According to the latest information released by Hebrew University demographics expert Professor Sergio Della Pergola, there are 13.75 million Jews in the world today, an increase of 88,300 from last Rosh Hashanah. The increase is negligible when one realizes the world’s population increased by 1.26% last year, placing the growth of Jews somewhere around 0.65%. One out of every 514 people in the world is Jewish, which amounts to less than 0.2% of mankind.

The entire report will be published after Rosh Hashanah by the American Jewish Yearbook, which reports the world’s Jewish population after WWII being 11 million (with 500,000 in Eretz Yisrael).

39% of Jews worldwide live in the United States (5.46 million), and 1.43 million reside in Europe.

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, there are 5.97 million Jews in Israel (43%), 2.099 million in New York (15.3%), 688,600 in Los Angeles (5%), 345,700 in San Francisco (2.5%), 332,900 in Washington (2.4%), 295,700 in Boston (2.2%), 295,700 in Chicago (2.1%), 284,000 in Paris (2.1%), 280,000 in Philadelphia (2%), 195,000 in London (1.4%) and 180,000 in Toronto (1.3%).

The Diaspora population shrank by 10,000 during the past year. One of the main reasons is aliyah to Eretz Yisrael. For example, there are only 276,000 Jews remaining in Russia, once home to 3 million. Another factor is assimilation. Intermarriage among Jews in the United States exceeds 50%. In Russia, 70% of the women and 80% of the men are intermarried.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)