Everything about American Jew totally explained
American Jews, or
Jewish Americans, are
Jews who are
American citizens or
resident aliens. The United States is home to the largest or second largest Jewish community in the world depending on religious definitions and varying population data.
The Jewish community in the United States is composed predominantly of
Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from
Central and
Eastern Europe, and their US-born descendants. There are, however, small numbers of both older and more recently arrived
Sephardic Jews (Jews with roots tracing back to
15th century Spanish and Portuguese expellees and to
North Africa), as well as smaller numbers of
Mizrahi Jews (Jewish communities with extended histories in the
Middle East,
Caucasus and
Central Asia),
Ethiopian Jews,
Indian Jews and others from various smaller
Jewish ethnic divisions. The Jewish community in America, therefore, manifests a wide range of
Jewish cultural traditions, as well as encompassing the full spectrum of religious observance, from the ultra-Orthodox
Haredi communities to Jews who are entirely
secular and
atheist.
History
Jews have been present in what is today the United States of America as early as the
seventeenth century, if not earlier, though they were small in numbers and almost exclusively
Sephardic Jewish immigrants of
Spanish and
Portuguese ancestry.
(External Link
)(External Link) Until about 1830
Charleston, South Carolina had more Jews than anywhere else in North America. Large scale Jewish immigration, however, didn't commence until the
nineteenth century, when, by mid-century, many secular
Ashkenazi Jews from Germany arrived in the United States, primarily becoming merchants and shop-owners. There were approximately 250,000 Jews in the United States by 1880, many of them being the educated, and largely secular, German Jews, although a minority population of the older
Sephardic Jewish families remained influential.
As a result of persecution in parts of
Eastern Europe, Jewish immigration to the United States increased dramatically in the early 1880s, with most of the new immigrants also being
Yiddish-speaking
Ashkenazi Jews, though mostly from the poor rural populations of the
Russian Empire (including the Russian-controlled portions of the former
Duchy of Warsaw–see
History of the Jews in Poland), many of them coming from the
Pale of Settlement (modern Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova ). Over 2,000,000 arrived between the late nineteenth century and 1924, when immigration restrictions increased due to the
National Origins Quota of 1924 and
Immigration Act of 1924. Most settled in
New York City and its immediate environs (New Jersey, etc.), establishing what became one of the world's major concentrations of Jewish population.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, these newly-arrived Jews built support networks consisting of many small
synagogues and Ashkenazi Jewish
Landsmannschaften (German for "Territorial Associations") for Jews from the same town or village. Jewish American writers of the time urged
assimilation and integration into the wider
American culture, and Jews quickly became part of American life. 500,000 American Jews (or half of all Jewish males between 18 and 50) fought in
World War II, and after the war Jewish families joined the new trend of
suburbanization. There, Jews became increasingly assimilated as rising
intermarriage rates combined with a trend towards secularization. At the same time, new centers of Jewish communities formed, as Jewish school enrollment more than doubled between the end of World War II and the mid-1950s, while synagogue affiliation jumped from 20% in 1930 to 60% in 1960.
Politics and Civil Rights
While the first group of Jewish immigrants from Germany tended to be Republican, the second wave that started in the early 1880s were generally more liberal or left wing. Polls showed Jews gave 90% support to Democrats
Franklin D. Roosevelt and
Harry S. Truman in the elections of 1940, 1944 and 1948. They gave about a third of their vote to Republican
Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. In 1960 Jews voted 83% for Catholic Democrat
John F. Kennedy. In 1964, when the Republicans nominated a strongly conservative candidate,
Barry Goldwater, who was half-Jewish, 90% of Jews voted for his opponent. Since 1968 Jews have voted about 70%-80% Democratic, surging to 87% for Democratic House candidates in 2006. After the 2006 elections there were 13 Jews in the Senate (out of 100 members), of whom two (
Norm Coleman and
Arlen Specter) were Republicans, and 30 in the House (out of 435 members), only one of whom (
Eric Cantor) was a Republican.
As a group, Jews have been very active in fighting prejudice and discrimination, and have historically been active participants in
civil rights movements since the 1930s, including active support and participation in the black civil rights / desegration movement, active support and participation in the women's rights movement, and active support for gay rights movement.
Seymour Siegel suggests that the historic struggle against prejudice faced by Jews led to a natural sympathy for any people confronting discrimination. Joachim Prinz, president of the
American Jewish Congress, stated the following when he spoke from the podium at the Lincoln Memorial during the famous
March on Washington on
August 28,
1963: "As Jews we bring to this great demonstration, in which thousands of us proudly participate, a twofold experience—one of the spirit and one of our history... From our Jewish historic experience of three and a half thousand years we say: Our ancient history began with slavery and the yearning for freedom. During the Middle Ages my people lived for a thousand years in the ghettos of Europe... It is for these reasons that it isn't merely sympathy and compassion for the black people of America that motivates us. It is, above all and beyond all such sympathies and emotions, a sense of complete identification and solidarity born of our own painful historic experience. "
The Holocaust
The Holocaust had a profound impact on the community in the United States, especially after 1945, as Jews tried to comprehend what had happened, and especially to commemorate and grapple with it when looking to the future.
Abraham Joshua Heschel summarized this dilemma when he attempted to understand Auschwitz: "To try to answer is to commit a supreme blasphemy. Israel enables us to bear the agony of Auschwitz without radical despair, to sense a ray [of] God's radiance in the jungles of history."
International affairs
Jews began taking a special interest in international affairs in the early twentieth century, especially regarding
pogroms in
Imperial Russia, and restrictions on immigration in the 1920s. This period is also synchronous with the development of political
Zionism and the
Balfour Declaration. Large-scale boycotts of German merchandize were organized during the 1930s, which was synchronous with the rise of
Fascism in Europe.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's leftist domestic policies received strong Jewish support in the 1930s and 1940s, as did his foreign policies and the subsequent founding of the
United Nations. Support for political Zionism in this period, although growing in influence, remained a distinctly minority opinion. The founding of
Israel in 1948 made the
Middle East a center of attention; the immediate recognition of Israel by the American government was an indication of both its intrinsic support and the influence of political Zionism.
This attention initially was based on a natural and religious affinity toward and support for Israel and world Jewry. The attention is also because of the ensuing and unresolved conflicts regarding the founding Israel and Zionism itself. A lively internal debate commenced, following the
Six-Day War. The American Jewish community was divided over whether or not they agreed with the Israeli response; the great majority came to accept the war as necessary. A tension existed especially for leftist Jews, between their liberal ideology and (rightist) Zionist backing in the midst of this conflict. This deliberation about the Six-Day War showed the depth and complexity of Jewish responses to the varied events of the 1960s. Similar tensions were aroused by the 1977 election of Begin and the rise of
revisionist policies, the
1982 Lebanon War and the continuing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The subject remains fodder for deep divisions among American Jews to this day.
Population
The Jewish population of the United States is one of the largest in the world.
Precise population figures vary depending on whether Jews are accounted for based on
halakhic considerations, or
secular,
political and
ancestral identification factors. There were about 4 million adherents of Judaism in the U.S. as of 2001, approximately 1.4% of the US population. The community self-identifying as Jewish by birth, irrespective of halakhic (unbroken maternal line of Jewish descent or formal Jewish conversion) status, numbers about 7 million, or 2.5% of the US population. According to the
Jewish Agency, for the year 2007 Israel is home to 5.4 million Jews (40.9% of the world's Jewish population), while the United States contained 5.3 million (40.2%). The Jewish Agency's figure for Israel, however, included those who don't consider themselves Jews and those who are not
Jewish by halakha (including a large number of
Russians who immigrated under the
Law of Return but are not technically Jewish by any authoritative definition), while the estimate for the US and other countries didn't include such people.
The most recent large scale population survey, released in the 2006
American Jewish Yearbook population survey estimates place the number of American Jews at 6.4 million, or approximately 2.1% of the total population. This figure is significantly higher than the previous large scale survey estimate, conducted by the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population estimates, which estimated 5.2 million Jews. A
2007 study released by the Steinhardt Social Research Institute (SSRI) at
Brandeis University presents evidence to suggest that both of these figures may be underestimations with a potential 7.0-7.4 million Americans of Jewish decent. Jews in the U.S. settled largely in and near the major cities. The Ashkenazi Jews, who are now the vast majority of American Jews, settled first in the Northeast and Midwest but in recent decades increasingly in the South and West. In descending order, the metropolitan areas with the highest Jewish populations are
New York City (1,750,000),
Miami (535,000),
Los Angeles (490,000),
Philadelphia (285,000),
Chicago (265,000),
San Francisco (210,000),
Boston (208,000), and
Baltimore-Washington (165,000). Although New York is the second largest Jewish population center in the world, after the
Gush Dan metropolitan area in Israel
(External Link), the Miami metropolitan area has a slightly greater Jewish population on a per-capita basis (9.9% compared to metropolitan New York's 9.3%). Several other major cities have over 5% Jewish proportions, including
Cleveland,
Baltimore, and
St. Louis. Miami and Los Angeles have long been major centers. Smaller, but growing numbers are found in
Houston,
Dallas,
Phoenix,
Charlotte, and especially
Atlanta and
Las Vegas. In many metropolitan areas, the majority of Jewish families live in
suburban areas. In Detroit, for example, the Jewish population is particularly concentrated in suburban
Oakland County.
Jewish Texans have been a part of
Texas History since the first
European explorers arrived in the 1500s.
(External Link) By
1990, there are around 108,000 adherents to
Judaism in Texas.
(External Link)
The
Israeli immigrant community in America is less widespread. The significant Israeli immigrant communities in the United States are in
Los Angeles,
New York City,
Miami, and
Chicago.
Immigrant
Soviet Jews began arriving after the
Jackson-Vanik laws of the 1970s and are heavily concentrated in
New York City,
Houston,
Dallas,
San Francisco,
Baltimore,
Los Angeles and many other large American cities, although these Russian Jews can be found throughout the US in cities even with very small Jewish populations.
Persian Jews began arriving to the United States in large numbers in the late 1970s before the
Islamic Revolution and most of them settled in
Los Angeles and
Great Neck on
Long Island. Most
Bukharian Jews arrived after the
Collapse of the Soviet Union to
New York City,
San Francisco,
Seattle,
Atlanta,
Arizona and elsewhere.
According to the
2001 undertaking of the
National Jewish Population Survey, 4.3 million American Jews have some sort of strong connection to the Jewish community, whether religious or cultural.
Assimilation and population changes
The same social and cultural characteristics of the
United States of America that facilitated the extraordinary economic, political, and social success of the American Jewish community have also been attributed to contributing to widespread
assimilation, a controversial and significant issue in the modern American Jewish community. While not all Jews disapprove of
intermarriage, many members of the Jewish community have become concerned that the high rate of interfaith marriage will result in the eventual disappearance of the American Jewish community.
Intermarriage rates have risen from roughly 6% in 1950 to approximately 40%-50% in the year 2000.
(External Link)(External Link) Only about 33% of intermarried couples raise their children with a Jewish religious upbringing. This, in combination with the comparatively low birthrate in the Jewish community, has led to a 5% decline in the Jewish population of the United States in the 1990s.
(External Link). In addition to this, when compared with the general American population, the American Jewish community is slightly older.
(External Link)
Despite the fact that only 33% of intermarried couples provide their children with a Jewish upbringing, doing so is more common among intermarried families raise their children in areas with high Jewish populations, such as the greater
New York City metropolitan area,
Boston,
Los Angeles,
Philadelphia,
Detroit,
Baltimore-Washington,
Chicago, and
Cleveland (which has the highest Jewish-American population per capita for smaller, major U.S. cities). In the Boston area, one study shows that 60% percent of children of intermarriages are being raised as Jews by religion; giving the perception that intermarriage is contributing to a net increase in the number of Jews.
(External Link) As well, some children raised through intermarriage
rediscover and embrace their Jewish roots when they themselves marry and have children.
In contrast to the ongoing trends of assimilation, some communities within American Jewry, such as
Orthodox Jews, have significantly higher birth rates and lower intermarriage rates, and are growing rapidly. The proportion of Jewish synagogue members who were Orthodox rose from 11% in 1971 to 21% in 2000, while the overall Jewish community declined in number.
(External Link) This trend, however, is likely due at least as much to declining synagogue membership and practice among the non-Orthodox as to greater numbers of Orthodox.
In 2000, there were 360,000 so-called "ultra-orthodox" (
Haredi) Jews in USA (7.2%). The figure for 2006 is estimated at 468,000 (9.4%).
(External Link)
About half of the American Jews are considered to be religious. Out of this 2,831,000 religious Jewish population, 92% are White, 5% Hispanic (Mostly Argentine Ashkenazim), 1% Asian (Mostly Bukharian and Persian Jews), 1% Black and 1% Other (Mixed Race.etc). Almost this many non-religious Jews exist in United States, the proportion of Whites being higher than that among the religious population.
Religion
Jewishness is generally considered an
ethnic identity as well as a
religious one.
Jewish religious practice in America is quite varied. Among the 4.3 million American Jews described as "strongly connected" to Judaism, over 80% have some sort of active engagement with Judaism, ranging from attendance at daily prayer services on one end of the spectrum to as little as attendance
Passover Seders or lighting
Hanukkah candles on the other.
The survey found that of the 4.3 million strongly connected Jews, 46% belong to a
synagogue. Among those who belong to a synagogue, 38% are members of
Reform synagogues, 33%
Conservative, 22%
Orthodox, 2%
Reconstructionist, and 5% other types. Traditionally,
Sephardic and
Mizrahis don't have different branches (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, etc) but usually remain observant and religious. The survey discovered that Jews in the
Northeast and
Midwest are generally more observant than Jews in the
South or
West. Reflecting a trend also observed among other religious groups, Jews in the Northwestern United States are typically the least observant.
A 2003
Harris Poll found that 16% of American Jews go to the synagogue at least once a month, 42% go less frequently but at least once a year, and 42% go less frequently than once a year. The poll also found that 48% of American Jews believe in God, 19% believe there's no God, and 33% are not sure whether or not there's a God.
In recent years, there has been a noticeable trend of secular American Jews returning to a more religious, in most cases, Orthodox, style of observance. Such Jews are called
baalei teshuva ("returners", see also
Repentance in Judaism). It is uncertain how widespread or demographically important this movement is at present.
Education
The great majority of school-age Jewish students attend public schools, although Jewish day schools and yeshivas are to be found throughout the country.
Jewish cultural studies and
Hebrew language instruction is also commonly offered at synagogues in the form of supplementary Hebrew schools or Sunday schools.
Until the 1950s, a quota system at elite colleges and universities limited the number of Jewish students. Before 1945, only a few Jewish professors were permitted as instructors at elite universities. In 1941, anti-Semitism drove
Milton Friedman from a non-tenured assistant professorship at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Harry Levin became the first Jewish full professor in the Harvard English department in 1943, but the Economics department decided not to hire
Paul Samuelson in 1948. Harvard hired its first Jewish biochemists in 1954.
Today, American Jews no longer face the discrimination in college admissions that they did in the past. By 1986, a third of the presidents of the elite undergraduate clubs at Harvard were Jewish, width="70" | % of Student body !! width="70"|Undergraduate Enrollment
|-
| 1 ||
University of Florida || 5,400 || 15% || 34,612
|-
| 2 ||
Rutgers University || 5,000 || 13% || 37,072
|-
| 3 ||
University of Central Florida || 4,500 || 11% ||39,545
|-
| 4 ||
University of MichiganPennsylvania State UniversityIndiana University University of Wisconsin-Madison || 4,000 || 16%
10%
10%
14% || 25,555
36,612
32,000
28,462
|-
| 5 ||
California State University, NorthridgeFlorida State UniversityUniversity of Texas, Austin || 3,800 || 14%
9%
10%||26,854
40,474
36,878
|-
| 6 ||
University at AlbanyFlorida International University || 3,500 || 31%
9% ||12,013
39,500
|}
|
Private Universities
| Rank |
University |
Enrollment of Jewish Student (est.) |
% of Student body |
Undergraduate Enrollment
|
| 1 |
New York University |
6,500 |
33% |
19,401 |
| 2 |
Boston University |
4,000 |
20% |
15,981 |
| 3 |
Cornell University |
3,500 |
25% |
13,515 |
| 4 |
University of Miami |
3,100 |
22% |
14,000 |
| 5 |
The George Washington UniversityUniversity of PennsylvaniaYeshiva University |
2,800 |
31%
30%
99% |
10,394
9,718
2,803 |
| 6 |
Syracuse University |
2,500 |
20% |
12,500 |
| 7 |
Columbia UniversityEmory UniversityHarvard UniversityTulane University |
2,000 |
29%
30%
30%
30% |
6,819
6,510
6,715
6,533 |
| 8 |
Brandeis UniversityNorthwestern UniversityWashington University in St. Louis |
1,800 |
56%
23%
29% |
3,158
7,826
6,097 |
|}
Jewish American culture
Since the time of the last major wave of Jewish immigration to America (over 2,000,000 Eastern European Jews who arrived between 1890 and 1924), Jewish secular culture in the United States has become integrated in almost every important way with the broader American culture. Many aspects of Jewish American culture have, in turn, become part of the wider culture of the United States.
Language
Although almost all American Jews are today native
English-speakers, a variety of other languages are still spoken within some American Jewish communities, communities which are representative of the various
Jewish ethnic divisions from around the world that have come together to make up America's Jewish population.
Many of America's
Hasidic Jews (being exclusively of
Ashkenazi descent) are raised speaking
Yiddish. Yiddish was once spoken as the primary language by most of the several million European Jews who immigrated to the United States (it was, in fact, the original language in which
The Forward was published). Yiddish has had an influence on American English, and words borrowed from it include
chutzpah ("effrontery", "gall"),
nosh ("snack"),
schlep ("drag"),
schmuck ("fool", literally "penis"), and, depending on
ideolect, hundreds of other terms. (See also
Yinglish.)
The
Persian Jewish community in the United States, notably the large community in and around
Los Angeles and
Beverly Hills, California, primarily speak
Persian (see also
Judeo-Persian) in the home and synagogue. They also support their own Persian language newspapers. Persian Jews also reside in eastern parts of
New York such as
Kew Gardens and
Great Neck, Long Island.
Many recent Jewish immigrants from the
Soviet Union speak primarily
Russian at home, and there are several notable communities where public life and business are carried out mainly in Russian, such as in
Brighton Beach in New York City.
American
Bukharian Jews speak
Bukhori (a dialect of Persian) and
Russian. They publish their own newspapers such as the
Bukharian Times and a large portion live in
Queens, New York.
Forest Hills in the
New York City borough of
Queens is home to 108th Street, which is called by some "Bukharian Broadway"
(External Link), a reference to the many stores and restaurants found on and around the street that have Bukharian influences. Many Bukharians are also represented in parts of
Arizona,
Miami, Florida, and areas of
Southern California such as
San Diego.
Classical Hebrew is the language of most Jewish religious literature, such as the
Tanakh (Bible) and
Siddur (prayerbook).
Modern Hebrew is also the primary official language of the modern State of
Israel, which further encourages many to learn it as a second language. Some recent Israeli immigrants to America speak Hebrew as their primary language.
Some of the Jews in
Miami and
Los Angeles, the second largest Jewish community in the United States, immigrated from the countries of
Latin America. Many of these
Hispanic Jews (many of them of
Sephardic origin dating back to the
Spanish and
Portuguese colonial era, but also many of
Ashkenazi descent from recent Central and Eastern European immigration to Latin America) speak
Spanish in the home, and some have intermarried with the non-Jewish
Hispanic population. Recent Jews from Spain and among their descendants speak Spanish. Spanish may be spoken by other Jews with ancestry outside Spain and Latin America living in areas near predominantly Hispanic populations. There are a large number of synagogues in the Miami area that give services in
Spanish. Many Luso-Jews with origin from
Brazil and
Portugal (Sephardic Jews but including in Brazil, Sephardic Jews with Spanish origin, Ashkenazi, and Mizrahi) speak
Portuguese in home. There are a handful of older European immigrant communities that still speak
Ladino.
Jewish American literature
Although American Jews have contributed greatly to American arts overall (see the following section), there remains a distinctly Jewish American literature. Generally exploring the experience of being a Jew, especially a Jew in America, and the conflicting pulls of secular society and history, the literary traditions of
Philip Roth,
Saul Bellow,
Chaim Potok,
Leon Uris,
Herman Wouk,
Cynthia Ozick and
Bernard Malamud all fall into this category. Younger authors (
for example,
Paul Auster,
Lisa Crystal Carver,
Allegra Goodman,
Gary Shteyngart,
Michael Chabon and
Jonathan Safran Foer) continue this view of Jewish American literature, examining the Holocaust, and the meaning of being an American Jew.
Notable American Jews
Popular culture
» Actors and actresses Writers Artists Musicians Show business figures Sportspeople List of Jewish American actors in televisionLists of Jews
Many individual Jews have made significant contributions to American popular culture. There have been many Jewish American actors and performers, ranging from early 1900s actors like
Carmel Myers,
Fanny Brice and the first cowboy film star,
Broncho Billy Anderson, to classic Hollywood film stars like
Lauren Bacall,
Kirk Douglas,
Tony Curtis, and culminating in many currently known actors, including
Sarah Michelle Gellar,
Winona Ryder,
Alicia Silverstone,
Natalie Portman,
Sarah Jessica Parker,
Kate Hudson,
Scarlett Johansson,
Rachel Bilson,
Adam Brody,
Zac Efron,
Evan Rachel Wood,
Adrien Brody,
Lisa Kudrow,
Ben Stiller,
Adam Sandler,
Jerry Seinfeld,
Larry David,
Bahar Soomekh,
Sara Paxton,
Jake Gyllenhaal and
Maggie Gyllenhaal, amongst others. Many of the early Hollywood moguls and pioneers were
Jewish, such as
Barney Balaban (Paramount Pictures),
Henry Cohen (Columbia Pictures),
Samuel Goldwyn and
Louis B. Mayer (MGM),
William Fox,
Jesse L. Lasky,
Carl Laemmle,
Marcus Loew,
Adolph Zukor, and the original
Warner Brothers. The characteristically Jewish field of American comedy includes the
Marx Brothers,
Three Stooges,
Milton Berle,
Bea Arthur,
Mel Brooks,
George Burns,
Woody Allen,
Joan Rivers, and
Gilda Radner. The legacy also includes songwriters as diverse as
Irving Berlin,
Burt Bacharach,
Carol King,
Ramblin' Jack Elliott,
Robert B. Sherman and
Richard M. Sherman (aka "The
Sherman Brothers"),
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller,
Jeff Barry,
Neil Diamond,
Lou Reed,
Bob Dylan, and
Paul Simon and writers as diverse as
J.D. Salinger,
Joseph Heller,
Ayn Rand,
E.L. Doctorow,
Lillian Hellman,
Allen Ginsberg,
Isaac Asimov, and
Harlan Ellison, in addition to the authors listed above.
On the countercultural and radical political front, Jewish hippies
Abbie Hoffman and
Jerry Rubin, with help from
Allen Ginsberg, formed the controversial
Youth International Party ("Yippies"), and the four main organizers of the 1969
Woodstock Festival concert were all Jewish, as was
Max Yasgur, the man on whose farm the legendary concert took place. In addition, master sound mixer and producer
Eddie Kramer was Jewish, as is
Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, his first wife,
Sara and sons
Jesse and
Jakob.
Bob Dylan did convert to Christianity in the late 1970s, but he returned to his Jewish roots in the 1980s.
Many Jews have been at the forefront of women's issues. Jewish
Women's rights activist
Gloria Steinem once became a
Playboy Bunny in order to write a book on how women were treated at their clubs.
Jews have also done well in the field of sport. The most notable of all would be Jewish Swimmer
Mark Spitz who won 7 gold medals at the
1972 Munich Olympics, which is still an
Olympic record for a single year in any sport.
Facebook creator
Mark Zuckerberg has recently made a name for himself by bringing the world together online.
Government and military
» Politicians Military figures
Since 1845, a total of 29 Jews have served in the Senate, including present-day senators
Chuck Schumer (D-NY),
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ),
Arlen Specter (R-PA),
Norm Coleman (R-MN),
Russ Feingold and
Herb Kohl (both D-WI),
Barbara Boxer and
Dianne Feinstein (both D-CA),
Carl Levin (D-MI),
Ron Wyden (D-OR), and
Joe Lieberman (Independent-CT). In 2007, the number of Jews in the Senate rose to thirteen with the additional of
Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and
Ben Cardin (D-MD). The number of Jews elected to the House rose to an all time high of 30. Seven Jews have been appointed on the
United States Supreme Court.
Sixteen American Jews have been awarded the
Medal of Honor.
Judah P. Benjamin was a member of the
Confederate cabinet.
World War II
After the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the American entry into
World War II, hundreds of thousands of Jews joined national service. More than 550,000 served in the
U.S. military during World War II; about 11,000 were killed and more than 40,000 were wounded. There were three recipients of the Medal of Honor, 157 recipients of the
Army Distinguished Service Medal,
Navy Distinguished Service Medal,
Distinguished Service Cross, or
Navy Cross, and about 1600 recipients of the
Silver Star. About 50,242 other decorations. citations and awards were given to Jewish military personnel, for a total of 52,000 decorations. During this period, Jews were approximately 3.3 percent of the total U.S. population but constituted about 4.23 percent of the U.S. armed forces. About 60 percent of all Jewish physicians in the United States under 45 years of age were in service as military physicians and
medics.
Many Jewish
physicists were involved in the
Manhattan Project, the secret World War II effort to develop the
atomic bomb. Many of these were refugees from
Nazi Germany or from
antisemitic persecution elsewhere in Europe. Jewish scientists involved in the Manhattan Project include
Robert Oppenheimer,
Richard P. Feynman,
Wolfgang Pauli,
Leo Szilard,
Albert Einstein,
John von Neumann,
Isidor I. Rabi,
Edward Teller,
Eugene Wigner,
Otto Frisch,
Samuel Goudsmit,
Jerome Karle,
Stanisław Ulam,
Robert Serber,
Louis Slotin,
Walter Zinn,
Robert Marshak,
Felix Bloch,
Emilio G. Segrè,
James Franck,
Joseph Joffe,
Eugene Rabinowitch,
Hy Goldsmith,
Samuel Cohen,
Victor F. Weisskopf, and
David Bohm.
Hans Bethe and
Niels Bohr both had Jewish mothers, which also necessitated their fleeing from Nazi-occupied lands during the war.
Science, business, and academia
» Scientists Businesspeople Academics
Ashkenazi Jews have traditionally been drawn to business and academia (see
Secular Jewish culture for some of the causes), and have made major contributions in science, economics, and the humanities. Of American
Nobel Prize winners, 37% have been Jewish Americans (19 times the percentage of Jews in the population), as have been 71% of the
John Bates Clark Medal winners (thirty-five times the Jewish percentage). While Jewish Americans only constitute roughly 2.5% of the U.S. population, they occupied 7.7% of board seats at U.S. corporations.
Distribution of Jewish-Americans
According to the Glenmary Research Center, which publishes Religious Congregations and Membership in the United States
(External Link), the 100 counties and
independent cities in 2000 with the largest Jewish communities, based by percentage of total population, were:
| County |
Jewishpopulation |
%
of total |
| 1 |
Rockland County, New York |
90,000 |
31.4% |
| 2 |
New York County, New York |
314,500 |
20.5% |
| 3 |
Falls Church, Virginia |
1,800 |
17.4% |
| 4 |
Fairfax, Virginia |
3,600 |
16.7% |
| 5 |
Nassau County, New York |
207,000 |
15.5% |
| 6 |
Kings County, New York |
379,000 |
15.4% |
| 7 |
Palm Beach County, Florida |
167,000 |
14.8% |
| 8 |
Broward County, Florida |
213,000 |
13.1% |
| 9 |
Queens County, New York |
238,000 |
10.7% |
| 10 |
Monmouth County, New Jersey |
65,000 |
10.6% |
| 11 |
Westchester County, New York |
94,000 |
10.2% |
| 12 |
Sullivan County, New York |
7,425 |
10.0% |
| 13 |
Essex County, New Jersey |
76,200 |
9.6% |
| 14 |
Bergen County, New Jersey |
83,700 |
9.5% |
| 15 |
Montgomery County, Maryland |
83,800 |
9.1% |
| 16 |
Baltimore, Maryland |
56,500 |
8.7% |
| 17 |
Fulton County, Georgia |
65,900 |
8.1% |
| 18 |
Montgomery County, Pennsylvania |
59,550 |
7.9% |
| 19 |
Middlesex County, Massachusetts |
113,700 |
7.8% |
| 20 |
Richmond County, New York |
33,700 |
7.6% |
| 21 |
Marin County, California |
18,500 |
7.5% |
| 22 |
Camden County, New Jersey |
36,000 |
7.1% |
| 22 |
Morris County, New Jersey |
33,500 |
7.1% |
| 24 |
Suffolk County, New York |
100,000 |
7.0% |
| 25 |
Denver County, Colorado |
38,100 |
6.6% |
| 26 |
Oakland County, Michigan |
77,200 |
6.5% |
| 27 |
San Francisco County, California |
49,500 |
6.4% |
| 28 |
Bronx County, New York |
83,700 |
6.3% |
| 29 |
Middlesex County, New Jersey |
45,000 |
6.0% |
| 30 |
Los Angeles County, California |
564,700 |
5.9% |
| 30 |
Norfolk County, Massachusetts |
38,300 |
5.9% |
| 32 |
Atlantic County, New Jersey |
14,600 |
5.8% |
| 32 |
Bucks County, Pennsylvania |
34,800 |
5.8% |
| 32 |
Union County, New Jersey |
30,100 |
5.8% |
| 35 |
Cuyahoga County, Ohio |
79,000 |
5.7% |
| 35 |
Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania |
86,600 |
5.7% |
| 37 |
Clark County, Nevada |
75,000 |
5.5% |
| 37 |
Miami-Dade County, Florida |
124,000 |
5.5% |
| 39 |
Baltimore County, Maryland |
38,000 |
5.0% |
| 39 |
Pitkin County, Colorado |
750 |
5.0% |
| 39 |
Plymouth County, Massachusetts |
23,600 |
5.0% |
| 42 |
St. Louis County, Missouri |
47,100 |
4.6% |
| 43 |
Boulder County, Colorado |
13,200 |
4.5% |
| 43 |
Washington, District of Columbia |
25,500 |
4.5% |
| 45 |
Cook County, Illinois |
234,400 |
4.4% |
| 45 |
Fairfield County, Connecticut |
38,800 |
4.4% |
| 45 |
Orange County, New York |
15,000 |
4.4% |
| 48 |
Alexandria, Virginia |
5,400 |
4.2% |
| 49 |
Albany County, New York |
12,000 |
4.1% |
| 49 |
Alpine County, California |
50 |
4.1% |
| 49 |
Sarasota County, Florida |
13,500 |
4.1% |
|
| County |
Jewishpopulation |
%
of total |
| 52 |
Howard County, Maryland |
10,000 |
4.0% |
| 53 |
Lake County, Illinois |
25,000 |
3.9% |
| 54 |
Portsmouth, Virginia |
3,800 |
3.8% |
| 55 |
Somerset County, New Jersey |
11,100 |
3.7% |
| 55 |
West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana |
800 |
3.7% |
| 57 |
Rockdale County, Georgia |
2,500 |
3.6% |
| 57 |
Suffolk County, Massachusetts |
24,700 |
3.6% |
| 59 |
Bristol County, Rhode Island |
1,760 |
3.5% |
| 59 |
Custer County, Idaho |
150 |
3.5% |
| 59 |
Hartford County, Connecticut |
30,000 |
3.5% |
| 59 |
New Haven County, Connecticut |
28,900 |
3.5% |
| 59 |
Passaic County, New Jersey |
17,000 |
3.5% |
| 59 |
San Mateo County, California |
24,500 |
3.5% |
| 59 |
Schenectady County, New York |
5,200 |
3.5% |
| 66 |
Ulster County, New York |
5,900 |
3.3% |
| 67 |
Norfolk, Virginia |
7,600 |
3.2% |
| 67 |
Santa Clara County, California |
54,000 |
3.2% |
| 69 |
Burlington County, New Jersey |
13,000 |
3.1% |
| 69 |
Monroe County, New York |
22,500 |
3.1% |
| 71 |
Essex County, Massachusetts |
21,700 |
3.0% |
| 72 |
Berkshire County, Massachusetts |
3,900 |
2.9% |
| 72 |
Delaware County, Pennsylvania |
15,700 |
2.9% |
| 72 |
Monroe County, Michigan |
4,200 |
2.9% |
| 72 |
Multnomah County, Oregon |
19,300 |
2.9% |
| 76 |
Hennepin County, Minnesota |
31,600 |
2.8% |
| 76 |
Sussex County, New Jersey |
4,100 |
2.8% |
| 78 |
Allegheny County, Pennsylvania |
34,600 |
2.7% |
| 78 |
Fayette County, Georgia |
2,500 |
2.7% |
| 78 |
Hamilton County, Ohio |
22,500 |
2.7% |
| 78 |
Johnson County, Kansas |
12,000 |
2.7% |
| 82 |
Mercer County, New Jersey |
9,100 |
2.6% |
| 82 |
Nantucket County, Massachusetts |
250 |
2.6% |
| 82 |
Ozaukee County, Wisconsin |
2,100 |
2.6% |
| 82 |
Pinellas County, Florida |
24,200 |
2.6% |
| 82 |
Prince George's County, Maryland |
20,700 |
2.6% |
| 82 |
Worcester County, Massachusetts |
19,500 |
2.6% |
| 88 |
San Diego County, California |
70,000 |
2.5% |
| 89 |
New Castle County, Delaware |
11,900 |
2.4% |
| 89 |
Pima County, Arizona |
20,000 |
2.4% |
| 91 |
Alameda County, California |
32,500 |
2.3% |
| 91 |
Chester County, Pennsylvania |
10,100 |
2.3% |
| 91 |
Contra Costa County, California |
22,000 |
2.3% |
| 91 |
Cumberland County, Maine |
6,000 |
2.3% |
| 91 |
Hampden County, Massachusetts |
10,600 |
2.3% |
| 91 |
Ocean County, New Jersey |
11,500 |
2.3% |
| 91 |
Santa Cruz County, California |
6,000 |
2.3% |
| 98 |
Bristol County, Massachusetts |
11,600 |
2.2% |
| 98 |
Clay County, Georgia |
75 |
2.2% |
| 98 |
Washtenaw County, Michigan |
7,000 |
2.2% |
|
Major Jewish-American communities
(Alphabetically by state and region)
