Demography

Contemporary Jewish Demography Online References

New Study Shows Israel as Singular Country Where Jewish Community is Growing, Israel Line, Tuesday, December 3, 2002
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0mts0

Israel is the only country in the world where the Jewish community is growing, according to The Jewish Agency's Institute for Jewish People Policy Planning's new study
http://www.jafi.org.il/press/2002/may/may14.htm , HA'ARETZ reported from articles by Yair Sheleg, Haaretz, see:
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=236983
[Also on
http://www.iht.com/articles/78940.html].
& by Jessica Steinberg, JTA, see:
http://www.jafi.org.il/papers/2002/dec/jtadec4.htm

Israel is also home to most of the world's Jewish children under the age of 15. The Institute's study also claims that the number of Jews in the world is declining with a net loss of 300,000 American Jews in the last decade. The study followed a preliminary examination of the recent census of American Jewry.

According to the Institute, which convened an emergency session to deal with what it called the "demographic crisis," there are now some 12.9 million Jews in the world. Earlier this year, estimates put the number at 13.2 million. The main reason for the decline appears in the data from the census of Jewish communities in the U.S., which shows a decline of 300,000 in the American Jewish population, from 5.5 million in 1990 to 5.2 million in 2002. Experts say that some 300,000 Jews emigrated to the U.S. during the 1990s, but nonetheless, the community lost some 50,000 Jews a year, mostly to natural attrition.

The Institute, jointly headed by former U.S. Middle East Peace Envoy Dennis Ross and Prof. Yehezkel Dror, a specialist in strategic government policy planning, is supposed to form general and long-term strategic plans for the Jewish people. Studies published at the conference, which opened on Saturday night and ends today, said the decline is apparent in other major Jewish communities around the world. The French Jewish community has declined from 535,000 in 1980 to some 500,000 now, while the number of Jews in the former Soviet Union has fallen from 1.45 million in 1989, to some 437,000 now. Most of those Jews moved to Israel during the 1990s.

Best Links

I. World Jewish Populations

1. World Jewish Population, 2001, Professor Sergio della Pergola, Division of Jewish Demography and Statistics, The A.Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
   http://sites.huji.ac.il/jcj/dmg_worldjpop_01.htm
2. World Jewish Congress
   http://www.wjc.org.il/
   1. Communities>Jewish Communities of the World >By Index or Charts http://www.wjc.org.il/communities/jewish_communities_of_the_world/index.html
   2. Policy Studies - various country profiles; Policy Forums [online summaries, only], from http://www.wjc.org.il/publications/index.html
   3. Policy Dispatches - topical issues, including demographic and qualitative issues by country, from http://www.wjc.org.il/publications/index.html
3. JTA - Pye Chart and summary article
   http://www.jafi.org.il/papers/2002/dec/jtadec4.htm
4. Institute for Jewish Policy Research
   http://www.jpr.org.uk/.
   1. Documentation and research center on Jewish communities, public policy
   2. AXT, Antisemitism database website.

USA

1. Survey: U.S. Jewish population declining, USA Today, AP (New York)
   http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-10-08-jewish-survey_x.htm
2. Survey: U.S. Jewish community is shrinking and aging, Haaretz, Nathan Guttman, October 2002. http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml
   ?itemNo=217603&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
3. U.S. JEWISH POPULATION FAIRLY STABLE OVER DECADE, ACCORDING TO RESULTS OF NATIONAL JEWISH POPULATION SURVEY 2000-01
   http://www.ujc.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=60654
4. North American Jewish Data Bank [1990]
   http://www.jewishdatabank.com/publicat.html
5. 2001 - result mapping charts only - from links below on http://www.ujc.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=60346

Israel

Central Bureau of Statistics Statistical data about the Israeli population,
http://www.cbs.gov.il/engindex.htm

Major Links Indexes

Dinur - Jewish Communities Worldwide
http://www.hum.huji.ac.il/dinur/Internetresources/historyresources/Jewish%20comm%20worldwide.htm

Haruth - Jewish community links, not all updated
http://www.haruth.com/

Jewish Peoplehood
http://www.jajz-ed.org.il/diaspora/links/teaching3.html

Activities from other websites:

PBS link
http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/lessons/statistics/orgc.html