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We the Few, We the Many
Ramban on Devarim/Deuteronomy 4:27
15 Av, 5782-Aug. 12, 2022
Moses warns the people that if they rebel against God, the Holy One will scatter them abroad, leaving only a few of them in the nations to which they will be marooned.
Ramban (Naḥmanides) comments that the Jews will be a faint minority in any single country. However, he notes, the global Jewish population will remain numerous and adds the words, “שֶבַח לָאֵל” (shevaḥ la’El), which means “Praise be to God.”
It is true that the Jews constitute a small minority in all countries with the obvious exception of Israel. But to say that our global Jewish population has ever been “numerous” is, in my opinion, charitable. We had our largest share of the world’s inhabitants during the Roman Empire, when we had seven million Jews out of probably a few hundred million human beings. Now, two thousand years later, we have about fifteen million Jews and a global population of seven billion. Currently, our share of the planet’s denizens is just two-tenths of one percent. Even here in America, the country with the second highest number of Jews, we are but a lonely two to three percent, depending on one’s definitions of Jewish identity.
So how can Ramban say that the population of Jews in all countries together is numerous, especially if…
