On Eve of Yom Hashoah, Israeli Statistics Bureau Study Underscores Rising World Jewish Population
Part of an exhibit on the Holocaust supported by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association. Photo: courtesy of IHRA.
The world’s Jewish population has returned to the level of nearly a century ago, according to new research published by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday.
Released ahead of Thursday’s observance of Yom Hashoah, Israel’s annual Holocaust commemoration day, the study revealed that at the end of 2019, the global Jewish population stood at 14.8 million — the same number recorded in 1925, more than a decade before the Nazi Holocaust began.
At its peak in 1939, the world Jewish population stood at 16.6 million, of whom 449,000 lived in the land of Israel, at the time ruled by a British mandate introduced following the Ottoman defeat in Palestine in World War I.
But by 1948, the year that Israel was established as an independent Jewish state, the total number of Jews in the world had shrunk to 11.5 million, 650,000 of whom had settled in the new Jewish homeland.
These days, Israel is the location of the largest concentration of Jews in the world, numbering nearly 7 million — more than 5 million of whom were born in the Jewish state.
Another 6 million Jews live in the US, with nearly 400,000 in Canada as well. Western Europe is home to around 900,000 Jews, with the largest concentration in France.
A further 155,000 Jews live in Russia. There are also significant Jewish communities in the southern hemisphere, with 180,000 in Argentina and 118,000 in Australia.