OPINION: Ex-pat Israelis are rejuvenating Jewish Diaspora
Six percent of Israelis live abroad, but it doesn't take many Israelis to arrive in a country with a small Jewish population for their presence to be felt
It’s easy to get over-excited about the number of Israelis living in the Diaspora. There are now 630,000 of them, and close to 1 million, if you include their children born abroad. Does this mean Israel is on the verge of collapse? Is this the beginning of the end of the first Jewish State in 2,000 years?
Errr, no. Amid a prolonged war in Gaza, and in the context of rising concerns about the future of Israel’s democracy, it’s easy to get drawn into these narratives. But the numbers, as ever, tell the real story.
About 6% of all Israelis live abroad. By way of comparison, the equivalent figure for Brits is about 10%.
Instead, something far more prosaic is going on. Prosaic, but nonetheless important.
People emigrate all the time, particularly in an era when plentiful opportunities exist to live, study or work elsewhere. Israelis are no different. They take up professional or study opportunities abroad. They fall in love with foreigners and choose to settle in their partner’s home. They opt to live abroad to broaden their horizons, or they fall out of love with the country of their birth, or they simply prefer the lifestyle in another country.
But because Israel is home to the largest Jewish population in the world, it exports more Jews than, for example, Britain or Germany. It’s simple mathematics: under reasonably normal circumstances, a population of 10 million people (Israel) will inevitably have a larger number of emigrants than a population of about 300,000 people (Jews in Britain) or 120,000 people (Jews in Germany).
But it doesn’t take very many Israelis to arrive in a country with a small Jewish population for their presence to be felt. About half of the 1,300-strong Jewish population of Norway is Israeli. 40% of the similarly sized Finnish Jewish population is Israeli.
About 20%-25% of the Jewish populations of Austria, Denmark, Spain, Ireland and Bulgaria – which each stand at somewhere between 2,000 and 13,000 – are Israeli.
The numbers of Israelis in each of these countries is miniscule – maybe a few hundred, a couple of thousand at most – so the impact of their choice to migrate barely registers in Israel, whose population continues to grow. But it is felt in these Diaspora communities. Increasingly so.
Indeed, in some places, the arrival of Israelis may be providing Diaspora Jewish communities with the shot in the arm they need to revive themselves. Consider the Netherlands, for example. By all natural demographic processes – namely, the number of births per annum relative to the number of deaths – the Dutch Jewish population should be in freefall. But it’s actually growing. Not dramatically, but noticeably. And why? Reason number one: Israelis are showing up and settling there.
Located in the context of modern Jewish history, that is quite a story. The Zionist narrative always foresaw the ‘ingathering of the exiles’ – the migratory movement of Jews from the Diaspora to Israel. Whilst that story remains alive and well, few, if any, imagined that some of those ‘ingathered’ might, over time, move back, and perhaps contribute to the renewal of Jewish life in the Diaspora.
But in the boardrooms of Jewish charities, schools, synagogues and community service organisations, any changes that may be happening to the Big Jewish Historical Narrative matter rather less than more practical issues. How might the arrival of Israeli migrants – many of whom are at the family-formation stage of life – alter demand for places in Jewish schools, or ch’darim or youth summer camps? What programmes or activities should we offer to attract them into the local Jewish community? Do we need to change what we’re doing to accommodate them?
If the trends of the past few decades are an indicator of those to come, the number of Israelis living abroad is expected to continue on a growth trajectory. The key question to Diaspora Jewish community leaders is clear: are we ready?
- Dr Jonathan Boyd is executive director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research
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