Israeli Jews
Israel's ethnic and religious majority / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Israeli Jews or Jewish Israelis (Hebrew: יהודים ישראלים Yêhūdīm Yīśrāʾēlīm) comprise Israel's largest ethnic and religious community. The core of their demographic consists of those with a Jewish identity and their descendants, including ethnic Jews and religious Jews alike. Approximately 99% of the global Israeli Jewish population resides in Israel; yerida is uncommon and is offset exponentially by aliyah, but those who do emigrate from the country typically relocate to the Western world. As such, the Israeli diaspora is closely tied to the broader Jewish diaspora.
Total population | |
---|---|
Jewish citizens only: 7,208,000 (73.2%)[1] Jews and non-Jewish relatives: 7,762,000 (78.9%) | |
Regions with significant populations | |
Israel (incl. occupied territories) | 7,181,000[lower-alpha 1] |
United States | 500,000[6][7][8] |
Russia | 100,000 (80,000 in Moscow)[9][10] |
Canada | 10,755[11]–30,000[12] |
United Kingdom | ≈30,000[13] |
Australia | 15,000[14] |
Germany | ≈10,000[15][16][17] |
Languages | |
Predominant: Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, English, French Historical: Yiddish, Amharic, other Jewish languages | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Diaspora Jews, Samaritans, Arabs, etc. (Middle Eastern peoples) |
The country is widely described as a melting pot for the various Jewish ethnic divisions, primarily consisting of Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews, and Mizrahi Jews, as well as many smaller Jewish communities, such as the Beta Israel, the Cochin Jews, the Bene Israel, and the Karaite Jews, among others. Likewise, over 25% of Jewish children and 35% of Jewish newborns in Israel are of mixed Ashkenazi and Sephardic or Mizrahi descent, and these figures have been increasing by approximately 0.5% annually: over 50% of Israel's entire Jewish population identifies as having Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi admixture.[18] The integration of Judaism in Israeli Jewish life is split along four categories: the secularists (33%), the traditionalists (24%), the Orthodox (9%), and the Ultra-Orthodox (7%). In addition to religious influences, both Jewish history and Jewish culture serve as important aspects defining Israel's Jewish society, thereby contributing significantly to Israel's identity as the world's only Jewish-majority country.[19][20][21]
In 2018, Israel's Knesset narrowly voted in favour of Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People. As the Israeli government considers a person's Jewish status to be a matter of nationality and citizenship, the definition of Jewishness in the Israeli Law of Return includes patrilineal Jewish descent; this does not align with the stipulations of Judaism's halakha, which defines Jewishness through matrilineality. As of 1970[update], all Jews by blood and their non-Jewish spouses automatically qualify for the right to immigrate to the country and acquire Israeli citizenship.
According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, the Israeli Jewish population stood at 7,208,000 people in 2023, comprising approximately 73% of the country's total population.[22] The addition of any non-Jewish relatives (e.g., spouses) increased this figure to 7,762,000 people, comprising approximately 79% of the country's total population. In 2008, a study conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute revealed that a plurality of Israeli Jews (47%) identify as Jews first and as Israelis second, and that 39% consider themselves to be Israelis first and foremost.[23]
Upon the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, the Palestinian Jews of the Yishuv in the British Mandate for Palestine became known as Israeli Jews due to their adoption of a new national identity. The former term has since fallen out of use in common speech.
Origins
Jews have long considered the Land of Israel to be their homeland, even while living in the diaspora. According to the Hebrew Bible the connection to the Land of Israel began in the covenant of the pieces when the region, which is called the land of Canaan, was promised to Abraham by God. Abraham settled in the region, where his son Isaac and grandson Jacob grew up with their families. Later on, Jacob and his sons went to Egypt. Decades later their descendants were led out of Egypt by Moses and Aaron, given the Tablets of Stone, returned to the land of Canaan and conquered it under the leadership of Joshua. After the period of the judges, in which the Israelites did not have an organized leadership, the Kingdom of Israel was established, which constructed the first temple. This kingdom was soon split into two—the Kingdom of Judah and the Kingdom of Israel. After the destruction of these kingdoms and the destruction of the First Temple, the Israelites were exiled to Babylon. After about 70 years parts of the Israelites were permitted to return to the region and soon thereafter they built the Second Temple. Later on they established the Hasmonean Kingdom. The region was conquered by the Roman Empire in 63 BCE. During the first couple of centuries in the common era during a series of rebellions against the Roman Empire the second temple was destroyed and there was a general expulsion of Jews from their homeland.
The area was later conquered by migrant Arabs who invaded the Byzantine Empire and established a Muslim Caliphate in the 7th century during the rise of Islam. Throughout the centuries the size of the Jewish population in the land fluctuated. Before the birth of modern Zionism in the 1880s, by the early 19th century, more than 10,000 Jews were still living in the area that is today modern Israel.
Following centuries of Jewish diaspora, the 19th century saw the rise of Zionism, a Jewish Nationalist Movement that had a desire to see the self-determination of the Jewish people through the creation of a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. Significant numbers of Jews have immigrated to Palestine since the 1880s. Zionism remained a minority movement until the rise of Nazism in 1933 and the subsequently attempted extermination of the Jewish people in Nazi-occupied areas of Europe in the Holocaust.[25] In the late 19th century large numbers of Jews began moving to the Ottoman and later British-controlled region. In 1917, the British endorsed a National Home for Jews in Mandate Palestine by issuing the Balfour Declaration. The Jewish population in the region increased from 11% of the population in 1922 to 30% by 1940.[26]
In 1937, following the Great Arab Revolt, the partition plan proposed by the Peel Commission was rejected by both the Palestinian Arab leadership and the Zionist Congress. As a result, believing that their position in the Middle East in the event of a war depended on the support of the Arab states, Britain abandoned the idea of a Jewish state in 1939 in favour of a unitary state with a Jewish minority. The White Paper of 1939 capped Jewish immigration for five years, with further immigration dependent on the agreement of the Arabs. In the event, limited Jewish immigration was permitted until the end of the mandate.
In 1947, following increasing levels of violence, the British government decided to withdraw from Mandatory Palestine. The 1947 UN Partition Plan split the mandate (apart from Jerusalem) into two states, Jewish and Arab, giving about 56% of Mandatory Palestine to the Jewish state. Immediately following the adoption of the Partition Plan by the United Nations General Assembly, the Palestinian Arab leadership rejected the plan to create the as-yet-unnamed Jewish State and launched a guerrilla war.
On 14 May 1948, one day before the end of the British Mandate of Palestine, the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine led by prime minister David Ben-Gurion, made a declaration of independence, of the State of Israel though without any reference to defined borders.[27]
1948 Arab–Israeli War
The armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq invaded the former mandate, thus starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The nascent Israeli Defense Force repulsed the Arab nations from much of the former mandate, thus extending its borders beyond the original UNSCOP partition.[28] By December 1948, Israel controlled much of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan River. The remainder of the Mandate consisted of Jordan, the area that came to be called the West Bank (controlled by Jordan), and the Gaza Strip (controlled by Egypt). Prior to and during this conflict, 711,000[29] Palestinians Arabs fled their original lands to become Palestinian refugees. The reasons for this are disputed, and range from claims that the major cause of Palestinian flight was military actions by the Israel Defense Forces and fear of events such as the Deir Yassin massacre to an encouragement to leave by Arab leaders so that they could return when the war was won.
1949–present
Immigration of Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees from Arab lands doubled Israel's population within one year of its independence. Over the following years approximately 850,000 Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews fled or were expelled from surrounding mostly due persecution in Arab countries, and in smaller numbers from Turkey, India, Afghanistan, and Iran. Of these, about 680,000 settled in Israel.
Israel's Jewish population continued to grow at a very high rate for years, fed by waves of Jewish immigration from round the world, most notably the massive immigration wave of Soviet Jews, which arrived in Israel in the early 1990s following the dissolution of the USSR, who, according to the Law of Return, were entitled to become Israeli citizens upon arrival. About 380,000 arrived in 1990–1991 alone. Some 80,000–100,000 Ethiopian Jews have immigrated to Israel since the early 1980s.
Since 1948, Israel has been involved in a series of major military conflicts, including the 1956 Suez War, 1967 Six-Day War, 1973 Yom Kippur War, 1982 Lebanon War, and 2006 Lebanon War, as well as a nearly constant series of ongoing minor conflicts. Israel has been also embroiled in an ongoing conflict with the Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories, which have been under Israeli control since the Six-Day War, despite the signing of the Oslo Accords on 13 September 1993, and the ongoing efforts of Israeli, Palestinian and global peacemakers.
According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, as of January 1, 2020, of Israel's 9.136 million people, 74.1% were Jews of any background.[30] Among them, 68% were Sabras (Israeli-born), mostly second- or third-generation Israelis, and the rest are olim (Jewish immigrants to Israel)—22% from Europe and the Americas, and 10% from Asia and Africa, including the Arab countries. Nearly half of all Israeli Jews are descended from Jews who made aliyah from Europe, while around the same number are descended from Jews who made aliyah from Arab countries, Iran, Turkey, and Central Asia. Over two hundred thousand are, or are descended from, Ethiopian and Indian Jews.[31]
Growth
Israel is the only country in the world with a consistently growing Jewish population due to natural population increase. Jewish communities in the Diaspora feature a population declining or steady, with the exception of the Orthodox and Haredi Jewish communities around the world, whose members often shun birth control for religious reasons, who have experienced rapid population growth.[32] The growth of the Orthodox and Haredi sector has partly balanced out negative population growth amongst other Jewish denominations. Haredi women have 7.7 children on average while the average Israeli Jewish woman has over 3 children.[33]
When Israel was first established in 1948, it had the third-largest Jewish population in the world, after the United States and Soviet Union. In the 1970s, Israel surpassed the Soviet Union as having the second-largest Jewish population.[34] In 2003, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics reported that Israel had surpassed the United States as the nation with the world's largest Jewish population. The report was contested by Professor Sergio Della Pergola of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Considered the greatest demographic expert on Jews, Della Pergola said it would take another three years to close the gap.[35] In January 2006, Della Pergola stated that Israel now had more Jews than the United States, and Tel Aviv had replaced New York as the metropolitan area with the largest Jewish population in the world,[36] while a major demographic study found that Israel's Jewish population surpassed that of the United States in 2008.[37] Due to the decline of Diaspora Jewry as a result of intermarriage and assimilation, along with the steady growth of the Israeli Jewish population, it has been speculated that within about 20 years,[when?] a majority of the world's Jews will live in Israel.[38] In March 2012, the Israeli Census Bureau of Statistics reported on behalf of Ynet has forecast that in 2019, Israel will be home to 6,940,000 Jews, 5.84 million which are non-Haredi Jews living in Israel, compared with 5.27 million in 2009. The number is expected to grow to anywhere between 6.09 million and 9.95 million by 2059, marking a 16%–89% increase with the 2011 population. The Bureau also forecasts that the ultra-Orthodox population will number 1.1 million people by 2019, compared with 750,000 in 2009. By 2059, the projected Haredi Jewish population is estimated to be between 2.73 million and 5.84 million, marking a 264%–686% increase. Thus the total projected Israeli Jewish population by 2059 is estimated to be between 8.82 million and 15.790 million.[39] In January 2014, it was reported by demographer Joseph Chamie that the projected population of Israeli Jews is expected to reach between 9.84 million by the year 2025 and 11.40 million by 2035.[40]
1st century estimate | 2,500,000[41] |
7th century estimate | 300,000–400,000[42] |
1800 estimate | 6,700[43][44] |
1880 estimate | 24,000[43][44] |
1915 estimate | 87,500[43][44] |
1931 estimate | 174,000[43][44] |
1936 estimate | > 400,000[43][44] |
1947 estimate | 630,000[43][44] |
1949 census | 1,013,900[45] |
1953 census | 1,483,600[46] |
1957 census | 1,762,700[47] |
1962 census | 2,068,900[47] |
1967 census | 2,383,600[45] |
1973 census | 2,845,000[45] |
1983 census | 3,412,500[45] |
1990 census | 3,946,700[45] |
1995 census | 4,522,300[45] |
2000 census | 4,955,400[45] |
2006 census | 5,393,400[45] |
2009 census | 5,665,100 |
2010 census | 5,802,000[48] |
2017 census | 6,556,000[49][50] |
Significant Jewish population centers
Rank | District | Total Jewish Population (2008) | % Jews (2008) |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Central District | 1,592,000 | 92% |
2 | Tel Aviv District | 1,210,000 | 99% |
3 | Southern District | 860,000 | 86% |
4 | Haifa District | 652,000 | 76% |
5 | Jerusalem District | 621,000 | 69% |
6 | Northern District | 562,000 | 46% |
7 | Judea and Samaria Area (the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem) | 304,569 | ≈15–20% |
Rank | City | Population (2009) | % Jews (2008) | District |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Jerusalem | 773,800 | 63.4% | Jerusalem District |
2 | Tel Aviv | 393,900 | 91.4% | Tel Aviv District |
3 | Haifa | 265,600 | 80.9% | Haifa District |
4 | Rishon Lezion | 227,600 | 93.9% | Central District |
5 | Ashdod | 211,300 | 91.0% | Southern District |
6 | Petah Tikva | 197,800 | 92.5% | Central District |
7 | Netanya | 181,200 | 93.4% | Central District |
8 | Beersheba | 187,900 | 87.9% | Southern District |
9 | Holon | 172,400 | 92.8% | Tel Aviv District |
10 | Bnei Brak | 155,600 | 98.6% | Tel Aviv District |
11 | Ramat Gan | 135,300 | 95.2% | Tel Aviv District |
12 | Bat Yam | 128,900 | 84.9% | Tel Aviv District |
13 | Rehovot | 109,500 | 94.8% | Central District |
14 | Ashkelon | 111,700 | 88.4% | Southern District |
15 | Herzliya | 85,300 | 96.3% | Tel Aviv District |
For statistical purposes, there are three main metropolitan areas in Israel. The majority of the Jewish population in Israel is located in the central area of Israel within the Metropolitan area of Tel Aviv. The Metropolitan area of Tel Aviv is currently the largest Jewish population center in the world.
Rank | Metropolitan area | Total population (2009) |
Jewish population (2009) |
% Jews (2009) |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Metropolitan area of Tel Aviv | 3,206,400 | 3,043,500 | 94.9% |
2 | Metropolitan area of Haifa | 1,021,000 | 719,500 | 70.5% |
3 | Metropolitan area of Beersheba | 559,700 | 356,000 | 63.6% |
It has been argued that Jerusalem, Israel's proclaimed capital and largest city with a population of 732,100, and an urban area with a population of over 1,000,000 (including 280,000 Palestinian East Jerusalemites who are not Israeli citizens), with over 700,000 Israeli Jews[52] and Nazareth with a population of 65,500, and an urban area of nearly 200,000 people of which over 110,000 are Israeli Jews[53] should also be classified as metropolitan areas.
Jewish communities in Israel
By the time the State of Israel was proclaimed, the majority of Jews in the state and the region were Ashkenazi. Following the declaration of the state, a flood of Jewish migrants and refugees entered Israel—both from Europe and America and also from Arab and Muslim countries. Most of the Jewish immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s were Jewish Holocaust survivors, as well as Sephardic Jews and Mizrahi Jews (mostly Moroccan Jews, Algerian Jews, Tunisian Jews, Yemenite Jews, Bukharan Jews, Iranian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Kurdish Jews, and smaller communities, principally from Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Egypt, India, Turkey and Afghanistan). In recent decades other Jewish communities have also immigrated to Israel including Ethiopian Jews, Russian Jews and Bnei Menashe.
Among Israeli Jews, 75% are Sabras (Israeli-born), mostly second- or third-generation Israelis, and the rest are olim (Jewish immigrants to Israel)—19% from Europe, Americas and Oceania, and 9% from Asia and Africa, mostly the Muslim world.
The Israeli government does not trace the diaspora origin of Israeli Jews.
Paternal country of diaspora origin
The CBS traces the paternal country of diaspora origin of Israeli Jews (including non–Halachically Jewish immigrants who arrived on the Law of Return) as of 2010 is as follows.[54]
Country of origin | Born abroad |
Israeli born |
Total | % |
---|---|---|---|---|
Total | 1,610,900 | 4,124,400 | 5,753,300 | 100.0% |
Asia | 201,000 | 494,200 | 695,200 | 12.0% |
Turkey | 25,700 | 52,500 | 78,100 | 1.4% |
Iraq | 62,600 | 173,300 | 235,800 | 4.1% |
Yemen | 28,400 | 111,100 | 139,500 | 2.4% |
Iran/Afghanistan | 49,300 | 92,300 | 141,600 | 2.5% |
India/Pakistan | 17,600 | 29,000 | 46,600 | 0.8% |
Syria/Lebanon | 10,700 | 25,000 | 35,700 | 0.6% |
Other | 6,700 | 11,300 | 18,000 | 0.3% |
Africa | 315,800 | 572,100 | 887,900 | 15.4% |
Morocco | 153,600 | 339,600 | 493,200 | 8.6% |
Algeria/Tunisia | 43,200 | 91,700 | 134,900 | 2.3% |
Libya | 15,800 | 53,500 | 69,400 | 1.2% |
Egypt | 18,500 | 39,000 | 57,500 | 1.0% |
Ethiopia | 81,600 | 38,600 | 110,100 | 1.9% |
Other | 13,100 | 9,700 | 22,800 | 0.4% |
Europe/Americas/Oceania | 1,094,100 | 829,700 | 1,923,800 | 33.4% |
Soviet Union | 651,400 | 241,000 | 892,400 | 15.5% |
Poland | 51,300 | 151,000 | 202,300 | 3.5% |
Romania | 88,600 | 125,900 | 214,400 | 3.7% |
Bulgaria/Greece | 16,400 | 32,600 | 49,000 | 0.9% |
Germany/Austria | 24,500 | 50,600 | 75,200 | 1.3% |
Czech Republic/Slovakia/Hungary | 20,000 | 45,000 | 64,900 | 1.1% |
France | 41,100 | 26,900 | 68,000 | 1.2% |
United Kingdom | 21,000 | 19,900 | 40,800 | 0.7% |
Europe, other | 27,000 | 29,900 | 56,900 | 1.0% |
North America/Oceania | 90,500 | 63,900 | 154,400 | 2.7% |
Argentina | 35,500 | 26,100 | 61,600 | 1.1% |
Latin America, other | 26,900 | 17,000 | 43,900 | 0.8% |
Israel | — | 2,246,300 | 2,246,300 | 39.0% |
In Israel there are approximately 300,000 citizens with Jewish ancestry who are not Jewish according to Orthodox interpretations of Jewish law. Of this number approximately 10% are Christian and 89% are either Jewish or non-religious. The total number of conversions under the Nativ program of IDF was 640 in 2005 and 450 in 2006. From 2002 to 1 October 2007, a total of 2,213 soldiers have converted under Nativ.[55] In 2003, 437 Christians converted to Judaism; in 2004, 884; and in 2005, 733.[56] Recently several thousand conversions conducted by the Chief Rabbinate under the leadership of Rabbi Chaim Drukman have been annulled, and the official Jewish status over several thousand people who converted through the conversion court of the Chief Rabbinate since 1999 hangs in limbo as the proceedings continue regarding these individuals Jewish status. The vast majority of these individuals are former Soviet Union immigrants.[57]
In his book from 2001 "The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Culture and Military in Israel", the Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling identified and divided the modern Israeli society into seven population groups (seven subcultures): The secular upper-middle class group, the national religious group, the traditionalist Mizrahim group, the Orthodox religious group, the Arab citizens of Israel, the Russian immigrants group and the Ethiopian immigrants group. According to Kimmerling, each of these population groups have distinctive characteristics, such as place of resident, consumption patterns, education systems, communications media and more.[58]
Israeli Jews who immigrated from European and American countries
Today, Jews whose family immigrated from European countries and the Americas, on their paternal line, constitute the largest single group among Israeli Jews and consist of about 3,000,000[59] people living in Israel. About 1,200,000 of them are descended from or are immigrants from the former Soviet Union who returned from the diaspora after the fall of the Former Soviet Union 1991 (about 300,000 of them are not considered to be Jewish under Jewish law). Most of the other 1,800,000 are descended from the first Zionist settlers in the Land of Israel, as well as Holocaust survivors and their descendants, with an additional 200,000 having immigrated or descended from immigrants from English-speaking countries and South America. They have played a prominent role in various fields including the arts, entertainment, literature, sports, science and technology, business and economy, media, and politics of Israel since its founding, and tend to be the most affluent of Israeli Jews.
Not all Jews immigrating to Israel from European countries are of Ashkenazi origin (the majority of French Jews are of Sephardic, and some Jews from the Asian Republics of the USSR are Mizrahi), and the Israeli government does not distinguish between Jewish communities in its census.
During the first decades of Israel as a state, strong cultural conflict existed between Mizrahi, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews (mainly east European Ashkenazim). The roots of this conflict, which still exists to a much smaller extent in present-day Israeli society, stem from the many cultural differences between the various Jewish communities, despite of the government's encouragement of the "melting pot". That is to say, all Jewish immigrants in Israel were strongly encouraged to "melt down" their own particular exile identities within the general social "pot" in order to become Israeli.
The current most prominent European countries of origin of the Israeli Jews are as follows:[citation needed]
|
Israeli Jews who immigrated from North African and Asian countries
The majority of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi.[60] The exact proportion of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish populations in Israel is unknown (since it is not included in the census); some estimates place Jews of Mizrahi origin at up to 61% of the Israeli Jewish population,[61] with hundreds of thousands more having mixed Ashkenazi heritage due to cross-cultural intermarriage. In a survey that attempted to be representative, 44.9% percent of the Israeli Jewish sample identified as either Mizrahi or Sephardi, 44.2% as Ashkenazi, about 3% as Beta Israel and 7.9% as mixed or other.[62]
Jews from North Africa and Asia have come to be called "Mizrahi Jews".
Most African and Asian Jewish communities use the Sephardic prayer ritual and abide by the rulings of Sephardic rabbinic authorities, and therefore consider themselves to be "Sephardim" in the broader sense of "Jews of the Spanish rite", though not in the narrower sense of "Spanish Jews". Of late, the term Mizrahi has come to be associated with all Jews in Israel with backgrounds in Islamic lands.
Cultural and/or racial biases against the newcomers were compounded by the fledgling state's lack of financial resources and inadequate housing to handle the massive population influx. Austerity was the law of the land during the country's first decade of existence. Thus, hundreds of thousands of new Sephardic immigrants were sent to live in tent cities in outlying areas. Sephardim (in its wider meaning) were often victims of discrimination, and were sometimes called schwartze (meaning "black" in Yiddish). The most egregious effects of racism were documented in the Yemenite children affair, in which Yemenite children were placed in the foster care of Ashkenazim families, their families being told that their children had died.
Some believe that even worse than the housing discrimination was the differential treatment accorded the children of these immigrants, many of whom were tracked by the largely European education establishment into dead-end "vocational" high schools, without any real assessment of their intellectual capacities. Mizrahi Jews protested their unfair treatment, and even established the Israeli Black Panthers movement with the mission of working for social justice.
The effects of this early discrimination still linger a half-century later, as documented by the studies of the Adva Center, a think tank on social equality, and by other Israeli academic research (cf., for example, Tel Aviv University Professor Yehuda Shenhav's article in Hebrew documenting the gross under-representation of Sephardic Jewry in Israeli high school history textbooks.) All Israeli Prime Ministers have been Ashkenazi, although Sephardim and Mizrahim have attained high positions including ministerial positions, chief of staffs and presidency. The student bodies of Israel's universities remain overwhelmingly Ashkenazi in origin, despite the fact that roughly half the country's population is non-Ashkenazi. The tent cities of the 1950s morphed into so-called "development towns". Scattered over border areas of the Negev Desert and the Galilee, far from the bright lights of Israel's major cities, most of these towns never had the critical mass or ingredients to succeed as places to live, and they continue to suffer from high unemployment, inferior schools, and chronic brain drain.[citation needed]
While the Israeli Black Panthers no longer exist, the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition and many other NGOs carry on the struggle for equal access and opportunity in housing, education, and employment for the country's underprivileged populace—still largely composed of Sephardim and Mizrahim, joined now by newer immigrants from Ethiopia and the Caucasus Mountains.
Today over 2,500,000 Mizrahi Jews,[63] and Sephardic Jews live in Israel with the majority of them being descendants of the 680,000 Jews who fled Arab countries due to expulsions and antisemitism, with smaller numbers having immigrated from the Islamic Republics of the Former Soviet Union (c.250,000), India (70,000), Iran (200,000–250,000), and Turkey (80,000). Before the immigration of over 1,000,000 Russian, mainly Ashkenazi Jews to Israel after to collapse of the Soviet Union, 70% of Israeli Jews were Sephardic or Mizrahi Jews.[64]
The current most prominent countries of diaspora origin of these Jewish communities are as follows:[65]
Italian rite and Romaniote Jews
Israel also has small populations of Italian (rite) Jews from Italy and Romaniote Jews from Greece, Cyprus and Turkey. Both groups are considered distinct from the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim. Jews from both communities made aliyah in relatively large numbers during the 20th century, especially after the Holocaust. Both came in relatively small numbers as compared to other Jewish groups. Despite their small numbers, the Italian have been prominent in the economy and academia. Most Italian and Romaniote Israelis and their descendants live in the Tel Aviv area.[69]
Argentine Jews
Argentines in Israel are the largest immigrant group from Latin America and one of the fastest growing groups. The vast majority of Argentines in Israel are Jewish Argentines who make Aliyah but there is also an important group of non-Jewish Argentines, having, or being married to somebody who has, at least one Jewish grandparent, who choose Israel as their new home. There are about 50,000 Argentines residing in Israel although some estimates put the figure at 70,000.[70][71]
Most Jewish Argentines are Ashkenazi Jews.[citation needed]
Ethiopian Beta Israel
Nearly all of the Ethiopian Beta Israel community today lives in Israel, comprising more than 121,000 people.[72] Most of this population are the descendants and the immigrants who immigrated to Israel during two massive waves of immigration mounted by the Israeli government—"Operation Moses" (1984) and during "Operation Solomon" (1991). Civil war and famine in Ethiopia prompted the Israeli government to mount these dramatic rescue operations. The rescues were within the context of Israel's national mission to gather Diaspora Jews and bring them to the Jewish homeland. Some immigration has continued up until the present day. Today 81,000 Ethiopian Israelis were born in Ethiopia, while 38,500 or 32% of the community are native born Israelis.[73]
Over time, the Ethiopian Jews in Israel moved out of the government-owned mobile home camps that they initially lived in and settled mainly in the various cities and towns throughout Israel, mainly with the encouragement of the Israeli authorities who granted the new immigrants generous government loans or low-interest mortgages.
Similarly to other groups of immigrant Jews who made aliyah to Israel, the Ethiopian Jews have faced obstacles in their integration to Israeli society. Initially the main challenges of the Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel were due in part to communication difficulties (most of the population could not read or write in Hebrew, and much of the veteran population could not hold a simple conversation in the Hebrew language), and discrimination in certain areas of the Israeli society. Unlike Russian immigrants, many of whom arrive with job skills, Ethiopians came from a subsistence economy and were ill-prepared to work in an industrialized society.
Over the years there has been significant progress in the integration of this population group in the Israeli society, primarily due to the fact that most of the young Ethiopian population is conscripted into the military service (mandatory for all Israelis at 18), where most Ethiopian Jews have been able to increase their chances for better opportunities.[74]
The 2013 Miss Israel title was given to Yityish Titi Aynaw, the first Ethiopian-born contestant to win the pageant. Aynaw, moved to Israel from Ethiopia with her family when she was 12.[75]
Descendants of mixed-marriages
Intermarriage between Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews in Israel was initially uncommon, due in part to distances of each group's settlement in Israel, economic gaps, and cultural and/or racial biases. In recent generations, however, the barriers were lowered by state-sponsored assimilation of all the Jewish communities into a common Sabra (native-born Israeli) identity, which facilitated extensive "mixed marriages". The percentage of Jewish children born to mixed marriages between Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews rose steadily. A 1995 survey found that 5.3% of Jews aged 40–43, 16.5% of Jews aged 20–21, and 25% of Jews aged 10–11 were of mixed ancestry. That same year, 25% of Jewish children born in Israel were mixed.[76]
Converts to Judaism
- Since the founding of the state of Israel and until today, thousands of converts to Judaism worldwide have immigrated to Israel. The most prominent groups of converts are:
- Bnei Menashe—As of 2015[update], over 3,000 Bnei Menashe converts to Judaism have immigrated to Israel since the 1980s.[77][78] The Bnei Menashe group originates from India's North-Eastern border states of Manipur and Mizoram who claim descent from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. They live mainly in West Bank settlements, the southern Israeli town of Nitzan and in the Galilee. The majority of Bnei Menashe are Orthodox Jews. About 7,000 members of this group remain in India, many hoping to make Aliyah.[77][79]
- B'nai Moshe— A few 100[80] Peruvian Amerindian converts to Judaism have immigrated to Israel since the early 1990s. The majority of these 'Inca Jews' follow Orthodox Judaism and live in Jewish West Bank settlements.
Assimilation and population changes
Even though the assimilation rate among the Israeli Jewish community has always been low, the propriety and degree of assimilation of Israeli Jews and Jews worldwide has always been a significant and controversial issue within the modern Israeli Jewish community, with both political and religious skeptics.
While not all Jews disapprove of intermarriage, many members of the Israeli Jewish community have expressed their concern that a high rate of interfaith marriages will result in the eventual disappearance of the Israeli Jewish community.
In contrast to the current moderate birth rates of Israeli Jews and the relative low trends of assimilation, some communities within Israeli Jewry, such as Orthodox Jews, have significantly higher birth rates and lower intermarriage rates, and are growing rapidly.
Israeli Jewish diaspora
Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 the term "Yerida" has been used to mark the emigration of Jews from Israel, whether in groups (small or large) or individually. The name is used in a pejorative sense, as “yerida” means “going down”, while “aliyah”, immigration to Israel, means “going up”.
Through the years, the majority of Israeli Jews who emigrated from Israel went to the United States and Canada.
For many years definitive data on Israeli emigration was unavailable.[81] In The Israeli Diaspora sociologist Stephen J. Gold maintains that calculation of Jewish emigration has been a contentious issue, explaining, "Since Zionism, the philosophy that underlies the existence of the Jewish state, calls for return home of the world's Jews, the opposite movement—Israelis leaving the Jewish state to reside elsewhere—clearly presents an ideological and demographic problem."[82]
Among the most common reasons for emigration of Israeli Jews from Israel are economic constraints, economic characteristics (U.S. and Canada have always been richer nations than Israel), disappointment of the Israeli government, Israel's ongoing security issues, as well as the excessive role of religion in the lives of Israelis.
In recent decades, considerable numbers of Israeli Jews have moved abroad.[83] Reasons for emigration vary, but generally relate to a combination of economic and political concerns. According to data published in 2006, from 1990 to 2005, 230,000 Israelis left the country; a large proportion of these departures included people who initially immigrated to Israel and then reversed their course (48% of all post-1990 departures and even 60% of 2003 and 2004 departures were former immigrants to Israel). 8% of Jewish immigrants in the post-1990 period left Israel. In 2005 alone, 21,500 Israelis left the country and had not yet returned at the end of 2006; among them 73% were Jews. At the same time, 10,500 Israelis came back to Israel after over one year abroad; 84% of them were Jews.
In addition, the Israeli Jewish diaspora group also has many Jews worldwide, especially the ones who originate from Western countries, who moved to Israel and gained Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return, who lived in Israel for a time, then returned to their country of origin and kept their dual citizenship.
United States
Many Israeli Jews emigrated to the United States throughout the period of the declaration of the state of Israel and until today. Today, the descendants of these people are known as Israeli-Americans. The 2000 Census counted 106,839 Israeli Americans.[84] It is estimated that 400,000–800,000 Israeli Jews have immigrated to the United States since the 1950s, though this number remains a contested figure, since many Israelis are originally from other countries and may list their origin countries when arriving in the United States.[6]
Russia
Moscow has the largest single Israeli expatriate community in the world, with 80,000 Israeli citizens living in the city as of 2014, almost all of them native Russian-speakers.[10][85] Many Israeli cultural events are hosted for the community, and many live part of the year in Israel. (To cater to the Israeli community, Israeli cultural centres are located in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg.)[86]
Canada
Many Israeli Jews emigrated to Canada throughout the period of the declaration of the state of Israel and until today. Today, the descendants of these people are known as Israeli Canadians. It is estimated that as many as 30,000 Jewish Israelis live in Canada.[12]
United Kingdom
Many Israeli Jews emigrated to the United Kingdom throughout the period of the declaration of the state of Israel and until today. Today, the descendants of these people are known as Israeli-British. It is estimated that as many as 30,000 Jewish Israelis live in the United Kingdom.[13]
The majority of the Israeli Jews in the UK live in London and in particular in the heavily populated Jewish area of Golders Green.[87]
Perceived Arab demographic threat
In the northern part of Israel the percentage of Jewish population is declining.[88] The increasing population of Arabs within Israel, and the majority status they hold in two major geographic regions—the Galilee and the Triangle—has become a growing point of open political contention in recent years.
The phrase demographic threat (or demographic bomb) is used within the Israeli political sphere to describe the growth of Israel's Arab citizenry as constituting a threat to its maintenance of its status as a Jewish state with a Jewish demographic majority.
Israeli historian Benny Morris states:
The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then. If we are attacked by Egypt (after an Islamist revolution in Cairo) and by Syria, and chemical and biological missiles slam into our cities, and at the same time Israeli Palestinians attack us from behind, I can see an expulsion situation. It could happen. If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified[...][89]
The term "demographic bomb" was famously used by Benjamin Netanyahu in 2003[90] when he asserted that if the percentage of Arab citizens rises above its current level of about 20 percent, Israel will not be able to maintain a Jewish demographic majority. Netanyahu's comments were criticized as racist by Arab Knesset members and a range of civil rights and human rights organizations, such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.[91] Even earlier allusions to the "demographic threat" can be found in an internal Israeli government document drafted in 1976 known as the Koenig Memorandum, which laid out a plan for reducing the number and influence of Arab citizens of Israel in the Galilee region.
In 2003, the Israeli daily Ma'ariv published an article entitled, "Special Report: Polygamy is a Security Threat," detailing a report put forth by the Director of the Israeli Population Administration at the time, Herzl Gedj; the report described polygamy in the Bedouin sector a "security threat" and advocated means of reducing the birth rate in the Arab sector.[92] The Population Administration is a department of the Demographic Council, whose purpose, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics is: "to increase the Jewish birthrate by encouraging women to have more children using government grants, housing benefits, and other incentives."[93] In 2008 the Minister of the Interior appointed Yaakov Ganot as new head of the Population Administration, which according to Haaretz is "probably the most important appointment an interior minister can make."[94]
The rapid population growth with the Haredi sector may affect, according to some Israeli researchers, the preservation of a Jewish majority in the state of Israel.[95] Preserving a Jewish majority population within the state of Israel has been a defining principle among Israeli Jews, where Jewish couples are encouraged to have large families. Many financial incentives were given on behalf of the Israeli government. For instance, Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion set up a monetary fund for Jewish women who gave birth to at least 10 children.[96] To further increase the Israeli Jewish fertility rate and population, many fertility clinics have been opened and are operated throughout the country. As part of Israel's universal health-care coverage, Israel spends $60 million annually on publicly funded fertility treatments and operates more fertility clinics per capita than any other country in the world.[97]
A study showed that in 2010, Jewish birthrates rose by 31% and 19,000 diaspora Jews immigrated to Israel, while the Arab birthrate fell by 1.7%.[98] By June 2013, a number of Israeli demographers called the so-called Arab demographic time bomb a myth, citing a declining Arab and Muslim birth rate, an incremental increase in the Israeli Jewish birth rate, unnecessary demographic scare campaigns, as well as inflated statistics released by the Palestinian Authority.[99][100][101][102]
Israeli former Ambassador Yoram Ettinger has rejected the assertion of a demographic time bomb, saying that anyone who believes such claims are either misled or mistaken.[103][104]
American political scientist Ian Lustick has accused Ettinger and his associates for multiple methodological errors and having a political agenda.[105]