Reply To: The Kiddush Hashem of Lakewood

Additionally, 100,000 was several years ago. In 2017, with Lakewood being the fastest growing town in the entire state and one of the fastest in the entire United States, it’s more like 115,000, of which 2/3 are now frum — meaning about 75-80,000. Furthermore, the massive amounts of Yeshiva students from New York, around the country and from around the world are not counted by the census, as they’re counted where their families live, not where they’re students. So that is well over 10,000 more uncounted adult students in Lakewood.

Beis Medrash Govah alone has close to 8,000 Kollel yungerleit. And there are many more kollelim in Lakewood besides BMG. And there are 30,000 yiddishe kinder officially bused by Lakewood to yeshivos every day, in addition to another number of Lakewood Yeshiva children who don’t use district transportation.

Moreover, the frum community has spread to outside of Lakewood, to neighboring towns such as Brick, Jackson, Toms River, Howell, etc. And those aren’t counted by the census or by the board of ed as part of the Lakewood population, so those are many more to the above numbers.