Australia’s Jewish population at an all-time high

June 28, 2022 by J-Wire Newsdesk
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The 2021 census results show that Australia’s Jewish population is 99,956 a 9.8% increase on the 2016 census.

The figures obviously does reflect the actual number as many chose not to mention their religion on the census form.

Peter Wertheim, co-CEO of The Executive Council of Australian Jewry said: “It shows 99,956 Jews in Australia, an all-time record, and a dramatic increase on the 2016 figure (91,000+) which we always maintained was an under-count skewed by flaws in the 2016 census.”

The census results:

55,860 Jews were born in Australia out of the total of 99,956.

Wertheim added: “Given that there was no box representing Judaism to tick, members of the community had to write “Jewish” on the census document. We feel that the adjusted number of Jews including those who did not put in their region would take the total to around 120,000.

 

 

Comments

7 Responses to “Australia’s Jewish population at an all-time high”
  1. Bill vdLeest says:

    It’s interesting to note that the current general political indifference shown to the Jewish side, especially by Labor, would cause uproar if it were the other way around.
    Could it be anything to do with the much larger part of our community that identifies as Islamic compared to the Jewish population. It’s worse than that when comparing the violent and aggressive majority against the low key passive Jewish way, however, the later should not be taken for granted as shown by the current continuing Jewish struggle following the heinous attack of October 7th.
    But the political pragmatism of the Australian Labor will surely come back to haunt them at the next election; hopefully anyway.

  2. Adrian Jackson says:

    Does Jewish mean the religion or the Semite race I assume the latter in this population context? There are Jews, like non Jews, who put No Religion on the Australian Census. The No Religion section is now about 39% in Australia and growing. It is now the largest groups in the religion section of the Census.

    • Stephen Scholem says:

      Adrian, your reference to ‘the Semite race’ appears to indicate you are either innocently ignorant or an antisemite. I hope it’s the former.

  3. Phillip Piorun says:

    I was surprised, I thought it was at around 130,000.

  4. Bill Rubinstein says:

    The rcaj should actively campaign for a Jewish box to tick at the next Census. Not having one sounds like deliberate discrimination.

  5. Liat Kirby says:

    That’s lovely to read.

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