Researching community demographics can reveal that what local leaders and policymakers sometimes assume to be absolute truth may not be so.
Dr Daniel Staetsky
For years, the core Dutch Jewish population was estimated by demographers to be at around 30,000 and slowly declining. By ‘core Jewish population’, we mean Jews who would readily and unambiguously self-identify as Jews when asked, for example, in a census or survey. Parenthetically, research also tells us that this definition is close to the halachic one (i.e. a Jew is someone who was born to a Jewish mother or who converted according to Jewish law).
There were good reasons to think the Dutch Jewish population was declining. It is ageing and has low fertility rates, much like Dutch society as a whole, only a little more so. In fact, Jews across the Diaspora led the way in the historical decline in fertility, and the result is clearly felt: most Jewish communities, including the Dutch one, cannot grow on their own. The number of deaths happening in them is larger than the number of births, and it is as simple as that.
Yet our recent research into the Jewish population of the Netherlands has shown that what is true in theory does not have to be so in practice. Researching the community can reveal that what local leaders and policymakers sometimes assume to be absolute truth may not tell the real story.
What have we learned about Jews in the Netherlands?
First, by using demographic research methods, we found out that the Dutch Jewish population amounts to 35,000 people, not 30,000. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the population is numerically stable at the very least, and probably even slowly growing. Third, like all Jewish communities, the Dutch one includes many people who might not self-identify as Jews but are connected to them, e.g. people with Jewish heritage and non-Jewish family members. Taken together in the Netherlands, they comprise 65,000-70,000 Dutch people.
But let us come back to the ‘core’ Jews: 35,000 and not 30,000. Is it such a big deal? Well, yes, it is. Because when the population is growing, its infrastructure also has to grow. Ask a school principal if growth is a big deal for them, and you would probably receive a fiery reply: ‘Of course! We need more classrooms and a larger budget!’ Establishing a fact of growth and ascertaining the true size of a population are not exercises that simply satisfy the over-indulgent analytical mind. They are of real pragmatic value and can be easily translated into the scale and quality of services.
What growth means to the narrative of Diaspora Jews
Demographers of Jewish populations have long popularised the narrative of the ‘vanishing Diaspora’ or ‘vanishing Jewish Europe’. They had their reasons to do so, all legitimate. It is a fact that since the 1960s, the Jewish population of Europe has declined dramatically from 3.2 million to 1.3 million people. A very significant part of this drop was prompted by the collapse of the USSR and the subsequent mass migration of Soviet and Eastern European Jews into Israel.
Jewish migration from Russia and Ukraine is continuing today, fuelled by the latest hostilities there and the unfolding geopolitical reshuffle. French Jews are migrating from France, too, for a different reason but with the same effect: the French Jewish population is also in decline. The German Jewish population is not migrating but is ageing rapidly, another process possibly resulting in decline. Still, while the overall decline is real, it is not universal and needs to be researched and qualified.
Jews arriving from Ukraine to Israel in February 2022
This is where Dutch Jews come in. While the Jewish populations of France, Germany and Russia are declining, others nearby are growing. The Dutch Jewish population is one such example; the UK Jewish population is another. For different reasons, these two communities are not declining in size, but increasing.
In the UK, the rapidly growing haredi (strictly orthodox) population is playing a key role in the overall increase in the number of British Jews. However, the Netherlands does not have a significant haredi component. So, what is the secret behind the Jewish growth in the Netherlands? Do Dutch Jews somehow defy the laws of demography that state aged populations with a small number of births should and will decline?
Migration from Israel revitalises the Dutch Jewish community
Not exactly. The Dutch Jewish population obeys that law; it just receives a little ‘help’ in the form of Israeli immigration into the Netherlands. Indeed, by immigrating to the Netherlands, Israelis help the local Jewish community ‘twice.’ First, they add numbers to the Jewish population simply by arriving. Second, as they are younger than Dutch-born Jews on average, they build families and give birth to Jewish children born Dutch. Overall, the Israelis make a critical difference; they stop the Jewish population in the Netherlands from declining.
The existence of Israelis in the Netherlands is not a major piece of news. It is well-known. The Dutch Jewish community even sponsored a book about them as early as the mid-1990s. What is new is the discovery of the accumulative impact of Israeli migration – the fact that this migration stream prevents the decline of the Dutch Jewish population from happening. What is also new is the calculation of their actual number. Together, the Israel-born and their children, born already in the Netherlands, number 12,000, constitute about one-third of all Dutch Jews and have perhaps doubled their proportion in the Dutch Jewish population as a whole over the last quarter of a decade.
Slowly but surely, the Dutch Jewish population is regenerating. That is big news. When was the last time you heard about a Jewish community that was growing in post-Holocaust Europe? The evidence from our sociodemographic study of Jews in the Netherlands demonstrates how important it is to invest in researching Jewish communities. Not only is it vital to help plan and support the day-to-day Jewish lives of Jews everywhere, but it can also shake a few myths and even help change paradigms.
Dr Daniel Staetsky
Senior Research Fellow and Director of JPR's European Demography Unit
Dr Daniel Staetsky
Senior Research Fellow and Director of JPR's European Demography Unit
Daniel holds a PhD in Social Statistics and Demography from the University of Southampton and a Master’s degree in Population Studies from the Hebrew University...
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