The declining numbers found in most other countries can be attributed to “low birth rates, frequent intermarriage, identificational drift, aging and emigration,” the report found.Article content
Core population counts help keep the data in line with “comparable” counts in past studies, which go back roughly 40 years, DellaPergola said. The study pulls together a vast quantity of different sources to achieve its count. Some samples, such as Canada’s census, can be “remarkably good,” including Jewish status, while the U.S. Jewish population is ascertained with Pew Research data.Article content
Despite those gains, Israel’s Jewish population is growing at a rate that’s two thirds of the general world population. Reaching the numbers prior to the catastrophic losses arising from the Holocaust “may take decades,” the report found. Professor Daniel Stone, who studies Jewish history in the Soviet Union, said a large majority of East European Jews in the postwar Soviet bloc were murdered during the Holocaust, which caused many of the survivors to leave territories they considered hostile.
Nearly two million Jews have left Eastern Europe in the last 50 years, many in search of better opportunities, according to the study. Western European countries also saw a loss of around 8.5%.Article content
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