The Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים‎‎ ISO 259-3 Yhudim Israeli pronunciation [jehuˈdim]), also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and an 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 Israel's Law of Return states: "Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh." Israel is the only country where Jews are a majority of the population. Jews achieved political autonomy twice before in ancient history. The first of these periods lasted 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 was the period of the Hasmonean Kingdom spanning from 140 to 37 BCE. Since the destruction of the First Temple, most Jews have lived in diaspora. A minority in every country in which they live (except Israel), they have frequently experienced persecution throughout history, resulting in a population that has fluctuated both in numbers and distribution over the centuries.

Max Kolonko (born: Mariusz Max Kolonko in Poland). - American producer, writer, author, broadcast journalist and a U.S. correspondent for a number of television news organizations (TVP, TVN, Panorama). From 2001- 2005 a senior White House correspondent for TVP, the national television in Poland .

Producer, director and creator of a popular, Telly winning, television series Discovering America with Max Kolonko on various aspects of American life. Founder and owner of Media 2000 Communications, a New York City television production company.

Max Kolonko is a frequent guest on numerous news shows, including CNN and CBS news.

Contributor to Newsweek and The Huffington Post.

The term black people is used in some socially-based systems of racial classification for humans of a dark-skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups represented in a particular social context. Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class and socio-economic status also play a role, so that relatively dark-skinned people can be classified as white if they fulfill other social criteria of "whiteness" and relatively light-skinned people can be classified as black if they fulfill the social criteria for "blackness" in a particular setting.

As a biological phenotype being "black" is often associated with the very dark skin colors of some people who are classified as "black". But, particularly in the United States, the racial or ethnic classification also refers to people with all possible kinds of skin pigmentation from the darkest through to the very lightest skin colors, including albinos, if they are believed by others to have African ancestry, or to exhibit cultural traits associated with being "African-American". As a result, in the United States the term "black people" is not an indicator of skin color but of socially based racial classification.

Simon Michael Schama, CBE (born 13 February 1945) is a British historian and art historian. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University. He is best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC documentary series A History of Britain. Other works on history and art include The Embarrassment of Riches, Landscape and Memory, Dead Certainties, Rembrandt's Eyes, and his history of the French Revolution, Citizens. Schama is an art and cultural critic for The New Yorker.

The son of Jewish parents with roots in Lithuania, Romania, and Turkey, Schama was born in London. In the mid-1940s, the family moved to Southend-on-Sea in Essex before moving back to London. Schama writes of this period in the Introduction to Landscape & Memory (pp. 3–4)

I had no hill [the previous paragraph had talked of his enthusiasm for Puck of Pook's Hill], but I did have the Thames. It was not the upstream river that the poets in my Palgrave claimed burbled betwixt mossy banks. ... It was the low, gull-swept estuary, the marriage bed of salt and fresh water, stretching as far as I could see from my northern Essex bank, toward a thin black horizon on the other side. That would be Kent, the sinister enemy who always seemed to beat us in the County Cricket Championship. ...

Richard William Littlejohn (born 1954) is an English author, broadcaster, journalist and satirist. He currently writes a twice-weekly column for the Daily Mail.

Littlejohn was previously a columnist for The Sun and has also written for The Spectator and London's Evening Standard. Littlejohn earned a place in the inaugural Press Gazette Newspaper Hall of Fame as one of the most influential journalists of the past 40 years.

Primarily a newspaper journalist, Littlejohn has also presented numerous radio and TV shows and has authored or co-authored several books. Although many of his newspaper columns are devoted to life and society in England, Littlejohn lives for much of the year in the United States.

Littlejohn was born in Ilford, Essex (now Greater London) in 1954, and his family moved to Peterborough when he was five. His father worked as a policeman and then for British Rail. Littlejohn passed the eleven-plus, obtaining the highest marks in his year. He was offered a public school scholarship which he turned down because the school didn't play football, and subsequently attended Deacons Grammar School.