Looking at the diversity of San Diego's Jewish community

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:01]May is Jewish [music] American Heritage Month and all month long we are looking at San Diego's Jewish community. Now, a lot of this reporting comes from my participation this year in the Karsh Fellowship. It was the nation's first and only fellowship dedicated to journalism about Jewish topics. Over three weekends in LA, New York, and Washington D.C., I spent time learning how to cover issues from anti-Semitism to religion with more depth and more nuance. And as part of that, I wanted to dig into San Diego's Jewish community to see how diverse its people and its culture really are.

[00:00:34]It's wonderful. The foods are different, the way they say the prayers are different, the way they think about the holidays are different, and they all bring their own, you know, rich cultural traditions and history with them, which makes for a really exciting blend of different practices and and and cultural and religious, both. That's Heidi Gantwerk from the Jewish Federation.

[00:00:57]Their most recent survey of the community found 100,000 people in San Diego who identify as Jewish. That's about 2% of the total population. Of those, 18% identify as Hispanic or person of color. Nearly a quarter regularly speak a language other than English at home, and 17% of Jewish households include someone born outside of the United States. As far as religious affiliation, half of Jews in San Diego said they don't identify with any specific denomination. More than half of Jewish couples are in interfaith relationships. And some other numbers, 16% identify as LGBTQ plus, 30% have lived here less than a decade, and the Jewish population skews a little older than San Diego in general. 27% are above the age of 65. But beyond all these numbers, the people tell the story. Take Or Shalom synagogue, for example. They just celebrated 100 years in their historic building in Banker's Hill, and they've got members from all over the world, including some who crossed the border to go to services. One member told me her congregation's diversity is what makes it feel like home. What does it say about San Diego that it has attracted but also nurtures such a rich diverse Jewish population?

[00:02:12]The fact that we're able to hold a multitude of ways of being, ways of expressing, and ways of really holding each other is amazing and I really think that goes to the heart of what the US is traditionally about. It's really like a coming together of a lot of different things to make this really sweet, I don't know, melody of friendships that you wouldn't otherwise really find.

[00:02:42]And there are a lot of other areas we could focus on in the numbers, socioeconomics, levels of education, philanthropy, but when I talk to people in the Jewish community about this, the general sense that I get is that San Diego's Jewish community is just as diverse and beautiful as all of San Diego.