Why does, by percentage, the US have more Jewish people living there than many other western countries do (Europe, UK)?

[Ottawa2011]

Originally Posted by markovian process

I noticed that proportionally, by religion stats, there are fewer people who are Jewish in the UK, European countries, even Canada and Australia. In absolute size of course, the US is the biggest western country and would have the most immigrants, but by proportion in the US, Jewish population is close to 2%, and in most other western countries, be they Canada, Australia, France, UK etc., they are less than 1% and closer to 0.5%

Jewish population by country - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Did the United States just have a much larger population from earlier waves of immigration, Ellis Island and earlier?

Did Jews leaving Europe for historical reasons cause such a demographic shift?

In the US, Judaism is the second largest religion, while in many other western countries it is Islam (presumably by recent immigration), but also even in Australia and Canada, Buddhists or Hindus' populations are bigger than the Jewish ones there.

Is the larger percentage of Jewish people in the US than in other western nations a product of 20th century immigration? How far back does it go?

Canada has a sizeable Jewish community in Toronto and Montreal. The Montreal community is by far the older and more historic one. Leonard Cohen, Mordecai Richler, the Bronfman family, are some of the well-known old timers from Montreal's Jewish community.

I'm under the impression that many of the Torontonian Jewish residents moved there from Montreal, actually. So for a lot of them, the roots are in Montreal. The rest of Canada's major cities have their own, somewhat smaller Jewish communities. But the largest percentage by far would be living in Toronto these days.

Canada's east coast port cities (Halifax, Saint John, etc.) once had quite large Jewish communities relative to their size, around the turn of the 20th century. This was the peak of the migration of Jewish people from the small Jewish villages (shtetl) of eastern Europe, mainly from Russia, Poland, and the Baltic countries. They stayed in the port cities for a period of time, but eventually moved on to larger cities with larger Jewish communities (Boston, NYC, Montreal).

The Jewish diaspora in North America is pretty fascinating. It's a long, long history. I've always wanted to visit Ellis Island. Maybe someday.

[Juice Malone]

Jews in Central Asia are the most interesting to me. Some groups have very ancient roots in that region.

[saxonwold]

Originally Posted by markovian process

I noticed that proportionally, by religion stats, there are fewer people who are Jewish in the UK, European countries, even Canada and Australia. In absolute size of course, the US is the biggest western country and would have the most immigrants, but by proportion in the US, Jewish population is close to 2%, and in most other western countries, be they Canada, Australia, France, UK etc., they are less than 1% and closer to 0.5%

Jewish population by country - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Did the United States just have a much larger population from earlier waves of immigration, Ellis Island and earlier?

Did Jews leaving Europe for historical reasons cause such a demographic shift?

In the US, Judaism is the second largest religion, while in many other western countries it is Islam (presumably by recent immigration), but also even in Australia and Canada, Buddhists or Hindus' populations are bigger than the Jewish ones there.

Is the larger percentage of Jewish people in the US than in other western nations a product of 20th century immigration? How far back does it go?

Due to the fact that Jewish people had endure intense discrimination, racism, genocides in Europe. Thus many fled to a land where freedom was promised to them!