By Bernard Beck
Jewish identity has been an issue in the Jewish community at least since the beginning of the Common Era, and perhaps even before.
The term “6 million” has chilling reminders of the Holocaust. Now that the number of Jews in Israel has reached that mark, the country is the largest Jewish center in the world.
By Anav Silverman, Tazpit News Agency
According to a study by Hebrew University’s Professor Sergio DellaPergola, the global Jewish population reached 13.75 million in the past year, with an increase of 88,000 people. Israel’s Maariv newspaper published excerpts of the study last week, reporting that one out of every 514 people in the world is Jewish, less than 0.2 percent of mankind.
A study by the UJA-Federation of New York found that the population of the New York Jewish community - comprising the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester - has grown nearly 10% since the last study in 2002. New York City's Jewish population stands at 1,086,000, with 40% identifying themselves as Orthodox, a 7% increase from 2002.