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Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation*
originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah*
Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly interrelated, as Judaism is their ethnic religion, though it is not practiced by all ethnic Jews. Despite this, religious Jews regard Gerim as members of the Jewish nation, pursuant to the long-standing conversion process.
The Israelites emerged from within the Canaanite peoples to establish Israel and Judah in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age.John Day (2005), In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel, Bloomsbury Publishing, pp. 47.5 48 'In this sense, the emergence of ancient Israel is viewed not as the cause of the demise of Canaanite culture but as its upshot'. By the late 6th century BCE, Judaism had evolved from the Israelite religion, dubbed Yahwism (for Yahweh) by modern scholars, having a theology that religious Jews believe to be the expression of the Mosaic covenant between their ancestors and God. The Babylonian captivity of the people of Judah following their kingdom's destruction, the movement of Jewish groups around the Mediterranean during the Hellenistic period, and subsequent periods of conflict and violent dispersion, such as the Jewish–Roman wars, gave rise to the Jewish diaspora, which is a worldwide dispersion of Jewish communities that have maintained their sense of Jewish history, Jewish identity, and Jewish culture.*
In the following millennia, Jewish diaspora communities coalesced into three major ethnic subdivisions according to where their ancestors settled: the Ashkenazi Jews (Central Europe and Eastern Europe), the Sephardic Jews (Iberian Peninsula), and the Mizrahi Jews (Middle East and North Africa).Dosick (2007), pp. 59, 60. While these three major divisions account for most of the world's Jews, there are other smaller Jewish groups outside of the three. Prior to World War II, the global Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million,, based on representing around 0.7% of the world's population at that time. During World War II, approximately six million Jews throughout Europe were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany in a genocide known as the Holocaust. Since then, the population has slowly risen again, and , was estimated to be at 15.2 million by the demographer Sergio Della Pergola or less than 0.2% of the total world population in 2012. Today, over 85% of Jews live in Israel or the United States. Israel, whose population is 73.9% Jewish, is the only country where Jews comprise more than 2.5% of the population.
Jews have significantly influenced and contributed to the development and growth of human progress in many fields, both historically and in modern times, including in science and technology, philosophy, Jewish ethics, (2005). 9781461674597, Sheed & Ward. ISBN 9781461674597 literature,"Upon the foundation of Judaism, two civilizations centered on monotheistic religion emerged, Christianity and Islam. To these civilizations, the Jews added a leaven of astonishing creativity in business, medicine, letters, science, the arts, and a variety of other leadership roles." governance, business, Jewish art, Jewish music, Jewish humor, Jewish theatre, cinema, architecture, Jewish cuisine, Jewish medicine,Shatzmiller, Joseph. Doctors to Princes and Paupers: Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society. Berkeley: U of California, 1995. Print. and religion. Jews founded Christianity"Early Christianity began as a Jewish movement in first-century Palestine" and had an indirect but profound influence on Islam. "Judaism also contributed to the religion of Islam for Islam derives its ideas of holy text, the Qur'an, ultimately from Judaism. The dietary and legal codes of Islam are based on those of Judaism. The basic design of the mosque, the Islamic house of worship, comes from that of the early synagogues. The communal prayer services of Islam and their devotional routines resembles those of Judaism." In these ways and others, Jews have played a significant role in the development of Western culture.Cambridge University Historical Series, An Essay on Western Civilization in Its Economic Aspects, p. 40: "Hebraism, like Hellenism, has been an all-important factor in the development of Western Civilization; Judaism, as the precursor of Christianity, has indirectly had much to do with shaping the ideals and morality of Western nations since the Christian era."
Though Genesis 29:35 and 49:8 connect "Judah" with the verb , meaning "praise", scholars generally agree that "Judah" most likely derives from the name of a geographic region dominated by gorges and ravines. The gradual shift from "Israelites" to "Jews", regardless of their descent from Judah, although not contained in the Torah, is made explicit in the Book of Esther (4th century BCE) of the Tanakh.André Chouraqui (1975). 9780870231728, Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press. . ISBN 9780870231728 Some modern scholars disagree with the conflation, based on the works of Josephus, Philo and Apostle Paul.
The English word "Jew" is a derivation of Middle English Gyw, Iewe. The latter was loaned from the Old French giu, which itself evolved from the earlier juieu, which in turn derived from judieu/iudieu which through elision had dropped the letter "d" from the Medieval Latin Iudaeus, which, like the New Testament Koine Greek term Ioudaios, meant both "Jew" and "Judean" / "of Judea".Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Africa and the Middle East, Facts On File Inc., Infobase Publishing, 2009, p. 336 The Greek term was a loan from Middle Aramaic , corresponding to Hebrew יְהוּדִי .
Some scholars prefer translating Ioudaios as "Judean" in the Bible since it is more precise, denotes the community's origins and prevents readers from engaging in antisemitic eisegesis.Adele Reinhartz, "The Vanishing Jews of Antiquity" "Marginalia", L.A. Review of Books, 24 June 2014.Danker, Frederick W. "Ioudaios", in A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. third edition University of Chicago Press. Others disagree, believing that it erases the Jewish identity of Biblical characters such as Jesus. Daniel R. Schwartz distinguishes "Judean" and "Jew". Here, "Judean" refers to the inhabitants of Judea, which encompassed southern Palestine. Meanwhile, "Jew" refers to the descendants of Israelites that adhere to Judaism. Converts are included in the definition. But Shaye J.D. Cohen argues that "Judean" should include believers of the Judean God and allies of the Judean state. Troy W. Martin similarly argues that biblical Jewishness is not dependent on ancestry but instead, is based on adherence to 'covenantal circumcision' ().
The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., يَهُودِيّ yahūdī (sg.), al-yahūd (pl.), in Arabic, "Jude" in German language, "judeu" in Portuguese, "Juif" (m.)/"Juive" (f.) in French language, "jøde" in Danish language and Norwegian, "judío/a" in Spanish language, "jood" in Dutch language, "żyd" in Polish language etc., but derivations of the word "Hebrew" are also in use to describe a Jew, e.g., in Italian language ( Ebreo), in Persian language ("Ebri/Ebrani" ()) and Russian language ( Еврей, Yevrey). The German word "Jude" is pronounced , the corresponding adjective "jüdisch" (Jewish) is the origin of the word "Yiddish".
According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition (2000),
It is widely recognized that the attributive use of the noun Jew, in phrases such as Jew lawyer or Jew ethics, is both vulgar and highly offensive. In such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a practice that carries risks of its own. In a sentence such as There are now several Jews on the council, which is unobjectionable, the substitution of a circumlocution like Jewish people or persons of Jewish background may in itself cause offense for seeming to imply that Jew has a negative connotation when used as a noun.
Historical definitions of Jewish identity have traditionally been based on halakha definitions of matrilineal descent, and halakhic conversions. These definitions of who is a Jew date back to the codification of the Oral Torah into the Talmud, around 200 Common Era. Interpretations by Jewish sages of sections of the Tanakh – such as , which forbade intermarriage between their Israelites and seven non-Israelite nations: "for that i.e. would turn away your children from following me, to serve other gods" – are used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and gentiles. says that the son in a marriage between a Hebrew woman and an Egyptian man is "of the community of Israel." This is complemented by , where Israelites returning from Babylon vow to put aside their gentile wives and their children. A popular theory is that the rape of Jewish women in captivity brought about the law of Jewish identity being inherited through the maternal line, although scholars challenge this theory citing the Talmudic establishment of the law from the pre-exile period. Another argument is that the rabbis changed the law of patrilineal descent to matrilineal descent due to the widespread rape of Jewish women by Roman soldiers. Since the anti-religious Haskalah movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries, halakhic interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged.Dosick (2007), pp. 56–57.
According to historian Shaye J. D. Cohen, the status of the offspring of mixed marriages was determined Patrilineality in the Bible. He brings two likely explanations for the change in Mishnah times: first, the Mishnah may have been applying the same logic to mixed marriages as it had applied to other mixtures ( Kil'ayim). Thus, a mixed marriage is forbidden as is the union of a horse and a donkey, and in both unions the offspring are judged matrilineally. Second, the Tannaim may have been influenced by Roman law, which dictated that when a parent could not contract a legal marriage, offspring would follow the mother. Rabbi Rivon Krygier follows a similar reasoning, arguing that Jewish descent had formerly passed through the patrilineal descent and the law of matrilineal descent had its roots in the Roman legal system.
According to the Tanakh narrative, Jewish ancestry is traced back to the Biblical patriarchs such as Abraham, his son Isaac, Isaac's son Jacob, and the Biblical matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel, who lived in Canaan. The Twelve Tribes are described as descending from the twelve sons of Jacob. Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacob's son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs' descendants were later enslaved until the The Exodus led by Moses, after which the Israelites conquered Canaan under Moses' successor Joshua, went through the period of the Biblical judges after the death of Joshua, then through the mediation of Samuel became subject to a king, Saul, who was succeeded by David and then Solomon, after whom the United Monarchy ended and was split into a separate Kingdom of Israel and a Kingdom of Judah. The Kingdom of Judah is described as comprising the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, partially Levi, and later adding remnants of other tribes who migrated there from the northern Kingdom of Israel.
In the extra-biblical record, the Israelites become visible as a people between 1200 and 1000 BCE. (2025). 9780495913245, Wadsworth/Cengage Learning. ISBN 9780495913245 There is well accepted archeological evidence referring to "Israel" in the Merneptah Stele, which dates to about 1200 BCE, and in the Mesha stele from 840 BCE. It is debated whether a period like that of the Biblical judges occurred and if there ever was a United Monarchy. (2025). 9780684869124, Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780684869124 There is further disagreement about the earliest existence of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their extent and power. Historians agree that a Kingdom of Israel existed by , there is a consensus that a Kingdom of Judah existed by c. 700 BCE at least, and recent excavations in Khirbet Qeiyafa have provided strong evidence for dating the Kingdom of Judah to the 10th century BCE. In 587 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II, King of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, besieged Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple and deported parts of the Judahite population.
Scholars disagree regarding the extent to which the Bible should be accepted as a historical source for early Israelite history. Rendsburg states that there are two approximately equal groups of scholars who debate the historicity of the biblical narrative, the minimalists who largely reject it, and the maximalists who largely accept it, with the minimalists being the more vocal of the two.Rendsburg, Gary A.. "1 Israel Without the Bible". The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship
"I am not sure I can quantify the schools, that is, tell you that the majority of biblical scholars today are maximalist or minimalist - I suppose the divide is about 50-50 - But I can tell you this: there is no doubt that the minimalists are more vocal, and they are the ones who set the agenda, publish books at a very rapid pace, organize conferences to present their views (especially in Europe) and take advantage of the popular press. The maximalists, in turn, frequently are left to respond to these diatribes, often needing to take time away from their own research to counter the views expressed in the many publications emanating from the pens of minimalist scholars."
Some of the leading minimalists reframe the biblical account as constituting the Israelites' inspiring national myth narrative, suggesting that according to the modern archaeological and historical account, the Israelites and their culture did not overtake the region by force, but instead branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatrism—and later monotheism—religion of Yahwism centered on Yahweh, one of the gods of the Canaanite pantheon. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of cultic practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group, setting them apart from other Canaanites.Tubb, 1998. pp. 13–14Mark Smith in "The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel" states "Despite the long regnant model that the Canaanites and Israelites were people of fundamentally different culture, archaeological data now casts doubt on this view. The material culture of the region exhibits numerous common points between Israelites and Canaanites in the Iron I period (c. 1200–1000 BCE). The record would suggest that the Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from Canaanite culture... In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature. Given the information available, one cannot maintain a radical cultural separation between Canaanites and Israelites for the Iron I period." (pp. 6–7). Smith, Mark (2002) "The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel" (Eerdman's)Rendsberg, Gary (2008). "Israel without the Bible". In Frederick E. Greenspahn. The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship. NYU Press, pp. 3–5 According to Dever, modern archaeology have largely discarded the search for evidence of the biblical narrative surrounding the patriarchs and the exodus.
According to the maximalist position, the modern archaeological record independently points to a narrative which largely agrees with the biblical account. This narrative provides a testimony of the Israelites as a people known to the Egyptians as belonging to the Shasu. Over time these nomads left the desert and settled on the central mountain range of the land of Canaan, in simple semi-nomadic settlements in which pig bones are notably absent. This population gradually shifted from a Tribe lifestyle to a monarchy. While the archaeological record of the ninth century BCE provides evidence for two monarchies, one in the south under a dynasty founded by a figure named David with its capital in Jerusalem, and one in the north under a dynasty founded by a figure named Omri with its capital in Samaria. It also points to an early monarchic period in which these regions shared material culture and religion, suggesting a common origin. Archaeological finds also provide evidence for the later cooperation of these two kingdoms in their coalition against Aram-Damascus, and for their destructions by the and later by the Babylonians.Rendsburg, Gary A.. "1 Israel Without the Bible". The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship, edited by Frederick E. Greenspahn, New York, USA: New York University Press, 2007, pp. 7-23. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814733080.003.0005
Genetic studies on Jews show that most Jews worldwide bear a common genetic heritage which originates in the Middle East, and that they share certain genetic traits with other Gentile peoples of the Fertile Crescent. Natural History 102:11 (November 1993): 12–19. The genetic composition of different Jewish groups shows that Jews share a common gene pool dating back four millennia, as a marker of their common ancestral origin. Despite their long-term separation, Jewish communities maintained their unique commonalities, propensities, and sensibilities in culture, tradition, and language.
In the 10th century BCE, two neighboring Israelite kingdoms—the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah—emerged. Since their inception, they shared ethnic, cultural, Biblical Hebrew and Yahwism characteristics despite a complicated relationship. Israel, with its capital mostly in Samaria, was larger and wealthier, and soon developed into a regional power. In contrast, Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem, was less prosperous and covered a smaller, mostly mountainous territory. However, while in Israel the royal succession was often decided by a military coup d'état, resulting in several dynasty changes, political stability in Judah was much greater, as it was ruled by the Davidic line for the whole four centuries of its existence.
Around 720 BCE, Kingdom of Israel was destroyed when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which came to dominate the ancient Near East. Under the Assyrian resettlement policy, a significant portion of the northern Israelite population was exiled to Mesopotamia and replaced by immigrants from the same region. During the same period, and throughout the 7th century BCE, the Kingdom of Judah, now under Assyrian Vassal state, experienced a period of prosperity and witnessed a significant population growth. This prosperity continued until the Neo-Assyrian king Sennacherib devastated the region of Judah in response to a rebellion in the area, ultimately halting at Jerusalem.Finkelstein, Israel and Mazar, Amihai. The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel. Leiden: Brill, 2007. p. 166. Later in the same century, the Assyrians were defeated by the rising Neo-Babylonian Empire, and Judah became its vassal. In 587 BCE, following a revolt in Judah, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, putting an end to the kingdom. The majority of Jerusalem's residents, including the kingdom's elite, were exiled to Babylon.
Judea was under control of the Achaemenids until the fall of their empire in c. 333 BCE to Alexander the Great. After several centuries under foreign imperial rule, the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire resulted in an independent Hasmonean kingdom, under which the Jews once again enjoyed political independence for a period spanning from 110 to 63 BCE. Under Hasmonean rule the boundaries of their kingdom were expanded to include not only the land of the historical kingdom of Judah, but also the Galilee and Transjordan.Stern, Menahem. (2007). "Hasmoneans". In Skolnik, Fred (ed.). Encyclopaedia Judaica Volume 8 Gos–Hep (2nd ed.). Michigan: Thompson Gale. p. 446. In the beginning of this process the Idumeans, who had infiltrated southern Judea after the destruction of the First Temple, were converted en masse.Strabo, Geography Bk.16.2.34 In 63 BCE, Judea was conquered by the Romans. From 37 BCE to 6 CE, the Romans allowed the Jews to maintain some degree of independence by installing the Herodian dynasty as Vassal state. However, Judea eventually came directly under Roman control and was incorporated into the Roman Empire as the province of Judaea.
The Jewish–Roman wars, a series of unsuccessful revolts against Roman rule during the first and second centuries CE, had significant and disastrous consequences for the Jewish population of Judaea. The First Jewish-Roman War (66–73 CE) culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple. The severely reduced Jewish population of Judaea was denied any kind of political self-government. A few generations later, the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE) erupted, and its brutal suppression by the Romans led to the depopulation of Judea. Following the revolt, Jews were forbidden from residing in the vicinity of Jerusalem, and the Jewish demographic center in Judaea shifted to Galilee.Mor, M. The Second Jewish Revolt: The Bar Kokhba War, 132–136 CE. Brill, 2016. P471/Powell, The Bar Kokhba War AD 132-136, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, ç2017, p.80 Similar upheavals impacted the Jewish communities in the empire's eastern provinces during the Diaspora Revolt (115–117 CE), leading to the near-total destruction of Jewish diaspora communities in Roman Libya, Roman Cyprus and Roman Egypt, including the highly influential community in Alexandria. ,'' or "captive Judea" (71 CE), representing Judea as a seated mourning woman (right), and a Jewish captive with hands tied (left)]]The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE brought profound changes to Judaism. With the Temple's central place in Jewish worship gone, religious practices shifted towards Jewish prayer, Torah study (including Oral Torah), and communal gatherings in . Judaism also lost much of its sectarian nature. Two of the three main sects that flourished during the late Second Temple period, namely the Sadducees and Essenes, eventually disappeared, while Pharisees beliefs became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis of Rabbinic Judaism, which emerged as the prevailing form of Judaism since late antiquity.
After the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Jewish population in Judaea, now significantly reduced in size, made efforts to recover from the revolt's devastating effects, but never fully regained its previous strength.Oppenheimer, A'haron and Oppenheimer, Nili. Between Rome and Babylon: Studies in Jewish Leadership and Society. Mohr Siebeck, 2005, p. 2. In the second to fourth centuries CE, the region of Galilee emerged as the new center of Jewish life in Syria Palaestina, experiencing a cultural and demographic flourishing. It was in this period that two central rabbinic texts, the Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud, were composed. However, as the Roman Empire was replaced by the Christianized Byzantine Empire under Constantine, Jews came to be persecuted by the church and the authorities, and many immigrated to communities in the diaspora. In the fourth century CE, Jews are believed to have lost their position as the majority in Syria Palaestina.
The long-established Jewish community of Mesopotamia, which had been living under Parthian Empire and later Sasanian Empire rule, beyond the confines of the Roman Empire, became an important center of Jewish studies as Judea's Jewish population declined. Estimates often place the Babylonian Jewish community of the 3rd to 7th centuries at around one million, making it the largest Jewish diaspora community of that period. Under the political leadership of the exilarch, who was regarded as a royal heir of the House of David, this community had an autonomous status and served as a place of refuge for the Jews of Syria Palaestina. A number of significant Talmudic academies, such as the Nehardea Academy, Pumbedita, and Sura Academy academies, were established in Mesopotamia, and many important Amoraim were active there. The Babylonian Talmud, a centerpiece of Jewish religious law, was compiled in Babylonia in the 3rd to 6th centuries.
Despite experiencing repeated waves of persecution, Ashkenazi Jews in Western Europe worked in a variety of fields, making an impact on their communities' economy and societies. In Francia, for example, figures like Isaac Judaeus and Armentarius occupied prominent social and economic positions. However, Jews were frequently the subjects of discriminatory laws, segregation, and , which culminated in events like the Rhineland Massacres (1066) and the expulsion of Jews from England (1290). As a result, Ashkenazi Jews were gradually pushed eastwards to Poland, Lithuania and Russia.Harshav, Benjamin (1999). The Meaning of Yiddish. Stanford: Stanford University Press. p. 6. "From the fourteenth and certainly by the sixteenth century, the center of European Jewry had shifted to Poland, then ... comprising the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (including today's Byelorussia), Crown Poland, Galicia, the Ukraine and stretching, at times, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, from the approaches to Berlin to a short distance from Moscow."
During the same period, Jewish communities in the Middle East thrived under Islamic rule, especially in cities like Baghdad, Cairo, and Damascus. In Babylonia, from the 7th to 11th centuries the Pumbedita and Sura Academy academies led the Arab and to an extant the entire Jewish world. The deans and students of said academies defined the Geonim in Jewish history. Following this period were the Rishonim who lived from the 11th to 15th centuries. Like their European counterparts, Jews in the Middle East and North Africa also faced periods of persecution and discriminatory policies, with the Almohad Caliphate in North Africa and Iberia issuing forced conversion decrees, causing Jews such as Maimonides to seek safety in other regions.
Initially, under Visigoth rule, Jews in the Iberian Peninsula faced persecutions, but their circumstances changed dramatically under Al-Andalus. During this period, they thrived in a golden age, marked by significant intellectual and cultural contributions in fields such as philosophy, medicine, and literature by figures such as Samuel ibn Naghrillah, Judah Halevi and Solomon ibn Gabirol. However, in the 12th to 15th centuries, the Iberian Peninsula witnessed a rise in antisemitism, leading to persecutions, anti-Jewish laws, massacres and forced conversions (peaking in 1391), and the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition that same year. After the completion of the Reconquista and the issuance of the Alhambra Decree by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, the Jews of Spain were forced to choose: convert to Christianity or be expelled. As a result, around 200,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, seeking refuge in places such as the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, Italy, the Netherlands and India. A similar fate awaited the Jews of Portugal a few years later. Some Jews chose to remain, and pretended to practice Catholic Church. These Jews would form the members of Crypto-Judaism.
The antisemitism that inflicted Jewish communities in Europe also triggered a mass exodus of more than two million Jews to the United States between 1881 and 1924. The Jews of Europe and the United States gained success in the fields of science, culture and the economy. Among those generally considered the most famous were Albert Einstein and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Many Nobel Prize winners at this time were Jewish, as is still the case.[[File:Jewish people around the world.svg|thumb|Map of the Jewish diaspora:
|301x301px]]When Adolf Hitler and the Nazism came to power in Nazi Germany in 1933, the situation for Jews deteriorated rapidly. Many Jews fled from Europe to Mandatory Palestine, the United States, and the Soviet Union as a result of racial anti-Semitic laws, economic difficulties, and the fear of an impending war. World War II started in 1939, and by 1941, Hitler occupied almost all of Europe. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Final Solution—an extensive, organized effort with an unprecedented scope intended to annihilate the Jewish people—began, and resulted in the persecution and murder of Jews in Europe and North Africa. In Poland, three million were murdered in gas chambers in all concentration camps combined, with one million at the Auschwitz camp complex alone. The The Holocaust is the name given to this genocide, in which six million Jews were systematically murdered.
Before and during the Holocaust, enormous numbers of Jews immigrated to Mandatory Palestine. On 14 May 1948, upon the termination of the mandate, David Ben-Gurion declared the creation of the Israel, a Jewish and democratic state in the Land of Israel. Immediately afterwards, all neighboring Arab states invaded, yet the newly formed IDF resisted. In 1949, the war ended and Israel started building the state and absorbing massive waves of Aliyah from all over the world.
The Hebrew Bible, a religious interpretation of the traditions and early history of the Jews, established the first of the Abrahamic religions, which are now practiced by 54 percent of the world. Judaism guides its adherents in both practice and belief, and has been called not only a religion, but also a "way of life,"Neusner (1991) p. 64 which has made drawing a clear distinction between Judaism, Jewish culture, and Jewish identity rather difficult. Throughout history, in eras and places as diverse as the ancient Ancient Greece world,Raphael Patai (1996). 081432651X, Wayne State University Press. 081432651X in Europe before and after The Age of Enlightenment (see Haskalah), in Al-Andalus,Sharot (1997), pp. 29–30. in North Africa and the Middle East, Indian Jews,Sharot (1997), pp. 42–43. China,Sharot (1997), p. 42. or the contemporary American JewsSylvia Barack Fishman (2025). 9780791445464, State University of New York Press. . ISBN 9780791445464 and Israel, cultural phenomena have developed that are in some sense characteristically Jewish without being at all specifically religious. Some factors in this come from within Judaism, others from the interaction of Jews or specific communities of Jews with their surroundings, and still others from the inner social and cultural dynamics of the community, as opposed to from the religion itself. This phenomenon has led to considerably different unique to their own communities.
For centuries, Jews worldwide have spoken the local or dominant languages of the regions they migrated to, often developing distinctive forms or branches that became independent languages. Yiddish language is the Judaeo-German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Central Europe. Judaeo-Spanish is the Judaeo-Spanish language developed by Sephardi Jews Jews who migrated to the Iberian peninsula. Due to many factors, including the impact of the Holocaust on European Jewry, the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, and widespread emigration from other Jewish communities around the world, ancient and distinct Jewish languages of several communities, including Judaeo-Georgian, Judaeo-Arabic, Judaeo-Berber, Krymchak, Judaeo-Malayalam and many others, have largely fallen out of use.
For over sixteen centuries Hebrew was used almost exclusively as a liturgical language, and as the language in which most books had been written on Judaism, with a few speaking only Hebrew on the Shabbat. Hebrew was revived as a spoken language by Eliezer ben Yehuda, who arrived in Palestine in 1881. It had not been used as a mother tongue since Tannaim times. Modern Hebrew is designated as the "State language" of Israel.
Despite efforts to revive Hebrew as the national language of the Jewish people, knowledge of the language is not commonly possessed by Jews worldwide and English language has emerged as the lingua franca of the Jewish diaspora. Although many Jews once had sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to study the classic literature, and Jewish languages like Yiddish and Judaeo-Spanish were commonly used as recently as the early 20th century, most Jews lack such knowledge today and English has by and large superseded most Jewish vernaculars.
The three most commonly spoken languages among Jews today are Hebrew, English, and Russian language. Some Romance languages, particularly French language and Spanish language, are also widely used. Yiddish has been spoken by more Jews in history than any other language,Hebrew, Aramaic and the rise of Yiddish. D. Katz. (1985) Readings in the sociology of Jewish languages but it is far less used today following the Holocaust and the adoption of Modern Hebrew by the Zionism and the Israel.
In some places, the mother language of the Jewish community differs from that of the general population or the dominant group. For example, in Quebec, the Ashkenazic majority has adopted English, while the Sephardic minority uses French as its primary language. Similarly, South African Jews adopted English rather than Afrikaans. Due to both Czarist and Soviet policies, Russian has superseded Yiddish as the language of Russian Jews, but these policies have also affected neighboring communities. Today, Russian is the first language for many Jewish communities in a number of Post-Soviet states, such as UkraineSubtelny, O. (2025). 9781442697287, University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division. . ISBN 9781442697287 and Uzbekistan, as well as for Ashkenazic Jews in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Tajikistan. Although communities in North Africa today are small and dwindling, Jews there had shifted from a multilingual group to a monolingual one (or nearly so), speaking French in Algeria, Morocco, and the city of Tunis, while most North Africans continue to use Arabic or Berber as their mother tongue.
Anthony D. Smith, an historical sociologist considered one of the founders of the field of nationalism studies, wrote that the Jews of the late Second Temple period provide "a closer approximation to the ideal type of the nation ... than perhaps anywhere else in the ancient world." He adds that this observation "must make us wary of pronouncing too readily against the possibility of the nation, and even a form of religious nationalism, before the onset of modernity." Agreeing with Smith, Goodblatt suggests omitting the qualifier "religious" from Smith's definition of ancient Jewish nationalism, noting that, according to Smith, a religious component in national memories and culture is common even in the modern era. This view is echoed by political scientist Tom Garvin, who writes that "something strangely like modern nationalism is documented for many peoples in medieval times and in classical times as well," citing the ancient Jews as one of several "obvious examples", alongside the Classical Greece and the Gauls and Celtic Britons.Tom Garvin, "Ethnic Markers, Modern Nationalisms, and the Nightmare of History," in Kruger, ed., ¨ Ethnicity and Nationalism, p. 67.
Fergus Millar suggests that the sources of Jewish national identity and their early nationalist movements in the first and second centuries CE included several key elements: the Bible as both a national history and legal source, the Hebrew language as a national language, a system of law, and social institutions such as schools, synagogues, and Sabbath worship. Adrian Hastings argued that Jews are the "true proto-nation", that through the model of ancient Israel found in the Hebrew Bible, provided the world with the original concept of nationhood which later influenced Christian nations. However, following Jerusalem's destruction in the first century CE, Jews ceased to be a political entity and did not resemble a traditional nation-state for almost two millennia. Despite this, they maintained their national identity through collective memory, religion and sacred texts, even without land or political power, and remained a nation rather than just an ethnic group, eventually leading to the rise of Zionism and the establishment of Israel.
It is believed that Jewish nationalist sentiment in antiquity was encouraged because under foreign rule (Persians, Greeks, Romans) Jews were able to claim that they were an ancient nation. This claim was based on the preservation and reverence of their scriptures, the Hebrew language, the Temple and priesthood, and other traditions of their ancestors.
Jews are often identified as belonging to one of two major groups: the Ashkenazi Jews and the Sephardi Jews. Ashkenazim are so named in reference to their geographical origins (their ancestors' culture coalesced in the Rhineland, an area historically referred to by Jews as Ashkenaz). Similarly, Sephardim (Sefarad meaning "Spain" in Hebrew) are named in reference their origins in Iberia. The diverse groups of Jews of the Middle East and North Africa are often collectively referred to as Sephardim together with Sephardim proper for liturgical reasons having to do with their prayer rites. A common term for many of these non-Spanish Jews who are sometimes still broadly grouped as Sephardim is Mizrahi Jews ( in Hebrew). Nevertheless, Mizrahis and Sepharadim are usually ethnically distinct.Dosick (2007), p. 59.
Smaller groups include, but are not restricted to, Indian Jews such as the Bene Israel, Bnei Menashe, Cochin Jews, and Bene Ephraim; the Romaniote Jews of Greece; the Italian Jews ("Italkim" or "Bené Roma"); the Teimanim from Yemen; various African Jews, including most numerously the Beta Israel of Ethiopia; and Chinese Jews, most notably the Kaifeng Jews, as well as various other distinct but now almost extinct communities.
The divisions between all these groups are approximate and their boundaries are not always clear. The Mizrahim for example, are a heterogeneous collection of , , Caucasian, and Middle Eastern Jewish communities that are no closer related to each other than they are to any of the earlier mentioned Jewish groups. In modern usage, however, the Mizrahim are sometimes termed Sephardi due to similar styles of liturgy, despite independent development from Sephardim proper. Thus, among Mizrahim there are Egyptian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Lebanese Jews, Kurdish Jews, Moroccan Jews, Libyan Jews, Syrian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, Iranian Jews, Afghan Jews, and various others. The Teimanim from Yemen are sometimes included, although their style of liturgy is unique and they differ in respect to the admixture found among them to that found in Mizrahim. In addition, there is a differentiation made between Sephardi migrants who established themselves in the Middle East and North Africa after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s and the pre-existing Jewish communities in those regions.
Ashkenazi Jews represent the bulk of modern Jewry, with at least 70 percent of Jews worldwide (and up to 90 percent prior to World War II and the Holocaust). As a result of their emigration from Europe, Ashkenazim also represent the overwhelming majority of Jews in the New World continents, in countries such as the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and Brazil. In France, the immigration of Jews from Algeria (Sephardim) has led them to outnumber the Ashkenazim. Only in Israel is the Jewish population representative of all groups, a melting pot independent of each group's proportion within the overall world Jewish population.Dosick (2007), p. 61.
Conversely, the maternal lineages of Jewish populations, studied by looking at mitochondrial DNA, are generally more heterogeneous. Scholars such as Harry Ostrer and Raphael Falk believe this indicates that many Jewish males found new mates from European and other communities in the places where they migrated in the diaspora after fleeing ancient Israel. In contrast, Behar has found evidence that about 40 percent of Ashkenazi Jews originate maternally from just four female founders, who were of Middle Eastern origin. The populations of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish communities "showed no evidence for a narrow founder effect." Subsequent studies carried out by Feder et al. confirmed the large portion of non-local maternal origin among Ashkenazi Jews. Reflecting on their findings related to the maternal origin of Ashkenazi Jews, the authors conclude "Clearly, the differences between Jews and non-Jews are far larger than those observed among the Jewish communities. Hence, differences between the Jewish communities can be overlooked when non-Jews are included in the comparisons." A study showed that 7% of Ashkenazi Jews have the haplogroup G2c, which is mainly found in Pashtuns and on lower scales all major Jewish groups, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese.
Studies of Autosome, which look at the entire DNA mixture, have become increasingly important as the technology develops. They show that Jewish populations have tended to form relatively closely related groups in independent communities, with most in a community sharing significant ancestry in common. For Jewish populations of the diaspora, the genetic composition of Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews, and Mizrahi Jews Jewish populations show a predominant amount of shared Middle Eastern ancestry. According to Behar, the most parsimonious explanation for this shared Middle Eastern ancestry is that it is "consistent with the historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrews and Israelites residents of the Levant" and "the dispersion of the people of ancient Israel throughout the Old World". , Italian and others of Iberian origin show variable frequencies of admixture with non-Jewish historical host populations among the maternal lines. In the case of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews (in particular Moroccan Jews), who are closely related, the source of non-Jewish admixture is mainly , while Mizrahi Jews show evidence of admixture with other Middle Eastern populations. Behar et al. have remarked on a close relationship between Ashkenazi Jews and modern Italians. A 2001 study found that Jews were more closely related to groups of the Fertile Crescent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to their Arab neighbors, whose genetic signature was found in geographic patterns reflective of Islamic conquests.
The studies also show that Sephardic Bnei Anusim (descendants of the "anusim" who were forced to convert to Catholicism), which comprise up to 19.8 percent of the population of today's Iberia (Spain and Portugal) and at least 10 percent of the population of Ibero-America (Hispanic America and Brazil), have Sephardic Jewish ancestry within the last few centuries. The Bene Israel and Cochin Jews of India, Beta Israel of Ethiopia, and a portion of the Lemba people of Southern Africa, despite more closely resembling the local populations of their native countries, have also been thought to have some more remote ancient Jewish ancestry. Views on the Lemba have changed and genetic Y-DNA analyses in the 2000s have established a partially Middle-Eastern origin for a portion of the male Lemba population but have been unable to narrow this down further.
As of 2010, there were nearly 14 million Jews around the world, roughly 0.2% of the world's population at the time. According to the 2007 estimates of The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, the world's Jewish population is 13.2 million. This statistic incorporates both practicing Jews affiliated with and the Jewish community, and approximately 4.5 million unaffiliated and secular Jews.
According to Sergio Della Pergola, a demographer of the Jewish population, in 2021 there were about 6.8 million Jews in Israel, 6 million in the United States, and 2.3 million in the rest of the world.
Between 1948 and 1958, the Jewish population rose from 800,000 to two million. Currently, Jews account for 75.4 percent of the Israeli population, or 6 million people. The early years of the State of Israel were marked by the Aliyah of Holocaust survivors in the aftermath of the Holocaust and Jews fleeing Arab lands.. "And most Oriental-Sephardic came... because of Arab persecution resulting from the very attempt to establish a Jewish state in Palestine." Israel also has a large population of Ethiopian Jews, many of whom were airlifted to Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Between 1974 and 1979 nearly 227,258 immigrants arrived in Israel, about half being from the Soviet Union. This period also saw an increase in Aliyah from Western Europe, Latin America, and North America.Goldstein (1995) p. 24
A trickle of immigrants from other communities has also arrived, including Indian Jews and others, as well as some descendants of Ashkenazi Holocaust survivors who had settled in countries such as the United States, Argentina, Australia, Chile, and South Africa. Some Jews have emigrated from Israel elsewhere, because of economic problems or disillusionment with political conditions and the continuing Arab–Israeli conflict. Jewish Israeli emigrants are known as Yerida.Dosick (2007), p. 340.
More than half of the Jews live in the Diaspora (see Population table). Currently, the largest Jewish community outside Israel, and either the largest or second-largest Jewish community in the world, is located in the United States, with 6 million to 7.5 million Jews by various estimates. Elsewhere in the Americas, there are also large Jewish populations in Canada (315,000), Argentina (180,000–300,000), and Brazil (196,000–600,000), and smaller populations in Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Chile, Colombia and several other countries (see History of the Jews in Latin America)., based on According to a 2010 Pew Research Center study, about 470,000 people of Jewish heritage live in Latin America and the Caribbean. Demographers disagree on whether the United States has a larger Jewish population than Israel, with many maintaining that Israel surpassed the United States in Jewish population during the 2000s, while others maintain that the United States still has the largest Jewish population in the world. Currently, a major national Jewish population survey is planned to ascertain whether or not Israel has overtaken the United States in Jewish population.
Western Europe's largest Jewish community, and the third-largest Jewish community in the world, can be found in France, home to between 483,000 and 500,000 Jews, the majority of whom are immigrants or refugees from North African countries such as Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia (or their descendants).Gartner (2001), pp. 410–10. The United Kingdom has a Jewish community of 292,000. In East Europe, the exact figures are difficult to establish. The number of Jews in Russia varies widely according to whether a source uses census data (which requires a person to choose a single nationality among choices that include "Russian" and "Jewish") or eligibility for immigration to Israel (which requires that a person have one or more Jewish grandparents). According to the latter criteria, the heads of the Russian Jewish community assert that up to 1.5 million Russians are eligible for aliyah. In Germany, the 102,000 Jews registered with the Jewish community are a slowly declining population, despite the immigration of tens of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thousands of Israelis also live in Germany, either permanently or temporarily, for economic reasons.
Prior to 1948, approximately 800,000 Jews were living in lands which now make up the Arab world (excluding Israel). Of these, just under two-thirds lived in the French-controlled Maghreb region, 15 to 20 percent in the Kingdom of Iraq, approximately 10 percent in the Kingdom of Egypt and approximately 7 percent in the Kingdom of Yemen. A further 200,000 lived in Pahlavi Iran and the Republic of Turkey. Today, around 26,000 Jews live in Arab countries and around 30,000 in Iran and Turkey. A small-scale exodus had begun in many countries in the early decades of the 20th century, although the only substantial aliyah came from Yemen and Syria. The exodus from Arab and Muslim countries took place primarily from 1948. The first large-scale exoduses took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily in Iraq, Yemen and Libya, with up to 90 percent of these communities leaving within a few years. The peak of the exodus from Egypt occurred in 1956. The exodus in the Maghreb countries peaked in the 1960s. Lebanon was the only Arab country to see a temporary increase in its Jewish population during this period, due to an influx of refugees from other Arab countries, although by the mid-1970s the Jewish community of Lebanon had also dwindled. In the aftermath of the exodus wave from Arab states, an additional migration of Iranian Jews peaked in the 1980s when around 80 percent of Iranian Jews left the country.
Outside Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and the rest of Asia, there are significant Jewish populations in Australia (112,500) and South Africa (70,000). There is also a 6,800-strong community in New Zealand.
Rates of interreligious marriage vary widely: In the United States, it is just under 50 percent, in the United Kingdom, around 53 percent; in France; around 30 percent, and in Australia and Mexico, as low as 10 percent. In the United States, only about a third of children from intermarriages affiliate with Jewish religious practice. The result is that most countries in the Jewish diaspora have steady or slightly declining religiously Jewish populations as Jews continue to assimilate into the countries in which they live.
According to James Carroll, "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million."Carroll, James. Constantine's Sword (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) p. 26
Later in Middle Ages Western Europe, further persecutions of Jews by Christians occurred, notably during the Crusades—when Jews all over Germany were massacred—and in a series of expulsions from the Kingdom of England, Germany, and France. Then there occurred the Alhambra Decree, when Spain and Portugal, after the Reconquista (the Catholic Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula), expelled both unbaptized Sephardic Jews and the ruling Muslim Moors.
In the Papal States, which existed until 1870, Jews were required to live only in specified neighborhoods called .Johnson (1987), pp. 243–44.
Islam and Judaism have a complex relationship. Traditionally Jews and Christians living in Muslim lands, known as dhimmis, were allowed to practice their religions and administer their internal affairs, but they were subject to certain conditions.Lewis (1984), pp. 10, 20 They had to pay the jizya (a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-Muslim males) to the Islamic state. Dhimmis had an inferior status under Islamic rule. They had several social and legal disabilities such as prohibitions against bearing arms or giving testimony in courts in cases involving Muslims.Lewis (1987), pp. 9, 27 Many of the disabilities were highly symbolic. The one described by Bernard Lewis as "most degrading" was the requirement of Yellow badge, not found in the Quran or hadith but invented in early medieval Baghdad; its enforcement was highly erratic.Lewis (1999), p.131 On the other hand, Jews rarely faced martyrdom or exile, or forced compulsion to change their religion, and they were mostly free in their choice of residence and profession.Lewis (1999), p. 131; (1984), pp. 8, 62
Notable exceptions include the massacre of Jews and forcible conversion of some Jews by the rulers of the Almohad dynasty in Al-Andalus in the 12th century,Lewis (1984), p. 52; Stillman (1979), p. 77 as well as in Islamic Persia,Lewis (1984), pp. 17–18, 94–95; Stillman (1979), p. 27 and the forced confinement of Moroccan Jews to walled quarters known as beginning from the 15th century and especially in the early 19th century.Lewis (1984), p. 28. In modern times, it has become commonplace for standard antisemitic themes to be conflated with anti-Zionist publications and pronouncements of Islamic movements such as Hezbollah and Hamas, in the pronouncements of various agencies of the Iran, and even in the newspapers and other publications of Turkish Refah Partisi."
Throughout history, many rulers, empires and nations have oppressed their Jewish populations or sought to eliminate them entirely. Methods employed ranged from Deportation to outright genocide; within nations, often the threat of these extreme methods was sufficient to silence dissent. The history of antisemitism includes the First Crusade which resulted in the massacre of Jews;Johnson (1987), pp. 207–08. the Spanish Inquisition (led by Tomás de Torquemada) and the Portuguese Inquisition, with their persecution and autos-da-fé against the New Christians and Marrano Jews;Johnson (1987), pp. 226–29. the Bohdan Chmielnicki Cossack massacres in Ukraine;Johnson (1987), pp. 259–60. the backed by the Russian Tsars;Johnson (1987), pp. 364–65. as well as expulsions from Spain, Portugal, England, France, Germany, and other countries in which the Jews had settled.Johnson (1987), pp. 213, 229–31. According to a 2008 study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, 19.8 percent of the modern Iberian population has Sephardic Jewish ancestry, indicating that the number of may have been much higher than originally thought.
The persecution reached a peak in Nazi Germany's Final Solution, which led to the Holocaust and the slaughter of approximately 6 million Jews.Johnson (1987), p. 512. Of the world's 16 million Jews in 1939, almost 40% were murdered in the Holocaust. The Holocaust—the state-led systematic persecution and genocide of European Jews (and certain communities of North African Jews in European controlled North Africa) and other of Europe during World War II by Germany and its collaborators—remains the most notable modern-day persecution of Jews.Donald L Niewyk, The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust, Columbia University Press, 2000, p. 45: "The Holocaust is commonly defined as the murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews by the Germans in World War II." However, the Holocaust usually includes all of the different victims who were systematically murdered. The persecution and genocide were accomplished in stages. Nuremberg Laws was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II.Johnson (1987), pp. 484–88. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as Slavery until they died of exhaustion or disease.Johnson (1987), pp. 490–92. Where the Nazi Germany conquered new territory in Eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings. Jews and Romani people were crammed into ghettos before being transported hundreds of kilometres by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were murdered in gas chambers.Johnson (1987), pp. 493–98. Virtually every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal nation."Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must Know," United States Holocaust Museum, 2006, p. 103.
Centuries later, policy was to deport and displace conquered peoples, and it is estimated some 4,500,000 among captive populations suffered this dislocation over three centuries of Assyrian rule. With regard to Israel, Tiglath-Pileser III claims he deported 80% of the population of Lower Galilee, some 13,520 people. Some 27,000 Israelites, 20 to 25% of the population of the Kingdom of Israel, were described as being deported by Sargon II, and were replaced by other deported populations and sent into permanent exile by Assyria, initially to the Upper Mesopotamian provinces of the Assyrian Empire. Between 10,000 and 80,000 people from the Kingdom of Judah were similarly exiled by , but these people were then returned to Judea by Cyrus the Great of the Persian Achaemenid Empire.Johnson (1987), pp. 85–86.
Many Jews were exiled again by the Roman Empire.Johnson (1987), p. 147. The 2,000 year dispersion of the Jewish diaspora beginning under the Roman Empire, as Jews were spread throughout the Roman world and, driven from land to land, settled wherever they could live freely enough to practice their religion. Over the course of the diaspora the center of Jewish life moved from BabyloniaJohnson (1987), p. 163. to the Iberian PeninsulaJohnson (1987), p. 177. to PolandJohnson (1987), p. 231. to the Jewish AmericanJohnson (1987), p. 460. and, as a result of Zionism, back to Israel.Gartner (2001), p. 431.
There were also many expulsions of Jews during the Middle Ages and Enlightenment in Europe, including: 1290, 16,000 Jews were expelled from England, see the (Statute of Jewry); in 1396, 100,000 from France; in 1421, thousands were expelled from Austria. Many of these Jews settled in East-Central Europe, especially Poland.Gartner (2001), pp. 11–12. Following the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, the Spanish population of around 200,000 Jews were expelled by the Spanish crown and Catholic church, followed by expulsions in 1493 in Sicily (37,000 Jews) and Portugal in 1496. The expelled Jews fled mainly to the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, and North Africa, others migrating to Southern Europe and the Middle East.Johnson (1987), pp. 229–31.
During the 19th century, France's policies of equal citizenship regardless of religion led to the immigration of Jews (especially from Eastern and Central Europe).Johnson (1987), p. 306. This contributed to the arrival of millions of Jews in the New World. Over two million Eastern European Jews arrived in the United States from 1880 to 1925.Johnson (1987), p. 370.
In summary, the in Eastern Europe, the rise of modern antisemitism,Gartner (2001), pp. 213–15. the Holocaust,Gartner (2001), pp. 357–70. as well as the rise of Arab nationalism,Johnson (1987), pp. 529–30. all served to fuel the movements and migrations of huge segments of Jewry from land to land and continent to continent until they arrived back in large numbers at their original historical homeland in Israel.
In the latest phase of migrations, the Islamic Revolution of Iran caused many Iranian Jews to flee Iran. Most found refuge in the US (particularly Los Angeles, California, and Long Island, New York) and Israel. Smaller communities of Persian Jews exist in Canada and Western Europe. Similarly, when the Soviet Union collapsed, many of the Jews in the affected territory (who had been ) were suddenly allowed to leave. This produced a wave of migration to Israel in the early 1990s.
Orthodox and Conservative Judaism discourage proselytism to non-Jews, but many Jewish groups have tried to reach out to the assimilated Jewish communities of the Diaspora in order for them to reconnect to their Jewish roots. Additionally, while in principle Reform Judaism favours seeking new members for the faith, this position has not translated into active proselytism, instead taking the form of an effort to reach out to non-Jewish spouses of intermarried couples.Kaplan (2003), p. 301.
There is also a trend of Orthodox movements reaching out to secular Jews in order to give them a stronger Jewish identity so there is less chance of intermarriage. As a result of the efforts by these and other Jewish groups over the past 25 years, there has been a trend (known as the Baal teshuva movement) for secular Jews to become more religiously observant, though the demographic implications of the trend are unknown.
(2015). 9780124201958, Academic Press/Elsevier. ISBN 9780124201958
Population centers
Although historically, Jews have been found all over the world, in the decades since World War II and the establishment of Israel, they have increasingly concentrated in a small number of countries.Johnson (1987), pp. 529, 560–62. In 2021, Israel and the United States together accounted for over 85 percent of the global Jewish population, with approximately 45.3% and 39.6% of the world's Jews, respectively. More than half (51.2%) of world Jewry resides in just ten metropolitan areas. As of 2021, these ten areas were Gush Dan, New York, Jerusalem, Haifa, Los Angeles, Miami, Delaware Valley, Paris, Washington, and Chicago. The Tel Aviv metro area has the highest percent of Jews among the total population (94.8%), followed by Jerusalem (72.3%), Haifa (73.1%), and Beersheba (60.4%), the balance mostly being Israeli Arabs. Outside Israel, the highest percent of Jews in a metropolitan area was in New York (10.8%), followed by Miami (8.7%), Philadelphia (6.8%), San Francisco (5.1%), Washington (4.7%), Los Angeles (4.7%), Toronto (4.5%), and Baltimore (4.1%).
Israel
Israel, the Jewish nation-state, is the only country in which Jews make up a majority of the citizens. Israel was established as an independent democratic and Jewish state on 14 May 1948. Of the 120 members in its parliament, the Knesset, , 14 members of the Knesset are Arab citizens of Israel (not including the Druze), most representing Arab political parties. One of Israel's Supreme Court judges is also an Arab citizen of Israel.
Diaspora (outside Israel)
The waves of immigration to the United States and elsewhere at the turn of the 19th century, the founding of Zionism and later events, including pogroms in Imperial Russia (mostly within the Pale of Settlement in present-day Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and eastern Poland), the massacre of European Jewry during the Holocaust, and the founding of the state of Israel, with the subsequent Jewish exodus from Arab lands, all resulted in substantial shifts in the population centers of world Jewry by the end of the 20th century.Gartner (2001), p. 213.
Demographic changes
Assimilation
Since at least the time of the Ancient Greece, a proportion of Jews have assimilated into the wider non-Jewish society around them, by either choice or force, ceasing to practice Judaism and losing their Jewish identity.Johnson (1987), p. 171. Assimilation took place in all areas, and during all time periods, with some Jewish communities, for example the Kaifeng Jews of China, disappearing entirely. The advent of the Jewish Enlightenment of the 18th century (see Haskalah) and the subsequent emancipation of the Jewish populations of Europe and America in the 19th century, accelerated the situation, encouraging Jews to increasingly participate in, and become part of, Secularism. The result has been a growing trend of assimilation, as Jews marry non-Jewish spouses and stop participating in the Jewish community.Elazar (2003), p. 434.
War and persecution
The Jewish people and Judaism have experienced various throughout Jewish history. During Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, the Roman Empire (in its later phases known as the Byzantine Empire) repeatedly repressed the Jewish population, first by ejecting them from their homelands during the pagan Roman era and later by officially establishing them as second-class citizens during the Christian Roman era.Goldenberg (2007), pp. 131, 135–36.Johnson (1987), pp. 164–65.
Migrations
Throughout Jewish history, Jews have repeatedly been directly or indirectly expelled from both their original homeland, the Land of Israel, and many of the areas in which they have settled. This experience as Jewish refugees has shaped Jewish identity and religious practice in many ways, and is thus a major element of Jewish history.de Lange (2002), pp. 41–43. The patriarch Abraham is described as a migrant to the land of Canaan from Ur of the ChaldeaJohnson (1987), p. 10. after an attempt on his life by King Nimrod. His descendants, the Children of Israel, in the Biblical story (whose historicity is uncertain) undertook the Exodus (meaning "departure" or "exit" in Greek) from ancient Egypt, as recorded in the Book of Exodus.Johnson (1987), p. 30.
Growth
Israel is the only country with a Jewish population that is consistently growing through natural population growth, although the Jewish populations of other countries, in Europe and North America, have recently increased through immigration. In the Diaspora, in almost every country the Jewish population in general is either declining or steady, but Orthodox Judaism and Haredi Jewish communities, whose members often shun birth control for religious reasons, have experienced rapid population growth.Gartner (2001), pp. 400–01.
(2025). 9780470758014 ISBN 9780470758014 Additionally, there is also a growing rate of conversion to Jews by Choice of gentiles who make the decision to head in the direction of becoming Jews.de Lange (2002), p. 220.
Contributions
Jewish individuals have played a significant role in the development and growth of Western culture, advancing many fields of thought, science and technology, both historically and in modern times, including through discrete trends in Jewish philosophy, Jewish ethics (2005). 9781461674597, Sheed & Ward. ISBN 9781461674597 and Jewish literature, as well as specific trends in Jewish culture, including in Jewish art, Jewish music, Jewish humor, Jewish theatre, Jewish cuisine and Jewish medicine. Jews have established various Jewish political movements, religious movements, and, through the authorship of the Hebrew Bible and parts of the New Testament, "During the subsequent five hundred years, under Persian, Greek and Roman domination, the Jews wrote, revised, admitted and canonized all the books now comprising the Jewish Old Testament""The fact that Jesus and his followers who wrote the New Testament were first-century Jews, then, produces as many questions as it does answers concerning their experiences, beliefs, and practices" provided the foundation for Christianity and Islam. More than 20 percent of the awarded Nobel Prize have gone to individuals of Jewish descent. Due to the Jewish contribution to the Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb was labeled as a “Jewish gift to mankind.”Pais-Greenapple, Nadav (23 October 2023). “Moshe Rabbenu splits the atom: Writers of the Forverts react to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki,” In Geveb
/ref> The Jews excel in IQ testsGregory Cochran & Gregory; Hardy, Jason & Henry Harpending (September 2006). "Natural history of Ashkenazi intelligence," Journal of Biosocial Science
/ref> and significantly contributed to the lists of chess champions and billionaires.
Notes
Citations
Sources
R. Hrair Dekmejian (1975). 087395291X, State University of New York Press. 087395291X
External links
Categories: Ancient Peoples Of The Near East, Ethnic Groups In The Middle East, Ethnic Groups In East Africa, Ethnic Groups In North Africa, Ethnic Groups In Europe, Ethnic Groups In South Asia, Ethnic Groups In Central Asia, Ethno-cultural Designations, Ethnoreligious Groups, Israelites, Religious Identity, Semitic-speaking Peoples, Indigenous Peoples Of West Asia
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