Jewish Population by Country

The standard core Jewish population estimate for 2024 was 15,736,800, fewer than 0.2% of the world's population. The report covered 104 countries and territories with at least 100 permanently resident core Jews.[1] This population was highly concentrated: the ten largest national communities accounted for 96.8% of world Jewry, while the 25 countries with at least 10,000 Jews accounted for 99.2%.[1] The remaining 79 countries documented by the report each had fewer than 10,000 Jews and together represented less than 1% of the global total.[1]

Tracking Jewish populations across countries is methodologically complex. Demographers must navigate contested definitions of Jewish identity, inconsistent census practices, declining survey response rates, international migration, intermarriage, multiple or changing self-identifications, and possible double-counting when people maintain residences in more than one country.[1] Published totals can therefore vary considerably according to the source, reference date, and definitional framework.

The Jewish Virtual Library's historical series records a world Jewish population of 7,800,000 in 1880, 10,600,000 in 1900, 13,500,000 in 1914, and 16,728,000 in 1939.[3] By 1945, the recorded total had fallen to approximately 11,000,000, a decline of roughly 5.7 million. The academic World Jewish Population 2024 report estimates that the Shoah caused the loss of 6 million Jews, partly offset demographically by population growth in areas outside Nazi occupation.[3][1] Recovery was slow: the population stood at around 11,297,000 in 1950 and 12,079,000 in 1960, and crossed 13 million by 2000.[3]

Growth accelerated in the twenty-first century, reaching 14,049,000 in 2010, 15,077,100 in 2020, and 15,253,500 in 2022 in the Jewish Virtual Library series.[3] Using a consistent core-population methodology, the World Jewish Population 2024 report placed the total at 15,736,800 on January 1, 2024, an increase of 78,800, or 0.50%, over the revised 2023 estimate of 15,658,000.[1] The Jewish Agency's Rosh Hashanah analysis, based on research by Sergio DellaPergola, gave a rounded figure of 15.8 million for the eve of the Jewish year 5785.[2] JPR currently reports a core population of 15,809,000.[4]

The Jewish Virtual Library's historical series lists a substantially higher 2024 total of 17,136,800. Its page says that it changed its United States data source beginning in 2023, making comparisons with earlier entries methodologically uneven.[3] However, its displayed 2024 United States estimate is the same 6.3 million used by the academic report, so the entire difference between the global totals cannot be attributed simply to a larger current American estimate. The 17.1 million historical-series figure and the 15.7–15.8 million core estimates should not be treated as interchangeable.[3][1]

The dominant modern trend is the demographic shift toward Israel, the Jewish people's ancestral homeland. In 2023, Israel's Jewish population was approximately 7.1 million, representing 45% of world Jewry, up from roughly 500,000 in 1945 and approximately 650,000 in 1948.[5] The Diaspora population declined from about 10.5 million in 1945 to roughly 8.6 million in 2023.[5] From 2023 to 2024, Israel's core Jewish population rose by 92,100, or 1.30%, while the Diaspora declined by 13,300, or 0.15%.[1]

The World Jewish Population 2024 report uses the "core Jewish population" as its principal measure. It defines this as a population for whom Judaism is a mutually exclusive identification framework, including both religious and nonreligious forms of Jewish identification. In most Diaspora countries, it includes people who identify themselves, or are identified by a household member, as Jewish and who do not profess another monotheistic religion. The report emphasizes that this operational social-scientific definition does not purport to define the population according to Rabbinic law or Halakha.[1]

Researchers also track broader measures. For 2024, the report estimated 15,736,800 people in the core Jewish population; 18,755,661 people with at least one Jewish parent; 21,774,677 in the enlarged Jewish population, which adds certain people with Jewish backgrounds and non-Jewish household members; and 24,735,988 in the Law of Return population, encompassing Jews, their children, grandchildren, and respective spouses regardless of current Jewish identification.[1] JPR currently publishes comparable figures of 15,809,000, 18,766,649, 21,724,467, and 24,682,248, respectively.[4]

The choice of definition can substantially alter a country's reported total. The 2024 academic report assessed the United States core Jewish population at 6.3 million, compared with Pew Research Center's broader net Jewish population estimate of 7.5 million and local estimates totaling about 7.7 million.[1] The Jewish Virtual Library states that it adopted Sheskin and Dashefsky data beginning in 2023 because it considered earlier DellaPergola estimates to have undercounted American Jews.[3]

Data collection relies on national censuses and population registers, Jewish community records, dedicated population surveys, vital statistics, migration and religious-change records, population projections, unpublished databases, local information, and organizational estimates.[1] JPR cautions that the boundary of who is Jewish is contested and that the appropriate definition can depend on the purpose of the inquiry; it therefore presents four measures simultaneously.[4]

Country-level estimates document the modern reconcentration of world Jewry. In 2024, 85.4% of the core Jewish population lived in Israel or the United States, and 96.8% lived in the ten largest national communities.[1] This concentration means that definitional or statistical revisions affecting Israel or the United States can materially alter the reported global total.

The figures also trace the renewed demographic centrality of the Jewish ancestral homeland. Israel grew from approximately 650,000 Jews, about 6% of post-Holocaust world Jewry, in 1948 to roughly 7.2 million and nearly half of the global Jewish population in 2025. The academic report found that nearly all recent global growth came from Israel while most other national communities remained stable or declined slightly.[1]

Israel had 7,153,000 core Jews on January 1, 2024, making it the country with the world's largest core Jewish population and representing approximately 45.5% of world Jewry.[1] A JPR publication in April 2025 placed the number at approximately 7.2 million, or 46% of world Jewry. Israel and the United States together accounted for 85.4% of the global core population in 2024.[1]

The 2024 academic report also recorded approximately 478,900 Israeli residents admitted under the Law of Return who were family members not registered as Jews. Together with the 7,153,000 core Jews, they represented about 77% of Israel's legal population.[1] The West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — is included in some Israeli population tallies. The Jewish Virtual Library's Asia table lists 7,760,000 Jews in Israel inclusive of residents in Judea and Samaria, but marks that figure as of October 1, 2025; it should not be treated as interchangeable with the 7,153,000 figure in the May 2024 country ranking.[3]

This scale represents one of the most consequential transformations in modern Jewish demography. When Israel was established in 1948, its approximately 650,000 Jews represented about 6% of the surviving global Jewish population. Israel is now home to nearly half of world Jewry, and its share continued to increase in the 2023–2024 estimates as the Diaspora total edged downward.[1]

The United States has the world's second-largest core Jewish population, estimated at 6,300,000 in 2024.[1] Israel and the United States were the only countries with Jewish populations in the millions, together accounting for 85.4% of world Jewry.[1]

American Jews are heavily concentrated in metropolitan areas. The greater New York region is the only area outside Israel where Jews constitute more than 10% of the local population. Jews make up 5–10% of the metropolitan populations of south Florida, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, and 3–5% in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, and San Diego.[5]

Canada has North America's second-largest Jewish community, with 400,000 Jews in 2024, while Mexico has 41,000.[3][1] Between 1980 and 2020, Canada's Jewish population grew by 28%, compared with 14% in the United States.[5] Across the Americas, the academic report counted 7,060,800 Jews in 2024, including 6.3 million in the United States, 400,000 in Canada, 302,100 in South America, and 58,500 in Central America and the Caribbean.[1]

The Jewish Virtual Library separately lists Panama at 10,000 Jews, Costa Rica at 2,600, Puerto Rico at 1,500, and Guatemala at 900.[3]

Europe had 1,309,800 Jews in 2024, representing about 8.3% of world Jewry.[1] France was Europe's largest Jewish community at 438,500, followed by the United Kingdom at 313,000.[1] Germany ranked third with 125,000; its Jewish population had more than tripled between 1980 and 2020, primarily through immigration from the former Soviet Union.[5] Russia had 123,000 Jews and Ukraine 32,000. Estimates for both were adjusted to reflect substantial emigration following the outbreak of war.[2]

Other significant European communities included Hungary (45,000), the Netherlands (35,000), Belgium (29,000), Italy (26,800), Switzerland (20,500), Turkey (15,000), Sweden (14,900), Spain (13,000), Austria (10,300), and Poland (9,600).[3][6] Smaller communities documented in the same table included Romania at 8,600, Denmark at 6,400, Latvia at 4,100, Greece at 4,000, Portugal at 3,800, Czechia at 3,500, Slovakia at 3,500, and Lithuania at 2,100.[3]

The European Union's Jewish population totaled 794,100 in 2024. The all-European estimate of 1,309,800 also encompassed former Soviet republics in Europe — Belarus (5,400), Moldova (1,500), Russia (123,000), and Ukraine (32,000) — and non-EU countries including the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Turkey.[3] The academic report described Europe's Jewish population as increasingly concentrated in the continent's western countries.[1]

South America's Jewish population numbered 302,100 in 2024.[3] Argentina had the largest community on the continent and the sixth-largest in the world, at 170,000.[1] Brazil followed with 90,300, making it the tenth-largest Jewish population globally.[1] Uruguay (16,100) and Chile (15,500) were next, with smaller communities in Venezuela (4,000), Colombia (1,900), Peru (1,800), Paraguay (1,100), Ecuador (600), Bolivia (500), and Suriname (200).[3]

The World Jewish Population 2024 report states that South America's Jewish population has generally declined since the 1960s, largely reflecting emigration associated with recurring economic and security concerns.[1] Argentina and Brazil nevertheless remain among the world's ten largest national Jewish communities.

Africa's Jewish population was concentrated overwhelmingly in South Africa, which had 49,500 Jews in 2024 and accounted for about 91% of the continental total.[1] Africa and Oceania together held slightly more than 1% of world Jewry.[1]

Australia was the principal Oceanian Jewish community, with 117,000 Jews — the ninth-largest national Jewish population in the world.[1] Its Jewish population had the third-fastest percentage growth among the communities compared for 1980–2020, after Germany and Israel.[5] A separate 2023 compilation estimated that approximately 27,000 Jews lived across the Arab and Muslim world, although it provided an aggregate regional figure rather than a detailed country-by-country total.[7]

Outside Israel and the Palestinian territories, the documented Jewish population in Asia is small. The 2024 estimates for the former Soviet republics of Asia totaled 13,100, including Azerbaijan (6,700), Uzbekistan (2,500), Kazakhstan (2,200), Georgia (1,100), and Armenia (100).[3] Other Asian countries together held an estimated 21,300 Jews, with Iran the largest at 9,000, followed by India (4,500), China (3,500), Japan (1,000), Singapore (900), and the United Arab Emirates (500).[3]

The full Asia regional total displayed in the Jewish Virtual Library's 2024 table was 7,794,400, of whom 7,760,000 appeared in the Israel and Palestinian Authority category. The latter figure is marked as of October 1, 2025 and includes Jews in Judea and Samaria, illustrating how the page combines figures from different reference dates.[3]

The 2024 World Jewish Population report ranks the world's largest core Jewish communities as Israel (7,153,000), the United States (6,300,000), France (438,500), Canada (400,000), the United Kingdom (313,000), Argentina (170,000), Germany (125,000), Russia (123,000), Australia (117,000), and Brazil (90,300).[1] These ten countries together accounted for 96.8% of world Jewry.[1]

The next tier of communities with at least 10,000 Jews included South Africa (49,500), Hungary (45,000), Mexico (41,000), the Netherlands (35,000), Ukraine (32,000), Belgium (29,000), Italy (26,800), Switzerland (20,500), Uruguay (16,100), Chile (15,500), Turkey (15,000), Sweden (14,900), Spain (13,000), Austria (10,300), and Panama (10,000).[6] The 25 countries with at least 10,000 Jews collectively accounted for 99.2% of world Jewry.[1]

Below that threshold, the report documented seven countries with 5,000–9,999 Jews, 28 with 1,000–4,999, and 44 with 100–999, forming a long tail of small communities across the inhabited continents.[1]

Published global totals can differ significantly according to the definition and reference date. The principal divide is between the core Jewish population, approximately 15.7–15.8 million in 2024, and broader measures encompassing people with Jewish parents, non-Jewish household members, or those eligible under Israel's Law of Return. The last category includes Jews, their children, grandchildren, and respective spouses and produces a global estimate of approximately 24.7 million.[1][4]

Even within demographic research on the United States, the selected boundary makes a substantial difference. The 2024 academic report uses a core estimate of 6.3 million, compares it with Pew's net Jewish population estimate of 7.5 million, and notes local estimates totaling about 7.7 million.[1] The Jewish Virtual Library says it changed the source used for its historical series beginning in 2023 because it considered earlier estimates to have undercounted American Jews. However, its displayed 2024 United States estimate is also 6.3 million, so its global total of 17,136,800 cannot be explained solely as the result of a larger current American count.[3][1]

The Jewish Virtual Library page also contains two Israel figures: 7,153,000 in the 2024 country-ranking table, dated May 9, 2024, and 7,760,000 in its Asia table, marked as of October 1, 2025 and inclusive of Jews in Judea and Samaria.[3] These entries have different reference dates and should not be treated as equivalent, even though they appear on the same regional page.

All estimates face structural limitations, including inconsistent censuses, declining response rates, self-selection bias, changing identities, intermarriage, migration, multiple residences, and possible double-counting.[1] JPR notes that the boundary of who is Jewish is genuinely contested and that the appropriate definition depends on the purpose of the inquiry.[4] Published figures are therefore estimates subject to retrospective revision when better evidence becomes available.