Blog for Monday October 28, 2013

Amanda Aussems

Blog Question 2

October 28, 2013 (Monday)

1. How and why did the Jewish population increase so rapidly in the 19th century?

·      Over the course of the 19^th century, the number of Jews in the world increased DRAMATICALLY. From the beginning of the 1800s to the start of the 1900s rose the Jewish population rose by about 6 million people (from 2.7 million- 8.7 million). IN 1910, there were 12 million Jews in the world. This rapid increase was due to two main factors. The high birth rate and low death rate of Jews during this time. There was a higher survival rate of Jewish infants mostly due to the fact that Jews were statistically very healthy people.  Jews were seen as healthy because there was practically no alcoholism what-so-ever among Jews, the frequent practice of hand washing help in avoiding disease, having fewer offspring within a family allowed for better care (in resource terms) for each child such as more food available to each child in the family, Jewish mothers breast fed their babies longer compared to gentiles, mothers typically stayed at home to tend to the family after marriage which provided more care for the children, and, finally, the more Jews became engaged in education, and prosperous occupations, the higher standards they were able to live and the more they were able to enjoy.

2.            Why did Jews move to cities and which cities became large Jewish centers?

·      Many Jews during the late 1800s and the 1900s moved to cities due to urbanization of that time. Thus, do to that fact of internal migration from rural areas to capitals and major cities, Jewish populations in urban settings began to rise. This contributed to the “Metropolitanization” of the nineteenth century (296). For example, in 1900, the population of Paris had grown from 8,000 Jews to 60,000 Jews because Jews were moving to the capital from Alsace. This internal migration was also seen in Sephardic Jewish communities. In Greece, Salonika became one of Europe’s largest Jewish cities; it soon became known as “Ir v’em be-Yisrael” (“Metropolis of Mother Israel”) (296). The increase in the Jewish population in Salonika toward the end of the nineteenth century was due to the arrival of eastern European Jews. In Eastern Europe, Jews were leaving their small towns and villages and moving to nearby large cities. The cities that became the largest Jewish centers were Warsaw, St. Petersburg, Salonika, Paris, and Amsterdam.