Hanukkah starts this week, and Jewish people across the world will celebrate the holy holiday. Jewish people represent less than 1% of the population in both the United States and Canada, but that can mean different things, as you can be ethnically Jewish, religiously Jewish, or a combination of both. So, who is celebrating, and where do they live?
First, it is important to break down how we get to these numbers. In the United States, the number of Jewish people comes from those indicating that they are members of a synagogue, so it could be underestimated, especially of those that are ethnically Jewish. In Canada, religion is asked in the census, and is therefore a mix of religious Jewish people and ethnically Jewish people. In the United States, there are just over 2 million Jewish people, about 0.61% of the population. In Canada, there are just about 325,000 Jewish people, 0.82% of the population. The map below shows where these people live.
As you can tell from the map, this is a very concentrated population in both countries. Over half of the Jewish population in Canada and the United States lives in just four metropolitan areas – New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, and Montreal. The maps below show the metro areas of Los Angeles and Montreal to show how those areas are dispersed.
Of course, we wanted to see the top metropolitan areas where Jewish people live, and also wanted to see if there were any surprises in other areas. Below is a chart of the top 20 metro areas across both countries, which correlates with the first map of both countries. While they didn’t make the top 20 metro areas, Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts boasts 5% of their population as Jewish, and interesting enough, nearly 3% of the Burlington, Iowa population is Jewish. On the other end of the spectrum, Ottawa, Quebec has only 21 Jewish people total, which represents 0% of their population.