Some Fundamentals of Jewish Demographic History

Sergio DellaPergola

A fruitful, intriguing relationship exists between population genetics and
historical demography. While the former seeks information on the
changing size and geographical distribution of populations to draw
inference on the odds and timing of observed mutations (Fraikor, 1977;
Motulsky, 1995; Risch et al., 1995), the latter may draw notions about the
timing and direction of past international migrations from observed
patterns of genetic similarity or dissimilarity (Bonné-Tamir et al., 1992).
The purpose of this paper is to describe some salient stages and processes
in Jewish population history, while trying to keep away from the obvious
risk of circular argumentation. More specifically, I search for certain
macro-historical and macro-social patterns which may have been
underlying the demographic evolution of the Jews and the transmitted
experience of Jewish peoplehood in the long run. Discussion of these
fundamental issues may enhance the understanding of various associate
and dependent processes, including aspects of Jewish population genetics,
and of Jewish genetic disease particularly.

The proceedings of the 1990 conference on Genetic Diversity Among
Jews in memory of Richard Goodman carried a descriptive article on the
development of Jewish population in historical perspective, with an
emphasis on the last hundred years (DellaPergola, 1992). The present
paper complements the previous one by substantially extending the time
framework for the assessment of the historical development of Jewish
population. In cautiously addressing a span of forty centuries since the
origins to the threshold of the 21st century, I am fully aware of the

analytic hiatus involved in trying to bridge between solid and documented scholarship, on the one hand, and a mixture of raw data, inference, literary memory, and imagination, on the other.

Ethnogenesis, Ethnomaintenance, Ethnoextinction

Before embarking in a discussion of Jewish demographic history, the general mechanisms of the origins and transformation of Jewish populations should be outlined. Jewish communities represent a special case of a group or subpopulation defined by symbolic particularism--be it religious, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, or of any other sort. All along history, countless such subpopulations have come into being, have existed for longer or shorter spans of time, and have disappeared.

The birth, or ethnogenesis, of such a group in a given place may
occur because of one of four possible processes (see Figure 1): (a) the
initial immigration of the given group to a new territory; (b) the

annexation of a territory where the given group was already present by
another territorial entity where it was not; (c) ideational innovation or split
out of another existing group; or (d) the merger of two or more existing
groups generating a new group with its own durable characteristics. The
opposite phenomenon of ethnoextinction in a certain place may occur
under any of five possible circumstances: (a) the total emigration of the
given group; (b) territorial cession, including all members of the given
group; (c) complete assimilation of the group; (d) extinction as the result
of an excess of deaths over births; or (e) genocide. Each of these different
mechanisms of population change can be assumed to have operated at
various points of time in the case of Jewish demographic history.

FIGURE 1. SCHEME OF ETHNOGENESIS, TRANSFORMATION, AND
ETHNOEXTINCTION OF GROUP/SUBPOPULATION

Once a subpopulation has been established, its changing size and
internal structure will be determined at any moment by a complex of
biological, social, and cultural factors: (a) the balance between births and
deaths; (b) the balance between immigration and emigration; and (c) the
balance between accessions of new members to the group and secessions
of old ones from it. The dynamics of these socio-demographic and socio-

cultural events ceaselessly affects the given group’s composition according to a variety of relevant characteristics, namely age, sex, marital status, socio-economic status, and cultural characteristics. Each of the latter personal traits, in turn, affects the likelihood of a given socio-demographic or socio-cultural event to occur.

While the vital balance of births and deaths and geographical
mobility are universal features affecting any population, the boundary of a
group defined by symbolic criteria tends to be quite fluid and open. Over
long periods in the past, Jewish communities were quite closed and
segregated from the surrounding societies, and hence, culturally,
demographically, and genetically isolated. On the other hand, at discrete
points in time in the past, and with increasing continuity and frequency
more recently, varying amounts of people joined the Jewish group or
seceded from it. The condition of a closed and isolated population,
therefore, tended to apply only to a (probably declining) set of Jewish
demographic processes. The frequency of Jews with non-Jewish origins, as
well as of non-Jews with Jewish origins tended to grow, making the
analytic distinction necessary between a “core Jewish population” of

currently Jewish individuals, and an “enlarged Jewish population” also

inclusive of current non-Jews with some Jewish ancestry and of nonJewish members in Jewish households. This trend will conceivably continue in the future.

The Long-Term Historical View

T aking now a very long-term historical look at the known or presumed
facts, in Figure 2 we try to compare the development of Jewish population
from the very origins to the present day, with that of the world’s total
population (Biraben, 1979). The emerging profile involves dramatic

sequences of expansion and shrinkage in the (assumed) total size of Jewish population. A unique blend of continuity and discontinuity is observed, or at least inferred.

Since the beginnings of Jewish transmitted collective history,

relevant textual testimony illustrates the unique demographic saga of the
Jews. One of the significant paradigms in Biblical tradition is the growth of
the Israelites from one, Abraham’s, extended family, into full-scale
peoplehood. Genesis (46:8-27) specifies the names of fewer than 70

Jewish males--sons and grandsons of Jacob--who migrated to Egypt. Exodus (11:37) mentions the over 600,000 Jewish male adults who left Egypt 430 years later. Numbers (1:1-50; 26:1-65) suggests an extremely low rate of total Jewish population growth, but substantially different rates of growth for each of the Israelite tribes during the 40 years of wandering in the desert under Moses’ leadership.

While we cannot elaborate here o n the details and reliability of such

early demographic accounts--or, for that matter, on the whole approach
to the origin of the Jews--what we do have demonstrated, through ancient
textual evidence, are three relevant and fundamental principles that will

affect all the ensuing demographic experience of the Jews: (a) the

unequal pace of growth over time of Jewish population as a whole; (b) the differential growth of different sections of the Jewish population at any given point in time, affecting the compositional characteristics of the whole group; and (c) international migration as a large scale process affecting the location and characteristics of the Jews.

FIGURE 2. WORLD JEWISH AND TOTAL POPULATIONS - ROUGH ESTIMATES,
2000 B.C.E. to 2000 C.E.

Later literary and archeological sources provide the basis for inference about the continuing development of Jewish population in antiquity. In very synthetic generalization, as against a relatively slow and steady development of total world population until the eve of the 20th century, three periods of major Jewish population expansion stand out (see also Baron 1971; Biraben, 1979):

1. The first corresponds with the period of the Kings, at the height of Israel’s

political influence in antiquity. King David’s censuses can be interpreted to
provide a figure around 2-2.5 million people--possibly including non-Jews
under Jewish rule--within the extended boundaries of the Kingdom of
Israel. After the fall of the First Temple in Jerusalem, during the 8th

century B.C.E., and the consequent deportation of Israelites to Babylon, the permanent bases of a Jewish Diaspora were created.

2. The emergence of a second Jewish population peak can b e posited toward

the time of the construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem during the
Hasmonean period (3rd-2nd century B.C.E.). This new peak, variously
estimated, and here cautiously put at around 4.5 million people during the
first century B.C.E., has been interpreted by some scholars as reflecting,
among other factors, significant numbers of non-Jews around the

Mediterranean basin joining into the fold of Judaism. On the other hand, the Jews’ first and second century’s struggle against the Roman Empire and their final defeat determined a dramatic Jewish population decline, possibly down to around 1-1.5 million individuals, or less. Most of this decrease was presumably due to the loss of a distinct Jewish identity and the assimilation of large masses of Jews into the surrounding cultures, under the hegemony of Christianity and, later, of Islam.

3. The long period of over one thousand years that follows can be defined by
   “unstable stability”: little major Jewish population change in the long run,
   accompanied by continuous and significant changes in the short run.
   Operating here is a combination of endogenous and exogenous factors,
   partly shared with the population at large, partly acting uniquely toward
   Jewish communities. High mortality due to general epidemics, wars,
   natural disasters, and more specifically focused expulsions, mass murder,
   and forced conversions of Jews, periodically wiped out any Jewish
   population build-up that might have accumulated during more stable
   times. Most likely the Jewish population at the beginning of the 17th
   century, here estimated at 1.1 million, was equal to or smaller than that
   found at the end of the 12th century.

4. The third Jewish population peak r eflects the effects of the modern

“demographic transition”: modernization and its influences on population
processes, namely the general declines in mortality and fertility from high
or very high to much lower levels. The impressive Jewish population surge

during the late 18th, the 19th, and the early 20th centuries--mostly

occurring in Eastern Europe--was mostly driven by early improvements in
morbidity and mortality levels, possibly linked to socio-cultural and socio-
economic differences between Jewish communities and the surrounding

populations. The Jewish transition to high rates of population growth clearly preceded similar trends that were to emerge among the total population several tens, if not one or two hundreds of years later.

5. This period of steady demographic expansion, peaking at abo 16.5 ut

million, was suddenly terminated by the Shoah, the destruction of about 6 million Jews during World War II.

6. The 11 million Jews surviving wo rldwide after the war are estimated to

have grown to 13 million at present. The Jewish population worldwide has currently reached an overall rate of growth approaching zero (DellaPergola, 1997).

Outline of Main Jewish Migrations in Antiquity and the Early Middle

Ages

M igrations in ancient eras and during the early Middle Ages crucially
shaped the geographic distribution of the Jews. Influences of that distant
past until very recently still decisively affected the main patterns of Jewish
population distribution. Given the importance of migrations for population
genetics, it may be useful to recapitulate the chronology of some of the
main steps in population dispersal in the past. Figure 3 shows the main

migration streams and some of the main areas of settlement and resettlement. Six main stages are indicated:

FIGURE 3. SCHEMATIC REPRESENTATION OF MAIN JEWISH MIGRATION FLOWS
IN ANTIQUITY AND THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

1.T he first Diaspora, from Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel) to Babel

(Babylon), beginning with the occupation and fall of the First Temple during the 8th century B.C.E.;

2. The Shivat Zion (Return to Zio n) movement which, according to Biblical

sources, brought back to the Land of Israel about 40,000 Jews from the Babylonian exile;

3. The second Diaspo ra, parallel to the falling of the Second Temple (1st-2nd

century C.E.). Among other lands, the southern part of the Italian peninsula, as well as other areas along the Mediterranean coasts of North Africa and southern Europe, housed the development of Jewish communities;

4. The northboun d migration from Italy and southern France, possibly since

the 4th and through the 10th centuries gave origin to the initial nucleus of Ashkenazic Jewry in the regions around the Rhine Valley, today part of northeast France and northwest Germany;

5. The westbound migration from Babel, reach ing the north shores of Africa

and the south shores of Europe--especially the Iberian Peninsula--
reaching its peak in correspondence with the westward expansion of Islam (7th-8th centuries and after);

6. The eastbound expansion of the Ashkenazic settlement, starting after the
11th century and continuing into the 16th.

These main migrations were accompanied by other streams to areas

such as Yemen, Central Asia, the Caucasus, the northern shores of the

Black Sea, and possibly Ethiopia. If this scheme is fairly accurate, a

number of significant implications ensue:

1. The common demographic sources of world Jewish population would be

implicit in the ancient stage of settlement in Eretz Israel;

2. The first significant partition of Jewish population occurred when the most
ancient Diaspora was created in Babylon in the area betwe en today’s Syria

and Iran;

3. Still in antiquity, yet much later, a Jewish population had experienced a
   prolonged Mediterranean-Southern European residence. These Jews,
   originating in the main from Eretz Israel and only to a minor extent from
   Babel, would generate the backbone of Ashkenazic Jewry. They had little
   direct contact with the Jewish community in the Babylonian Diaspora;

4. The same population nucleus had left the Mediterranean-Southern
European shores northwards well before these areas--especially the

Iberian peninsula--began to attract larger numbers of Jews with a Babylonian background, finally coalescing into the Sephardic Jewish community;

5. It is likely, therefore, that the basic differentiation between what was to
   become Ashk enazic Jewry and what was to become Sephardic Jewry can
   be traced to the much different frequency of their ancestral roots in Eretz
   Israel and in Babel, respectively. Support for this view comes from an
   analysis of Jewish religious practices, pointing to different prayer rituals
   and to a preference for responsa in the respective versions of the Talmud
   (Yerushalmi vs. Bavli)(Grossman, 1973; Bonfil, 1983);

6. This interpretation suggests that the same initial Jewish population
became subdivided into two quite separate subpopula tions (Ashkenazim

and Sephardim) between the 2nd and the 8th centuries.

In each instance of a significant Jewish migration movement, it can
be assumed that a minority moved away from the local e stablished Jewish

community while the majority remained. The Jewish migrant community settling and developing in a new place therefore probably included a rather limited and self-selected pool of individuals. On the other hand, the communities that remained in the pre-existing locales were exposed to processes of change which possibly often led to serious demographic erosion if not disappearance.

In the more circumscribed context of the discussion about the
origins of Ashkenazic Jewry , if the assumptions presented here are

correct, namely regarding a relatively closed group of people moving
gradually from the Middle East to South Europe, then to North Europe,
and finally to East Europe, modern genetic studies should show some
degree of similarity between Jews of Eastern European origin and Jews of
southern European, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern origin. On the
other hand, research findings and hypotheses by linguists and other
scholars who have found substantial Slavic and Turkish influences on the

Yiddish language and literature, would imply that Ashkenazic Jewry
emerged from the fusion of Jewish immigrants with substantial numbers
of non-Jews in the Eastern European context (Herzog, 1979; King, 1992).
The consequence for modern genetic studies would be substantial
similarity between Jews and other persons belonging to those regional
societies.

Further genetic research is needed here to adjudicate between these conflicting historical, demographic, and philological hypotheses.

World Jewish Population: Middle Ages to Early Modern Period

Tur ning to a more data-oriented analysis of Jewish demographic histor y,

B enjamin de Tudela’s (ca.1170) travel itinerary probably provides the
most comprehensive description of the geographical distribution and main
characteristics of Jewish population in the world of the Middle Ages.
Generally considered authoritative and reliable, withstanding the scrutiny
of modern historiography--at least for those locales he unquestionably
visited--de Tudela provides plenty of statistical data. Some of these can
be accepted at face value, some others surely need some adjustment.

TABLE 1. JEWISH POPULATION ESTIMATES BASED ON BENJAMIN DE TUDELA’S

ITINERARY - Ca. 1170

Region

Number

Percent

Original Adjusted^b

Total 974,454 1,200,000 100.0

Europe 14,613 150,000 12.5

West Europe^c5,872 102,500 8.5

Balkans^d8,741 40,000 3.4

East Europe 0 7,500 0.6

Asia 946,241 979,700 81.6

Near East 22,241 52,900 4.4

Iraq 121,500 121,500 10.1

Arabian Pen. 455,000 455,000 37.9

Iran 193,500 193,500 16.1

Central Asia 50,000 52,300 4.4

India 101,000 101,000 8.4

East Asia 3,000 3,500 0.3

Africa 13,600 70,300 5.9

N.E.Africa 13,600 40,300 3.4

Maghreb 0 30,000 2.5

a. Not including Jews whose presence is reported by de Tudela without a figure being provided. See

also text above.

b. Including our estimates for areas where de Tudela reported the presence of Jews without a

figure, and areas not reported by him where the presence of Jews is known from other sources.

See also text above.

c. Including Germany.

d. Greece and Turkey.

The emerging picture is displayed in Table 1, which includes both
th e or iginal data and our adjustments for areas where de Tudela reported
a Jewish presence without specifying the numbers, as well as for areas he
did not touch and where a Jewish presence can be ascertained through
other sources. For the areas better documented by Benjamin, such as
Western Europe and the Near East, we considered his data as
representing households, and multiplied them by a cautious factor of

4.375 persons per household. Data for other areas, whose descriptions
appear to be less reliable, were taken as total population figures.
After adjustments of the original figure of about 975,000 Jews, a
total estimate of 1.2 million obtains around the year 1170. Over 80% of
the adjusted Jewish population were located on the Asian continent. Some
of de Tudela’s figures, namely the huge Jewish concentrations reported in
the Arabian Peninsula, admittedly appear quite unreliable, and
occasionally quite fantastic. The same applies to some of his descriptions
of India, Central Asia, and the Far East. If we were to dismiss these data
or to reduce them drastically, the total Jewish population estimate would
be reduced accordingly. On the other hand, the reported information
about the large communities in Constantinople or Baghdad appear
reliable, as surely is the case for the smaller communities visited in
western European countries, or the report of Benjamin’s visit to the
sparsely inhabited and desolate Holy Land.

We know from other evidence that Jewish population was growing in
western Europe during the 12th century. Jews were also beginning to spill
into Eastern Europe, although the assumed numbers there were still very
small. De Tudela was aware of that presence, as far as the Ukraine’s
capital city, Kiev, but he did not provide figures; nor did he for Jews who
had arrived from the south and probably were sparsely settled in
Southeast Europe, from the northern Balkans through Romania. Moreover,
de Tudela only partially covered North Africa, which included long-
standing Jewish communities. His bare mentioning of Jews in the Upper
Nile Valley, south of Egypt, would be consistent with the assumption that
the growth of Jewish populations there was a later development.

Overall, the crucial fact provided by de Tudela about the Jewish
world in the Middle Ages, confirmed by numerous other observations, is
that at this stage the Jews still featured a predominantly Middle Eastern
geography, while their presence in Eastern Europe was extremely sparse
and scarce. During the successive two or three centuries the demography
of world Jewry would be transformed by migrations from the southeastern
Mediterranean to Western Europe, and from Western to Eastern Europe.
The growth of these regional communities would also be significantly
affected by the differential impact of birth and death rates. On the other
hand, some of the communities that de Tudela was able to describe or at
least to mention in South and Central Asia, would disappear through
complete assimilation, thus fueling the myth of the “lost tribes”.

The process of geographical and demographic transformation within
a world Jewish population of rather stable total size between 1170 and

1700 is outlined in the upper lines of Table 2. The roughly estimated

Jewish population of Europe tended to grow, while--assuming we can
accept the figures for the earlier date--the tentatively combined estimates
for the communities in Asia and Africa tended to decline. Between 1170
and 1490, while the center of gravity of the Jewish people was transferred
westward to Europe, the main Jewish population centers in Western
Europe were periodically wiped away by several successive expulsions,
most importantly from Spain and Portugal at the turn of the 15th and 16th
centuries. But, besides the dispersive effects of emigration, the major
Jewish population shift occurred within Eastern Europe. In the course of
the 17th century, despite the mid-century Chemelnitzky massacres,
Eastern Europe was to become the leading center of Jewish population
growth.

The Modern Demographic Transition and the Growth of Ashkenazic
Jewry

The crucial process in modern demographic history was the reduction in
the levels of mortality and subse quently of natality, usually described as

th e “demographic transition” (Bachi, 1976; DellaPergola, 1983). Modern Jewish and total population growth reflects the different timing in the modernization of the different factors of population change. Jews generally preceded the non-Jewish population in the same places in undergoing these demographic transitions. Consequently the Jews anticipated the early take-off of rapid population growth, as in due course they would anticipate the modern slowing down of population growth.

TABLE 2. JEWISH POPULATION ESTIMATES, BY MAJOR REGIONS - 1170-1995

Year Number (Thousands) Percent

Total West East Asiaa, America, Europe East

Europe Europe, Africa Oceania as % Europe

Balkans of as %

Total of

Europe

1170 1,200 103 47 1,050 - 12.5 31.3

1300 1,200 385 65 750 - 37.5 14.4

1490 1,300 510 90 700 - 46.2 15.0

1700 1,100 146 573 377 4 65.4 79.7

1825 3,281 458 2,272 540 11 83.2 83.2

1880 7,663 1,044 5,727 630 262 88.4 84.6

1939 16,500 1,350 8,150 1,600 5,400 57.6 85.8

1948 11,500 1,035 2,665 2,000 5,800 32.2 72.0

1995 13,059 1,037 704 4,735 6,583 13.3 40.4

a. Including Palestine/Israel.

Sources: Adapted from de Tudela (ca 1170), Baron (1971), DellaPergola (1992, 1997)

The major shifts in Jewish population size and geographic

distribution by major regions between 1700 and 1939 are outlined in the

mid-portion of Table 2, showing the different rhythm of growth of Jewish
populations in East Europe, West Europe, Asia and Africa, and in the newly
settled worlds across the Ocean, the Americas and Oceania. The late
Jewish population surge in America is obviously explained by international
migration.

Viewed in historical perspective, migrations unquestionably had
deep consequences in reshaping the social and cultural profile of Jewish
communitie s globally. Not only the geographic center of gravity, but also
the predominant focus and character of Jewish society were repeatedly
and decisively shifted as a consequence of massive migratory movements.
Migration disconnected and reconnected Jewish individuals and organized
communities in ways that promoted social and cultural change. Although
similar interconnections can be found in the migration experiences of
other ethnoreligious or sociocultural groups, the Jewish case appears to
extend over a longer time span and is geographically more complex and
articulated.

However, it is the unfolding of demographic processes within Eastern European Jewry that commands special attention. A few thousand Ashkenazic Jewish households in the Middle Ages would multiply into several hundreds of thousands by the 18th century, and into several millions toward the end of the 19th. Here the question has repeatedly been raised: Is it at all possible that the small initial Jewish population in Eastern Europe would grow to become the overwhelming majority of world Jewry, and if so, under what conditions?

The partial demographic evidence that is actually available from
censuses and vital records, combined with relatively simple and plausible
assumptions about the main factors of population change, i.e. life-
expectancy and fertility levels, allows for an attempt to reconstruct this

crucial phase of Jewish demographic history (see also: Mahler, 1958;

Weinryb, 1972; Baron, 1976; Gieysztorowa, 1976; Bloch, 1980;

DellaPergola, 1983; Stampfer, 1987; Jagur-Grodzinski, 1997).

Table 3 illustrates how the development of Eastern European Jewry
might be outlined for the period of over seven centuries between the
initial stages of settlement and the early stages of mass emigrat ion from

East E urope to America and other Western destinations. It should be
stressed that the geographical definition of our estimates does not refe r

only to the central nucleus of the Polish-Lithuanian communities, which
were the main centers of Jewish population growth, but also to a muc h

broader territory including the lands from Bohemia eastwards, Galicia,
Hungary, Romania, the whole southeastern extensions of Ukraine, and
Russia. This is done to take into account the likely existence of a small
pre-Ashkenazic Jewish population in Eastern Europe, and more
significantly, the geographical mobility from and into each of these area s

as an important factor in the coalescence over time of the Jewish population in Eastern Europe.

TABLE 3. JEWISH POPULATION GROWTH IN EASTERN EUROPE - TENTATIVE ESTIMATES OF POPULATION SIZE AN D MAIN DEMOGRAPHIC INDICATORS,
1170-1900

Year Jewish Years span Yearly Life Total

population, growth expectancy fertility rate

thousands rate, % , female

1170 7

130 0.9-1.0

1300 25

190 0.3-0.4 25 5.8

1490 50

160 1.0 27.5/30 6.4/5.9

1650 250

115 1.1-1.2 30 5.9

1765 910

60 1.5-1.6 35 5.9

1825 2,272^a

55 1.7 40 5.5

1880 5,727^a

20 2.0 45 5.4

1900 8,510^b

a. Including Balkans. b. Including emigrants overseas

Sources: adapted from Baron (1971), Bloch (1980), DellaPergola (1992), Coale and Demeny [West

models] (1966), and author’s estimates.

T he observed (or assumed) Jewish population increase in such an
all-inclusive definition of Eastern Europe would possibly correspond to
25,000 persons in 1300, 50,000 in 1490, 250,000 after the mid-17th
century Chemelnitzky massacres, 910,000 in 1765 at the time of the
major census of Polish Jewry (see Stampfer, 1987), two and a quarter
million in 1825, over five and a half million in 1880, and over eight and a
half million in 1900. These developments would correspond to annual

rates of population growth gradually passing from about 0.3-0.4% during
the earlier stages of Jewish settlement (14th-15th centuries), to

somewhat above 2% at the end of the 19th century. The higher initial
Jewish population growth rates are also meant to account for immigration,
although this was relatively small in terms of the absolute numbers
involved. One can further assume that the Jewish population growth rates
in the central area of Poland/Lithuania would be somewhat higher than
the average for the whole region considered here, higher growth setting in
at somewhat anticipated dates. These rates of Jewish population growth
are generally higher than those for the total population, and imply a
gradual increase in the proportion of Jews out of total inhabitants.

The rates of Jewish population growth that we suggest in Table 3
can be compared with standard population models, namely stable

population tables (Coale and Demeny, 1966) that mathematically link the

different parameters of demographic change and composition under
varying assumptions of life-expectancy. These model tables allow for the
determination of the level and range of variation of any demographic

parameter once one or more of the other main parameters are known or
have been estimated. Specifically, we shall use the Coale-Demeny models
to evaluate Jewish total fertility rates (TFR) that would be compatible with
estimated rates of Jewish population growth, and with assumed levels of
life expectancy among the Jewish population. Coale-Demeny “West”

models were preferred, as they better fit populations with relatively low child mortality, as assumedly was the case of the Jews. A further assumption is an average generation length (the average age of women giving birth) around 29, implying a comparatively young age at marriage for Jewish brides, but also an extended period of childbearing.

Complementing our set of estimates of annual growth rates of the
Jewish population, we further assume that levels of Jewish female life-
expectancy at birth gradually improved from a very low level of 25 years
in the period 1300-1490, to 45 years toward the end of the 19th century,
as actually estimated on the basis of available data (Bloch, 1980). Two
alternative levels of life expectancy were suggested for the period 1490-
1650. Under the conditions indicated here, the Jewish average total
fertility rate (TFR) would necessarily range most of the time around 5 to 6
children born alive per woman (only some of whom would survive to
adulthood). The higher the life expectancy during a certain time interval,
the lower would be the fertility level necessary to reach a given population
growth rate. Alternatively, a rather constant level of fertility combined
with improving life expectancies would produce rising population growth.

Early improvements in the longevity of the Jews, against
comparatively lower life-expectancies for contemporary populations, would
be facilitated by the adherence of Jewish communities to traditional ritual
prescriptions, including quality control over food, personal and family
hygienic norms, some input offered by relatively frequent Jewish
physicians and, significantly, social assistance traditionally awarded to the
Jewish poor. At a later stage, the impact of socioeconomic differences
most likely tended to become the main determinant of persisting mortality
and fertility differentials between Jews and non-Jews. More widespread
urbanization, and significant differences in educational levels and
occupational concentrations could translate into relative advantages for
Jews in terms of survivorship levels.

Comparatively, though not exceptionally, high Jewish fertility levels
would be enhanced by the traditiona l support for, and active community

mobilization to achieve, universal marriage at relatively young ages, and
frequent remarriage of widowers in the closed and strictly endogamous
cultural context of Jewish communities. It should be noted that average
total fertility rates equivalent to 6-7 children have been customarily found
among historical populations, not to mention the North American Hutterite
community during the 1920s, or Israel’s Muslim community during the
1960s, among whom averages of 10 children or more were recorded.
Eventually, many of the same social factors responsible for the early
decline in Jewish mortality also translated into an earlier beginning and
quicker development of the transition toward lower levels of Jewish
fertility.

While any claim to accuracy in the speculations just submitted is out
of the question, it is important to stress that the demographic parameters
postulated here are entirely feasible. They are indeed consistent with
measures of Jewish population growth rates independently obtained for
various portions of the 18th and 19th centuries. The feasibility and

coherence of the figures suggested in Table 3 strongly argue against the
need to look for alternative explanations to the rapid growth of Eastern
European Jewry, such as continuing mass immigration, or large-scale
conversions to Judaism of members of local non-Jewish populations.

FIGURE 4. DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION AMONG JEWISH AND TOTAL
POPULATIONS IN FOUR COUNTRIES - 1800-1990

Figure 4 illustrates these trends by providing four series of birth and
d eath rates during the 19th and 20th centuries: for two West European
countries (Italy and Germany); a country in Eastern Europe (Poland); and
a Western country where the Jewish population grew rapidly under the
impact of large-scale international migration (the United Kingdom). In

spite of substantial differences in the timing and modes of diffusion,
differences in demographic transition between Jews and non-Jews quite
consistently followed the same rules. In each instance, death rates
declined earlier among Jews than among the general population; and the
same happened later with regard to birth rates. The East-West differential
is evident for Jews and non-Jews alike in terms of the levels, timing and
speed of demographic transition. The Jews in England offer an interesting
case of a passage from a Western to an East European pattern, as

appropriate to a Jewish community whose composition changed under the impact of immigration from predominantly German to mostly East European stock. A similar process affected the Jewish population in the United States between the 1880s and the First World War.

Fundamental features of the Jewish fertility transition are further
clarified through a measure of the pace of family formation, as reflected
by parity progression ratios. Parity progression ratios measure a given
population’s average likelihood to expand a family of a given size through
an additional birth of higher rank. Figure 5 shows parity progression ratios
for selected age cohorts of Jewish women in four countries: Carpatho-
Russia--the easternmost province of Czechoslovakia during the interwar
period; Bohemia--a more Westernized province in the same country--in
1930; France in the 1970s; and Israel in the 1980s (Blau, 1953;

Bensimon and DellaPergola, 1984; Israel, 1996).

FIGURE 5. PARITY PROGRESSION RATIOS AMONG EU ROPEAN JEWISH WOMEN

IN SELECTED COUNTRIES - BORN BEFORE 1860 TO 1938;

OBSERVED 1930-1983

Four principal patterns of demographic behavior emerge: (a) the
persistently high and unchecked level of natural fertility, typical of Jewish
women in Carpatho-Russia born before 1860; (b) the beginning of fertility
control among Bohemian Jewish women born before 1860 and among
their peers born 30 years later in Carpatho-Russia; (c) a more moderate,
controlled, and bi-modal profile for the later Bohemian cohorts, and for
contemporary Israeli women; (d) and the much lower, down to extremely
low, yet still bi-modal fertility profile of contemporary Jewish women in
France. Bi-modal distributions imply a largely diffused propensity to
reduce the likelihood of an additional child as a function of the number of
children already born. At the same time, women reaching a certain
threshold--here around 6 births in the earlier data and around 4 in the
more recent ones--appear to be making lesser efforts to avoid births of a
higher rank.

Apparently while the diffusion of demographic modernization during
the 19th century implied a general lowering of fertility rates,
modernization trends by no means synchronically involved the whole
Jewish population, not even in the same place. Within each Jewish
community, side by side and along with the modernizing majority, a
minority was resilient in its more traditional family behaviors. Similar
differentials in fertility patterns characterized different social strata as
well. Significantly, what most likely characterized the East European
Jewish context in an earlier past was an overlap between the higher social
classes and the more religiously observant strata of the Jewish population.
These trends consistently imply differential Jewish population growth
between communities, as well as between different sectors within the
same community. Even if not necessarily the same communities or sectors
all the time, in all instances the burden of Jewish population growth was
carried disproportionately by a relatively small minority of the total Jewish
population. This is true of the role of the quite small initial Eastern
European Jewry vis-à-vis the rest of world Jewry; and of the minority of
more traditional Jewish families vis-à-vis the poorer, and later the more
rapidly modernizing majority within any given locale, in Eastern Europe or
elsewhere.

Demographic Implications of the Holocaust

While we have dealt so far with Jewish population growth and its
differential impact in the past, one question which looms large in more
recent Jewish demographic history and crucially affects the present status
of world Jewry is: What would have been the demographic profile of the
Jewish people if there had been no Shoah (Holocaust) of European Jewry?
This surely is a most intractable question, as it involves a huge array of
hypotheses and speculation, if not fiction (DellaPergola, 1996). Indeed,
one cannot delete one major portion of history without asking what the
implications would be for other interrelated historical developments. One
main related issue is whether or not the State of Israel would have been

born without the Shoah. While historians have debated this question for years, there obviously is no answer to it. However, the boosting influence of an independent State of Israel on the later demographic development of Jewish population cannot be undervalued (see below).

Putting aside these major and other excruciating conceptual
problems, it is nevertheless possible to assess the size, age composition,
and demographic dynamics that prevailed among world Jewish population
before World War II. One may then try to figure out some more likely
scenarios about what could have been the demographic development of
Jewish populations in the ensuing years. Some computational, albeit
purely speculative, results can thus be obtained. These are demonstrated
in Table 4.

TABLE 4. JEWISH POPULATION PROJECTIONS, ASSUMING THE SHOAH HAD NOT
OCCURRED, MILLIONS, 1940-2000

Year Actual Model A Model B: Model C:

estimate Low fertility Very low Actual

fertility growth rate

1940 16.5 16.5 16.5 16.5

1950 11.4 18.5 18.5 17.9

1960 12.2 21.9 20.9 19.2

1970 12.6 25.2 22.8 19.8

1980 12.8 28.1 24.6 20.1

1990 12.9 31.0 25.9 20.3

2000 13.2 32.8 26.5 20.8

Source: Adapted from DellaPergola (1996). See text for explanations.

We projected the 1940 Jewish population under three alternative
and extremely conservative assumptions: (a) moderate to low fertility
levels after World War II; (b) extremely low fertility levels; and for the
sake of establishing a minimum estimate, (c) simply applying to the pre-
war Jewish population estimate the actual post-war growth rates--thus
incorporating the prominent after-effects of the Shoah. The results clearly
reflect the relatively young age structure of Jewish populations, namely in
Eastern Europe, and the demographic momentum such young population
composition could be expected to generate. The more interesting finding
is not that without the Shoah the Jewish population would have been
larger, but by how much. As against today’s 13 million Jews worldwide,
the more likely projections (A and B) indicate an expected population
ranging between 26 and 31 million in 1990. Moreover, while the present
world Jewish population clearly tends toward “zero population growth” and
substantial aging, according to our tentative projection Jewish population
in the 1990s still would have been in the process of growth.

The selective geographical impact implicit in this fictional yet
intriguing exercise is also of great significance. Eastern European Jewry
would have been the recipient of most of the potential population growth
that was terminated through the irreversible effects of the Shoah. In the

real, post-Shoah world, the main reservoir of the Ashkenazic Jewish community was now to be found in the United States of America.

Israel’s Impact on Jewish Demography

What actually happened since World War II is demonstrated in the bottom
lines of Table 2, and Figure 6. Under the impact of international migration,
namely aliyah to Israel and of internal demographic developments locally,
the Jewish subpopulations in Israel and in the aggregate of Diaspora
Jewries developed according to two quite different courses. Jewish
population growth in Israel--especially rapid during the late 1940s and the
early 1990s--was more or less matched by stability or, more typically,
decline in the rest of world Jewry. At the end of 1995, the total world
Jewish population estimate of 13.1 million included 4.6 million in Israel
(35%) and 8.5 million in the rest of the world, 65% (over 5.7 million) of
whom lived in the United States (DellaPergola, 1997).

FIGURE 6. JEWISH POPULATION ESTIMATES - WORLD, ISRAEL, DIASPORA,
1945-1995

12
10
8

6
4
2

1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995

World Israel Diaspora

Underlying these trends were very different patterns of family
formation in Israel versus the majority of other Jewish communities,
namely higher marriage propensities, younger ages at marriage and
persistently higher fertility rates. This resulted in a younger Jewish
population composition in Israel, and comparatively fewer deaths which in

any healthy contemporary population are concentrated at the oldest end of the age distribution. The product was a moderate rate of natural increase in Israel, as against a growing demographic deficit among Jewish populations elsewhere. These trends were enhanced by impressive processes of social mobility, and a consistent tendency to converge geographically towards the economically and culturally more developed national and urban centers of the world.

FIGURE 7. INDICATORS OF JEWISH HETEROGAMY - ISRAEL AND UNITED
STATES, 1940s-1990s

Up 1948 1954-58 1964-68 1975-79 1985-89

1949-53 1959-63 1969-73 1980-84 1990-92

Israel: Ethnic Heterogamy Index US: Jewish % Out-marrying

One momentous implication of changes in Jewish marriage patterns
is illustrated in Figure 7, which juxtaposes the trends in choice of partner
in two different contexts: of Jewish majority in Israel, and of Jewish
minority in the United States. The Israeli data are based on Benini
indexes--a statistical measure of the propensity to marry within one’s own
group independent of group size--based on a dichotomous classification of
European-American and Asian-African origins. They point to the growing
tendency of Jews in Israel to marry a partner of different ethnic
background (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics). The US data report the
percentage of Jews who married a non-Jewish partner who did not convert
to Judaism. They point to an even faster developing trend to heterogamy
(Kosmin et al., 1991; Phillips, 1996). These are two distinct yet parallel
aspects of the growing interaction and assimilation of Jewish sub-
populations within a broader societal context (whether Jewish or non-
Jewish). The implications for the future continuity of Jewish populations
are obviously different in Israel and in the Diaspora. Both trends,

however, point to the expansion of relevant pools underlying the search for marital partners, which is of sure interest for the future development of Jewish genetics.

One significant consequence of the different growth of Jewish
populations in Israel and in the Diaspora through the combined effect of
the Shoah, international migration, differential birth and death rates, and
assimilation, is presented in Table 5. It shows the deep geographic

compositional difference by countries of origin for Jews who live in Israel and elsewhere. Today most of the Jews of Asian and African origin live in Israel, while the largest concentration of Jews of Eastern European origin live in the United States.

TABLE 5. JEWS IN ISRAEL BY BIRTHPLACE AND COUNTRY OF ORIGIN, AND
WORLD JEWISH POPULATION BY COUNTRY OF RESIDENCE, 1995

Country In Israel, by origin^aJewish

Born abroad Total^cpopulation

in country^b

Grand total 1,747,800 4,495,100 13,059,000

Europe 1,053,000 1,636,300 1,781,200

Former USSR^d651,400 792,800 660,000

Poland 102,800 253,900 3,500

Romania 135,700 252,300 14,000

Germany, Austria 35,400 83,800 70,500

Bulgaria, Greece 25,900 58,400 6,700

Hungary 18,700 41,200 54,000

Czech, Slovakia 15,800 36,700 5,900

Other 67,300 117,200 966,600

Asia 255,600 732,600 39,800

Iraq 83,200 254,100 100

Yemen 42,300 156,200 200

Iran 54,800 135,600 13,000

Turkey^e34,400 85,700 19,200

India 18,600 42,900 4,300

Other 22,100 58,100 3,000

Africa 330,000 842,700 105,700

Morocco 181,800 504,400 6,300

Algeria, Tunisia 44,600 126,400 1,700

Libya 21,900 73,900 0

Egypt 24,000 62,300 200

Ethiopia 46,100 58,300 200

Other 11,400 17,300 97,300

America, Oceania 108,700 170,800 6,582,800

N. America, Oceania 60,800 93,100 6,148,600

Latin America 47,900 77,000 434,200

Israel/Israel = 1,112,700 4,549,500

a. Mid-year estimates.

b. End of year estimates.

c. Including Israel-born, by country of birth of father.

d. Including Asian territory.

e. Including European territory.

Sources: Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (1996); DellaPergola (1997).

According to an ongoing reevaluation of current Jewish population
trends, carried out at the Hebrew University, it is likely that Israel’s weight
within total world Jewry will continue to increase. At some date around the
first decade of the 21st century, there might be more Jews living in Israel
than in the United States, and at some later date in the third or fourth
decade of the century, Israeli Jewry might constitute more than one half
of the total world Jewish population. These projections, evidently,
presume the absence of any dramatic deviation from the main
evolutionary patterns of Jewish population that have been observed in
recent decades. The continuing growth of Israel on the world Jewish
population scene also implies a changing predominance in the types and
incidence of genetic profiles and diseases that can be expected in the
future among Jews globally.

Conclusions

From the broad illustrations brought here, we learn that certain basic mechanisms indeed repeatedly and deeply influenced the size and composition of Jewish populations locally and globally.

1. The reconstruction submitted here clearly suggests that the demographic
   history of the Jews never did unfold as a straight-line. Rather, sudden
   growths and declines in Jewish population size alternated over time
   globally, and to an even more dramatic extent within the circumscribed
   context of specific geographic regions, countries, or locales.

2. Implicit in the preceding feature, and evidently fundamental in its
   implications for human genetics, was the repeated substitution of large
   sections of the total Jewish population stock. Now and then, entire
   sections assimilated out and disappeared (the “lost tribes”), and to a
   lesser extent, and especially in the more distant past, new members
   joined.

3. Through the ceaseless influence of differential Jewish population growth,
   some sections grew more rapidly than others, mostly through higher
   levels of fertility. This produced wide diffusion and predominance of
   certain characteristics, at one and the same time physical and cultural,
   and the dilution or disappearance of others.

4. International migration constantly represented a major factor of global
   change and adaptation, determining from time to time under what
   environmental circumstances Jewish population processes would unfold--
   more or less culturally and socially segregated.

Minority status, which prevailed most of the time, exposed Jewish
populations in the Diaspora to manifold legal, political, economic, and
cultural influences. Bottlenecks in the orderly demographic development
of Jewish population in a given locale repeatedly occurred through mass
emigration, large scale withdrawal from belonging to the Jewish
community, or violent persecutions and mass victimization. The
symmetric process of interaction and intermingling of Jews with non-
Jewish populations now and then brought about some expansions in the

Jewish population, though more often the balance was negative.
Continuity of the Jews as a collective did not, nor will it, necessarily imply
continuity at the level of individual genealogy. Yet cultural, demographic,
and physical continuity in a broader sense and in the very long term is a
feature on which the Jewish population uniquely stands out in the
comparative study of human society worldwide over the last 40 centuries.

Acknowledgements

This paper reflects ongoing research at the Division of Jewish Demography and Statistics, The A. Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

References

Bachi, R. (1976). Population Trends of World Jewry. The Institute of

Contemporary Jewry, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

Baron, S. (1971). Population. Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol. 13, pp.866-903.
_______. (1976). A Social and Religious History of the Jews 3. New York.
Bensimon, D., and DellaPergola, S. (1984). La population juive de France:

sociodémographie et identité. Paris-Jerusalem,

Biraben, J.N. (1979). “Essai sur l’évolution du nombre des hommes.”

Population, Vol. 34, pp.13-25.

Blau, B. (1953). “On the Frequency of Births in Jewish Marriages.” Jewish

Social Studies, Vol.. 15, pp. 237-252.

Bloch, B. (1980). “Vital Events Among the Jews in European Russia

Towards the End of the XIX Century.” In: Schmelz, U.O., Glikson, P.,

DellaPergola, S., eds. Papers in Jewish Demography 1977. The

Institute of Contemporary Jewry, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

pp. 69-81.

Bonfil, R. (1983). “Tra due mondi: prospettive di ricerca sulla storia

culturale degli ebrei nell’Italia meridionale nell’alto Medioevo.” Italia

Judaica, Vol. 1, Roma, pp. 135-158.

Bonné-Tamir, B., Zoossman-Diskin, A. and Ticher, A. (1992). “Genetic
        Diversity among Jews Reexamined: Preliminary Analysis at the DNA
        Level.” In: Bonné-Tamir, B. and Adam, A., eds. Genetic Diversity
        among the Jews, New York, pp. 80-94.

Coale, A. and Demeny, P. (1966). Regional Model Life Tables and Stable
Populations. Princeton.

DellaPergola, S. (1983). La trasformazione demografica della diaspora

ebraica. Torino.

____________. (1992). “Major Demographic Trends of World Jewry: The
Last Hundred Years.” In: Bonné-Tamir, B. and Adam, A., eds.
Genetic Diversity among the Jews, New York, pp. 3-30.

____________. (1996). “Between Science and Fiction: Notes on the

Demography of the Holocaust.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 34-51.

____________. (1997). “World Jewish Population 1995.” American Jewish
Year Book, Vol. 97,

New York.

de Tudela, B. (ca. 1170). Sefer Massa’ot. [The Itinerary of Benjamin of
Tudela (Adler, M.N., ed.). London, 1907; Itinerario (Busi, G., ed.).
Rimini, 1988.]

Fraikor, A.L. (1977). “Tay-Sachs Disease: Genetic Drift among the

Ashkenazim.” Social Biology, Vol. 24, pp.117-134.

Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (1996). Statistical Abstract of Israel,
No. 47, Jerusalem.

Gieysztorowa , I. (1976). Wstep do demografii Staropolskiej. Warsaw.

Grossman, A. (1973.) The Rabbinical Literature in Ashkenas and North
France in the Eleventh Century (1030-1085). The Hebrew

University, Jerusalem. Ph.D. dissertation.

Herzog, M. (1979). “Origins of the Yiddish Language.” In: Goodman, R.M.
and Motulsky, A.G., eds. Genetic Diseases among Ashkenazi Jews,
New York.

Jagur-Grodzinski, J. (1997). “Origins of Ashkenazic Jewry: Natural Growth
        vs. Immigration.” In: DellaPergola, S. and Even, J., eds. Papers in
        Jewish Demography 1993. The Institute of Contemporary Jewry, The
        Hebrew University, Jerusalem, pp. 79-90.

King, R.D. (1992). “Migration and Linguistics as Illustrated by Yiddish.” In:
Polome, E.C. and Winter, W., eds. Reconstructing Languages and
Cultures. The Hague.

Kosmin, B.A., Goldstein ,S., Waksberg, J., Lerer, N., Keysar, A. and

Scheckner, J. (1991). Highlights of the CJF 1990 National Jewish Population Survey. New York.

Mahler, R. (1958). Yidn in Amolikn Poiln in Likht fon Zifern. Warsaw.

Motulsky, A.G. (1995). “Jewish Diseases and Origins.” Nature Genetics,
Vol. 9, pp. 99-101.

Phillips, B.A. (1997). Re-examining Intermarriage: Trends, Textures,

Strategies, New York, Los Angeles.

Risch, N. et al. (1995). “Genetic Analysis of Idiopathic Torsion Dystonia in
Ashkenazi Jews and their Recent Descent from a Small Founder
Population.” Nature Genetics , Vol. 9, pp.152-159.

Stampfer, S. (1989). “The 1764 Census of Polish Jewry.” Bar Ilan Annual.
Vol. 24-25. Ramat Gan, pp. 41-147.

Weinryb, B.D. (1972.) The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History
of the Jewish Community of Poland from 1100 to 1800. Philadelphia.

Continuous Jewish Presence in the "Holy Land"

The Jewish presence in "the Holy Land" -- at times tenuous -- persisted throughout its bloody history. In fact, the Jewish claim -- whether Arab-born or European-born Jew -- to the land now called Palestine does not depend on a two-thousand-year-old promise. Buried beneath the propaganda -- which has it that Jews "returned" to the Holy Land after two thousand years of separation, where they found crowds of "indigenous Palestinian Arabs" -- is the bald fact that the Jews are indigenous people on that land who never left, but who have continuously stayed on their "Holy Land." Not only were there the little-known Oriental Jewish communities in adjacent Arab lands, but there had been an unceasing strain of "Oriental" or "Palestinian" Jews in "Palestine" for millennia.¹
The Reverend James Parkes, an authority on Jewish/non-Jewish relations inthe Middle East, assessed the Zionists' "real title deeds" in 1949.²

It was, perhaps, inevitable that Zionists should look back to the heroic period of the Maccabees and Bar-Cochba, but their real title deeds were written by the less dramatic but equally heroic endurance of those who had maintained the Jewish presence in The Land all through the centuries, and in spite of every discouragement. This page of Jewish history found no place in the constant flood of Zionist propaganda.... The omission allowed the anti-Zionists, whether Jewish, Arab, or European, to paint an entirely false picture of the wickedness of Jewry trying to re-establish a two thousand-year-old claim to the country, indifferent to everything that had happened in the intervening period. It allowed a picture of The Land as a territory which had once been "Jewish," but which for many centuries had been "Arab." In point of fact any picture of a total change of population is false....

It was only "politically" that the Jews lost their land, as Parkes reminded us. They never abandoned it physically, nor did they renounce their claim to their nation -- the only continuous claim that exists. The Jews never submitted to assimilation into the various victorious populations even after successive conquerors had devastated the Jewish organizational structure. But, more important, despite becoming "much enfeebled in numbers and deprived both of political and social leaders and of skilled craftsmen,"³ the Jews, in addition to their spiritual roots, managed to remain in varying numbers physically at all times on the land.
Thus, despite "physical violence against Jews and pagans" by the post-Roman Christians, more than forty Jewish communities survived and could be traced in the sixth century -- "twelve towns on the coast, in the Negev, and east of the Jordan [land ihat was part of the Palestine Mandate, called Transjordan in 1922, and declared the "Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan" only thirty-odd years ago] and thirty-one villages in Galilee and in the Jordan Valley."⁴
In A.D. 438 the Jews from Galilee optimistically declared, "the end of the exile of our people" when the Empress Eudocia allowed the Jews to pray again at their holy temple site.⁵Recent archaeological discoveries determine that in A.D. 614 the Jews fought along with the Persian invaders of Palestine, "overwhelmed the Byzantine garrison in Jerusalem," and controlled that city for five years.⁶ By the time the Arabs conquered the land two decades later, the Jews "had suffered three centuries of Christian intolerance, and monkish violence had been spasmodic during at least half of that period."⁷ And the Jews hopefully welcomed the Arab conquerors.
The Muslim Arabs who entered seventh-century Jerusalem found a strong Jewish identity. At that time, "we have evidence that Jews lived in all parts of the country and on both sides of the Jordan, and that they dwelt in both the towns and the villages, practicing both agriculture and various handicrafts"* A number of Jews lived in Lydda and Ramle-which have been identified by modem propaganda and even by more serious documents as historically "purely Arab" towns. "Large and important communities" of Jews lived "in such places as Ascalon, Caesarea and above all Gaza, which the Jews ... had made a kind of capital [when] ... they were excluded from Jerusalem.'"⁸
Jericho was home to many Jews⁹ -- the seventh-century Jewish refugees from Khaibar in Arabia among them. Khaibar had been a thriving Jewish community to the north of Mecca and Medina. After the Jews had "defended their forts and mansions with signal heroism," the Prophet Muhammad had "visited upon his beaten enemy inhuman atrocities," and "by the mass massacre of... men, women and children," the Prophet of Islam exterminated "completely" two Arabian Jewish tribes.¹⁰

The consequences of the war were catastrophic. For centuries the Jews of Khaibar had led a life of freedom, peace, labor and trade; now they had to bow under the yoke of slavery and degradation. They had prided themselves on the purity of their family life; now their women and daughters were distributed among and carried away by the conquerors.¹¹

An Arab "notable" from Medina, who visited the site of hostilities afterward, was quoted by a ninth-century Arab historian:

Before the Moslem occupation, whenever there was a famine in the land, people would go to Khaibar.... The Jews always had fruit, and their springs yielded a plentiful supply of water. After the conquest of Khaibar, the Jews were said to design evil schemes against the Moslems. But hunger pressed us to go to their fields.... We found the landscape completely changed. We met none of the rich Khaibar landowners, but only destitute farmers everywhere ... When we moved on to Kuteiba we felt much relieved....¹²

The Jewish survivors from the area surrounding Khaibar were expelled from "the Arabian Peninsula" when the extent of the Muslim conquest was sufficient to add enough Arab farmers and replace the detested Jews. [See Chapter 8] Based on the Prophet Muhammad's theory, Caliph Omar implemented the decree "Let not two religions co-exist within the Arabian Peninsula."¹³
The Arab theologians' 1968 conference, 1,300 years later, continued to justify the Khaibar extermination of its Jews. One participant explained: ... Omar ... got experience that the Jews were the callers and instigators of the sedition at any time and everywhere. He purified Arabia from them. Most of them dwelt at Khaibar and its neighborhood. That was because he was informed that the Prophet said while he was dying: "Never do two religions exist in Arabia." [Sheikh Abd Allah Al Meshad]¹⁴
Another Arab participant at that conference emphazised,

All people want to get rid of the Jews by hook or by crook.... People are not prejudiced against them but the Jewish evil and the various wicked aspects ... are quite clear....When Bani Qoraiza were punished, an end was put to the Jews of Madina. Those Jews had been the strongest, the richest and the most pernicious and harmful ones. They had been deeply rooted in the society and they had had a high rank and an important status....
Some orientalists ignore the various reasons why the Jews of Khaibar and others were punished.... These orientalists alleged that the invasion of Khaibar was launched because the Prophet wished to reward the Muslims of Hodaibeya and comfort them.... but we have mentioned the most evident reasons of the punishment befalling the Jews. The question of the booty is casual and always subsidiary for waging the wars of the Prophet. It is mentioned in the Verses of the Quran about Jihad [holy war] as a secondary reason for striving against the Unbelievers. [Muhammad Azzah Darwaza]¹⁵

The seventh-century Jewish refugees from Khaibar's environs joined the indigenous Jewish population in "Transjordan, especially in Dera'a." In fact, Arabian Jewish exiles settled "as far as the hills of Hebron," but had they not "intermarried" with the established Jewish communities and connected somehow to the "Diaspora centers, they [the Jewish settlements] could hardly have survived as Jewish communities for hundreds of years." A settled Jewish community was present then in the northern Transjordanian city of Hamadan, "or Amatus" -"a city famed for its palms"-in the area that one day would be part of the League of Nations' [See Chapter 12] Mandated "Jewish National Home" in Palestine.¹⁶
The Christian Crusaders of the eleventh century were merciless but unsuccessful in their efforts to remove any vestige of Jewish tradition. In 1165, Benjamin of Tudela, the renowned Spanish traveler, found that the "Academy of Jerusalem" had been established at Damascus. Although the Crusaders had almost "wiped out" the Jewish communities of Jerusalem, Acre, Caesarea and Haifa, some Jews remained, and whole "village communities of Galilee survived."
Acre became the seat of a Jewish academy in the thirteenth century. And while "many may have merged themselves into the local population, Christian or Muslim," the Jews "stayed, to share and suffer from the disorder" of the aftermath of the Crusaders' "feudalism,"¹⁷ resisting conversion. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, "there was a constant trickle of Jewish immigrants into the country ... some from other Islamic territories and especially North Africa."¹⁸
Jews from Gaza, Ramle, and Safed were considered the "ideal guides" in the Holy Land in the fourteenth century, as Jacques of Verona, a visiting Christian monk, attested. After the Christian had "noted the long established Jewish community at the foot of Mount Zion, in Jerusalem," he wrote,

A pilgrim who wished to visit ancient forts and towns in the Holy Land would have been unable to locate these, without a good guide who knew the Land well, or without one of the Jews who lived there. The Jews were able to recount the history of these places since this knowledge had been handed down from their forefathers and wise men.So when I journeyed overseas I often requested and managed to obtain an excellent guide among the Jews who lived there.¹⁹

In 1438 a rabbi from Italy became the spiritual leader of the Jewish community in Jerusalem,²⁰ and fifty years afterward, another Italian scholar, Obadiah de Bertinoro, founded the Jerusalem rabbinical school that dealt authoritatively "in rabbinic matters among the Jewish communities of the Islamic world."²¹
The Jews, meanwhile, were plentiful enough so that in 1486 "a distinguished pilgrim" to the Holy Land, the Dean of Mainz Cathedral, Bernhard von Breidenbach, advised that both Hebron's and Jerusalem's Jews "will treat you in full fidelity -- more so than anyone else in those countries of the unbelievers."²²
The "Ishmaelite," or Islamic-bom, Jewish immigration to the Holy Land was prominent, and became intensified after the Spanish Inquisition. The Holy Land's throbbing, spirited Jewish life continued, even in Hebron, where "the prosperous Jewish community ... had been plundered, many Jews killed and the survivors forced to flee" in 1518, three years after Ottoman rule began. By 1540, Hebron's Jewry had recovered and reconstructed its Jewish Quarter, while the first Jewish printing press outside Europe was instituted in Safed in 1563.²³
Under Turkish rule the Jews in Jerusalem and in Gaza maintained "cultural and spiritual unity," and Sultan Suleiman I allowed many Jews "to return to the Holy Land." In 1561, "Suleiman gave Tiberias, one of the four Jewish holy cities, to a former 'secret' Jew from Portugal, Don Joseph Nasi, who rebuilt the city and the villages around it." Nasi's efforts attracted Jewish settlement from many areas of the Mediterranean.²⁴ And those "Ishmaelite" Jewish communities that did not or could not make the pilgrimage were nonetheless spiritually attached to their brothers in the Holy Land.
1. See Palestine Royal Commission Report (London, 1937), pp. 2-5, 7, 9, particularly p. 11, para. 23.
2. James Parkes, Whose Land?, A History of the Peoples of Palestine (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Great Britain: Penguin Books, 1970), p. 266.
3. Ibid., pp. 31, 26.
4. Samuel Katz, Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine (New York, 1973), p. 88.
5. Avraham Yaari, 1grot Eretz Yisrael (Tel Aviv, 1943), p. 46; see F. Nau, "Sur la synagogue de Rabbat Moab (422), et un mouvement sioniste favorisk par l'imperatrice Eudocie (438), d'apres la vie de Barsauma le Syrien," Journal Asiatique, LIX (1927), pp. 189-192.
6. A. MaIamat, H. Tadmor, M. Stern, S. Safrai, Toledot Am Yisrael Bi'mei Kedem (Tel Aviv, 1969), p. 348, cited by Katz, Battleground, p. 88.
7. Parkes, Whose LandZ p. 72.
8. Ibid.; also see S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 3 vols. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1971), vol. 2, p. 61 the main synagogue [in Ramle] was the Palestinian."
9. Al-Waqidy, ninth-century Arab historian, recorded a Jewish-settled area in Jericho in the seventh century and "there are other references to Jewish communal life in Jericho as late as the ninth century." Cited by Itzhak Ben-Zvi, The Exiled and the Redeemed (Philadelphia, 1961), p. 146.
10. Ben-Zvi, The Exiled, pp. 144-145. The Nadhir and Kainuka Arabian-Jewish tribes' "battles for their survival ... is found in Dr. Israel Ben-Zeev's remarkable book, Jews in Arabia, " Ben-Zvi states.
11. Israel Ben Zeev, Jews in Arabia, cited by Ben-Zvi, The Exiled, p. 145.
12. Ben-Zvi, The Exiled, p. 145. Ben-Zvi cites Arabian historian Al-Waqidy, as reported in Ben-Zeev, Jews in Arabia.
13. Ibid., p. 146. Ben-Zvi states that some Jews who could "produce letters of protection and treaties signed by or on behalf of the Prophet" were permitted to remain. "...there is reason to believe that these surviving Jewish communities were maintained intact until the twelfth century."
14. Quoted from SheikhAbd Allah Al Meshad, "Jews' Attitudes Towards Islam and Muslims in the First Islamic Era," in D.F. Green, ed., Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel (Geneva, 197 1), p. 22. Darwaza, "The Attitude of the Jews Towards
15. Quoted from Muhammad Azzah nto Him]-at the Islam, Muslims and the Prophet of Islam-P.B.U.H. [Peace Be Unto Him] - at the time of His Honourable Prophethood," in ibid., pp. 29-30.
16. Ben-Zvi, The Exiled, pp. 146-147 the existence of which we have records."
17. Parkes, Whose Land?, pp. 97-99.
18. Ibid., p. 110.
19. Martin Gilbert, Exile and Return, The Strugglefor a Jewish Homeland (Philadelphia and New York, 1978), p. 17. "In 1322 Jewish geographer from Florence, Ashtory Ha-Parhi, had settled in the Jezreel Valley where he wrote a book on the topography of Palestine....
20. Ibid., pp. 17-19. Elijah of Ferrara.
21. Parkes, Whose Land?, p. I 11.
22. Gilbert, Exile, p. 17.
23. Ibid., p. 21.
24. Ibid. For a more detailed account, see Joachim Prinz, The Secret Jews (New York, 1973), p. 147ff

This page was produced by Joseph E. Katz
Middle Eastern Political and Religious History Analyst
Brooklyn, New York

E-mail to a friend
Source: "From Time Immemorial" by Joan Peters, 1984

Jewish Liberation

Monday, August 3, 2015

Some Fundamentals of Jewish Demographic History

Continuous Jewish Presence in the "Holy Land"

No comments:

Post a Comment