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 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.
1 See Appendix I, " Jewish Population Statistics."
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