Your city's Jewish community

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Docere

* Forest Hill-Cedarvale 12,795 34.6%
** Bathurst-Lawrence area 15,930 36.7%
*** Bathurst-Sheppard area 16,430 21.9%

Jewish population in Bayview-York Mills area: 3,225 11.8%

[Docere]

The area with the fastest Jewish growth in Toronto is the St. Clair West area (I grew up in this area, as did my father). The area was quite Jewish in the 1940s and 1950s, less so after that, but in recent years it has really grown. The Jewish population is around 3,500, up by around 70% since 2011.

It's a pleasant middle to upper middle class streetcar suburb-type area, located at the southern border of the Jewish Bathurst Corridor, close to Forest Hill-Cedarvale and just north of the Annex and core neighborhoods. A Reform day school opened in the area.

This article from 2019 noted the Jewish revival of the area, which is confirmed by 2021 census.

https://thecjn.ca/perspectives/st-cl...-a-jewish-hub/

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Docere

Montreal, 2021 census:

Hampstead 4,440 63.1%
Cote St. Luc 17,845 52.9%
Outremont (borough) 5,715 29.3%
Westmount 4,330 22.5%
Dollard des Ormeaux 7,395 15.4%

Adding to the list:

Cote-des-Neiges (H3S, H3T and H3V postal codes) 3,260 6.2%
Snowdon (H3W postal code) 3,490 11.5%
NDG (H4A and H4B postal codes) 2,615 5.6%

Montreal West (city) 680 13.3%
Town of Mount Royal 1,330 6.4%
Saint Laurent (borough) 5,540 5.5%

[softee]

I did an updated walk along the Bathurst St. Orthodox Jewish area: https://youtu.be/p9NVn4BLb8E

[Docere]

Map of Toronto Jewish population by Census Tract (via censusmapper.ca)

[Quixote]

Are the gentiles in the more heavily Jewish tracts generally of majority English/Irish/Scottish stock or is there also a good presence of Italian, Portuguese, Greek, and Eastern European ancestry?

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Quixote

Are the gentiles in the more heavily Jewish tracts generally of majority English/Irish/Scottish stock or is there also a good presence of Italian, Portuguese, Greek, and Eastern European ancestry?

It depends where.

In Forest Hill, the "establishmentarian" Jewish area, most of the non-Jewish population is WASP.

But once you get north of Eglinton and into North York where Orthodox and immigrant Jews live, there are few WASPs. A lot of Filipinos live in apartments in the area (you can see some Filipino businesses in softee's video). There's a Little Manila around Bathurst and Wilson, which 40 years ago probably the geographic center of Jewish Toronto. There's also some Italians there, the Italian corridor runs west of the Jewish corridor (the Italian community followed Dufferin and Keele in the way the Jewish community followed Bathurst St.)

[Docere]

Just to contextualize the map, the last "o" in Toronto is Yonge St. It's probably fairly obvious where Bathurst is, but the "or" is Bathurst and Eglinton, in Forest Hill.

The light green zone at the bottom of the map is the Annex and Yorkville areas. The first red tract (25%+ Jewish) is at Bathurst and St. Clair.

[samne]

Originally Posted by Quixote

Are the gentiles in the more heavily Jewish tracts generally of majority English/Irish/Scottish stock or is there also a good presence of Italian, Portuguese, Greek, and Eastern European ancestry?

An equal adjacent corridor to the left would be Italian in the north and more Portuguese in south.

[Docere]

Jewish (religion) and English ancestry in some favored quarter neighborhoods:

Rosedale-Moore Park

English 23%
Jewish 7%

Yonge-St. Clair

English 20%
Jewish 12%

Casa Loma

Jewish 22%
English 16%

Forest Hill South

Jewish 39%
English 10%

Lawrence Park South (Lytton Park)

English 22%
Jewish 16%


Neighborhood reference map: https://www.toronto.ca/city-governme...s-communities/

[Docere]

North of Eglinton along the Bathurst Corridor:

Forest Hill North

Jewish 38%
English 5%
Italian 4%

Englemount-Lawrence (Lawrence Manor)

Jewish 36%
English 4%
Italian 4%

Clanton Park

Jewish 30%
Italian 9%
English 4%

Bathurst Manor

Jewish 26%
Italian 10%
English 3%

The Bathurst Corridor may more aptly be described as a Jewish-Filipino area.

Filipino VM

Forest Hill North 14%
Englemount-Lawrence 21%
Clanton Park 20%
Bathurst Manor 14%

[yaletown_fella]

On my route in Forest Hill north between Elm Ridge to Briar Hill, there are noticeably more Italian households on the western end of the route around Allen Road.

[Docere]

In the dissemination area (sub-census tract level) around Whitmore Avenue (at the very edge of upper Forest Hill) there's a more Italian pocket, it's about equally Jewish and Italian.

The most Jewish-dominated part of Upper Forest Hill is the SFH area between Bathurst and the Allen. The pocket around Allen Rd.-Marlee as well as the big apartments around Chaplin Crescent includes many Jews as well, but has more of a mixed population.

The Upper Village (north of Eglinton) isn't really what Torontonians think of when they think of Forest Hill, they think of the really swanky Lower Village south of Eglinton.

Forest Hill Village in the interwar years was mostly WASP with a sizeable Jewish minority. The Upper Village developed in the 1940s and was predominantly Jewish from the beginning. The Lower Village gradually became more Jewish in the postwar years.

I suspect you'll find more Orthodox and traditional side of Conservative in Upper Forest Hill and fewer Reform compared to Lower Forest Hill but I don't have any data for that.

[Docere]

Should note that in Toronto and Montreal, the "establishmentarian liberal" (Reform or secular, multiple generations in North America) are a minority of the Jewish population. They are also a minority in the NYC area. L.A. has a large immigrant component too. But this demographic is pretty dominant in Boston, DC, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit etc.


The Jewish suburbs of the Midwest feel more like York Mills and the Bayview corridor which to me passes for affluent US suburbia. While Bathurst Street feels more distinctly..."Canadian"? Forest Hill has the "establishmentarian" demographic, but it's more urban. I'm not sure what a US "equivalent" of Forest Hill is.

Interestingly the typical Reform Jew in Toronto probably lives closer to the city center than the typical Orthodox Jew while in Detroit or Cleveland say the pattern is Orthodox closest in, Reform furthest out.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Docere

Interestingly the typical Reform Jew in Toronto probably lives closer to the city center than the typical Orthodox Jew while in Detroit or Cleveland say the pattern is Orthodox closest in, Reform furthest out.

Because Toronto has a giant zone of core affluence, and Detroit/Cleveland don't. In North America, Toronto probably has one of the highest shares of wealth proximate to the core.

Though it's true that Toronto doesn't just have Jews in/near the core, it has Jewish districts in/near the core. This is arguably distinct from places like SF and DC, and perhaps even Chicago (though Chicago was historically so much bigger it could be argued its "Forest Hill" is on the North Shore - Orthodox Chicago is an older neighborhood than Cosmopolitan Jewish Toronto. Forest Hill is more like inner North Shore).

[Quixote]

The results of Brandeis' community study on the Long Beach area will be presented tonight, with the full report made available soon.

It turns out that the number of Jews is estimated at 40,000, nearly 30% of which identify as non-white... I'm guessing that's where the 29K figure came from.

https://lbpost.com/ads/new-study-she...ish-community/

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Because Toronto has a giant zone of core affluence, and Detroit/Cleveland don't. In North America, Toronto probably has one of the highest shares of wealth proximate to the core.

Though it's true that Toronto doesn't just have Jews in/near the core, it has Jewish districts in/near the core. This is arguably distinct from places like SF and DC, and perhaps even Chicago (though Chicago was historically so much bigger it could be argued its "Forest Hill" is on the North Shore - Orthodox Chicago is an older neighborhood than Cosmopolitan Jewish Toronto. Forest Hill is more like inner North Shore).

Yeah, the pattern is reversed. The closest in Jewish neighborhood in Chicago is Orthodox West Rogers Park. Lawrence Manor is probably the closest Toronto equivalent, but it's an immediate postwar era and the second Jewish neighborhood after the older interwar district of Forest Hill. But it's also interesting in that it combines some elements of inner ring suburbia that's seen better days in some parts, but a fair amount of wealth in other parts. It lies west of the favored quarter and east of polyglot, working class northwest Toronto and takes in elements of both.

Basically Cosmopolitan Jewish Toronto is Forest Hill and York Mills, and to a lesser extent the Annex-Yorkville, Yonge-St. Clair and North Toronto.

[Docere]

Estimated Jewish population for some North Shore communities. Based on the Chicago Jewish study of 2020 (I took the Jewish population for North Shore suburbs Cook and used Russian/Eastern European ancestry in each community as a proxy):

Glencoe 4,338 49%
Wilmette 7,293 27%
Winnetka 1,850 14%

New Trier Township 14,564 27%

[Crawford]

I'm pretty sure much of the North Shore Jewish population is in the slightly less expensive, slightly newer "inland" communities. Northbrook, especially, but maybe Glenview and/or Deerfield? Some of this might be New Trier territory. Also some might only consider North Shore to be the lakefront areas.

Glencoe is definitely stereotyped as the Jewish North Shore community, though.

And I believe Highland Park and Buffalo Grove have decent sized Jewish populations.

[Docere]

Russian/(unspecified) Eastern European ancestry

Deerfield 18.6%
Highland Park 17.3%
Glencoe 15.1%
Buffalo Grove 12.7%
Northbrook 12.5%
Wilmette 8.2%
Skokie 6.7%
Lincolnwood 6.2%
Evanston 4.7%
Winnetka 4.6%