On Rosh Hashanah Eve: Global Jewish Population 15.2 M., Grew by 100,000

Jerusalem, 5 September, 2021 (TPS) -- The Jewish population worldwide stands at 15.2 million Jews and grew by 100,000 in the past year, according to the Jewish Agency’s report published ahead of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Israel has the largest Jewish population with 6.93 million Jews, accounting for 45.3% of world Jewry.

The largest Jewish population outside Israel is in the US, with around 6 million Jews, followed by France with 446,000, Canada with 393,500, Britain with 292,000, Argentina with 175,000, Russia with 150,000, Germany with 118,000, and Australia with 118,000 Jews.

A total of 8.2 million Jews live outside Israel.

At the end of 2020, eight decades after the Holocaust, the world’s Jewish population has yet to recover from the Holocaust’s devastation. In 1939, on the eve of World War II, the world Jewish population was 16.6 million, of whom 449,000, only 3%, lived in Israel.

A very small number of 27,000 Jews live in Muslim countries, including 14,500 in Turkey, 9,500 in Iran, 2,000 in Morocco and 1,000 in Tunisia.

Jews in this report were defined as those who self-identified as Jewish and not as any other religion.

The Jewish Agency noted that if you count the Jewish population according to those eligible to receive Israeli citizenship under Israel’s Law of Return, which requires at least one Jewish grandparent, there are 25.3 million Jews worldwide.