What is the least "WASP" city in the United States?

[Docere]

Beverly Hills is certainly a very Jewish place, somewhere in the 35-50% range I suspect.

Ancestry

Iranian 25.7%
Russian 8.6%
German 6.2%
Polish 6.1%
English 4%
Italian 3.5%
Irish 3.1%
American 3.1%
French 2.7%
Arab 2.7%
Hungarian 1.7%
Ukrainian 1.4%
Eastern European 1.4%
Romanian 1.3%
European 1.2%
Iraqi 1.1%
Scottish 1.1%
Swedish 1%

https://statisticalatlas.com/place/C...Hills/Ancestry

[Quixote]

I'll change my "half" speculation to 33-40%. LA city only needs to be 9.5% Jewish for Jews to constitute a third of all whites. The county is already 5.7% Jewish, and most of the very Jewish areas are within LA city limits. Looking squarely at the city proper excludes Jewish-heavy Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and Calabasas, but it also factors out the South Bay, San Gabriel, Santa Clarita (which is actually quite Jewish... estimated 20,000 out of a population of about 275,000), and Antelope Valleys with their large gentile populations. There's a fair to high concentration of chabads and synagogues within a 1-2 mile radius in areas where whites make up at least 33% of the population, with the exception of Northeast LA, Silver Lake + Echo Park, Westchester + Playa del Rey, San Pedro, and Sunland-Tujuna + Lake View Terrace + Shadow Hills.

Westchester + Playa del Rey in particular will probably get more Jewish as high-paying jobs cluster around Culver City and Playa Vista; there's already a chabad in the Playa Vista area called "Chabad Culver City." And Silver Lake + Echo Park, due to proximity to Downtown and Hollywood and being liberal, are fair game for increased Jewry. I suspect the same for NELA, but to a lesser extent.

[Docere]

Jews make up a similar share of the population in Los Angeles and Bay Area, but L.A. has Jewish enclaves/concentrations the Bay Area lacks. In the Bay Area, the Jewish population is quite dispersed, and it doesn't seem to have anything that can be called a Jewish neighborhood or suburb.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Shawn

This is certainly true of Mass and RI Italians, who are mostly Sicilian. I didn't meet a Northern Italian until I started working in Japan, with some Milanese and Genoese clients and coworkers. Plus a guy from Naples, who seemed much more like the guys I went to high school with. Naples is traditionally considered Southern, no? But maybe more in a Virginia / NC way, whereas Sicily is Deep South Alabama?

Naples is the centre of South, its metropolis. Rome is on the middle ground, a Washington DC.

Down here in Brazil, it's the opposite: very few southern Italians, and massive numbers of northerners.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Docere

Jews make up a similar share of the population in Los Angeles and Bay Area, but L.A. has Jewish enclaves/concentrations the Bay Area lacks. In the Bay Area, the Jewish population is quite dispersed, and it doesn't seem to have anything that can be called a Jewish neighborhood or suburb.

Jews make up a similar share of their respective CSAs, but I wouldn't say that the Bay Area is as Jewish as Greater LA, if that's what you're implying. Not everything is about percentage or per capita. The LA CSA is about twice the size of the Bay Area and LA County alone is already larger than the Bay Area (as well as other metro areas with similar or slightly higher percentages like DC and Philly) by several hundred thousand. Furthermore, Jews constitute a much larger share of the white population in LA County and certainly LA city, as the Bay Area has a higher per capita representation of just about every "fair skin" European ethnic group along with Italian and Portuguese.

This is also without mentioning that there hasn't been a comprehensive study of our Jewish population since 1997, although one is coming in 2021.

The whole point of me bringing up LA city vis-a-vis South Florida in particular was to demonstrate just how much Jews and Jewish culture have influenced the urban/civic/cultural life and identity of LA. Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler, Pierre Koenig, Armand Hammer, Norton Simon, Eli Broad, David Geffen, Steve Soboroff, Frank Gehry, Randy Newman, Langer's Deli, Pink's Hot Dogs, etc. Hollywood, like Wall Street, is run by Jews.

At the national level, our Jewish "cultural currency" is visible. Our mayor Eric Garcetti is Jewish, as is our biggest superstar politician (Adam Schiff). Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden's nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security, is also Jewish. And so is Monica Lewinsky, who grew up in Brentwood and Beverly Hills.

[Docere]

No, I'm agreeing L.A. is a much more visibly "Jewish" place than the Bay Area. I think the existence of enclaves makes a difference. Nor do I think it's a matter of sheer numbers only - the Bay Area certainly has the critical mass for enclaves. You'll much more easily find concentrations of Jews in Boston, Chicago, Baltimore and Cleveland, than in the Bay Area.

[Shawn]

How many neighborhoods in the Bay Area are eruv-equipped? That's the baseline as far as I'm concerned. Boston may not seem super Jewish on the surface, but we have eruvs galore, in the city and in the suburbs. Malden, Medford, Waltham, Newton, Brookline, Lynn, Revere, Milton, Cambridge . . . and of course Sharon.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Docere

No, I'm agreeing L.A. is a much more visibly "Jewish" place than the Bay Area. I think the existence of enclaves makes a difference. Nor do I think it's a matter of sheer numbers only - the Bay Area certainly has the critical mass for enclaves. You'll much more easily find concentrations of Jews in Boston, Chicago, Baltimore and Cleveland, than in the Bay Area.

Agreed.

I forgot to mention that Doug Emhoff (Kamala Harris' husband) to the list. He grew up in New Jersey but moved to LA when he was 17, graduating from high school, college, and law school, and establishing his law career here.

Casey Wasserman, a sports and entertainment executive, was responsible for bringing the 2028 Olympics to LA.

Rams COO Kevin Demoff, born in LA and grew up a (Los Angeles) Rams fan, was the essentially the face of the SoFi Stadium development... LA's newest landmark.

Max Fried... Atlanta Braves ace. Gabe Kapler... San Francisco Giants manager.

I think Jewish LA vis-a-vis Jewish South Florida is an interesting point of discussion. I find it fascinating that LA County is more Jewish than Miami-Dade, with half of South Floridian Jews residing in Palm Beach County, which is definitely not "Miami" in the cultural sense. It's much more "American" in demographic makeup, as non-Hispanic whites make up 57% of the population and Hispanics 20%; Cubans barely edge out Mexicans for most common Hispanic ancestry.

There is no question that South Florida is much, much more Jewish than Greater LA and that Jews are more evenly distributed across the metro area. Yet South Florida as a whole doesn't seem to have the Jewish cultural currency that you'd expect based on the numbers, in large part because much of the Jewish population consists of retirees from the Northeast.

In LA, Jewish culture certainly takes a backseat to Mexican culture and many Jews are originally from NYC, but the difference is that the Jews are urban-based ("urban" meaning part of the cosmopolitan fabric of the city) and have left their imprint on our civic institutions for decades. And when I say civic, I actually mean the city of Los Angeles (not the county, MSA, or CSA). Jews that come to CA to retire don't move to Encino; they head to the Coachella Valley, which has its own substantial Jewish community.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Docere

Beverly Hills is certainly a very Jewish place, somewhere in the 35-50% range I suspect.

Ancestry

Iranian 25.7%
Russian 8.6%
German 6.2%
Polish 6.1%
English 4%
Italian 3.5%
Irish 3.1%
American 3.1%
French 2.7%
Arab 2.7%
Hungarian 1.7%
Ukrainian 1.4%
Eastern European 1.4%
Romanian 1.3%
European 1.2%
Iraqi 1.1%
Scottish 1.1%
Swedish 1%

https://statisticalatlas.com/place/C...Hills/Ancestry

I analyzed ancestry profiles for some of the most Jewish communities near NYC (Great Neck, Woodmere, Monsey, Kiryas Joel) using the Census' ACS and also took a look at Jewish population by European country pre-Holocaust. Based on those metrics, I concluded that the following groups are the best proxies for "Jewish":

Austrian
Czech
Eastern European
European
German
Hungarian
Iranian
Israeli
Lithuanian
Polish
Romanian
Russian
Ukrainian

...

For Kiryas Joel (2019 5-year estimates, total ancestry):

American -- 8,577
Arab -- 104
Austrian -- 80
British -- 45
Canadian -- 139
Czech -- 106
English -- 293
European -- 538
French (except Basque) -- 11
German -- 269
Hungarian -- 5,390
Irish -- 13
Israeli -- 410
Italian -- 2
Polish -- 531
Romanian -- 620
Russian -- 86
Scandinavian -- 7
Subsaharan African -- 5
Ukrainian -- 8
Yugoslavian -- 28
Other groups -- 4,985
Unclassified or not reported -- 4,032

[Crawford]

Though there will be very different proxies for Jewish heritage depending on community. Scarsdale and Kiryas Joel are both Jewish communities but won't have similar ancestry profiles (and aren't really similar in any respect outside of the fact they identify as heavily Jewish).

And this is disregarding Sephardic Jews. Great Neck will be heavily Persian, and probably won't have a dissimilar heritage as many LA Jewish communities. Central Queens will be heavily Central Asian, and former Soviet. Much of South Brooklyn and Deal, NJ area will be heavily Syrian and North African (Tunisian, Egyptian). You're more likely to find couscous than a pastrami sandwich these days, if you're on Ave. U, Ave. X or Kings Highway in BK.

[Docere]

According to this,

Great Neck is 70% Jewish.

South-Central Westchester (which includes Scarsdale and north end of New Rochelle) is 36% Jewish.

https://www.jewishdatabank.org/conte...-Rev-10-13.pdf

[Crawford]

Northern New Rochelle is the only Orthodox enclave in Westchester, and it's a very recent development. Scarsdale and Rye Brook are Conservative, with some Reform, and largely secular. Armonk is probably most Jewish community in Westchester by %, and is basically a newer, slightly cheaper version of Scarsdale, where schools are everything.

Great Neck was basically the same as Scarsdale till the 1980's. Now overwhelmingly observant and very Sephardic. It's future will be like Five Towns.

[Quixote]

It sounds like Great Neck is the most Jewish NYC suburb, as I suspected. Did I get the others right, or should I have looked at other places in Nassau and Rockland Counties along with Livingston and Lakewood in NJ? I tended to choose places based on their share of Russian and Polish in relation to Italian and Irish, and where Israelis formed a large enough contingent to show up in the ancestry profiles on Statistical Atlas.

And the rationale for using primarily European ancestry was of course because 85% of Jews worldwide are Ashkenazi, certainly in NYC and environs. And since I’m guessing most of the Jews that migrated to LA in the 20th century had NYC roots (directly or by way of other eastern metros), I thought using European groups along with more recent Iranian and Israeli immigrants was the best lens through which to examine LA, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and Calabasas’ populations.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Northern New Rochelle is the only Orthodox enclave in Westchester, and it's a very recent development. Scarsdale and Rye Brook are Conservative, with some Reform, and largely secular. Armonk is probably most Jewish community in Westchester by %, and is basically a newer, slightly cheaper version of Scarsdale, where schools are everything.

Great Neck was basically the same as Scarsdale till the 1980's. Now overwhelmingly observant and very Sephardic. It's future will be like Five Towns.

New Rochelle was also the "Jewish suburb" of Westchester in the postwar years.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Quixote

It sounds like Great Neck is the most Jewish NYC suburb.

Most Jewish by %? And traditional suburbs, right? Not newer Hasidic enclaves like Monsey or KJ?

Probably Five Towns, on LI. Lawrence and Cedarhurst, in particular, are almost entirely Jewish, much more Jewish than Great Neck, which has longstanding Christian residents and newer Asian arrivals. But the Five Towns enclave straddles the Queens border, and many of the schools/institutions are on the Queens side.

Largest Jewish community in NY Metro outside city limits will be Lakewood, NJ. Might be largest Jewish community anywhere outside of Israel and Brooklyn?

[Docere]

Five Towns is 57% Jewish, but varies by town. Lawrence/Cedarhurst are virtually all Orthodox Jewish and the rest aren't really that Jewish.

[Crawford]

This article is more than a decade old but indicates that Hewlett and Woodmere are increasingly (Orthodox) Jewish. And the towns to the east, like Atlantic Beach, and Long Beach, are increasingly Jewish.

https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com...er-five-towns/

[Docere]

The NYC area is really the only US metro with large geographies with Jewish-majorities. And none of these are your standard "American Jewish" communities, they're Orthodox and/or immigrant communities.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Shawn

This is certainly true of Mass and RI Italians, who are mostly Sicilian. I didn't meet a Northern Italian until I started working in Japan, with some Milanese and Genoese clients and coworkers. Plus a guy from Naples, who seemed much more like the guys I went to high school with. Naples is traditionally considered Southern, no? But maybe more in a Virginia / NC way, whereas Sicily is Deep South Alabama?

Same with me. I am (southern) Italian from Upstate NY and never met of these elusive southern Italians until I moved to Houston. There are loads down here working in oil and the medical center.

And yes, Sicily/ Calabria were the Alabama of Italy. Still relatively poor compared to the north.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by JManc

Same with me. I am (southern) Italian from Upstate NY and never met of these elusive southern Italians until I moved to Houston. There are loads down here working in oil and the medical center.

And yes, Sicily/ Calabria were the Alabama of Italy. Still relatively poor compared to the north.

That's what I figured. And I didn't mean anything negative in comparing Sicily to Alabama, I was just thinking along the lines of how Americans view the geography of the South. As in, both Alabama and Sicily are "Deep South".