How many Jews in the world? It depends on how you define ‘Jewish’

Published: 26 February 2018

Last updated: 4 March 2024

THOUSANDS OF JEWS fled to the United States and Israel during and after the Holocaust, if they could manage to make it to these relative safe havens. Now, more than 80 percent of the world’s Jewish population lives in those two countries, and the American Jewish population has grown substantially in number since the end of World War II.

The Jewish People Policy Institute estimated that the global Jewish population was nearing pre-Holocaust numbers a couple of years ago, in part because of “changing patterns of Jewish identification.” But that finding was challenged because of the study’s broad definition of “Jewish.”

Like most things in Judaism, there’s disagreement. Here’s how two major scholars define Jewishness:

Steven Cohen, a professor at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem, defines a Jew as “anybody who considers him or herself Jewish with some evidence of having Jewish familial ties or having affirmatively switched their identities by conversion or self-identification.”

He says that being Jewish is not a religion but “a culture, an ancestry. Most practice Judaism, some don’t practice it at all and some practice other religions.”

Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Sergio DellaPergola defines the more narrow “core Jewish population” as those who are Jewish only or Jewish by identity, even if they are not religiously Jewish, as long as they practice no other religions.

FULL STORY How many Jews live in the US? That depends on how you define ‘Jewish’ (Washington Post)

Photo: Photo: Hillel students take photos of the 300-year-old Torah scroll that was given to the University of Pittsburgh Hillel Jewish student organisation. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/AP)