JOEL KOTKIN: Where have all the Jews gone?
Just as in the past, American Jews are moving away from urban cores – where violence and now anti-Semitism are more obvious. Historian Arthur Hertzberg estimated that between the end of the Second World War and 1956, one-third of all Jews left the urban centers for the suburbs. When you think of Jewish communities, particularly outside orthodoxy, you think not of the Lower East Side but Long Island and Westchester. In LA, Boyle Heights has been supplanted first by the San Fernando Valley and increasingly the Conejo Valley even further from Downtown. In Greater Baltimore today, three-fourths of all Jews live in the suburbs.
The same forces – crime and rising anti-Semitism – have also prompted many Jews to move to the South. Long seen as too conservative and Christian fundamentalist, the South is now the ‘it’ place for Jews, both in terms of basic safety and economic opportunity. Demographer Ira Sheskin notes that while the north-east’s share of US Jews has dropped from 68 per cent in 1955 to 41 per cent today, the South’s share of the US Jewish population has soared from a mere eight per cent in 1955 to 24 per cent. The ‘hot’ cities for Jewish growth include Dallas, Houston and Atlanta, as well as Miami.
More and more Jewish young people are choosing colleges on similar grounds. For generations, the dream of Jewish parents was to send their offspring to the Ivy League, or the great public universities like Berkeley or UCLA. But today, the leading destination for Jewish students is the University of Florida, with the University of Central Florida ranking third.
The reason for this shift is simple. Jewish young people are safer in the South. According to one study ranking universities’ level of hostility toward Jewish students, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania and three University of California campuses were among the most hostile. The least hostile environments included Tulane in New Orleans, Washington University in St Louis and five colleges in Florida.
Jews may be in the depths of despair, as their havens throughout the West sometimes seem to be turning into an anti-Zionist, Jew-hating hellscape. But they have hope, too. After all, Jews have survived outside Israel for two millennia by adapting, shifting their locales and their political loyalties to fit changing realities. We may be horrified by recent events. But in the face of those who yearn for our destruction, we will persevere.
And it’s exposed the absurdity of Colorado’s priorities:
