Sklare Address, 2025 Religion and Health: The Encounter of American Jews, Protestants, and Catholics with the COVID-19 Pandemic

This article describes the way American Jews, in comparison with their non-Hispanic White Protestant, Catholic, as well as unaffiliated peers, responded to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Using the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel covering the period between 2020 and 2023, I focus on three complementary dimensions: masking, vaccination, and illness. The findings suggest that Jews were the most attentive to the recommendation to adopt protective behaviors and that, accordingly, they were the least likely to contract the virus. Still, some significant variations among the Jewish population by religious identification were found. This is discussed in reference to the “risk society” theory and raises implications for public health planning and communication interventions.