24 April, 2006
Jews are less likely than Mormons and Christians to attend services regularly, according to a Gallup poll conducted in the United States. Some 15 per cent of Jews polled responded that they attended synagogue every week, as opposed to nearly two-thirds of Mormons and evangelical Protestants. Between 43 and 45 per cent of Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists and Presbyterians said they attended services weekly. The poll of 11,000 adult Americans was conducted between 2002 and 2005. Rabbi Gary P. Zola, an executive director at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, told the "Jerusalem Post" that what the survey highlighted was the historic problem that synagogues were "not functioning in a way that is bringing in increasing numbers of American Jews that belong to the synagogue on a regular basis." However, he said that "There is great vitality in American Jewry, but it is not being expressed" solely by worship attendance.
