Jews comprise approximately 9 percent of New York City's population, making the Jewish community the largest in the world outside of Israel. , 1.1million Jews lived in the five boroughs of New York City, and over 1.75million Jews lived in New York State overall.
Judaism is the second-largest religion practiced in New York City, with approximately 1.6 million adherents as of 2022, representing the largest Jewish community of any city in the world, greater than the combined totals of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Nearly half of the city’s Jews live in Brooklyn. The ethno-religious population makes up 18.4% of the city and its religious demographic makes up 8%. The first recorded Jewish settler was Jacob Barsimson, who arrived in August 1654 on a passport from the Dutch West India Company. Following the assassination of Alexander II of Russia, for which many blamed "the Jews", the 36 years beginning in 1881 experienced the largest wave of Jewish immigration to the United States. In 2012, the largest Jewish denominations were Orthodox, Haredi, and Conservative Judaism. Reform Jewish communities are prevalent through the area. Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan is the largest Reform synagogue in the world. Jews have immigrated to New York City since the first settlement in Dutch New Amsterdam in 1654, most notably at the end of the 19th century to the early 20th century, when the Jewish population rose from about 80,000 in 1880 to 1.5million in 1920. The large Jewish population has led to a significant impact on the culture of New York City. After many decades of decline in the 20th century, the Jewish population of New York City has seen a sharp increase in the 21st century, owing to the high birth rate of the Hasidic and Orthodox communities.
Population
, about 1.6million residents of New York City, or about 18% of its residents, were Jewish.
There are over 2million Jews in the New York metropolitan area, making it the second largest metropolitan Jewish community in the world, after the Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area in Israel (however, Tel Aviv proper has a smaller population of Jews than New York City proper, making New York City the largest community of Jews in the world within a city proper). New York City's Jewish population is more than the combined Jewish populations of Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., and more than Jerusalem and Tel Aviv combined.
The number of Jews in New York City soared throughout the beginning of the 20th century and reached a peak of 2million in the 1950s, when Jews constituted one-quarter of the city's population. New York City's Jewish population then began to decline because of low fertility rates and migration to suburbs and other states, particularly California and Florida. Though there were small Jewish communities throughout the United States by the 1920s, New York City was home to about 45% of the entire population of American Jews. A new wave of Ashkenazi and Bukharian Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union began arriving in the 1980s and 1990s. Sephardic Jews, including Syrian Jews, have also lived in New York City since the late 19th century. Russian, Lithuanian, and Polish Jews immigrated during the mid-19th century as well, in large numbers. There have also been a sizeable amount of Mountain Jews from Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus in Brooklyn as well as Bukharian Jews from Uzbekistan and greater Central Asia in Forest Hills, Queens. Many Jews, including the newer immigrants, have settled in Queens, south Brooklyn, and the Bronx, where at present most live in middle-class neighborhoods. The number of Jews is especially high in Brooklyn, where 561,000 residents—one out of four inhabitants—is Jewish. , there are 1.1million Jews in New York City. Borough Park, known for its large Orthodox Jewish population, had 27.9 births per 1,000 residents in 2015, making it the neighborhood with the city's highest birth rate. However, the most rapidly growing community of American Orthodox Jews is located in Rockland County and the Hudson Valley of New York, including the communities of Monsey, Monroe, New Square, Kiryas Joel, and Ramapo. Within the greater New York metropolitan area, many rapidly growing Orthodox Jewish communities have made their home in New Jersey, particularly in Lakewood and surrounding Ocean County, where Beth Medrash Govoha, the world's largest yeshiva outside Israel, is located.