首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
According to reports in major news outlets, a study published last week included a startling discovery: the nation’s Jewish popu
According to reports in major news outlets, a study published last week included a startling discovery: the nation’s Jewish popu
admin
2010-05-14
86
问题
According to reports in major news outlets, a study published last week included a startling discovery: the nation’s Jewish population is in shrinking. The study, the National Jewish Population Survey, found 5.2 million Jews living in the United States in 2000, a drop of 5 percent, or 300,000 people, since a similar study in 1990. What’s truly startling is that the reported decline is not tree. Worse still, the sponsor of the $6 million study, United Jewish Communities, knows it.
Both it and the authors have openly admitted their doubts. They have acknowledged in interviews that the population totals for 2000 and 1990 were reached by different methods and are not directly comparable. The survey itself also cautions readers, in a dauntingly technical appendix, that judgment calls by the researchers may have led to an undercount. When the research director and project director were asked whether the data should be construed to indicate a declining Jewish population, they flatly answered no. In addition, other survey researchers interviewed pointed to other studies with population estimates as high as 6.7 million.
Despite all this, the two figures --5.2 million now, 5.5 million then --are listed by side in the survey, leaving the impression that the population has shrunk. The result, predictably, has been a rash of headlines trumpeting the illusionary decline, in turn touching off jeremiads by rabbis and moralists condemning the religious laxity behind it. Whether out of ideology, ego, incompetence or a combination of all three, the respected charity has invented a crisis.
United Jewish Communities is the coordinating body for a national network of Jewish philanthropies with combined budgets of $2 billion. Its population surveys carry huge weight in shaping community policy. This is not the first time the survey has set off a false alarm. The last one, conducted by a predecessor organization, found that 52 percent of American Jews who married between 1985 and 1990 did so outside the faith. That number was a fabrication produced by including marriages in which neither party was Jewish by anyone’s definition, including the researchers.
Its publication created a huge stir, inspiring anguished sermons, books and conferences. It put liberals on the defensive, emboldened conservatives who reject full integration into society and alienated ordinary folks by the increasingly xenophobic tone of Jewish communal culture. The new survey, to its credit, retracts that figure and offers the latest survey has spawned a panic created by the last one.
So why did the organization flawed figures once again? Some scholars who have studied the. survey believe the motivation then came partly out of a desire to shock straying Jews into greater observance. It’ s too early to tell if that’ s the case this time around. What is clear is the researchers did their job with little regard to how their data could be misconstrued. They used statistical models and question formats that, while internally sound, made the new survey incompatible with the previous one. For example, this time the researchers divided the population of 5.2 million into two groups--"highly involved" Jews and "people of Jewish background"- and posed most questions only to the first group. As a result, most findings about belief and observance refer only to a subgroup of American Jews, making comparisons to the past impossible.
We can’ t afford to wait a decade before these figures are revised. The false population decline must be corrected before it further sours communal discourse. The United Jewish Communities owes it to itself and its public to step forward and state plainly what it knows to be true: American Jews are not disappearing.
According to the passage, which of the following statements is NOT true about the National Jewish Population Survey?
选项
A、It found a decline of 300,000 Jews in ten years.
B、It was carded out by United Jewish Communities.
C、This is the first time United Jewish Communities has made mistakes in the population survey.
D、The reported decline is not reliable.
答案
C
解析
作者在第四段介绍了United Jewish Communities这一组织,并说到This is not the first time the survey has set off a false alarm.
转载请注明原文地址:https://www.kaotiyun.com/show/mOqO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
A、AcademyAwardwinners.B、Historicaldocumentaries.C、Blockbusters.D、Classics.B
A、Clarinet.B、Percussion.C、Piano.D、Violin.B
Modernintelligencetestingbeganin【B1】______.FrenchpsychologistBinetbasedhistestonthetheorythatintelligenceincreas
InlikemannerwecannotreferthewholephenomenaoftheRenaissancetoanyonecauseorcircumstance,orlimitthemwithinthe
ArabdiplomaticsourcestellTIMEthattheArab-IsraelisummitinSharmel-SheikhonMondayisintendedasasternmessagetoHa
A、AmericanEnglish.B、BritishEnglish.C、ChineseEnglish.D、AustralianEnglish.D
Whatweretheythinking,thecrowdattheTelfordshoppingcentrewhereIanLamstoodswayingonahighledge?Whatmadethemlo
Itcanbeinferredthatthedeafboy’slifeintheorphanagewasItcanbeinferredfromthepassagethattheauthorwasallEX
ThedraftoftheDeclarationofIndependencewaswrittenby______.
随机试题
下列权利中,可以质押的是()
A、龙肌泻肝汤B、柴胡疏肝散C、旋覆花汤D、一贯煎E、茵陈蒿汤治疗胁痛肝胆湿热证,应首选
有关当事人在订立合同过程小知悉的商业秘密的表述正确的有()。
建筑材料、建筑构配件和设备由( )采购的,发包单位不得指定承包单位购入用于工程的建筑材料、建筑构配件和设备或指定生产厂、供应商。
目前在我国已经成立的几只货币市场基金主要投资于()。
下列各选项中,同时属于国际货币基金组织和世界银行资金来源的有( )。
阅读下面这首诗,写一篇500字左右的鉴赏评论文章。使至塞上唐.王维单车欲问边,属国过居延。征蓬出汉塞,归雁入胡天。大漠孤烟直,长河落日圆。萧关逢候骑,都护在燕然。
医务社会工作者教给病人知识和技巧,协助他们适应新情况。这是扮演了()角色。
[*]
Whenwasthebuildingbuilt?
最新回复
(
0
)