Israel’s Jewish Population Explosion

FORWARD MOMENTUM “This group [chareidim] has its own independent educational system which is the key for its intergenerational survival within a very materialistic outer world” says Dov Friedlander professor emeritus at the Hebrew University’s Department of Population Studies (Photos: FLASH90)

I srael’s Jewish Population Explosion

Chareidi National-Religious Contribution Cited in Research

Twice every year like clockwork Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) releases a census — before Yom Hatzma’ut Israel’s Independence Day and again just before the end of the calendar year.

The headline number is always the country’s total population. With 8.7 million people — among them almost 6.5 million Jews — the State of Israel’s Jewish population today has grown tenfold since 1948. Some 43% of the world’s Jewish population now lives in Israel. And while that figure is most significant other numbers that receive less publicity bear watching just as closely.

For example in 1955 the first year in which the CBS released statistics on anticipated births Arab women could be expected to bear an average of eight children and Jewish women 3.6. Some 60 years later those numbers are almost equal — 3.3 Arab births to 3.1 Jewish births. And that’s despite the average marriage age of Jewish women rising from about 23 in 1955 to over 26 today and the number of marriages per 1 000 people dropping from almost 11 in 1948 to just over six today.