California lawmakers pass bill allowing people to identify their Jewish ancestry on state forms

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California would allow Jews to voluntarily identify their Jewish heritage on state forms under a bill the state Legislature passed Monday.

The bill, which lawmakers sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk, would require state agencies that collect demographic information to add “Jewish” as an option for ethnicity or ancestry. The goal is to give state officials and researchers better data on Jewish Californians, including their unemployment rates and representation in schools.

The data would enable lawmakers to create policies that address the needs of Jews in the state, said David Bocarsly, CEO of Jewish California, an advocacy group.

“It’s about inclusion as a community,” Bocarsly said, noting the Legislature has passed laws in recent years to collect more inclusive demographic data on Middle Eastern, North African and LGBTQ+ communities.

Some opponents of the bill are worried about the idea of the state collecting such data given the traumatic history of the Nazi government keeping records of Jews during the Holocaust. The proposal would bar agencies from disclosing “personal identifying information,” and bill author Henry Stern, a Democratic state senator who is Jewish, said California already has robust privacy protections that should assuage those concerns.

Sydney Levy of Jewish Voice for Peace, a progressive anti-Zionist group, wasn't convinced by that argument.

“When it comes to government holding lists of Jews, we do not trust your privacy guardrails,” Levy said at a hearing on the bill.

Marc Dollinger, a Jewish studies professor at San Francisco State University, said in Jewish tradition, “Jews are not supposed to be counted.”

“Ultimately, it becomes a question of trust: do California Jews have confidence that this form of data collection will support and protect them or will it elevate concerns over the possible harm this sort of counting can do?” he said in an email.

Since the bill would categorize Jewish identity as an ethnicity, it could help the state track hate crimes against Jews, Dollinger said.

Levy said he also disagrees with categorizing Jews as a single ethnic group.

“Latino Jews like myself, as well as other Jews of color, have cultures and experiences different from those of white Jews,” Levy said at the hearing.

Under the bill, people could still identify their race in addition to selecting “Jewish” for their ethnicity. It would be similar to how some people identify as Latino ethnically while describing their race as white, Native American or Black. The legislation was updated Friday to exempt agencies from adding “Jewish” as an option on their forms if they would for some reason lose federal funding for making the change.

Stern started wearing a kippah to work in recent years, a sign of how his relationship to his Jewish identity has evolved throughout his life.

On the same day that Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, which launched the war in Gaza, Stern was walking to synagogue with his daughter, pushing her in a stroller, when people in a car went out of their way to yell an antisemitic remark at them, he said.

Stern was wearing a kippah. He decided to wear it regularly after that.

Stern said it was a big shift for someone who wasn't very religious as a kid, though he would be reminded that he was different from other students in junior high school, when he was bullied for being Jewish. If Stern's bill had been in place back then, it would have been a way to ensure his identity was better represented, he said.

“This bill is just trying to create a little more space for those kinds of people — just let them be seen,” Stern said. “I don’t think it’s going to be a radical transformation. I don’t think it’s going to change the world.”