Abstract
In 2000-01, a National Jewish Population Survey was conducted. This survey is realized once every ten years. The survey declared that the population of Jews in the U.S. amounted to nearly 5.2 million (it was 5.5 million in 1990). The Herculean task of defining ?Who is a Jew' was the main difficulty researchers encountered when conducting this survey. Finally, it was decided to categorize all the people who either identify themselves as Jews, or have had a Jewish parents/parent or were raised as Jews and did not convert into any other religion. If they had included every single person who had a Jewish background, the total population counted would have risen to 6.9 million which is a mammoth! But even the choice they made was not completely accurate as a recent survey by the Jewish Studies Centre of CCNY concluded that half of the population they counted as Jews list their religion as either "other" or "none."
