Project Prism: A New Map of Young Adult Jewish Life

Project Prism was a rigorous research project offering an unprecedented look at Jewish young adults today, including those not involved in Jewish communal life. The research yields new insights about how this demographic expresses their Judaism, the types of experiences and relationships that impact them most, the external factors that shape their lives, and the key drivers of much of their decision-making.

Sense Worldwide, with NORC at the University of Chicago serving as the quantitative survey partner, conducted the multi-method study. They compiled a dataset that represents more than 2,000 Jewish young adults between the ages of 22 and 40 that spans a broad spectrum of backgrounds, family structures, religious identities, levels of participation, geography, and life experiences.

What made this work especially exciting was the combination of rigor and breadth: a robust, probability-based quantitative sample developed in partnership with NORC at the University of Chicago, alongside a genuinely multi-method research approach that combined digital qualitative research, machine learning analysis, and cultural research (through both a consumer culture scan and semiotic analysis) with the quantitative survey. For us, this project offers a holistic snapshot of how young Jewish adults in America think, feel, and live—not just in relation to Jewish identity and Jewish life, but in the wider context of being a young adult in America today.  – Courtney McLauchlan, part of the Sense Worldwide research team

Key Insights

For Jewish young adults, life feels fast, the demands are layered, and the emotional load is constant. This context is a thread in many of the key insights from the research:

A lot of meaningful Jewish life is happening informally and ‘off-site.’

• 75% of Jewish young adults say they regularly do something Jewish in their lives, often at home with family or friends.
• 45% say this is their only form of participation in Jewish experiences.

Immersive and socially intensive experiences are especially likely to generate a sense of belonging and to have a lasting positive impact.

• Israel travel programs, Jewish summer camp, youth group, b’nai mitzvah experiences, and Jewish high school create a sense of belonging.
• Merely attending an activity is less predictive of positive outcomes than whether the participant felt they belonged.

Three factors impede more participation in Jewish life for Jewish young adults.

• Relevance and connection – For many, Jewish life feels too distant from who they are, what matters to them, or where they are in life.
• Flexibility – Jewish activities need to fit around modern lives, in formats that are manageable, low pressure, and easy to step into.
• Complexity – Young adults want spaces that can hold complexity, plurality, and nuance without social penalty.

Jewish young adults don’t lack a sense of purpose; they find purpose closer to home.

•  68% of Jewish young adults report having a high sense of direction or purpose in life. Only 23% say being Jewish plays a strong role in that.
• Sources of purpose are helping others, personal growth, work or career, and supporting family.
• Young adults respond to instability, overload, and institutional distrust by investing in activities where their effort leads to a visible result that they feel good about.

A key driver of participation in Jewish experiences is already feeling connected to Jewish people and community. 

• Connection is both an outcome and a precondition, and Jewish connection is relational before it is institutional.
• Connection depends on close and emotionally grounded relationships, but young adults’ lives make those relationships hard to build.
• Jewish institutions contribute to feelings of connection, but these feelings are generally built on a foundation created by family, friendships and shared culture.

Read additional insights about Project Prism from Stacie Cherner, the Jim Joseph Foundation’s Director of Research and Learning.

Research Documents

Access data, insights, and analysis from Project Prism:

1. Summary Presentation Slides – A focused, insight-led story that weaves together all the methods into a clear narrative, highlighting key themes and implications across the Jewish young adult landscape.
2. Webinar Recording – A presentation by the research team of the research’s key insights and findings from Sense Worldwide.
3. Quantitative Report – A data-led report summarizing the patterns and metrics from the survey, showing the broader spectrum of the Jewish young adult experience, including the varied ways Jewishness is lived, felt, and participated in today.
4. Segmentation Report – A report outlining the segmentation of Jewish young adults developed from the quantitative data.
5. Machine Learning Report – An analytical readout that uses machine learning to surface patterns and relationships between data points in the full quantitative dataset.
6. Cultural Scan Report – A snapshot of the broader forces shaping young adults in America today, to ground our understanding of young Jewish adults in their lives as Americans, not only in their Jewishness.
7. Semiotics Report – An analysis of the visual and verbal codes that shape how young adults construct meaning and determine what feels resonant in contemporary culture.
8. Methodology Report – This AmeriSpeak Project Methods and Transparency Report provides complete information on how the survey was executed.
9. Quantitative Survey Questionnaire

Research Scope and Methodology in Brief

Known as Project Prism, the research was a multi-method study of Jewish young adults in the United States conducted in partnership with Sense Worldwide, with NORC at the University of Chicago serving as the quantitative survey partner.

Sense Worldwide led this project through multiple complementary research approaches. Project Prism combines online qualitative research, a nationally representative survey, consumer culture analysis, semiotics, and machine learning. Each method helps answer a different set of questions and brings a different perspective, and together they create a more complete picture than any one method could on its own.

The qualitative phase helps surface stories, tensions, and lived experiences. The quantitative survey measures how widespread those experiences are by looking for patterns at scale. Consumer culture analysis examines the broader cultural forces shaping young adulthood in America today. Semiotic analysis explores the symbols, narratives, and cultural codes through which young adults construct meaning. Machine learning techniques allow the researchers to use complex data modelling to identify patterns and relationships in the data that traditional descriptive analysis may overlook.

NORC’s expertise in rigorous probability-based survey research is widely recognized and helped ensure that the findings would reflect the diversity and complexity of Jewish young adults across the United States, producing findings that reduce sampling bias and that can be generalized with confidence. The result is a dataset representing more than 2,000 Jewish young adults between the ages of 22 and 40 that spans a remarkably broad spectrum of backgrounds, family structures, religious identities, levels of participation, geography, and life experiences.