Has the world’s Jewish population regained its prewar strength?

WASHINGTON— In 1939, the global population of Jewish people worldwide peaked at around 16.6 million. That population was soon decimated by the Holocaust, which saw Nazi Germany and its collaborators kill approximately six million Jews. In just a few horrifying years, the global population of Jews had fallen by more than a third.

Last week, a new report by the Jerusalem-based think-tank Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) made a startling announcement: the world’s Jewish population was finally approaching 16.6 million again.

It sparked headlines around the world, with many observers shocked that it could have taken 70 years for the Jewish population to return to its pre-Holocaust peak. The problem is, it wasn’t entirely accurate.

Prof. Sergio DellaPergola, perhaps the best-known expert in Jewish demographics, is among those who have rebutted the reports. “It is a canard,” DellaPergola told the Times of Israel this week, suggesting that the numbers widely reported were both a result of “misunderstanding” and “journalistic counterfeit.”

When you look closely at JPPI’s numbers, DellaPergola’s objections make sense. The report makes clear that the number of self-identifying Jews in the world is around 14.2 million — a number DellaPergola had arrived at in his own work last year.

It then, however, adds on to this a number of other people, including those with only one Jewish parent or those who identify as partially Jew- ish. Some 348,000 Israeli citizens who came to Israel under the Law of Return, but are not recorded as Jews, are also included in the higher figure.

Traditionally, Judaism has a comparatively strict definition of who is Jewish, with Halacha (Jewish religious law) requiring either that a person’s mother was Jewish or that they go through a formal conversion process.