Jews in New York City

Jews in New York City יהודים בניו יורק

Jewish shopkeeper in New York City, circa 1929

The first Jewish settlement in what became the United States was in Dutch New Amsterdam, which is now known as New York City. Since then, Jews have settled in New York City in large numbers. As of 2014^[update], there are 1.5 million Jews in New York City.

As of 2014^[update], about 1,757,000 residents of the U.S. state of New York, or about 9% of its residents, were Jewish.

The Census Bureau estimated the total population of New York City at 8,336,697 in 2012; thus, assuming the figures in the table above are correct, Jews were 18.4% of the City's population in 2012. Other sources, like the source that estimated that there were just 972,000 Ashkenazim in New York City in 2002, put the number at much lower. There are approximately 1.5 million Jews (as of 2001) in the New York metropolitan area, making it the second largest metropolitan Jewish community in the world, after the Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area in Israel (however, Tel Aviv proper has a smaller population of Jews than New York City proper, making New York City the largest community of Jews in the world within a city proper). New York City's Jewish population is more than Chicago's, Philadelphia's, San Francisco's, and Washington, D.C.'s combined Jewish populations.

The number of Jews in New York City soared throughout the beginning of the 20th century and reached a peak of 2 million in the 1950s, when Jews constituted one-quarter of the city's population. New York City's Jewish population then began to decline because of low fertility rates and migration to suburbs and other states, particularly California and Florida. A new wave of Ashkenazi and Bukharian Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union began arriving in the 1980s and 1990s. Sephardic Jews, including Syrian Jews and other Jews of non-European origin, have also lived in New York City since the late 19th century. Many Jews, including the newer immigrants, have settled in Queens, south Brooklyn, and the Bronx, where at present most live in middle-class neighborhoods. The number of Jews is especially high in Brooklyn, where 561,000 residents—one out of four inhabitants—is Jewish. As of 2012^[update], there are 1.1 million Jews in New York City.Borough Park known for its large Orthodox Jewish population, had 27.9 births per 1,000 residents in 2015, making it the neighborhood with the city's highest birth rate. However, the most rapidly growing community of American Orthodox Jews is located in Rockland County and the Hudson Valley of New York, including the communities of Monsey, Monroe, New Square, Kiryas Joel, and Ramapo.