A new study by the Jewish Federations of North America suggests that the surge in Jewish interest and engagement that emerged after Oct. 7 continues three years later.
Most respondents (52%) said they have maintained increased involvement with a Jewish community over the past three years. Another 23% of American Jewish respondents said they are engaging less, but still more than before Oct. 7.
“Last year, we shared that between 2024 and 2025, there was a dip in the surge, a lower rate than it had been the first year” after Oct. 7, Mimi Kravetz, chief impact and growth officer at the Federation, told JNS.
“I thought it would slowly decline,” she said. “Yet this year, instead of finding a decline since last year, there was a leveling off or new normal of engagement in Jewish life.”
There has been a concomitant increase in the money Federations are raising in their annual campaigns, the Federation stated in July.
It announced a 15.4% jump in money raised in fiscal year 2025 over the prior year, to $2.9 billion, the biggest increase in a decade and the largest amount it ever raised in a non-crisis year.
The Federation is the umbrella group of 141 local Jewish Federations, and about 300 smaller communities around North America.
In the new survey, 2,836 American Jews answered questions about their attitudes toward and level of involvement with the Jewish community and its institutions. The polling firm Burson conducted the poll from May 4 to 27.
The Federation has released related surveys about once annually since Oct. 7.
Other findings show that awareness and confidence in community safety grew over the last year. Some 58% of Jewish Americans now say that they know where to turn if targeted by antisemitism, which was up from 46% in 2025.
The survey’s margin of error was plus or minus 1.84 percentage points.
‘Real opportunity’
Self-reported awareness of security programs protecting Jewish institutions rose from 39% last year to 57% in 2026, and 60% of respondents said they believe Jewish organizations are effectively providing safety and security for their community. That was up from 47% last year.
“People are still showing up, still learning and still finding their way into Jewish community,” Kravetz stated. “There’s a real opportunity to reach even more of them, and we now have lessons from individuals and institutions doing this work on how to sustain this new normal.”
Almost all (96%) respondents said there is “some” or “a lot” of antisemitism in the United States, which was the same percentage that Pew Research Center reported in 2020.
Some 65% of the respondents to the Federation survey said there is a lot of Jew-hatred in the United States, up from 45%in 2020.
In their local communities, 68% said there is “some” or “a lot” of antisemitism. About the same percentage said that right after Oct. 7.
The number of American Jews who said they are concerned about Jew-hatred in general in the United States has stayed the same over the past several years (84%).
Some 34% of Jews are more cautious about being identified as Jewish, according to the survey, while 37% said they are feeling more proud to be Jewish.
A key barrier to greater involvement in Jewish life was political tension, the survey suggests, with 88% of respondents saying that they are tired of the debate over Israel and discussion of Jew-hatred.
They prefer focusing on different aspects of Jewish life and mostly move around within their local community to find a place where they feel more comfortable, the study suggests.
Most of those who say they have become more engaged as Jews are doing so in informal social settings, like at-home Shabbat dinners, in workplace affinity groups and through friends, the survey said.
