About Us Israelis - The Shrinking of the Jewish People

The diminishing number of the Jewish People is a dark cloud always looming over our heads.

The most troubling example is the low birthrate (just above 1 child per family) and the high intermarriage rate (more than 50%) that have caused the largest Jewish community outside Israel – that of the United States – to shrink by approximately 1 million during the last generation. Since the 1980s, US American Jewry shrunk from about 6 million strong to barely 5.

For more than a decade, Jewish population growth worldwide has been steady at around 0.3% percent, compared to a worldwide population growth of more than 1%. This is due largely to the compensation in birthrate of Jews inside Israel (an average of 3 children per family). Birthrates among the Jews of the Diaspora are in negative percentages, and they keep on dropping. In short, our demography as a people is in dire straits: we bring fewer children into the world and marry more and more outside the boundaries of our faith.

For us Jews, this means deep trouble, but for us Israelis, looking at the distant future, this could mean calamity. If we put the fate of the Jewish people aside, for a moment, and consider the fate of Israel as the only Jewish country in the world, we quickly realize that the shrinking of the Jewish People living in the Diaspora would leave Israel's fate in great danger.  

Facing an automatic majority, working against us in almost any international organization or forum, regardless of the issue on the agenda (21 Arab countries plus another 26 countries with Muslim majorities) Israelis feel alone and singled out in a complicated and uneven international environment. In fact, if it weren't for the decency and kindness of the American people and the might of the great United States of America, who knows what would have become of us by now.

We need our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora to help us explain our positions and actions to their own governments, to help us expose the Israeli narrative to them, to force them to look beyond their economic interests, which are usually deeply rooted in Arab oil or in the huge markets of the Muslim world. The shrinking of the Jewish People of the Diaspora could mean leaving the task of influencing the international community exclusively in the hands of our foes.   

Jewish and Israeli leaders, acknowledging this strategic problem, conceived two programs intended to strengthen the connection between young Jews and their heritage. The first of those programs is "Taglit - Birthright Israel" ("Taglit" in Hebrew means discovery), in which young Jews arrive for a 10-day tour of Israel. The second is "Masa" (voyage in Hebrew) in which thousands of young Jews spend a semester or a whole school year in Israel, helping them build a long-lasting relationship with Israel and Israelis. The goal of both programs is to try and keep these young men and women of the Jewish faith linked to our people.

Successful and innovative as they are, those programs are a drop in the ocean. The Jewish People is shrinking at a troubling rate and, although we will endlessly keep on trying, it seems there is nothing we can do to stop this disturbing inclination.

So, please consider this before forming your opinion about us Israelis.