is all this? Has it become seriously uncomfortable to be Jewish in the Milwaukee area? Not according to the community study.
As explained in previous Chronicle articles, two groups were surveyed for that study, one by telephone and one by the Internet. Among the other questions, area Jews were asked about how many times during the past year or two they felt uncomfortable revealing their Jewish identity.
In the two groups, 80.5 percent and 77.1 percent, respectively, reported no situation in which they felt discomfort about revealing that they were Jewish. Others reported feeling such discomfort once (4.8 and 8.1 percent), twice (6.1 and 6.7 percent), three times (2.9 and 2.3 percent), four times (0.8 and 0.6 percent), and five or more times (5 and 3.6 percent).
On the other hand, “While anti-Semitic incidents are still relatively low in Milwaukee, we are concerned that people either do not identify anti-Jewish expressions as anti-Semitism or do not report incidents at all,” said Kahn-Oren. The community study suggests this might be the case as well, at least when it comes to verbal expressions.
The study found that 38.9 percent of the telephone-surveyed group and 34 percent of the Internet-surveyed group heard no anti-Semitic remarks during the previous year.
However, 29.9 and 42.8 percent, respectively, said they had heard one or two such remarks; 21.4 and 18.7 percent said they had heard three to eight; and 9.9 and 4.6 percent said they had heard more than eight.
To report anti-Semitic expressions and incidents to the JCRC, visit its website, www.milwaukeejewish.org/jcrc, or call 414-390-5781.
The CJL school census, for its part, reports that 1,838 children in grades pre-school through 12th are enrolled in Milwaukee-area Jewish educational programs for the school year 2011-12.
These institutions comprise:
• Four pre-schools with 418 children total: Jewish Beginnings, JCC Gan Ami at the Karl Campus, JCC Gan Ami in Mequon, and the Mequon Jewish Preschool.
• Five day schools, with a total of 624 children: The Hillel Academy, Milwaukee Jewish Day School, and Yeshiva Elementary School elementary and middle schools; and the Torah Academy of Milwaukee (girls) and Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study (boys) high schools.
• Ten synagogue or supplemental schools, with a total of 796 children: Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue; Congregations Beth Israel, Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun, Emanu-El of Waukesha, Shalom, Shir Hadash, and Sinai; the Milwaukee Community Cheder; and the Pelz Hebrew School. (Data for Temple Menorah was not available.)
The total number of children attending, and the total numbers for each kind of school, all declined slightly from those of the 2010-11 school year. Last year, 1,898 children attended all local Jewish educational programs.
Moreover, a bar graph in the census shows a steady decline in the numbers of Milwaukee-area Jewish children participating, from a high of 2,497 in the 1997-98 school year.
“It is difficult to explain the reasons for these patterns with certainty,” according to a memo accompanying the census by Steven Baruch, Ph.D., CJL executive director, and Alice Jacobson, director of the CJL Creativity Center.
“There are apparently less Jewish children,” the memo states. “However, we have no way of knowing the impact of factors such as the economy, assimilation, interfaith marriage, and the often-noted tendency of Jews to marry later. While observers suggest that all of these factors have an impact, we can only speculate regarding the influence of each on the decline of enrollment in Jewish schools.”
Again, the community study can help set these figures into a larger context. The survey found that the Milwaukee-area Jewish community contains about 30,000 people, of which about 4,100 or 13.6 percent are children under 18.
That number appears to represent a decline from the 4,568 Jewish children, or about 26 percent of the total, found in “The 1996 Jewish Community Study of Greater Milwaukee.” However, comparisons here should be made cautiously, as that earlier study covered a different geographical area and used different methodology than the 2011 study.
Comparing 2011 study’s number with the CJL census figures, about 44.8 percent of those children currently attend some kind of Jewish educational program.
To break that down a bit further: Of the population study’s estimated 2,268 Milwaukee-area Jewish children between the ages of 5 and 14 (first through eighth grade age), 997 or about 44 percent are enrolled in some kind of Jewish education program.
Moreover, of those 2,268 children, 420 or about 18.5 percent attend a Jewish day school.
A more detailed report on Milwaukee-area Jewish education based on community study data will be forthcoming.
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