World Jewish population totals 15.2 million – with nearly half in Israel
The number of Jews globally is still some 1.4 million fewer than on the eve of World War II in 1939, according to figures published by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.
Jewish men pray at the Western Wall. Photo by Getty Images
This article originally appeared on Haaretz, and was reprinted here with permission. Sign up here to get Haaretz’s free Daily Brief newsletter delivered to your inbox.
The world’s Jewish population, most recently estimated at 15.2 million, has still not recovered to its pre-Holocaust levels, according to figures published Monday by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.
The figures show that in 1939, on the eve of World War II, the number of Jews worldwide totaled 16.6 million.
The distribution of the world’s Jewish population has changed dramatically since then, according to the CBS.
Of the 15.2 million Jews worldwide at the end of 2020 (when the number was last calculated), nearly half were based in Israel. That compares to only 3 percent in 1939.
In 1948, the year Israel was founded, the number of Jews worldwide totaled 11.5 million. About 6 percent of them lived in Israel then.
According to the CBS, a total of 165,000 Holocaust survivors reside in Israel today.
Of the 15.2 million Jews worldwide, 6.9 million live in Israel. The other main centers of Jewish life are the United States (6 million), France (445,000), Canada (393,000), the United Kingdom (292,000), Argentina (175,000), Russia (150,000) and Germany (118,000).
These figures refer to the “core Jewish population” in each of those countries – defined as individuals who identify as Jewish and have no other religion.
This article originally appeared on Haaretz, and was reprinted here with permission. Sign up here to get Haaretz’s free Daily Brief newsletter delivered to your inbox.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
