[austlar1]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Mass doesn't seem unusually Jewish to me. Feels much less Jewish than NY, NJ, FL, even PA and CT.

MA has only a few counties, and doesn't really have rural areas. Add in the colleges and you have some temporary Jewish transplants. As a former Cambridge resident, I can tell you Cambridge isn't particuarly Jewish. Some of the Harvard and MIT faculty/students are Jewish, but that's about it, and neither school has a particularly large % of Jews compared to peer schools like Columbia, Penn, Cornell, Yale, Brown, etc., all of which feel more Jewish.

I also doubt Brookline and Newton (especially Newton) are anywhere close to 40% Jewish.

At 4.3% of the population of Massachusetts, the state ranks THIRD in terms of the percentage of population that is Jewish. NY is first, NJ is second, Mass. is 3rd, and MD. is fourth. If you count DC, Mass. would slide into 4th place. My source is the Virtual Jewish Library.