The two countries with the greatest shares of the world's Jewish population are the United States and Israel. The United States had been a hub of Jewish immigration since the nineteenth century, as Jewish people sought to escape persecution in Europe by emigrating across the Atlantic. The Jewish population in the U.S. is largely congregated in major urban areas, such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, with the New York metropolitan area being the city with the second largest Jewish population worldwide, after Tel Aviv, Israel. Israel is the world's only officially Jewish state, having been founded in 1948 following the first Arab-Israeli War. While Jews had been emigrating to the holy lands since the nineteenth century, when they were controlled by the Ottoman Empire, immigration increased rapidly following the establishment of the state of Israel. Jewish communities in Eastern Europe who had survived the Holocaust saw Israel as a haven from persecution, while the state encouraged immigration from Jewish communities in other regions, notably the Middle East & North Africa. Smaller Jewish communities remain in Europe in countries such as France, the UK, and Germany, and in other countries which were hotspots for Jewish migration in the twentieth century, such as Canada and Argentina.

Study commissioned by the Ford Foundation studies Black-Jewish relations in New York City to determine points of contact between the groups and delineate current and future conflict areas.Attitudes underlying conflict or cooperation as well as perceptions of non-black, non-Jewish population are also examined.

In 2022, there were *** incidents related to anti-Semitism in the state of New York, the most out of any state. California, New Jersey, Florida, and Texas rounded out the top five states for anti-Semitic incidents in that year.