New Jersey is excluded from a survey of metropolitan area Jews. Federations are glad, demographers are sad, and regular folks are just confused.

Take an early daylight drive down an upscale street in a MetroWest suburb, and notice how the neatly trimmed lawns sprout with more blue-covered copies of The New York Times than the orange-encased issues of the Star-Ledger.

Turn either newspaper to the sports section, and if it is football season, you can read about the latest exploits of the New York Jets and Giants, two teams whose home field advantage lies west of the Lincoln Tunnel in the New Jersey Meadowlands.

Head a few miles east, take a right turn off Route 3, and you'll spot the home of WWOR-TV in Secaucus, a rare commercial television station with a base in New Jersey — even though executives in its news department define its prime coverage area as the "New York Designated Market Area."

Of course, there are plenty of proud Jewish Jersey natives who would bristle at the suggestion that their state is but a sixth borough of Gotham. They'd remind you that the United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey is an entity with its roots in Newark, by way of telling you that east is east, and west is west, and never the PATH train shall meet.

And now it turns out that "real" New York Jews — or at least those who represent them as leaders of the UJA-Federation of New York — appear to agree with them. When the New York federation released its 2002 Jewish Community Study on June 16, it triggered questions west of the Hudson about its implications for significant Jewish populations in North Jersey.

Jerseyans were excluded from the survey of the New York federation's catchment area, which includes the city's five boroughs, along with Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties.

For federation planners, who may fundraise only in their catchment areas, the exclusion made perfect sense. For students of American Jewry, the survey is puzzlingly incomplete, leaving out, for example, swaths of Bergen and Essex counties in New Jersey and Rockland County in New York where large Jewish populations owe their livelihoods — and allegiances — to the Big Apple. For the average Jew in this area, meanwhile, the survey goes to the heart of what it means to be a New Jerseyan — or not.

To Rabbi Arthur Vernon, it reflects a certain "identity crisis." Vernon grew up in the Bronx and after moving to New Jersey, he spent 11 years commuting to a job in New York.

He is a rabbi at two Conservative synagogues in MetroWest — Ahavas Sholom in Newark and Congregation Beth Torah in Florham Park.

His roots are now firmly planted in New Jersey.

One's Jewish community, he said, "is not where you work. It's where you live, where you go to a synagogue, where your kids go to Hebrew school."

‘The same forces'

Apart from headlines in the secular press that the city's Jewish population dipped below one million to 972,000, the New York study reflected dramatic growth in the Orthodox and Russian Jewish communities, most notably in Brooklyn.

Even more dramatic, but less noticed, was the rise of those who identify themselves as non-denominational or secular Jews — a jump from 13 percent to 25 percent in the past 11 years.

To Ron Miller, a principal investigator for Ukeles Associates, the research firm that performed the study, "many of the same forces" responsible for changes in the city's Jewish communities "apply to the people of MetroWest."

Alisa Rubin Kurshan, the vice president for strategic planning and organizational resources of the New York federation, suggests that the survey contains "snapshots" that will help "all Jewish communities, to consider the role that all groups play, and to give voice to all of their concerns."

One person who is taking a good look at those "snapshots" is David Mallach, assistant executive vice president of UJC MetroWest and director of its Community Relations Committee.

The study "does have significance for MetroWest because we are part of the greater New York area," he said. "One of the things that seems to come out of the New York survey is suburbanization." The survey noted that the Jewish population in leafy Westchester jumped 40 percent since the last survey, while Manhattan and Queens saw declines of 24 percent and 27 percent, respectively. "There probably is some increase in movement from New York to New Jersey as the survey documents for Westchester and Connecticut."

To Mallach, MetroWest is replicating one of the most significant trends in the New York community — the increase of Russian and Orthodox Jewish populations.

"We're seeing the suburbanization of Russians. We see Russian Jewish families buying into the Livingstons," he said, using "Livingstons" as a shorthand for local suburban Jewish communities.

"We're also seeing other immigrant families. We probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 Latin American Jewish families in the MetroWest community from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Mexico. The Latin Americans tend to be more in the Conservative fold due to the predominance of Conservative Judaism in Latin America, but I don't think there's a pattern there."

A few doors down from Mallach's office on the second floor of the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany, Arthur Sandman sits poised at his computer, accessing data from the survey.

He has viewed such "snapshots" from both sides of the state line, as MetroWest's assistant executive vice president for planning and evaluation, and previously as executive director for management and budget during his 19 years with the New York federation.

Unlike Mallach, he said the New York findings may have limited relevance to MetroWest. "When you look at the New York study, one of the striking things is how diverse the New York region is in and of itself. The boroughs look different from one another. Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk look different from one another and from the city. And so, the most readily apparent thing is it's very difficult to extrapolate anything from New York out into MetroWest."

At the local level, Sandman said, the differences are significant.

"Russian and Orthodox communities are becoming more significant as components of the New York Jewish community, and particularly the Brooklyn Jewish community in both places. So obviously, you're not going to take the Brooklyn experience and consider it to be indicative of what's going on here."

There are also differences among the regions' Orthodox Jews.

"From a federation perspective, our Orthodox community in MetroWest is probably much more integrated into the federation community than is the case in New York. But our Orthodox community looks very different than New York's Orthodox community. It's a more centrist community, rather than the haredi," or fervently Orthodox.

A regional study?

Yet both men agree that a multi-federation study of the metropolitan area's Jewish demographics would benefit all of the communities included, whether or not such a survey would be cost-effective or even practical. But even to bring up the possibility is a reminder that the federations are not Jewish think tanks or municipalities, but fund-raising organizations whose interests lie in understanding, and protecting, its geographic turf. New Jersey alone is divided among 13 federations, who closely guard their fund-raising and allocations borders.

"A regional study could be very helpful and useful, but it would not replace the need for the New York federation to understand its catchment area specifically, or MetroWest to understand its catchment area specifically," said Sandman.

"At the end of the day, you're left with what really is a money issue. These studies are really expensive. How many studies can you justify?"

And when it comes to Jewish communal life, the New York federation is famously and proverbially the 600-pound gorilla, with 1.4 million Jews. Mallach estimates that in New Jersey, north of Middlesex County, the Jewish population is 300,000: 120,000 in MetroWest, 80-90,000 Jews in Bergen, 50-60,000 in Clifton-Passaic and Northern Jersey, and 50,000 in Union County.

"In terms of federations, New York does what New York wishes to do," said Mallach.

"A group of people sit on 59th Street and say, 'Okay, we're going to do this study.' They get their lay people together, they get their sociological experts committee together, and if they decided to include New Jersey, it would require four or five other federations to be added.

"So you've got to have a bit of rachmones (pity) for the people in New York. To have to work with New Jersey would require seven other people in the room.

Rachmones aside, Mallach still holds a nagging notion that considering the numbers of New York expatriates who still commute across the Hudson, the region might be more usefully viewed as a vast labor market whose locus is New York.

"Are we part of the greater New York area? I believe we are. New York? You can't ignore it. There is no real New Jersey electronic media. Yes, there are real newspapers in New Jersey — The Star-Ledger and The Record. People at The Star-Ledger will also acknowledge that a significant number of their readers also read The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. In terms of communication and information, New York dominates."

But that is not necessarily true for two generations of the Canter family, who contemplated the issue as they studied menus at Eppes Essen, a restaurant in Livingston.

It is the town where Mark Canter has his dental practice. He commutes there from his home in Newton.

"I was born and raised in Jersey City, and the place you were raised is the biggest issue, so even if I was in California I would still consider myself a part of the greater New York Jewish community," he said.

"Federations may have their separate boundaries, but that's just geographic. You're talking more academic than emotional." In terms of the emotional links, "nothing breaks those ties."

His wife, Lucille, was born in Brooklyn and raised in Jersey City.

"We go to temple in Jersey City, where we were brought up. It may be this side of the Hudson but it's still greater New York. If there's anything different it's New York and New Jersey. It's not Jews New York, Jews New Jersey."

Mark Canter's father, Julius, who resides in Verona and has a law practice in Jersey City, calls himself "really Jersey, although I'm in New York quite a bit."

Although his wife, Bea, grew up in Yonkers, she is adamant about her identity.

"I'm Jersey. I'm Jersey. I am a Jew in whatever state or whatever country I happen to be in."

Robert Wiener can be reached at