Every congregation in the U.S. Synagogue Census, from the first Jewish arrivals to today.
Press Play to watch congregations appear year by year, starting with the first English colony in 1585. Playback pauses on each commentary note. Slow, Medium and Fast change the pace, and Previous note and Next note jump between notes.
Drag the slider under the map to any year. Click a diamond on the slider to jump to an event in American history, or one of the colored stripes in the immigration box to jump to an era. The camera follows the spread of congregations; uncheck Follow the spread to see the whole country.
Each dot is a congregation, placed where it is today and colored by its affiliation today, as in the legend under the map. A ring means it had closed or merged by the year shown. Sand and orange shading mark English and Dutch or Swedish colonies, and gray marks states. Curved lines from the right edge are immigration routes, colored by wave and origin, and circled labels point to what the current note discusses. Smaller dots that appear all at once in 2025 are congregations with no known founding year. Hover over a dot for its name and founding year.
Bars count the congregations founded in each five-year span. Their colors, and the stripe beneath them, show the waves of Jewish immigration; the dashed stretch before 1654 covers the years when Jews came only one at a time.
Above the line, each congregation on the map is a dot stacked by founding year. Below it, congregations that closed (solid dot) or merged (ring) are stacked by the year it happened. Shaded bands mark the immigration eras. Pick a group with the buttons above the chart to see it alone, and check Filter the map too to fade the other groups on the map. Hover a dot for its name, or click it to set the map to that year.
Click a group in the list beside the circle to show it alone there and in the chart above. Replay runs the animation again.
שארית ישראל Shearith Israel, “Remnant of Israel”
Founded by 23 refugees from Recife, Brazil, and Jacob Barsimson from Amsterdam. For 171 years it was the only congregation in New York City.
This list follows the year shown on the map.
| Year | Congregation | Place | Denomination |
|---|
The census is built mostly from congregations that exist today, plus some that closed or merged. So the map shows where today's congregations began, and it undercounts earlier eras: thousands of immigrant-era synagogues that have since closed are missing.
Colors show each congregation's affiliation today, and dots sit where the congregation is today, at its ZIP or city center. Many congregations began downtown under another affiliation and later moved or changed movements. Founding years follow the workbook. A row-by-row web research pass that began in October 2026 is checking every year (2,791 of 2,979 census rows so far). A congregation's year is the year it claims for itself and a Chabad center's is the year the center opened; census years that turned out to be tax-exemption dates, corporate filings, building years or another congregation's year were cleared. Congregations formed by merger appear at the year they claim.
Immigration routes enter from the right edge of the map during each wave and end at the main ports of arrival. Each wave’s color recalls its main source: orange for Iberia and Dutch Brazil, Prussian blue for the German lands, crimson for the Russian Empire, gray for the closed-door years, teal for postwar survivors, red for the Soviet Union and coral for the former Soviet Union. Iran (green), Israel (blue) and Latin America (light blue) keep their own colors. Line widths only roughly indicate the size of each stream.
Groups come from each congregation’s denomination label and name in the census. Chabad (yellow) and other Chassidic courts (near-black, or near-white in dark mode) are split from Orthodox, as are congregations labeled Modern Orthodox (light blue). Sephardic and Mizrahi (red-orange) covers Spanish and Portuguese, Syrian, Persian and Bukharian congregations whatever their movement; Ashkenazi congregations that pray in Nusach Sefard are not included. Reconstructionist (magenta), Renewal and Humanistic (pink) and Independent (dark teal, including nondenominational, pluralistic, havurah and traditional congregations) are split from Other, which now mostly holds congregations with no affiliation recorded. The few yellow dots before 1940 are older congregations that later affiliated with Chabad.
Founding years for Chassidic congregations were searched separately in October 2026. Of 221 undated Chassidic congregations, mostly small shtiebels in Brooklyn and Rockland and Orange counties, only two had a founding year stated in a source, so most remain off the map; about forty more have a likely year from an anniversary, a rebbe’s arrival or a tax-exemption date, recorded as a proposal in the workbook.
Colonies and states use today's borders. Before 1776 each of the thirteen colonies is shaded from its first lasting English, Dutch or Swedish settlement (Roanoke, abandoned by 1590, shows only for 1585 to 1590), and New York, New Jersey and Delaware turn from Dutch or Swedish to English in 1664. The thirteen become states in 1776, and every other state appears in its year of admission. Land that belonged to an existing state is shaded with it: West Virginia with Virginia until 1863, Kentucky with Virginia from 1776 until 1792, and Maine with Massachusetts from 1652 until 1820. Land that was not yet a colony or a state is shown only as a pale silhouette, with no borders.
Jews who came before the first congregation are shown with thin gray routes. Some are well documented (Joachim Gans, Solomon Franco, Jacob Barsimson); others, such as Elias Legarde in Virginia and possible conversos in Spanish New Mexico, rest on debated evidence.
Sources for the colonial era: National Park Service on Joachim Gans; Elias Legarde; Solomon Franco in Boston; Jacob Barsimson; Jews in New Amsterdam; Jewish Women's Archive, 1654 fact sheet; Archives of Maryland on Jacob Lumbrozo; Jeshuat Israel, Newport; the Mill Street synagogue; Mickve Israel, Savannah; the debate over crypto-Jews in New Mexico; Temple Shalom, Wheeling and Temple Israel, Charleston, West Virginia.
Sources for the immigration notes and commentary: Jewish Virtual Library population estimates; Library of Congress, From Haven to Home; Jewish Women's Archive; USHMM on refugees and displaced persons; Mark Tolts on emigration from the former Soviet Union; J. Weekly on Iranian Jews; Rodeph Shalom history; Rockdale Temple; Chabad house. Population estimates before 1900 are ranges, and later figures use changing definitions.
Ḥeshbon
חשבון, an accounting
Evidence where anecdote has been doing the work: what a Jewish household or a Jewish institution actually pays, and who decides. Most of these datasets did not exist until a piece needed them. Each one is published alongside the work, with its sources and its limits, so you can check the arithmetic yourself.
The figures here are estimates built from public filings, published price pages and survey samples, and every piece states its own sources, sample sizes and limits in place. Tax filings run a year or more behind and get restated, posted prices change without notice, and a percentage describes the sample observed rather than the whole field. Several rest on small denominators or on voluntary reporting, noted where they appear. Where a number is our own arithmetic rather than a published one, the piece says so and shows the working.
Nothing here audits an individual institution or a person, and naming an organization is not a finding about its conduct. Ḥeshbon is independent of every body named on this site. None has reviewed, approved or funded the work, and where a ranking uses another organization's published figures as an input, that organization has not endorsed the result.
This is research rather than financial, tax, legal or immigration advice, and no one should decide about their own money on these pages alone. Israeli figures are current as of August 2026, at roughly three shekels to the dollar, and Israeli tax and benefit rules move faster than that. Corrections are made on the piece itself and noted there. If something here is wrong, write and it gets fixed.
© 2026 Ḥeshbon, Center on Data and Jewish Life. Research, writing and charts by Gavriel Brown.