[Editor’s Note: Dr. Herman, a demographer, is an essayist at jewishjournal.com]
Israeli-born Jews were found not to be a growing presence by the recently published New York Jewish Population Study. The number of Israeli-born Jews in New York declined 6.5 percent in the last decade, since 2002 when 31,000 Jewish Israeli-borns were counted, and 2011 when 29,000 were found.
This is additional key evidence that Israel is not losing population to the key Israeli migratory destination in the world, New York. The myth of mass Israeli migration has become an integral part of the Jewish civil religion recounting its own Exodus story. One has to wonder why, when in actuality Israel retains its native born at rates much better than most developed countries.
For a people, one of whose main narratives is migration, and now is the most popularly celebrated Jewish ritual in existence, it is not surprising that when currently there may not be an “Egypt” to flee from, other venues, such as the U.S. (“next year in Jerusalem) and Israel may stand in for a place to exodus from. Unfortunately for popular beliefs, demography doesn’t seem to confirm the popular piety of Israeli Jews who remain in place and American Jews who viscerally react to yordim, a pejorative for “those who go down” or fell off the Zionist wagon, that they fully intend to alight on in the future.
The other central narrative of Passover, “for you were slaves in Egypt,” and its imperatives for social justice, are much more achievable contemporarily than the demographic themes of the holiday. That is perhaps the main true strength of the Jewish people as well the ability to engage in wishful thinking about migration and migratory opportunities.
Dr. Herman, Ph. D., has served as Assistant Research Professor at the USC Dept. of Geography, Adjunct Lecturer at the USC School of Social Work, Research Director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angele,s following Bruce Phillips, Ph.D., in that position and is a past President of the Movable Minyan a lay-led independent congregation in the 3rd Street area. Currently he is a principal of Phillips and Herman Demographic Research. He may be contacted at pini00003@gmail.com
