Nearly half of New Yorkers believe Jews wield too much influence in city life and politics, according to a recent survey commissioned by the American Jewish Committee.
Forty-seven percent said Jews possess too much influence, a figure more than twice the percentage of the next group, Italians, at 20 percent.
Precisely one-third of the respondents said that Jews have the right amount of influence, and six percent said they have too little.
The perception of undue influence is most prevalent among Hispanics and blacks. Almost two-thirds of Hispanics (66 percent) and nearly as many blacks (63 percent) agreed that Jews have too much influence, according to the poll.
A minority of the Jews surveyed said their own community had either too much influence or too little. A 61 percent majority said it was about right.
The Roper Organization randomly called 1,057 adult New Yorkers between July 27 and Aug. 10, in all of the city’s boroughs.
A majority of the 137 Jews who responded reported that anti-Semitism in the city was a problem.
More than half of the Jewish respondents (54 percent) said it is “somewhat of a problem,” and 37 percent said it is a “very serious problem.”
Just eight percent of Jewish respondents said that anti-Semitism is “not a problem at all.”
And 58 percent of Jewish respondents said that anti-Semitism in the city has increased over time, while 36 percent said that it has stayed about the same.
What is true in New York may not be true in other cities, according to David Singer, director of research and publications at the American Jewish Committee.
The high level of suspicion of Jewish influence expressed in the poll, for example, markedly contrasts with the findings of a 1990 nationwide survey by the National Opinion Research Center. The poll found that 21 percent of Americans nationwide think that Jews are too powerful.
But the possible uniqueness of New York doesn’t mitigate the importance of the findings, Singer said.
With 1,049,000 Jews, New York has the largest Jewish population of any city in the world, he pointed out, and 18 percent of the American Jewish population.
“To the degree that there is a center of Jewish life in the U.S., it’s the institutional center,” said Singer.
He called the perceptions of Jewish influence “troubling.”
“Given the right kind of conditions and leadership, these attitudes can be mobilized,” he said. “That’s why attitudes need to be monitored. It gives you a sense of the potential.”
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