North American Jewish Communities

American Jews or Jewish Americans are Americans who are Jewish, whether by religion, ethnicity, culture, or nationality. Today the Jewish community in the United States consists primarily of Ashkenazi Jews, who descend from diaspora Jewish populations of Central and Eastern Europe and comprise about 90–95% of the American Jewish population.

During the colonial era, prior to the mass immigration of Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews who arrived via Portugal represented the bulk of America’s then-small Jewish population, and while their descendants are a minority today, they, along with an array of other Jewish communities, represent the remainder of American Jews, including other more recent Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, Beta Israel-Ethiopian Jews, various other ethnically Jewish communities, as well as a smaller number of converts to Judaism. The American Jewish community manifests a wide range of Jewish cultural traditions, encompassing the full spectrum of Jewish religious observance.

Depending on religious definitions and varying population data, the United States has the largest or second largest Jewish community in the world, after Israel. As of 2020, the American Jewish population is estimated at 6.4 million people, accounting for 1.9% of the total US population. This includes 4.9 million adults who identify their religion as Jewish, 1.2 million Jewish adults who identify with no religion, and 1.6 million Jewish children.