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Originally Posted by Crawford
Italians took a bit longer to transition to the suburban periphery. They arrived later, tended to be in working class professions, and tended to resist ethnic change to a greater degree. And I may be caricaturing a bit, but Jews tended to value education more (so "changing" schools were more of a threat), and had a greater wish and means to avoid conflict.
Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn, is a good read describing the varying reactions to demographic/cultural change. Canarsie was a (secular) Jewish/Italian mix, but when demographic change hit, Jews mostly vacated the area by about 1980, while Italians remained the largest demographic group till the late 90's or so.
Bensonhurst had similar patterns, with (secular) Jews largely vacating by 1980, but Italians dominant until maybe 10-15 years ago. Bensonhurst is now growing more Jewish, but that's because of Orthodox overflow from Borough Park. Also, Bensonhurst overall changed more slowly because the immigrant replacement groups were Chinese and former Soviet, not (black) Carribean, as in Canarsie.
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NYC had about 2 million Jews in the 1950s, but it had fallen to 1 million by 1980, a number that's more or less the same today. There's also (as you point out) a great change in the demographic composition of the Jewish population due to the fast-growing Orthodox component and immigration from the FSU, which offset what would have been an even bigger decline.
NYC had about 1 million people of Italian ancestry in 1980, more or less the same as in 1940. Post-war immigration from Italy obviously offset the suburbanization of Italian Americans in the postwar period. The white population was declining, but the Italian population numbers held up. The end of immigration from Italy and further suburbanization has greatly reduced the numbers; today about 600,000 New Yorkers are of Italian ancestry.