Gale Family Foundation Spring 2025 Lecture with Dr. Sergio DellaPergola

The Jewish experience has been shaped by the interplay of long-term trends and patterns characterized by stability and continuity, with sudden ruptures, dramas, and changes. The perennial movement of Jewish history and society has been redirected infinite times toward new roadmaps and unpredicted developments. After the watersheds of the Shoah and of the independence of the state of Israel, the Jewish people gradually consolidated its dual course of existence, as the majority component of the population in a sovereign state, and as a constellation of population minorities across all countries worldwide. The United States is by far the largest and more dominant among these. The tragic events of October 7, 2023 and Israel’s military reaction represent a further watershed in Jewish history as well as in the interpretation of Jewish history.

This lecture will outline the main lines of development of Jewish demography and Jewish identity across the global Jewish people from the period after World War II to the aftermath of October 7, 2023, stressing similarities and differences, convergences, and divergences. This lecture will discuss the implications of the events of October 7 for the position of Israel in Jewish global perceptions, as well as for the position of world Jewish communities, the possible influences of the Middle East crisis for the future course of Jewish demography and identity, and the possible ways of addressing the emerging issues by the organized Jewish polity in Israel and in the United States.

Sergio DellaPergola is Professor Emeritus and former Chairman of the Hebrew University’s Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry (ICJ) and of its Division of Jewish Demography and Statistics. Born in Italy 1942, in Israel since 1966. M.A., Political Sciences, University of Pavía; Ph.D., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1973. Specialist on the demography of world Jewry, authored or edited numerous books and monographs, including Israel and Palestine: The Power of Numbers (2008), Jewish Intermarriage around the World (2009, with Shula Reinharz), Jewish Demographic Policies: Population Trends and Options (2011), Diaspora vs. Homeland: Development, Unemployment and Ethnic Migration to Israel, 1991-2019 (2020), The Jewish Identities of European Jews: What, Why, and How (2021, with L.D. Staetsky), the special issue of Contemporary Jewry on Jews in the Americas: Transnational Perspectives (2021, with Robert Abzug, Naomi Lindstrom, Judit Bokser Liwerant, and Richard Menkis), and most recently Reflections on U.S. Jews: Jewish Identity and Demography 1970-2020. Since 1982 has authored the annual World Jewish Population chapter in the American Jewish Year Book. Lectured at over 100 universities in six continents. Member of the advisory committee of the 2013 and 2020 Pew surveys on Jewish Americans, of the 2015 Pew Survey of Religiously Divided Israel Society, and of the 2012 and 2018 FRA surveys on Perceptions of Discrimination and Antisemitism in European Union Member States. Advised the State of Israel’s President, Israel’s Government, Jerusalem’s Municipality, The Jewish Agency for Israel, The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, and several other major Israeli and international organizations. Won the Marshall Sklare Award for distinguished achievement by the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (1999), and the Michael Landau Prize for Demography and Migration (2013). Member of Yad Vashem committee for the Righteous among the Nations.

This lecture is a part of the Gale Family Foundation Lecture Series.

Host or Publisher Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies