10 Facts About Jewish California
Jane Says: Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell is Jewish. Image by Getty Images
1. California had 1,223,640 Jews in 2012. This is the second highest number of Jews in the country (only behind New York) and 18% of the entire Jewish population in the U.S.
2. MGM Studios and Paramount Pictures, two of the largest Hollywood film studios in history, were founded by Jews. Marcus Loew started MGM and Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky founded Paramount.
3. Baseball player Ryan Braun, nicknamed the “Hebrew Hammer,” was a star player on L.A.’s Granada Hills high school team.
4. Geoff and Mitchell Schwartz, who are both offensive linemen in the NFL, grew up in Los Angeles. This year, Geoff, who weighs around 340 pounds, fasted for Yom Kippur.
5. California is currently the only state with two Jewish senators: Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.
6. Rube Goldberg, the famous cartoonist known for his images of complicated imaginary gadgets, was born in San Francisco.
7. The band Jane’s Addiction, whose singer Perry Farrell is Jewish, started out in L.A.
8. Three members of the 60’s band Jefferson Airplane, which began in San Francisco, were Jewish: singer Marty Balin and guitarists Jorma Kaukonen and Paul Kanter.
9. Israeli American Hillel Slovak was the first guitarist of the LA-based Red Hot Chili Peppers.
10. 2006 Olympic silver medalist figure skater Sasha Cohen was born in LA’s Westwood neighborhood.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
