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Jew

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Peoples

   Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים, Yehudim; Yiddish: ייִדן, Yidn) are followers
   of Judaism or, more generally, members of the Jewish people (also known
   as the Jewish nation, or the Children of Israel), an ethno-religious
   group descended from the ancient Israelites and from converts who
   joined their religion. The term also includes those who have undergone
   an officially recognized formal process of religious conversion to
   Judaism. Although the total number of Jews is difficult to measure and
   controversial, most authorities place the number between 12 and 14
   million, the majority of whom live in the United States and Israel.
   (see Jewish population)

Jews and Judaism

   The origin of the Jews is traditionally dated to around 1800 BCE with
   the biblical account of the birth of Judaism.

   The Merneptah Stele, dated at 1200 BCE, is one of the earliest
   archaeological records of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel,
   where they further developed a monotheistic religion, Judaism, and
   enjoyed periods of self-determination. As a result of foreign conquests
   and expulsions starting in the 8th century BCE, a Jewish diaspora was
   formed. Defeats in the Jewish-Roman Wars in the years 70 CE and 135
   notably contributed to the numbers and geography of the diaspora, as
   significant numbers of the Jewish population of the Land of Israel were
   expelled and sold to slavery throughout the empire. Since then, Jews
   lived throughout Europe, the greater Middle East and in India,
   surviving discrimination, oppression, poverty, and even genocide (see
   the articles anti-Semitism, The Holocaust), with occasional periods of
   cultural, economic, and individual prosperity in various locations
   (such as the United States).

   Until the late 18th century, the terms Jews and adherents of Judaism
   were practically synonymous, and Judaism was the prime binding factor
   among the Jews, although it was not strictly required to be followed in
   order to belong to the Jewish people. Following the Age of
   Enlightenment and its Jewish counterpart Haskalah, a gradual
   transformation occurred where many Jews came to view being a member of
   the Jewish nation as separate from adhering to the Jewish faith.

   The Hebrew name Yehudi (plural Yehudim) came into being when the
   Kingdom of Israel was split between the northern Kingdom of Israel and
   the southern Kingdom of Judah. The term originally referred to the
   people of the southern kingdom, although the term B'nei Yisrael
   (Israelites) was still used for both groups. After the Assyrians
   conquered the northern kingdom leaving the southern kingdom as the only
   Israelite state, the word Yehudim gradually came to refer to people of
   the Jewish faith as a whole, rather than those specifically from Judah.
   The English word Jew is ultimately derived from Yehudi (see Etymology).
   Its first use in the Bible to refer to the Jewish people as a whole is
   in the Book of Esther.

Etymology

   There are many different views as to the origin of the English language
   word Jew. The most common view is that the Middle English word Jew is
   from the Old French giu, earlier juieu, from the Latin iudeus from the
   Greek Ioudaios (Ἰουδαῖος). The Latin simply means Judaean, from the
   land of Judaea. The Hebrew for Jew, יהודי , is pronounced ye-hoo-DEE.
   The Hebrew letter Yodh (or Yud), י, used as a 'y' in the Hebrew
   language (as in the word ye-hoo-DEE), becomes a 'j' in languages using
   the Latin-based alphabet when the Yodh is used as a consonant rather
   than as a vowel. Therefore, a rough transliteration of יהודי in English
   would be Jew.

   The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., "Jude"
   in German, "juif" in French, "jøde," in Danish, etc., but derivations
   of the word "Hebrew" are also in use to describe a Jewish person, e.g.,
   in Italian (Ebreo) and Russian: Еврей, (Yevrey). (See Jewish ethnonyms
   for a full overview.)

Who is a Jew?

   Jews praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur. (1878 painting by Maurice
   Gottlieb)
   Enlarge
   Jews praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur. (1878 painting by Maurice
   Gottlieb)

   Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation, an ethnicity, a
   religion, and a culture, making the definition of who is a Jew vary
   slightly depending on whether a religious or national approach to
   identity is used. For discussions of the religious views on who is a
   Jew and how these views differ from each other, please see Who is a
   Jew?. Generally, in modern secular usage, Jews include three groups:
   people who practice Judaism and have a Jewish ethnic background
   (sometimes including those who do not have strictly matrilineal
   descent), people without Jewish parents who have converted to Judaism;
   and those Jews who, while not practicing Judaism as a religion, still
   identify themselves as Jewish by virtue of their family's Jewish
   descent and their own cultural and historical identification with the
   Jewish people.

   Historical definitions of Jewish identity have traditionally been based
   on Halakhic definitions of matrilineal descent, and halachic
   conversions. Historical definitions of who is a Jew date back to the
   codification of the oral tradition into the Babylonian Talmud. Biblical
   interpretations of sections in the Tanach, such as Deuteronomy 7:1-5,
   by learned Jewish sages, is used as a warning against intermarriage
   between Jews and non Jews because "[the non-Jewish male spouse] will
   cause your child to turn away from Me and they will worship the gods of
   others." Leviticus 24:10 speaks of the son in a marriage between a
   Hebrew woman and an Egyptian man to be "of the community of Israel.",
   which contrasts with Ezra 10:2-3, where Israelites returning from
   Egypt, vowed to put aside their gentile wives and their children. Since
   the Haskalah, these halakhic interpretations of Jewish identity have
   been challenged.

Jewish culture

   Judaism guides its adherents in both practice and belief, and has been
   called not only a religion, but also a "way of life," which has made
   drawing a clear distinction between Judaism, Jewish culture, and Jewish
   nationality rather difficult. In many times and places, such as in the
   ancient Hellenic world, in Europe before and after the Enlightenment
   (see Haskalah), and in contemporary United States 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 with
   others around them, others from the inner social and cultural dynamics
   of the community, as opposed to religion itself.

Ethnic divisions

   The most commonly used terms to describe ethnic divisions among Jews
   currently are: Ashkenazi (meaning "German" in Hebrew, denoting the
   Central European base of Jewry); and Sephardi (meaning "Spanish" or "
   Iberian" in Hebrew, denoting their Spanish, Portuguese and North
   African location). They refer to both religious and ethnic divisions.

   Other Jewish ethnic groups include Mizrahi Jews (a term overlapping
   Sephardi, but emphasizing North African and Middle Eastern rather than
   Spanish history, and including the Maghrebim); Teimanim (Yemenite and
   Omani Jews); and such smaller groups as the Gruzim and Juhurim from the
   Caucasus, the Bene Israel, Bnei Menashe, Cochin and Telugu Jews of
   India, the Romaniotes of Greece, the Italkim (Bené Roma) of Italy,
   various African Jews (most notably the Beta Israel or Ethiopian Jews),
   the Bukharan Jews of Central Asia, Kaifeng Jews from China, and the
   Persian Jews of Iran.

Population

   Prior to World War II the world population of Jews was approximately 18
   million. The Holocaust reduced this number to approximately 12 million.
   Today, there are an estimated 13 million to 14.6 million

Significant geographic populations

   Please note that these populations represent low-end estimates of the
   worldwide Jewish population, accounting for around 0.2% of the world's
   population.
   Country or Region Jewish population Notes
   United States 5,671,000 (est.)
   Israel 5,466,800 (est.) (about 79% of Israel's population)
   Europe 2,000,000 (fewer than)
   France 600,000 (est.)
   Russia 800,000 (Territory of the former Soviet Union. Some estimates
   are much higher.)
   United Kingdom 267,000 (2001 census)
   Germany 220,000 (2004 est.), over 100,000 who are members of a
   synagogue
   Turkey 30,000 (2001 census)
   Italy 30,000 (Jewish communities est.)
   Canada 371,000 (est.)
   Argentina 250,000 (est.)
   Brazil 130,000 (est.)
   South Africa 106,000 (est.)
   Australia 100,000 (est.)
   Asia (excl. Israel) 50,000 (est.)
   Iran 20,405 (est.)
   Mexico 40,000–50,000 (est.)
   Total 15,871,000 (est.)

State of Israel

   David Ben Gurion (First Prime Minister of Israel) publicly pronouncing
   the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, May 14,
   1948 David Ben Gurion (First Prime Minister of Israel) publicly
   pronouncing the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of
   Israel, May 14, 1948

   Israel, the Jewish nation-state, is the only country in which Jews make
   up a majority of the citizens. It was established as an independent
   democratic state on May 14, 1948. Of the 120 members in its parliament,
   the Knesset, 9 members are Israeli Arabs and 2 are Israeli Druze. At
   the time of its independence, approximately 600,000 Jews lived in
   Israel. Since then, the country's Jewish population has increased by
   about one million over each decade as more immigrants arrived and more
   Israelis were born, resulting in one of the most significant global
   Jewish population shifts in over 2,000 years.

   All the Arab Israeli Wars have not slowed Israel's growth. Israel
   opened its doors to the Holocaust survivors. It has absorbed a majority
   of the Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews from the Islamic countries. It has
   taken in hundreds of thousands of Jews from the former USSR, and has
   airlifted tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews (Falashas) to Israel. In
   the past decade nearly a million immigrants went to Israel from the
   former Soviet Union. Some Jews migrated from Israel elsewhere, known as
   yerida ("descent" [from the Holy Land]), due to its economic problems
   or due to disillusionment with political conditions and the continuing
   Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Diaspora (outside Israel)

   The waves of immigration to the United States at the turn of the 19th
   century, massacre of European Jewry during the Holocaust, and the
   foundation of the state of Israel (and subsequent Jewish exodus from
   Arab lands) all resulted in substantial shifts in the population
   centers of world Jewry during the 20th century.

   Currently, the largest Jewish community in the world is located in the
   United States, with almost 5.7 million Jews. Elsewhere in the Americas,
   there are also large Jewish populations in Canada and Argentina, and
   smaller populations in Brazil, Mexico , Uruguay, Venezuela, Chile, and
   several other countries (see History of the Jews in Latin America).

   Western Europe's largest Jewish community can be found in France, home
   to 600,000 Jews, the majority of whom are immigrants or refugees from
   North African Arab countries such as Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia (or
   their descendants). There are over 265,000 Jews in the United Kingdom.
   In Eastern Europe, there are anywhere from 500,000 to over two million
   Jews living in the former Soviet Union, but exact figures are difficult
   to establish. The fastest-growing Jewish community in the world,
   outside Israel, is the one in Germany, especially in Berlin, its
   capital. Tens of thousands of Jews from the former Eastern Bloc have
   settled in Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

   The Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East were home to
   around 900,000 Jews in 1945. Systematic persecution after the founding
   of Israel caused almost all of these Jews to flee to Israel, North
   America, and Europe in the 1950s. Today, around 8,000 Jews remain in
   Arab nations. Iran is home to around 25,000 Jews, down from a
   population of 100,000 Jews before the 1979 revolution. After the
   revolution some of the Iranian Jews emigrated to Israel or Europe but
   most of them emigrated (with their non-Jewish Iranian compatriots) to
   the United States (especially Los Angeles).

   Outside Europe, Asia and the Americas, significant Jewish populations
   exist in Australia and South Africa.

Population changes: Assimilation

   Since at least the time of the ancient Greeks, 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. Some Jewish communities, for example the Kaifeng Jews
   of China, have disappeared entirely, but assimilation has remained
   relatively low over much of the past millennium, as Jews were often not
   allowed to integrate with the wider communities in which they lived.
   The advent of the Jewish Enlightenment (see Haskalah) of the 1700s and
   the subsequent emancipation of the Jewish populations of Europe and
   America in the 1800s, changed the situation, allowing Jews to
   increasingly participate in, and become part of, secular society. The
   result has been a growing trend of assimilation, as Jews marry
   non-Jewish spouses and stop participating in the Jewish community.
   Rates of interreligious marriage vary widely: In the United States,
   they are just under 50%, in the United Kingdom, around 50%, and in
   Australia and Mexico, as low as 10%, and in France, they may be as high
   as 75%. In the United States, only about a third of children from
   intermarriages affiliate themselves with Jewish practice. Additionally,
   since non-religious Jews generally tend to marry later and have fewer
   children than the general population, the Jewish community in many
   countries is aging. The result is that most countries in the Diaspora
   have steady or slightly declining Jewish populations as Jews continue
   to assimilate into the countries in which they live.

Population changes: Wars against the Jews

   Jews (identifiable by the distinctive hats that they were required to
   wear) being killed by Christian knights. French Bible illustration from
   1250.
   Enlarge
   Jews (identifiable by the distinctive hats that they were required to
   wear) being killed by Christian knights. French Bible illustration from
   1250.

   Throughout history, many rulers, empires and nations have oppressed
   their Jewish populations, or sought to eliminate them entirely. Methods
   employed have ranged from expulsion to outright genocide; within
   nations, often the threat of these extreme methods was sufficient to
   silence dissent. Some examples in the history of anti-Semitism are: the
   Great Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire; the First Crusade which
   resulted in the massacre of Jews; the Spanish Inquisition led by
   Torquemada and the Auto de fé against the Marrano Jews; the Bohdan
   Chmielnicki Cossack massacres in Ukraine; the Pogroms backed by the
   Russian Tsars; as well as expulsions from Spain, England, France,
   Germany, and other countries in which the Jews had settled. The
   persecution reached a peak in Adolf Hitler's Final Solution, which led
   to the Holocaust and the slaughter of approximately 6 million Jews from
   1939 to 1945.

   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."

Population changes: Growth

   Israel is the only country with a consistently growing Jewish
   population due to natural population increase, though the Jewish
   populations of other countries in Europe and North America have
   recently increased due to immigration. In the Diaspora, in almost every
   country the Jewish population in general is either declining or steady,
   but Orthodox and Haredi Jewish communities, whose members often shun
   birth control for religious reasons, have experienced rapid population
   growth, with rates near 4% per year for Haredi Jews in Israel, and
   similar rates in other countries.

   Orthodox and Conservative Judaism discourage proselytization to
   non-Jews, but many Jewish groups have tried to reach out to the
   assimilated Jewish communities of the Diaspora in order to increase the
   number of Jews. Additionally, while in principle Reform Judaism favors
   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. There is also a
   trend of Orthodox movements pursuing 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
   twenty-five years, there has been a trend of secular Jews becoming more
   religiously observant, known as the Baal Teshuva movement, though the
   demographic implications of the trend are unknown. Additionally, there
   is also a growing movement of Jews by Choice by gentiles who make the
   decision to head in the direction of becoming Jews.

Jewish languages

   Hebrew is the liturgical language of Judaism (termed lashon ha-kodesh,
   "the holy tongue"), the language in which the Hebrew scriptures (
   Tanak) were composed, and the daily speech of the Jewish people for
   centuries. By the fifth century BCE, Aramaic, a closely related tongue,
   had replaced Hebrew as the daily street speech of Jewish life. By the
   third century BCE, Jews of the diaspora were speaking Greek. Modern
   Hebrew is now one of the two official languages of the State of Israel
   (the other being Arabic). It was revived by Eliezer ben Yehuda, who
   arrived in Palestine in 1881 at a time when no one spoke the Hebrew
   language. Diaspora Jews (outside Israel) today speak the local
   languages of their respective countries. Yiddish is the historic
   language of many Ashkenazi Jews, and Ladino of many Sephardic Jews.

History of the Jews

Jews and migrations

   Etching of the expulsion of the Jews from Frankfurt on August 23, 1614.
   The text says: "1380 persons old and young were counted at the exit of
   the gate"
   Enlarge
   Etching of the expulsion of the Jews from Frankfurt on August 23, 1614.
   The text says: "1380 persons old and young were counted at the exit of
   the gate"

   Throughout Jewish history, Jews have repeatedly been directly or
   indirectly expelled from both their original homeland, and the areas in
   which they have resided. This experience as both immigrants and
   emigrants (see: Jewish refugees) have shaped Jewish identity and
   religious practice in many ways. An incomplete list of such migrations
   includes:
     * The patriarch Abraham was a migrant to the land of Canaan from Ur
       of the Chaldees.
     * The Children of Israel experienced the Exodus (meaning "departure"
       or "going forth" in Greek) from ancient Egypt, as recorded in the
       Book of Exodus.
     * The Kingdom of Israel was sent into permanent exile and scattered
       all over the world (or at least to unknown locations) by Assyria.
     * The Kingdom of Judah was exiled by Babylonia, returned to the
       Levant, and then the Kingdom was exiled again by Rome.
     * 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, and settled wherever they could live
       freely enough to practice their religion. Over the course of the
       diaspora the centre of Jewish life moved from Babylonia to Spain to
       Poland to the United States and to Israel.
     * Many expulsions 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 Eastern
       Europe, especially Poland.
     * Following the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, the Spanish population
       of around 200,000 Sephardic 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.
     * 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), which was encouraged by Napoleon
       Bonaparte.
     * The arrival of millions of Jews in the New World, including
       immigration of over two million Eastern European Jews to the United
       States from 1880-1925, see History of the Jews in the United States
       and History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union.
     * The Pogroms in Eastern Europe, the rise of modern Anti-Semitism,
       the Holocaust and the rise of Arab nationalism 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.
     * The Islamic Revolution of Iran, forced many Iranian Jews to flee
       Iran. Most found refuge in the US (particularly Los Angeles, CA)
       and Israel. Smaller communities of Persian Jews exist in Canada and
       Western Europe.

Kingdoms of Israel and Judah

   Allotments of Israelite tribes in Eretz Israel. (1695 Amsterdam
   Haggada)
   Enlarge
   Allotments of Israelite tribes in Eretz Israel. (1695 Amsterdam
   Haggada)

   Jews descend mostly from the ancient Israelites (also known as
   Hebrews), who settled in the Land of Israel. The Israelites traced
   their common lineage to the biblical patriarch Abraham through Isaac
   and Jacob. A United Monarchy was established under Saul and continued
   under King David and Solomon. King David conquered Jerusalem (first a
   Canaanite, then a Jebusite town) and made it his capital. After
   Solomon's reign, the nation split into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of
   Israel (in the north) and the Kingdom of Judah (in the south). The
   Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrian ruler Shalmaneser V in
   the 8th century BCE and spread all over the Assyrian empire, where they
   were assimilated into other cultures and came to be known as the Ten
   Lost Tribes. The Kingdom of Judah continued as an independent state
   until it was conquered by a Babylonian army in the early 6th century
   BCE, destroying the First Temple that was at the centre of Jewish
   worship. The Judean elite was exiled to Babylonia, but later at least a
   part of them returned to their homeland after the subsequent conquest
   of Babylonia by the Persians seventy years later, a period known as the
   Babylonian Captivity. A new Second Temple was constructed funded by
   Persian Kings, and old religious practices were resumed.

Persian, Greek, and Roman rule

          See related article Jewish-Roman wars.

   The Seleucid Kingdom, which arose after the Persians were defeated by
   Alexander the Great, sought to introduce Greek culture into the Persian
   world. When the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, supported by
   Hellenized Jews (those who had adopted Greek culture), attempted to
   convert the Jewish Temple to a temple of Zeus, the non-Hellenized Jews
   revolted under the leadership of the Maccabees and rededicated the
   Temple to the Jewish God (hence the origins of Hanukkah) and created an
   independent Jewish kingdom known as the Hasmonaean Kingdom which lasted
   from 165 BCE to 63 BCE, when the kingdom came under influence of the
   Roman Empire. During the early part of Roman rule, the Hasmonaeans
   remained in power, until the family was annihilated by Herod the Great.
   Herod came from a wealthy Idumean family and became a very successful
   client king under the Romans. He significantly expanded the Temple in
   Jerusalem.
   The Arch of Titus depicts enslaved Judeans and objects from the Temple
   being brought to Rome.
   Enlarge
   The Arch of Titus depicts enslaved Judeans and objects from the Temple
   being brought to Rome.

   Upon his death in 4 BCE the Romans directly ruled Judea and there were
   frequent changes of policies by conflicting and empire-building
   Caesars, generals, governors, and consuls who often acted cruelly or to
   maximize their own wealth and power. Rome's attitudes swung from
   tolerance to hostility against its Jewish subjects, who had since moved
   throughout the Empire. The Romans, worshiping a large pantheon, could
   not readily accommodate the exclusive monotheism of Judaism, and the
   religious Jews could not accept Roman polytheism. (It was in this
   tumultuous climate that Christianity first emerged, among a small group
   of Jews.) After a famine and riots in 66 CE, the Judeans began to
   revolt against their Roman rulers. The revolt was smashed by Titus
   Flavius, a Roman general who later succeeded his father Vespasian as
   emperor. In Rome the Arch of Titus still stands, showing enslaved
   Judeans and a menorah being brought to Rome. It is customary for Jews
   to walk around, rather than through, this arch.

   The Romans all but destroyed Jerusalem; only a single " Western Wall"
   of the Second Temple remained. After the end of this first revolt, the
   Judeans continued to live in their land in significant numbers, and
   were allowed to practice their religion. In the second century the
   Roman Emperor Hadrian began to rebuild Jerusalem as a pagan city while
   restricting some Jewish practices. Angry at this affront, the Judeans
   again revolted led by Simon Bar Kokhba. Hadrian responded with
   overwhelming force, putting down the revolution and killing as many as
   half a million Jews. After the Roman Legions prevailed in 135, Jews
   were not allowed to enter the city of Jerusalem and most Jewish worship
   was forbidden by Rome. Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the
   expulsion of the Jews, Jewish worship stopped being centrally organized
   around the Temple, and instead was rebuilt around rabbis who acted as
   teachers and leaders of individual communities. No new books were added
   to the Jewish Bible after the Roman period, instead major efforts went
   into interpreting and developing the Halakhah, or oral law, and writing
   down these traditions in the Talmud, the key work on the interpretation
   of Jewish law, written during the first to fifth centuries CE.

Beginning of the Diaspora

   Though Jews had settled outside Israel since the time of the
   Babylonians, the results of the Roman response to the Jewish revolt
   shifted the centre of Jewish life from its ancient home to the
   diaspora. While some Jews remained in Judea, renamed Palestine by the
   Romans, some Jews were sold into slavery, while others became citizens
   of other parts of the Roman Empire. This is the traditional explanation
   to the Jewish diaspora, almost universally accepted by past and present
   rabbinical or Talmudical scholars, who believe that Jews are almost
   exclusively biological descendants of the Judean exiles, a belief
   backed up at least partially by DNA evidence. Some secular historians
   speculate that a majority of the Jews in Antiquity were most likely
   descendants of converts in the cities of the Graeco-Roman world,
   especially in Alexandria and Asia Minor. They were only affected by the
   diaspora in its spiritual sense and by the sense of loss and
   homelessness which became a cornerstone of the Jewish creed, much
   supported by persecutions in various parts of the world. Any such
   policy of conversion, which spread the Jewish religion throughout
   Hellenistic civilization, seems to have ended with the wars against the
   Romans and the following reconstruction of Jewish values for the
   post-Temple era. DNA evidence of this theory has been spotty, however,
   some historians believe based on some historical records that at the
   dawn of Christianity as many as 10% of the population of the Roman
   Empire were Jewish, a figure that could only be explained by local
   conversion. This theory could also solve the paradox of DNA studies
   noted above that show Ashkenazi Jews to be somewhat related to the
   peoples of the nations surrounding Israel despite physical features
   that more closely resembles that of the peoples of southern and central
   Europe; as one explanation would be a large miscegenation millennia ago
   followed by almost no outside genetic contact thereafter.
   The Amsterdam Esnoga, the synagogue for the Portuguese-Israelite
   Sephardic community
   Enlarge
   The Amsterdam Esnoga, the synagogue for the Portuguese-Israelite
   Sephardic community

   During the first few hundred years of the Diaspora, the most important
   Jewish communities were in Babylonia, where the Talmud was written, and
   where relatively tolerant regimes allowed the Jews freedom. The
   situation was worse in the Byzantine Empire which treated the Jews much
   more harshly, refusing to allow them to hold office or build places of
   worship. In the belief of restoration to come, the Jews made an
   alliance with the Persians who invaded Palestine in 614, fought at
   their side, overwhelmed the Byzantine garrison in Jerusalem, and for
   three years governed the city. But the Persians made their peace with
   the Emperor Heraclius. Christian rule was re-established, and those
   Jews who survived the consequent slaughter were once more banished from
   Jerusalem.

   The conquest of much of the Byzantine Empire and Babylonia by Islamic
   armies generally improved the life of the Jews, though they were still
   considered second-class citizens. In response to these Islamic
   conquests, the First Crusade of 1096 attempted to reconquer Jerusalem,
   resulting in the destruction of many of the remaining Jewish
   communities in the area. The Jews were among the most vigorous
   defenders of Jerusalem against the Crusaders. When the city fell, the
   Crusaders gathered the Jews in a synagogue and burned them. The Jews
   almost single-handedly defended Haifa against the Crusaders, holding
   out in the besieged town for a whole month (June-July 1099). At this
   time, a full thousand years after the fall of the Jewish state, there
   were Jewish communities all over the country. Fifty of them are known
   to us; they include Jerusalem, Tiberias, Ramleh, Ashkelon, Caesarea,
   and Gaza.
   Image of a cantor reading the Passover story in Moorish Spain, from a
   14th century Spanish Haggadah.
   Enlarge
   Image of a cantor reading the Passover story in Moorish Spain, from a
   14th century Spanish Haggadah.

Middle Ages: Europe

          Jews settled in Europe during the time of the Roman Empire, but
          the rise of the Roman Catholic Church resulted in frequent
          expulsions and persecutions. The Crusades routinely attacked
          Jewish communities, and increasingly harsh laws restricted them
          from most economic activity and land ownership, leaving open
          only moneylending and a few other trades. Jews were subject to
          expulsions from England, France, and the Holy Roman Empire
          throughout the Middle Ages, with most of the population moving
          to Eastern Europe and especially Poland, which was uniquely
          tolerant of the Jews through the 1700s. The final mass expulsion
          of the Jews, and the largest, occurred after the Christian
          conquest ( reconquista) of Spain in 1492 (see History of the
          Jews in Spain). Even after the end of the expulsions in the 17th
          century, individual conditions varied from country to country
          and time to time, but, as rule, Jews in Western Europe generally
          were forced, by decree or by informal pressure, to live in
          highly segregated ghettos and shtetls. By the beginning of the
          twentieth century, most European Jews lived in the so-called
          Pale of Settlement, the Western frontier of the Russian Empire
          comprised generally of the modern day countries of Poland,
          Lithuania, Belarus and neighboring regions.

Middle Ages: Islamic Europe, North Africa and Asia

   During the Middle Ages, Jews in Islamic lands generally had more rights
   than under Christian rule, with a Golden Age of coexistence in Islamic
   Spain from about 900 to 1200, when Spain became the centre of the
   richest, most populous, and most influential Jewish community of the
   time. The rise of more radical Muslim regimes, such as that of the
   Almohades ended this period by the thirteenth century, and Jews were
   soon expelled from Spain after the Christian reconquest. Many of these
   Jews found refuge in the Ottoman Empire, which remained tolerant of its
   Jewish population for much of its history.

Enlightenment and emancipation

   Napoleon emancipating the Jews, represented by the woman with the
   menorah, an 1804 French print.
   Enlarge
   Napoleon emancipating the Jews, represented by the woman with the
   menorah, an 1804 French print.

   During the Age of Enlightenment, significant changes occurred within
   the Jewish community. The Haskalah movement paralleled the wider
   Enlightenment, as Jews began in the 1700s to campaign for emancipation
   from restrictive laws and integration into the wider European society.
   Secular and scientific education was added to the traditional religious
   instruction received by students, and interest in a national Jewish
   identity, including a revival in the study of Jewish history and
   Hebrew, started to grow.

   The Haskalah movement influenced the birth of all the modern Jewish
   denominations, and planted the seeds of Zionism. At the same time, it
   contributed to encouraging cultural assimilation into the countries in
   which Jews resided. At around the same time another movement was born,
   one preaching almost the opposite of Haskalah, Hasidic Judaism. Hasidic
   Judaism began in the 1700s by Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov,
   and quickly gained a following with its exuberant, mystical approach to
   religion. These two movements, and the traditional orthodox approach to
   Judaism from which they spring, formed the basis for the modern
   divisions within Jewish observance.

   At the same time, the outside world was changing. France was the first
   country to emancipate its Jewish population in 1796, granting them
   equal rights under the law. Napoleon further spread emancipation,
   inviting Jews to leave the Jewish ghettos in Europe and seek refuge in
   the newly created tolerant political regimes (see Napoleon and the
   Jews). Other countries such as Denmark, England, and Sweden also
   adopted liberal policies toward Jews during the period of
   Enlightenment, with some resulting immigration. By the mid-19th
   century, almost all Western European countries had emancipated their
   Jewish populations, with the notable exception of the Papal States, but
   persecution continued in Eastern Europe including massive pogroms at
   the end of the 19th century and throughout the Pale of Settlement. The
   persistence of anti-semitism, both violently in the east and socially
   in the west, led to a number of Jewish political movements, culminating
   in Zionism.

Zionism and immigration

   Many of the newly secular Jews who had embraced Haskalah found
   themselves deeply troubled by the continuing virulent anti-semitism of
   the late 1800s, especially the massive pogroms of the 1880s in Russia
   and the Dreyfus Affair, which occurred in France in 1894, a country
   many Jews had previously thought of as particularly accepting. Many
   Jews in Eastern Europe embraced socialism as a potential escape from
   persecution, but another group, the Zionists, led by Theodor Herzl,
   viewed the only solution as the creation of a Jewish state. The
   interplay between Jewish national and religious identities was evident
   in Zionism, which was initially an entirely secular movement, but drew
   inspiration and support from the religious connection between Jews and
   the Land of Israel. Zionism contributed to the growth of the Jewish
   population there, which at the time was the Palestine province of the
   Ottoman Empire, and later the British Mandate of Palestine. Zionism,
   initially one out of a number of competing Jewish political movements,
   gained nearly universal support from the world Jewish population
   following the near-complete destruction of the Jews of Europe in the
   Holocaust, and led to the foundation of the State of Israel.

   In addition to responding politically, during the late 19th century,
   Jews began to flee the persecutions of Eastern Europe in large numbers,
   mostly by heading to the United States, but also to Canada and Western
   Europe. By 1924, almost two million Jews had emigrated to the US alone,
   creating a large community in a nation relatively free of the
   persecutions of rising European anti-Semitism (see History of the Jews
   in the United States).

The Holocaust

   This anti-Semitism reached its most destructive form in the policies of
   Nazi Germany, which made the destruction of the Jews a priority,
   culminating in the killing of approximately six million Jews during the
   Holocaust from 1941 to 1945. Originally, the Nazis used death squads,
   the Einsatzgruppen, to conduct massive open-air killings of Jews in
   territory they conquered. By 1942, the Nazi leadership decided to
   implement the Final Solution, the genocide of the Jews of Europe, and
   to increase the pace of the Holocaust by establishing extermination
   camps specifically to kill Jews. This was an industrial method of
   genocide. Millions of Jews who had been confined to diseased and
   massively overcrowded Ghettos were transported (often by train) to
   "Death-camps" where some were herded into a specific location (often a
   gas chamber), then either gassed or shot. Afterwards, their remains
   were buried or burned. Others were interned in the camps were they
   given little food and disease was common. Many Jews tried to escape
   Europe before or during the Holocaust, but were unable to find refuge,
   giving new urgency to the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish
   homeland.

Israel

   In 1948, the Jewish state of Israel was founded, creating the first
   Jewish nation since the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. After a series
   of wars with neighboring Arab countries, almost all of the 900,000 Jews
   previously living in North Africa and the Middle East fled to the
   Jewish state, joining an increasing number of immigrants from post-War
   Europe. By the end of the 20th century, Jewish population centers had
   shifted dramatically, with the United States and Israel being the
   centers of Jewish secular and religious life.

Persecution

          Related articles: Anti-Semitism, History of anti-Semitism, New
          anti-Semitism

   The Jewish people and Judaism have experienced various persecutions
   throughout Jewish history. In medieval Europe, many persecutions of
   Jews in the name of Christianity occurred, notably during the
   Crusades—when Jews all over Germany were massacred—and a series of
   expulsions from England, Germany, France, and, in the largest expulsion
   of all, Spain. In the Papal States, which existed until 1870, Jews were
   required to live only in specified neighborhoods called ghettos. In the
   19th and (before the end of the second World War) 20th centuries, the
   Roman Catholic church adhered to a distinction between "good
   anti-Semitism" and "bad anti-Semitism". The "bad" kind promoted hatred
   of Jews because of their descent. This was considered un-Christian
   because the Christian message was intended for all of humanity
   regardless of ethnicity; anyone could become a Christian. The "good"
   kind criticized alleged Jewish conspiracies to control newspapers,
   banks, and other institutions, to care only about accumulation of
   wealth, etc.

   Islam and Judaism have a complex relationship. The political conflict
   between Muhammad and the Jews of Medina in the 7th century left ample
   ideological fuel for Islam and anti-Semitism through the centuries.
   During the Middle Ages, Jews typically had a better status in the
   Muslim world than in Christendom. As the Muslim empire expanded during
   the centuries, the status of the non-Muslim communities was at times
   precarious, and they were generally subject to dhimmi laws. These laws
   freed them from military service and paying zakah, but placed
   additional jizyah and land taxes on them.

   The most notable modern day persecution of Jews remains the Holocaust —
   the state-led systematic persecution and genocide of the Jews and other
   minority groups of Europe and North Africa during World War II by Nazi
   Germany and its collaborators During the Holocaust, the Middle East was
   in turmoil. Britain prohibited Jewish immigration to the British
   Mandate of Palestine. While the Allies and the Axis were fighting for
   the oil-rich region, the Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husayni staged a
   pro-Nazi coup in Iraq and organized the Farhud pogrom which marked the
   turning point for about 150,000 Iraqi Jews who, following this event
   and the hostilities generated by the war with Israel in 1948, were
   targeted for violence, persecution, boycotts, confiscations, and near
   complete expulsion in 1951. In the French Vichy territories of Algeria
   and Syria plans were drawn up for the liquidation of their Jewish
   populations were the Axis powers to triumph.

   The tensions of the Arab-Israeli conflict were also a factor in the
   rise of animosity to Jews all over the Middle East, as hundreds of
   thousands of Jews fled as refugees, the main waves being soon after the
   1948 and 1956 wars. In reaction to the Suez Crisis of 1956, the
   Egyptian government expelled almost 25,000 Egyptian Jews and
   confiscated their property, and sent approximately 1,000 more Jews to
   prisons and detention camps. The population of Jewish communities of
   Muslim Middle East and North Africa was reduced from about 900,000 in
   1948 to less than 8,000 today.

Jewish leadership

   There is no single governing body for the Jewish community, nor a
   single authority with responsibility for religious doctrine. Instead, a
   variety of secular and religious institutions at the local, national,
   and international levels lead various parts of the Jewish community on
   a variety of issues.

Famous Jews

   Jews have made contributions in a broad range of human endeavors,
   including the sciences, arts, politics, business, etc. The Jewish
   people have the largest concentration of Nobel prize winners (
   approximately 160 in all) of any ethnic or religious group.

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