Jewish ambivalence about demography goes back a long way. The Bible, in several places, meticulously enumerates each tribe's population even while warning that conducting head counts can bring dire consequences. Such consequences are realized in the Book of Samuel, in which the Israelites are punished severely for a census conducted by King David. According to the Book of Chronicles, the census was incited by Satan himself.
Sergio DellaPergola, the dean of contemporary Jewish population studies, has no such hang-ups. In his new book Jewish Demographic Policies: Population Trends and Options in Israel and in the Diaspora, he declares that "demography is not a problem, a demon, a ghost, or voodoo"—though he grants that when it comes to the Jews' low numbers, "it is plausible to speak of an emergency." Now an emeritus professor after a distinguished career at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, DellaPergola prepared this volume for the Jewish People Policy Institute, which describes itself, in appropriate bureaucratese, as a "central focal point for developing policy proposals directed at facilitating the pluralistic thriving of the Jewish People."
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