Oy Gollus

A new report to be published has some interesting Gollus demographics.

According to the newspaper linked above,

But the most startling evidence of Palm Beach County's transformation into one of the world's leading centers of Jewish life will come next month, when the county's two Jewish federations — one based in Boca, the other in West Palm — reveal the results of a population study.

It's expected to show that there are 254,300 Jews in the county, representing more than 20 percent of the overall population of about 1.2 million.

That means one out of every five local residents is Jewish.

And that means Palm Beach County tops every metropolitan area in the country by a wide margin. Even the closest rival, metropolitan New York City, has a Jewish population that represents only 9.7 percent of the overall population.

"To find a more densely populated Jewish community, you'd have to go to Israel," says Richard Jacobs, vice president of community planning for the Boca-based Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County.

Yes, you'd have to go to Israel. But what did this Jew do?

Yet the frenetic growth of the Jewish population means the county is a place where newcomers, observant or not, can readily establish themselves. Rather than being deeply entrenched, the county's Jewish community is very much about the here and now.

This appeal helped lure Jonathan Marriott, an Orthodox Jew from London, to Boca Raton.

Marriott, his wife and two children moved to Boca a year-and-a-half ago, and in that short time, he has landed on the board of his temple — the Boca Raton Synagogue — and his wife has become PTA president of the Jewish school their children attend.

"You try and do that somewhere else, it would take generations," he says.

Read the entire report (here, click on this to avoid going back to the top. why work?).

Oy, gollus.

P.S. And did you read about Kemp Hill near Washington, DC?