|- ! style="background-color: #b0c4de" Languages |- | Historical Jewish languagesHebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, and other Jewish languages (most endangered, and some now extinct) Liturgical languagesHebrew and Aramaic Predominant spoken languagesModern Israeli Hebrew, English, Russian |- ! style="background-color: #b0c4de" Religion |- | Judaism |- ! style="background-color: #b0c4de" Related ethnic groups |- | Ashkenazi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, Sephardi Jews, other Jewish ethnic divisions |- | colspan="2" style="line-height:150%; padding-top:0.8em; border-top: 1px #aaa solid; text-align:left; font-size:80%; font-weight:lighter;" | * The official CBS estimate of the Israeli Jewish population does not include Israeli ethnic Jews not considered to be Jewish under halakha as well as their ethnic Jewish/non-Jewish immediate family members. |} Israeli Jews, also known as Jewish Israelis, can refer to:

The legal Israeli citizens or residents of the Jewish faith and/or Jewish ethnicity.

Descendants of Israeli-Jewish emigrants.

Israeli Jews are found mostly in Israel and Western world countries, as well as many other countries worldwide, not necessarily only in Jewish communities. Israeli Jews mostly speak Hebrew and most practice Judaism in some form. Israel, the Jewish state, currently has almost half the world's Jews .

The Jewish community in Israel is composed from all Jewish ethnic divisions, including Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, Beta Israel and many converts. The Israeli Jewish community manifests a wide range of Jewish cultural traditions, as well as encompassing the full spectrum of religious observance, from the Haredi communities to the Hilonim Jewish communities who live a secular lifestyle.

Despite the ongoing debate over the question of who is a Jew among Israeli Jews, the Jewish status of a person, which is considered a matter of "nationality" by the Israeli authorities, is registered and controlled by the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, which requires a person to meet the halakhic definition to be registered as a "Jew". Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics estimated the Israeli Jewish population was 5,840,400 in May 2011 (75.35% of the total population). Depending on religious definitions and varying population data, Israel is home to the largest or second largest (after the United States) Jewish community in the world.

An IDI Guttman Study of 2008 shows that a plurality of Israeli Jews (47%) identify themselves first as Jews and Israeli second, and that only 39% consider themselves first and foremost Israeli.

Jews living in the region prior to the establishment of the State of Israel are commonly referred to in English as Palestinian Jews and in Hebrew as "HaYishuv HaYehudi Be'Eretz Yisra'el (The Jewish Community in the Land of Israel).

History

Origins

Jews have long considered Israel to be their spiritual home. According to the Jewish tradition the connection to the region Land of Israel began in The covenant of the pieces when the region, then called the land of Canaan, was promised to Abraham by God. Abraham settled in the region, where his son Isaac and grandson Jacob grew up with and their families. Later on, Jacob and his sons went to Egypt. Decades later their descendants were led out of Egypt by Moses and Aaron, given the Tablets of Stone, returned to the land of Canaan and conquered it under the leadership of Joshua. After the period of the judges, in which the Israelites did not have an organized leadership, the Kingdom of Israel was established which constructed the first temple. This kingdom was soon split into two – the Kingdom of Judah and the Kingdom of Israel. After the destruction of these kingdoms and the destruction of the first Temple, the Israelites were exiled to Babylon. After about 70 years parts of the Israelites were permitted to return to the region and soon thereafter they built the Second Temple. Later on they established the Hasmonean Kingdom. The region was conquered by the Roman Empire in 63 BC. During the 2nd century CE a series of rebellions against the Roman Empire ended up with the destruction of the second temple and a general expulsion of Jews from their homeland.

The area was later conquered from the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantines) by the Muslim Caliphate in the 7th century and became populated by Arabs. Throughout the centuries the size of Jewish population in the land fluctuated. Before the birth of modern Zionism, by the early 19th century, more than 10,000 Jews lived in the area that is today's Israel.

Following centuries of Diaspora, the 19th century saw the rise of Zionism, the Jewish Nationalist Movement, a desire to see the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine, and significant immigration. Zionism remained a minority movement until the rise of Nazism in 1933 and the subsequent attempted extermination of the Jewish people in the Holocaust. In the late 1800s large numbers of Jews began moving to the Turkish and later British-controlled region. In 1917, the British endorsed a Jewish homeland in Mandate Palestine by passing the Balfour Declaration. The Jewish population in the region increased from 11% of the population in 1922 to 30% by 1940

In 1937, following the Great Arab Revolt, the partition plan proposed by the Peel Commission, was rejected by the Palestinian Arab leadership; but accepted tentatively by Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion. This was notable, as Ben-Gurion showed a willingness to essentially accept about 1/3 of the land that would ultimately be won by Israel in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. As a result, in 1939, the British caved to Arab pressure because of support needed for WW2, abandoned the idea of a Jewish national homeland, and abandoned partition and negotiations in favour of the unilaterally-imposed White Paper of 1939, which capped Jewish immigration, and put subject to review under further agreement with the Arabs. Its other stated policy was to establish a system under which both Jews and Arabs were to share one government. The policy was viewed as a significant defeat for the Jewish side as it placed severe restrictions on Jewish immigration, while placing no restriction on Arab immigration.

In 1947, following increasing levels of violence, the British government withdrew from Israel. The 1947 UN Partition Plan split the mandate into two states, Jewish and Arab, giving about half the land area to each state. Immediately following the adoption of the Partition Plan by the United Nations General Assembly, the Palestinian Arab leadership rejected the plan to create the as yet unnamed Jewish State and launched a guerrilla war.

On May 14, 1948, one day before the end of the British Mandate of Palestine, the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine led by prime minister David Ben-Gurion, made a declaration of independence, and the state of Israel was established on the portion partitioned by UNSCOP for the Jewish state.

1948 Arab–Israeli War

Hoping to annihilate the new Jewish state, the armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq invaded the territory partitioned for the Arab state, thus starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The nascent Israeli Defense Force repulsed the Arab nations from part of the occupied territories, thus extending its borders beyond the original UNSCOP partition. By December 1948, Israel controlled most of the portion of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan River. The remainder of the Mandate consisted of Jordan, the area that came to be called the West Bank (controlled by Jordan), and the Gaza Strip (controlled by Egypt). Prior to and during this conflict, 711,000 Palestinians Arabs fled their original lands to become Palestinian refugees, in part, due to a promise from Arab leaders that they'll be able to return when the war is won.

Most Israeli Jews refer to the 1948 Arab–Israeli War as the War of Independence, while most of the Arab citizens of Israel refer to it as the Nakba (catastrophe), a reflection of differences in perception of the purpose and outcomes of the war.

1949–present

After the war, only 14–25% (depending on the estimate) of the Arab population remained in Israel. When Israel refused the reentry of most, and when subsequent offers of partial repatriation were rejected, they became refugees (see Palestinian refugee and Palestinian Exodus).

Meanwhile, Immigration of Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees from Arab lands doubled Israel's population within one year of its independence. Over the following years approximately 850,000 Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews fled or were expelled from surrounding mostly due persecution in Arab countries, and in smaller numbers from Turkey, India, Afghanistan, and Iran. Of these, about 680,000 settled in Israel (See also Jewish exodus from Arab lands).

Israel's Jewish population continued to grow at a very high rate for years, fed by waves of Jewish immigration from round the world, most notably the massive immigration wave of Soviet Jews, which arrived to Israel in the early 1990s following the dissolution of the USSR, who, according to the Law of Return, were entitled to become Israeli citizens upon arrival. About 380,000 arrived in 1990–1991 alone. At the same time some 80,000–100,000 Ethiopian Jews have immigrated to Israel since the early 1980s.

Since 1948, Israel has been involved in a series of major military conflicts, including the 1956 Suez War, 1967 Six-Day War, 1973 Yom Kippur War, 1982 Lebanon War, and 2006 Lebanon War, as well as a nearly constant series of ongoing minor conflicts to preserve its national interests. Israel has been also embroiled in an ongoing conflict with the Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories, which have been under Israeli control since the Six Day War in 1967, despite the signing of the Oslo Accords on September 13, 1993, and the ongoing efforts of Israeli, Palestinian and global peacemakers.

Today (2011), approximately 6 million Jews live in Israel, out of a population of over 7.5 million Israelis. Two-thirds of Israeli Jews (4,000,000) live in the coastal region of the country.

Population

According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, as of 2009, of Israel's 7 million people, 75.4% were Jews of any background Among them, 68% were Sabras (Israeli-born), mostly second- or third-generation Israelis, and the rest are olim (Jewish immigrants to Israel) — 22% from Europe and the Americas, and 10% from Asia and Africa, including the Arab countries. Nearly half of all Israeli Jews are descended from Jews who immigrated from Europe, while around the same number are descended from Jews who immigrated from Arab countries, Iran, Turkey and Central Asia. Over two hundred thousand are, or are descended from, Ethiopian and Indian Jews.

Growth

Israel is the only country in the world with a consistently growing Jewish population due to natural population increase unlike the Jewish communities in the Diaspora in which the Jewish population in general is either declining or steady, with the exception of the Orthodox and Haredi Jewish communities around the world, whose members often shun birth control for religious reasons, have experienced rapid population growth.

1800 estimate: 6,700 1880 estimate: 24,000 1915 estimate: 87,500 1931 estimate: 174,000 1936 estimate: > 400,000 1947 estimate: 630,000 1949 census: 1,013,900 1953 census: 1,483,600 1957 census: 1,762,700 1962 census: 2,068,900 1967 census: 2,383,600 1973 census: 2,845,000 1983 census: 3,412,500 1990 census: 3,946,700 1995 census: 4,522,300 2000 census: 4,955,400 2006 census: 5,393,400 2009 census: 5,665,100 2010 census: 5,776,500

Significant Jewish population centers

{|class="wikitable" |+Israeli Jews by District |- !Rank!!District!!Total Jewish Population(2008)!!% Jews(2008) |- |1 |Central District |1,592,000 |92% |- |2 |Tel Aviv District |1,210,000 |99% |- |3 |Southern District |860,000 |86% |- |4 |Haifa District |652,000 |76% |- |5 |Jerusalem District |621,000 |69% |- |6 |Northern District |562,000 |46% |- |7 |Judea and Samaria Area |304,569 |~15–20% |}

{|class="wikitable" |+Significant population centers |- !Rank!!City!!Population(2009)!!% Jews(2008)!!District |- |1 |Jerusalem |773,800 |63.4% |Jerusalem District |- |2 |Tel Aviv |393,900 |91.4% |Tel Aviv District |- |3 |Haifa |265,600 |80.9% |Haifa District |- |4 |Rishon Lezion |227,600 |93.9% |Center District |- |5 |Ashdod |211,300 |91.0% |Southern District |- |6 |Petah Tikva |197,800 |92.5% |Center District |- |7 |Netanya |181,200 |93.4% |Center District |- |8 |Beer Sheva |187,900 |87.9% |Southern District |- |9 |Holon |172,400 |92.8% |Tel Aviv District |- |10 |Bnei Brak |155,600 |98.6% |Tel Aviv District |- |11 |Ramat Gan |135,300 |95.2% |Tel Aviv District |- |12 |Bat Yam |128,900 |84.9% |Tel Aviv District |- |13 |Rehovot |109,500 |94.8% |Center District |- |14 |Ashkelon |111,700 |88.4% |Southern District |- |15 |Herzliya |85,300 |96.3% |Tel Aviv District |}

For statistical purposes, there are three main metropolitan areas in Israel. The majority of the Jewish population in Israel is located in the central area of Israel within the Metropolitan area of Tel Aviv. The Metropolitan area of Tel Aviv is currently the largest Jewish population center in the world.

{|class="wikitable" |+Israeli Jewish population per metropolitan area |- ! style="background:#efefef;"|Rank ! style="background:#efefef;"|Metropolitan Area ! style="background:#efefef;"|Total Population(2009) ! style="background:#efefef;"|Jewish Population(2009) ! style="background:#efefef;"|% Jews(2009) |- |1||Metropolitan area of Tel Aviv||3,206,400||3,043,500||94.9% |- |2||Metropolitan area of Haifa||1,021,000|| 719,500||70.5% |- |3||Metropolitan area of Beersheba||559,700||356,000||63.6% |}

Some argue that Jerusalem, Israel's largest city with a population of 732,100, and an urban area with a population of over 1,000,000 (Including 280,000 Arab East Jerusalemites who are not Israeli citizens), with over 700,000 Israeli Jews and Nazareth with a population of 65,500, and an urban area of nearly 200,00 people of which over 110,000 are Israeli Jews should also be classified as metropolitan areas.

Jewish ethnic divisions in Israel

By the time the State of Israel was proclaimed, the majority of Jews in the state and the region were Ashkenazi. Following the declaration of the state, a flood of Jewish migrants and refugees entered Israel—both from Europe and America and also from the Arab world and the Muslim world. Most of the Jewish immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s were Jewish Holocaust survivors, as well as Sephardic Jews and Mizrahi Jews (mostly Jews from the Maghreb, Yemenite Jews, Bukharan Jews, Persian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Kurdish Jews, and smaller communities, principally from Libya, Egypt, India and Turkey). In recent decades other Jewish communities have also immigrated to Israel including Ethiopian Jews, Russian Jews and Bnei Menashe.

Israeli Ashkenazi Jews

Today, Ashkenazi Jews (whom originate from Europe and the United States) constitute the largest single ethnic group amongst Israeli Jews and consist of about 3,000,000 people living in Israel. About 1,100,000 of them are descended from or are immigrants from the former Soviet Union who came to Israel after the fall of the Former Soviet Union 1991 (about 300,000 of them are not considered to be Jewish under halakha). Most of the other 1,800,000 are descended from the first Zionist settlers in the land of Israel, and Holocaust survivors with an additional 200,000 having immigrated or descended from immigrants from English speaking countries, South Africa, and South America since the founding of the state. They have played a prominent role in the economy, media, and politics of Israel since its founding, and tend to be the most affluent ethnic group in Israel.

Over time in Israel, most Jews from Europe came to be called "Ashkenazi" in Israel, whether or not they had any connection with Germany. A major factor that contributed to this was their relative similar cultural orientation (e.g., the Yiddish language and their common religious authority), especially by comparison to the diversity of the many smaller Jewish communities.

During the first decades of Israel as a state, strong cultural conflict was going on between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews (mainly east European Ashkenazim). The roots of this conflict, which still exists to a much smaller extent in present day Israeli society, stems from the many cultural differences between the various Jewish communities; this happened despite of the government's encouragement of the "melting pot". That is to say, all Jewish immigrants in Israel were strongly encouraged to "melt down" their own particular exile identities within the general social "pot" in order to become Israeli.

The current most prominent countries of origin of the Israeli Ashkenazi Jews are as follows:

{| |- |

Former Soviet Union and Russia

Poland

Ukraine

Romania

North/South America

Germany/Austria

|

Latin America

Hungary

Czechoslovakia

South Africa

|}

Israeli Mizrahi Jews and Sephardic Jews

Together, the Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish populations in Israel; consist of about 2,700,000 people (as of 2009), with hundreds of thousands more having mixed Ashkenazi heritage due to Jewish cross-cultural intermarriage. Over time in Israel, all Jews from Africa and Asia have come to be called "Sephardi", whether or not they had any connection with Spain. One reason is that most African and Asian Jewish communities use the Sephardic prayer ritual and abide by the rulings of Sephardic rabbinic authorities, and therefore consider themselves to be "Sephardim" in the broader sense of "Jews of the Spanish rite", though not in the narrower sense of "Spanish Jews". Of late, the term Mizrahi has come to be associated with all Jews in Israel with backgrounds in Islamic lands.

Cultural and/or "racial" biases against the newcomers were compounded by the fledgling state's lack of financial resources and inadequate housing to handle the massive population influx. Thus, hundreds of thousands of new Sephardic immigrants were sent to live in tent cities in outlying areas. Sephardim (in its wider meaning) were often victims of discrimination, and were sometimes called schwartze (meaning "black" in Yiddish).

Some believe that even worse than the housing discrimination was the differential treatment accorded the children of these immigrants, many of whom were tracked by the largely European education establishment into dead-end "vocational" high schools, without any real assessment of their intellectual capacities. Mizrahi Jews protested their unfair treatment, and even established the Israeli Black Panthers movement with the mission of working for social justice.

The effects of this early discrimination still linger a half-century later, as documented by the studies of the Adva Center, a think tank on social equality, and by other Israeli academic research (cf., for example, Tel Aviv University Professor Yehuda Shenhav's article in Hebrew documenting the gross underrepresentation of Sephardic Jewry in Israeli high school history textbooks.) Most of Israeli prime ministers has been Ashkenazi, although Sephardim and Mizrahim have attained high positions including ministerial positions, chief of staffs and presidency. The student bodies of Israel's universities remain overwhelmingly European in origin, despite the fact that roughly half the country's population is non-European. And the tent cities of the 1950s morphed into so-called "development towns". Scattered over border areas of the Negev Desert and the Galilee, far from the bright lights of Israel's major cities, most of these towns never had the critical mass or ingredients to succeed as places to live, and they continue to suffer from high unemployment, inferior schools, and chronic brain drain.

While the Israeli Black Panthers no longer exist, the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition and many other NGOs carry on the struggle for equal access and opportunity in housing, education, and employment for the country's underprivileged populace—still largely composed of Sephardim and Mizrahim, joined now by newer immigrants from Ethiopia and the Caucasus Mountains.

Today over 2,500,000 Mizrahi Jews, and Sephardic Jews live in Israel with the majority of them being descendants of the 680,000 Jews who fled Arab Lands Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands (<2,500,000), due to expulsions, and antisemitism, with smaller numbers having immigrated from the Islamic Republics of the Former Soviet Union (c.250,000), India (70,000), Iran (200,000–250,000), Turkey (80,000). Before the immigration of over 1,000,000 Russian mainly Ashkenazi Jews to Israel after to collapse of the Soviet Union, 70% of Israeli Jews were Sephardic or Mizrahi Jews.

The current most prominent countries of origin of these ethnic divisions are as follows:

{| |- |

Morocco

Iraq

Yemen

Iran

Algeria/Tunisia

Azerbaijan/Armenia/Georgia/Southern Russia

Bulgaria/Greece

Turkey

|

Libya

Egypt

Central Asia

Syria

Lebanon

India/Pakistan

Latin America

|}

Israeli Beta Israel Jews

Nearly all of the Ethiopian Beta Israel community in Israel today comprises more than 121,000 people. Most of this population are the descendants and the immigrants whom immigrated to Israel during two massive waves of immigration mounted by the Israeli government—"Operation Moses" (1984) and during "Operation Solomon" (1991). Civil war and famine in Ethiopia prompted the Israeli government to mount these dramatic rescue operations. The rescues were within the context of Israel's national mission to gather Diaspora Jews and bring them to the Jewish homeland. Some immigration has continued up until the present day. Today 81,000 Ethiopian Israelis were born in Ethiopia, while 38,500 or 32% of the community are native born Israelis.

Over time, the Ethiopian Jews in Israel moved out of the government-owned mobile home camps that they initially lived in and settled mainly in the various cities and towns throughout Israel, mainly with the encouragement of the Israeli authorities whom granted the new immigrants generous government loans or low-interest mortgages.

Similarly to other groups of immigrant Jews who made aliyah to Israel, the Ethiopian Jews have faced obstacles in their integration to Israeli society. Initially the main challenges of the Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel were due in part to communication difficulties (most of the population could not read nor write in Hebrew, and much of the veteran population could not hold a simple conversation in the Hebrew language), discrimination in certain areas of the Israeli society, manifestations of racism from some parts of the Israeli society. Unlike Russian immigrants, many of whom arrive with job skills, Ethiopians came from a subsistence economy and were ill-prepared to work in an industrialized society.

Over the years there has been significant progress in the integration of this population group in the Israeli society, primarily due to the fact that most of the young Ethiopian population enlists to the mandatory Israel military service, where most Ethiopian Jews have been able to increase their chances for better opportunities.

Other groups of Israeli Jews

Descendants of mixed-marriages—Intermarriage of all re-gathered Jewish ethnic groups in Israel was initially uncommon, due in part to distances of each group's settlement in Israel, and cultural and/or "racial" biases. In recent generations, however, the barriers were lowered by state-sponsored assimilation of all the Jewish ethnic groups into a common Sabra (native-born Israeli) identity, which facilitated extensive "mixed marriages".

Since the founding of the state of Israel and until today thousands of converts to Judaism world wide have immigrated to Israel. The biggest most prominent groups of converts are:

:* Bnei Menashe—Nearly 1,700 Bnei Menashe converts to Judaism have immigrated to Israel since the early 1990s. The Bnei Menashe group originates from India's North-Eastern border states of Manipur and Mizoram who claim descent from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. They live mainly in West Bank settlements, the southern Israeli town of Nitzan and in the Galilee. The majority of Bnei Menashe are Orthodox Jews. 7,300 members of this group remain in India and are set to make Aliyah by 2012. :* B'nai Moshe—Nearly 1,000 Peruvian Amerindian converts to Judaism have immigrated to Israel since the early 1990s. The majority of these 'Inca Jews' follow Orthodox Judaism and live in Jewish West Bank settlements.

Origin and place of birth

The origin and place of birth of the Israeli Jewish population as of 2009 is as follows:

+ Origin of the Jewish population of Israel
Origin	Population (2009)	Percentages (2009)
Israel	2,089,200	37.5%
	1,939,900	34.8%
Africa	860,800	15.5%
Asia	679,300	12.2%
TOTAL	5,569,200	100%

+ Continent of birth of the Jewish population of Israel
Continent of birth	Population (2009)	Percentages (2009)
	3,937,400	70.7%
	1,126,500	20.2%
Africa	306,600	5.5%
Asia	198,800	3.6%
TOTAL	5,569,200	100%

Notes In Israel there are approximately 300,000 citizens with Jewish ancestry who are not Jewish according to the Jewish law (mostly immigrants from the former USSR). Of this number approximately 10% are Christian and 89% are either Jewish or non-religious. Only a small number of them (c.2,000) convert every year to Judaism, while immigration from FSU adds thousands to their number every year. The total number of conversions under the Nativ program of IDF was 640 in 2005 and 450 in 2006. From 2002 to 2007 October 1, a total of 2,213 soldiers have converted under Nativ. In 2003, 437 Christians converted to Judaism, in 2004 – 884, and in 2005 – 733. Recently several thousand conversions conducted by the Chief Rabbinate under the leadership of Rabbi Chaim Drukman have been annulled, and the official Jewish status over several thousand people who converted through the conversion court of the Chief Rabbinate since 1999 hangs in limbo as the proceedings continue regarding these individuals Jewish status. The vast majority of these individuals are former FSU immigrants.

In his book from 2001 "The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Culture and Military in Israel", the Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling identified and divided the modern Israeli society into seven population groups (seven subcultures): The secular upper-middle class group, the national religious group, the traditionalist Mizrahim group, the Orthodox religious group, the Arab citizens of Israel, the Russian immigrants group and the Ethiopian immigrants group. According to Kimmerling, each of these population groups have distinctive characteristics, such as place of resident, consumption patterns, education systems, communications media and more.

Assimilation and population changes

Even though the assimilation rate among the Israeli Jewish community has always been low. The propriety and degree of assimilation of Israeli Jews and Jews world wide has always been a significant and controversial issue within the modern Israeli Jewish community, with both political and religious skeptics.

While not all Jews disapprove of intermarriage, many members of the Israeli Jewish community have expressed their concern that a high rate of interfaith marriages will result in the eventual disappearance of the Israeli Jewish community.

In contrast to the current low birth rates of Israeli Jews and the relative low trends of assimilation, some communities within Israeli Jewry, such as Orthodox Jews, have significantly higher birth rates and lower intermarriage rates, and are growing rapidly.

Israeli Jewish diaspora

Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 the term "Yerida" has been used to mark the emigration of Jews from Israel, whether in groups (small or large) or individually.

Through the years, the majority of Israeli Jews who emigrated from Israel went to the United States and Canada.

For many years definitive data on Israeli emigration was unavailable. In The Israeli Diaspora sociologist Stephen J. Gold maintains that calculation of Jewish emigration has been a contentious issue, explaining, "Since Zionism, the philosophy that underlies the existence of the Jewish state, calls for return home of the world's Jews, the opposite movement—Israelis leaving the Jewish state to reside elsewhere—clearly presents an ideological and demographic problem."

Among the most common reasons for emigration of Israeli Jews from Israel are most often due to economic constraints, economic characteristics (U.S. and Canada have always been richer nations than Israel), disappointment of the Israeli government, Israel's ongoing security Issues, as well as the excessive role of religion in the lives of Israelis.

In recent decades, considerable numbers of Israeli Jews have moved abroad. Reasons for emigration vary, but generally relate to a combination of economic and political concerns. From 1990 to 2005, 230,000 Israelis left the country; a large proportion of these departures included people who initially immigrated to Israel and then reversed their course (48% of all post-1990 departures and even 60% of 2003 and 2004 departures were former immigrants to Israel). 8% of Jewish immigrants in the post-1990 period left Israel. In 2005 alone, 21,500 Israelis left the country and had not yet returned at the end of 2006; among them 73% were Jews. At the same time, 10,500 Israelis came back to Israel after over one year abroad; 84% of them were Jews.

In addition, The Israeli Jewish diaspora group consists also of many Jews worldwide, especially the ones whom originate from western countries, whom have gained Israeli citizenships during their life under the Israeli Law of Return (under which they are immediately entitled to an Israeli citizenship) whom lived a short period of time in Israel and eventually choose to return to their country of origin and keep their dual citizenship.

United States of America

Many Israeli Jews emigrated to the United States throughout the period of the declaration of the state of Israel and until today. Today, the descendants of these people are known as Israeli-Americans. It is estimated that as many as 250,000 Jewish Israelis live in the United States nowadays.

Canada

Many Israeli Jews emigrated to the Canada throughout the period of the declaration of the state of Israel and until today. Today, the descendants of these people are known as Israeli-Canadians. It is estimated that as many as 30,000 Jewish Israelis live in the Canada nowadays.

United Kingdom

Many Israeli Jews emigrated to the United Kingdom throughout the period of the declaration of the state of Israel and until today. Today, the descendants of these people are known as Israeli-British. It is estimated that as many as 30,000 Jewish Israelis live in the United Kingdom nowadays.

The majority of the Israeli Jews in the UK live in London and in particular in the heavily populated Jewish area of Golders Green.

Perceived Arab demographic threat

In the northern part of Israel the percentage of Jewish population is declining. The increasing population of Arabs within Israel, and the majority status they hold in two major geographic regions — the Galilee and the Triangle — has become a growing point of open political contention in recent years.

The phrase demographic threat (or demographic bomb) is used within the Israeli political sphere to describe the growth of Israel's Arab citizenry as constituting a threat to its maintenance of its status as a Jewish state with a Jewish demographic majority.

Israeli historian Benny Morris states:

The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then. If we are attacked by Egypt (after an Islamist revolution in Cairo) and by Syria, and chemical and biological missiles slam into our cities, and at the same time Israeli Palestinians attack us from behind, I can see an expulsion situation. It could happen. If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified[...]

The term "demographic bomb" was famously used by Benjamin Netanyahu in 2003 when he noted that if the percentage of Arab citizens rises above its current level of about 20 percent, Israel will not be able to maintain a Jewish demographic majority. Netanyahu's comments were criticized as racist by Arab Knesset members and a range of civil rights and human rights organizations, such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. Even earlier allusions to the "demographic threat" can be found in an internal Israeli government document drafted in 1976 known as the Koenig Memorandum, which laid out a plan for reducing the number and influence of Arab citizens of Israel in the Galilee region.

In 2003, the Israeli daily Ma'ariv published an article entitled, "Special Report: Polygamy is a Security Threat," detailing a report put forth by the Director of the Population Administration at the time, Herzl Gedj; the report described polygamy in the Bedouin sector a "security threat" and advocated means of reducing the birth rate in the Arab sector. The Population Administration is a department of the Demographic Council, whose purpose, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics is: "...to increase the Jewish birthrate by encouraging women to have more children using government grants, housing benefits, and other incentives." In 2008 the Minister of the Interior appointed Yaakov Ganot as new head of the Population Administration, which according to Haaretz is "probably the most important appointment an interior minister can make."

The rapid population growth with the Haredi sector might affect, according to some Israeli researchers, the preservation of a Jewish majority in the state of Israel.

Jewish Israeli culture

Religion

Jewishness is widely considered by Israeli Jews both an ethnic identity as well as a religious one (See Ethnoreligious group).

Religious beliefs

Roughly 8% of Israeli Jews defined as haredim (ultra-orthodox religious); an additional 13% are "religious"; 25% consider themselves "traditionalists" (not adhering strictly to Jewish Halakha); and 42% are "secular" (termed "hiloni"). Among the seculars, 53% believe in God. However, 78% of all Israelis (virtually all Israeli Jews) participate in a Passover seder, and 63% fast on Yom Kippur.

Observances and engagement

Jewish religious practice in Israel is quite varied. Among the 4.3 million American Jews described as "strongly connected" to Judaism, over 80% report some sort of active engagement with Judaism, ranging from attendance at daily prayer services on one end of the spectrum to as little as attendance Passover Seders or lighting Hanukkah candles on the other.

Unlike North American Jews, Israeli Jews tend not to align themselves with a movement of Judaism (such as Reform Judaism or Conservative Judaism) but instead tend to define their religious affiliation by degree of their religious practice.

Education

The Israeli government regulates and finances most of the schools operating in the country, including the majority of those run by private organizations. The national school system has two major branches—a Hebrew-speaking branch and an Arabic-speaking branch. The curricula for the two systems are almost identical in mathematics, sciences, and English. It is different in humanities (history, literature, etc.). While Hebrew is taught as a second language in Arab schools since the third grade and obligatory for Arabic-speaking school's matriculation exams, only basic knowledge of Arabic is taught in Hebrew-speaking schools, usually from the 7th to the 9th grade. Arabic is not obligatory for Hebrew speaking school's matriculation exams.

Language

The movement for the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language was particularly popular among new Jewish Zionist immigrants who came to Palestine since the 1880s. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (born in the Russian Empire) and his followers created the first Hebrew-speaking schools, newspapers, and other Hebrew-language institutions. After his immigration to Israel, and due to the impetus of the Second Aliyah (1905–1914), Hebrew prevailed as the single official and spoken language of the Jewish community of mandatory Palestine. When the State of Israel was formed in 1948, the government viewed Hebrew as the de facto official language and initiated a melting pot policy, where every immigrant was required to study Hebrew and often to adopt a Hebrew surname. Use of Yiddish, which was the main competitor prior to World War II, was discouraged, and the number of Yiddish speakers declined as the older generations died out, though Yiddish is still commonly used in Ashkenazi haredi communities.

Nowadays, Modern Hebrew is also the primary official language of the modern State of Israel and almost all Israeli Jews nowadays are native Hebrew-speakers and speak Hebrew as their primary language. A variety of other languages are still spoken within some Israeli Jewish communities, communities that are representative of the various Jewish ethnic divisions from around the world that have come together to make up Israel's Jewish population.

Even though the majority of Israeli Jews nowadays are native Hebrew speakers, many Jewish immigrants still continue to speak their former languages—many recent Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union continue to speak primarily Russian at home and many recent Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia continue to speak primarily Amharic at home.

Many of Israel's Hasidic Jews (being exclusively of Ashkenazi descent) are raised speaking Yiddish.

Classical Hebrew is the language of most Jewish religious literature, such as the Tanakh (Bible) and Siddur (prayerbook).

Legal and political status in Israel

Israel was established as a homeland for the Jewish people and is often referred to as the Jewish state. Israel's Declaration of Independence specifically called for the establishment of a Jewish state with equality of social and political rights, irrespective of religion, race, or sex. The notion that Israel should be constituted in the name of and maintain a special relationship with a particular group of people, the Jewish people, has drawn much controversy vis-à-vis minority groups living in Israel—the large number of Muslim and Christian Palestinians residing in Israel. Nevertheless, through the years many Israeli Jewish nationalists have based the legitimacy of Israel being a Jewish state on the Balfour Declaration and ancient historical ties to the land, asserting that both play particular roles as evidence under international law, as well as a fear that a hostile Arab world might be disrespectful of a Jewish minority—alleging a variety of possible harms up to and including genocide—were Israel to become a post-national "state for all its citizens".

Through the years, as Israel's continued existence as a "Jewish State" has relied upon the maintenance of a Jewish demographic majority, Israeli demographers, politicians and bureaucrats have treated Jewish population growth promotion as a central question in their research and policymaking.

Law of Return

The Law of Return is an Israeli legislation that grants all Jews and those of Jewish lineage the right to gain an Israeli citizenship and to settle in Israel. It was enacted by the Knesset, Israel's Parliament, on July 5, 1950, and the related Law of Citizenship in 1952. These two pieces of legislation contain expressions pertaining to religion, history and nationalism, as well as to democracy, in a combination unique to Israel. Together, they grant preferential treatment to Jews returning to their ancestral homeland.

The Law of Return declares that Israel constitutes a home not only for the inhabitants of the State, but also for all members of the Jewish people everywhere, be they living in poverty and fear of persecution or be they living in affluence and safety. The law declares to the Jewish people and to the world that the State of Israel welcomes the Jews of the world to return to their ancient homeland.

Israeli laws governing marriage and divorce of Jews

Currently, all the marriages and divorces in Israel (as well as within the Jewish community) are recognized by the Israeli Interior Ministry only if performed under an official recognized religious authority and only between a man and a woman of the same religion. The Jewish marriage and divorce in Israel are under the jurisdiction of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, which defines a person's Jewish status strictly according to halakha.

Civilian marriages are only officially sanctioned if performed abroad. As a result, it is not uncommon for couples who may for some reason not be able (or chose not) to get married in Israel to travel overseas to get married.

During its time of existence the legal settlement that gives the rabbinical courts the monopoly on conducting the marriages and divorces of the entire Israeli Jewish population has been a source of great criticism from the secular public in Israel, but also to the ardent support from the religious public. The main argument of the supporters of the law is that its cancellation will divide the Jewish people in Israel between the Jews who would marry and divorce each other within the Jewish religious authorities and the Jews who would marry and divorce each other within the civil marriages—which would not be registered or inspected by the religious authorities, and thus their children would be considered illegitimate to marry the children of the couples married within the religious court, from fear of them being considered Mamzer. Opponents of the law see it as a severe offense to the human civil rights made by the state of Israel.

However, common-law marriage is recognized by Israeli law, without restriction of ethnicity, religion or sex (that is, both for inter-sex and same-sex couples, and between a Jew and a non-Jew). Once, the status of common law marriage is proven and obtained, it gives a legal status almost equal to marriage.

Military conscription

National military service is mandatory for any Israeli over the age of 18, with the exception of the Arab Muslim and Christian population (currently estimated at around 20% of the Israeli population) and many ultra-Orthodox Jews (currently estimated at around 8% of the Israeli Jewish population and rising steeply). Druze and Circassian men are liable, by agreement with their community leaders. Members of the exempted groups can still volunteer, but very few do, except for the Bedouin where a relatively large number of men have tended to volunteer. The Israeli Jewish population and especially the secular Israeli Jewish population, is currently the only population group in Israel that has a mandatory military conscription for both men and women – a fact that has caused much resentment from within the Jewish community towards the non-serving population, some of which are demanding that all the Israeli citizens share an equal amount of responsibilities, whether in the Israeli army or as part of Sherut Leumi.

In addition, in the recent decade a growing minority from within the Israeli Jewish conscripts have denounced the mandatory enrollment, and refused to serve (see also Refusal to serve in the Israeli military), many claiming that due to financial insecurities they feel that they need to be spending their time more productively pursuing their chosen studies or career paths. Some individual resentment may also be compounded by the typically low wages paid to conscripts – the current Israeli policies see National Service as a duty rendered to the country and its citizens, and therefore the Israeli army does not pay any wages to conscripts, but instead grants a low monthly allowance to the full-time national service personnel, depending on the type of their duty.

Jewish National Fund

The Jewish National Fund is a private organization established in 1901 to buy and develop land in the Land of Israel for Jewish settlement; land purchases were funded by donations from world Jewry exclusively for that purpose. The JNF currently owns 13% of the land in Israel, while 79.5% is owned by the government (this land is leased on a non-discriminatory basis) and the rest, around 6.5%, is evenly divided between private Arab and Jewish owners. Thus, the Israel Land Administration (ILA) administers 93.5% of the land in Israel (Government Press Office, Israel, 22 May 1997). A significant portion of JNF lands were originally properties left behind by Palestinian "absentees" and as a result the legitimacy of some JNF land ownership has been a matter of dispute. The JNF purchased these lands from the State of Israel between 1949 and 1953, after the state took control of them according to the Absentee Properties Law. While the JNF charter specifies the land is for the use of the Jewish People, land has been leased to Bedouin herders. Nevertheless, JNF land policy has been criticized as discrimination. When the Israel Land Administration leased JNF land to Arabs, it took control of the land in question and compensated the JNF with an equivalent amount of land in areas not designated for development (generally in the Galilee and the Negev), thus ensuring that the total amount of land owned by the JNF remains the same. This was a complicated and controversial mechanism, and in 2004 use of it was suspended. After Supreme Court discussions and a directive by the Attorney General instructing the ILA to lease JNF land to Arabs and Jews alike, in September 2007 the JNF suggested reinstating the land-exchange mechanism.

While the JNF and the ILA view an exchange of lands as a long-term solution, opponents say that such maneuvers privatize municipal lands and preserve a situation in which significant lands in Israel are not available for use by all of its citizens. As of 2007, the High Court delayed ruling on JNF policy regarding leasing lands to non-Jews, and changes to the ILA-JNF relationship were up in the air. Adalah and other organizations furthermore express concern that proposed severance of the relation between the ILA and JNF, as suggested by Ami Ayalon, would leave the JNF free to retain the same proportion of lands for Jewish uses as it seeks to settle hundreds of thousands of Jews in areas with a tenuous Jewish demographic majority (in particular, 100,000 Jews in existing Galilee communities and 250,000 Jews in new Negev communities via the Blueprint Negev).

Hebrew language in Israel

The main language used for communication among Israeli citizens and among the Israeli Jews is Modern Hebrew, a language that emerged in the late 19^th century, based on different dialects of ancient Hebrew and influenced by Yiddish, Arabic, Slavic languages, and German.

Hebrew and Arabic are currently official languages of Israel. Government ministries publish all material intended for the public in Hebrew, with selected material translated into Arabic, English, Russian, and other languages spoken in Israel.

The country's laws are published in Hebrew, and eventually English and Arabic translations are published. Publishing the law in Hebrew in the official gazette (Reshumot) is enough to make it valid. Unavailability of an Arabic translation can be regarded as a legal defense only if the defendant proves he could not understand the meaning of the law in any conceivable way. Following appeals to the Israeli Supreme Court, the use of Arabic on street signs and labels increased dramatically. In response to one of the appeals presented by Arab Israeli organizations, the Supreme Court ruled that although second to Hebrew, Arabic is an official language of the State of Israel, and should be used extensively. Today most highway signage is trilingual (Hebrew, Arabic, and English).

Hebrew is the standard language of communication at places of work except inside the Arab community, and among recent immigrants, foreign workers, and with tourists. The state's schools in Arab communities teach in Arabic according to a specially adapted curriculum. This curriculum includes mandatory lessons of Hebrew as foreign language from the 3rd grade onwards. Arabic is taught in Hebrew-speaking schools, but only the basic level is mandatory.

Jewish national symbols

The Israeli national anthem and the Israeli flag have exclusively Jewish themes and symbols:

The Israeli National Anthem (Hatikvah), which was written in 1878 by the secular Galician Jew Naphtali Herz Imber revolves around the nearly 2000-year-old hope of the Jewish people to be a free and sovereign people in the Land of Israel.

The Israeli flag, which was designed for the Zionist Movement in 1891 features a basic design resembling the Tallit (a Jewish prayer shawl) and features a Star of David, generally acknowledged as a symbol of Judaism.

Critics of Israel as a Jewish nation state have suggested that it should adopt more inclusive and neutral symbolism for the national flag and anthem arguing that they exclude the non-Jewish citizens of Israel from their narrative of a national identity. Defenders of the flag say that many flags in Europe bear crosses (such as the flags of Sweden, Finland, Norway, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Greece), while flags in predominantly Muslim countries bear distinctive Muslim symbols (such as Turkey, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania, and Saudi Arabia).

Through the years some Israeli-Arab politicians have requested a reevaluation of the Israeli flag and Israeli national anthem, arguing that they cannot represent all citizens of Israel, including the Arab citizens of Israel. Although the proposals to change the flag have never been discussed in the state institutions, they do occasionally get to a public discussion, as part of the discussion on whether Israel is, as defined by the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty a "A Jewish and Democratic State", or, or if it must become, as demanded by certain circles, "a state of all its citizens". The demand to change the flag is seen among many Israelis as a threat to the very essence of the state. In relation to this, in 2001 the Israeli Minister of Education Limor Livnat ordered the enforcement of the flag amendment she initiated, and ordered a raising the flag in the front of all schools in Israel, even those serving the Arab population.

Intercommunal relations

The Israeli Jews victims of Palestinian terrorism

As part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, over the years, the Palestinian terror organization have carried out thousands of terrorist attacks directed against the Israeli civilian population aimed primarily at the Israeli Jewish population. The terror attacks have led to the deaths of thousands of innocent Israeli Jewish civilians.

Public attitudes

There are significant tensions between Arab citizens and their Jewish counterparts. As with all such surveys, polls differ considerably in their findings regarding intercommunal relations.

On April 29, 2007 Haaretz reported that an Israeli Democracy Institute (IDI) poll of 507 people showed that 75% of "Israeli Arabs would support a constitution that maintained Israel's status as a Jewish and democratic state while guaranteeing equal rights for minorities, while 23% said they would oppose such a definition."

In contrast, a 2006 poll commissioned by the Arab advocacy group, The Center Against Racism, showed unexpectedly negative attitudes towards Arabs, based on questions asked to 500 Jewish residents of Israel representing all levels of Jewish society. The poll found that: 63% of Jews believe Arabs are a security threat; 68% of Jews would refuse to live in the same building as an Arab; 34% of Jews believe that Arab culture is inferior to Israeli culture. Additionally, support for segregation between Jewish and Arab citizens was found to be higher among Jews of Middle Eastern origin than those of European origin. A more recent poll by the Center Against Racism (2008) found a worsening of Jewish citizens' perceptions of their Arab counterparts:

75% would not agree to live in a building with Arab residents.

More than 60% wouldn't accept any Arab visitors at their homes.

About 40% believed that Arabs should be stripped of the right to vote.

More than 50% agree that the State should encourage emigration of Arab citizens to other countries

More than 59% think that the culture of Arabs is a primitive culture.

When asked "What do you feel when you hear people speaking Arabic?" 31% said they feel hate and 50% said they feel fear, with only 19% stating positive or neutral feelings.

A 2007 poll conducted by Sami Smooha, a sociologist at Haifa University, found that:

63.3% of Jewish citizens of Israel said they avoid entering Arab towns and cities

68.4% of Jewish citizens of Israel fear the possibility of widespread civil unrest among Arab citizens of Israel

49.7% of Arab citizens of Israel said Hezbollah's capture of IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in a cross-border raid was justified

18.7% of Arab citizens of Israel thought Israel was justified in going to war following the kidnapping

48.2% of Arab citizens of Israel said they believed that Hezbollah's rocket attacks on northern Israel during that war were justified

89.1% of Arab citizens of Israel said they viewed the IDF's bombing of Lebanon as a war crime

44% of Arab citizens of Israel said they viewed Hezbollah's bombing of Israel as a war crime

62% of Arab citizens of Israel worry that Israel could transfer their communities to the jurisdiction of a future Palestinian state

60% of Arab citizens of Israel said they are concerned about a possible mass expulsion

76% of Arab citizens of Israel described Zionism as racist

67.5% of Arab citizens of Israel said they would be content to live in the Jewish state, if it existed alongside a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip

40.5% of Arab citizens of Israel deny the Holocaust; among high school and college graduates the figure was 33%

Surveys in 2009 found a radicalization in the positions of Israeli Arabs towards the State of Israel, with 41% of Israeli Arabs recognizing Israel's right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state (down from 65.6% in 2003), and 53.7% believing Israel has a right to exist as an independent country (down from 81.1% in 2003). Polls also showed that 40% of Arab citizens engaged in Holocaust denial.

A 2010 Arab Jewish Relations Survey, compiled by Prof. Sami Smoocha in collaboration with the Jewish-Arab Center at the University of Haifa shows that:

71% of Arab citizens of Israel said they blamed Jews for the hardships suffered by Palestinians during and after the “Nakba” in 1948.

37.8% of Arab citizens of Israel denied the Holocaust.

11.5% of Arab citizens of Israel support the use of violence against Jews to advance Arab causes (up from 6% in 1995).

66.4% of Arab citizens of Israel say they reject Israel as a Jewish and Zionist state.

29.5% of Arab citizens of Israel opposed Israels existence under any terms.

62.5% of Arab citizens of Israel saw the Jews as "foreign settlers who do not fit into the region and will eventually leave, when the land will return to the Palestinians."

A 2010 poll from the Arab World for Research and Development found that:

91% of Arabs citizens of Israel said their national historic homeland stretches from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea.

94% of Arab citizens of Israel believe Palestinian refugees and their decedents should have the right of return and be compensated, in essence destroying the Jewish state.

A range of politicians, rabbis, journalists, and historians commonly refer to the 20–25% minority of Arabs in Israel as being a "fifth column" inside the state of Israel.

See also

Israelis

List of Israeli Jews

Israel

History of the Jews in the Land of Israel

Arab citizens of Israel

References

External links

Kehilot | Secular & Religious Jewish Communities of Israel

Category:Article Feedback Pilot Category:Israeli society

es:Judíos de Israel fr:Juifs israéliens he:יהדות ישראל no:Israelske jøder ru:Евреи в Израиле

The Jews ( ISO 259-3 Yhudim Israeli pronunciation ), also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation. Converts to Judaism, whose status as Jews within the Jewish ethnos is equal to those born into it, have been absorbed into the Jewish people throughout the millennia.

In Jewish tradition, Jewish ancestry is traced to the Biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the second millennium BCE. The modern State of Israel defines itself as a Jewish state in its Basic Laws, and is the only country where Jews are a majority of the population. Jews also experienced political autonomy twice during ancient history. The first of the two ancient eras spanned from 1350 to 586 BCE, and encompassed the periods of the Judges, the United Monarchy, and the Divided Monarchy of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, ending with the destruction of the First Temple. The second era was the period of the Hasmonean Kingdom spanning from 140 to 37 BCE. Since the destruction of the First Temple, the diaspora has been the home of most of the world's Jews. Except in Israel, Jews are a minority in every country in which they live, and they have frequently experienced persecution throughout history, resulting in a population that fluctuated both in numbers and distribution over the centuries.

, the world Jewish population was estimated at 13.42 million by the North American Jewish Data Bank, or roughly 0.2% of the total world population. According to this report, about 42% of all Jews reside in Israel (5.70 million), and about 42% in the United States (5.28 million) and Canada (0.38 million), with most of the remainder living in Europe (1.46 million). These numbers include all those who consider themselves Jews, whether or not they are affiliated with a Jewish organization. The total world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure. In addition to issues with census methodology, there are halakhic disputes regarding who is a Jew and secular, political, and ancestral identification factors that may affect the figure considerably.

Name and etymology

The English word Jew continues Middle English , a loan from Old French , earlier , ultimately from Latin . The Latin simply means Judaean, "from the land of Judaea". The Latin term itself, like the corresponding Greek , is a loan from Aramaic , corresponding to , Yehudi (sg.); , Yehudim (pl.), in origin the term for a member of the tribe of Judah or the people of the kingdom of Judah. The name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob.

The Hebrew word for Jew, ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced , with the stress on the final syllable, in Israeli Hebrew, in its basic form.

The Ladino name is , Djudio (sg.); , Djudios (pl.); : Yid (sg.)}}; , Yidn (pl.).

The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., "Yahoud"/"Yahoudi" () in Arabic language "Jude" in German, "juif" in French, "jøde" in Danish, "judío" in Spanish, etc., but derivations of the word "Hebrew" are also in use to describe a Jew, e.g., in Italian (Ebreo), in Persian language ("Ebri/Ebrani" ()) and Russian (Еврей, Yevrey). The German word "Jude" is pronounced , and is the origin of the word Yiddish. (See Jewish ethnonyms for a full overview.)

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.

Origins

According to their tradition, the Jewish people originated from the Israelites of the Southern Levant, who had several independent states before being overtaken first by the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and later the Roman Empire, with a large portion of the population being scattered throughout the world. According to the Hebrew Bible, all Israelites were descended from Abraham, who was born in the Sumerian city of Ur, and migrated to Canaan (commonly known as the Land of Israel) with his family. Genetic studies on Jews show that most Jews worldwide do indeed bear a common genetic heritage which originates in the Middle East, and that they bear their strongest resemblance to the peoples of the Fertile Crescent, with only minor contribution from their host populations (historically due to the taboo on intermarriage in Jewish tradition, the low number of converts to Judaism, as well as the general isolations and persecutions of Jews throughout history). According to some Biblical archaeologists, however, Israelite culture did not overtake the region, but rather grew out of Canaanite culture.

Judaism

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 identity rather difficult. Throughout history, in eras and places as diverse as the ancient Hellenic world, in Europe before and after The Age of Enlightenment (see Haskalah), in Islamic Spain and Portugal, in North Africa and the Middle East, India, and China, or the 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 or specific communities of Jews with their surroundings, 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 Jewish cultures unique to their own communities, each as authentically Jewish as the next.

Who is a Jew?

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. Generally, in modern secular usage, Jews include three groups: people who were born to a Jewish family regardless of whether or not they follow the religion; those who have some Jewish ancestral background or lineage (sometimes including those who do not have strictly matrilineal descent); and people without any Jewish ancestral background or lineage who have formally converted to Judaism and therefore are followers of the religion.

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

At times, conversion has accounted for a substantial part of Jewish population growth. In the first century of the Christian era, for example, the population more than doubled, from four to 8–10 million within the confines of the Roman Empire, in good part as a result of a wave of conversion.

Ethnic divisions

Within the world's Jewish population there are distinct ethnic divisions, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, and subsequent independent evolutions. An array of Jewish communities were established by Jewish settlers in various places around the Old World, often at great distances from one another resulting in effective and often long-term isolation from each other. During the millennia of the Jewish diaspora the communities would develop under the influence of their local environments; political, cultural, natural, and populational. Today, manifestation of these differences among the Jews can be observed in Jewish cultural expressions of each community, including Jewish linguistic diversity, culinary preferences, liturgical practices, religious interpretations, as well as degrees and sources of genetic admixture.

Jews are often identified as belonging to one of two major groups: the Ashkenazim, or "Germanics" (Ashkenaz meaning "Germany" in Medieval Hebrew, denoting their Central European base), and the Sephardim, or "Hispanics" (Sefarad meaning "Spain/Hispania" or "Iberia" in Hebrew, denoting their Spanish, and Portuguese, base). The Mizrahim, or "Easterners" (Mizrach being "East" in Hebrew), that is, the diverse collection of Middle Eastern and North African Jews, constitute a third major group, although they are sometimes termed Sephardi for liturgical reasons.

Smaller groups include, but are not restricted to, Indian Jews such as the Bene Israel, Bnei Menashe, Cochin Jews, and Bene Ephraim; the Romaniotes of Greece; the Italian Jews ("Italkim" or "Bené Roma"); the Teimanim from Yemen and Oman; 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 North African, Central Asian, Caucasian, and Middle Eastern Jewish communities that are often as unrelated to each other as 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 Iraqi Jews, Egyptian Jews, Berber Jews, Lebanese Jews, Kurdish Jews, Libyan Jews, Syrian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, and various others. The Teimanim from Yemen and Oman 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.

Despite this diversity, Ashkenazi Jews represent the bulk of modern Jewry, with at least 70% of Jews worldwide (and up to 90% 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, emigration of Jews from North Africa 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.

Jewish languages

Hebrew is the liturgical language of Judaism (termed l'shon ha-kodesh, "the holy tongue"), the language in which the Hebrew scriptures (Tanakh) were composed, and the daily speech of the Jewish people for centuries. By the 5th century BCE, Aramaic, a closely related tongue, joined Hebrew as the spoken language in Judea. By the third century BCE, Jews of the diaspora were speaking Greek.

For centuries, Jews worldwide have spoken the local or dominant languages of the regions they migrated to, often developing distinctive dialectal forms or branches that became independent languages. Yiddish is the Judæo-German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Central Europe. Ladino is the Judæo-Spanish language developed by Sephardic 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 lands, and widespread emigration from other Jewish communities around the world, ancient and distinct Jewish languages of several communities, including Gruzinic, Judæo-Arabic, Judæo-Berber, Krymchak, Judæo-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 Sabbath. 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 Tannaic times. Modern Hebrew is now one of the two official languages of the State of Israel along with Arabic.

The three most commonly spoken languages among Jews today are Hebrew, English and Russian. Some Romance languages, such as French and Spanish, are also widely used.

Yiddish has been spoken by more Jews in history than any other language, but it is far less used today, after the Holocaust and the adoption of Hebrew by the Zionist movement, then Israel.

Genetic studies

Genetic studies indicate various lineages found in modern Jewish populations; however, most of these populations share a lineage in common, traceable to an ancient population that underwent geographic branching and subsequent independent evolutions. While DNA tests have demonstrated inter-marriage in all of the various Jewish ethnic divisions over the last 3,000 years, it was substantially less than in other populations. The findings lend support to traditional Jewish accounts accrediting their founding to exiled Israelite populations, and counters theories that many or most of the world's Jewish populations were founded entirely by local populations that adopted the Jewish religion, devoid of any actual Israelite genetic input.

DNA analysis further determined that modern Jews of the priesthood tribe—"Kohanim"—share an ancestor dating back about 3,000 years. This result is consistent for all Jewish populations around the world. The researchers estimated that the most recent common ancestor of modern Kohanim lived between 1000 BCE (roughly the time of the Biblical Exodus) and 586 BCE, when the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple. They found similar results analyzing DNA from Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews. The scientists estimated the date of the original priest based on genetic mutations, which indicated that the priest lived roughly 106 generations ago, between 2,650 and 3,180 years ago depending whether one counts a generation as 25 or 30 years. These Jews belong to the haplotypes J1e and J2a. However, more recent research has shown that many ethnic groups in the Middle East and Mediterranean area also share this genetic profile.

Although individual and groups of converts to Judaism have historically been absorbed into contemporary Jewish populations, it is unlikely that they formed a large percentage of the ancestors of modern Jewish groups, and much less that they represented their genesis as Jewish communities.

Biologist Robert Pollack stated in 2003 that one cannot determine the biological "Jewishness" of an individual because "there are no DNA sequences common to all Jews and absent from all non-Jews". A 2009 study was able to genetically identify individuals with full or partial Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.

Male lineages: Y chromosomal DNA

A study published by the National Academy of Sciences found that "the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population", and suggested that "most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora". Researchers expressed surprise at the remarkable genetic uniformity they found among modern Jews, no matter where the diaspora has become dispersed around the world.

Other Y-chromosome findings show that the world's Jewish communities are closely related to Kurds, Syrians and Palestinians. Skorecki and colleague wrote that "the extremely close affinity of Jewish and non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations observed ... supports the hypothesis of a common Middle Eastern origin". According to another study of the same year, more than 70% of Jewish men and half of the Arab men (inhabitants of Israel and the territories only) whose DNA was studied inherited their Y-chromosomes from the same paternal ancestors who lived in the region within the last few thousand years. The results are consistent with the Biblical account of Jews and Arabs having a common ancestor. About two-thirds of Israeli Arabs and Arabs in the territories and a similar proportion of Israeli Jews are the descendants of at least three common ancestors who lived in the Middle East in the Neolithic period. However, the Palestinian Arab clade includes two Arab modal haplotypes which are found at only very low frequency among Jews, reflecting divergence and/or large scale admixture from non-local populations to the Palestinians.

A study of haplotypes of the Y-chromosome, published in 2000, addressed the paternal origins of Ashkenazi Jews. Hammer et al. found that the Y chromosome of some Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews contained mutations that are also common among Middle Eastern peoples, but uncommon in the general European population. This suggested that the male ancestors of the Ashkenazi Jews could be traced mostly to the Middle East. The proportion of male genetic admixture in Ashkenazi Jews amounts to less than 0.5% per generation over an estimated 80 generations, with "relatively minor contribution of European Y chromosomes to the Ashkenazim," and a total admixture estimate "very similar to Motulsky's average estimate of 12.5%." This supported the finding that "Diaspora Jews from Europe, Northwest Africa, and the Near East resemble each other more closely than they resemble their non-Jewish neighbors." However, when all haplotypes were included in the analysis, m (the admixture percentage) increased to 23% ± 7%. In addition, of the Jewish populations in this cluster, the Ashkenazim were closest to South European populations, specifically the Greeks.

In Jewish populations, Haplogroup J1 (defined by the 267 marker) constitutes 30% of the Yemenite Jews 20.0% of the Ashkenazim results and 12% of the Sephardic results. However, J1 is most frequent in Yemen (76%), Saudi (64%) Qatar (58%). J1 is generally frequent amongst Negev Bedouins (62%). It is also very common among other Arabs such as those of the Levant, i.e. Palestinian (38.4%), Syria (30%), Lebanon (25%). In Europe, higher frequencies have been reported in the central Adriatic regions of Italy: Gargano (17.2%), Pescara (15%), in the Mediterranean Paola (11.1%) and in South Sicilian Ragusa (10.7%). Fairly high frequencies have also been reported in other nearby Mediterranean areas: Crete (8.3%), Malta (7.8%), Cyprus (6.2%), Greece (5.3%).

Haplogroup J2 which is found in the Sephardic Jews (29%) and Ashkenazi Jews (23%), or 19%. is found mainly in the Fertile Crescent, the Caucasus, Anatolia, the Balkans, Italy, the Mediterranean littoral, the Iranian plateau, Central Asia, and South Asia. More specifically, it is found in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Greece, Italy and the eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, and more frequently in Iraqis 29.7%, Lebanese 25%, Palestinians 16.8%, Syrians 22.5%, Kurds 28.4%, Saudi Arabia 15.92%, Jordan 14.3%, Oman 10–15%, UAE 10.4%, Yemen 9.7%, in Israel, in Palestine, and in Turkey.

Female lineages: Mitochondrial DNA

Before 2006, geneticists largely attributed the genesis of most of the world's Jewish populations to founding acts by males who migrated from the Middle East and "by the women from each local population whom they took as wives and converted to Judaism." , though no genetic relation was found between Jewish and non Jewish female lineages. However, more recent findings of studies of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA, at least in Ashkenazi Jews, has led to a review of this archetype. This research has suggested that, in addition to Israelite male, significant female founder ancestry might also derive from the Middle East-with 40% of Ashkenazim descended from four women lived about 1000–1500 years ago in the Middle East. In addition, Behar (2006) suggested that the rest of Ashkenazi mtDNA is originated from about 150 women, most of those were probably of Middle Eastern origin. Approximately 32% of people with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry belong to the mtDNA haplogroup K. This high percentage points to a genetic bottleneck occurring some 100 generations ago.

Research in 2008 found significant founder effects in many non-Asheknazi Jewish populations. In Belmonte, Azerbaijani, Georgian, Bene Israel and Libyan Jewish communities "a single mother was sufficient to explain at least 40% of their present-day mtDNA variation". In addition, "the Cochin and Tunisian Jewish communities show an attenuated pattern with two founding mothers explaining >30% of the variation." In contrast, Bulgarian, Turkish, Moroccan and Ethiopian Jews were heterogeneous with no evidence "for a narrow founder effect or depletion of mtDNA variation attributable to drift". The authors noted that "the first three of these communities were established following the Spanish expulsion and/or received large influxes of individuals from the Iberian Peninsula and high variation presently observed, probably reflects high overall mtDNA diversity among Jews of Spanish descent. Likewise, the mtDNA pool of Ethiopian Jews reflects the rich maternal lineage variety of East Africa." Jewish communities from Iraq, Iran, and Yemen showed a "third and intermediate pattern... consistent with a founding event, but not a narrow one".

In this and other studies Yemenite Jews differ from other Mizrahim, as well as from Ashkenazim, in the proportion of sub-Saharan African gene types which have entered their gene pools. African-specific Hg L(xM,N) lineages were found only in Yemenite and Ethiopian Jewish populations. Among Yemenites, the average stands at 35% lineages within the past 3,000 years.

Genome-wide association and linkage studies

In genetic epidemiology, a genome-wide association study (GWA study, or GWAS) is an examination of all or most of the genes (the genome) of different individuals of a particular species to see how much the genes vary from individual to individual. These techniques were originally designed for epidemiological uses, to identify genetic associations with observable traits.

A 2006 study by Seldin, et al. used over five thousand autosomal SNPs to demonstrate European genetic substructure amongst the Ashkenazi. The results showed "a consistent and reproducible distinction between 'northern' and 'southern' European population groups". Most northern, central, and eastern Europeans (Finns, Swedes, English, Irish, Germans, and Ukrainians) showed >90% in the 'northern' population group, while most individual participants with southern European ancestry (Italians, Greeks, Portuguese, Spaniards) showed >85% in the 'southern' group. Both Ashkenazi Jews as well as Sephardic Jews showed >85% membership in the "southern" group. Referring to the Jews clustering with southern Europeans, the authors state the results were "consistent with a later Mediterranean origin of these ethnic groups".

A 2007 study by Bauchet, et al. found that Ashkenazi Jews were most closely clustered with Arabic North African populations when compared to Global population, and in the European structure analysis, they share similarities only with Greeks and Southern Italians, reflecting their east Mediterranean origins.

A 2010 study on Jewish ancestry by Atzmon-Ostrer et al. stated "Two major groups were identified by principal component, phylogenetic, and identity by descent (IBD) analysis: Middle Eastern Jews and European/Syrian Jews. The IBD segment sharing and the proximity of European Jews to each other and to southern European populations suggested similar origins for European Jewry and refuted large-scale genetic contributions of Central and Eastern European and Slavic populations to the formation of Ashkenazi Jewry.", as both groups - the Middle Eastern Jews and European/Syrian Jews shared common ancestors in the Middle East about 2500 years ago. The study examines genetic markers spread across the entire genome and shows that the Jewish groups (Ashkenazi and non Ashkenazi) share large swaths of DNA, indicating close relationships and that each of the Jewish groups in the study (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek and Ashkenazi) has its own genetic signature but is more closely related to the other Jewish groups than to their non Jewish fellow countrymen. Atzmon's team found that the SNP markers in genetic segments of 3 million DNA letters or longer were 10 times more likely to be identical among Jews than non-Jews. Results of the analysis also tally with biblical accounts of the fate of the Jews. Using their DNA analysis, the authors traced the ancestors of all Jews to Persia and Babylon, areas that now form part of Iran and Iraq. The study also found that with respect to non-Jewish European groups, the population most closely related to Ashkenazi Jews are modern-day Italians. The study speculated that the genetic-similarity between Ashkenazi Jews and Italians may be due to inter-marriage and conversions in the time of the Roman Empire. It was also found that any two Ashkenazi Jewish participants in the study shared about as much DNA as fourth or fifth cousins

A 2010 study by Bray et al, using SNP microarray techniques and linkage analysis, estimated that 35 to 55 percent of the modern Ashkenazi genome is specifically traceable to Europe, and that European "admixture is considerably higher than previous estimates by studies that used the Y chromosome". The study assumed Druze and Palestinian Arabs populations to represent the reference to world Jewry ancestor genome. With this reference point, the linkage disequilibrium in the Ashkenazi Jewish population was interpreted as "matches signs of interbreeding or 'admixture' between Middle Eastern and European populations". In their press release, Bray stated: "We were surprised to find evidence that Ashkenazi Jews have higher heterozygosity than Europeans, contradicting the widely-held presumption that they have been a largely isolated group". Nevertheless, the authors indicated possible Achilles heels for their conclusions. These were, firstly, that their calculations might have "overestimated the level of admixture" in case that the true Jewish ancestor was genetically closer to Southern Europeans than Druze and Palestinian Arabs are and, secondly, predicted that using the non Ashkenazi Jewish Diaspora populations as reference for world Jewry ancestor genome will "underestimate the level of admixture". This would be because they find it reasonable that the non-Ashkenazi Jewish Diaspora has also "undergone the similar admixture".

Demographics

Population centres

There are an estimated 13–14 million Jews worldwide. The table below lists countries with significant 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.

State of 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 May 14, 1948. Of the 120 members in its parliament, the Knesset, currently, 12 members of the Knesset are Arab citizens of Israel, most representing Arab political parties and one of Israel's Supreme Court judges is a Palestinian Arab.

Between 1948 and 1958, the Jewish population rose from 800,000 to two million. Currently, Jews account for 75.8% of the Israeli population, or 5.4 million people. The early years of the state of Israel were marked by the mass immigration of Holocaust survivors and Jews fleeing Arab lands. 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 immigration to Israel from Western Europe, Latin America, and the United States

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 and South Africa. Some Jews have emigrated from Israel elsewhere, due to economic problems or disillusionment with political conditions and the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict. Jewish Israeli emigrants are known as yordim.

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 Russia, 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.

Currently, the largest Jewish community in the world is located in the United States, with 5.3 million to 6.4 million Jews by various estimates. Elsewhere in the Americas, there are also large Jewish populations in Canada, Argentina, and Brazil, and smaller populations in 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 490,000 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 295,000 Jews in the United Kingdom. In Eastern Europe, there are anywhere from 350,000 to one 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. Fueled by anti-Zionism after the founding of Israel, systematic persecution caused almost all of these Jews to flee to Israel, North America, and Europe in the 1950s (see Jewish exodus from Arab lands). Today, around 8,000 Jews remain in all Arab nations combined.

Iran is home to around 10,800 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, where the principal community is called "Tehrangeles").

Outside Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and the rest of Asia, there are significant Jewish populations in Australia and South Africa.

Demographic 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. 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, 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 53%, in France, around 30%, and in Australia and Mexico, as low as 10%. In the United States, only about a third of children from intermarriages affiliate themselves with Jewish religious practice. The result is that most countries in the Diaspora have steady or slightly declining religiously Jewish populations as Jews continue to assimilate into the countries in which they live.

War and persecution

:Related articles: Antisemitism, Islam and antisemitism, History of antisemitism, New antisemitism

The Jewish people and Judaism have experienced various persecutions 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.

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."

Later in medieval Western Europe, further 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 and Portugal after the Reconquista (the Catholic Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula), where both unbaptized Sephardic Jews and the ruling Muslim Moors were expelled.

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 World War II) 20th centuries, the Roman Catholic Church adhered to a distinction between "good antisemitism" and "bad antisemitism". 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. Traditionally Jews and Christians living in Muslim lands, known as dhimmis, were allowed to practice their religions and to administer their internal affairs, but subject to certain conditions. 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. Many of the disabilities were highly symbolic. The one described by Bernard Lewis as "most degrading" was the requirement of distinctive clothing, not found in the Qur'an or hadith but invented in early medieval Baghdad; its enforcement was highly erratic. 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.

Notable exceptions include the massacre of Jews and/or forcible conversion of some Jews by the rulers of the Almohad dynasty in Al-Andalus in the 12th century, as well as in Islamic Persia, and the forced confinement of Morrocan Jews to walled quarters known as mellahs beginning from the 15th century and especially in the early 19th century. 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 Islamic Republic of 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 expulsion 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; the Spanish Inquisition (led by Torquemada) and the Portuguese Inquisition, with their persecution and autos-da-fé against the New Christians and Marrano Jews; the Bohdan Chmielnicki Cossack massacres in Ukraine; the Pogroms backed by the Russian Tsars; as well as expulsions from Spain, Portugal, 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 a recent study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics 19.8% of the modern Iberian population has Sephardic Jewish ancestry, indicating that the number of conversos may have been much higher than originally thought.

The most notable modern day persecution of Jews remains 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 minority groups of Europe during World War II by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. The persecution and genocide were accomplished in stages. Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II.

Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labour until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings. Jews and Roma were crammed into ghettos before being transported hundreds of miles by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were killed in gas chambers. 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."

Migrations

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) has shaped Jewish identity and religious practice in many ways, and is thus a major element of Jewish history. An incomplete list of such migrations includes: The patriarch Abraham was a migrant to the land of Canaan from Ur of the Chaldees after an attempt on his life by King Nimrod. The Children of Israel experienced the Exodus (meaning "departure" or "exit" in Greek) from ancient Egypt, as recorded in the Book of Exodus. The Kingdom of Israel was sent into permanent exile by Assyria, initially to the Upper Mesopotamian provinces of the Assyrian Empire, from whence they scattered all over the world (or at least to unknown locations). The Kingdom of Judah was exiled by Babylonia, then returned to Judea by Cyrus the Great of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, and then many were exiled again by the Roman Empire. 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 center of Jewish life moved from Babylonia to the Iberian Peninsula to Poland to the United States and, as a result of Zionism, 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). 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 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. When the Soviet Union collapsed, many of the Jews in the affected territory (who had been refuseniks) 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 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 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.

Notable Jews

Jews have made contributions in a broad range of human endeavors, including the sciences, arts, politics, and business. The number of Jewish Nobel prize winners is far out of proportion to the percentage of Jews in the world's population.

See also

More complete guides to topics related to the Jews are available from the guide at the top or bottom of this page. Some topics of interest include:

Ashkenazi Jews

Antisemitism

:Category: Jewish ethnic groups

:Category: Jewish history by country

Interfaith marriage in Judaism

Israel

* Basic Laws of Israel

* Law of Return

* Politics of Israel

Jewish diaspora

Jewish identity

Jewish languages

Jewish population

Jewish population by cities and city areas

Judaism

Lists of Jews

Mizrahi Jews

Pogrom

Sephardi Jews

Notes

References

Baron, Salo Wittmayer (1952). A Social and Religious History of the Jews, Volume II, Ancient Times, Part II. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America.

Lewis, Bernard (1984). The Jews of Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-00807-8

Lewis, Bernard (1999). Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice. W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-31839-7

Poliakov, Leon (1974). The History of Anti-semitism. New York: The Vanguard Press.

Ruderman, David B. Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton University Press; 2010) 326 pages. Examines print culture, religion, and other realms in a history emphasizing the links among early modern Jewish communities from Venice and Krakow to Amsterdam and Smyrna.

Stillman, Norman (1979). The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America. ISBN 0-8276-0198-0

External links

Jewish Virtual Library

Judaism 101

Maps related to Jewish history

WORLD JEWISH NEWS AGENCY

The Future of Judaism series at Patheos

Secular organizations

American Jewish Committee

American Jewish Congress

Anti-Defamation League

B'nai B'rith International

Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life

United Jewish Communities: The Federations of North America

Religious organizations

Aish HaTorah (Orthodox)

ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal (Renewal)

American Sephardi Federation (Sephardic)

Chabad Lubavitch (Chabad)

Jewish Reconstructionist Federation (Reconstructionist)

The Karaite Korner (Karaite)

The Orthodox Union (Orthodox)

Society for Humanistic Judaism (Humanistic)

Union for Reform Judaism (Reform)

The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (Conservative)

Zionist organizations

Ameinu

Hadassah: the Women's Zionist Organization of America

The Jewish Agency for Israel

Religious Zionists of America

World Mizrachi Movement

Zionist Organization of America

Category:Ancient peoples Category:Ethnic groups in the Middle East Category:Ethno-cultural designations Category:Religious identity Category:Semitic peoples Category:Indigenous peoples of Southwest Asia

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