By REVIVA HASSON Research Officer at the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research
Is the Cape Town Jewish community growing or shrinking?
Demographers understand population change through a surprisingly straightforward equation. Communities grow through births, in-migration into the area, and people joining through conversion. They decline through deaths, out-migration, and assimilation – i.e. where a person no longer identifies as Jewish.
The Kaplan Centre’s recent demographic report set out to examine these trends within the Cape Town Jewish community. By bringing together existing data from multiple community organisations including schools, the Beth Din, United Orthodox Synagogues, the Cape Town Progressive Jewish Congregation, and other communal records, the report provides an understanding of Cape Town Jewry’s demographic trajectory.
Over the long term it’s clear that the Cape Town Jewish population has declined. At its peak in the 1980s, the community numbered 27 000.
In contrast, the 2019 Jewish Community Survey estimated Cape Town Jewry at around 12 500 people. This represents a population decline of roughly 50% over four decades.
However, over the past decade, the Cape Town Jewish population appears to have remained remarkably stable with current estimates of the community being between 13 000 – 13 500.
Natural population decline
The most basic measure of whether a community is growing or shrinking is the relationship between births and deaths. When more people die than are born, a community experiences what demographers call natural population decline.
The Cape Town Jewish community has excellent records of deaths and increasingly reliable records of births. While the longer-term trend has been one of declining births, one of the most encouraging findings in the report is that this trend has improved in recent years.
At its lowest point, during 2022-2023, there were almost five deaths for every birth in the community, yet in 2024-2025, births increased significantly, resulting in the ratio improving to approximately 2.5 deaths for every birth.
This improved death-to-birth ratio is a key demographic development in the right direction, yet it still reflects a community experiencing natural population decline – albeit at a slower pace.
Why births have increased is not yet entirely clear. The trend may reflect a combination of factors, including young adults and families choosing to remain in Cape Town, increasing semigration from elsewhere in South Africa, and a delayed post-COVID effect as weddings and family formation returned to more normal patterns after the pandemic.
Migration
Emigration has long been one of the defining features of South African Jewish life. Since the 1970s, large numbers of South Africans have emigrated, contributing significantly to the decline of the country’s Jewish population. Indeed, previous research by the Kaplan Centre suggests that there may be more South African-born Jews living abroad than in South Africa.
For much of the last couple of decades, more families were leaving Cape Town than moving into it. School-based data, however, suggests this pattern has shifted towards relative equilibrium, with approximately one child arriving for every child leaving.
When focusing only on movements within South Africa, it’s evident that more Jewish families are moving to Cape Town than are relocating from Cape Town to other parts of the country. Most are arriving from Johannesburg. This in-migration is likely one of the reasons why the Cape Town Jewish population has remained relatively stable in recent years despite experiencing natural population decline.
Religious switching
Since 2002, the Cape Town Jewish community has welcomed more than 600 converts from both the Orthodox and Progressive conversion programmes.
Measuring the number of people who cease to identify as Jewish is far more difficult. One indicator often used by demographers is intermarriage. Nationally, 12% of Jewish individuals living with a spouse are in interfaith unions. 18% in Cape Town.
Intermarriage is an imperfect measure of assimilation. Many intermarried households are active members of the Jewish community and are raising children with a strong Jewish identity.
At the same time, research from Jewish communities around the world indicates that the children and grandchildren of intermarried unions are less likely to identify as Jewish.
Putting the pieces together
Emigration is often seen as the primary driver of population decline because it is the most visible. However, it is not the only factor. The community has also been shrinking quietly through natural population decline, as deaths continue to outnumber births. In addition, assimilation gradually reduces the number of people who identify as Jewish from one generation to the next. Unlike emigration, these demographic forces are less visible, yet their cumulative impact has been a significant contributor to the long-term decline of Cape
Town Jewry.
At the same time, the findings from the Kaplan Centre’s Cape Town Jewish Community Demographic Report suggest that there are reasons for cautious optimism. Births have rebounded strongly in recent years, slowing the pace of natural population decline, and migration patterns appear to have shifted from net out-migration towards relative equilibrium. While the community remains smaller than it was a generation ago, there is evidence that Cape Town is attracting Jewish families particularly from Johannesburg as well as a smaller number from overseas. It is too early to know whether these developments represent a temporary fluctuation or the beginning of a longer-term trend, but the demographic outlook for Cape Town Jewry is more positive than many assume.
The University of Cape Town’s Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies http://www.kaplancentre.uct.ac.za
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