FOR generations, American Jews, and particularly Jewish New Yorkers, have largely been identified as ardent liberals.

Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe formed a substantial core of early 20th-century progressives and socialists. More recently, 70 percent of Jews voted for President Obama in 2012, about the same as Hispanics, and were exceeded in their enthusiasm mainly by African-Americans.

But that liberal image is poised to change.

A 2012 demographic study by UJA-Federation of New York found that 60 percent of Jewish children in the New York City area — the Jewish center of the United States — live in Orthodox homes, which suggests that in a generation a majority of the city’s one million Jews may be classified as Orthodox. A sizable percentage of those children happen to be Hasidim, the group that has fueled Orthodox growth with its astonishing fecundity. (Seven or eight children per family is common and one Hasidic woman, Yitta Schwartz, had about 2,000 living descendants when she died in 2010.)

Given the far more conservative Hasidic and other Orthodox stances on issues like abortion, the role of women and Middle East politics, that population boom is transforming the traditional Jewish profile in New York.