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Jews

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This article is about the Jewish people. For their religion, see Judaism.
"Jew" redirects here. For other uses, see Jew (disambiguation).
Jews
Hebrew: יהודים‎‎ (Yehudim)
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn 063.jpg
According to Jewish tradition, Jacob was the father of the tribes of Israel.
Total population
14.7-17.3 million[1]
Regions with significant populations
 Israel 6,481,182[2]
 United States 5,300,000–6,800,000[3][4]
 France 467,500[3]
 Canada 386,000[3]
 United Kingdom 290,000[3]
 Russia 183,000[3]
 Argentina 181,000[3]
 Germany 117,500[3]
 Australia 112,800[3]
 Brazil 94,500[3]
 South Africa 69,800[3]
 Ukraine 60,000[3]
 Hungary 47,700[3]
 Mexico 40,000[3]
 Netherlands 29,900[3]
 Belgium 29,800[3]
 Italy 27,600[3]
  Switzerland 18,900[3]
 Chile 18,400[3]
Rest of the world 218,100[3]
Languages
Historical languages:
Sacred languages:
Religion
Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Samaritans,[6] Druze, other Levantines,[6][7][8][9] Arabs,[6][10] Assyrians[6][9]
Part of a series on
Jews and Judaism
Star of David

The Jews (/dʒuːz/;[11] Hebrew: יְהוּדִים ISO 259-3 Yehudim, Israeli pronunciation [jehuˈdim]), also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group[12] originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East.[13][14] Jewish ethnicity, nationhood and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation,[15][16][17] while its observance varies from strict observance to complete nonobservance.

Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE,[10] in the part of the Levant known as the Land of Israel.[18] The Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El,[19] somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE (Late Bronze Age).[20][21] The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population,[22] consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, and the Kingdom of Judah. Some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as 'Hebrews'.[23] Though few sources in the Bible mention the exilic periods in detail,[24] the experience of diaspora life, from the Ancient Egyptian rule over the Levant, to Assyrian Captivity and Exile, to Babylonian Captivity and Exile, to Seleucid Imperial rule, to the Roman occupation, and the historical relations between Israelites and their homeland, became a major feature of Jewish history, identity and memory.[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]

The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II,[35] but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered[36][37] during the Holocaust. Since then the population has slowly risen again, and as of 2015 was estimated at 14.3 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank,[3] or less than 0.2% of the total world population (roughly one in every 514 people).[38] According to the report, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel (6.4 million), and 40% in the United States (5.7 million), with most of the remainder living in Europe (1.4 million) and Canada (0.4 million).[3] These numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household.[39] The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure. In addition to issues with census methodology, disputes among proponents of halakhic, secular, political, and ancestral identification factors regarding who is a Jew may affect the figure considerably depending on the source.[40] Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and Basic Laws. Its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it.[41]

Despite their small percentage of the world's population, Jews have significantly influenced and contributed to human progress in many fields, including philosophy,[42] ethics,[43] literature, business, fine arts and architecture, religion, music, theatre[44] and cinema, medicine,[45][46] as well as science and technology, both historically and in modern times.

Name and etymology

Main articles: Jew (word) and Ioudaios

The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe. These terms derive from Old French giu, earlier juieu, which had elided (dropped) the letter "d" from the Medieval Latin Iudaeus, which, like the New Testament Greek term Ioudaios, meant both Jews and Judeans / "of Judea".[47]

The Greek term was originally a loan from Aramaic Y'hūdāi, corresponding to Hebrew: יְהוּדִי, Yehudi (sg.); יְהוּדִים, Yehudim (pl.), in origin the term for a member of the tribe of Judah or the people of the kingdom of Judah. According to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob.[48]

The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced [jehuˈdi], with the stress on the final syllable, in Israeli Hebrew, in its basic form.[49] The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו, Djudio (sg.); ג׳ודיוס, Djudios (pl.); Yiddish: ייִד Yid (sg.); ייִדן, Yidn (pl.).

The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., يَهُودِيّ yahūdī (sg.), al-yahūd (pl.), and بَنُو اِسرَائِيل banū isrāʼīl in Arabic, "Jude" in German, "judeu" in Portuguese, "juif" in French, "jøde" in Danish and Norwegian, "judío" in Spanish, "jood" in Dutch, "żyd" in Polish etc., but derivations of the word "Hebrew" are also in use to describe a Jew, e.g., in Italian (Ebreo), in Persian ("Ebri/Ebrani" (Persian: عبری/عبرانی‎‎)) and Russian (Еврей, Yevrey).[50] The German word "Jude" is pronounced [ˈjuːdə], the corresponding adjective "jüdisch" [ˈjyːdɪʃ] (Jewish) is the origin of the word "Yiddish".[51] (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.[52]

Origins

See also: Origins of Judaism, Jewish history, Israelites, History of Ancient Israel and Judah, and Canaan
Map of Canaan

According to the Hebrew Bible narrative, Jewish ancestry is traced back to the Biblical patriarchs such as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the Biblical matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel, who lived in Canaan around the 18th century BCE. Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacob's son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs' descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, traditionally dated to the 13th century BCE, after which the Israelites conquered Canaan.[citation needed]

Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the Patriarchs and of the Exodus story,[53] with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites' inspiring national myth narrative. The Israelites and their culture, according to the modern archaeological account, did not overtake the region by force, but instead branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatristic — and later monotheistic — religion centered on Yahweh,[54][55][56] one of the Ancient Canaanite deities. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of cultic practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group, setting them apart from other Canaanites. The Canaanites themselves are archeologically attested in the Middle Bronze Age,[57] while the Hebrew language is the last extant member of the Canaanite languages. In the Iron Age I period (1200–1000 BCE) Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature.[citation needed]

Although the Israelites were divided into Twelve Tribes, the Jews (being one offshoot of the Israelites, another being the Samaritans) are traditionally said to descend mostly from the Israelite tribes of Judah (from where the Jews derive their ethnonym) and Benjamin, and partially from the tribe of Levi, who had together formed the ancient Kingdom of Judah,[58] and the remnants of the northern Kingdom of Israel who migrated to the Kingdom of Judah and assimilated after the 720s BCE, when the Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire.[59]

Israelites enjoyed political independence twice in ancient history, first during the periods of the Biblical judges followed by the United Monarchy.[disputed – discuss] After the fall of the United Monarchy the land was divided into Israel and Judah. The term Jew originated from the Roman "Judean" and denoted someone from the southern kingdom of Judah.[60] The shift of ethnonym from "Israelites" to "Jews" (inhabitant of Judah), although not contained in the Torah, is made explicit in the Book of Esther (4th century BCE),[61] a book in the Ketuvim, the third section of the Jewish Tanakh. In 587 BC Nebuchadnezzar II, King of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, besieged Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple, and deported the most prominent citizens of Judah.[62] In 586 BC, Judah itself ceased to be an independent kingdom, and its remaining Jews were left stateless. The Babylonian exile ended in 539 BCE when the Achaemenid Empire conquered Babylon and Cyrus the Great allowed the exiled Jews to return to Yehud and rebuild their Temple. The Second Temple was completed in 515 BCE. Yehud province was a peaceful part of the Achaemenid Empire until the fall of the Empire in c. 333 BCE to Alexander the Great. Jews were also politically independent during the Hasmonean dynasty spanning from 140 to 37 BCE and to some degree under the Herodian dynasty from 37 BCE to 6 CE. Since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, most Jews have lived in diaspora.[63] As an ethnic 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.[citation needed]

Genetic studies on Jews show that most Jews worldwide 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.[64][65][66] The genetic composition of different Jewish groups shows that Jews share a common genetic pool dating back 4,000 years, as a marker of their common ancestral origin. Despite their long-term separation, Jewish communities maintained commonalities in culture, tradition, and language.[67]

Judaism

Main article: Judaism

The Jewish people and the religion of Judaism are strongly interrelated. Converts to Judaism typically have a status within the Jewish ethnos equal to those born into it.[68] However, several converts to Judaism, as well as ex-Jews, have claimed that converts are treated as second-class Jews by many of the born-Jews.[69] Conversion is not encouraged by mainstream Judaism, and is considered a difficult task. A significant portion of conversions are undertaken by children of mixed marriages, or by would-be or current spouses of Jews.[70]

The Hebrew Bible, a religious interpretation of the traditions and early national history of the Jews, established the first of the Abrahamic religions, which are now practiced by 54% of the world. Judaism guides its adherents in both practice and belief, and has been called not only a religion, but also a "way of life,"[71] 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,[72] in Europe before and after The Age of Enlightenment (see Haskalah),[73] in Islamic Spain and Portugal,[74] in North Africa and the Middle East,[74] India,[75] China,[76] or the contemporary United States[77] and Israel,[78] 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.[79]

Babylon and Rome

After the destruction of the Second Temple Judaism lost much of its sectarian nature. Nevertheless, a significant Hellenized Diaspora remained, centered in Alexandria, at the time the largest urban Jewish community in the world. Hellenism was a force not just in the Diaspora but also in the Land of Israel over a long period of time. Generally, scholars view Rabbinic Judaism as having been meaningfully influenced by Hellenism.[citation needed]

Without a Temple, Greek speaking Jews no longer looked to Jerusalem in the way they had before. Judaism separated into a linguistically Greek and a Hebrew / Aramaic sphere.[80]: 8–11 The theology and religious texts of each community were distinctively different.[80]: 11–13 Hellenized Judaism never developed yeshivas to study the Oral Law. Rabbinic Judaism (centered in the Land of Israel and Babylon) almost entirely ignores the Hellenized Diaspora in its writings.[80]: 13–14 Hellenized Judaism eventually disappeared as its practitioners assimilated into Greco-Roman culture, leaving a strong Rabbinic eastern Diaspora with large centers of learning in Babylon.[80]: 14–16

By the first century, the Jewish community in Babylonia, to which Jews were exiled after the Babylonian conquest as well as after the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE, already held a speedily growing[81] population of an estimated one million Jews, which increased to an estimated two million[82] between the years 200 CE and 500 CE, both by natural growth and by immigration of more Jews from the Land of Israel, making up about one-sixth of the world Jewish population at that era.[82] The 13th-century author Bar Hebraeus gave a figure of 6,944,000 Jews in the Roman world Salo Wittmayer Baron considered the figure convincing.[83] The figure of seven million within and one million outside the Roman world in the mid-first century became widely accepted, including by Louis Feldman. However, contemporary scholars now accept that Bar Hebraeus based his figure on a census of total Roman citizens. The figure of 6,944,000 being recorded in Eusebius' Chronicon.[84][85] Louis Feldman, previously an active supporter of the figure, now states that he and Baron were mistaken.[86]: 185 Feldman's views on active Jewish missionizing have also changed. While viewing classical Judaism as being receptive to converts, especially from the second century BCE through the first century CE, he points to a lack of either missionizing tracts or records of the names of rabbis who sought converts, as evidence for the lack of active Jewish missionizing.[86]: 205–206 Feldman maintains that conversion to Judaism was common and the Jewish population was large both within the Land of Israel and in the Diaspora.[86]: 183–203, 206 Other historians believe that conversion during the Roman era was limited in number and did not account for much of the Jewish population growth, due to various factors such as the illegality of male conversion to Judaism in the Roman world from the mid-second century. Another factor that made conversion difficult in the Roman world was the halakhic requirement of circumcision, a requirement that proselytizing Christianity quickly dropped. The Fiscus Judaicus, a tax imposed on Jews in 70 CE and relaxed to exclude Christians in 96 CE, also limited Judaism's appeal.[87]

Who is a Jew?

Main articles: Who is a Jew? and Jewish identity

Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation, an ethnicity,[12] 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.[88][89] 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.[90]

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 Torah into the Babylonian Talmud, around 200 CE. Interpretations of sections of the Tanakh, such as Deuteronomy 7:1–5, by Jewish sages, are used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and Canaanites because "[the non-Jewish husband] will cause your child to turn away from Me and they will worship the gods (i.e., idols) 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 is complemented by Ezra 10:2–3, where Israelites returning from Babylon vow to put aside their gentile wives and their children.[91][92] Since the anti-religious Haskalah movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries, halakhic interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged.[93]

According to historian Shaye J. D. Cohen, the status of the offspring of mixed marriages was determined patrilineally in the Bible. He brings two likely explanations for the change in Mishnaic times: first, the Mishnah may have been applying the same logic to mixed marriages as it had applied to other mixtures (Kil'ayim). Thus, a mixed marriage is forbidden as is the union of a horse and a donkey, and in both unions the offspring are judged matrilineally.[94] Second, the Tannaim may have been influenced by Roman law, which dictated that when a parent could not contract a legal marriage, offspring would follow the mother.[94]

Ethnic divisions

Main article: Jewish ethnic divisions
Ashkenazi Jews of late 19th century Eastern Europe portrayed in Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur (1878), by Maurycy Gottlieb

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 was 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. During the millennia of the Jewish diaspora the communities would develop under the influence of their local environments: political, cultural, natural, and populational. Today, manifestations 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.[95]

Sephardi Jewish couple from Sarajevo in traditional clothing. Photo taken in 1900.

Jews are often identified as belonging to one of two major groups: the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim. Ashkenazim, or "Germanics" (Ashkenaz meaning "Germany" in Hebrew), are so named denoting their German Jewish cultural and geographical origins, while Sephardim, or "Hispanics" (Sefarad meaning "Spain/Hispania" or "Iberia" in Hebrew), are so named denoting their Spanish/Portuguese Jewish cultural and geographic origins. The more common term in Israel for many of those broadly called Sephardim, is Mizrahim (lit. "Easterners", Mizrach being "East" in Hebrew), that is, in reference to the diverse collection of Middle Eastern and North African Jews who are often, as a group, referred to collectively as Sephardim (together with Sephardim proper) for liturgical reasons, although Mizrahi Jewish groups and Sephardi Jews proper are ethnically distinct.[96]

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; 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.[97]

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 no closer related to each other than they are to any of the earlier mentioned Jewish groups. In modern usage, however, the Mizrahim are sometimes termed Sephardi due to similar styles of liturgy, despite independent development from Sephardim proper. Thus, among Mizrahim there are Egyptian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Lebanese Jews, Kurdish Jews, Libyan Jews, Syrian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, Iranian Jews and various others. The Teimanim from Yemen are sometimes included, although their style of liturgy is unique and they differ in respect to the admixture found among them to that found in Mizrahim. In addition, there is a differentiation made between Sephardi migrants who established themselves in the Middle East and North Africa after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s and the pre-existing Jewish communities in those regions.[97]

Yemenite Jew blows shofar, 1947

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, the immigration of Jews from Algeria (Sephardim) has led them to outnumber the Ashkenazim.[98] 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.[99]

Languages

Main article: Jewish languages
A page from Elia Levita's (right to left) Yiddish-Hebrew-Latin-German dictionary (1542) contains a list of nations, including an entry for Jew: Hebrew: יְהוּדִי‎‎, Yiddish: יוּד‎, German: Jud, Latin: Iudaeus

Hebrew is the liturgical language of Judaism (termed lashon ha-kodesh, "the holy tongue"), the language in which most of 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.[100] By the 3rd century BCE, some Jews of the diaspora were speaking Greek.[101] Others, such as in the Jewish communities of Babylonia, were speaking Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages of the Babylonian Talmud. These languages were also used by the Jews of Israel at that time.[citation needed]

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 and Muslim countries, and widespread emigration from other Jewish communities around the world, ancient and distinct Jewish languages of several communities, including Judæo-Georgian, Judæo-Arabic, Judæo-Berber, Krymchak, Judæo-Malayalam and many others, have largely fallen out of use.[5]

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.[102] 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.[100] Modern Hebrew is now one of the two official languages of the State of Israel along with Modern Standard Arabic.[103]

Despite efforts to revive Hebrew as the national language of the Jewish people, knowledge of the language is not commonly possessed by Jews worldwide and English has emerged as the lingua franca of the Jewish diaspora.[104][105][106][107][108] Although many Jews once had sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to study the classic literature, and Jewish languages like Yiddish and Ladino were commonly used as recently as the early 20th century, most Jews lack such knowledge today and English has by and large superseded most Jewish vernaculars. The three most commonly spoken languages among Jews today are Hebrew, English, and Russian. Some Romance languages, particularly French and Spanish, are also widely used.[5] Yiddish has been spoken by more Jews in history than any other language,[109] but it is far less used today following the Holocaust and the adoption of Modern Hebrew by the Zionist movement and the State of Israel. In some places, the mother language of the Jewish community differs from that of the general population or the dominant group. For example, in Quebec, the Ashkenazic majority has adopted English, while the Sephardic minority uses French as its primary language.[110][111][112][113] Similarly, South African Jews adopted English rather than Afrikaans.[114] Due to both Czarist and Soviet policies,[115][116] Russian has superseded Yiddish as the language of Russian Jews, but these policies have also affected neighboring communities.[117] Today, Russian is the first language for many Jewish communities in a number of Post-Soviet states, such as Ukraine[118][119][120][121] and Uzbekistan,[122] as well as for Ashkenazic Jews in Azerbaijan,[123] Georgia,[124] and Tajikistan.[125][126] Although communities in North Africa today are small and dwindling, Jews there had shifted from a multilingual group to a monolingual one (or nearly so), speaking French in Algeria,[127] Morocco,[123] and the city of Tunis,[128][129] while most North Africans continue to use Arabic as their mother tongue.[citation needed]

Genetic studies

Main article: Genetic studies on Jews

Y DNA studies tend to imply a small number of founders in an old population whose members parted and followed different migration paths.[130] In most Jewish populations, these male line ancestors appear to have been mainly Middle Eastern. For example, Ashkenazi Jews share more common paternal lineages with other Jewish and Middle Eastern groups than with non-Jewish populations in areas where Jews lived in Eastern Europe, Germany and the French Rhine Valley. This is consistent with Jewish traditions in placing most Jewish paternal origins in the region of the Middle East.[131][132] Conversely, the maternal lineages of Jewish populations, studied by looking at mitochondrial DNA, are generally more heterogeneous.[133] Scholars such as Harry Ostrer and Raphael Falk believe this indicates that many Jewish males found new mates from European and other communities in the places where they migrated in the diaspora after fleeing ancient Israel.[134] In contrast, Behar has found evidence that about 40% of Ashkenazi Jews originate maternally from just four female founders, who were of Middle Eastern origin. The populations of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish communities "showed no evidence for a narrow founder effect."[133] Subsequent studies carried out by Feder et al. confirmed the large portion of non-local maternal origin among Ashkenazi Jews. Reflecting on their findings related to the maternal origin of Ashkenazi Jews, the authors conclude "Clearly, the differences between Jews and non-Jews are far larger than those observed among the Jewish communities. Hence, differences between the Jewish communities can be overlooked when non-Jews are included in the comparisons."[135][136][137]

Studies of autosomal DNA, which look at the entire DNA mixture, have become increasingly important as the technology develops. They show that Jewish populations have tended to form relatively closely related groups in independent communities, with most in a community sharing significant ancestry in common.[138] For Jewish populations of the diaspora, the genetic composition of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi Jewish populations show a predominant amount of shared Middle Eastern ancestry. According to Behar, the most parsimonious explanation for this shared Middle Eastern ancestry is that it is "consistent with the historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant" and "the dispersion of the people of ancient Israel throughout the Old World".[139] North African, Italian and others of Iberian origin show variable frequencies of admixture with non-Jewish historical host populations among the maternal lines. In the case of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews (in particular Moroccan Jews), who are closely related, the source of non-Jewish admixture is mainly southern European, while Mizrahi Jews show evidence of admixture with other Middle Eastern populations and Sub-Saharan Africans. Behar et al. have remarked on an especially close relationship of Ashkenazi Jews and modern Italians.[139][140][141] Jews were found to be more closely related to groups in the north of the Fertile Crescent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to Arabs.[142]

The studies also show that the Sephardic Bnei Anusim (descendants of the "anusim" forced converts to Catholicism) of Iberia (estimated at about 19.8% of modern Iberia) and Ibero-America (estimated at least 10% of modern Ibero-America) have Sephardic Jewish origins within the last few centuries, while the Bene Israel and Cochin Jews of India, Beta Israel of Ethiopia, and a portion of the Lemba people of Southern Africa, despite more closely resembling the local populations of their native countries, also have some more remote ancient Jewish descent.[143][144][145][137]

Demographics

Further information: Jewish population by country

Population centers

Main article: Jewish population by urban areas

According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics there were 13,421,000 Jews worldwide in 2009, roughly 0.19% of the world's population at the time.[146]

According to the 2007 estimates of The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, the world's Jewish population is 13.2 million.[147] Adherents.com cites figures ranging from 12 to 18 million.[148] These statistics incorporate both practicing Jews affiliated with synagogues and the Jewish community, and approximately 4.5 million unaffiliated and secular Jews.[citation needed]

According to Sergio DellaPergola, a demographer of the Jewish population, in 2015 there were about 6.3 million Jews in Israel, 5.7 million in the United States, and 2.3 million in the rest of the world.[149]

Israel

Main article: Israeli Jews

Israel, the Jewish nation-state, is the only country in which Jews make up a majority of the citizens.[150] Israel was established as an independent democratic and Jewish state on May 14, 1948.[151] Of the 120 members in its parliament, the Knesset,[152] as of 2016, 14 members of the Knesset are Arab citizens of Israel (not including the Druze), most representing Arab political parties. One of Israel's Supreme Court judges is also an Arab citizen of Israel.[153]

Between 1948 and 1958, the Jewish population rose from 800,000 to two million.[154] Currently, Jews account for 75.4% of the Israeli population, or 6 million people.[155][156] The early years of the State of Israel were marked by the mass immigration of Holocaust survivors in the aftermath of the Holocaust and Jews fleeing Arab lands.[157] Israel also has a large population of Ethiopian Jews, many of whom were airlifted to Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s.[158] Between 1974 and 1979 nearly 227,258 immigrants arrived in Israel, about half being from the Soviet Union.[159] This period also saw an increase in immigration to Israel from Western Europe, Latin America, and North America.[160]

A trickle of immigrants from other communities has also arrived, including Indian Jews and others, as well as some descendants of Ashkenazi Holocaust survivors who had settled in countries such as the United States, Argentina, Australia, Chile, and South Africa. Some Jews have emigrated from Israel elsewhere, because of economic problems or disillusionment with political conditions and the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict. Jewish Israeli emigrants are known as yordim.[161]

Diaspora (outside Israel)

Main article: Jewish diaspora

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.[162]

Public Hanukkah menorah in Nicosia, Cyprus
In this Rosh Hashana greeting card from the early 1900s, Russian Jews, packs in hand, gaze at the American relatives beckoning them to the United States. Over two million Jews fled the pogroms of the Russian Empire to the safety of the U.S. between 1881 and 1924.[163]

More than half of the Jews live in the Diaspora (see Population table). Currently, the largest Jewish community outside Israel, and either the largest or second-largest Jewish community in the world, is located in the United States, with 5.2 million to 6.4 million Jews by various estimates. Elsewhere in the Americas, there are also large Jewish populations in Canada (315,000), Argentina (180,000-300,000), and Brazil (196,000-600,000), and smaller populations in Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Chile, Colombia and several other countries (see History of the Jews in Latin America).[164] Demographers disagree on whether the United States has a larger Jewish population than Israel, with many maintaining that Israel surpassed the United States in Jewish population during the 2000s, while others maintain that the United States still has the largest Jewish population in the world. Currently, a major national Jewish population survey is planned to ascertain whether or not Israel has overtaken the United States in Jewish population.[165]

Western Europe's largest Jewish community, and the third-largest Jewish community in the world, can be found in France, home to between 483,000 and 500,000 Jews, the majority of whom are immigrants or refugees from North African Arab countries such as Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia (or their descendants).[166] The United Kingdom has a Jewish community of 292,000. 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. In Germany, the 102,000 Jews registered with the Jewish community are a slowly declining population,[167] despite the immigration of tens of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union since the fall of the Berlin Wall.[168] Thousands of Israelis also live in Germany, either permanently or temporarily, for economic reasons.[169]

Prior to 1948, approximately 800,000 Jews were living in lands which now make up the Arab world (excluding Israel). Of these, just under two-thirds lived in the French-controlled Maghreb region, 15–20% in the Kingdom of Iraq, approximately 10% in the Kingdom of Egypt and approximately 7% in the Kingdom of Yemen. A further 200,000 lived in Pahlavi Iran and the Republic of Turkey. Today, around 26,000 Jews live in Arab countries[170] and around 30,000 in Iran and Turkey. A small-scale exodus had begun in many countries in the early decades of the 20th century, although the only substantial aliyah came from Yemen and Syria.[171] The exodus from Arab and Muslim countries took place primarily from 1948. The first large-scale exoduses took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily in Iraq, Yemen and Libya, with up to 90% of these communities leaving within a few years. The peak of the exodus from Egypt occurred in 1956. The exodus in the Maghreb countries peaked in the 1960s. Lebanon was the only Arab country to see a temporary increase in its Jewish population during this period, due to an influx of refugees from other Arab countries, although by the mid-1970s the Jewish community of Lebanon had also dwindled. In the aftermath of the exodus wave from Arab states, an additional migration of Iranian Jews peaked in the 1980s when around 80% of Iranian Jews left the country.[citation needed]

Outside Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and the rest of Asia, there are significant Jewish populations in Australia (112,500) and South Africa (70,000).[35] There is also a 7,500-strong community in New Zealand.[citation needed]

Demographic changes

Main article: Historical Jewish population comparisons

Assimilation

Main articles: Jewish assimilation and Interfaith marriage in Judaism

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.[172] Assimilation took place in all areas, and during all time periods,[172] with some Jewish communities, for example the Kaifeng Jews of China, disappearing entirely.[173] 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.[174]

Rates of interreligious marriage vary widely: In the United States, it is just under 50%,[175] in the United Kingdom, around 53%; in France; around 30%,[176] and in Australia and Mexico, as low as 10%.[177][178] In the United States, only about a third of children from intermarriages affiliate with Jewish religious practice.[179] 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.[citation needed]

War and persecution

Main article: Persecution of Jews
Further information: Antisemitism, Anti-Judaism, Orientalism, Christianity and antisemitism, Islam and antisemitism, History of antisemitism, and New antisemitism
World War I poster shows a soldier cutting the bonds from a Jewish man, who says, "You have cut my bonds and set me free – now let me help you set others free!"

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.[180][181]

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."[182]

The Roman Emperor Nero sends Vespasian with an army to destroy the Jews, 69 CE

Later in medieval Western Europe, further persecutions of Jews by Christians occurred, notably during the Crusades—when Jews all over Germany were massacred—and a series of expulsions from the Kingdom of 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.[183][184]

In the Papal States, which existed until 1870, Jews were required to live only in specified neighborhoods called ghettos.[185]

Islam and Judaism have a complex relationship. Traditionally Jews and Christians living in Muslim lands, known as dhimmis, were allowed to practice their religions and administer their internal affairs, but they were subject to certain conditions.[186] They had to pay the jizya (a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-Muslim males) to the Islamic state.[186] 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.[187] Many of the disabilities were highly symbolic. The one described by Bernard Lewis as "most degrading"[188] was the requirement of distinctive clothing, not found in the Quran or hadith but invented in early medieval Baghdad; its enforcement was highly erratic.[188] 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.[189]

Notable exceptions include the massacre of Jews and forcible conversion of some Jews by the rulers of the Almohad dynasty in Al-Andalus in the 12th century,[190] as well as in Islamic Persia,[191] and the forced confinement of Moroccan Jews to walled quarters known as mellahs beginning from the 15th century and especially in the early 19th century.[192] 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."[193]

Jews in Minsk, 1941. Before World War II some 40% of the population was Jewish. By the time the Red Army retook the city on 3 July 1944, there were only a few Jewish survivors.

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;[183] the Spanish Inquisition (led by Tomás de Torquemada) and the Portuguese Inquisition, with their persecution and autos-da-fé against the New Christians and Marrano Jews;[194] the Bohdan Chmielnicki Cossack massacres in Ukraine;[195] the Pogroms backed by the Russian Tsars;[196] as well as expulsions from Spain, Portugal, England, France, Germany, and other countries in which the Jews had settled.[184] According to a 2008 study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, 19.8% of the modern Iberian population has Sephardic Jewish ancestry,[197] indicating that the number of conversos may have been much higher than originally thought.[198][199]

The persecution reached a peak in Nazi Germany's Final Solution, which led to the Holocaust and the slaughter of approximately 6 million Jews.[200] Of the world's 15 million Jews in 1939, more than a third were killed in the Holocaust.[201][202] 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 Germany and its collaborators remains the most notable modern-day persecution of Jews.[203] 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.[204] Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labour until they died of exhaustion or disease.[205] Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in Eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings.[206] 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.[207] 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."[208]

Migrations

Etching of the expulsion of the Jews from Frankfurt on August 23, 1614. The text says: "1380 persons old and young were counted at the exit of the gate"
Jews fleeing pogroms, 1882

Throughout Jewish history, Jews have repeatedly been directly or indirectly expelled from both their original homeland, the Land of Israel, and many of the areas in which they have settled. This experience as refugees has shaped Jewish identity and religious practice in many ways, and is thus a major element of Jewish history.[209] The incomplete list of major and other noteworthy migrations that follows includes numerous instances of expulsion or departure under duress:

Growth

A man praying at the Western Wall

Israel is the only country with a Jewish population that is consistently growing through natural population growth, although the Jewish populations of other countries, in Europe and North America, have recently increased through immigration. In the Diaspora, in almost every country the Jewish population in general is either declining or steady, but Orthodox and Haredi Jewish communities, whose members often shun birth control for religious reasons, have experienced rapid population growth.[232]

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.[233]

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 25 years, there has been a trend (known as the Baal Teshuva movement) for secular Jews to become more religiously observant, though the demographic implications of the trend are unknown.[234] Additionally, there is also a growing rate of conversion to Jews by Choice of gentiles who make the decision to head in the direction of becoming Jews.[235]

Leadership

Main article: Jewish leadership

There is no single governing body for the Jewish community, nor a single authority with responsibility for religious doctrine.[236] 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.[237]

Notable individuals

Main article: Lists of Jews

Jews have made a myriad of contributions to humanity in a broad and diverse range of fields, including the sciences, arts, politics, and business.[238] Although Jews comprise only 0.2% of the world's population, over 20%[239][240][241][242][243][244] of Nobel Prize laureates have been Jewish, with multiple winners in each category.

See also

References

  1. ^ 14.3 million (core Jewish population) to 17,4 million (including non-Jews who have a Jewish parent), according to: 14–14.5 million according to:
  2. ^ Population, by Population Group (PDF) (Report). Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. 2016. Retrieved 4 May 2016. 
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u DellaPergola, Sergio (2015). World Jewish Population, 2015 (Report). Berman Jewish DataBank. Retrieved 4 May 2016. 
  4. ^ An estimated figure, the following sources claim the number to be either slightly higher or lower:
  5. ^ a b c "Links". Beth Hatefutsoth. Archived from the original on 2009-03-26. Retrieved 2012-04-02. 
  6. ^ a b c d Shen, P; Lavi, T; Kivisild, T; Chou, V; Sengun, D; Gefel, D; Shpirer, I; Woolf, E; Hillel, J (2004). "Reconstruction of patrilineages and matrilineages of Samaritans and other Israeli populations from Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA sequence variation" (PDF). Human Mutation. 24 (3): 248–60. doi:10.1002/humu.20077. PMID 15300852. 
  7. ^ Wade, Nicholas (June 9, 2010). "Studies Show Jews' Genetic Similarity". New York Times. 
  8. ^ Nebel, Almut; Filon, Dvora; Weiss, Deborah A.; Weale, Michael; Faerman, Marina; Oppenheim, Ariella; Thomas, Mark G. (2000). "High-resolution Y chromosome haplotypes of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs reveal geographic substructure and substantial overlap with haplotypes of Jews" (PDF). Human Genetics. 107 (6): 630–41. doi:10.1007/s004390000426. PMID 11153918. 
  9. ^ a b "Jews Are The Genetic Brothers Of Palestinians, Syrians, And Lebanese". Sciencedaily.com. 2000-05-09. Retrieved 2013-04-12. 
  10. ^ a b Atzmon, G; Hao, L; Pe'Er, I; Velez, C; Pearlman, A; Palamara, PF; Morrow, B; Friedman, E; Oddoux, C (2010). "Abraham's Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry". American Journal of Human Genetics. 86 (6): 850–859. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2010.04.015. PMC 3032072Freely accessible. PMID 20560205. 
  11. ^ Jespersen, Otto (2013). A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles : Volume 1, Sounds and Spellings. City: Routledge. p. 384. ISBN 1135663513. 
  12. ^ a b
  13. ^ * "In the broader sense of the term, a Jew is any person belonging to the worldwide group that constitutes, through descent or conversion, a continuation of the ancient Jewish people, who were themselves descendants of the Hebrews of the Old Testament." Jew at Encyclopedia Britannica
  14. ^ "Hebrew, any member of an ancient northern Semitic people that were the ancestors of the Jews." Hebrew (People) at Encyclopedia Britannica
  15. ^ Brandeis, Louis (April 25, 1915). "The Jewish Problem: How To Solve It". University of Louisville School of Law. Retrieved 2012-04-02. Jews are a distinctive nationality of which every Jew, whatever his country, his station or shade of belief, is necessarily a member 
  16. ^ Palmer, Edward Henry (October 14, 2002) [First published 1874]. A History of the Jewish Nation: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day. Gorgias Press. ISBN 978-1-931956-69-7. OCLC 51578088. Retrieved 2012-04-02. Lay summary. 
  17. ^ Einstein, Albert (June 21, 1921). "How I Became a Zionist" (PDF). Einstein Papers Project. Princeton University Press. Retrieved 2012-04-05. The Jewish nation is a living fact 
  18. ^ "Facts About Israel: History". GxMSDev. 
  19. ^ Kenton L. Sparks,Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel: Prolegomena to the Study of Ethnic Sentiments and Their Expression in the Hebrew Bible, Eisenbrauns, 1998 pp.95ff.p.108.:'The probable use of the "Israel" by the people of Israel can reasonably imply two things: both a common cultural identity and a shared devotion to the god El.'
  20. ^ K. L. Noll,Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: A Textbook on History and Religion, A&C Black, 2012, rev.ed. pp.137ff.
  21. ^ Thomas L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People: From the Written & Archaeological Sources, BRILL, 2000 pp.275-276:'They are rather a very specific group among the population of Palestine which bears a name that occurs here for the first time that at a much later stage in Palestine's history bears a substantially different signification.'
  22. ^ John Day,[In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel,] Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005 pp.47.5p.48:'In this sense, the emergence of ancient Israel is viewed not as the cause of the demise of Canaanite culture but as its upshot'.
  23. ^ Day,pp.31-33,p.57.n.33.
  24. ^ Rainer Albertz, Israel in Exile: The History and Literature of the Sixth Century B.C.E., Society of Biblical Lit, 2003 pp.45ff:'Since the exilic era constitutes a gaping hole in the historical narrative of the Bible, historical reconstruction of this era faces almost insurmountable difficulties. Like the premonarchic period and the late Persian period, the exilic period, though set in the bright light of Ancient Near Eastern history, remains historically obscure. Since there are very few Israelite sources, the only recourse is to try to cast some light on this darkness from the history of the surrounding empires under whose dominion Israel came in this period.'
  25. ^ Marvin Perry (1 January 2012). Western Civilization: A Brief History, Volume I: To 1789. Cengage Learning. p. 87. ISBN 1-111-83720-1. 
  26. ^ Botticini, Maristella and Zvi Eckstein. "From Farmers to Merchants, Voluntary Conversions and Diaspora: A Human Capital Interpretation of History." p. 18-19. August 2006. Accessed 21 November, 2015. "The death toll of the Great Revolt against the Roman empire amounted to about 600,000 Jews, whereas the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 caused the death of about 500,000 Jews. Massacres account for roughly 40 percent of the decrease of the Jewish population in Palestine. Moreover, some Jews migrated to Babylon after these revolts because of the worse economic conditions. After accounting for massacres and migrations, there is an additional 30 to 40 percent of the decrease in the Jewish population in Palestine (about 1—1.3 million Jews) to be explained" (p. 19).
  27. ^ Boyarin, Daniel, and Jonathan Boyarin. 2003. Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Diaspora. p. 714 "...it is crucial to recognize that the Jewish conception of the Land of Israel is similar to the discourse of the Land of many (if not nearly all) "indigenous" peoples of the world. Somehow the Jews have managed to retain a sense of being rooted somewhere in the world through twenty centuries of exile from that someplace (organic metaphors are not out of place in this discourse, for they are used within the tradition itself). It is profoundly disturbing to hear Jewish attachment to the Land decried as regressive in the same discursive situations in which the attachment of native Americans or Australians to their particular rocks, trees, and deserts is celebrated as an organic connection to the Earth that "we" have lost" p. 714.
  28. ^ Cohen, Robin. 1997. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. p. 24 London: UCL Press. "...although the word Babylon often connotes captivity and oppression, a rereading of the Babylonian period of exile can thus be shown to demonstrate the development of a new creative energy in a challenging, pluralistic context outside the natal homeland. When the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in AD 70, it was Babylon that remained as the nerve- and brain-centre for Jewish life and thought...the crushing of the revolt of the Judaeans against the Romans and the destruction of the Second Temple by the Roman general Titus in AD 70 precisely confirmed the catastrophic tradition. Once again, Jews had been unable to sustain a national homeland and were scattered to the far corners of the world" (p. 24).
  29. ^ Johnson, Paul A History of the Jews "The Bar Kochba Revolt," (HarperPerennial, 1987) pp. 158-161.: Paul Johnson analyzes Cassius Dio's Roman History: Epitome of Book LXIX para. 13-14 (Dio's passage cited separately) among other sources: "Even if Dio's figures are somewhat exaggerated, the casualties amongst the population and the destruction inflicted on the country would have been considerable. According to Jerome, many Jews were also sold into slavery, so many, indeed, that the price of Jewish slaves at the slave market in Hebron sank drastically to a level no greater than that for a horse. The economic structure of the country was largely destroyed. The entire spiritual and economic life of the Palestinian Jews moved to Galilee. Jerusalem was now turned into a Roman colony with the official name Colonia Aelia Capitolina (Aelia after Hadrian's family name: P. Aelius Hadrianus; Capitolina after Jupiter Capitolinus). The Jews were forbidden on pain of death to set foot in the new Roman city. Aelia thus became a completely pagan city, no doubt with the corresponding public buildings and temples...We can...be certain that a statue of Hadrian was erected in the centre of Aelia, and this was tantamount in itself to a desecration of Jewish Jerusalem." p. 159.
  30. ^ Cassius Dio's Roman History: Epitome of Book LXIX para. 13-14: "13 At first the Romans took no account of them. Soon, however, all Judaea had been stirred up, and the Jews everywhere were showing signs of disturbance, were gathering together, and giving evidence of great hostility to the Romans, partly by secret and partly by overt acts; 2 many outside nations, too, were joining them through eagerness for gain, and the whole earth, one might almost say, was being stirred up over the matter. Then, indeed, Hadrian sent against them his best generals. First of these was Julius Severus, who was dispatched from Britain, where he was governor, against the Jews. 3 Severus did not venture to attack his opponents in the open at any one point, in view of their numbers and their desperation, but by intercepting small groups, thanks to the number of his soldiers and his under-officers, and by depriving them of food and shutting them up, he was able, rather slowly, to be sure, but with comparatively little danger, to crush, exhaust and exterminate them. Very few of them in fact survived. 14 1 Fifty of their most important outposts and nine hundred and eighty-five of their most famous villages were razed to the ground. Five hundred and eighty thousand men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out. 2 Thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate, a result of which the people had had forewarning before the war. For the tomb of Solomon, which the Jews regard as an object of veneration, fell to pieces of itself and collapsed, and many wolves and hyenas rushed howling into their cities. 3 Many Romans, moreover, perished in this war. Therefore Hadrian in writing to the senate did not employ the opening phrase commonly affected by the emperors, 'If you and our children are in health, it is well; I and the legions are in health'" (para. 13-14).
  31. ^ Safran, William. 2005. The Jewish Diaspora in a Comparative and Theoretical Perspective. Israel Studies 10 (1): 36.[dead link] "...diaspora referred to a very specific case—that of the exile of the Jews from the Holy Land and their dispersal throughout several parts of the globe. Diaspora [ galut] connoted deracination, legal disabilities, oppression, and an often painful adjustment to a hostland whose hospitality was unreliable and ephemeral. It also connoted the existence on foreign soil of an expatriate community that considered its presence to be transitory. Meanwhile, it developed a set of institutions, social patterns, and ethnonational and/or religious sym- bols that held it together. These included the language, religion, values, social norms, and narratives of the homeland. Gradually, this community adjusted to the hostland environment and became itself a center of cultural creation. All the while, however, it continued to cultivate the idea of return to the homeland." (p. 36).
  32. ^ Sheffer, Gabriel. 2005. Is the Jewish Diaspora Unique? Reflections on the Diaspora's Current Situation. Israel Studies 10 (1): p. 3-4. "...the Jewish nation, which from its very earliest days believed and claimed that it was the "chosen people," and hence unique. This attitude has further been buttressed by the equally traditional view, which is held not only by the Jews themselves, about the exceptional historical age of this diaspora, its singular traumatic experiences its singular ability to survive pogroms, exiles, and Holocaust, as well as its "special relations" with its ancient homeland, culminating in 1948 with the nation-state that the Jewish nation has established there... First, like many other members of established diasporas, the vast majority of Jews no longer regard themselves as being in Galut [exile] in their host countries.7 Perceptually, as well as actually, Jews permanently reside in host countries of their own free will, as a result of inertia, or as a result of problematic conditions prevailing in other hostlands, or in Israel. It means that the basic perception of many Jews about their existential situation in their hostlands has changed. Consequently, there is both a much greater self- and collective-legitimatization to refrain from making serious plans concerning "return" or actually "making Aliyah" [to emigrate, or "go up"] to Israel. This is one of the results of their wider, yet still rather problematic and sometimes painful acceptance by the societies and political systems in their host countries. It means that they, and to an extent their hosts, do not regard Jewish life within the framework of diasporic formations in these hostlands as something that they should be ashamed of, hide from others, or alter by returning to the old homeland" (p. 4).
  33. ^ Davies, William David; Finkelstein, Louis; Katz, Steven T. (1984-01-01). The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 4, The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521772488. Although Dio's figure of 985 as the number of villages destroyed during the war seems hypberbolic, all Judaean villages, without exception, excavated thus far were razed following the Bar Kochba Revolt. This evidence supports the impression of total regional destruction following the war. Historical sources note the vast number of captives sold into slavery in Palestine and shipped abroad." ... "The Judaean Jewish community never recovered from the Bar Kochba war. In its wake, Jews no longer formed the majority in Palestine, and the Jewish center moved to the Galilee. Jews were also subjected to a series of religious edicts promulgated by Hadrian that were designed to uproot the nationalistic elements with the Judaean Jewish community, these proclamations remained in effect until Hadrian's death in 138. An additional, more lasting punitive measure taken by the Romans involved expunging Judaea from the provincial name, changing it from Provincia Judaea to Provincia Syria Palestina. Although such name changes occurred elsewhere, never before or after was a nation's name expunged as the result of rebellion. 
  34. ^ Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Exclusive Inclusivity: Identity Conflicts Between the Exiles and the People who Remained (6th-5th Centuries BCE), A&C Black, 2013 p.xv n.3:'it is argued that biblical texts of the Neo-Babylonian and the early Persian periods show a fierce adversarial relationship(s) between the Judean groups. We find no expressions of sympathy to the deported community for its dislocation, no empathic expressions towards the People Who Remained under Babylonian subjugation in Judah. The opposite is apparent: hostile, denigrating, and denunciating language characterizes the relationships between resident and exiled Judeans throughout the sixth and fifth centuries.' (p.xvii)
  35. ^ a b "The Jewish Population of the World (2014)". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved June 30, 2015. , based on American Jewish Year Book. American Jewish Committee. 
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  38. ^ "Jews make up only 0.2% of mankind". ynetnews. October 2012. 
  39. ^ Jewish Virtual Library. World Jewish Population. "Refers to the Core Jewish Population. The concept of core Jewish population includes all persons who, when asked in a socio-demographic survey, identify themselves as Jews; or who are identified as Jews by a respondent in the same household, and do not have another monotheistic religion." [1]
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  41. ^ A 1970 amendment to Israel's Law of Return defines "Jew" as "a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion." "Law of Return". 
  42. ^ "Maimonides - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy". utm.edu. Retrieved 26 August 2015. 
  43. ^ Sekine, Seizō. A Comparative Study of the Origins of Ethical Thought: Hellenism and Hebraism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. Print.
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  45. ^ Roni Caryn Rabin Exhibition Traces the emergence of Jews as medical innovators, The New York Times (May 14, 2012). Accessed August 16, 2015.
  46. ^ Shatzmiller, Joseph. Doctors to Princes and Paupers: Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society. Berkeley: U of California, 1995. Print.
  47. ^ Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Africa and the Middle East, Facts On File Inc., Infobase Publishing, 2009, p.336
  48. ^ "Jew", Oxford English Dictionary.
  49. ^ Grintz, Yehoshua M. (2007). "Jew". In Fred Skolnik. Encyclopaedia Judaica. 11 (2d ed.). Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. p. 253. ISBN 0-02-865928-7. 
  50. ^ Falk, Avner (1996). A Psychoanalytic History of the Jews. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. p. 131. ISBN 0-8386-3660-8. 
  51. ^ "Yiddish". Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.). Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster. 2004. p. 1453. ISBN 0-87779-809-5. 
  52. ^ "Jew". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Archived from the original on August 5, 2011. Retrieved 2012-04-02. 
  53. ^ Dever, William (2001). What Did the Biblical Writers Know, and When Did They Know It?. Eerdmans. pp. 98–99. ISBN 3-927120-37-5. After a century of exhaustive investigation, all respectable archaeologists have given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob credible "historical figures" [...] archaeological investigation of Moses and the Exodus has similarly been discarded as a fruitless pursuit. 
  54. ^ Tubb, 1998. pg-13-14
  55. ^ Mark Smith in "The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel" states "Despite the long regnant model that the Canaanites and Israelites were people of fundamentally different culture, archaeological data now casts doubt on this view. The material culture of the region exhibits numerous common points between Israelites and Canaanites in the Iron I period (c. 1200 – 1000 BC). The record would suggest that the Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from Canaanite culture... In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature. Given the information available, one cannot maintain a radical cultural separation between Canaanites and Israelites for the Iron I period." (pp. 6–7). Smith, Mark (2002) "The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel" (Eerdman's)
  56. ^ Rendsberg, Gary (2008). "Israel without the Bible". In Frederick E. Greenspahn. The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship. NYU Press, pp. 3–5
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  244. ^ Jonathan B. Krasner; Jonathan D. Sarna (2006). The History of the Jewish People: Ancient Israel to 1880's America. Behrman House, Inc. p. 1. These accomplishments account for 20 percent of the Nobel Prizes awarded since 1901. What a feat for a people who make up only .2 percent of the world's population! 

Further reading

  • Baron, Salo Wittmayer (1952). A Social and Religious History of the Jews, Volume II, Ancient Times, Part II. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America.
  • Carr, David R. (2003) [2000]. "Judaism in Christendom". In Neusner, Jacob; Avery-Peck, Alan J. The Blackwell Companion to Judaism. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 1-57718-058-5. 
  • Cowling, Geoffrey (2005). Introduction to World Religions. Singapore: First Fortress Press. ISBN 0-8006-3714-3. 
  • Danzger, M. Herbert (2003) [2000]. "The "Return" to Traditional Judaism at the End of the Twentieth Century: Cross-Cultural Comparisons". In Neusner, Jacob; Avery-Peck, Alan J. The Blackwell Companion to Judaism. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 1-57718-058-5. 
  • Dekmejian, R. Hrair (1975). Patterns of Political Leadership: Egypt, Israel, Lebanon. State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-87395-291-X. 
  • de Lange, Nicholas (2002) [2000]. An Introduction to Judaism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-46073-5. 
  • Dosick, Wayne (2007). Living Judaism. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-062179-6. 
  • Elazar, Daniel J. (2003) [2000]. "Judaism as a Theopolitical Phenomenon". In Neusner, Jacob; Avery-Peck, Alan J. The Blackwell Companion to Judaism. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 1-57718-058-5. 
  • Feldman, Louis H. (2006). Judaism and Hellenism Reconsidered. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. ISBN 90-04-14906-6. 
  • Gartner, Lloyd P. (2001). History of the Jews in Modern Times. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-289259-2. 
  • Goldenberg, Robert (2007). The Origins of Judaism: From Canaan to the Rise of Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-84453-3. 
  • Goldstein, Joseph (1995). Jewish History in Modern Times. Sussex Academic Press. ISBN 1-898723-06-0. 
  • Johnson, Paul (1987). A History of the Jews. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-091533-1. 
  • Kaplan, Dana Evan (2003) [2000]. "Reform Judaism". In Neusner, Jacob; Avery-Peck, Alan J. The Blackwell Companion to Judaism. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 1-57718-058-5. 
  • Katz, Shmuel (1974). Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine. Taylor Productions. ISBN 0-929093-13-5. 
  • 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
  • Littman, David (1979). "Jews Under Muslim Rule: The Case Of Persia". The Wiener Library Bulletin. XXXII (New series 49/50). 
  • Neusner, Jacob (1991). Studying Classical Judaism: A Primer. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 0-664-25136-6. 
  • 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 Kraków to Amsterdam and Smyrna.
  • Sharot, Stephen (1997). "Religious Syncretism and Religious Distinctiveness: A Comparative Analysis of Pre-Modern Jewish Communities". In Endelman, Todd M. Comparing Jewish Societies. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-06592-0. 
  • Stillman, Norman (1979). The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America. ISBN 0-8276-0198-0
  • Sweeney, Marvin A. (2003) [2000]. "The Religious World of Ancient Israel to 586 BCE". In Neusner, Jacob; Avery-Peck, Alan J. The Blackwell Companion to Judaism. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 1-57718-058-5. 

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