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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/38083/full/38083/what-if-we-were-32-million-strong-but-we-arent/ <br /><br /> <b>What if we were 32 million strong? But we aren’t</b> <br /> Thursday, May 14, 2009 | by Michael Freund <br /><br /><p>A few weeks ago, just in time for Holocaust Remembrance Day, a news item appeared in the media that sent a shiver up my spine.</p> <p>According to the report, Hebrew University demographer Sergio Della Pergola has concluded that had it not been for the Holocaust, there would be 32 million Jews in the world today, rather than just 13 million.</p> <p>Whereas prior to World War II, there were eight Jews per 1,000 people worldwide, the figure now stands at just two per every 1,000, and it is heading southward.</p> <p> <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 126px;"><img alt="Vfreund, michael" class="left" height="173" src="http://dev.jweekly.com/images/uploads/z_photos_2009/ze_05_15_09/Vfreund, michael.jpg" title="Michael Freund" width="126" /> <div class="caption">Michael Freund</div> </div> Not only did the Holocaust claim the 6 million who were murdered by the Germans and their collaborators, but it also took away their children, grandchildren and all of their descendants, forever depriving the Jewish people of untold millions of precious souls.</p> <p>Just imagine a world in which a vibrant and ample Jewish people, more than double its present size, were not beset by the constant threat of demographic diminution and assimilatory attenuation.</p> <p>Consider for a moment the cultural and spiritual riches that we would be producing, the mighty intellectual and cerebral contributions to mankind that we could be making, and you begin to realize the extent of what has been lost.</p> <p>But, in addition to all the “what ifs,” Della Pergola’s research inevitably raises a related question, albeit one far more philosophical and theological in nature: To what extent does it matter how many Jews there are?</p> <p>Traditionally, of course, we have never placed a great deal of emphasis on the size or dimensions of the Jewish people, but have tended to focus more on quality rather than quantity.</p> <p>That, perhaps, is why many Jews tend to discount or minimize the importance of our numbers, arguing that what really matters is whether we are working effectively to fulfill our national destiny.</p> <p>But this mode of thinking, I believe, is a product of exile, that we were more concerned with surviving, rather than thriving. In the process, we tended to lose sight of the important role that numbers can and do play in the life of a nation.</p> <p>Go back to the Bible, for example, where demographic prowess is repeatedly emphasized. In Genesis 13, God assures Abraham that his descendants shall be as numerous as the dust of the Earth.</p> <p>When Moses addressed Israel before his death, he, too, prophesied that God would multiply them “a thousand times over” (Deuteronomy 1:10-11). This, says the Ha’emek Davar commentary, is a promise that relates both to the quality and the quantity of the Jewish people.</p> <p>We seem to have moved away from this approach.</p> <p>After all, size does matter, whether in basketball, business or international diplomacy. And to make a difference in the world and live up to our national mission as Jews, we need a much larger and more diverse “team” at our disposal.</p> <p>We not only need to work harder at keeping Jews Jewish, but we also must expand our horizons and look for other ways to boost our numbers.</p> <p>A good place to start would be with descendants of Jews, with communities that have a historical connection with the Jewish people and are now interested in returning. These include the Bnei Menashe of northeastern India, the Bnei Anousim of Spain, Portugal and South America (whom historians refer to by the derogatory term “Marranos”) and the “Hidden Jews” of Poland from the Holocaust era.</p> <p>Through no fault of their own, these people’s ancestors were taken by force from the Jewish people, and we owe it to them and their descendants to embrace them and welcome them back home.</p> <p>If you are still not convinced of the importance of numbers, consider the following. In his “A History of the Jews,” Paul Johnson notes that during the Herodian era there were 8 million Jews in the world, “constituting about 10 percent of the Roman empire.” At around the same time, a census in China conducted by the Han dynasty found that there were 57.5 million Chinese. (That works out to roughly seven Chinese for every Jew.)</p> <p>Jump ahead 2,000 years to the present: China’s population has grown by some 1,800 percent to 1.1 billion people, while the Jewish population has increased just 63 percent to 13 million. (About 85 Chinese for every Jew.)</p> <p>We might never be able to match China’s demographics, but we can and should look for new opportunities for growth. Our precarious state as a people, and the threats we face in Israel and in the diaspora, demand as much.</p> <p><br /><strong>Michael Freund</strong> chairs Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based group that assists “lost Jews” seeking to return to the Jewish people. He wrote this piece for the Jerusalem Post.</p>

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