ḤeshbonCenter on Data and Jewish Life

Ḥeshbon · Center on Data and Jewish Life

Where the figures come from

Every season rests on records anyone can pull. This page lists what each one reads, so a figure on this site can be traced back to the document it came out of.

School finance

Every figure on Jewish day school finance comes from one of these.

  • NAIS and Prizmah benchmarking panels, 2022–2026
  • IRS Form 990 filings: revenue, endowment, tuition assistance, executive pay
  • SAIS comparison pool, 887 private schools
  • BLS consumer prices and private-sector wages

Communal affordability

Pricing a household’s year, one community at a time.

  • BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, for metropolitan wages
  • BLS CPI average prices via FRED, with USDA Food Plans, for grocery baskets
  • Zillow ZHVI home values, with Census Bureau migration and American Community Survey tables
  • IRS Form 990 filings and NCES private school surveys for tuition and enrollment
  • OU Communities Database and Nishma Research for community-level counts

Giving and institutions

Giving read from what filers and institutions report.

  • IRS Statistics of Income ZIP code data: returns, income, and Schedule A contributions
  • IRS Form 990 filings via ProPublica, 2008–2023, for revenue, expenses and net assets
  • Form 990 Schedule I grant lines, 176,718 of them across 2,335 federation returns, tax years 2014–2024
  • NCES ELSI and PSS biennial surveys, with state education censuses, for enrollment histories
  • A community-by-community census of 266 communities, verified against institutional records and press
  • A building-by-building census of synagogues, schools, JCCs, camps and care homes in 143 communities, for security cost
  • Zillow home values, matched to each community

Aliyah

The aliyah essays run on official records from both countries.

  • Central Bureau of Statistics household expenditure and wage releases
  • Bituach Leumi national salary report, contribution rates and benefit tables
  • Ministry of Aliyah and Integration record-level arrivals file, 2015–2025
  • OECD comparative price levels and Taxing Wages
  • Price transparency files published by every Israeli grocery chain each morning

Methodology companions

Each piece backed by a working paper carries a methodology and data companion, a short PDF setting out the sample, the construction of every measure, and what the result does not support. The link sits at the foot of the piece itself, next to the paper.

Where a chart on this site simplifies a published result, the piece says so in place. Where a figure rests on a small denominator, the piece says that too.

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