Your city's Jewish community

[Quixote]

More recent population estimates have tended to fall in the middle or slightly above longstanding estimates by the federations:

OC has been in the 80-100K ballpark for a while. While OC has never had a local community study, the AJPP estimates 87,000 Jews.

Long Beach area was estimated at 20-25K, the Jewish Data Bank putting it at 23,750. The results of the recently completed local community study found 28,300 Jews.

20,000 for Coachella Valley is (for now) the baseline estimate, similar to OC's 80,000.

[craigs]

So 20,000 out of a total population of 370,135 is 5.4%.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by craigs

Not only is there a broken link, but also Wikipedia has slapped a warning on that part of the entry containing the unverifiable Jewish population estimate since 2012, reading "This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed."

So when you say you've seen estimates as high as 35,000 and 10% of the total population of the Coachella Valley, you're just saying you saw some random number that can't be backed up by anything and is essentially being challenged by Wikipedia.

The 35,000 figure came from the federation itself, which may or may not have provided the 20,000 figure. American Jewish Data Bank used the findings of the 1998 study and then updated it in 2015 (see pages 77 and 80):

"For communities for which the date is more recent than the date of the latest scientific study shown in boldface type in the Geographic Area column, the study estimate has been confirmed or updated by an Informant/Internet Estimate subsequent to the scientific study."

It's not clear who/what the "informant" was or where the "Internet [e]stimate" came from. Perhaps it was the federation, but there's no citation anywhere.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by craigs

So 20,000 out of a total population of 370,135 is 5.4%.

Yes, I provided a range of 5.3-9.3%.

[Docere]

Bergen is the most populated county in NJ and there's no county outside the NYC region that's more Jewish except Palm Beach.

Lakewood is one of the largest Orthodox Jewish concentrations on earth.

Suburban Essex is quite Jewish as well - Newark once had a very large Jewish population.

Of course there are parts of the NYC region that are more and less Jewish. Suffolk County is less Jewish as well.

I'm getting a little confused here. Is Coachella Valley supposed to be to L.A. what Lakewood is to NYC (a Jewish "enclave" on the metropolitan fringe?)

[Quixote]

According to the link, the portion of Ventura County that's not part of the Greater LA federation has an estimated 15,000 Jews, but that's from 1997-2001 and has not been updated since.

So for Greater LA, the most recent figures are:

Greater LA: 564,700 (community study)
Long Beach + West OC: 28,300 (community study)
Oxnard, Ventura, Ojai Valley, Santa Clara River Valley: 15,000 (1997-2001 estimate)
IE: 50,500 (AJPP 2020 estimate)

Long Beach city has about 18,100, according to the most recent community study. Round that up to 20,000 (I'm sure there are 1,900 extra Jews in Lakewood, Signal Hill, Cerritos, Whittier, La Mirada, La Habra Heights, etc.) to include the rest of the LA County portion area and exclude OC.

OC: 87,000 (AJPP 2020 estimate)

All that's remaining is the SGV of LA County. The SGV estimate of 30,000 includes Upland, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, San Bernardino, Ontario, Chino, etc. I think anywhere in the neighborhood of 10-20,000 sounds reasonable. Let's just split it right down the middle and say 15,000.

So...

564,700 (Greater LA)
15,000* (Oxnard/Ventura)
20,000 (Long Beach + Gateway Cities)
87,000* (OC)
15,000* (SGV)
50,500* (IE)

Total: 752,200

AJPP estimated about 709,000 for the five-county Greater LA region.

* No recent local community study has been done or is in the pipeline.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Docere

Bergen is the most populated county in NJ and there's no county outside the NYC region that's more Jewish except Palm Beach.

Lakewood is one of the largest Orthodox Jewish concentrations on earth.

Suburban Essex is quite Jewish as well - Newark once had a very large Jewish population.

Of course there are parts of the NYC region that are more and less Jewish. Suffolk County is less Jewish as well.

I'm getting a little confused here. Is Coachella Valley supposed to be to L.A. what Lakewood is to NYC (a Jewish "enclave" on the metropolitan fringe?)

It's to say that if you were to create a density map of Jews in Greater NYC, your eye would first be drawn to Brooklyn and Manhattan, similar to Greater LA's Westside/SFV. There will be lots of dots everywhere else, obviously more than LA. But LA will have dots in all four directions as well, and some of the densest cluster of dots will be at the opposite end of the metro area.

I'm not saying that Jews can be found in high numbers across nearly every swath of Greater LA's geography. I'm saying that there are dense concentrations of Jews more or less similar to NJ levels. Bergen and Ocean are not representative of NJ as a whole, and they skew the percentage by one point. Without Bergen and Ocean, NJ is 6.4%. That doesn't include Sussex, Warren, and Hunterdon Counties; Warren isn't part of the CSA, so I decided to leave all three out.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Quixote

According to the link, the portion of Ventura County that's not part of the Greater LA federation has an estimated 15,000 Jews, but that's from 1997-2001 and has not been updated since.

So for Greater LA, the most recent figures are:

Greater LA: 564,700 (community study)
Long Beach + West OC: 28,300 (community study)
Oxnard, Ventura, Ojai Valley, Santa Clara River Valley: 15,000 (1997-2001 estimate)
IE: 50,500 (AJPP 2020 estimate)

Long Beach city has about 18,100, according to the most recent community study. Round that up to 20,000 (I'm sure there are 1,900 extra Jews in Lakewood, Signal Hill, Cerritos, Whittier, La Mirada, La Habra Heights, etc.) to include the rest of the LA County portion area and exclude OC.

OC: 87,000 (AJPP 2020 estimate)

All that's remaining is the SGV of LA County. The SGV estimate of 30,000 includes Upland, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, San Bernardino, Ontario, Chino, etc. I think anywhere in the neighborhood of 10-20,000 sounds reasonable. Let's just split it right down the middle and say 15,000.

So...

564,700 (Greater LA)
15,000* (Oxnard/Ventura)
20,000 (Long Beach + Gateway Cities)
87,000* (OC)
15,000* (SGV)
50,500* (IE)

Total: 752,200

AJPP estimated about 709,000 for the five-county Greater LA region.

* No recent local community study has been done or is in the pipeline.

So 752,200 out of 18,644,680 total residents amounts to 4%.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by craigs

So 752,200 out of 18,644,680 total residents amounts to 4%.

Yes.

And the South Bay, south OC, and Coachella Valley, which have a combined population of over 2 million and roughly 100,000 Jews total, are each in the 4.5-6% range. They are all above the metro average of 4%.

I always thought that the Palm Springs area was known to be a "Jewish enclave," but apparently not. If you have people flying in from the East Coast, Chicago, and Canada just to celebrate Jewish holidays, that sounds like it should register on the "Jew-dar."

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by craigs

So 752,200 out of 18,644,680 total residents amounts to 4%.

The 1997 study didn't include Camarillo, so maybe subtract 5,000 (or so) Jews.

Every revised calculation that I've done, even using the most conservative figures, has ended up in the 740-750-ish range.

[Docere]

There are heavily Jewish suburbs all over NJ.

Suburbs that are at least 10% Russian or (unspecified) Eastern European ancestry, which means they're probably at least 30% Jewish. I excluded Bergen and Ocean.

North Caldwell (Essex) 14.5%
Highland Park (Middlesex) 13%
Millburn (Essex) 12.7%
Livingston (Essex) 11.4%
Marlboro (Monmouth) 10.7%

If we lower the threshold a bit (probably around 20-25% Jewish):

Manalapan (Monmouth) 8.8%
Springfield (Union) 7.7%

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Docere

Bergen is the most populated county in NJ and there's no county outside the NYC region that's more Jewish except Palm Beach.

Broward is similar to Bergen and Westchester. Bergen and Westchester have slightly higher percentages, but Broward has 1 million more people and the Jewish share of NHWs is around 25%.

Palm Beach and Nassau are a wash.

I'll say it again. To me, what distinguishes NYC is more kind than degree. Brooklyn and Manhattan account for 35% of all NYC-area Jews, and of course there are large swaths of both boroughs that are virtually devoid of Jews. The dense, urban concentration in Brooklyn and Manhattan creates a tight-knit Jewish community. You'll likely have more Jews marrying and primarily associating with other Jews. And you'll likely see more Jewish-Italian/Irish/whatever mixture in NJ, Westchester, and Nassau. It's Brooklyn, Manhattan, and (to a lesser extent) Queens, along with Rockland/Orange, and Lakewood that set NYC apart.

Otherwise, NJ (sans Bergen and Ocean), Suffolk, CT, and Dutchess/Putnam/Ulster — half the metro population — is around 6%. That's similar to LA County, only the Jewish share of NHWs is much higher in LA County.

[Docere]

Palm Springs/Coachella Valley really doesn't compare to NJ, I doubt the Jewish percentage even matches the average for the state of NJ.

Russian ancestry

Palm Springs 1.9%
Cathedral-Palm Desert County Census Division 1.2%


There may be some Jewish part-time residents excluded from these numbers, but Palm Springs isn't Palm Beach.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Docere

There are heavily Jewish suburbs all over NJ.

Suburbs that are at least 10% Russian or (unspecified) Eastern European ancestry, which means they're probably at least 30% Jewish. I excluded Bergen and Ocean.

North Caldwell (Essex) 14.5%
Highland Park (Middlesex) 13%
Millburn (Essex) 12.7%
Livingston (Essex) 11.4%
Marlboro (Monmouth) 10.7%

If we lower the threshold a bit (probably around 20-25% Jewish):

Manalapan (Monmouth) 8.8%
Springfield (Union) 7.7%

If that's it, then I wouldn't call that "all over."

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Docere

Palm Springs/Coachella Valley really doesn't compare to NJ, I doubt the Jewish percentage even matches the average for the state of NJ.

Russian ancestry

Palm Springs 1.9%
Cathedral-Palm Desert County Census Division 1.2%


There may be some Jewish part-time residents excluded from these numbers, but Palm Springs isn't Palm Beach.

No, but 7.3% (the average for NJ, including Bergen and Ocean) is a lot closer to 5.4% (the average for Coachella Valley) than it is to NYC's 11.5% (that's including Queens and The Bronx, which really drag down the percentage), Nassau, and Westchester.

The bulk of NJ (75%) is around 6.3%.

Also, both Palm Beach and Nassau are only 3.4% and 3.6% Russian, respectively, but are 14-15% Jewish.

[Quixote]

Nassau County (14.2% Jewish)
3.6% Russian

Bergen County (10.8% Jewish)
3.1% Russian

Monmouth County (8.5% Jewish)
2.9% Russian

Westchester County (11.8% Jewish)
2.8% Russian

Middlesex County (7.5% Jewish)
2.1% Russian

There's a strong association but not necessarily a correlation with respect to Russian ancestry and Jewish population. Polish is an even worse proxy due to the sizable number of Polish Catholics.

[Docere]

So we're comparing the percentage of the population in a subsection of a county (Coachella Valley, population of 350,000) to the New Jersey part of the NYC metro area (but subtracting out Bergen on one end and Ocean on the other)?

I think a more reasonable comparison to "New Jersey" (at least in terms of population in a contiguous area) would be Orange + Inland Empire.

[Docere]

I use Russian plus Eastern European as a Jewish proxy. It doesn't capture the Orthodox well. It obviously doesn't capture immigrant groups like Persian Jews at all. But Russian is the most common reported European ancestry by Jews and most who report Russian are Jewish. Those who write "Eastern European" (no specific nationality) are almost certainly almost all Jewish.

Eastern European rarely shows up in the top ancestries in a community, but when it does it's in a heavily Jewish area (it's common in Beachwood, but not in Parma).

As for the communities listed, the point is you can find a heavily Jewish suburb even in some random NJ county (like Monmouth or Middlesex) that's not particularly elite or particularly Jewish by NYC metro area standards. It really shows how large Jewish communities exist pretty much throughout the region. Monmouth and Middlesex have Jewish percentages similar to the "Jewish sector" counties in other metros like Lake IL or the Montgomerys.

[Crawford]

I'm not seeing a big distinction here. Livingston and Millburn are very heavily conservative Jewish like certain towns on LI, Westchester and Rockland. Englewood and Teaneck are heavily Modern Orthodox like Five Towns.

CT, not NJ, is the big regional outlier. CT has no real Jewish enclaves, though there are more Jewish-friendly towns. Greenwich and Westport are more open than New Canaan and especially Darien.

Rockland is the other extreme; the most Jewish county in the U.S. and will probably be the first majority Jewish county in modern U.S. history (Bronx was probably around 50% right after WW2). But the legacy conservative Jews aren't driving Rockland growth, it's all the ultra-orthodox enclaves.

[Docere]

If Palm Springs is comparable to anything in the New York metro area, it's the Hamptons. Both are in large suburban counties (Riverside and Suffolk) but too far away from the central city to really be "suburbs" anymore. They attract a lot of wealthy vacationers and retirees.

The Hamptons has a Jewish presence, but it's not a Jewish enclave:

https://jewishchronicle.timesofisrae...ish-character/

Chabad does Jewish outreach and essentially tries to proselytize secular Jews to embrace orthodoxy. And they show up pretty much anywhere there's Jews. I suspect a survey of Coachella would find a highly assimilated community with high levels of intermarriage and a low Orthodox percentage.