The new figure for Dutch Jewry is around 5,000 higher than that given in the American Jewish Year Book of 2023.
Although deaths among Dutch Jews have outnumbered births, Israeli migration means “the Jewish population of the Netherlands today is, in high probability, slowly growing,” the report’s author Dr Daniel Staetsky, director of JPR’s European Jewish Demography Unit, said.
Annual immigration from Israel has averaged around 200 people a year, compared to 70 Jews emigrating from Netherlands in recent years, around 45 of whom make aliyah.
“The total number of 11,600 people with an Israeli background in 2023 can be considered a minimal estimate,” Staetsky said.
The number of Israelis grew “especially rapidly” since 2015, the report stated. “Many Israelis do not come to settle in the Netherlands for good; they come and go instead in a movement that can be described as ‘churning’.
“Yet an increase in the stock of Israelis is happening, which is evidence of the fact that more and more Israelis are choosing to remain in the Netherlands for longer periods, if not for life.”
Emigration of 200 people a year was “very ‘affordable’ and practically imperceptible for Israel,” Staetsky noted, “but such numbers constitute a considerable addition to small Jewish populations in Europe that are no longer able to grow naturally due to low fertility and advanced ageing.”
The Netherlands in general, and the Jewish community, in particular, the report noted, “have gone through the process of ‘internationalisation’ and the English language is used widely and naturally by many.
“It is only to be expected that such an environment will attract Israelis. who would find the prospect of living in a version of an Anglosphere quite appealing.”
Jewish demography, Staetsky wrote, “may be on the brink of a new reality, where Israel helps to sustain the diaspora, sharing with it some of its spectacular growth”.
Jews represent 0.2 per cent of the Dutch population, compared with 35 to 40 per cent of Christians and six to eight per cent of Muslims.
If those with some Jewish connection and eligible for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return were counted in — for example, those with a Jewish grandparent, then the extended Jewish population would rise to 65,000.
The Jewish community is “one of the most secularised” in Europe with only 22 per cent identifying as Orthodox or traditional (compared to 43 per cent in the UK).
Only around a quarter circumcise sons and a third have a formal Jewish burial. Fewer than a quarter of (23 per cent) affiliate to a religious community (compared with 56 per cent in the UK).
Around 60 per cent of those with a partner have a non-Jewish spouse.
Around half “self-identify with the centre-right in political terms, a quarter or so are centrists, and another quarter are centre-left,” the report said. “This situation is not very different from the Dutch electorate as a whole.”
Jewish support for the hard-right Freedom Party of Geert Wilders grew from one per cent in 1999 to above 10 per cent toward the end of 2010, the report said.
