An Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man prays ahead of the funeral ceremony of prominent rabbi Chaim Kanievsky who died at 94, outside his home in Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, Israel March 20, 2022. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

i24 News – On the occasion of Israel’s Independence Day celebrations, researchers from the Haredi Policy Research Institute have compiled a statistics report about the demographic growth of the ultra-Orthodox (Haredim) community in Israel.

The researchers note that there are no hard numbers dating back to the early years of the state, as official data on Haredim as a subset of the population has only been collected years later. The earliest date for which reasonably reliable data exists is 1979, when the ultra-Orthodox community numbered some 212,000, or 5.6-percent of the total population.

Since then, the community has grown by 509-percent and today numbers approximately 1.29 million, or 12.9-percent of the total population. For comparison, the general population (non-Orthodox Jews and Arabs combined) increased by 135-percent between 1979 and 2023.

According to the Institute’s projections, when Israel celebrates its 90th anniversary, the number of ultra-Orthodox Jews will reach 2.15 million, representing 18-percent of the population. When the Jewish state celebrates its centenary in 2048, there is expected to be 2.86 million ultra-Orthodox Jews, which will amount to 21.2-percent of all Israelis.