The two countries with the greatest shares of the world's Jewish population are the United States and Israel. The United States had been a hub of Jewish immigration since the nineteenth century, as Jewish people sought to escape persecution in Europe by emigrating across the Atlantic. The Jewish population in the U.S. is largely congregated in major urban areas, such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, with the New York metropolitan area being the city with the second largest Jewish population worldwide, after Tel Aviv, Israel. Israel is the world's only officially Jewish state, having been founded in 1948 following the first Arab-Israeli War. While Jews had been emigrating to the holy lands since the nineteenth century, when they were controlled by the Ottoman Empire, immigration increased rapidly following the establishment of the state of Israel. Jewish communities in Eastern Europe who had survived the Holocaust saw Israel as a haven from persecution, while the state encouraged immigration from Jewish communities in other regions, notably the Middle East & North Africa. Smaller Jewish communities remain in Europe in countries such as France, the UK, and Germany, and in other countries which were hotspots for Jewish migration in the twentieth century, such as Canada and Argentina.

This statistic shows the top 25 countries in the world with the largest number of Jewish population in 2010. In 2010, there were living about 5.7 million Jews in the United States.

The world's Jewish population has had a complex and tumultuous history over the past millennia, regularly dealing with persecution, pogroms, and even genocide. The legacy of expulsion and persecution of Jews, including bans on land ownership, meant that Jewish communities disproportionately lived in urban areas, working as artisans or traders, and often lived in their own settlements separate to the rest of the urban population. This separation contributed to the impression that events such as pandemics, famines, or economic shocks did not affect Jews as much as other populations, and such factors came to form the basis of the mistrust and stereotypes of wealth (characterized as greed) that have made up anti-Semitic rhetoric for centuries. Development since the Middle Ages The concentration of Jewish populations across the world has shifted across different centuries. In the Middle Ages, the largest Jewish populations were found in Palestine and the wider Levant region, with other sizeable populations in present-day France, Italy, and Spain. Later, however, the Jewish disapora became increasingly concentrated in Eastern Europe after waves of pogroms in the west saw Jewish communities move eastward. Poland in particular was often considered a refuge for Jews from the late-Middle Ages until the 18th century, when it was then partitioned between Austria, Prussia, and Russia, and persecution increased. Push factors such as major pogroms in the Russian Empire in the 19th century and growing oppression in the west during the interwar period then saw many Jews migrate to the United States in search of opportunity.

The average for 2013 based on 3 countries was 0.6 percent. The highest value was in Argentina: 1 percent and the lowest value was in Mexico: 0.2 percent. The indicator is available from 1960 to 2013. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

The data reported here are from the 2000 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion, sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, detailing the views of American Jews about a broad range of subjects. Among the topics covered in the present survey are the Israel-Arab peace process, the attachment of American Jews to Israel, political and social issues in the United States, Jewish perceptions of anti-Semitism, Jewish opinion about various countries, and Jewish identity concerns. Some of the questions appearing in the survey are new; others are drawn from previous American Jewish Committee surveys, including the 1997, 1998, and 1999 Annual Surveys of American Jewish Opinion. The 2000 survey was conducted for the American Jewish Committee by Market Facts, Inc., a leading survey-research organization. Respondents were interviewed by telephone during September 14-28, 2000; no interviewing took place on the Sabbath. The sample consisted of 1,010 self-identified Jewish respondents selected from the Market Facts consumer mail panel. The respondents are demographically representative of the United States adult Jewish population on a variety of measures. (AJC 3/4/2015).

Please Note: This dataset is part of the historical CISER Data Archive Collection and is also available at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at https://doi.org/10.25940/ROPER-31094161. We highly recommend using the Roper Center version as they may make this dataset available in multiple data formats in the future.

According to a survey conducted in 2022, 70 percent of Americans said that it was mostly or somewhat true that Jews stick together more than other Americans in the United States. 53 percent also agreed that it was mostly or somewhat true that Jews in business go out of their way to hire other Jews.

The average for 2013 based on 2 countries was 0.8 percent. The highest value was in Argentina: 1 percent and the lowest value was in Uruguay: 0.5 percent. The indicator is available from 1960 to 2013. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Among the topics covered in the present survey are the consequences of the September 11 terrorist attack on the United States, the Israel-Arab peace process, the attachment of American Jews to Israel, political and social issues in the United States, Jewish perceptions of anti-Semitism, Jewish opinion about various countries, and Jewish identity concerns. Some of the questions appearing in the survey are new; others are drawn from previous American Jewish Committee surveys, including the Annual Surveys of American Jewish Opinion carried out in 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000. The 2001 survey was conducted for the American Jewish Committee by Market Facts, Inc., a leading survey-research organization. Respondents were interviewed by telephone during November 19 - December 4, 2001; no interviewing took place on the Sabbath. The sample consisted of 1,015 self-identified Jewish respondents selected from the Market Facts consumer mail panel. The respondents are demographically representative of the United States adult Jewish population on a variety of measures. (AJC 3/4/2015)

Please Note: This dataset is part of the historical CISER Data Archive Collection and is also available at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at https://doi.org/10.25940/ROPER-31094162. We highly recommend using the Roper Center version as they may make this dataset available in multiple data formats in the future.

The Pew Research Center Survey of U.S. Jews 2013, is a comprehensive national survey of the Jewish population. The survey explores attitudes, beliefs, practices and experiences of Jews living in the United States. There are two datasets, a respondent dataset (where there is one row per respondent) and a household dataset (where there is one row per person in the sampled households). The respondent dataset includes all of the information collected as part of the survey. The household dataset is a reshaped version of the respondent dataset that includes a limited number of variables describing the demographic characteristics and Jewish status of all of the people in the surveyed households.

Among the topics covered are the war against terrorism and Iraq; the Israel-Arab conflict; the attachment of American Jews to Israel; transatlantic relations; political and social issues in the United States; Jewish perceptions of anti-Semitism; and Jewish identity concerns. Some of the questions appearing in the survey are new, others are drawn from previous AJC surveys conducted annually since 1997. The 2003 survey was conducted for AJC by Market Facts, a leading survey-research organization. Respondents were interviewed by telephone between November 25 and December 11. The sample consisted of 1,000 self-identifying Jewish respondents selected from the Market Facts consumer mail panel. The respondents are demographically representative of the U.S. adult Jewish population on a variety of measures. (AJC 3/4/2015)

Please Note: This dataset is part of the historical CISER Data Archive Collection and is also available at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at https://doi.org/10.25940/ROPER-31094163. We highly recommend using the Roper Center version as they may make this dataset available in multiple data formats in the future.

This statistic shows the denominational affiliation of Jewish community members in the United States, as of January 2017. 28 percent of Jews identified with the Reform movement while 29 percent considered themselves to be "just Jewish"

Financial overview and grant giving statistics of Weitzman National Museum Of American Jewish History

Financial overview and grant giving statistics of The Jewish Federations Of North America Inc

According to a survey conducted in 2022, 44 percent of Jewish Americans said that they made 100,000 U.S. dollars or more in the United States. In comparison, 33 percent of Muslim Americans said that they made less than 30,000 U.S. dollars.

Financial overview and grant giving statistics of American Jewish Historical Society

Financial overview and grant giving statistics of American Jewish Committee Inc

In 1995, Israel had a Jewish population of approximately 4.5 million people, of whom approximately 1.75 million were born abroad. Over one million of these immigrants were born in Europe, with over 650,000 of these born in the former Soviet Union. Despite Poland having the largest Jewish population in the world in the pre-WWII years, the number of Polish Jewish migrants and descendents in Israel was relatively small in 1995 when compared to the USSR due to the impact of the Holocaust.

Outside of Europe, Morocco had the largest number of Jewish immigrants and descendents in Israel by 1995. Morocco had the largest Jewish population in the Muslim world when Israel was founded in 1948, with over 250,000 people. Many Moroccan Jews sought to emigrate to Israel at this time, but often faced resistance from authorities and local populations who believed the Jews would join in the fight against the Arab forces seeking to establish a Muslim state in Palestine. The government of Morocco then officially prohibited emigration to Israel after gaining independence from France in 1956, however this policy was reversed in 1961 whereby the Moroccan government began facilitating Jewish emigration to Israel in return for payments from Jewish organizations in the U.S. and Israel. By the 1970s, Morocco's Jewish population had fallen to less than 15 percent of its size in 1948.

Financial overview and grant giving statistics of Iranian American Jewish Cultural Organization

Throughout history, the displacement and migration of Jewish populations has been a repeating theme. In ancient times, the worlds Jewish population was concentrated in the Middle East, especially around Judaism's spiritual homeland in present-day Israel. However, the population distribution of the world's Jewry began to shift in the Middle Ages, with an increasing share living in Europe. Initially, Western Europe (particularly France, Italy, and Spain) had the largest Jewish populations, before they then migrated eastward in later centuries. Between the 18th and mid-20th centuries, over half of the worl'd Jews lived in Europe, with over 80 percent of these living in Eastern Europe.

Poland had become a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution in the Middle Ages, although shifting borders and foreign influence meant that long-term security was never fully attained, and a series of pogroms in the Russian Empire in the 1800s, and rising anti-Semitism in Central Europe in the early-1900s contributred to waves of migration to the United States and Israel during this time. After the Holocaust saw the genocide of up to six million Jews (over one third of the world's Jewish population), the share of Jews living in Europe dropped drastically, and emmigration outside of Europe increased. Today, the United States has the world's largest Jewish population in the world at around 7.3 million people, just ahead of Israel with 7.1 million.

Financial overview and grant giving statistics of Iranian American Jewish Center