Los Angeles' Jewish community--the third-largest in the world--now numbers just over 519,000, with steady migration from around the nation and the world offsetting a relatively low birthrate, according to the first census of the area's Jewish population in nearly two decades.
While migration has helped keep the area's Jewish population steady since the late 1970s, the Jewish community's center of gravity has increasingly moved westward over the past 20 years.
While longtime Jewish neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley and on the Westside continue to have the biggest concentrations of Jewish residents, some of the fastest-growing areas of Jewish population are now in the Conejo Valley and Simi Valley in eastern Ventura County and the South Bay, according to the study.
The population of the Fairfax District, for instance, slipped from 75,000 in 1979 to 55,000 in 1997. Over the same period, the total population in the west San Fernando Valley more than doubled, from 19,000 to 40,000, while that of the South Bay tripled, from 5,000 to 17,000. Just across the Ventura County line, Simi Valley and the Conejo Valley now boast 38,000 Jews. In 1979, the Jewish populations in those Ventura County areas were so small that the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles did not bother to take a count.
The population survey was conducted in 1997 by the Jewish Federation, but not released until now. It covers the area served by the Jewish Federation, which is most of Los Angeles County and a portion of eastern Ventura County. The population count of 519,151 is up 3.6% from the 500,869 in the 1979 survey.
The totals do not include Jews in the Long Beach and San Gabriel Valley areas, which are served by separate Jewish federations, nor Jews in Riverside and Orange counties. Including those communities would increase the area's Jewish population to an estimated 590,000.
While the number of Jews has stabilized, the general Los Angeles population has continued to grow--meaning the proportion of Jews in the Los Angeles area is now 5.5%, down from 7% in 1980.
The survey paints a portrait of a Jewish community that is better educated and wealthier than the region's non-Jewish populations. It is also graying, with one in five Jews in the region now older than 65--nearly twice the level found in 1979.
Perhaps partly because of the aging of the population, the percentage of area Jews affiliated with a synagogue has also gone up. The study found 34% of area Jews belong to a synagogue, up from 25% in 1979. The figure is lower than the 41% of Jews nationwide who are synagogue members, but is similar to the 38% of non-Jews in West Coast states who report in surveys that they belong to a church.
Among the major branches of Judaism, the number of Orthodox households declined from 5.2% to 4.3% of the overall population. The proportion of Conservative households also dropped, from 33.9% to 28.2%.
Reform households grew, from 37.2% to 39.9%. Reconstructionists also saw an increase, from less than 1% to 2%.
Unique among major American religious groups, Jews in most large American cities subject themselves to such surveys on a recurring basis. Almost always they are conducted by regional Jewish federations, which serve in each metropolitan area as an umbrella fund-raising agency for an extensive social service network.
The primary aim of the census is to provide facts and figures for those who decide which charities and community projects receive money the Jewish community raises for charity each year.
In 1997, the Los Angeles federation raised $42.7 million; more than half the money is used locally, the rest in efforts to aid Jews in Israel and nearly five dozen other countries.
But the census also serves a secondary need--a particularly Jewish one. As the authors of the survey put it in an introduction to their results, Jews "have an intense curiosity and a strongly felt need to know who we are as a Jewish community."
"I would say who we are and where we're going," adds Gary Greenebaum, a former member of the Los Angeles Police Commission and a rabbi who serves as head of the local office of the American Jewish Committee.
"My sense is that we conduct these surveys as much out of fear as curiosity. We worry whether our numbers are declining or if we're assimilating away."
Along those lines, the survey found that in addition to the "core" population of 519,151 Jews, there are another 70,668 non-Jews who live in Jewish households and 29,154 people who have Jewish backgrounds but either practice other religions or are being raised in other religions.
While those two groups are not included in the survey's analysis of the Jewish community, experts say it would be foolhardy to ignore them.
"That's a number that needs to be taken seriously," said Daniel Gordis, a rabbi and a dean at the University of Judaism in Bel-Air. "One in six people is in at least a partially Jewish household in this survey. That would have been unthinkable 75 years ago."
