This year will mark the first time in history that there will be as many Jews living in Israel as in the United States, according to statistics presented at a Jewish Policy Planning Institute conference this week. The greater Tel Aviv area has already replaced New York as the city with the most Jews.
The change is part of a larger trend showing that while the number of Jews living in Israel between 1970 and 2005 increased, the number of Jews in the Diaspora shrunk by about a quarter in that time. Overall, the world Jewish population has increased slightly in the last 35 years - but its percentage of the overall world population has decreased by about a third since 1970, Hebrew University Prof. Sergio Della Pergola said Sunday at the conference in Jerusalem.
The Jewish population increased from 12.65 million in 1970 to nearly 13 million in 2005, but in the same period, the world population grew by more than 70 percent. As a result, the Jewish people now comprises 0.21 percent of the world population, down from 0.35 percent 35 years ago.
The statistics also show that the number of Jews in the Diaspora has decreased from slightly more than 10 million to 7.75 million in 2005. The increase in the world Jewish population, then, is due to a significant rise in the number of Jews living in Israel since 1970.
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