Your city's Jewish community

[Capsicum]

Apparently, there are still descendants of the really old communities of the Chinese Kaifeng Jews, who descend from Jewish communities in China of the 7th century. But apparently they number only around 1000 people. And they've obviously assimilated quite a bit, isolated from the rest of the world, from what it seems but it's interesting that these descendants still have the desire to return to, or live in Israel.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/c...israel-n527876

[Docere]

According to this report, Chevy Chase and Potomac are about 1/3 Jewish.

http://www.jewishdatabank.org/studie...fm?FileID=2071

[Docere]

Big study - unprecedented in scale - of the Canadian Jewish community. Here's the denominational breakdown for the 4 cities studied.

Toronto

Conservative 27%
Reform 21%
Orthodox/Modern Orthodox 16%
Reconstuctionist 3%
Renewal/Humanist 2%
Hasidic/Chabad 1%
None or Just Jewish 27%

Montreal

Orthodox/Modern Orthodox 25%
Conservative 19%
Reform 10%
Hasidic/Chabad 6%
Reconstructionist 2%
Renewal/Humanist 1%
None or Just Jewish 30%

Winnipeg

Conservative 33%
Reform 12%
Orthodox/Modern Orthodox 6%
Reconstructionist 1%
Renewal/Humanist 1%
Hasidic/Chabad <1%
None or Just Jewish 39%

Vancouver

Conservative 18%
Reform 16%
Orthodox/Modern Orthodox 9%
Renewal/Humanist 7%
Reconstructionist 6%
Hasidic/Chabad 1%
None or Just Jewish 40%

https://www.environicsinstitute.org/...jews-in-canada

[CastleScott]

Denver's Jewish area's are South and east shore of Sloans Lake and several neighborhoods in SE Denver (I'm a Denver native btw). Sacramento's is the area's just east of Mid-town-I happen to be Jewish my self but a loosely practicing one..

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Docere

Big study - unprecedented in scale - of the Canadian Jewish community. Here's the denominational breakdown for the 4 cities studied.

Toronto

Conservative 27%
Reform 21%
Orthodox/Modern Orthodox 16%
Reconstuctionist 3%
Renewal/Humanist 2%
Hasidic/Chabad 1%
None or Just Jewish 27%

Montreal

Orthodox/Modern Orthodox 25%
Conservative 19%
Reform 10%
Hasidic/Chabad 6%
Reconstructionist 2%
Renewal/Humanist 1%
None or Just Jewish 30%

Winnipeg

Conservative 33%
Reform 12%
Orthodox/Modern Orthodox 6%
Reconstructionist 1%
Renewal/Humanist 1%
Hasidic/Chabad <1%
None or Just Jewish 39%

Vancouver

Conservative 18%
Reform 16%
Orthodox/Modern Orthodox 9%
Renewal/Humanist 7%
Reconstructionist 6%
Hasidic/Chabad 1%
None or Just Jewish 40%

https://www.environicsinstitute.org/...jews-in-canada

Canadian Jewish communities seem to be more observant than American ones on average.

Is this a product of the Canadian ones being more recent (and the American ones more "assimilated") or is there some other reason? In the US, there's a lot of the secular, "just Jewish" identity that seems less widespread in Canada. It also feels like American culture has incorporated secular Jewish culture into its mainstream a lot more quickly and Jewish Americans became seen as "regular Americans" faster (eg. in the 60s, and 70s even as Canada took up multiculturalism, you could tell that the assumption of Christian normality was still there, even when Jewish Americans had "made it" in US culture and media already for decades earlier than their Canadian counterparts).

But then again, someone like Leonard Cohen, getting his musical career up and started in the 60s and 70s, was pretty secular, but still used religious imagery and influence extensively in his art. He and his cultural background also was said to exemplify Canadian plurality vs. the more American "assimilationist" view.

[softee]

Toronto's Jewish community has produced some pretty big names in the entertainment industry such as Joe Shuster, Frank Shuster, Lorne Michaels, Ivan Reitman, David Cronenberg, Howie Mandel, Howard Shore, Garth Drabinsky, Rick Moranis and Drake.

[Lear]

Over the last 30 years Berlin has seen a Jewish immigration wave.
In the 1990ies around 10000 Jews came from former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
Since the early 2000s more than 10000 mostly secular Israelis settled in Berlin.

20 years on, Russians in Germany flocking to big cities - Jewish Journal 2011

However, a combination of factors is sending the young Jews away to a handful of big cities: the search for a job, growing Jewish engagement that spurs a quest for larger Jewish communities, and the lure of the big city.
The epicenter, of course, is Berlin.
“Berlin is becoming like a Mecca for younger Russian-speaking Jews,” said Alina Gromova, 30, who moved to Germany with her family in 1997 from Ukraine and is writing a dissertation on the urban spaces and practices of young Russian-speaking German Jews. Those coming from smaller cities may be looking for jobs, she said, but many “come to Berlin to look for Jewish life.”
While Berlin’s official Jewish community has 11,000 members, the actual number of Jews in the city is probably much higher. Germany’s capital has 13 active synagogues and a variety of community organizations. But what really draws many young Jewish Russian-speaking Germans here are the employment opportunities and cultural life.

Actress Rafaëlle Cohen Explores Israelis’ Love of Berlin - Jewish Journal 2019

While the Israeli Embassy in Germany has no official statistics on how many Israelis currently live in the German capital, NPR’s Daniel Estrin reported that according to Tal Alon, the Berlin-based editor of the Hebrew-language magazine Spitz, at least 10,000 of them are estimated to have moved to Berlin in the past decade.

German-Jewish comedian from Israel living in Berlin

• Video Link

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by softee

Toronto's Jewish community has produced some pretty big names in the entertainment industry such as Joe Shuster, Frank Shuster, Lorne Michaels, Ivan Reitman, David Cronenberg, Howie Mandel, Howard Shore, Garth Drabinsky, Rick Moranis and Drake.

That's true now that I think of it, though there's that "famous Canadian after being famous to Americans, is conflated with American" thing going.

[Obadno]

Arizona doesnt really have one, I guess some parts of North Central Phoenix and Scottsdale have some concentrations of Jewish families but there really arent any "Jewish Neighborhoods" so to speak.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Canadian Jewish communities seem to be more observant than American ones on average.

Is this a product of the Canadian ones being more recent (and the American ones more "assimilated") or is there some other reason? In the US, there's a lot of the secular, "just Jewish" identity that seems less widespread in Canada. It also feels like American culture has incorporated secular Jewish culture into its mainstream a lot more quickly and Jewish Americans became seen as "regular Americans" faster (eg. in the 60s, and 70s even as Canada took up multiculturalism, you could tell that the assumption of Christian normality was still there, even when Jewish Americans had "made it" in US culture and media already for decades earlier than their Canadian counterparts).

But then again, someone like Leonard Cohen, getting his musical career up and started in the 60s and 70s, was pretty secular, but still used religious imagery and influence extensively in his art. He and his cultural background also was said to exemplify Canadian plurality vs. the more American "assimilationist" view.

About 75% of Canadian Jews live in Toronto and Montreal, which have large Orthodox, traditional and immigrant Jewish populations. That would be the main factor in tilting the Canadian Jewish population in a less assimilated direction.

Another thing to note is that the Reform movement is much weaker in Canada. Unlike the US there really wasn't a sizeable 19th century German Jewish immigration. A lot of people of people who would be Reform in the US are on the liberal side of Conservative or "just Jewish."

Toronto is the only Canadian city with more than one Reform congregation, I believe.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by Docere

Toronto is the only Canadian city with more than one Reform congregation, I believe.

That's incredible. Little suburban Sharon, Massachusetts (population 18,000) has three. I attended 5 bat mitzvahs and 2 bar mitzvahs growing up in a Boston suburb close to Sharon, all at Reform synagogues. Southeast Mass is predominantly "barely-practicing Catholic" (my entire family on both sides), with a lot of Reform Jewish congregations sprinkled throughout. There were a whole lot of half Irish / half Italian, half Jewish kids who got to celebrate both sets of holidays, made me jealous. My home town of Foxboro wasn't Jewish enough, but many neighboring towns celebrated all the Jewish high holidays (i.e. no school). On the flip side, since Mass mandates 180 days of school per year for public school attendees, my friends in Sharon / Stoughton / Canton etc. had to start school about 2 weeks earlier than me.

Cool note: even though it's a suburb by every definition, Sharon still has an eruv surrounding a few square miles of downtown and includes the Sharon MBTA Commuter Station within its borders.

Brookline and Newton definitely have multiple Reform congregations (and multiple eruvs) as well.

[Crawford]

I didn't know that Canada didn't get the German Jewish influx, but it makes sense. The U.S. has such a huge Reform population because of the massive late 19th century migration of middle class, secular Germanic Jews.

The later arrivals of poorer, more religious Eastern European Jews was viewed with suspicion by establishment Jews, who had largely discarded many cultural/religious traditions.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I didn't know that Canada didn't get the German Jewish influx, but it makes sense. The U.S. has such a huge Reform population because of the massive late 19th century migration of middle class, secular Germanic Jews.

The later arrivals of poorer, more religious Eastern European Jews was viewed with suspicion by establishment Jews, who had largely discarded many cultural/religious traditions.

So, was it also a matter of "earlier immigrants" setting the cultural/religious standard for the "later immigrants" to assimilate to? Because, even though the German wave was ealier, numerically the Eastern European wave was also very large in the US by sheer numbers, right?

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

So, was it also a matter of "earlier immigrants" setting the cultural/religious standard for the "later immigrants" to assimilate to? Because, even though the German wave was ealier, numerically the Eastern European wave was also very large in the US by sheer numbers, right?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the EE migration wave was much bigger.

But the secular German Jews were the OGs of U.S. Judaism. They founded many of the institutions and set the tone, and were the upper class, establishment Jews until relatively recently (maybe the 60's-70's or so).

It was a big deal to wear a kippah in 1930's-1950s-era Bronx and that's because of German Jews, who had discarded such traditions and often believed the newcomers were backward (and, to be fair, they were quite different; the German Jews were usually highly educated and from big Central European cities, the later arrivals were from rural shetls).

[Docere]

The Eastern European wave was much, much larger. There were about 250,000 Jews in the US in 1880. There were around 4 million by 1930.

But as you say, the German Jews were sizeable enough and influential enough to establish the community and set the tone. Reform Judaism was still dominated by long-established German Jews until the 1960s or so; the Conservative movement was a more comfortable place for second generation Jews who were leaving Orthodox Judaism. Today I am almost certain that most Reform Jews are of Eastern European descent.

While retaining a politically liberal outlook, Reform Judaism is actually much more "Jewish" today than it was in the past. To many Eastern European Jews it seemed too "Protestant."

[Docere]

German Jewish immigration was much more dispersed than the Eastern European wave - cities like Cincinnati and San Francisco were significant Jewish centers of the 19th century. In Cincinnati there may be still more Jews of German than Eastern European descent; San Francisco was a minor center of Eastern European immigration and German Jews were the majority until the 1950s.

[edale]

Originally Posted by Docere

German Jewish immigration was much more dispersed than the Eastern European wave - cities like Cincinnati and San Francisco were significant Jewish centers of the 19th century. In Cincinnati there may be still more Jews of German than Eastern European descent; San Francisco was a minor center of Eastern European immigration and German Jews were the majority until the 1950s.

Yeah, Reform Judaism was actually founded in Cincinnati by Rabbi Isaac Wise. This is why Cincinnati is home to the original Hebrew Union College (rabbinical school + Skirball Museum and Jewish family archives). There are now HUC locations in LA, NYC, and Israel, which all make sense given the large Jewish communities that exist in those places. Even though it was such a historical hub of American Jewry, Cincy lacks many of the visible signs of a strong Jewish community, such as Kosher restaurants, Orthodox neighborhoods with people walking on sabbath, etc. because the population is mostly assimilated. There are still some Jewish neighborhoods in Cincy, and there's a massive JCC and some large congregations, but the community is less visible in Cincinnati than in those cities that experienced the massive wave of Eastern European immigration, like Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, etc.

There is a relatively small population of Russian Jews who immigrated to Cincinnati in the 70s and 80s, I believe. If I remember correctly, they were sponsored and brought over by one of the local Jewish non-profits, which are very well funded and established in the city. The Russians mostly live in one small neighborhood called Golf Manor, and have their own congregation and school. German Jews still make up the bulk of the community, though.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by edale

There are still some Jewish neighborhoods in Cincy, and there's a massive JCC and some large congregations, but the community is less visible in Cincinnati than in those cities that experienced the massive wave of Eastern European immigration, like Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, etc.

Detroit doesn't have a particularly big Jewish population (a little over 70,000, and heavily secular), but the Detroit JCC is gigantic. I believe the physical structure is largest on the planet for a JCC.

It was built in the 1970's, in basically woodlands (anticipating the population would grow in that direction, which it did, to an extent), and is absurdly large for the local population. It speaks to the philanthropic largess (or perhaps hubris) of the local community.

[edale]

^ Ah, yes, I think I've heard that. It's somewhat surprising, since Detroit did receive a lot of immigrants from Eastern Europe. Makes me wonder why Cleveland, and to a lesser extent Pittsburgh, received so many Jews compared to Detroit.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by edale

Makes me wonder why Cleveland, and to a lesser extent Pittsburgh, received so many Jews compared to Detroit.

jewish popualtion by city:

cleveland: 86,600
detroit: 78,000
pittsburgh: 42,200

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ish_population