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This paper is a study of the demography of the contemporary post-Soviet Jewish Diaspora based on various statistical sources collected from many countries where these Jews live. It examines (post-) Soviet Jewish resettlement, and the demographic transformation of FSU Jews in the wake of the recent mass migration, especially in Israel. Based on this analysis, an update for 2010 of the number of the 'core' Jews (by self-identity) originating from the FSU by country was presented, and the total number of people belonging to the post-Soviet Jewish Diaspora worldwide and their distribution was estimated.

The author explains the situation of the Lithuanian Jewish community, situating it in its historical and geopolitical context. The tiny remaining community (5,500) constitutes 0.2% of the population of Lithuania, has a 41% rate of intermarriage, and 56% of their children are born into families of mixed-origin. Only 42% of them identify themselves as Jewish. To what extent Jews might disappear in Lithuania and how quickly that could occur depends on the current and future Jewish identity of children from mixed marriages, and the focus of the author's research is the role of Jewish women in the promotion of children's Jewish identity in the mixed family.

The author provides an overview of Jewish history in the former Yugoslavia, with an emphasis on the lives and activities of women. Until the Holocaust, the diverse Jewish community prospered and Jewish women's organizations multiplied and grew. Jewish women were active in organizing and providing aid, in supplies and medical work, in every Balkan war. After the decimation of the Holocaust, only a fraction of the community remained. Yugoslavia enjoyed relative freedom of movement and freedom of religion under communism, however, and eventually some women's organizations were rebuilt and were able to continue their benevolent work throughout the modern conflicts, even at the high point of violence in Sarajevo. Each of the new countries continues to have its own women's organizations, even in smaller communities like Split, where the Jewish population is only 120.

In giving an overview of Jewish women in Great Britain I intend to touch on three areas: Jewish organizations; participation in synagogue life; and the position of Jewish women's research in Britain. The main sources for the data I quote are the regular compilations of synagogue membership and estimates of population which the Board of Deputies Community Research Unit has conducted regularly the past thirty years; and two recent large scale-studies: The Review of Women in the Jewish Community in 1993 for the Chief Rabbi's Commission on Women; and The Survey of Social Attitudes of British Jews conducted by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in 1995.

The author presents an outline of the history of Jewish women in Italy, going back to their involvement with Jewish and Christian courts in the late Middle Ages. Highlights include women's struggles against forced conversion, anti-Semitism, and the creation of the Italian ghetto; women's involvement in Garibaldi's Resorgimento; the early popularization of the Bat Mitzvah celebration; the first Italian Jewish woman to have a rabbinic education; women's role in the anti-Nazi resistance and later in Holocaust awareness; and finally women's active leadership in the modern Italian Jewish community.

This article presents a brief overview of the demographics of the Hungarian Jewish community. It includes reflections on the struggles of individuals and the community, especially women, to deal with the Holocaust legacy, anti-Semitism, and sexism, in modern Hungarian society.

In the 1990s most of the second largest Jewish Diaspora population, which resided in the former Soviet Union (FSU), changed their places of residence. Whereas the majority emigrated to Israel, the rest were divided mostly between the USA and Germany. The aims of this paper are to present (post-) Soviet Jewish resettlement, and to study the demographic transformation in the course of this mass migration.

Numerical dynamics of the Jews in Russia as a whole and in its two capital cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, during the 20th century have been examined in this paper. In an effort to understand the long-term population decline, the dynamics of Jewish marriage, fertility and mortality were analyzed in detail. The role of the negative balance of births and deaths was compared with the influence of emigration. Special attention was paid to the post-war period as a whole, and particularly the period following the start of the recent Jewish exodus from the former Soviet Union in 1989.

This paper is based mainly on the results of the post-war Soviet censuses concerning respondents' native language and second language. The statistical data on Yiddish were studied for the former union republics of the USSR and their capitals. For Belorussia, Ukraine and the Russian Federation, the data were also studied for their different regions. In the 1994 Russian microcensus, a question on the primary language of conversation at home was asked for the first time, and the respective data concerning Yiddish in the city of Moscow and Birobidzhan ("Jewish") oblast were analyzed.

This paper was presented at the conference "Yiddish in the Contemporary World" at Oxford, 19-21 April 1998, and revised in May 2012.