Jews, Jewish Institutions, and the Construction of Identity in Changing American Cities and Urban Neighborhoods

Abstract

The restructuring of the American economy in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has implications for the local geographies and social structure of Jewish life. Jewish urban population growth has been associated with the expansion of professional workplaces in such fields as higher education, medicine, and finance in the American world cities of the global professional service economy. As well, Orthodox populations concentrated in urban neighborhoods have grown. These changes have been taking place in the urban cores of metropolitan areas with large Jewish populations and also in some with smaller ones. Data from 20 local Jewish community studies indicate an increase in urban Jewish population, often at a faster rate than in the federation area as a whole, and in many cases, these indicate that Jews have been becoming a larger fraction of total local urban population. Available data from various sources allow a preliminary exploration of the emergent significance of the increased urban Jewish presence for the social construction of identity. The exploration considers neighborhood relations in Orthodox enclaves, the values and preference of highly educated professionals, cosmopolitanism as an outlook and an urban neighborhood characteristic, the role of urban Jewish institutions in identity construction, and economic challenges facing residents and institutions in thriving urban centers. Areas of future research are suggested.