Jewish Population Goes Down in Many Areas

JERUSALEM —  The Jewish population is plummeting around the world--except in Israel, Germany, Canada, Panama and Hong Kong--according to a demographic “State of the Jewish World” report issued during the World Jewish Congress’ annual convention held in Jerusalem this week.

Only 13 million Jews are alive worldwide--indicating that the community has not recovered numerically from the Holocaust, before which there were about 18 million Jews.

In the United States, the percentage of Jews has dropped drastically. From a postwar high of 4% of the U.S. population, it has plunged to 2.3%, or 5.8 million Jews, as a result of a relatively low birthrate and a high rate of intermarriage.

More than 50% of U.S. Jews who wedded in the ‘80s married a non-Jewish partner, the study notes. Studies have shown that only about a fourth of intermarried couples raise their children as Jews.

“This is the most up-to-date and comprehensive attempt to survey the trends in world Judaism today, and the numbers are quite worrying,” said Avi Beker, a political scientist and director of the Israel office of the World Jewish Congress, which conducted the survey.

He said the study also identified a growing polarization between religious and nonreligious Jews worldwide. “In some places we can say there is almost no contact between these communities,” Beker said.

The two segments of Jewry are divided by their lifestyles and their views on political issues such as the Israeli-Arab peace process, which has far deeper opposition among religious Jews worldwide than among secular groups.

Israel, Canada and Germany were the three significant bright spots amid the grim statistics, Beker added. In Israel, the rate of natural increase--births exceeding deaths--is about three times that of the United States.

Israel, with about 4.5 million Jews, “is slowly replacing the United States as the largest community in the world, a process which we think will take place within a decade. It is the only place in the world where there is a natural growth rate in the Jewish community.”

Meanwhile, Germany’s 60,000-member Jewish community has doubled in the last two decades. Still, that figure is a fraction of Germany’s pre-Holocaust Jewish population of about 500,000.

Canada’s Jewish population, which totals 360,000, has risen 60%.

But the increases in Germany and Canada were due largely to the immigration of Jews from other diaspora countries, such as the former Soviet Union.

In tiny Panama and in Hong Kong, small Jewish communities doubled or tripled their populations, but the increases were due largely to immigration. Panama now has 7,000 Jews, Hong Kong about 2,500.

Proposals for strengthening declining Jewish communities via Jewish education, greater support for Jewish families and increased contacts between religious and nonreligious Jews were among those considered at the four-day World Jewish Congress conference, which brought together Jewish communities from around the world.

Dr. Mandell Ganchrow, a physician and president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, which also held its annual convention in Jerusalem, said Jewish diaspora communities need to encourage a return to traditional Jewish observance in which large families are the norm. “A major problem in the U.S. and Europe is the singles problem,” he said.

“I don’t want to sound like a male chauvinist, but the solution is for people to get married at a younger age and have larger families.”