In a hundred years, the Jewish people is likely to look very different from what it is today, according to Professor Sergio DellaPergola. But the pre-eminent authority on Jewish demography is reluctant to bring out his crystal ball, citing the talmudic caution that after the Prophets, foretelling the future was the province of “fools and infants”.
For many decades, the emeritus Hebrew University professor has been studying trends within the Jewish population since he first penned an article on intermarriage in a student newspaper in his native Italy in the early 1960s.
Now in a new essay for the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, The Jewish People in 2026, DellaPergola, who is 83, analyses some of the forces that will help to shape the Jewish world over the next century.
As happened in the past, dramatic events that had the most impact on Jewish societies turned out to be hard to predict. At the time of the Six-Day War in 1967, he suggests, who could have foreseen that in a quarter of a century the Soviet Union would collapse (leading to a mass wave of immigration into Israel and a decisive shift in the balance of European Jewry towards the West)?
Today we are living with the unfolding repercussions of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel two and half years ago. “So many discussions that existed previously [that] were latent have come to the fore in new ways with greater intensity,” he said in an interview with the JC.
For one thing, he believes, 20 or 30 years ago, there was “greater clarity” over Israel’s place within global Jewry. “I am not saying there was unanimous consensus about the role of Israel but clearly it was understood that Israel is something special, it has a dynamic of growth, of success,” he said.
“The problem is that with the tragedy of October 7 perhaps there is a reconsideration of Israel’s role in the framework of global Jewry.”
While some still see a centre (Israel) – which he says could become home to a majority of world Jewry by 2035 – and a periphery (the diaspora), others argue for two centres (Israel and US Jewry). Some reject the very notion of a centre at all, instead conceiving of different Jewish communities as only partially connected nuclei. As for his own stance, he said it could be gleaned from the fact that “I am speaking from Jerusalem.”
Professor Sergio DellaPergola[Missing Credit]
One consequence of October 7 and its aftermath has been the effect of rising antisemitism and animosity towards Israel. “And so several people who were outliers and very marginal, who had left completely any connection with the Jewish community, some of them feel that nevertheless they are perceiving a very unpleasant sense of foreignness in their non-Jewish environment and so they seek to reconstruct some kind of link to the Jewish community…
“The anti-Israeli hostility has no clear boundary with the anti-Jewish hostility – we see that in many street demonstrations, writings, even by prominent intellectuals and of course politicians. So there is a kind of returning home because of the wrong reasons. But I say it also provides the Jewish community an opportunity to recreate a bond with people who are practically lost.”
But while some might want to open the gates to Jewish peoplehood more widely, others some such as the Israeli Chief Rabbinate try to enforce a more selective policy. He gives the example of giyur katan -– the conversion of minors without insisting on the conversion of the mother. “This was quite a widespread practice in many communities and today this is practically abandoned,” he said.
Some rabbis would contend that “the net result if you go back to that kid 35 years later [is that] you have an adult who most times will not be very much integrated in the Jewish community. This is one point of view. The other point of view says had we not done that [the conversion], we even would not have that minority who remain inside and some of them are very active, very educated and very productive within the Jewish community. So it is a balance between maximising the benefit and minimising the losses.”
Around half a million Israelis who immigrated under the Law of Return are still considered not Jewish under halachah. “Many of them have a Jewish father, many of them do not have any Jewish parent.” But many lead a typical Israeli life. “They go to the army, they pay taxes, they die fighting.”
Although many might have applied for conversion, the rigours of the process mean only a “trickle” complete it. Ruth, the most famous Jewish convert, whose story is read on Shavuot, was admitted into the people with a simple declaration of faith – but that, he noted, would no longer be good enough for the rabbinate.
“Is the interest of Israel to have these people as loyal citizens of a Jewish state – or to have depressed and frustrated people who feel alienated and some of them will also emigrate from the country?”
In fact, this group of Israelis represent a high proportion of those who have left the country in recent years. Generally, immigration into Israel has exceeded emigration out of it, except for four brief periods, one being post-October 7, he pointed out.
Meanwhile, some Israeli politicians have even proposed restricting the Law of Return so that the grandchild of a Jew would no longer be able to claim Israeli citizenship. But the fear that such non-halachically Jewish immigrants represent a danger to the Jewish character of the state he dismisses as “quite ridiculous”.
Such issues ought to be “considered in a broader balance of assets and liabilities. I tend to see those somewhat marginal Jews as an asset and not as a liability.”
As for aliyah, he stresses the influence of economics. “I have demonstrated empirically that most explanations of the variable size of Jewish migration are economic,” he said.
“The Zionist movement should give the gold medal for UK aliyah to Mrs Margaret Thatcher whose new economic policies caused a very big wave of aliyah during the worst years of unemployment in the UK.
“Then the situation improved and aliyah diminished.”
Israel’s place in the “Premier League” of developed countries – he is an avid football follower – has made it an attraction for new immigrants.
“It is therefore important that Israeli maintains a profile of high development… High development is related to high freedom of thought, innovation and liberty, and therefore pluralism and diversity.”
If it slips out of the international elite, it may become less appealing as a destination for immigration, while losing more of its citizens to emigration.
Strictly Orthodox men protesting against recruitment into the IDF in Mea Shearim last year (Photo: Flash90)Flash90
But there are tensions at home that could affect Israel’s long-term prosperity. The birth rate among secular Israelis in Tel Aviv, at two children per family, is higher than the European average – but among Charedim it is thrice that. The Charedi population represent 10 to 15 per cent of Israeli Jews but that share will double in another generation “and at some point it may even grow more”.
Not only has Charedi non-enrolment in the armed forces become a political hot potato but also male non-participation in the workforce. “The participation rate of Charedi women is very high, not unlike the non-Charedi women. But the Charedi men are much below average. This leads to poverty and poverty leads to subsidy… At some point the equation changes in a way that it goes beyond control – there are not enough subsidisers to subsidise the subsidised.”
The answer is not to try to impose secularism on Charedi communities, he says, but to encourage reform of the strictly Orthodox education system so that children receive the tools that would enable them to find more productive work as adults.
Outside Israel, change is also afoot among the largest diaspora community, US Jewry, with high rates of intermarriage among the non-Orthodox majority but growth among the central and strictly Orthodox.
Therefore, organised US Jewry is likely to look more Orthodox over the course of the century, bringing with it a greater divide between the Orthodox and the rest. “I looked at the Jewish day school system in the US. The Orthodox schools have grown enormously over the last 40 years and the non-Orthodox schools have remained exactly where they were in the 1980s,” he said.
The election of Zohran Mamdani as New York City's mayor reflects changes in American society (Photo: Getty)Getty Images
But it is not only internal factors that will have a bearing. “I noted the demographic change in the structure of the [general] US population. It is becoming less white and of European origin and mostly composed of other ethnic branches from Africa, Asia and Latin America to the point that just after the mid-[point] of the 21st century there will not be any more a white non-Hispanic majority in the US.”
The recent election of the radical antizionist Mayor Mamdani in New York, he suggests, is an indication of the changing make-up of America. If demography leads to shifting currents in culture and society, American Jews may begin to feel less part of the American mainstream.
But whatever future might lie ahead, he believes the Jewish world could be doing more collectively to consider the challenges. “I don’t think there is a room or a table around which the fundamental problems of today’s existence are being debated by the appropriate people.”
In the past, he argues, leaders such as the founder of the Zionist movement Theodor Herzl or Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion could rally people behind their goals, commanding a broad consensus.
“We must cross the Red Sea in every generation,” he said. Which requires leaders able to keep “the bunch” together. “It is to some extent a very unnerving, annoying, undisciplined bunch, yet you have to take into account that’s what you have, you have to keep it together.”
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