Do “Half the World’s Jews Live in Israel”?

Part One of a new series, "Rethinking Israel/Palestine."

One of the most common talking points about Israel is that it is home to half the world’s Jews. It’s often used to imply that Israel’s interests are inseparable from those of Jews everywhere, or that criticism of Israel is a de facto attack against one out of every two Jews—that is, antisemitism.

As the New York Times reported in December:

“Of course anti-Zionism is antisemitism, they say: Around half the world’s Jews live in Israel, and destroying it, or ending its status as a refuge where they are assured of governing themselves, would imperil a people who have faced annihilation time and again.” (Emphasis mine.)

This claim is widespread, as the first page of a Google search shows (click to enlarge):

---

This statement is frequently used, as in the article excerpt above, to suggest that the security of the world’s Jews depends on the existence of a Jewish state. When taken to an extreme, it can lead to the belief that Israel must be exempted from certain moral standards and laws because the future of the Jewish people depends on its security. After all, half the world’s Jews live there.

But a careful review of the available literature, using a common-sense definition of Jewishness, indicates that this statement isn’t true.

In one way, of course, the percentages don’t matter. Every individual deserves to live in peace and security. It’s a war crime to target any civilian. But the claim that “half the world’s Jews live in Israel” has skewed the political debate. It’s also been used to silence Israel’s critics.

Surprisingly, this idea seems have arisen from work of a single researcher—one whose definition of Jewishness has been strongly criticized by other academics. This definition disqualifies many self-identified Jews, challenges popular understanding, and even contradicts Israel’s legal definition of a Jew.

What makes a Jew?

The slang Yiddish greeting, “Vos macht a Yid?” means something like, “What’s happening?” or “What’s going on?” But its literal meaning is “What makes a Jew?” (Or “What does a Jew make?”) The misconception behind this erroneous claim lies in the answer to that question: what makes a person Jewish?

The idea that half the world’s Jews live in Israel seems to stem from the work of Sergio DellaPergola, Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the Hebrew University’s Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry. DellaPergola initially argued that Pew researchers over-counted the number of Jews in the United States. In doing so, he created a restricted definition of Jewishness that had never before been used by academics—or, for that matter, by most Jews. (See notes below.)

DellaPergola excluded many people with only one Jewish parent, for example, even if they “identify as Jewish aside from religion.” That excludes millions of people worldwide—people who see themselves as Jews, who are seen by others as Jews, who qualify for Israeli citizenship as Jews, and who would have been targeted for Nazi extermination as Jews. They are among the very people whose protection was the stated goal behind the creation of a Jewish state.

Five researchers responded to DellaPergola’s paper, arguing that his definition of what he called “core” Jewishness was overly narrow and broke with past practice. The dissenting scholars later described his definition as a “novel and more limited definition of who is a Jew” and said they “take strong exception to (DellaPergola’s) rejection of the growing consensus among scholars of contemporary Jewish life ...”

Despite the controversy, however, DellaPergola’s definition was repeatedly widely (including by DellaPergola himself). From there, it seems, the belief took hold that half the world’s Jews live in Israel.

Where Half the World’s Jews Really Live

There’s a better way to define Jewishness: Who is eligible for Israeli citizenship as a Jew? In other words, who does the Zionist project itself consider Jewish?

That definition is much broader than DellaPergola’s. Israel’s 1950 Law of Return grants immigration rights, not only to people with one Jewish parent, but to people with one Jewish grandparent on either side of the family. (My children have the right of return under this law, for example, even though their mother was not Jewish and my mother’s conversion to Judaism was not recognized under Orthodox law.)

Under DellaPergola’s restricted definition, Israel’s “core” population of 6,340,600 represents 40 percent of the 15,700,000 people worldwide he considers Jews.* (40 percent is, of course, not 50 percent; that discrepancy suggests the often-rhetorical use of this claim.) But the vast majority of an estimated 23,809,000 people** worldwide are eligible to immigrate under Israeli law. To Israel, they’re Jews.

By Israel’s own definition it is home, not to half of the world’s Jews, but to roughly one in four. Half the world’s Jews do live in one country, however: the United States. Twelve million people in the US are eligible to emigrate because Israel considers them Jews. That’s nearly twice Israel’s Jewish population.

Americans, not Israelis, make up half the world’s Jews.

A Future for Everyone

Why does this matter?  It tells us that a rhetorical device used to silence legitimate criticism and justify violence against civilians is factually, as well as morally, wrong. It means that news outlets who repeat this claim are violating journalistic practice. And it means that vital information has been misrepresented in important debates.

The real figures tell us something important about the interests of world Jewry—namely, that the opinions and needs of American Jews (and the country they call home) should hold at least as much weight as those of any other Jewish population.  

Since its inception, however, Israel’s supporters have argued otherwise, making diaspora Jews into second-class religionists. Non-Israeli Jews can’t criticize Israel, they say, because they aren’t on the front lines fighting for Judaism’s future. (Hannah Arendt explores this at length in Eichmann in Jerusalem; see notes.) A past genocide is being used to justify a present genocide in ways that re-traumatize Jews everywhere.

But the Jewish future, like that of all humanity, is global. The interests of world Jewry are consistent with those of American Jews, and indeed of all human beings worldwide. All civilians have the right to safety, food and shelter, and personal freedom. They have the right to live in harmony with others. But ethnic divisiveness, injustice, and inequality lead to instability and violence, putting everyone at risk.

People will undoubtedly say, “What does it matter? 50 percent, 20 percent ... zero percent of any population should be endangered or harmed.”

Exactly. That’s why so many people around the world—including countless Jews—are protesting the attack on Gaza, the occupation of Palestine, and the denial of basic rights to the Palestinian people. As Judaism itself teaches, wrong is wrong: anytime, anywhere, against any part of the human family. 

*Re total population and percentages, exact figures vary slightly based on source and year. I used figures from the American Jewish Yearbook for 2020.
** This total may include a small number of spouses and other non-Jewish family members.

---

Disclaimers:

Nothing in the above is meant as criticism of any individual. My purpose is solely to identify the source of an apparent misconception—or, at best, the widespread repetition of a highly disputed conclusion as unquestioned fact.

I also recognize that this issue is both complex and highly charged. All feedback is welcome, especially that which can improve our understanding of the topic. What isn’t welcome is hatred toward anyone of any faith or ethnicity. That includes me.

Notes:

The map at the top of the page was created by Allice Hunter using data from World Jewish Population, Berman Jewish DataBank (2018).

For DellaPergola’s definitions of Judaism, see DellaPergola, S., 2015, 2022a, 2022b. (Some of them require library access to academic papers or payment.)

Here’s an excerpt from “According to their Numbers: Assessing the Pew Research Center’s Estimate of 7.5 Million Jewish Americans,” November 2022. Elizabeth Tighe, Leonard Saxe, Daniel Parmer,  Daniel Nussbaum & Raquel Magidin de Kramer:

It is unclear why DellaPergola revised population estimates from the Pew 2013 survey to exclude all those who said partially (and their children) when previous studies and population estimates had included them as part of the Jewish population.

The exclusion of those who might identify with multiple ethnicities is without precedent. 

Traditional Jewish law (halacha) follows matrilineal descent, and thus, there is no precedent for excluding those with Jewish mothers (half of those excluded by DellaPergola), with the exception of those who practice another religion ...

… excluding those with a Jewish parent even though they self-identify as Jewish and are not practicing another religion is counter to current Jewish practice. There is no precedent for doing so in sociological surveys. It not only distorts the snapshot provided by Pew of the contemporary Jewish population but makes it difficult to compare with past surveys of the US Jewish population. DellaPergola does not provide revised estimates of the Jewish population from earlier studies using his novel and more limited definition of who is a Jew.

From “Social Science and Consensus in Estimates of the US Jewish Population: Response to Sasson and DellaPergola,” July 2023. Saxe, Tighe et al:

Although we value the collegial tone of DellaPergola’s response, not surprisingly, we take strong exception to his rejection of the growing consensus among scholars of contemporary Jewish life about the size of the US Jewish population and its implications.

DellaPergola’s complaint is that by documenting the growing consensus among studies of US Jewry and growing agreement about the boundaries of Jewish identity, we are seeking to silence dissenting voices. The very fact of the present debate suggests that no one is being silenced. To the contrary, our position is offered as a counterpoint to the “official” statistics about the size of the US Jewish population, as promulgated by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). For many years, DellaPergola’s analyses have formed the basis for the CBS’s world Jewish population report ...

These counts have not only been promulgated by the Israeli government, but have also been the basis for annual reviews in the American Jewish Year Book (e.g., DellaPergola 2004, 2015, 2017, 2022).

Contrary to his assertion that we advocate only a single way to define membership in the Jewish community, we appreciate the diverse ways in which Jewish Americans relate to their Jewish identities ...

 From Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem:

The Jews in the Diaspora were to remember how Judaism, “four thousand years old, with its spiritual creations and its ethical strivings, its Messianic aspirations,” had always faced “a hostile world,” how the Jews had degenerated until they went to their death like sheep, and how only the establishment of a Jewish state had enabled Jews to hit back, as Israelis had done in the War of Independence, in the Suez adventure, and in the almost daily incidents on Israel’s unhappy borders.

More discussion of Arendt, Eichmann, and the promotion of Zionism among American Jews can be found here—and, of course, in Arendt’s book.