3.1 Jewish Population figures

A key factor shaping Jewish identity is the population growth of the world Jewish community. The figures, such as we have, point to a holding pattern giving neither the alarmists or the triumphalists in the Jewish community cause for rejoicing. The Jewish community has not yet been split into three separate religions or four or five different peoples! What should be noted is that 50 years after the Holocaust, we are almost back to the pre-Second World War figure.

The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw rapid growth in the Jewish population from 2.5 million in 1800 to a peak of 16.5 million (DellaPergola 1999:13). If these trends had continued without the Holocaust the Jewish population at the end of this century would have been in the region of 25-35 million. Until the difference between the actual population and what might have been is cancelled out we can continue to expect the Holocaust to have a major affect on Jewish identity, particularly in the Diaspora.

Since the 1960Õs the Jewish population has been affected by two opposite trends that have combined to bring about zero growth rate, the decline of the Diaspora Jewish communities and the growth of the Israeli Jewish population. Apart from the two major communities of the USA (5.8 million) and Israel (4.6 million), a pattern of decline can be seen in most other Jewish communities, particularly in the CIS. Whilst the Diaspora is not vanishing, it is generally declining in numbers, with a few exceptions such as Canada and Germany where immigration is making up for the low rate of natural increase.

At present one third of the worldÕs Jewish population live in Israel. The population has grown from approximately 500,000 in 1946 to about 4.8 million in 1999 (IsraelÕs Central Bureau of Statistics), its share of world Jewry going from 5% to 36%. Assuming trends such as health improvements, family patterns, fertility rates, migration patterns and intermarriage rates continue, the world Jewish population will remain stable until 2020, and Israel will hold a majority of the worldÕs Jewish population, with the USA making up a greater proportion of the Diaspora contingent.

According to these projections, we will continue to see the slow decline of the Diaspora Jewish communities, with continued decrease in fertility rates, increase in the number of ageing populations, and continuing outmarriage and assimilation. A general process of de-Europeanisation of world Jewry is implicit in IsraelÕs population growth.

How does this affect Jewish identity? The present trends in the Diaspora of high intermarriage rates have produced an increasing number of people whose Jewish status and involvement is peripheral rather than core. Jewish identification by such people, of whom there may be as many as three million who do not figure on Jewish population surveys, is problematic. DellaPergola proposes four basic types of Jewish identity (allowing for regional variations and specific cultural traits of different communities) based on the interplay of the two variables we mentioned previously, the nature of individual beliefs and behaviour, and the nature of community connections. He uses this simple frame of reference to address the widening spectrum of Jewish identities in Israel and the Diaspora. This allows for a definition of Israeli secular identity as a form of Jewish identity, based on ethnic rather than religious indicators. This approach wisely avoids the question of how religious identity is defined:

Much of the current debate about Jewish identification deals with the ideological differences that exist between different denominations. While ideational gaps between Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or Liberal Jews are significant and sometimes entail serious conflicts, the substance of Jewish identification is better described in broader and less politically laden terms. (DellaPergola 1999: 54)

This approach also has the advantage of including those Jews in Diaspora who define themselves as "just Jewish", and those Israelis whose identity is defined in a- or anti-religious terms, and claim an ethnic "Israeliness" rather than "Jewishness." It is worth observing that terms such as Jew, Jewish, Israel, Hebrew etc. bear a range of meanings which change over time. The nuances in PaulÕs use of the terms "Jew" and "Israel" are now almost reversed in contemporary understanding. (3