California could become the first state to list ‘Jewish’ as an ethnicity

Citing data from the Pew Research Center, a statement from the coalition noted that more than 50% of American Jews describe ancestry and culture as the core of being Jewish, while only 36% choose religion.

By Sharon Udasin, JTA

California could become the first state in the nation to consider “Jewish” an ethnic and racial identity, rather than just a religious affiliation.

A groundbreaking bill, which was recently approved by the State Senate and is awaiting a vote in the Assembly, would expand California’s legal definition of ethnicity “to include Jewish identity” in demographic data collection.

In other words, state agency forms would need to include a “Jewish” category in questions that allow for voluntary disclosures of ethnicity or race.

If the bill, SB 1387, goes on to become law, this requirement would also apply to public entities ranging from public schools to unemployment offices to prisons.

But the clock is ticking, as Monday, Aug. 31, is the final day of the year that California lawmakers can pass legislation. The governor then has until Sept. 30 to sign bills into laws or veto them.

The ethnicity legislation has been a priority among many Jewish groups across the Gold Rush state, who believe that Jewish peoplehood should be tied to far more than just religion—and that the law should reflect this unique relationship.

“When state law misrepresents us and puts us in this box of just a religion, there are a number of implications,” said David Bocarsly, CEO of Jewish California, an umbrella coalition for dozens of organizations that sponsored the bill.

“As antisemitism continues to rise, part of that can be attributed to misinformation and misunderstanding,” Bocarsly added.

Proponents of the SB 1387 bill achieved a critical milestone two weeks ago when the State Assembly’s Appropriations Committee passed it to the Assembly floor, where a vote has yet to occur.

If the Assembly approves the legislation, it then must return to the State Senate for a “concurrence” vote on amendments before heading to the governor’s desk.

The bill’s architect, State Sen. Henry Stern, is the son of actor Daniel Stern, known for his role as Marv the burglar in Home Alone.

Stern, who has represented the Malibu region for the past decade, has been a driving force behind bills focused on fighting climate change and improving Holocaust education.

He co-authored the legislation with three Democratic lawmakers who, like Stern, are members of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus: State Sen. Ben Allen and State Assemblymembers Marc Berman and Josh Lowenthal.

California is currently home to about 1.2 million Jews, who make up the second-biggest Jewish population nationwide—trailing behind only New York.

And while these residents may have varying opinions on the legislation, the 43 federations, councils, and other organizations that make up Jewish California have thrown their support behind it.

Citing data from the Pew Research Center, a statement from the coalition noted that more than 50% of American Jews describe ancestry and culture as the core of being Jewish, while only 36% choose religion.

The passage of SB 1387, Bocarsly argued, would help the broader Californian population understand this reality.

“People will see that and continue to be reminded we’re not just a religious group that can be flattened into one kind of monolithic idea,” he said. “When we aren’t counted, it’s hard to be able to address and respond to issues.”

Advocating for data collection within a specific community is not without precedent in California.

Bocarsly pointed out that in 2024, members of the LGBTQ population pushed for the passage of a bill that required California health agencies to collect sexual orientation and gender identity information alongside other demographic data.

A couple years before that, the state began disaggregating data on Asians and Pacific Islanders by separating Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander groups.

Touching on part of the Jewish community, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom last fall signed a bill that created a new demographic data category for Middle Eastern ethnicities—including Israelis.

“All of these groups, year over year, have shown why data is valuable and why advocating for more data is good for their community,” Bocarsly said. “We believe the same for the Jewish community.”

Marc Dollinger, a Jewish studies professor at San Francisco State University, believes that the emergence of SB 1387 stemmed from the spike in antisemitism that followed the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.

“This is a way of placing antisemitism alongside the other ‘isms,’” Dollinger said.

He likened the state’s commitment to ending racism, sexism, homophobia, and Islamophobia to fighting antisemitism, noting, “They need the data in order to be able to do that.”

This bill, which would take effect in 2030, would ban the disclosure of personal information and require the use of de-identification methods to maintain privacy.

The data collection would serve to inform research initiatives, identify disparities, and guide policy decisions, per the bill.

“This is aggregated data,” Bocarsly said. “No list of Jews, no registry, will ever be published.”

Joshua Goldstein, a professor of demography at UC Berkeley, raised some concerns about potential privacy breaches, telling

The Jewish News of Northern California that this kind of data is “often collected in a non-anonymized manner.” In other words, he explained, a respondent’s name might appear in an initial answer, only to be erased later.

Bocarsly disputed these fears, stressing that California’s “robust data privacy laws” forbid the publication of aggregate datasets when the number of respondents is insufficient to ensure that their identities aren’t easily guessable.

Both the Bay Area and Sacramento chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace opposed the bill, with the former arguing that past attempts to distinguish Jewish identity from other ethnicities have led to “catastrophic” outcomes and that treating a religion as an ethnicity “is legally inconsistent and factually wrong.”

The Sacramento chapter, meanwhile, warned that this “wrong-headed oversimplification of identity” could “exacerbate antisemitism.”

Proponents of the bill, however, argue that in this era of increased antisemitism, such legislation could bolster much-needed protections for Jewish Americans.

Austin Sarat, a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, argued in a recent opinion piece that California should not only recognize Jews as members of an ethnic group but also “redouble its efforts to combat antisemitism in the state.”

“The legislation’s impact will not be confined to the Golden State,” Sarat stated, adding that government officials and Jewish leaders nationwide will “need to keep their eyes on what is happening in California and be ready to deal with the ripple effects.”

Beyond the role Jewish demographic data could play in fighting antisemitism, Bocarsly also pointed out the practical benefits that access to such information could provide in sectors like education or healthcare.

For example, he explained, the data could help improve screening protocols for certain genetic issues, like Tay-Sachs disease or BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, which have outsized impacts on Jewish communities.

“We don’t have the ability to study when people go into the hospital and are diagnosed with some of these diseases,” Bocarsly said.

Although SB 1387 would be the first law to mandate the inclusion of Jewish ethnicity in public data collection, Bocarsly cited other efforts that have ventured in a similar direction.

In 2024, the Oregon Health Authority began gathering Jewish ethnicity data in an effort launched by a cancer researcher.

Years before that, the Obama administration also started recognizing Jews as an ethnicity in the context of discrimination, Bocarsly added.

If the California bill does become law, Bocarsly expressed hope “that other states and hopefully the federal government would also follow suit.”

Dollinger, the San Francisco State professor, said that the bill’s advancement actually surprised him, observing that “in traditional Judaism, Jews do not count themselves” due to superstitions about the “evil eye.”

From a historical perspective, meanwhile, he pointed out that Jews have not fared well when “counted by governments.” A general distrust of authorities, Dollinger explained, has been a core issue for Jews as a vulnerable minority group.

“I’ve got to believe that Jewish leadership trusts the California state government to collect that data and believe that collecting the data will help Jews,” Dollinger said.

Although he would not reveal his personal opinion on the bill, Dollinger said he is in favor of deeming Jewishness an ethnicity.

Doing so, he continued, has a history dating back to Wilhelm Marr’s coinage of the term “antisemitism” in 1879. Marr spoke of antisemitism in a racist rather than a religious context because he “considered Jews to be a subhuman race,” Dollinger explained.

In modern-day America, Dollinger referred to Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, as “a classic example” of a “cultural Jew” who isn’t faith-driven but is recognizably Jewish to members of the public.

“Having Jews as an ethnic category is correct,” he confirmed.

The unique ethnic characteristics that they’ve developed around the Diaspora over time “are both particular to them as Jews and differentiating them as Jews from the communities around them,” Dollinger added.

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