If someone asked a New York resident in the 1950s how many people he would expect to live in New York sixty years from now, most would say I probably won't say 20 million. Among these 20 million, it is even more unfathomable that approximately 1.7 million Jews reside in New York City, making New York home to over a quarter of the Jews living in America today. However, among these Jews, how many consider themselves religious? Considering that today only about 10 percent of Jews classify themselves as observant, how and when did this substantial dispersion occur? The post-World War II period in America presents many different factors and pressures on Jews coming to America during this time. Although many Jews believed that America would be the best place to preserve and rebuild the Jewish presence in the world, democracy and economic opportunity had negative effects on many Jews. The rate of acculturation and assimilation of many of these Jews proved too high, resulting in the emergence of two types of Jews during this time period. Pressures that included the shift to suburbanization, secular education in professional careers, hidden discrimination in the labor market, and compelling American culture ultimately caused the emergence of the passive and often embarrassed "American Jew"; the active “Jewish American” or distinctly “Jewish” citizen, makes Judaism an active and engaging component of who and what they are in this new American culture. For a Jew coming to America from Europe, starting over was a defining point. After losing six million Jews in the Holocaust, the United States of America served as one of the safest havens to re-establish a strong Jewish presence. New York City, April 28, 2014. Barry Chiswick, “The Labor Market Status of American Jews: Patterns and Determinants,” in AJYB, 1985, 145. Calvin Goldscheider, Jewish Continuity and Change (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986) , 29.Arthur Hertzberg, The Jews in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 321.Alvin Chenkin, “Jewish Population in the United States, 1957,” in AJYB, 1958, Appendix Frederick M. Binder, David M. Reimers, All Nations Under Heaven, An Ethnic and Racial History of New York City (New York: Columbia University Press), 206. Samuel C. Heilman, Portrait of American Jews, the Last Half of the 20th Century (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1998), 4.Elliot Cohen, “An Act of Affirmation,” Commentary 1 (November 1945), 3.New York Times, June 11, 2012New York Times, October. 2, 2013