DISPERSION AND DISTRIBUTION
    Number of Jews in the world and in each continent - Apparent multitude and real paucity in each country - The centre of gravity of Jewry - The Russian Pale - Austria-Hungary, particularly Galicia - Germany, Turkey, Rumania, the British Isles, and the rest of Europe - Asiatic countries - Communities in Africa - The Jews in America - The greatest Jewish city - Settlements in Australasia 
 
The total number of Jews in the world at the present day amounts approximately to 13,500,000.1 This is the highest figure that they have ever reached in their history, and yet it forms only about a hundred and twentieth of the entire population of the globe. Their numbers are thus out of all proportion to their prominence and significance on the stage of the world. Although Asiatic by origin, with a continuous history of three thousand years on Asiatic soil, they are mostly concentrated in Europe, whither they gravitated after the downfall of Judea in 70 C.E. In this continent they number 10,068,435, three-fourths of the total Jewish population, whilst in Asia they number only 525,658. Thus, in the continent which gave them birth and which witnessed the first and highest efflorescence of their genius, the Jews are now represented by less than a twenty-fifth of their total number. In the New World, which Columbus discovered with their material aid in the year in which they were expelled from Spain, there are 2,495,805; all of whom, save about 200,000, are inhabitants of the United States. In Africa there are 414,246, and in Australasia 19,415. 

The most notable feature in their distribution over the earth's surface is the unevenness of density. In some regions there are compact and congested communities which seem wholly composed of Jews; in others the appearance of a Jew is sufficiently rare to be a curiosity. This phenomenon is not confined to any particular continent; it is character-istic of nearly every country in the world. The gregariousness of the Jews, apart from historical and psychological considerations, has given them a position of prominence on the stage of the world far exceeding that proportionate to their numbers. For even in the countries in which their numbers are highest, Russia and Austria-Hungary, they form less than five per cent of the total population; but their residence is mostly confined to a comparatively small part of either country, where political and industrial life is most vigorous, and where public opinion is keenest, and hence their compact solidity in these busy, pulsating centres conveys an impression of numerical magnitude which is utterly belied by their real paucity. In Western Europe too, and in the United States, the Jewish population bears an even smaller proportion to the general population, varying from a quarter to three per cent; but here likewise it is largely confined to the capitals and the great cities, whose local problems bulk upon the national horizon to an inordinate extent, and whose Jewish inhabitants seem to those who mould public opinion to reflect a similar populousness throughout the country. In addition to this physical crowding into the main centres of national life there are special circumstances that make the Jews seem far more numerous than they really are, namely, the inevitable pro-minence of a different racial type, and their participation and success in callings, such as the law, politics, the stage, the press, and the stock exchange, which enjoy an undue measure of public attention. 
The centre of gravity of modern Jewry is in the Russian Pale of Settlement, which contains six million Jews. This region is situated between the Baltic Provinces and the shores of the Black Sea; it comprises the ten provinces of the Kingdom of Poland and fifteen provinces of Lithuania, White Russia, South-Western and Southern Russia; and it has an area of 362,000 square miles, which is equal to three times the size of the United Kingdom. As constituted to-day the Pale was established in 1835; it is an expansion of a smaller region that was delimited in 1769 for the restricted residence of the Jews; while the policy of isolation which it embodies was first put into practice by the Muscovite Government in the sixteenth century. The history of the Jews in this country, however, goes back to the earliest times. According to Armenian and Gregorian historians, they were deported by Nebuchadnezzar to Armenia and the Caucasus after the destruction of the first Temple, in 586 B.C.; and their influence in the eighth century was sufficiently evidenced by the conversion to Judaism of the kingdom of the Chazars, a people inhabiting the region of the lower Don, the Vistula, and the Dnieper, whose independence lasted until 969 A.D. Until the last quarter of the eighteenth century their numbers were comparatively few. The great mass of them came under the sway of the Tsar in consequence of the partition of Poland, whither they had fled for refuge in the Middle Ages from the chronic outbreaks of persecution in Western Europe, and where they had pursued their lives in peace, with little interruption, and even with a measure of communal autonomy. The change of ruler exposed them to the very dangers which had made their forefathers settle in Poland, but the disturbed conditions of the time, com-bined with memories of the past and hopes for a brighter future, prevented any wholesale migration back to the Western countries. Thus, the dismemberment of Poland in 1795 placed half of the Jewish race under Russian dominion, and there it has remained unto the present day. 

The total number of Jews in the Russian Empire, ac-cording to the latest estimates (1905), was 6,122,127, which represents a percentage of only 4.6 of the total population. By far the greatest number, 939 per cent, live in the Pale, which occupies only a fifth of European Russia and a twenty-fifth of All the Russians. The remainder, who are privileged to live outside it, consisting mainly of merchants of the first guild, members of professions, and master artisans, number less than half a million, which is an insignificant proportion (.037 per cent) of the general population. But although the preponderating mass of Russian Jews live in the Pale, they form only 11.6 per cent - less than a ninth - of the entire population of that region. This proportion, however, affords no exact indication of the real conditions, as more than five out of the six millions are concentrated in cities and towns, in consequence of laws passed in 1882 and 1891 against the further settlement of Jews in rural districts. The congestion is thickest in the six north-western provinces, in which they form nearly 60 per cent of the urban population; whilst even in the least con-gested districts, in Southern Russia, they represent a per-centage of 28.2. Berditchev, which has a Jewish popu-lation of 47,000 in a total of 53,000, a percentage of 87, enjoys the distinction of being the most Jewish town in the world. There are 48 towns with more than 10,000 Jewish inhabitants,2 of which only five are outside the Pale (Kiev, Riga, St. Petersburg, Rostov on Don, and Kharkov). The city containing the greatest number of Jews is Warsaw with 308,488, whilst Odessa comes next with 170,000 and Lodz with 92,308. Thus, although the number of Jews in the Russian Empire is so small in proportion to the entire popu-lation that, if evenly distributed throughout the Tsar's dominions, their presence would be almost unnoticed, their forced aggregation in the towns of only one-fifth of European Russia has produced an intensity of communal life, pre-served intact the orthodox observance of religious customs and the spirit of national culture, and created permanent problems of economic distress. 

In Austria-Hungary the Jews present a similar pheno-menon of uneven distribution. Their total numbers are 1,313,687 in Austria,3 and 932,416 in Hungary,4 forming a percentage of only 4.4 of the entire population. But two-thirds of the Jews in Austria are crowded together in the province of Galicia, where they form over 10 per cent of the population. In the province of Bukowina the proportion is a little higher, being nearly 13 per cent.5 The early history of Galicia belongs to the kingdom of Poland, hence we naturally find there a great aggregation of Jews. In two towns of Galicia, Brody and Buczacz, they form an absolute majority, and in ten they form the relative majority.6 They also constitute more than a fourth of the inhabitants in seven towns in Hungary.7 Their highest percentage (67.5) is in Brody, where, however, the total number of Jews is only 14,729. The highest number of Jews in any city in Austria-Hungary is 203,687 in Budapest, where they form nearly a fourth of the inhabitants, whilst in Vienna they number 175,318, and constitute less than a tenth of the inhabitants. Lemberg, Cracow, and Czernowitz are the next three Jewish communities in point of size ranging from 57,387 to 28,613. 

After Austria-Hungary comes Germany, with a Jewish population of 615,029,8 which forms less than one per cent of its entire numbers, and of which nearly one-fourth is found in the city of Greater Berlin (142,289).9 In Turkey, which showed generous hospitality to the Jews upon their expulsion from medieval Spain, there are now, in conse-quence of the recent loss of territory, only about 95,000,10 mostly concentrated in Constantinople.  In Rumania there are 250,000, forming about 3.2 per cent of the general population. Here, as in Russia, they have been forbidden by law to live in the country districts; they have been evicted from one village after another and compelled to crowd into the towns. Hence, nearly one-half of their number are cooped up in the four cities of Bucharest, Jassy, Botoschani, and Galatz, comprising half of the population in Jassy and Botoschani. In the British Isles, where a resettlement of the Jews took place under Cromwell after an absence of three centuries and a half, there are 270,000, representing a per-centage of .59 of all the inhabitants. More than half of them live in London (160,000), and more than a fourth in the three cities of Manchester, Leeds, and Liverpool. The total number of Jews in the United Kingdom, however, is less than that in the one city of Warsaw. Holland, which, like Turkey, also welcomed fugitives from Inquisition-ridden Spain and Portugal, has 106,309,11 - less than the number in Vienna - of whom more than half are confined to Amster-dam. France has 100,000, which is less than Odessa, and forms less than one-quarter per cent of the general population, whilst more than half are confined to Paris. Italy has only 45,000, of whom 10,000 live in Rome; Bulgaria, 50,000, of whom one-fourth live in Sofia and Philippopolis; Belgium, 15,000, of whom nearly one-half are in Brussels (6500); and Switzerland has 19,023. 12 Greece, through its acquisition of Salonica and other Turkish towns, has now about 90,000 Jews, and Servia about 16,000, while the remaining countries of Europe, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, and Portugal have each less than 4000. 

The Jews in Asia number only 525,658, an insignificant fraction of the teeming millions in that vast continent. Less than a fourth (100,000) live in Palestine, where they form 14.2 per cent of the general population, a higher propor-tion than is to be found in any other country in the world, not even excepting Poland, where they constitute 13.7 per cent of the population. Fully one-half of the Jews in Palestine live in Jerusalem, where they comprise half of the inhabitants. In Asia Minor there are 60,000, of whom nearly one-half live in Smyrna.  In Asiatic Russia there are 120,636; in Syria and Mesopotamia, 100,000; in Persia, 40,000; in Arabia, 30,000;  in Afghanistan, 19,000; in India, 20,900, of whom more than a half are in the State of Bombay; in China and Japan, 2000. In Palestine, Asiatic Russia, and Japan, the Jewish population is largely composed of European immigrants who settled in those countries in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In the other parts of Asia the Jews have formed a constant element since the early centuries of the current era, their first notable migration eastward from Palestine having been due to deportation after the destruction of the first Temple, more than two thousand years ago. The Jews of Cochin claim to have come to Malabar from Jerusalem soon after its downfall in the year 70, whilst the derelict Jewish colony in Kal-Fung-Foo has a tradition that Jews first entered China under the Han dynasty, during the reign of Han Ming-ti, 58-76 C.E. 

The Jews in Africa number 414,246, of whom nearly 300,000 inhabit the countries along the north coast. Their settlement in this region, irrespective of the period of bondage in the Egypt of the Pharaohs, took place two thousand years ago. The communities are to be found at their densest in Morocco, which is believed to contain 109,000 Jews, mostly congregated in Mogador, Tetuan, and Tangier. In Algeria there are 70,271, and in Tunis, 65,213.13 In Egypt there are 50,000, of whom more than five-sixths are concentrated in Cairo and Alexandria; and in Tripoli and Cyrenaica, 19,000. Abyssinia contains an ancient community, who trace their history back to the days of the Temple and their origin to the visit paid by the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon. Their numbers have been esti-mated by Dr. Jacques Faitlovitch, who has made several explorations of the country since 1904, at 50,000.14 In the neighbouring territory of the East African Protectorate there is a small colony of fifty Jews, who have recently immigrated thither either direct from Europe or from South Africa. 

In South Africa itself there is a thriving community of 50,000, consisting almost entirely of immigrants from Europe and their descendants, of whom a third are con-centrated in Johannesburg and Cape Town. The founders of this community made their way to the Cape in the early part of the nineteenth century, and were pioneers in the industrial development of nearly the whole interior of the country.15 The great influx of Jews into this region, however, did not take place until the outbreak of persecutions in Russia, in the early eighties, and they are now to be found in hundreds of towns throughout British South Africa, extending from the coast to the farthest outposts in the interior. 

The Jews in America number 2,495,805, and form the second largest continental aggregation.  Their connexion with America began even before its discovery, for they were the authors of astronomical works and scientific instruments that helped Columbus to direct his course, they supplied a great deal of the money that made his voyages possible, and at least five persons of Jewish blood accompanied him on his first voyage. It is even now conjectured that Columbus himself was of Jewish blood. The coincidence of his discovery of the New World with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain seems as obvious an act of Providence as any that historians can demonstrate. The phenomenon has often been noted by those who have chronicled the wanderings of Israel, but the first to refer to it was Columbus himself in his journal, a letter written to his Jewish patron, Santangel. The coincidence, striking as it is, should not blind us, however, to the fact that. Jews contributed in brains and money to the discovery of their new land of refuge. Moreover, one of their number, Luis de Torres, who accompanied Columbus as an interpreter, is believed to have been the first European to tread the soil of America. 

The first migration of Jews to the New World took place at the beginning of the sixteenth century, when exiles from Spain settled in Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and other parts of South America. A hundred and fifty years later the descendants of other exiles, who had fled to Holland and built up the important community of Amsterdam, emigrated to New Amsterdam, and formed the nucleus of the still more important and numerous community of New York. The wars in Central Europe in the eighteenth century, culminating in the partition of Poland, drove another host of emigrants, mostly from Germany and Poland, across the Atlantic. But all these successive migrations, even down to the middle of the nineteenth century, did not contribute any very considerable addition to the population. Not until 1882, when an epidemic of massacres broke out among the Jews in Russia, did the volume of emigration attain imposing dimensions. From that year down to the present day the tide of Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe has flowed without pause, increasing in strength with every fresh outbreak of per-secution. Before the eighties the Jewish population of America was less than half a million: it now amounts to more than four times that number. 

The inequality that marks the distribution of the Jews in the Old World also characterizes their settlement in the New World.  The overwhelming bulk live in the United States, while smaller communities have developed in Canada, Argentine; Mexico, and some of the southern re-publics. In the United States the Jewish population may be estimated at 2,300,000 souls,16 nearly half of whom are contained in a single city - Greater New York. This city, with its aggregation of a million Jews, possesses the largest Jewish community in the world, and likewise the largest known in the entire annals of history.  The dimensions of the vast colony may be appreciated from the fact that it contains as many Jews as the next five largest centres put together, namely, Warsaw, Budapest, Chicago, Vienna, and Odessa. At present the Jews form a little more than a fourth of the general population in New York, and while there is no doubt that their absolute numbers will steadily increase, it is also very probable that with their superior fecundity they will soon surpass their present ratio to the general population. There are several other cities, too, with big Jewish communities: Chicago has 200,000; Philadelphia, 150,000; Boston, 75,000; Cleveland, 60,000; and Baltimore, 50,000. In Canada there are 74,564, nearly half of whom are concentrated in Montreal,16 while 22,500 live in Toronto, and 14,000 in Winnipeg.17 In the Argentine there are 100,000, of whom 24,000 are settled in the agricultural colonies established by the Jewish Colonization Association, and the remainder are in Buenos Ayres and other cities.18 Mexico has nearly 10,000 Jews, Cuba 4000, and Brazil 3000, while smaller numbers are dis-persed in Jamaica, Dutch Guiana, Venezuela, Chile, and other southern states. 
Australasia, the last of the continents to be colonized, contains only 19,415 Jews, of whom 2128 are inhabitants of New Zealand. The largest community is that of Sydney, which has 6355 Jews, while Melbourne comes next with 5500.  In Perth there are 1100, and the numbers in the other towns are even smaller. The settlement of the Jews in Australasia began in the early part of the nineteenth century, but it did not attain considerable proportions - in relation to local conditions - until the discovery of gold in 1851. The earliest immigrants originated from England, and most of the subsequent settlers also pro-ceeded from this country, including of late years some Russian Jews, who, finding no prospects of improvement here, sailed for the Antipodes. 

1 See Appendix I, " Jewish Population Statistics." 
2 Die sozialen Verhältnisse der Juden in Russland, p.16. 
3 Census of 1910. 
4 Census of 1910 (Die Welt, 17th January 1913). 
5 Zeitschrift für Statististik und Demographie der Juden, 1912. 
6 Zeitschrift für Statististik und Demographie der Juden, 1913, p.22. 
7 Zeitschrift für Statististik und Demographie der Juden, 1912, p.136. 
8 Census of 1910. 
9 Zeitschrift für Statististik und Demographie der Juden, 1913, p.12. 
10 Estimate of "Alliance Israelite Universelle." 
11 Census of 1909. 
12 Census of 1910. 
13 Zeitschrift für Statististik und Demographie der Juden, 1911, p.48. 
14 Dr. J. Faitlovich, Quer durch Abessinien, p.173. 
15 Cf. "Jewish Pioneers of South Africa," by Sidney Mendelssohn, in Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, vol. vii. pp. 180-205. 
16 See Appendix I. 
17 Census of 1911 (Canadian Jewish Times, 14th March 1913). 
18 Jewish Chronicle, 29th May 1914. 

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