Demographer explores ‘Shrinking Jewish Middle’ at TBA

Photo Courtesy of Tina Greenberg
Rabbi Clifford Kulwin, left, greets professor Steven Cohen before the lecture.

LIVINGSTON, NJ — More than 140 attendees from Temple B’nai Abraham’s congregation and the community-at-large listened in rapt attention as demographer Steven Cohen enumerated and explored how the strong post-war “middle” of American Jewry is shrinking. Speaking at this year’s Bloom Family Memorial Lecture, titled “The Shrinking Jewish Middle,” Cohen is the research professor of social policy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York, and director of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive at Stanford University. Consultant to the recently conducted Pew Study of American Jews, Cohen shared the communal responses he has studied and as well as offered thoughts on what can be done to preserve the health and well-being of Jews in America.