Emigration from Israel: New Realities and New Questions
Introduction
Immigration is something that Israel, both as a state and as a society, has always celebrated. It has long been regarded as a clear sign of the country’s political and cultural success and remains central to Israel’s ethos as a homeland to which Jews return. Since the establishment of the modern state, about 3.5 million immigrants have arrived in Israel. Emigration, by contrast, has occupied a very different place in public discourse. In the early decades of statehood, it was often viewed almost as an act of betrayal. In the 1970s, Yitzhak Rabin, later prime minister of Israel, famously described emigrants as “a fallout of weaklings.” Less famously, but no less revealingly, Menachem Begin, a prime minister from a very different political tradition, lamented emigration in terms of military units lost. The Hebrew terms themselves reflect these attitudes: aliyah (“ascent”) for immigration and yerida (“descent”) for emigration.
Such sentiments were perhaps understandable in the formative years of the state. Israel then had to demonstrate to both the wider world and global Jewry that it could serve as a viable and sustainable destination for Jewish return, offering political freedom, physical security, and economic opportunity superior to those available elsewhere. Today, Israel’s population exceeds 10 million, making it a medium-sized country by European standards. Emigration is now generally viewed in more neutral terms, often as a consequence of Israel’s integration into the global economy and a route to professional self-realization. Periodic surges of concern about emigration still occur, but they tend to coincide with security crises.
While demographic and sociological analyses of immigration are abundant, the same cannot be said of emigration. This imbalance has less to do with the political significance of the two processes than with the availability of data. In Israel’s population administration system, immigrant status (oleh) is a clearly defined administrative category. Emigrant status (yored), by contrast, does not formally exist. This distinction has profound implications for the measurement and analysis of emigration. For the Israeli statistical authority, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS-Israel), immigration statistics are essentially a matter of counting observable events. Emigration statistics, by contrast, require estimating a phenomenon that is inherently more elusive.
Since the late 1940s, emigration has been measured using records from the Border Control system, which tracks all international movements of Israeli citizens and permanent residents. Throughout this period, an emigrant has been broadly defined as a person who leaves Israel and remains abroad for an extended period. The precise definition of what constitutes an “extended period” has evolved over the past eight decades. These adjustments reflected broader changes in patterns of life, particularly the growth of international mobility, the rise of dual residences, and the emergence of transnational employment arrangements. Yet the core principle has remained unchanged: an emigrant is someone who, after leaving Israel, spends the greater part of a year abroad, whether continuously or cumulatively. A returning emigrant is someone who, after a prolonged stay abroad, returns and subsequently spends the greater part of a year in Israel. These definitions are based not on intentions or future plans but on observed patterns of residence.
The remainder of this note focuses on the most recently observed levels of emigration from Israel. First, we present the available evidence and discuss possible interpretations of recent trends. Second, we examine two often overlooked aspects of Israeli emigration: its demographic impact on Israel’s population and its contribution to the population of the Jewish Diaspora.
Emigration of Israelis from 2009 onward: a closer look at the emerging realities
Experts’ estimates put the total population of Israelis living abroad at 630,000 on January 1, 2022. Since then, the level of emigration from Israel has increased, and the most recent estimates (January 1, 2025) put this population at 755,000. These figures include all Israelis – citizens or permanent residents, whether born in Israel or immigrants to Israel – who once lived in Israel and subsequently left for long-term settlement abroad. They are adjusted to exclude those who emigrated from Israel and have since died. The Israel-born population accounts for about half of the total. Given that the population of Israel stood at around 9.8 million at about the same time, the population of Israelis living abroad amounts to roughly 7% of the global Israeli population. If one is inclined to include children born abroad to Israeli emigrants, that number rises to around 1 million.
Thus, the answer to the question “How many Israeli emigrants are there?” depends strongly on who is counted as Israeli. No answer is entirely right or entirely wrong; the choice between definitions depends on the intended use and the specific policy question at hand. More often than not, animated public debates about “the true number of Israelis” miss this point entirely. In 2009-2019, long-term departures from Israel stood at about 5 people per 1,000 population per year, while long-term returns stood at about 3 people per 1,000. In every year, the number of departures exceeded the number of returns, resulting in a net loss through emigration of about 2 persons per 1,000 annually. This conclusion does not take into account new immigrants, so the overall migration balance could still have been positive. Yet emigration as such was a source of population loss. As an aside, these levels can be considered low by international standards.
In the year of the coronavirus pandemic (2020), departures from Israel declined by about 20%, while returns increased by a similar proportion, resulting in a zero net emigration balance. Much of this change can be attributed to restrictions on international travel, which caused many Israelis to modify their plans, for example by postponing departures abroad or bringing forward their return to Israel. The post-pandemic reality is notable. In 2021, when pandemic restrictions still existed, albeit on a lesser scale, the pattern of emigration returned to its pre-pandemic state. Then, in 2022, the level of departures rose sharply, whereas the level of returns remained broadly unchanged. In 2023, departures increased again, this time accompanied by a reduction in returns. In 2024, the level of departures remained unusually high, although somewhat lower than in 2023, while the level of returns declined further.
In 2023-2024, the net emigration balance stood at 5-6 persons per 1,000, almost three times the level recorded immediately before and immediately after the pandemic. Historically, these levels of emigration were last observed in the 1970s, generally considered a time of high emigration. To date, there is no single decisive explanation for the sudden increase in emigration from Israel. The war in Gaza following the Hamas-led attack on Jewish communities in southern Israel in October 2023 and the subsequent conflicts with Lebanon and Iran are obvious candidates. Yet they cannot provide the whole explanation. The increase in emigration clearly began in 2022, before any of these developments. On these grounds alone, the wars can only be regarded as contributory factors.
Further, previous research on Israeli emigration has repeatedly found that recent immigrants to Israel are the group most prone to emigration. It is worth remembering in this respect that a significant wave of immigration from Russia and Ukraine reached Israel following the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022. In 2022 alone, the number of new immigrants from these two countries was about four times higher than before the coronavirus pandemic. With such an influx, some increase in subsequent emigration is to be expected. Some immigrants may acquire Israeli citizenship and a passport primarily as an insurance strategy before returning to their countries of origin, while others may choose to move on to a third country.
It should also be noted that the coronavirus pandemic represented a major shock to international migration. Owing to travel restrictions, many relocations, institutional visits, and other forms of long-term migration became impossible in 2020 and much of 2021. It is therefore possible that the post-pandemic period includes an element of migration rebalancing, whereby journeys that were postponed or canceled are now being compensated for by increased movement. It would be fair to say that, while the increase in emigration from Israel in the post-pandemic period is real and cannot be doubted, the factors responsible for it remain poorly understood. Clarifying them should be a priority for both researchers and policymakers.
Impact of Emigration on the Population of Israel
One way of evaluating the impact of emigration on Israel’s population size is to place it in the context of the European family of nations, and ask how much Israel would gain if all emigrants had remained in the country. This is not a trivial question. Given that emigration is very commonly perceived as a loss in public debate in Israel, it is surprising that such an assessment has not been carried out so far. This exercise is revealing in more than one sense. Israel is a small country in terms of territory, but not in terms of population size. This fact is often overlooked in both popular and academic discourse, which is unfortunate since a country’s cultural and economic influence is related to its population size as much as to the size of the landmass it occupies.
It is also underappreciated that Europe is a politically and culturally highly fragmented continent, with the median population size in 2025 standing below 6 million. With a population of around 10 million today, Israel is larger than each of the Scandinavian countries except Sweden, and larger than, for example, Austria, Hungary, and Switzerland all important political and economic players in Europe. What impact has emigration had on Israel’s population size? To answer this question, all one needs to do is add the 755,000 Israelis living abroad to the current population of Israel. This would bring Israel’s population to around 10.5-10.7 million, close to the size of Sweden’s population. Adding one million Israelis instead would have a broadly similar effect.
Given that Israel’s population has already surpassed 10 million at the time of writing (2026), it is expected to overtake Sweden’s before long; this would represent only a relatively modest boost to Israel’s size and its position in the numerical hierarchy of European nations. Emigration, in purely numerical terms, has therefore not had a clearly visible detrimental effect on Israel’s population size. Adding emigrants “back” would not materially improve Israel’s position in the European or global rankings of population size, nor, arguably, would it alter the country’s geopolitical standing by an order of magnitude. At the same time, the loss of so many Israelis does have a profound social impact on the country, especially amid anecdotal evidence that many of the emigrants are academics, high-tech workers, and doctors. Their decision to relocate overseas removes a substantial portion of the brain trust that is meant to continue to propel the country forward. This is, undoubtedly, a negative trend.
Emigration and the Jewish Diaspora: The Picture of Israelization
The numerical impact of Israeli emigrants on Jewish communities in the Diaspora has attracted little attention so far. This too is unfortunate, because a large or growing numerical presence can translate into a significant and increasing cultural influence of Israeli society on Jewish life in the Diaspora. An interesting pattern emerges: in some relatively small Jewish communities, Israeli emigrants today constitute a numerically very significant minority of Jews. In the Scandinavian countries, Israel-born Jews account for close to, or more than, 20% of the Jewish population.
Note that in two relatively large Jewish communities in Europe – the United Kingdom and Germany – Israel-born Jews account for 7%-15% of the total Jewish population. This is broadly comparable in scale to the numerical impact of immigration on British and German societies as a whole. Thus, while Western European societies diversify through immigration, their Jewish communities diversify in their own way: they acquire a growing proportion of Israel-born individuals. The cultural influence of Israel is bound to follow its demographic expansion into the Diaspora. These communities are likely to shed some of what previously counted as “Jewish” and converge more closely toward Israeli notions of Jewishness.
Importantly, the figures presented in this section are deliberately conservative and therefore understate the extent of the Israelization of Diaspora communities. They are based only on individuals born in Israel, who can be identified in national censuses and surveys. They exclude both the locally born children of Israeli emigrants and Israeli emigrants who were themselves not born in Israel. Accounting for these groups would produce substantially higher proportions, perhaps as much as twice as high. By way of illustration, in the United Kingdom and Germany the adjusted proportions may plausibly lie in the range of 15%-30%.
Conclusion
This chapter has presented a panoramic view of the Israeli emigrant population. Its dimensions have been clarified. It has been shown that any attempt to quantify this population requires clarity of definition, and that the use of different definitions may result in radically different estimates. In particular, “anywhere in the range of three-quarters of a million to one million” is a reasonable answer to the question of how many Israelis live abroad. Further, it has been shown that emigration from Israel increased in the post-coronavirus period, although the precise reasons for this increase are not yet known.
This is a supremely important point. Policy development in this and any other area should be based on a proper understanding of the root causes of phenomena. The reality of high emigration may appear bleak, normatively speaking, but it should be explored before a final verdict is known and policies are shaped. Old sensibilities may not apply to new realities. Emigration has long been regarded as undesirable from the perspective of Israeli politicians. Looking at it purely from a demographic point of view, however, it has made a relatively small dent in Israel’s demography. Bringing all emigrants “back,” as a numerical exercise, does not alter the position of Israel’s population in broad geopolitical terms in any perceptible way. Israel is, and remains, a medium-sized country when compared with the typical population sizes of European nations. These fundamental realities have so far remained unaffected by emigration.
For the Jewish Diaspora, the picture is different. Despite the negative aspect of Israelis leaving their country, the upside is that for some small Diaspora communities, the arrival of Israelis can be transformative, both demographically and culturally. The demographic story of the Jewish Diaspora in the second half of the twentieth century has largely been one of aging, out-migration, and low fertility. As a result of these forces, Jewish communities in many places – and certainly across much of Europe – have gradually shrunk. Their eventual disappearance through a persistent excess of deaths over births seemed almost inevitable. In at least some of these communities, however, the arrival of Israelis appears to have reversed their demographic fortunes. It has not changed the balance of births and deaths, but it has enabled communities to grow or stabilize through migration. It has also altered their composition and culture. The full significance of these developments will become clear only with time. Thus, while emigration from Israel is negative for the state, it can have a positive impact on Jewish communities that are otherwise in decline.
Recommending “more research” is a conventional conclusion of most projects in the social sciences today. In this instance, however, there is a particularly strong case for doing so. Statistics on the size of Jewish populations across the Diaspora have been made routinely available thanks to the efforts of demographers at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. For several decades, their estimates have appeared in the American Jewish Year Book. This has never been the case with statistics on Israeli populations abroad. Their publication has always been ad hoc. In early 2025, a foundational study of Israeli populations outside Israel was published by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. This benchmark study, which underlies the analyses offered here, ought to be updated at regular intervals and expanded to cover new aspects of the demography of this population. If sensible policy toward Israelis abroad is to be developed, this population needs to be properly documented.
In the area of policy development, the government of Israel needs to create a task force aimed at identifying the groups of people considering emigration and engaging with them to see if there are solutions that can keep them in Israel. There is almost certainly a connection between the security situation and people’s decisions to emigrate, especially among families in which one parent has served for extended periods in the reserves. Programs that provide grants to academics and doctors, for example, can be helpful in improving retention rates for these high-income and highly educated individuals. It is high time for the Jewish Agency – a chief arm of the Israeli state operating in the Jewish Diaspora – and other Jewish organizations to develop policies that account for the significant presence of Israelis across Diaspora Jewish communities.
In certain places, most notably in Europe, Israelis both transform existing communities culturally and bolster them demographically. The growth of Israeli populations has an especially significant effect on the population of Jewish children, due to the relatively high fertility of Israelis. Traditionally, Israeli policy in the Diaspora has focused on facilitating immigration to Israel. This line of activity is likely to remain the most important in the future. Alongside it, however, another line should emerge: maintaining the connection of Israelis abroad to Israel and Israeli culture. New times and new conditions call for new approaches.
