Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Global Jewish population grew by just under a million from 2010 to 2020, Pew says

In that span, the Jewish population went up from about 14 to 15 million, “fewer than the estimated 16.6 million Jews who were alive in 1939 prior to the Holocaust.” The worldwide Jewish population grew by 870,000 in the decade from 2010 to 2020, according to the Pew Research Center’s global religion survey released on Monday. The analysis of worldwide religious trends looked at self-reported religious belief, except in Israel, where the surveyors used the government’s population register.

“The number of Jews around the world grew by 6%, from an estimated 14 million in 2010 to nearly 15 million in 2020,” the researchers wrote. “That’s fewer than the estimated 16.6 million Jews who were alive in 1939 prior to the Holocaust.”

Those numbers notably exclude those who might identify ethnically as Jewish but who report being religiously unaffiliated, agnostic or atheist. A Pew survey that used a broader definition of Jewish identity, which included both religion and ethnicity, found about 1.8 million more Jews in the United States than Monday’s report did. (Read More)