A Christian group has described orthodox Jews as 'blessed by God' following revelations that their numbers are set to outstrip other Jews by the middle of the century.
The study, carried out by Dr Yaakov Wise of the University of Manchester, found that three out of every four Jewish births are now ultra-orthodox. The orthodox are currently 17 per cent of the UK Jewish population of 275,000 Jews, but will be in a majority by 2050. Similar trends are being observed in Israel and America.
http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/index.htm?id=120459
Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, said today: 'There is a very simple reason why orthodox Jews are increasing at such a rate while the rest of Jewry is declining. The orthodox are observing God's Biblical command in Genesis 1:28 to 'be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth' while the rest are ignoring it. Children are described in Psalms 127 and 128 as a heritage and reward of the Lord and as His blessing, so there is a sense in which orthodox Jews are being blessed by God.
'Crucially, orthodox Jews reject artificial contraception, refusing to put a latex barrier between man and wife or to use hormonal poisons to wipe out women's fertility. The rest of the Jewish population accept these evils and even permit the infanticide of abortion. It will astonish many that the State of Israel has become so enamoured of western immorality that abortion is legal there.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Health/abort1.html
'But westernism comes with the Pied Piper of Hamelin's price-tag. It is anti-child, anti-growth, anti-life and ultimately anti-God. We are seeing this in Britain, where immigrant, especially Muslim, communities are dominating birth statistics while so many of the indigenous population can't be bothered to have children or are simply leaving it too late.
'And just as Israel had to give up Gaza and will be obliged to pull out of Judea and Samaria (the 'Left-Bank') because of the demographics of Muslim increase, so we shall have problems before long from fertile Islam in Britain.
'The increase amongst orthodox Jews will come too late for Israel to save Judea and Samaria, and there is only hope for Britain if the Christian majority adopt a more positive view of children and start to see large families as God does, as a blessing, not as a curse.'
NOTE:
Earlier this year, the Sunday Telegraph ran an article under the headline 'Third of graduate women will be childless':
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/22/ncareer22.xml
The article was referred to by Professor Neil Gilbert in a lecture in Oxford the day after:
http://www.apsoc.ox.ac.uk/Docs/TheOptOutRevolution230407.pdf
