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.
Jews were the dominant religious group in the Israel-Palestine region at the beginning of the first millennia CE, and are the dominant religious group there today, however, there was a period of almost 2,000 years where most of the world's Jews were displaced from their spiritual homeland. Antiquity to the 20th century Jewish hegemony in the region began changing after a series of revolts against Roman rule led to mass expulsions and emigration. Roman control saw severe persecution of Jewish and Christian populations, but this changed when the Byzantine Empire adopted Christianity as its official religion in the 4th century. Christianity then dominated until the 7th century, when the Rashidun Caliphate (the first to succeed Muhammad) took control of the Levant. Control of region split between Christians and Muslims intermittently between the 11th and 13th centuries during the Crusades, although the population remained overwhelmingly Muslim. Zionism until today Through the Paris Peace Conference, the British took control of Palestine in 1920. The Jewish population began growing through the Zionist Movement after the 1880s, which sought to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Rising anti-Semitism in Europe accelerated this in the interwar period, and in the aftermath of the Holocaust, many European Jews chose to leave the continent. The United Nations tried facilitating the foundation of separate Jewish and Arab states, yet neither side was willing to concede territory, leading to a civil war and a joint invasion from seven Arab states. Yet the Jews maintained control of their territory and took large parts of the proposed Arab territory, forming the Jewish-majority state of Israel in 1948, and acheiving a ceasefire the following year. Over 750,000 Palestinians were displaced as a result of this conflict, while most Jews from the Arab eventually fled to Israel. Since this time, Israel has become one of the richest and advanced countries in the world, however, Palestine has been under Israeli military occupation since the 1960s and there are large disparities in living standards between the two regions.
Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. The 1851 Anglo-Jewry Database is a prosopographic resource with entries on the great majority of Jews resident in the British Isles in 1851. The collation of available data on their births, marriages, and deaths, on the children they had and their faith affiliations, along with decade-by-decade data on their residence and occupations, provides a basis for analysing their migrations, social mobility, fertility, mortality, and similar themes, and affords some scope for comparison with parallel populations.Latest edition informationFor the third edition (August 2020) an expanded and updated version of the database was deposited. The existing data have been significantly enriched and cleaned and 155 additional entries have been added. The documentation has been updated accordingly.Further information can be found on the Jewish Communities and Records 1851 Anglo-Jewry Database webpage.
Open Government Licence 3.0http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
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Census 2021 data on religion by economic activity status, by sex, by age, and religion by occupation, by sex, by age, England and Wales combined. This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify usual residents in England and Wales by ethnic group. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.
The religion people connect or identify with (their religious affiliation), whether or not they practise or have belief in it.
This question was voluntary and the variable includes people who answered the question, including “No religion”, alongside those who chose not to answer this question.
Total counts for some population groups may not match between published tables. This is to protect the confidentiality of individuals' data. Population counts have been rounded to the nearest 5 and any counts below 10 are suppressed, this is signified by a 'c' in the data tables.
This dataset shows population counts for usual residents aged between 16 to 64 years old only. This is to focus on religious affiliation differences among the working age. Population counts in these tables may be different from other publications which use different age breakdowns.
Quality notes can be found here
Quality information about Labour Market can be found here
The Standard Occupation Classification 2020 code used can be found here
Religion
The 8 ‘tickbox’ religious groups are as follows:
Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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This dataset is about book subjects. It has 3 rows and is filtered where the books is A history of the Jews in the English-speaking world : Great Britain. It features 10 columns including number of authors, number of books, earliest publication date, and latest publication date.
The database was developed in the first instance as a resource for undergraduate teaching and subsequently for historical and genealogical research. The teaching aspect was in the context of the pioneering Computing for Historians programme developed at Leicester between 1988 and 2002. This required all history students to undertake database work as a core element in their degree, involving an assigned quota of data input into one of a range of departmental databases and culminating in a finals project on their designated database. From a research point of view, work on the Shelter database received an important stimulus with the discovery that a substantial proportion of the migrants recorded in the database were bound for South Africa. This discovery attracted funding from the Kaplan Centre at the University of Cape Town, to help speed up the input by employing three postgraduates, and it led to the mounting of a partial online version of the database in Cape Town as part of a project there to research the development of South Africa’s early Jewish community at the beginning of the twentieth century. The database has subsequently been drawn on by two postgraduate theses and a number of publications.
Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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This data powers a dashboard presenting insights into the religious affiliations and Assisted Dying voting patterns of UK Members of Parliament (MPs). It can be found here:
👉 https://davidjeffery.shinyapps.io/mp-religion/.
Please cite all uses of the data.
This dashboard presents insights into the religious affiliations and Assisted Dying voting patterns of UK Members of Parliament. It combines publicly available data to support transparency and understanding of Parliament’s composition.
The data is compiled from publicly available parliamentary records and voting data. You can download it directly from the link in the header or view it in the Raw Data tab of the dashboard.
There are three steps to determining religion. An MP is classified as having a religion based on the following criteria:
If the MP is a member of a religiously based group, they are classified as a member of that religion.
If a member has publicly spoken about their religion, they are classified as a member of that religion.
Finally, the text an MP swore in on is used to help infer their religion.
These sources are used in order of priority. For example, Tim Farron is a member of Christians in Parliament and has spoken about his religious views. However, he did not take the oath on the Bible, but made a solemn affirmation on no text. Regardless, he is still classed as Christian.
What do those variable names mean?
Member ID – member_id – A unique numeric identifier for each MP provided by Parliament.
Name – display_as – The full display name of the MP.
Gender – gender – The MP’s gender.
Party – party – The full political party name.
Party (Simplified) – party_simple – A shortened or cleaned version of the party name.
Religion – mp_final_relig – The MP’s classified religion based on multiple criteria outlined above.
AD: 2nd Reading Vote – ass_suicide_2nd – The MP’s vote (Yes, No, Abstain) on the Assisted Dying Bill 2nd Reading.
AD: 3rd Reading Vote – ass_suicide_3rd – The MP’s vote (Yes, No, Abstain) on the Assisted Dying Bill 3rd Reading.
LGBT Status – lgbt – Whether the MP is publicly identified as LGBT (LGBT.MP).
Ethnic Minority – ethnic_mp – Whether the MP identifies as an ethnic minority.
Religious Group: Christian – relig_christian – MP belongs to a Christian group (1 = Yes).
Religious Group: Muslim – relig_muslim – MP belongs to a Muslim group (1 = Yes).
Religious Group: Jewish – relig_jewish – MP belongs to a Jewish group (1 = Yes).
Religious Group: Sikh – relig_sikh – MP belongs to a Sikh group (1 = Yes).
Oath Taken – mp_swear – Whether the MP took the Oath or made an Affirmation.
Oath Book – mp_swear_book – The specific religious text (e.g., Bible, Quran) used when swearing in.
Inferred Religion – mp_inferred_relig – The religion inferred from the swearing-in text.
Election Outcome – elected – Whether the MP was re-elected in the most recent election.
Majority – majority – The MP’s vote share margin.
Constituency Type – constituency_type – Type: Borough or County.
Claimant Rate – cen_claimant – % of constituents claiming unemployment benefits.
% White (Census) – cen_eth_white – Proportion of white ethnicity in the constituency.
% Christian – cen_rel_christian – Constituency Christian population from the Census.
% Buddhist – cen_rel_buddhist – Constituency Buddhist population.
% Hindu – cen_rel_hindu – Constituency Hindu population.
% Jewish – cen_rel_jewish – Constituency Jewish population.
% Muslim – cen_rel_muslim – Constituency Muslim population.
% Sikh – cen_rel_sikh – Constituency Sikh population.
% No Religion – cen_rel_no religion – Constituents identifying as non-religious.
% No Qualifications – cen_qual_none – Constituents with no formal qualifications.
% Graduates – cen_qual_grad – Constituents with degree-level education.
% Some Disability – cen_disab_some – Constituents reporting a form of disability.
Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting we bring back the Test Acts. The logic here is that more granular data is better.
When swearing in, there are versions of the Bible specific to Catholics — typically the New Jerusalem Bible or the Douay–Rheims Bible — whereas if someone just asks for “the Bible”, they are given the King James Version and could be from any Christian denomination.
It would be a shame to lose that detail, so I provide the option to break out Catholic MPs separately.
The Parliament website has a great guide:
👉 https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/elections-and-voting/swearingin/
This dashboard was created by Dr David Jeffery, University of Liverpool.
Follow me on Twitter/X or Bluesky.
I needed to know MPs’ religion, and the text MPs used to swear in seemed like a valid proxy. This information was held by Humanists UK and when I asked for it, they said no.
So I did what any time-starved academic would do: I collected the data myself, by hand, and decided to make it public.
Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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This dataset is about book series. It has 1 row and is filtered where the books is The structure and regime of the Board of Deputies of British Jews : a communal and social study. It features 10 columns including number of authors, number of books, earliest publication date, and latest publication date.
Contemporary Jews comprise an aggregate of ethno-religious communities whose worldwide members identify with each other through various shared religious, historical, and cultural traditions1,2. Historical evidence suggests common origins in the Middle East, followed by migrations leading to the establishment of communities of Jews in Europe, Africa, and Asia - in what is termed the Jewish Diaspora3-5. This complex demographic history imposes special challenges in attempting to address the genetic structure of the Jewish people6. While many genetic studies have shed light on Jewish diseases and origins, including those focusing on uniparentally- and biparentally-inherited markers7-16, genome-wide patterns of variation across the vast geographic span of Jewish Diaspora communities and their respective neighbors have yet to be addressed. Here we use high-density bead arrays to genotype individuals from 14 Jewish Diaspora communities, and compare these patterns of genome-wide diversity with those from 69 Old World non-Jewish populations, of which 25 have not been previously reported. These samples were carefully chosen to provide comprehensive comparisons between Jewish and non-Jewish populations in the Diaspora, as well as with non-Jewish populations from the Middle East and North Africa. Principal component and structure-like analyses identify previously unrecognized genetic substructure within the Middle East. Most Jewish samples form a remarkably tight sub-cluster that overlies Druze and Cypriot samples, but not samples from other Levantine populations or paired Diaspora host populations. In contrast, Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel) and Bene Israel Indian Jews cluster with neighbouring autochthonous populations in Ethiopia and western India, respectively; despite a clear paternal link between the Bene Israel and the Levant. These results cast light on the variegated genetic architecture of the Middle East, and trace the origins of most Jewish Diaspora communities to the Levant. 466 samples are analysed on three different Illumina platforms.
Open Government Licence 3.0http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
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People who identified as Jewish and Jewish identity groups by highest level of qualification, England and Wales, Census 2021.
There were ***** Anti-Semitic incidents reported to the Community Security Trust in the United Kingdom in 2024, compared with ***** in 2023. There has been a clear and noticeable increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents reported in the UK since 2013 when just *** incidents were reported.
Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 (CC BY-NC 3.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
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Dataset which contains a nationally representative sample of British Jews (n=512). Content is largely on political attitudes and behaviour, fieldwork was conducted in 2017 by polling company Survation.
Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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BackgroundOrthodox Jews follow the Jewish law, Halacha, that determines most daily activities and behaviours. Halacha restrictions and the insular lifestyle of groups within the Orthodox community have led to cultural barriers when interacting with NHS maternity services in the UK.Aims and objectivesThis protocol describes a scoping review that will aim to: explore the needs of Orthodox Jews when interacting with maternity services and their experiences in the UK; to what extend this topic has been studied; and identify any gaps that need further research.RationaleThe literature on this topic is scarce. There is an urgent need to understand the unique needs of these communities in order to make NHS maternity services accessible to all.MethodsThe scoping review will follow Arksey and O’Malley’s framework for scoping reviews. We will utilise a broad search strategy that will include terms such as Orthodox Jewish, Haredi, Halacha, Needs, Experiences and Maternity Services. We will search the grey literature and databases such as OpenGrey, PubMed, Web of Science, CINHAL, SocINDEX and ProQuest. The search will be an iterative process that will be led by the search itself and the Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) work done in parallel.Inclusion criteriaUsing the terms above, we will include English papers from all OECD countries, applying no restrictions on publication year.Expected outcomesMapping the literature will allow a better understanding of the needs and experiences of the Orthodox community when interacting with NHS maternity services in the UK and will lead to the next stage of the project that aims to make these services more culturally sensitive.
Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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This dataset is about books. It has 2 rows and is filtered where the book is Christian identity, Jews, and Israel in seventeenth-century England. It features 7 columns including author, publication date, language, and book publisher.
Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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This dataset is about book subjects. It has 8 rows and is filtered where the books is Romantic diasporas : French émigrés, British convicts, and Jews. It features 10 columns including number of authors, number of books, earliest publication date, and latest publication date.
Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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This dataset is about books. It has 1 row and is filtered where the book is Jews in the professions in Great Britain 1891-1991. It features 7 columns including author, publication date, language, and book publisher.
Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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This dataset is about books. It has 1 row and is filtered where the book is At the end of the earth : essays on the history of the Jews of England and Portugal. It features 7 columns including author, publication date, language, and book publisher.
Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Royaume-Uni: People practicing Judaism as percent of the population: Pour cet indicateur, The Cline Center for Democracy fournit des données pour la Royaume-Uni de 1960 à 2013. La valeur moyenne pour Royaume-Uni pendant cette période était de 0.6 pour cent avec un minimum de 0.5 pour cent en 1996 et un maximum de 0.8 pour cent en 1960.
CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedicationhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
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Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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This dataset is about books. It has 1 row and is filtered where the book is The Palestine triangle : the struggle between the British the Jews and the Arabs 1935-48. It features 7 columns including author, publication date, language, and book publisher.
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.