02/19/2026
Cleveland Jewish Population Reaches 93,200
Article reprinted with permission from Cleveland Jewish News
by Casey Couch
After the Jewish Federation of Cleveland released its 2022 Greater Cleveland Jewish Community Study, Kim Pesses, chair of the population study committee, told the Cleveland Jewish News the data pointed to one key takeaway: “Jewish Cleveland is large and stable.”
Based on responses from over 2,000 households, the study, which was publicly released in August 2025, found Jewish Cleveland is home to about 93,200 people living in 36,100 Jewish households. Of these, about 73,600 identify as Jewish, with Jewish households making up 4.1% of all households in the Cleveland area – a relatively high share compared to other U.S. cities.
When the Federation conducted its last population study in 2011, the data showed Jewish Cleveland was home to about 80,800 Jews – a number that has stayed relatively steady in the last decade. An all-time high number was recorded in 1920 with 100,000 Jewish residents.
The Federation wished to wait until early 2026 to discuss the results and methodology behind the 2022 population study.
To carry out the study, the Federation partnered with two national research organizations – NORC at the University of Chicago and the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University – to conduct a “mulit-mode address-based” survey, which included letters, postcards and emails, to contact Jewish residents.
Pesses
The landscape has changed since the last population study took place in 2011, as fewer people have landlines and many people won’t pick up their cellphone if a call comes from an unknown number, according to Pesses. This prompted the researchers to pursue additional contact methodology to ensure they reached the most population members.
“It’s harder to reach people now, so we needed to use multiple outreach channels and really careful sampling so that we wouldn’t miss certain key groups of people,” Pesses said. “It required rigorous quality control, waiting, different variables and validation to make sure we had all those various groups represented.”
The researchers contacted 208,500 households and received an 11.2% response rate – more than 2,000 households. Pesses said this is a strong response rate for the industry, and the researchers were pleased with it. This was especially notable because the outreach took place in 2022, during the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wild
“The pandemic didn’t really influence the method at all,” Pesses said. “We would’ve used the same methods regardless, but we feel that it definitely did affect the results in certain ways.”
While the core demographic results, such as where people live, were likely unaffected, Pesses said that certain questions that pertained to behavior, Jewish engagement and life situations over the previous year, 2021, would have definitely been affected as many people had not yet returned to their pre-pandemic lives and, in some scenarios, were still engaging in virtual learning or programming.
There are a number of key takeaways, and to start, it is important to look at the general overview of the population demographics – such as age – as it gives insight into who the community is, according to Pesses.
“The community is both older and young at the same time, which I think is really important,” Pesses said. “Thirty-two percent, or a third of the population, are 65 plus. 20% are 18 to 34, and 19% are children.”
Those generations, however, each face their own challenges, as 42% of young adults reported they struggle to make ends meet, with 39% skipping Jewish communal activities in recent years due to cost.
“Financial vulnerability is real,” Pesses said, with one in five households, or 20%, reporting that they are struggling or just getting by. “That is a very real number that has a lot of downstream ramifications, especially for families with children.”
Meanwhile, the older generation reported a gap in services. Twenty-one percent of adults age 75 or older with health issues reported unmet social service needs. That subset of the community also reported social isolation, with 49% noting they have just a few people or no one to rely on.
“In households with health issues, most of those households said they need help with services to manage,” Pesses said. “And well over half of those households said that there was at least one service that they needed that they were unable to get.”
Discovering financial vulnerability, health needs and limited support networks in the community “underscores the importance” of building a strategy that invests in both younger and older adults, as both groups are key components to the Cleveland Jewish community, Pesses said.
Disclaimer: studies before 1981 only counted number of Jewish individuals
Jewish families, however, are strong.
While 35% of married Jews have non-Jewish partners, which is up from the last study, 23% in 2011, but below the national average of 42%, this does not necessarily mean Judaism is absent from those households, as many who are raising children are choosing to do so in the faith.
“Children and Judaism together is a strength,” Pesses said. “Eighty-eight percent of children in Jewish households are being raised with Judaism, and that is a really strong number.”
Of note for children, study results reported that in 2021-22, 29% attended a Jewish day school and 15% attended congregational or Sunday school, though part-time Jewish education enrollment has been rising since study data was collected.
Additionally, 95% of households with children discuss Jewish topics at home, and 80% read Jewish books. This highlighted the importance of expanding programming and support for families, especially interfaith families, in the Jewish community, according to Pesses.
A surprise that came out of the study was that newcomers are a major opportunity, Pesses said.
According to the results, 18% of Jewish adults have moved to the Cleveland area in the last decade, a stronger number compared to 11% in the 2011 study.
Of those newcomers, she said that 63% are between 18 and 34 years old.
“It’s surprising because it signals a strong inflow and opportunity, but also a need to make sure that those newcomers feel welcome, and then figure out how to retain them,” Pesses said.
Another important insight that came out of the study is that affiliation is diverse in the Cleveland Jewish community, she said.
“Over half of Jewish adults are not affiliated with a congregation or some type of Jewish worship community,” Pesses said.
While 37% of adults don’t affiliate with a denomination, mirroring a national shift away from formal movement affiliation, at 32% nationally, the study found that Orthodox Jews make up 14% of Jewish adults in Cleveland, which is up from 10% in 2011. Conservative adults represent another 14%, while Reform remains the largest group at 33%.
Another statistic of note was that six in 10 people live outside of the Beachwood/Heights area, according to Pesses.
Beachwood and the Heights area are home to over 40% of Jewish Cleveland households, with 21% in the Heights and 19% in Beachwood. In the east side suburbs, growth occurred since 2011 from 6% to now 16%, while the west side and Central and Southeast regions stayed steady. The Northeast/Northern Heights region declined from 24% to 15%, partly due to seniors relocating to Beachwood or the east side suburbs, the study found.
However, regardless of where one lives, almost all participants reported feeling a high sense of belonging to the local Jewish community.
“People in Jewish Cleveland feel very connected,” Melanie Halvorson, vice president of community planning and allocations at Federation, told the CJN. “Ninety-eight percent say they feel connected to the Jewish people and 84% feel that they belong in Jewish Cleveland, and those numbers say a lot about the strength and vitality of our community and how great it is to live here.”
In addition to these numbers, 72% of respondents said that being part of Jewish Cleveland is important. Young adults showed the strongest connection at 87%, and interfaith households also reported high belonging at 74%.
These numbers replace “anecdotes and stories” with a “shared set of facts” that can be used to guide programming, funding and determining priorities and gaps, according to Pesses.
“Beyond the numbers and stats, it’s a way for all of us to understand our Cleveland Jewish community,” she said. “To me, most importantly, it helps us really understand the stressors and the service needs of our community.”
The information will not only help local Jewish institutions, such as Federation, determine where the gaps are in services and programming, but it will also provide insight for new opportunities to explore in programming to help engage and enrich community members, she said.
“This study is really a starting point for planning and ongoing tracking,” Pesses said. “The 2011 study led to some real changes and innovation in meeting people’s needs, and we know that as we drill down into this one further, this study will also lead to positive innovations as well. We’re really excited about taking this and using it.”
The data has begun to be presented to local organizations so that they can also help bridge the gap of providing assistance where it is needed, according to Halvorson.
Proactively, Federation has already has launched scholarship programs with Jewish Family Services Association to help young adults, are providing more opportunities to travel to Israel for young adults based on interest, and are sharing data to help inform the Jewish Day School Transformation initiative.
“The 2022 Greater Cleveland Jewish Community Study reflects an enormous amount of work, and we are already putting its findings into action through initiatives like the Older Adult Task Force, expanded Israel trips and college scholarships,” Jeffrey J. Wild, Federation board chair, said in a statement to the CJN. “We will continue to use this data to guide our priorities and shape our community planning moving forward.”
“That, to me, was the whole reason for doing this study,” Pesses said. “It’s great to have the underlying statistics, but now we can really take this and use it to help the Jewish community become the best it can be.”
