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This report focuses on the general demographics of the Jewish community in New York: its size, geographic distribution, and the changes in those measures over the past two decades. It also provides a portrait of the individuals who live in these households: their ages, relationships, and Jewish identification. This report also recognizes and highlights the substantial diversity of Jewish New Yorkers with respect to national origin, Jewish tradition, race, and ethnicity.

Jewish Population Estimates of the New York 8-County Area in 2023

In 2023, the eight-county area is home to 736,000 Jewish households that contain about 1,372,000 Jewish people, including 1,076,000 Jewish adults and 296,000 Jewish children. These Jewish households are also home to about 405,000 non-Jewish people. The total number of people in Jewish households, both Jewish and non-Jewish, is 1,776,000.

Who is a Jewish person?

This study aims to understand the Jewish community of New York, across all — and regardless of — levels of observance, religious belief, and belonging to Jewish communal organizations. This study relies on an expansive definition of who is a Jew by considering anyone who identifies as a member of the Jewish community as part of the community. Consequently, for the purposes of this study, a Jewish adult is defined as someone aged 18 and over who self-identifies as Jewish, either religiously, ethnically, culturally, or by family background. A household is defined as a Jewish household if it includes one or more Jewish adults ages 18 and over.

Survey recipients were asked a pair of screening questions about each adult in their household before receiving the complete questionnaire:³

1.    What is this person’s present religion, if any?
2.    Aside from religion, does this person consider themselves to be any of the following … in any way (for example, ethnically, culturally, or because of family background)?

Respondents were coded as Jewish households if at least one adult was “Jewish” under either screening question.

Geographic Profile of People in Jewish Households in 2023

Distribution of People in Jewish Households Across Counties

For as long as Jewish population studies have been conducted in New York, Brooklyn has been the most populous Jewish county in the eight-county catchment area. In 2023, about a third of people in Jewish households live in Brooklyn, followed by Manhattan (20%), Nassau (15%), and Queens (12%). Staten Island (4%) and the Bronx (3%) are the least populous Jewish counties in the eight-county area.

The Jewish Population in the City and the Suburbs

More than two thirds of all people in Jewish households reside in New York City, with the rest in Westchester and Long Island. Nearly 1.227 million people in Jewish households live in New York City, and 542,000 others live in the three proximate suburban counties of Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester. Additionally, 960,000 Jews live in New York City, and 412,000 live in the suburban counties. Among metropolitan areas in North America, with respect to the distribution between urban and suburban residence, the New York area’s Jewish community is rather distinctive in its relative urban concentration.

Jewish Household Characteristics and Composition

In 2023, about one in four Jewish households include at least one child. Another 26% of Jewish households are composed of single adults living alone. Among Jewish adults who live alone, about half are age 65 or older, for a total of 328,000 seniors in Jewish households. Among Jewish households with children, nearly 80% include two or fewer children and 13% include four or more children.

 Trends in Jewish Households Over Time

Household Distribution by County and NYC/Suburbs

Overall Growth in Jewish Households

Since 2002, New York’s eight-county area has experienced a continuous growth in Jewish households. In 2023, the 736,000 Jewish households represent an increase of about 42,000 households since 2011 and nearly 93,000 households since 2002. This equates to a 6% increase in the number of Jewish households since 2011, and a 14% increase in Jewish households since 2002.

Stability of Jewish Households Across Counties

While the total number of Jewish households has increased over the past three decades, the distribution of these households across the counties has remained largely stable (within 1-2% points) over this same time period. The one notable exception to this pattern is Manhattan, which saw a 27% increase in Jewish households from 2011 to 2023 (from 153,000 Jewish households in 2011 to 194,000 Jewish households in 2023). It is also important to highlight that, at least since 2002, the majority of Jewish households in the eight-county-area have been and continue to be located in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Fifty-three percent of Jewish households in 2023 are located in Brooklyn (26%) and Manhattan (26%) combined.

Jewish Households as a Percentage of All Households

Jewish households compose 14% of all households in the eight-county New York area — about the same as in 2002, when it stood at 15%. Over the last 20 years, the number of total households in the eight-county area has grown, from 4.275 million in 2002 to 5.091 million in 2023; and, similarly, the number of Jewish households has grown from 643,000 to 736,000. The number of Jewish households grew at a slightly slower rate from 2002 to today (14.5%) compared to the growth in overall households in the same area (19% growth). Even so, the New York area region is still home to the highest percentage of Jewish households of any major Jewish community in the United States.

Marital Status and Intermarriage

Marital Status of Adults in Jewish Households

The marriage rate of Jewish adults is higher than the marriage rate for the general (white, non-Hispanic) adult population in the eight-county area. In 2023, 61% of Jewish adults are married, compared to 50% of total adults in the eight-county area. The rate of marriage of adults in Jewish households largely mirrors the marriage rate of Jewish adults nationally (59%).⁶ Additionally, 18% of adults in Jewish households in the eight-county area are single and have never married, 6% live with an unmarried partner, and 15% are separated or divorced or widowed. 

Overall Percent of Married Couples Who Are Intermarried

Percent of Married Couples Who Are Intermarried (Excluding Orthodox) by Age of Respondent

Among married couples with at least one Jewish member, 37% are intermarriages. Among non-Orthodox households, the rate of intermarriage is higher, at 46%. 

Intermarriage rates in the eight-county area remain well below national rates reported by Pew’s 2020 study of Jewish Americans across all age groups. And although intermarriage tends to increase in each successive age cohort, young Jews in the eight-county area trail the national rate by the largest margin among any age group.

Age Distribution of Jewish Adults

The New York Jewish community in 2023 is older than the general population in the eight-county area. Twenty-eight percent of Jewish adults are above the age of 65, compared to 21% of adults overall in the eight-county area. The median age of Jewish adults in the eight-county area is 49, which currently mirrors the median age of Jewish adults nationally. While the median age for most counties in the study area is near fifty, both Brooklyn and the Bronx stand out as outliers, with median ages of 42 and 59, respectively.

New York has long been a hub of diversity in the United States. Since the earliest days of the region’s organized Jewish community, the city and its surroundings have absorbed waves of Jewish immigration from across Europe, the Ottoman Empire, countries of the Middle East and North Africa, and most recently the Former Soviet Union. For the purposes of comparison with the U.S. Census and to ensure representativeness of the study population, this study measured race and ethnicity using the categories established by the federal Office of Management and Budget, which standardizes six racial categories alongside one category of Hispanic ethnicity. 

Outside of the census classifications around race and ethnicity, the Jewish community has its own ethnic and religious traditions. Most Jewish adults in New York identify as exclusively Ashkenazi (75%), following practices formed in Central and Eastern Europe.⁹ A substantial minority (10%), however, identify at least in part as Sephardic or Mizrachi, with ancestry from Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East.¹⁰

Jewish Traditions of Jewish Adults

Many Jews, however, do not fit neatly within the prevailing American racial categories.¹¹ For example, people with origins in the Middle East and North Africa are officially tabulated as white by the census, despite their unique experiences and history as a minority culture in the United States. Likewise, many of those with Hispanic origin reject the distinction between race and ethnicity and identify solely with the Hispanic or Latino label.¹² This is true in our study as well: among the 7% of respondents who identify as Hispanic, most identify as white, but about one in seven indicated they were “other” and provided no additional race selection.

Different combinations and ways of integrating race, ethnicity, and Jewish tradition can lead to different counts of Jewish diversity. Rather than staking a claim to one definition of Jewish diversity, we instead offer several approaches to understanding and counting Jewish diversity in New York:

1. Hispanic, Black, Asian, multiracial, and other Jews

Twelve percent of Jewish adults in the eight-county area identify as non-white (Black, Asian, Multiracial, and other) and/or Hispanic. This includes the 7% of Jews who did not identify as white in our study, plus an additional 5% who identified as white and Hispanic. This share of non-white and/or Hispanic Jews is higher in New York (12%) than it is in the U.S. as a whole (8%).

2. Hispanic, Black, Asian, multiracial, and other Jews + Sephardic and Mizrachi Jews

A different, broader measure of diversity includes both census racial/ethnic categories with Jewish ethnicity. In 2023, about 17% of Jews identify as Hispanic, Black, Asian, other or multiple race groups and/or Sephardic/Mizrachi in the eight-county area compared to 14% of Jewish adults nationally.

3. Self-identification

Finally, this survey asked if respondents identify as a person of color. When asked, only 3% of Jewish adults identified as people of color. Of those, nearly half (49%) were Black or Hispanic. Twenty percent of the people of color in the Jewish community, however, were non-Hispanic and White, indicating that many Jews do not identify in terms of the standardized census racial categories. Regarding Jewish traditions, more than half of Jewish adults who identify as people of color identify as Ashkenazi.

Race/Ethnicity Among Jewish Adults Who Identify as People of Color

Jewish Tradition Among Jewish Adults Who Identify as People of Color

Identification With Sephardic and Mizrachi Traditions 

(Among Sephardic + Mizrachi Jewish Adults)

Nearly half of the Sephardic and Mizrachi Jewish adults in the eight-county area do not identify with one of the five sub-traditions that we measured in this study. Of those within the Sephardic and Mizrachi community who identified with a specific sub-tradition, the largest group are the Syrian Jews (17%), followed by Persian (15%), Bukharian (12%), North African (12%), and Iraqi Jews (7%).

Sephardic and Mizrachi Jews are not evenly distributed across the eight-county area. Instead, they are concentrated in certain neighborhoods, mainly in Brooklyn and Queens. For example, over a third of Jewish adults in Great Neck identify as Sephardic or Mizrachi (37%), while a third of Jewish adults in Gravesend (33%) and nearly 30% in Forest Hills similarly identify with these traditions.

Birthplace of Jewish Adults

Most Jewish adults in the eight-county area were born in the New York area (63%), while another 20% were born elsewhere in the United States. Only 17% of Jewish adults were born outside of the United States, reflecting the conclusion of the waves of Jewish migration, largely from the Former Soviet Union, that shaped New York Jewry in the late twentieth century.

Even among those born in the U.S., a substantial number are children of immigrants. About one in three Jewish adults in the eight-county area are second-generation immigrants, with at least one parent who was born outside of the United States.

Origin Among Foreign-Born Jewish Adults

Just under half of all foreign-born Jewish adults in New York were born in the Former Soviet Union. Fifteen percent of foreign-born Jewish adults were born in Western Europe and 11% were born in Israel. About 17% of foreign-born Jewish adults were born in countries outside of the Former Soviet Union, Europe, Israel, and Canada. Of those born in another non-U.S. country, place of birth includes more than 45 countries with the largest shares born in South Africa (15%) and Iran (14%). 

Russian-Speaking Jews and RSJ Household Estimates

In 2023, the eight-county area is home to about 90,000 Russian-speaking Jewish (RSJ) adults and 72,000 Russian-speaking Jewish households.¹³ Russian-speaking Jewish adults are heavily concentrated in Brooklyn, and a quarter of all RSJ households are in the southern Brooklyn areas of Coney Island, Brighton Beach, and Sheepshead Bay.

Age of Russian-Speaking Jewish Adults

Russian-speaking Jews are more heavily represented among older Jewish adults. About one in three Russian-speaking Jewish adults are 65 or older, compared to 28% of Jewish adults in general.

Holocaust Survivors

In 2023, there are an estimated 13,000 Holocaust survivors living in Jewish households in the eight-county area, 92% of whom live in New York City. The largest number of these individuals live in Brooklyn, accounting for 65% of the total number of survivors in the eight-county area.

Recently, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany released a 2024 report with estimates of the number of Holocaust survivors nationally and in New York State. The Claims Conference estimates of Holocaust survivors in the eight-county area closely resemble the counts produced by this study. The Claims Conference counts about 14,700 survivors statewide, of whom 14,000 are estimated to live in the eight-county area.¹⁵

LGBTQ Jewish Households

In 2023, about 14 percent of Jewish households in the eight-county area include a member who identifies as LGBTQ, which is similar to national estimates from other research studies. Among all Jewish adults in the eight-county area, 9% identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer and about 1.3% identify as transgender, a number that also roughly aligns with national estimates.¹⁶ Among Jewish adults nationally, nine percent identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual.¹⁷ Jewish adults under 50 in this study identify as LGBTQ at more than four times the rate of those over 50, potentially reflecting the growing acceptance and prevalence of LGBTQ identity, especially among young people.

Jewish Denomination (Households)

From 2002 to today, three trends have defined the Jewish denominational landscape in New York: 

1. A stability in the share of Orthodox Jewish households.
2. A decline in the share of Conservative and Reform households.
3. A growth in the share of households among those who eschew a denominational identity.

The share of Orthodox households has remained consistent at about 20% since 2002. At the same time, the proportion of Jewish adults who identify as Conservative or Reform has continued its steady, decades-long decline. Currently, 35% of Jewish households identify as either Conservative or Reform, down from 42% in 2011. Finally, the percentage of Jewish households with no or some other denominational identification has grown substantially over the past few decades, reaching 47% in 2023, a 10-percentage-point increase since 2011. 

The decline in the share of New York Jews who identify as Conservative and Reform and the growth in the share of the denominationally unaffiliated over the past decade marks a departure from national Jewish denominational trends. The recent 2020 Pew Study of Jewish Americans found that the denominational identities of U.S. Jews nationally have remained consistent since their last study in 2013, with the shares of Conservative, Reform and denominationally unaffiliated Jews remaining largely unchanged over the past decade.²⁰ The New York eight-county area is much more densely Jewish than any other area in the United States and offers more Jewish engagement opportunities outside of synagogue life than other parts of the country. As a result, it is possible that New York Jews may not rely on their synagogues and denominational identities to the same extent as Jews who live in other areas of the country. 

It is also important to note that these denominational identities, while closely correlated with respondents’ congregational affiliations, have resonance beyond synagogue membership, and that the percent of Jewish adults who identify with one of these denomination is higher than the percentage who are synagogue members or attend synagogue regularly.

Jewish Denomination by Age (Jewish Adults)

Denominational affiliation also varies by age, particularly for Orthodox. While only 14% of Jewish adults aged 65 and over identify as Orthodox, more than a third of Jewish adults aged 18-29 identify as Orthodox (37%). However, among those who do not denominationally identify, there is limited variation by age, suggesting that the growth of this population has taken place among all age groups.

Jewish Denomination by Denomination in Childhood (Jewish Adults)

Among each of the three main denominational identities, most people who currently identify with a particular denomination were also raised in that denomination. This association is most strongly pronounced among Orthodox adults, of whom nearly nine in ten (87%) were also raised Orthodox, but is also true among large shares of Conservative and Reform adults. The majority of denominational switching is observed among those who currently identify as Reform, of whom about a quarter (26%) were raised Conservative. 

Among those who do not identify with one of the three denominational branches, nearly two thirds were raised outside the three main denominations, while smaller shares were raised Conservative and Reform (17% and 16%), and 4% were raised Orthodox.