February/March 1994, Page 37

Survey Indicates Only 1.4 Million Jews Remain in Former U.S.S.R. 

By Richard H. Curtiss

Israel's hope of significantly increasing the percentage of its Jewish population by tapping the last major reservoir of Jews outside the United States faded with the publication of a survey conducted by the semi-official Jewish Agency. Whereas it once was believed that between five and six million Jews lived in the republics of the former Soviet Union, according to the 1993 survey there are at present only 1,434,000 Jews living in 208 communities in those territories. The largest concentrations of Jews are in Russia, with 656,000, and Ukraine with 474,000. Some 148,000 Jews live in the Muslim republics of the former U.S.S.R.

Baruch Gur of the Jewish Agency's unit for the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, which carried out the survey, predicts that if present instability continues throughout that area, 600,000 of the remaining former Soviet Jews will emigrate during the next five years, of whom 350,000 will go to Israel.

That optimistic figure would barely offset Israel's Jewish emigration, a closely guarded figure, presently estimated at 60,000 per year. Because few Jewish emigrants admit that they are leaving Israel for good, the country's real population has long been a matter of conjecture. Jewish Israelis who move to the United States or other countries are counted as present in Israel so long as they return for at least one visit within four years. Since many visit their families in Israel at least that often, population figures compiled by the Israeli government have ignored this "silent emigration" over many years.

One indication of the number of "missing Israelis" was provided by comparing the number of arrivals and departures at Israel's Ben-Gurion airport. Until these figures, too, were classified secret, they showed that before unrestricted immigration from the former Soviet Union began, about 600,000 more Jewish Israelis had left the country than had arrived.

This would indicate that of Israel's claimed population of five million, at least 600,000 Jewish citizens no longer reside in Israel. Since there are at least 900,000 Arabs among Israel's five million citizens, there may in fact be only 3.5 million Jews in Israel, with little prospect of growth because of continuing Jewish emigration and Israel's extremely low birthrate.

Israel's total fertility rate (TFR), the number of children the average woman will bear in her lifetime, is 2.9. That is the lowest, by far, in the Middle East. There are only three other Middle East countries with TFRs below 4. These are Turkey (3.6), Lebanon (estimated 3.7) and Egypt (3.9). By contrast, Palestinians under Israeli military occupation have extremely high TFRs, with Gaza's estimated 7.9 the highest in the Middle East and the West Bank's estimated 5.7 slightly above average for Middle Eastern countries.

These figures shed some light on the eagerness of Israel's Labor government to devise some form of autonomy that will put the rapidly expanding population of the occupied territories outside Israeli boundaries, while keeping as much as possible of their land. This step would end world pressure on Israel to grant civil rights to the 2 million Palestinians under its occupation. Such inclusion of more Palestinian Arabs in Israel would soon make Israel's Jews a minority within its borders.

The sharply lower count of Jews in the former Soviet republics also will force demographers to revise estimates of the world's Jewish population. Assuming there are 5.5 million Jews in the U.S., 1 million in Europe, and a half million elsewhere in the world, there may in fact be no more than 12 million Jews in the world, rather than the 15 or 16 million generally claimed.

U.N. Records Declining Birthrates A 1992 revision of "World Population Prospects," a United Nations publication, shows declining total fertility rates in every region of the world between 1980 and 1991. The TFR in sub-Saharan Africa, the highest in the world, dropped from 6.8 to 6.5. The TFR for the Middle East, the world's second highest, dropped from 6 to 5. South Asia dropped from 5.1 to 4.4; Central America and the Caribbean dropped from 4.6 to 3.6; South America dropped from 4 to 3; East Asia and the Pacific dropped from 3.1 to 2.6; and the industrialized countries dropped from 1.9 to 1.8.

1994 Is U.N. "Year of the Family" To foster appreciation of the family as the basic building block of society, the United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed 1994 the International Year of the Family. Statistical data compiled by U.N. agencies indicate that two predominantly Muslim countries, Iraq and the Maldives, have the world's largest families, with an average of 7.1 members, and Pakistan has the smallest percentage of families headed by women (4.3 percent) among countries for which figures are available.

The accompanying chart gives some statistics about families in selected Middle Eastern and South Asian countries, and, for comparative purposes, selected major countries outside the area. NA indicates information is not available.