Your city's Jewish community

[Docere]

I would agree that NYC's urban Jewish presence and large Orthodox element are what really make it unique beyond sheer numbers. There's lots of UMC suburban-liberals too, but they're not the dominant element like in most American Jewish communities.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Quixote

If there shouldn't be delineation between state lines, then why should there be for counties? County boundaries are arbitrary.

I'd love to slim down these SoCal mega-counties. But there are county level population figures available, and that's better than just doing guess work at the sub-county level.

[Docere]

Looking at statisticalatlas, one can make a core area that contains the following census county divisions:

Los Angeles CCD 2,574,176 (includes Beverly Hills, Culver City, West Hollywood)

San Fernando Valley CCD 1,840,994

Santa Monica 92,247

Total population 4,507,417

These CCDs must contain the majority of L.A.'s Jewish population.

https://statisticalatlas.com/county/...nty/Population

The federation area would also include South Bay, Torrance, Inglewood, Compton and East Los Angeles (areas that have few Jews).

(I think this may be inspiration for a thread on what constitutes the core of L.A.)

[Quixote]

Okay, I'll concede. NYC, Nassau and Westchester make up 60% of the metro Jewish population in an area that is home to 10.5 million people or about 45-50% of the metro population. NJ accounts for about 25%.

LA County accounts for about half the metro population, but around 75% of the Greater LA Jewish population. And the vast majority live in an area that has a total population in the 3-3.5 million range.

[Quixote]

I'll be very interested to see how LA's Jewish population evolves. The community study found that 27% of all Jews in the federation area were children or adults ages 18-24, with higher degrees of immersion with Jewish culture among the younger generations.

I think OC's Jewish population will also continue to grow as the county continues to diversify and its WASP legacy diminishes with time. I'm not sure which community is most likely to cross the 20% threshold, if there even is one, partly because there are already lots of Iranian Muslims and Arabs snapping up homes in south OC communities as part of a larger diversification that also includes Asians and Latinos.

In LA, I could see the Fairfax District and Pico-Robertson, where the Orthodox community is concentrated, densify. Valley Flats, which are ripe for gentrification despite being the butt of jokes for some, are probably a logical place for young and fairly Jewish-involved families to settle.

And the South Bay will probably cross over the 10% threshold. Looking at the names of those having brought property in Manhattan Beach going all the way back to 2019/2020, Jews definitely seem to constitute around 20% of buyers.

[Docere]

The Wikipedia article probably needs a cleanup. There's no way L.A. city is 17% Jewish. But it may be 8 or 9%, perhaps 10-11% in Los Angeles CCD, San Fernando Valley CCD and Santa Monica.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...in_Los_Angeles

What do you think comprises "core L.A."?

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Quixote

I think OC's Jewish population will also continue to grow as the county continues to diversify and its WASP legacy diminishes with time. I'm not sure which community is most likely to cross the 20% threshold, if there even is one, partly because there are already lots of Iranian Muslims and Arabs snapping up homes in south OC communities as part of a larger diversification that also includes Asians and Latinos.

Coastal OC is surprisingly non-diverse, even today. It feels like the SoCal caricature. Archie Comics or Beach Boys. My cousins attended Corona Del Mar High, and I remember looking at the yearbook, and it seemed half the school was blond Chads and Trixies playing water polo or surfing. Not many Jews, Persians, Asians, Latinos. Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Newport Coast are largely the same. Coastal Huntington Beach and Dana Point are somewhat less extreme costs but still very white. Those two towns have almost a reactionary vibe, like a white enclave in Gulf Florida.

Inland is obviously a totally different story. Irvine schools are overwhelmingly Asian, and the white kids are often Persian. Santa Ana is almost entirely Latino, and even inland Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach are pretty diverse. It's now referred to as Costa Mexico. But I don't see the coast undergoing massive demographic change. Those homes are passed down through generations.

[Quixote]

Trying to figure out how many Jews live in LA city is a total guessing game and not really worth the effort. I believe the 1997 study did do a neighborhood-by-neighborhood breakdown, but the Conejo Valley (Ventura County) and Santa Clarita Valleys have seen a lot of growth since then.

I do think a disproportionate amount of Jews in Greater LA live in LA city though. If the county is 5.8% Jewish, then the city proper probably is 8-10%. But there's really no recent, credible source with an estimate.

Since the federation's results were revealed, the 565,000 figure has been used by numerous sources. But that's neither LA city nor LA County. AJPP's 2020 estimate has the county at 530,000, but that's too low.

If we assume that all Ventura County Jews lived in the part captured in the federation study area (which we know is not the case) and subtract that from 565,000, you get 525,000 Jews. But the recent Long Beach study estimates 18,100 Jews in Long Beach city. My guesstimate is that the total for LA County is 565-575,000.

The most accurate quantification would be to say that the five-county region is home to over 700,000 Jews. Personally, I think "around 750,000 Jews" is more accurate, but there's no source to support it.

[Quixote]

"LA" = LA County

The 565,000 estimate is probably roughly accurate, even though the catchment area includes half of Ventura County and excludes about 3 million in the rest of LA County. The 20,000 in LB and Gateway Cities plus the 15,000 in the SGV cancels out the loss of subtracting out Ventura.

[Docere]

DC has a "Jewish sector" of sorts. The Jewish concentrations are in Montgomery County, Maryland is significantly more Jewish than in Virginia. There's a small Orthodox pocket in Silver Spring. Still, I'm not sure if DC has any "Jewish neighborhoods" beyond that, my guess is upper NW DC/Chevy Chase/Bethesda are just "largely Jewish by default."

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Coastal OC is surprisingly non-diverse, even today. It feels like the SoCal caricature. Archie Comics or Beach Boys. My cousins attended Corona Del Mar High, and I remember looking at the yearbook, and it seemed half the school was blond Chads and Trixies playing water polo or surfing. Not many Jews, Persians, Asians, Latinos. Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Newport Coast are largely the same. Coastal Huntington Beach and Dana Point are somewhat less extreme costs but still very white. Those two towns have almost a reactionary vibe, like a white enclave in Gulf Florida.

Inland is obviously a totally different story. Irvine schools are overwhelmingly Asian, and the white kids are often Persian. Santa Ana is almost entirely Latino, and even inland Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach are pretty diverse. It's now referred to as Costa Mexico. But I don't see the coast undergoing massive demographic change. Those homes are passed down through generations.

Even though its virtually devoid of black people, I actually find OC very diverse and even better integrated than LA. There's generally better (equal) representation of Latinos and Asians in wealthier communities with whites supermajorities. Even Anaheim and "Garbage Grove" still have decent-sized white populations. Compare that to upper-middle-class Diamond Bar, where even Latinos now outnumber whites. It's really only Santa Ana that is not racially diverse at all.

Ironically, Newport and Laguna have greater percentages of Russian ancestry (3.0% and 2.8%, respectively) than the inland communities of south OC (minus Laguna Woods, which is definitely the most Jewish community in all of OC). Aliso Viejo, which many have said is one of the "Jewish areas" of OC, is (based on recent home sales) largely trending more Iranian and Indian. Half the names under the homes sold in the last 3-4 years must be of those two ethnic groups.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Coastal OC is surprisingly non-diverse, even today. It feels like the SoCal caricature. Archie Comics or Beach Boys. My cousins attended Corona Del Mar High, and I remember looking at the yearbook, and it seemed half the school was blond Chads and Trixies playing water polo or surfing. Not many Jews, Persians, Asians, Latinos. Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Newport Coast are largely the same. Coastal Huntington Beach and Dana Point are somewhat less extreme costs but still very white. Those two towns have almost a reactionary vibe, like a white enclave in Gulf Florida.

Inland is obviously a totally different story. Irvine schools are overwhelmingly Asian, and the white kids are often Persian. Santa Ana is almost entirely Latino, and even inland Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach are pretty diverse. It's now referred to as Costa Mexico. But I don't see the coast undergoing massive demographic change. Those homes are passed down through generations.

Agreed.

I try to avoid going down there when I can, but my husband grew up on the Balboa Peninsula and I occasionally get roped into going down there. It is definitely a white area--like "Anglo" white or however we want to put that, and it's way more so than even where we live in the hills. That's a subculture down there.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Docere

DC has a "Jewish sector" of sorts. The Jewish concentrations are in Montgomery County, Maryland is significantly more Jewish than in Virginia. There's a small Orthodox pocket in Silver Spring. Still, I'm not sure if DC has any "Jewish neighborhoods" beyond that, my guess is upper NW DC/Chevy Chase/Bethesda are just "largely Jewish by default."

What's an example of "Jewish sector" vs. a "Jewish quarter/quadrant"?

[Docere]

No difference. I just mean the part of the region where the Jewish population is particularly concentrated.

How concentrated the Jewish population is, and how the "Jewish" neighborhoods and suburbs are, varies greatly by city.

At one extreme, San Francisco for instance doesn't seem to really have any specific Jewish concentrations at all. They largely "tail" UMC whites as far as I can tell in their residential patterns.

Cleveland is an example of a very concentrated Jewish population. Almost the Jewish populations lives in a cluster of eastern suburbs. The number of Jews in Cleveland proper or in the western suburbs is tiny.

DC is somewhere in the middle. It's not at the level of Cleveland and there aren't really "Jewish suburbs" per se, but there's definitely a preference for Maryland (Montgomery County) over Virginia.

[Quixote]

^ For reference:

Montgomery and Frederick, MD
92,100 / 1,333,183 (6.9%)

Originally Posted by Quixote

DC
50,500 / 676,061 (7.5%)

NoVA
63,400 / 1,589,699 (4.0%)

Fairfax County, VA
42,000 / 1,171,606 (3.6%)

Falls Church, Alexandria, and Arlington, VA
21,400 / 418,093 (5.1%)

Baltimore, MD
33,500 / 589,124 (5.7%)

Baltimore County, MD
54,000 / 799,335 (6.8%)

Howard and Carroll Counties, MD
20,300 / 480,432 (4.2%)

Anne Arundel County, MD
10,900 / 554,637 (2.0%)

[Docere]

So the District is now about as Jewish as Montgomery County. I'm sure that's a recent development but perhaps not surprising given that the growth of the white population in DC in the last two or three decades. They're quite a high percentage of NHWs in the District, but probably more or less tail whites with no real concentrations in their residential patterns.

[Quixote]

^ SF is probably a like-type. Lots of Jews by virtue of having lots of white-collar jobs but no discernible Jewish district.

The Peninsula and Marin are clearly the Jewish part of the metro. Marin has a much higher percentage that is lowered significantly by being grouped with Contra Costa.

Originally Posted by Quixote

SF Bay Area

San Francisco
52,200 / 872,399 (6.0%)

San Mateo
39,100 / 782,687 (5.0%)

Santa Clara
50,500 / 1,901,795 (2.7%)

Santa Cruz
8,000 / 748,802 (1.1%)

Alameda
49,300 / 1,656,400 (3.0%)

Contra Costa and Marin Counties
59,900 / 1,394,601 (4.3%)

Napa and Sonoma Counties
17,100 / 628,616 (2.7%)

Solano
3,500 / 436,436 (0.8%)

San Joaquin
5,000 / 749,568 (0.7%)

Total: 284,600 / 9,171,304 (3.1%)

* Doesn't include Merced and Stanislaus Counties

[Quixote]

And Philly to cap off the neatly defined geopolitical entities where the city limits exactly coincide with a higher-level jurisdiction. I'm guessing the main Jewish district is Center City (Rittenhouse Square, Society Hill, etc.), but those are rich areas within or adjacent to the CBD where the ethnic flavor is less obvious.

Originally Posted by Quixote

Delaware Valley

Philadelphia
81,600 / 1,540,507 (5.3%)

Bucks
44,400 / 609,665 (7.3%)

Montgomery
69,600 / 802,726 (8.7%)

Delaware
30,200 / 544,757 (5.5%)

Chester
15,700 / 532,215 (2.9%)

Berks
3,800 / 410,726 (0.9%)

New Castle
16,400 / 545,488 (3.0%)

Burlington
18,900 / 431,479 (4.4%)

Camden
28,600 / 514,078 (5.6%)

Gloucesster and Salem
4,800 / 331,582 (1.5%)

Atlantic, Cape May, and Cumberland
12,300 / 493,986 (2.5%)

* Doesn't include Kent (DE) or Cecil (MD)

Total: 326,300 / 6,757,209 (4.8%)

[Crawford]

Philly does have a majority Jewish, Orthodox area right outside city limits. It's likely bigger/more prominent than the DC (Silver Spring) enclave.

DC is a bit like SF in that it's quite Jewish and has Jews throughout the DC-MD favored quarter but doesn't have much of an overt Jewish feel. Bethesda and Potomac don't feel Jewish, though they has many Jews.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Philly does have a majority Jewish, Orthodox area right outside city limits. It's likely bigger/more prominent than the DC (Silver Spring) enclave.

Interestingly, Lower Merion has stayed very Democratic. There might be a bit of a drift to the right, but the most conservative precinct in the area still voted for Biden by a 2-1 margin, so they don't vote like NYC-area Orthodox.