Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Are there really as many Jews as
Chinese?
By Ken Spiro
I travel around
the world quite a lot on speaking tours and being the outgoing person that I
am; I often try and engage my fellow passengers in conversation. When they find out that I am from Israel the
conversation often gets quite interesting. One of my favorite questions that I
like to ask people is: “How many Jews do you think there are in the world?”
The answers
I get are fascinating and what’s most fascinating is that almost everyone
overestimates the numbers and often by a huge amount. Over the years I have had at least a half a
dozen people tell me that there must be as many Jews in the world as Chinese.
This is amazing given the fact that there are 1.3 billion Chinese in the world and
they are the most populous nation on the planet.
The reality
is very different. It’s estimated that
the total world Jewish population is somewhere between 12.5- to 13 million and
that the Jewish people are only .2% of the world’s population. (An interesting little factoid: In the Chinese
census in 1995, when their population reached 1.2 billion, the margin of error
in the census was +/- 48 million people.
This means that 4 times more Chinese where missing from their census
than there are Jews on the planet earth!!)
When I tell people how many Jews are really in the world they often
react with shock and disbelief.
The real
question is why do people think that there are so many more Jews than there
really are? The answer is twofold:
One reason people think there are so many Jews
is the Diaspora (which is a Greek word meaning “scattering.”). The fact is that for the last 2,500 years the
vast majority of the Jewish people have lived outside their national homeland,
scattered around the globe. I often say
that the three most ubiquitous products on the planet earth (you find them
everywhere) are Jews, McDonalds and Coca Cola.
Some places have Jews, Burger King and Pepsi, but everyone has Jews.
This for sure is one of the big reasons why people so overestimate the world’s
Jewish population. There may be only a
few of them, but no matter where you go you always seem to bump into them.
The other
reason is that Jews are so disproportionately impactful. For a tiny people they make a huge noise.
Whatever Jews do, for better or for worse, they tend to do it BIG. The statistics on Jewish impact on the world
are quite amazing:
-The fact
that Jews are 1.7% of the U.S. population but comprise about 10% of the
professionals and 10% of university students. (In the Ivy League schools the
proportion is far higher than 10%)
-The fact
that Jews are .2% of the world’s population but have won about 23% of all Nobel
prizes since 1901
-The fact
that if you take pretty much any cause to make the world a better place in the
last 100 years: socialism, communism, feminism, black civil rights,
anti-apartheid, labor unions, Doctors without Borders; Amnesty International
etc., you will find that if it isn’t
founded by a Jew, it’s overwhelming and disproportionately run by Jews
And so on
and so on…..
There’s no
question that the combination of these two factors is responsible for the
impression that there are so many more Jews in the world then there really are.
The weirdest
part of all of this is these two factors are really quite contradictory-a tiny
people, scattered around the world should barely be noticed but when it comes
the Jews, the opposite is true. Perhaps Mark Twain said it best when he wrote:
“If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of
the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of smoke lost in the blaze of
the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought Hardly to be heard of; but he is heard
of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other
people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of Proportion to the
smallness of his bulk.
His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature,
science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning, are also way out
of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in
this world, in all ages: and has done it with his hands tied behind him.
All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he
remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”
This is just one of the many fascinating and mysterious aspects of the
Jewish people and their amazing, almost supernatural history. As to why this is
so, I’ll have to save that for a later blog.
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