Can You Guess The Top 10 Countries By Jewish Population?

The Jewish world Image by TzahiV/iStock

By Aiden Pink September 5, 2019

The Jewish Agency for Israel’s annual world Jewish population figures have been released, and they reveal that Jews continue to be spread throughout the world, although mostly concentrated in major countries.

According to research by Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor Sergio Della Pergola, the global Jewish population in 2019 is 14.6 million. There are 175 countries where the Jewish population is 100 or bigger, but 84% of global Jewry lives either in the Israel or the United States.

Della Pergola defined a country’s “core Jewish population” as anyone who identified themselves as Jews; anyone without a religion who was identified as Jewish by a respondent in the same household; or anyone with Jewish parentage who does not identify with a particular religion. If one were to use the broader definition of Israel’s Law of Return – anyone with a Jewish grandparent – the number would swell to 23.5 million.

נכון שרציתם לדעת את מספר היהודים העדכני בעולם, בשנת 2019? pic.twitter.com/7CP1TqXkW5

— Amihai Bannett (@israelconnect) September 5, 2019

Here are the top 10 countries by core Jewish population, compared with data from the 2012 edition of the study:

Israel: 6,153,500 (grew 10.2%)
United States: 5,700,000 (grew 5.1%)
France: 453,000 (shrank 5.6%)
Canada: 395,000 (grew 5.3%)
United Kingdom: 290,000 (shrank 0.3%)
Argentina: 180,300 (shrank 0.8%)
Russia: 172,000 (shrank 11.3%)
Germany: 116,000 (shrank 2.5%)
Australia: 113,400 (grew 1.3%)
Brazil: 93,200 (shrank 2.2%)

South Africa, Ukraine, Hungary, Mexico, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy also had core Jewish populations of 25,000 or more.

Correction: A previous version of this article omitted Belgium from the list of countries with a Jewish population of 25,000 or more.

Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink

Aiden Pink is the Deputy News Editor for the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO