December 27, 2021

The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics reports that the population of Israel has increased to almost 9.5 million, more than seven million of whom are Jews. (These numbers include Jewish settlers in the West Bank, but not the millions of Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank). Can these numbers keep going up?

Visitors to the Holy Land in the 18th and 19th centuries noted that it was almost empty of people. In “Innocents Abroad,” Mark Twain described it as“a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land” while the Swedish traveler Frederick Hasselquist (“Voyages and Travels in the Levant in the Years 1749, 50, 51 52, 1766”) referred to it as an “uncultivated and uninhabited country.”

Incredulously, in 1930 Chaim Weizmann was told by Lord Passfield (a British official assigned to investigate the capacity of Palestine to absorb Jewish immigrants) that there was not room in Palestine “to swing a cat”; this when the total population was one million (200,000 Jews and 800,000 Arabs).

For most of the more than 70 years since the existence of the State of Israel, the growth of its Jewish population was dependent on immigration: 3.3 million immigrants since 1948. Immigration (aliyah) is still important. The number for 2021 is 27,000, an impressive number given the difficulties associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the primary reason for Israel’s recent population growth is fertility. The birth rate for Jews in Israel is by far the highest of the OECD countries, with a value of more than three children per family, higher than for Arabs in Israel and the West Bank. Moreover, the high birth rate is true both for orthodox and secular families.

This trend shows no sign of abating. At this point about half of all the Jews in the world live in Israel. With the exception of orthodox families (ten percent of American Jews), birth rates for Jews in the Diaspora are much lower; it is estimated that three quarters of all Jewish babies born annually are born to Israelis. Moreover, aliyah numbers may mushroom in response to increased antisemitism in Europe and North America, as well as economic turmoil in places such as Brazil and Argentina.

This trend shows no sign of abating. At this point about half of all the Jews in the world live in Israel.

Is there room in Israel for all or almost all of the Jews in the world?

Tova Cohen and Steven Scheer think not. In 2015 they noted in Reuters World News that Israel’s high birth rate is leading to a quality of life disaster. Alon Tal, who suggested in a 2017 Jerusalem Post piece that a new kind of thinking is required to prevent Israel’s collapse from too large a population, seems to agree. But Barbara Sofer, on the other hand, is an optimist who sees the high Israeli birthrate as an expression of positive values as indicated in her 2021 article in The Jerusalem Post.

The late Israeli author Amos Oz was an optimist as well. In 2005 he was the subject of a BBC documentary (“Amos Oz: the Conscience of Israel”). In the final segment, Oz shows the producer, Alan Yentob, around his home, the town of Arad, located in the northern Negev Desert. As they sit in the main square Oz proudly points to the diversity of the passersby, noting that Arad, population 27,000, was built on empty land. He goes on to say that there is enough land for all the Jews in the world, from Arad to Eilat on the Red Sea, 200 kilometers of empty land.

Can the Negev, which represents 60 percent of Israel, support a large population? After all, it is one of the most arid and desolate regions in the world. NASA uses the Negev when training for Mars missions.

Yet there are cities and towns such as Beersheva (population more than 200,000), Dimona and Mitzpe Ramon that have shown that it is indeed possible to live and thrive in the desert. Kibbutzim in the barren Arava Valley of the southern Negev have been remarkably successful as well. Kibbutz Yotvata is one of Israel’s largest milk and dairy product operations (700 hundred cows in the desert), while Kibbutz Ketura produces microalgae valuable to the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries.

In a 1963 address, “The Renewed State of Israel,” the founding Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, said that “the Negev is a desolate area which is currently empty of people … What it lacks is water and Jews. It has the potential to be densely populated.”

Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor in the School of Optometry, University of Waterloo.

I’ve watched with amusement bordering on embarrassment as various Jewish publications have reported on the announcement that Dr. Mehmet Oz, the world’s most famous physician, has announced that he’s running for the Senate in Pennsylvania. I’ve read about how Dr. Oz is of Turkish descent and, given how connected he remains to his parents’ birthplace, he is probably not a friend of Israel.

That’s a vile lie and few would know that better than me.

It’s a little bit stomach-turning to read such drivel about someone you know so well and who has been such an incomparable friend to Israel and the Jewish community.

Dr. Oz and I became colleagues back in 2008 when we both worked for Oprah Winfrey on the Oprah and Friends Radio Network. There were so many special and legendary people on the network, from Oprah herself, to Maya Angelou and to Gayle King. But the one I bonded with the most and the quickest was Dr. Oz. At the time, as is also true now, he was the foremost celebrity doctor on the planet and a cardiac surgeon of world-renown.

It made no difference. He had zero airs about him. I quickly discovered him to be one of the warmest and most genuine people I had ever met.

Because he has four kids and we have nine, we got along like a house on fire. His family started coming to ours for Shabbat dinners and his wife Lisa, a noted Christian theologian, had incredible conversations with me about religion, God and every other subject under the sun. (Lisa moderated my final debate with the world’s most famous atheist, Christopher Hitchens, on the subject of the afterlife, just a year before his tragic passing.)

By the time I invited Dr. Oz and his family to join us on a trip to Israel in the summer of 2013, he was arguably the most famous Muslim on earth who was not a head of State. He immediately jumped at the chance to visit the Jewish state with us and his visit was a media extravaganza. Everywhere we went we were mobbed by media and large crowds of Israelis of every persuasion who wanted a picture with the celebrity doctor. Israel poured its love out on Dr. Oz and he warmly reciprocated.

We visited Israel’s leading hospitals and medical research facilities. The experts were all blown away by Mehmet’s kaleidoscopic knowledge of his art. He was tinkering with new surgical inventions by Israeli startups, giving them ideas as to how to improve them. He was treated not just as a celebrity but also as a world-class physician whom the hospitals were honored to host and consult regarding cutting-edge care. The visit culminated in a lecture we delivered together at the world-famous Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa that was attended by their leading doctors and researchers.

I asked Dr. Oz if he wanted to go to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. I told him he’d get flak from those who hate Israel if he visited Judea and Samaria. He didn’t hesitate. He told me that being at the tomb of Abraham was the privilege of a lifetime. He had no fears about the security situation and the visit to Hebron was unforgettable. Later the same day Dr. Oz joined me in a hora with the Israeli soldiers guarding the tomb in Hebron, a video of which went viral on the internet and sparked much media coverage.

When we came to the tomb of Maimonides in Tiberius the press were there in force. They alighted on the fact that the Rambam, a Jew, had been the personal physician to the world’s greatest Islamic ruler. Now, the world’s most famous physician, who is Muslim, was coming to pay homage to the greatest Jewish doctor of all time.

Mehmet’s love for Israel and the Israeli people and his awe at their accomplishments was evident in every place we visited, from the Golan in the North to Eilat in the South.

Mehmet’s love for Israel and the Israeli people and his awe at their accomplishments was evident in every place we visited, from the Golan in the North to Eilat in the South.

He was invited to meet Prime Minister Netanyahu and the meeting was not one of a celebrity visiting the Jewish state but rather one of deep substance about Israel’s security needs.

In the years that have followed Mehmet has proved to be a friend without compare, to me and the Jewish community as a whole. He has spoken almost every year at our annual Champions of Jewish Values International Awards Gala and became close to Elie Wiesel through the gatherings. Indeed, it was Dr. Oz and Sheldon Adelson, OB’M, who jointly presented Elie Wiesel with our “Light of the Jewish People” Award in 2015 in Times Square. (As he presented the award with Dr. Oz, Sheldon Adelson said of Elie Wiesel, “He is the greatest Jew since Albert Einstein.”)

I have put countless desperate people on the phone with Dr. Oz who needed medical advice in dire situations. He never once said no. Not when he was with his family. Not when he was traveling. And not even when he was taping his TV show.

The other day a man got in touch with me and asked if his wife could speak to Dr. Oz after a particularly worrying diagnosis. I didn’t even have to ask Mehmet if it was OK. I had agreed on his behalf on so many previous occasions. I arranged the call. Mehmet could not have been more caring and patient. On the spot, he offered not only his encyclopedic medical advice but every contact he had in the medical world who might be able to help the woman.

On the bus in Israel, with all of our kids in tow, he made me substitute all the sugary snacks with almonds and other nuts, which he personally and liberally distributed to the entire bus. He has always pushed me to live and think more healthy and positively.

I could fill notebooks with stories of Dr. Oz’s caring for me and my family and he is, quite simply, one of the finest men I know.

But that’s not why I’m writing this column. People have every right not to vote for Dr. Oz and to reject his candidacy. What they have no right to do is demonize a good man—especially Jewish media whose issue seems to be that he is beloved in Turkey—when he has been an unflinching friend to the Jewish community.

I am not a doctor and cannot evaluate Dr. Oz as a physician, even though I once put on scrubs and watched him perform open heart surgery and replace a heart valve on an elderly woman to save her life, which was awe-inspiring. When it was over, the world’s most famous doctor went calmly and warmly to her anxious family, told them the surgery had been a success, and that he was available to them for whatever they needed.

But I am uniquely qualified to evaluate him as a man.

I have worked with and befriended celebrities of various types. Mehmet Oz stands out among them for his sincerity, genius and humanity.

So if you want to oppose Dr. Oz the candidate, that’s what democracy is all about. But if you’re in the Jewish community and you want to question Dr. Oz as a friend of Israel, know your facts first, lest we ever appear ungrateful to those who have stood with us for years.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, whom Newsweek calls “the most famous Rabbi in America,” has just published “Holocaust Holiday.” Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @RabbiShmuley.