Jewish population by country


, the world's "core" Jewish population, those identifying as Jews above all else, was 14.6 million. The "connected" Jewish population, including those who say they are partly Jewish or that have Jewish background from at least a single Jewish parent, in addition to the core Jewish population, was 17.8 million. The "enlarged" Jewish population, including those who say they have Jewish background but not a Jewish parent, and all non-Jewish household members who live in households with Jews, in addition to the Jewish connected population, was 20.7 million. The Law of Return Jewish population, which counts all those eligible to immigration to Israel under its Law of Return, was 23.5 million.
Two countries, the United States, and Israel, including the West Bank, account for 81% of those recognised as Jews and eligible for citizenship by Israel under its Law of Return. France, Canada, Russia, United Kingdom, Argentina, Germany, Ukraine, Brazil, Australia and Hungary hold an additional 16%, and the remaining 3% are spread around other countries and territories with less than 0.5% each. With nearly 6.5 million Jews, Israel is the only Jewish-majority and.
In 1939, the core Jewish population reached its historical peak of 17 million. Due to the Holocaust, the number was reduced to 11 million by 1945. The population grew to around 13 million by the 1970s and then recorded near-zero growth until around 2005, due to low fertility rates and to assimilation. From 2005 to 2018, the world's Jewish population grew on average 0.63% annually. This increase primarily reflected the rapid growth of Haredi and some Orthodox sectors, who are becoming a growing proportion of Jews.

Recent trends

Recent Jewish population dynamics are characterized by continued steady increase in the Israeli Jewish population and flat or declining numbers in other countries. The Jewish population of Israel increased from the country's inception in 1948 to 6,135,000 in 2014 while the population of the diaspora has dropped from 10.5 to 8.1 million over the same period. Current Israeli Jewish demographics are characterized by a relatively high fertility rate of 3 children per woman and a stable age distribution. The overall growth rate of Jews in Israel is 1.7% annually. The diaspora countries, by contrast, have low Jewish birth rates, an increasingly elderly age composition, and a negative balance of people leaving Judaism versus those joining.
Immigration trends also favor Israel ahead of diaspora countries. The Jewish state has a positive immigration balance. Israel saw its Jewish numbers significantly buoyed by a million-strong wave of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s and immigration growth has been steady in the low tens of thousands since then. In the rest of the world, only the United States, Canada, Australia, and Germany have had a positive recent Jewish migration balance outside of Israel. In general, the modern English-speaking world has seen an increase in its share of the diaspora since the Holocaust and the foundation of Israel, while historic Jewish populations in Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East have significantly declined or disappeared.
France continues to be home to the world's third largest Jewish community, around 500,000, but has shown an increasingly negative trend. Emigration loss to Israel amongst French Jews reached the tens of thousands between 2014 and 2017 following a wave of antisemitic attacks.

Debate over United States numbers

The number of Jews in the United States has been the subject of much debate because of questions over counting methodology. In 2012, Sheskin and Dashefsky put forward a figure of 6.72 million based on a mixture of local surveys, informed local estimates, and US census data. They qualified their estimate with a concern over double counting and suggested the real figure may lie between 6 and 6.4 million. Drawing on their work, the Steinhardt Social Research Institute released their own estimate of 6.8 million Jews in the United States in 2013. These figures are in contrast to Israeli demographer Sergio Della Pergola's number of 5,425,000, also in 2012. He has called high estimates “implausible” and “unreliable” although he revised the United States Jewish number upward to 5.7 million in subsequent years. This controversy followed a similar debate in 2001 when the National Jewish Population Survey released a United States Jewish estimate as low as 5.2 million only to have serious methodological errors suggested in their survey. In sum, a confidence interval of a million or more people is likely to persist in reporting on the number of Jewish Americans.

By country

Below is a list of Jewish populations in the world by country. All data below, but the last column, is from the Berman Jewish DataBank at Stanford University in the World Jewish Population report coordinated by Sergio DellaPergola at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Jewish DataBank figures are primarily based on national censuses combined with trend analysis. "Core" Jewish population refers to those who consider themselves Jews to the exclusion of all else. The "connected" Jewish population, in addition to the core Jewish population, includes those who say they are partly Jewish or that have Jewish background from at least one Jewish parent. The "enlarged" Jewish population includes the Jewish connected population and those who say they have Jewish background but not a Jewish parent, and all non-Jews living in households with Jews. The Law of Return Jewish population includes all those eligible to immigration to Israel under its Law of Return.

Table

Remnant and vanished populations

The above table represents Jews that number at least a few dozen per country. Reports exist of Jewish communities remaining in other territories in the low single digits that are on the verge of disappearing, particularly in the Muslim world, as their reaction to the birth of Israel in 1948 was the persecution of Jews in nearly all Muslim lands; these are often of historical interest as they represent the remnant of much larger Jewish populations. For example, Egypt had a Jewish community of 80,000 in the early 20th century that numbered fewer than 40 as of 2014, mainly because of the forced expulsion movements to Israel and other countries at that time. Afghanistan may have only one Jew left, Zablon Simintov, despite a 2,000 year history of Jewish presence. In Syria, another ancient Jewish community saw mass exodus at the end of the 20th century and numbered fewer than 20 in the midst of the Syrian Civil War. The size of the Jewish community in Indonesia has been variously given as 65, 100, or 18 at most over the last 50 years.

Major Jewish population centers worldwide

Jewish population by city

Censuses in many countries do not record religious or ethnic background, leading to a lack of certainty on the exact numbers of Jewish population.
CityCountryNumber
New York City1,100,000
Jerusalem546,100
Los Angeles519,200
Tel Aviv401,500
San Francisco391,550
Chicago291,800
Paris277,000
Boston248,000
Rishon LeZiyyon229,300
Petah Tiqwa220,900
Haifa217,600
Washington, D.C.215,600
Philadelphia214,600
Ashdod200,400
Netanya196,300
Toronto188,710
Be'er Sheva181,000
London172,000
Buenos Aires159,000
Ramat Gan146,900
Atlanta119,800
Miami119,000
Moscow100,000
San Diego100,000
Montreal90,780
Cleveland86,600
Denver83,900
Phoenix82,900
Las Vegas80,000
Budapest80,000
Detroit78,000
São Paulo75,000
Marseille70,000
Seattle63,400
Dallas57,800
St. Louis, Missouri54,500
Tampa51,100
Johannesburg50,000
Houston48,400
Portland47,500
Pittsburgh42,200
Melbourne41,643
Minneapolis40,240
Saint Petersburg40,000
Rio de Janeiro40,000
Mexico City39,777
Sydney35,196
Hartford34,500
New Haven29,700
Cincinnati27,000
Vancouver26,255
Milwaukee25,800
Manchester25,000
Berlin25,000
Tucson22,900
Rochester22,500
Columbus25,500
Montevideo20,000
Amsterdam20,000
Kansas City19,000
Orlando19,000
Kiev17,900
Istanbul17,000
Austin16,300
Strasbourg16,000
Cape Town16,000
Porto Alegre15,000
Jacksonville15,000
Antwerp15,000
Panama City15,000
Providence14,200
Ottawa14,010
Winnipeg13,690
Rome13,000
Buffalo13,000
San Antonio12,740
Richmond12,500
Albany12,500
Odessa12,400
Charlotte12,000
New Orleans12,000
Munich11,000
Frankfurt10,500
Kharkiv10,300
Indianapolis10,000
Córdoba9,000
Stockholm9,000
Nashville9,000-9,200
Louisville8,700
Calgary8,335
Milan8,000
Rosario8,000
Leeds8,000
Vienna7,000
Chapel Hill6,000
Raleigh6,000
Zurich6,000
Edmonton5,550
Birmingham5,300
Perth5,187
Hong Kong5,000
El Paso5,000
Madison5,000
Santa Fe5,000
Bogotá5,500
Dayton4,000
Toledo3,900
Glasgow3,500
Youngstown3,200
Prague3,000
Greensboro3,000
Durban2,700
Chișinău2,649
Athens2,500
Bucharest2,481
Brisbane2,195
Curitiba1,774
Belo Horizonte1,714
İzmir1,500
Pretoria1,500
Dublin1,439
Recife1,300
Helsinki1,200
Montgomery1,200
Brasília1,103
Florence1,000
Casablanca1,000
Asunción1,000
Sofia1,000
Guadalajara900
Bratislava800
Monterrey500

Jewish population by towns and villages as a percentage of total population

List does not include cities in Israel.
RankCityCountryPercentNumber
1Qırmızı Qəsəbə1003,300
2Kiryas Joel9922,000
3Deal91600
4Beachwood90.410,700
5Hampstead74.25,170
6Côte-Saint-Luc69.120,146
7Lakewood5959,607
8Teaneck5018,000
9Livingston4612,600
10Caulfield North41.46,319
11Caulfield South33.94,008
12Rose Bay27.32,744
13Sarcelles2515,000
14Mercer Island255,000
15St Kilda East24.83,246
16Créteil24.422,000
17Vaucluse23.22,163
18Westmount23.24,495
19Bellevue Hill21.42,300
20Dollard-des-Ormeaux21.110,115
21Vaughan18.233,090
22Elsternwick17.81,846
23Montreal West13.8710
24New York City181,540,000
25Bondi12.71,272
26Los Angeles12.5519,000
27Mount Royal12.02,205
28San Jose, California440,000
29Marseille970,000
30Buenos Aires8.22244,000
31Newton Mearns5.981,431
32Philadelphia4.89276,000
33Toronto4.21103,500