For the first time in nearly two millennia, there are more Jews concentrated in Israel than in any other area of the world. This is a wonderful thing on the eve of the celebration of Israel’s Independence Day.
For the first time since the first century, there are more Jews in Israel today than in any other country, according to data published by the Central Bureau of Statistics on Monday.
Ahead of Independence Day on Wednesday, the bureau, which is one of Israel’s top demographers, announced that the country’s population currently stands at 7.03 million, a population increase of 118,000 since a year ago. According to the report, 5.33 million are Jews, making up 76 percent of the total population. There are 1.39 million Arabs, contributing to approximately 20%.
Of course, there is a flip side to this news. The Jewish population of America is shrinking. Jews are disappearing into the population at large.
The Jewish population of the United States is notoriously difficult to measure, according to Della-Pergola. “The last surveys were taken in 2001, and even then the figures are not as accurate as the numbers provided by Israeli statisticians,” he said. The 2001 surveys stated that there were around 5.3 million Jews in America, though Della-Pergola expects that number to have declined somewhat over the last five years. “In 1990 there were an estimated 5.515 million Jews in the US, in 2001 there were only 5.3 million,” he commented, and suggested that extrapolation of this declining figure would mean a figure today lower than the 2001 estimate.
Still, this is a good thing. Or it would be, if it weren’t for the world’s comprehension problem regarding Israel and its Jewish history.
“If current trends continue, there could be an absolute majority of world Jewry living in Israel within 25-30 years,” said Professor Sergio Della-Pergola of the A. Harmann Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University and the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. He attributed the increase to the higher number of births than deaths amongst Israeli Jews – there were some 138,000 new babies born since Independence Day 2005 – estimating that this alone added around 70,000 to the current figure. “Israel is the only country in the world with a natural increase in its Jewish population,” commented Della-Pergola.
And let us all say: Amen.
But consider that we have lost so mucha in the past decades. While we can be happy that the Jewish polpulation of Israel is increasing, we cannot rejoice fully in that the reason that the population of Israel is greater than elsewhere is not because Jews have gone on Aliyah, nor is it because of the full population growth in Israel (the Israeli abortion rate is horrifying), but it is because of the destruction of Diaspora Jewry. That is a matter for sorrow. While we are told that we will be the smallest of the nations and while we remember the medrash that 80% of the Bani Yisroel never made it out of Egypt, we still feel the pain of the loss of so many or our people.
Let us be happy for all the births, but let us mourn for all those not born that should have been
Consider the statistics at Historical abortion statistics, Israel compiled by Wm. Robert Johnston last updated 9 April 2005. Consider all the children that were not born because of assimilation and intermarriage. Let us pray that we can reverse the trend of destruction.
Actually, I believe it has been longer than that. IIRC, from the Babylonian exile onward, the Jewish population in Babylon was higher than in Eretz Yisrael. So this would be the first time since the destruction of the First Temple that more Jews have lived in Israel than anywhere else.
There is a possibility that in between the exile of Yehoyakim and the final destruction, the population of Bavel may have passed that of Eretz Yisroel. Thus, the crossover point could have been as much as a decade before the destruction.