Jews#Origins

{{main|Jew (word)}}

{{main list|List of Jewish ethnonyms}}

The term "Jew" is derived from the Hebrew word {{lang|he|יְהוּדִי}} {{transliteration|he|Yehudi}}, with the plural {{lang|he|יְהוּדִים}} {{transliteration|he|Yehudim}}.{{cite EJ|last=Grintz|first=Yehoshua M.|title=Jew|volume=11|page=253}} Endonyms in other Jewish languages include the Ladino {{lang|lad|ג׳ודיו}} {{transliteration|lad|Djudio}} (plural {{lang|lad|ג׳ודיוס}}, {{transliteration|lad|Djudios}}) and the Yiddish {{lang|yi|ייִד}} {{transliteration|yi|Yid}} (plural {{lang|yi|ייִדן}} {{transliteration|yi|Yidn}}). Originally, in ancient times, Yehudi (Jew){{Cite web |date=2024-07-03 |title=Jew {{!}} History, Beliefs, & Facts {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Jew-people |access-date=2024-07-06 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}} was used to describe the inhabitants of the Israelite kingdom of Judah.Cf. Marcus Jastrow's Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Babli, Talmud Yerushalmi and Midrashic Literature, and the source he used: Megilla 13a:2 (Talmud). It is also used to distinguish their descendants from the gentiles and the Samaritans.Amy-Jill Levine. The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006, page 162 According to the Hebrew Bible, these inhabitants predominately descend from the tribe of Judah from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob."Jew", Oxford English Dictionary. Together the tribe of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin made up the Kingdom of Judah. In ancient times, Jewish people as a whole were called Hebrews or Israelites until the Babylonian Exile. After the Exile, the term Yehudi (Jew) was used for all followers of Judaism because the survivors of the Exile (who were the former residents of the Kingdom of Judah) were the only Israelites that had kept their distinct identity. The ten tribes from the northern Kingdom of Israel had been dispersed by the Assyrian captivity and slowly assimilated into other populations.

Though Genesis 29:35 and 49:8 connect "Judah" with the verb {{transliteration|he|yada}}, meaning "praise", scholars generally agree that "Judah" most likely derives from the name of a Levantine geographic region dominated by gorges and ravines.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pcAkKMECPKIC&pg=PA483 |title=Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament |publisher=William B. Eerdmans |year=1986 |isbn=978-0-8028-2329-8 |editor1-last=Botterweck |editor1-first=G. Johannes |editor1-link=G. Johannes Botterweck |volume=V |location=Grand Rapids, Mich. |pages=483–84 |translator-last=Green |translator-first=David E. |editor2-last=Ringgren |editor2-first=Helmer |editor2-link=Helmer Ringgren}}{{cite book |author=Julia Phillips Berger |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zese2C-fDTEC&q=when+was+the+term+jew+first+used&pg=PA41 |title=Teaching Jewish History |author2=Sue Parker Gerson |publisher=Behrman House, Inc |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-86705-183-4 |page=41}} The gradual ethnonymic shift from "Israelites" to "Jews", regardless of their descent from Judah, although not contained in the Torah, is made explicit in the Book of Esther (4th century BCE) of the Tanakh.{{Cite book |last=Chouraqui |first=André |url=http://archive.org/details/peoplefaith00andr |title=The people and the faith of the Bible |date=1975 |publisher=Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-87023-172-8 |page=43}} Some modern scholars disagree with the conflation, based on the works of Josephus, Philo and Apostle Paul.{{Cite journal |last=Staples |first=Jason A. |date=2021 |title=The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism: A New Theory of People, Exile, and Israelite Identity |url=https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108906524 |journal=Cambridge University Press |pages=25–53 |doi=10.1017/9781108906524 |isbn=9781108906524 |s2cid=235573883 |via=Cambridge Core}}

The English word "Jew" is a derivation of Middle English {{lang|enm|Gyw, Iewe}}. The latter was loaned from the Old French {{lang|fro|giu}}, which itself evolved from the earlier {{lang|fro|juieu}}, which in turn derived from {{lang|fro|judieu/iudieu}} which through elision had dropped the letter "d" from the Medieval Latin Iudaeus, which, like the New Testament Greek term Ioudaios, meant both "Jew" and "Judean" / "of Judea".Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Africa and the Middle East, Facts On File Inc., Infobase Publishing, 2009, p. 336 The Greek term was a loan from Aramaic {{transliteration|arc|*yahūdāy}}, corresponding to Hebrew {{lang|he|יְהוּדִי}} {{transliteration|he|Yehudi}}.

Some scholars prefer translating Ioudaios as "Judean" in the Bible since it is more precise, denotes the community's origins and prevents readers from engaging in antisemitic eisegesis.Adele Reinhartz, [http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/vanishing-jews-antiquity-adele-reinhartz/ "The Vanishing Jews of Antiquity"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170822181415/http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/vanishing-jews-antiquity-adele-reinhartz/|date=22 August 2017}} "Marginalia", L.A. Review of Books, 24 June 2014.Danker, Frederick W. "Ioudaios", in A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. third edition University of Chicago Press. {{ISBN|978-0226039336}} Others disagree, believing that it erases the Jewish identity of Biblical characters such as Jesus. Daniel R. Schwartz distinguishes "Judean" and "Jew". Here, "Judean" refers to the inhabitants of Judea, which encompassed southern Palestine. Meanwhile, "Jew" refers to the descendants of Israelites that adhere to Judaism. Converts are included in the definition.{{Cite book |last=Schwartz |first=Daniel R. |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctt1287s34 |title=Judeans and Jews: Four Faces of Dichotomy in Ancient Jewish History |date=2014 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-1442648395 |pages=3–10|jstor=10.3138/j.ctt1287s34 }} But Shaye J.D. Cohen argues that "Judean" should include believers of the Judean God and allies of the Judean state.{{Cite book |last=Cohen |first=Shaye J.D. |title=The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties |date=2001 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=9780520226937}} Troy W. Martin similarly argues that biblical Jewishness is not dependent on ancestry but instead, is based on adherence to 'covenantal circumcision' ({{Bibleverse|Genesis|17:9-14}}).{{Cite journal |last=Martin |first=Troy W. |date=2003 |title=The Covenant of Circumcision (Genesis 17:9-14) and the Situational Antitheses in Galatians 3:28 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3268093 |journal=Journal of Biblical Literature |volume=122 |issue=1 |pages=111–125 |doi=10.2307/3268093 |jstor=3268093 }}

The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., يَهُودِيّ yahūdī (sg.), al-yahūd (pl.), in Arabic, "Jude" in German, "judeu" in Portuguese, "Juif" (m.)/"Juive" (f.) in French, "jøde" in Danish and Norwegian, "judío/a" 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" ({{langx|fa|عبری/عبرانی}})) and Russian (Еврей, Yevrey).{{cite book |last=Falk |first=Avner |author-link=Avner Falk |title=A Psychoanalytic History of the Jews |publisher=Fairleigh Dickinson University Press |year=1996 |isbn=0-8386-3660-8 |location=Madison, N.J. |page=131}} The German word "Jude" is pronounced {{IPA|de|ˈjuːdə|}}, the corresponding adjective "jüdisch" {{IPA|de|ˈjyːdɪʃ|}} (Jewish) is the origin of the word "Yiddish".{{cite encyclopedia |year=2004 |title=Yiddish |encyclopedia=Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary |publisher=Merriam-Webster |location=Springfield, Massachusetts |url=https://archive.org/details/merriamwebstersc00merr_6/page/1453 |edition=11th |page=[https://archive.org/details/merriamwebstersc00merr_6/page/1453 1453] |isbn=0-87779-809-5}}

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.{{cite book|title=The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style|at=Jew|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xb6ie6PqYhwC&pg=PA269|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Company|year=2005|isbn=978-0-618-60499-9|editor1-last=Kleinedler|editor1-first=Steven|editor2-last=Spitz|editor2-first=Susan|display-editors=etal}}

{{main|Who is a Jew?|Jewish identity}}

File:A map of Canaan (8343807206).jpg]]

Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation,{{cite book|author=M. Nicholson|title=International Relations: A Concise Introduction|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HvI8DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA19|year=2002|publisher=NYU Press|isbn=978-0-8147-5822-9|pages=19–}} "The Jews are a nation and were so before there was a Jewish state of Israel"{{cite book|author=Jacob Neusner|title=An Introduction to Judaism: A Textbook and Reader|url=https://archive.org/details/introductiontoju0000neus|url-access=registration|year=1991|publisher=Westminster John Knox Press|isbn=978-0-664-25348-6|pages=[https://archive.org/details/introductiontoju0000neus/page/375 375]–}} "That there is a Jewish nation can hardly be denied after the creation of the State of Israel"{{cite book|author=Alan Dowty|title=The Jewish State: A Century Later, Updated With a New Preface|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vL8r4U1FKSQC&pg=PA3|year=1998|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-92706-3|pages=3–}} "Jews are a people, a nation (in the original sense of the word), an ethnos"{{cite web|url=https://louisville.edu/law/library/special-collections/the-louis-d.-brandeis-collection/the-jewish-problem-how-to-solve-it-by-louis-d.-brandeis|title=The Jewish Problem: How To Solve It|first=Louis|last=Brandeis|author-link=Louis Brandeis|date=25 April 1915|publisher=University of Louisville School of Law|access-date=2 April 2012|quote=Jews are a distinctive nationality of which every Jew, whatever his country, his station or shade of belief, is necessarily a member}}{{cite book|last1=Palmer|first1=Edward Henry|author-link1=Edward Henry Palmer|title=A History of the Jewish Nation: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day|url=https://archive.org/details/historyofjewishn00palm|access-date=2 April 2012|year= 2002|orig-year=First published 1874|publisher=Gorgias Press|isbn=978-1-931956-69-7|oclc=51578088}}{{cite web|url=http://press.princeton.edu/einstein/materials/jewish_nationality.pdf|title=How I Became a Zionist|first=Albert|last=Einstein|author-link=Albert Einstein|work=Einstein Papers Project|quote=The Jewish nation is a living fact|date=21 June 1921|publisher=Princeton University Press|access-date=5 April 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151105012335/http://press.princeton.edu/einstein/materials/jewish_nationality.pdf|archive-date=5 November 2015|url-status=dead}} an ethnicity, a religion, and a culture,{{cite book|author1=David M. Gordis|author2=Zachary I. Heller|title=Jewish Secularity: The Search for Roots and the Challenges of Relevant Meaning|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QWrSy8Ckd5UC&pg=PA1|year=2012|publisher=University Press of America|isbn=978-0-7618-5793-8|pages=1–}}: "Judaism is a culture and a civilization which embraces the secular as well"{{cite book|author=Seth Daniel Kunin|title=Themes and Issues in Judaism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=St_TAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA1|year= 2000|publisher=A&C Black|isbn=978-0-304-33758-3|pages=1–}}: Although culture - and Judaism is a culture (or cultures) as well as religion - can be subdivided into different analytical categories..."{{cite book|author=Paul R. Mendes-Flohr|title=Divided Passions: Jewish Intellectuals and the Experience of Modernity|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VBuFygk2C-AC&pg=PA421|year=1991|publisher=Wayne State University Press|isbn=0-8143-2030-9|pages=421–}}: "Although Judaism is a culture - or rather has a culture - it is eminently more than a culture" making the definition of who is a Jew vary slightly depending on whether a religious or national approach to identity is used.{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/whojew1.html|title=Who is a Jew?|access-date=6 October 2007|last=Weiner|first=Rebecca|year=2007|encyclopedia=Jewish Virtual Library}}{{better source needed|date=May 2022}} 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.{{cite book|title=World Religions: An Introduction for Students|last=Fowler|first=Jeaneane D.|year=1997|publisher=Sussex Academic Press|isbn=1-898723-48-6|page=[https://archive.org/details/worldreligionsin0000unse/page/7 7]|url=https://archive.org/details/worldreligionsin0000unse/page/7}}

Historical definitions of Jewish identity have traditionally been based on halakhic definitions of matrilineal descent, and halakhic conversions. These definitions of who is a Jew date back to the codification of the Oral Torah into the Babylonian Talmud, around 200 CE. Interpretations by Jewish sages of sections of the Tanakh – such as {{bibleverse|Deuteronomy|7:1–5}}, which forbade intermarriage between their Israelite ancestors and seven non-Israelite nations: "for that [i.e. giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,] would turn away your children from following me, to serve other gods"{{Failed verification|date=July 2022}} – are used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and gentiles. {{bibleverse|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 {{bibleverse|Ezra|10:2–3}}, where Israelites returning from Babylon vow to put aside their gentile wives and their children.{{cite web|url=http://www.shamash.org/lists/scj-faq/HTML/faq/10-11.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19961018024300/http://shamash.org/lists/scj-faq/HTML/faq/10-11.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=18 October 1996|title=What is the origin of Matrilineal Descent?|access-date=9 January 2009|date=4 September 2003|publisher=Shamash.org}}{{cite web|url=http://www.torah.org/qanda/seequanda.php?id=318 |title=What is the source of the law that a child is Jewish only if its mother is Jewish? |access-date=9 January 2009 |publisher=Torah.org |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081224205847/http://www.torah.org/qanda/seequanda.php?id=318 |archive-date=24 December 2008}} A popular theory is that the rape of Jewish women in captivity brought about the law of Jewish identity being inherited through the maternal line, although scholars challenge this theory citing the Talmudic establishment of the law from the pre-exile period. Another argument is that the rabbis changed the law of patrilineal descent to matrilineal descent due to the widespread rape of Jewish women by Roman soldiers.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6iFx-wHhMJMC&pg=PA67|title=Birth, Death, and Femininity: Philosophies of Embodiment|author=Robin May Schott|year=2010|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=978-0-253-00482-6|pages=67–}} Since the anti-religious Haskalah movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries, halakhic interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged.Dosick (2007), pp. 56–57.

According to historian Shaye J. D. Cohen, the status of the offspring of mixed marriages was determined 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.{{cite book|author=Shaye J.D. Cohen|year=1999|title=The Beginnings of Jewishness|publisher=U. California Press|pages=305–06|isbn=0-585-24643-2}} Second, the Tannaim may have been influenced by Roman law, which dictated that when a parent could not contract a legal marriage, offspring would follow the mother. Rabbi Rivon Krygier follows a similar reasoning, arguing that Jewish descent had formerly passed through the patrilineal descent and the law of matrilineal descent had its roots in the Roman legal system.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0BC_DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA6|title=Lost Jews: The Struggle for Identity Today|author=Emma Klein|year=2016|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-1-349-24319-8|pages=6–}}

{{further|Canaan|Israelites| Yahwism|Origins of Judaism|History of ancient Israel and Judah}}

File:Procession of the Aamu, Tomb of Khnumhotep II (composite).jpg. The painting is from the tomb of a 12th dynasty official Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan, and dated to c. 1900 BCE. Their nearest Biblical contemporaries were the earliest of Hebrews, such as Abraham and Joseph.{{cite book |last1=Mieroop |first1=Marc Van De |title=A History of Ancient Egypt |date=2010 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1-4051-6070-4 |page=131 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JADDYAZ9GIIC&pg=PA131 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Bard |first1=Kathryn A. |author-link=Kathryn A. Bard |title=An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt |date=2015 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1-118-89611-2 |page=188 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lFscBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA188 |language=en}}{{cite journal |last1=Curry |first1=Andrew |title=The Rulers of Foreign Lands |journal= Archaeology Magazine |date=2018 |url=https://www.archaeology.org/issues/309-1809/features/6855-egypt-hyksos-foreign-dynasty}}{{cite journal |last1=Kamrin |first1=Janice |title=The Aamu of Shu in the Tomb of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hassan |journal=Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections |date=2009 |volume=1 |issue=3 |pages=22–36 |url=https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/jaei/article/view/28 |s2cid=199601200 }}]]

File:Jehu on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III.jpg, tenth king of the northern Kingdom of Israel, on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 841–840 BCE.{{cite book |last1=Kuan |first1=Jeffrey Kah-Jin |title=Neo-Assyrian Historical Inscriptions and Syria-Palestine: Israelite/Judean-Tyrian-Damascene Political and Commercial Relations in the Ninth-Eighth Centuries BCE |date=2016 |publisher=Wipf and Stock Publishers |isbn=978-1-4982-8143-0 |pages=64–66 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zMOqCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA65 |language=en}} This is "the only portrayal we have in ancient Near Eastern art of an Israelite or Judaean monarch".{{cite book |last1=Cohen |first1=Ada |last2=Kangas |first2=Steven E. |title=Assyrian Reliefs from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II: A Cultural Biography |date=2010 |publisher=UPNE |isbn=978-1-58465-817-7 |page=127 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uRKU0YXBWtgC&pg=PA127 |language=en}}]]

The prehistory and ethnogenesis of the Jews are closely intertwined with archaeology, biology, historical textual records, mythology, and religious literature. The ethnic stock to which Jews originally trace their ancestry was a confederation of Iron Age Semitic-speaking tribes known as the Israelites that inhabited a part of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods.{{Cite book |title=Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People |last=Ostrer |first=Harry |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2012 |isbn=978-0-19-537961-7 |publication-date=8 May 2012}} Modern Jews are named after and also descended from the southern Israelite Kingdom of Judah.{{Cite book|last=Killebrew|first=Ann E.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VtAmmwapfVAC|title=Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanite|date=October 2005|publisher=Society of Biblical Lit|isbn=978-1-58983-097-4|language=en}}{{cite book |last=Schama |first=Simon |author-link=Simon Schama |title=The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC–1492 AD|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sHIpAgAAQBAJ|year=2014|publisher=HarperCollins|isbn=978-0-06-233944-7}}* "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 the descendants of the Hebrews of the Old Testament."

• "The Jewish people as a whole, initially called Hebrews (ʿIvrim), were known as Israelites (Yisreʾelim) from the time of their entrance into the Holy Land to the end of the Babylonian Exile (538 BC)."

[https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/303358/Jew Jew] at [https://www.britannica.com/ Encyclopædia Britannica]{{cite book |last=Ostrer |first=Harry |title=Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xIloAgAAQBAJ|year=2012|publisher=Oxford University Press, USA|isbn=978-0-19-970205-3}}{{cite book |last=Brenner |first=Michael |title=A Short History of the Jews|url=https://archive.org/details/shorthistoryofje00bren|url-access=registration |year=2010|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-0-691-14351-4}}{{cite book |last=Adams |first=Hannah |title=The History of the Jews: From the Destruction of Jerusalem to the Present Time|url=https://archive.org/details/historyjewsfrom00adamgoog|year=1840|publisher=London Society House}}

Gary A. Rendsburg links the early Canaanite nomadic pastoralists confederation to the Shasu known to the Egyptians around the 15th century BCE.{{Citation |last=Rendsburg |first=Gary A. |title=1 Israel Without the Bible |date=31 December 2022 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814733080.003.0005 |work=The Hebrew Bible |pages=1–23 |access-date=7 December 2023 |publisher=New York University Press |doi=10.18574/nyu/9780814733080.003.0005 |isbn=978-0-8147-3308-0}}

According to the Hebrew Bible narrative, Jewish ancestry is traced back to the Biblical patriarchs such as Abraham, his son Isaac, Isaac's son Jacob, and the Biblical matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel, who lived in Canaan. The Twelve Tribes are described as descending from the twelve sons of Jacob. Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacob's son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs' descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, after which the Israelites conquered Canaan under Moses' successor Joshua, went through the period of the Biblical judges after the death of Joshua, then through the mediation of Samuel became subject to a king, Saul, who was succeeded by David and then Solomon, after whom the United Monarchy ended and was split into a separate Kingdom of Israel and a Kingdom of Judah. The Kingdom of Judah is described as comprising the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, partially Levi, and later adding remnants of other tribes who migrated there from the northern Kingdom of Israel.{{cite book |last=Broshi |first=Maguen |title=Bread, Wine, Walls and Scrolls |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=etTUEorS1zMC&pg=PA174|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |year=2001 |page=174 |isbn=1-84127-201-9}}{{Cite web |title=Judah |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Judah-Hebrew-tribe |access-date=1 April 2018 |publisher=Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-israelite-refugees-found-high-office-in-judah-seals-found-in-jerusalem-show-1.5448092|title=Israelite refugees found high office in Kingdom of Judah, seals found in Jerusalem show|newspaper=Haaretz}}

In the extra-biblical record, the Israelites become visible as a people between 1200 and 1000 BCE.{{cite book |last1=Spielvogel |first1=Jackson J. |title=Western civilization |date=2012 |publisher=Wadsworth/Cengage Learning |isbn=978-0-495-91324-5 |edition=8th |location=Australia |page=33 |quote=What is generally agreed, however, is that between 1200 and 1000 B.C.E., the Israelites emerged as a distinct group of people, possibly united into tribes or a league of tribes}} There is well accepted archeological evidence referring to "Israel" in the Merneptah Stele, which dates to about 1200 BCE,{{Cite book|last=Noll|first=K. L.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hMeRK7B1EsMC&pg=PA139|title=Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: A Textbook on History and Religion: Second Edition|date=7 December 2012|publisher=A&C Black|isbn=978-0-567-44117-1|language=en}}{{Cite book|last=Thompson|first=Thomas L.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RwrrUuHFb6UC&pg=PA275|title=Early History of the Israelite People: From the Written & Archaeological Sources|date=1 January 2000|publisher=BRILL|isbn=978-90-04-11943-7|language=en|quote=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.|pages=137ff}} and in the Mesha stele from 840 BCE. It is debated whether a period like that of the Biblical judges occurred{{Cite book |last=Yoder |first=John C. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h7kFCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA5%257CYEAR=2015%257CPUBLISHER=FORTRESS |title=Power and Politics in the Book of Judges: Men and Women of Valor |date=2015 |publisher=Augsburg Fortress Publishers |isbn=978-1-4514-9642-0 |language=en}}{{cite book |author=Marc Zvi Brettler |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9j9Jbcl6g38C&pg=PA107 |title=The Book of Judges |publisher=Psychology Press |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-415-16216-6 |page=107}}{{cite book |author=Thomas L. Thompson |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RwrrUuHFb6UC&pg=PA96 |title=Early History of the Israelite People: From the Written & Archaeological Sources |publisher=Brill |year=2000 |isbn=90-04-11943-4 |page=96}}{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hmOaCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA4 |title=History, Archaeology and The Bible Forty Years After "Historicity": Changing Perspectives |publisher=Routledge |year=2016 |isbn=978-1-317-42815-2 |editor-last=Hjelm |editor-first=Ingrid |page=4 |editor-last2=Thompson |editor-first2=Thomas L}}{{cite book |author=Philip R. Davies |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5D5GNju1-ggC&pg=PA26 |title=In Search of "Ancient Israel": A Study in Biblical Origins |publisher=A&C Black |year=1995 |isbn=978-1-85075-737-5 |page=26}} and if there ever was a United Monarchy.{{cite book |last1=Lipschits |first1=Oded |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yErYBAAAQBAJ |title=The Jewish Study Bible |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2014 |isbn=978-0-19-997846-5 |editor1-last=Berlin |editor1-first=Adele |edition=2nd |language=en |chapter=The History of Israel in the Biblical Period |editor2-last=Brettler |editor2-first=Marc Zvi}}{{cite book |last1=Finkelstein |first1=Israel |title=The Bible unearthed : archaeology's new vision of ancient Israel and the origin of its stories |last2=Silberman |first2=Neil Asher |date=2001 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |isbn=0-684-86912-8 |edition=1st Touchstone |location=New York}}{{cite book |last=Kuhrt |first=Amiele |url=https://archive.org/details/ancientneareastc00akuh/page/438 |title=The Ancient Near East |publisher=Routledge |year=1995 |isbn=978-0-415-16762-8 |page=[https://archive.org/details/ancientneareastc00akuh/page/438 438]}}{{cite web |last1=Wright |first1=Jacob L. |date=July 2014 |title=David, King of Judah (Not Israel) |url=http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/2014/07/wri388001.shtml |publisher=The Bible and Interpretation}} There is further disagreement about the earliest existence of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their extent and power. Historians agree that a Kingdom of Israel existed by {{Circa|900 BCE}},{{rp|169–95}} there is a consensus that a Kingdom of Judah existed by c. 700 BCE at least,{{Cite book |last1=Holloway |first1=Steven W. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tu02muKUVJ0C&pg=PA229 |title=The Pitcher is Broken: Memorial Essays for Gösta W. Ahlström |last2=Handy |first2=Lowell K. |date=1 May 1995 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-0-567-63671-3 |language=en |quote=For Israel, the description of the battle of Qarqar in the Kurkh Monolith of Shalmaneser III (mid-ninth century) and for Judah, a Tiglath-pileser III text mentioning (Jeho-) Ahaz of Judah (IIR67 = K. 3751), dated 734–733, are the earliest published to date.}} and recent excavations in Khirbet Qeiyafa have provided strong evidence for dating the Kingdom of Judah to the 10th century BCE.{{Cite journal |last1=Garfinkel |first1=Yosef |last2=Ganor |first2=Saar |date=2008-12-31 |title=Khirbet Qeiyafa: Sha'arayim |url=https://jhsonline.org/index.php/jhs/article/view/6220 |journal=Journal of Hebrew Scriptures |volume=8|doi=10.5508/jhs.2008.v8.a22 |doi-access=free }} In 587 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II, King of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, besieged Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple and deported parts of the Judahite population.{{cite news |last1=Baker |first1=Luke |date=3 February 2017 |title=Ancient tablets reveal life of Jews in Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon |newspaper=Reuters |url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-archaeology-babylon-idUSKBN0L71EK20150203}}

Scholars disagree regarding the extent to which the Bible should be accepted as a historical source for early Israelite history. Rendsburg states that there are two approximately equal groups of scholars who debate the historicity of the biblical narrative, the minimalists who largely reject it, and the maximalists who largely accept it, with the minimalists being the more vocal of the two.Rendsburg, Gary A.. "1 Israel Without the Bible". The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship, edited by Frederick E. Greenspahn, New York, USA: New York University Press, 2007, p. 7. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814733080.003.0005: "I am not sure I can quantify the schools, that is, tell you that the majority of biblical scholars today are maximalist or minimalist - I suppose the divide is about 50-50 - But I can tell you this: there is no doubt that the minimalists are more vocal, and they are the ones who set the agenda, publish books at a very rapid pace, organize conferences to present their views (especially in Europe) and take advantage of the popular press. The maximalists, in turn, frequently are left to respond to these diatribes, often needing to take time away from their own research to counter the views expressed in the many publications emanating from the pens of minimalist scholars."

Some of the leading minimalists reframe the biblical account as constituting the Israelites' inspiring national myth narrative, suggesting that according to the modern archaeological and historical account, the Israelites and their culture did not overtake the region by force, but instead branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion of Yahwism centered on Yahweh, one of the gods of the Canaanite pantheon. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of cultic practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group, setting them apart from other Canaanites.Tubb, 1998. pp. 13–14{{full citation needed|date=October 2020}}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 BCE). The record would suggest that the Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from Canaanite culture... In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature. Given the information available, one cannot maintain a radical cultural separation between Canaanites and Israelites for the Iron I period." (pp. 6–7). Smith, Mark (2002) "The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel" (Eerdman's)Rendsberg, Gary (2008). "Israel without the Bible". In Frederick E. Greenspahn. The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship. NYU Press, pp. 3–5 According to Dever, modern archaeologists have largely discarded the search for evidence of the biblical narrative surrounding the patriarchs and the exodus.{{cite book |last=Dever |first=William |title=What Did the Biblical Writers Know, and When Did They Know It? |year=2001 |publisher=Eerdmans |isbn=3-927120-37-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6-VxwC5rQtwC |pages=98–99 |quote=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.}}

According to the maximalist position, the modern archaeological record independently points to a narrative which largely agrees with the biblical account. This narrative provides a testimony of the Israelites as a nomadic people known to the Egyptians as belonging to the Shasu. Over time these nomads left the desert and settled on the central mountain range of the land of Canaan, in simple semi-nomadic settlements in which pig bones are notably absent. This population gradually shifted from a tribal lifestyle to a monarchy. While the archaeological record of the ninth century BCE provides evidence for two monarchies, one in the south under a dynasty founded by a figure named David with its capital in Jerusalem, and one in the north under a dynasty founded by a figure named Omri with its capital in Samaria. It also points to an early monarchic period in which these regions shared material culture and religion, suggesting a common origin. Archaeological finds also provide evidence for the later cooperation of these two kingdoms in their coalition against Aram, and for their destructions by the Assyrians and later by the Babylonians.Rendsburg, Gary A.. "1 Israel Without the Bible". The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship, edited by Frederick E. Greenspahn, New York, USA: New York University Press, 2007, pp. 7-23. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814733080.003.0005

Genetic studies on Jews show that most Jews worldwide bear a common genetic heritage which originates in the Middle East, and that they share certain genetic traits with other Gentile peoples of the Fertile Crescent.{{cite web |author=Jared Diamond |year=1993 |title=Who are the Jews? |url=http://ftp.beitberl.ac.il/~bbsite/misc/ezer_anglit/klali/05_123.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721133548/http://ftp.beitberl.ac.il/~bbsite/misc/ezer_anglit/klali/05_123.pdf |archive-date=21 July 2011 |access-date=8 November 2010}} Natural History 102:11 (November 1993): 12–19.{{cite journal |last1=Hammer |first1=MF |last2=Redd |first2=AJ |last3=Wood |first3=ET |display-authors=etal |date=June 2000 |title=Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes |journal=Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. |volume=97 |issue=12 |pages=6769–74 |bibcode=2000PNAS...97.6769H |doi=10.1073/pnas.100115997 |pmc=18733 |pmid=10801975 |doi-access=free}}{{cite news |last=Wade |first=Nicholas |date=9 May 2000 |title=Y Chromosome Bears Witness to Story of the Jewish Diaspora |newspaper=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/09/science/y-chromosome-bears-witness-to-story-of-the-jewish-diaspora.html |access-date=10 October 2012}} The genetic composition of different Jewish groups shows that Jews share a common gene pool dating back four millennia, as a marker of their common ancestral origin.{{cite journal |last=Balter |first=Michael |date=3 June 2010 |title=Tracing the Roots of Jewishness |url=https://www.science.org/content/article/tracing-roots-jewishness-rev2 |access-date=4 October 2018 |journal=Science}} Despite their long-term separation, Jewish communities maintained their unique commonalities, propensities, and sensibilities in culture, tradition, and language.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gFtYAgAAQBAJ&q=the+importance+of+ancestral+origin+box+5-1&pg=PT116 |title=Genes, Behavior, and the Social Environment:: Moving Beyond the Nature ...By Committee on Assessing Interactions Among Social, Behavioral, and Genetic Factors in Health, Board on Health Sciences Policy, Institute of Medicine, Lyla M. Hernandez |date=2006 |publisher=National Academies Press |isbn=978-0-309-10196-7 |page=100 |language=en}}

{{main|Jewish history}}

{{For timeline|Timeline of Jewish history}}

{{Tribes of Israel}}

{{further|History of ancient Israel and Judah|}}

The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele, which dates to around 1200 BCE. The majority of scholars agree that this text refers to the Israelites, a group that inhabited the central highlands of Canaan, where archaeological evidence shows that hundreds of small settlements were constructed between the 12th and 10th centuries BCE.{{sfn|Stager|1998|p=91}}{{Cite book |last=Dever |first=William G. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6-VxwC5rQtwC&dq=What+did+the+biblical+writers+know&pg=PA102 |title=What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?: What Archeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel |publisher=Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-8028-2126-3 |language=en}} The Israelites differentiated themselves from neighboring peoples through various distinct characteristics including religious practices, prohibition on intermarriage, and an emphasis on genealogy and family history.{{sfn|McNutt|1999|p=35}}{{sfn|Dever|2003|p=206}}{{sfn|Dever|2003|p=206}}

In the 10th century BCE, two neighboring Israelite kingdoms—the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah—emerged. Since their inception, they shared ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious characteristics despite a complicated relationship. Israel, with its capital mostly in Samaria, was larger and wealthier, and soon developed into a regional power.{{sfn|Finkelstein|Silberman|2002|pp=146–7|ps=Put simply, while Judah was still economically marginal and backward, Israel was booming. [...] In the next chapter we will see how the northern kingdom suddenly appeared on the ancient Near Eastern stage as a major regional power}} In contrast, Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem, was less prosperous and covered a smaller, mostly mountainous territory. However, while in Israel the royal succession was often decided by a military coup d'état, resulting in several dynasty changes, political stability in Judah was much greater, as it was ruled by the House of David for the whole four centuries of its existence.{{Cite book |last=Lemaire |first=André |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1017604304 |title=The Oxford Illustrated History of the Holy Land |date=2018 |others=Robert G. Hoyland, H. G. M. Williamson |isbn=978-0-19-872439-1 |edition=1st |pages=61–85 |chapter=Israel and Judah |publisher=Oxford University Press |oclc=1017604304}}

Around 720 BCE, Kingdom of Israel was destroyed when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which came to dominate the ancient Near East. Under the Assyrian resettlement policy, a significant portion of the northern Israelite population was exiled to Mesopotamia and replaced by immigrants from the same region.{{sfn|Tobolowsky|2022|pp=69–70; 73–75}} During the same period, and throughout the 7th century BCE, the Kingdom of Judah, now under Assyrian vassalage, experienced a period of prosperity and witnessed a significant population growth.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2kSovzudhFUC |title=A History of the Jewish People |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1976 |isbn=978-0674397316 |editor-last=Ben-Sasson |editor-first=Haim Hillel |editor-link=H.H. Ben-Sasson |page=142 |quote=Sargon's heir, Sennacherib (705–681), could not deal with Hezekiah's revolt until he gained control of Babylon in 702 BCE. |access-date=12 October 2018}} This prosperity continued until the Neo-Assyrian king Sennacherib devastated the region of Judah in response to a rebellion in the area, ultimately halting at Jerusalem.Finkelstein, Israel and Mazar, Amihai. The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel. Leiden: Brill, 2007. p. 166. Later in the same century, the Assyrians were defeated by the rising Neo-Babylonian Empire, and Judah became its vassal. In 587 BCE, following a revolt in Judah, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, putting an end to the kingdom. The majority of Jerusalem's residents, including the kingdom's elite, were exiled to Babylon.{{sfn|Lipiński|2020|p=94}}{{Cite book |last=Lipschits |first=Oded |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/j.ctv1bxh5fd |title=The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: Judah under Babylonian Rule |date=2005 |publisher=Penn State University Press |isbn=978-1-57506-297-6 |pages=367 |doi=10.5325/j.ctv1bxh5fd|jstor=10.5325/j.ctv1bxh5fd }}

{{further|Second Temple period|Jewish–Roman wars}}

According to the Book of Ezra, the Persian Cyrus the Great ended the Babylonian exile in 538 BCE,{{cite web|url=http://www.biu.ac.il/js/rennert/history_4.html |title=Second Temple Period (538 BCE. to 70 CE) Persian Rule |publisher=Biu.ac.il |access-date=15 March 2014}} the year after he captured Babylon.Harper's Bible Dictionary, ed. by Achtemeier, etc., Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1985, p. 103 The exile ended with the return under Zerubbabel the Prince (so called because he was a descendant of the royal line of David) and Joshua the Priest (a descendant of the line of the former High Priests of the Temple) and their construction of the Second Temple circa 521–516 BCE. As part of the Persian Empire, the former Kingdom of Judah became the province of Judah (Yehud Medinata),Yehud being the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew Yehuda, or "Judah", and "medinata" the word for province with a smaller territory{{cite book |last=Grabbe |first=Lester L. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-MnE5T_0RbMC&q=gave+the+Jews+permission+to+return+to+Yehud+province+and+to+rebuild+the&pg=PA355 |title=A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period: Yehud – A History of the Persian Province of Judah v. 1 |publisher=T & T Clark |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-567-08998-4 |page=355}} and a reduced population.

Judea was under control of the Achaemenids until the fall of their empire in c. 333 BCE to Alexander the Great. After several centuries under foreign imperial rule, the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire resulted in an independent Hasmonean kingdom, under which the Jews once again enjoyed political independence for a period spanning from 110 to 63 BCE.{{cite book |author1=Peter Fibiger Bang |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GCj09AmtvvwC&pg=PAPA184 |title=The Oxford Handbook of the State in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean |author2=Walter Scheidel |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-19-518831-8 |pages=184–187 |access-date=16 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230409160404/https://books.google.com/books?id=GCj09AmtvvwC&pg=PAPA184 |archive-date=9 April 2023 |url-status=live}} Under Hasmonean rule the boundaries of their kingdom were expanded to include not only the land of the historical kingdom of Judah, but also the Galilee and Transjordan.Stern, Menahem. (2007). "Hasmoneans". In Skolnik, Fred (ed.). Encyclopaedia Judaica Volume 8 Gos–Hep (2nd ed.). Michigan: Thompson Gale. p. 446. In the beginning of this process the Idumeans, who had infiltrated southern Judea after the destruction of the First Temple, were converted en masse.{{Cite journal |last=Levin |first=Yigal |date=2020-09-24 |title=The Religion of Idumea and Its Relationship to Early Judaism |journal=Religions |volume=11 |issue=10 |pages=487 |doi=10.3390/rel11100487 |issn=2077-1444 |doi-access=free}}Strabo, Geography Bk.16.2.34 In 63 BCE, Judea was conquered by the Romans. From 37 BCE to 6 CE, the Romans allowed the Jews to maintain some degree of independence by installing the Herodian dynasty as vassal kings. However, Judea eventually came directly under Roman control and was incorporated into the Roman Empire as the province of Judaea.{{cite book |author1=Peter Fibiger Bang |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GCj09AmtvvwC&pg=PA184 |title=The Oxford Handbook of the State in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean |author2=Walter Scheidel |publisher=OUP USA |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-19-518831-8 |pages=184–87}}{{cite book |author=Abraham Malamat |url={{Google books|2kSovzudhFUC|page=PA223|keywords=|text=|plainurl=yes}} |title=A History of the Jewish People |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1976 |isbn=978-0-674-39731-6 |pages=223–239}}

The Jewish–Roman wars, a series of unsuccessful revolts against Roman rule during the first and second centuries CE, had significant and disastrous consequences for the Jewish population of Judaea.{{Cite book |last=Zissu |first=Boaz |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/988856967 |title=Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: The Interbellum 70‒132 CE |date=2018 |others=Joshua Schwartz, Peter J. Tomson |isbn=978-90-04-34986-5 |pages=19 |chapter=Interbellum Judea 70-132 CE: An Archaeological Perspective |publisher=Brill |oclc=988856967}}{{cite book |author1=Erwin Fahlbusch |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C5V7oyy69zgC&pg=PAPA15 |title=The Encyclopedia of Christianity |author2=Geoffrey William Bromiley |publisher=Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-8028-2416-5 |pages=15– |access-date=16 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230409160412/https://books.google.com/books?id=C5V7oyy69zgC&pg=PAPA15 |archive-date=9 April 2023 |url-status=live}} The First Jewish-Roman War (66–73 CE) culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple. The severely reduced Jewish population of Judaea was denied any kind of political self-government.{{Cite book |last=Goodman |first=Martin |title=A History of Judaism |date=2018 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-18127-1 |location=Princeton Oxford |pages=21, 232}} A few generations later, the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE) erupted, and its brutal suppression by the Romans led to the depopulation of Judea. Following the revolt, Jews were forbidden from residing in the vicinity of Jerusalem, and the Jewish demographic center in Judaea shifted to Galilee.Mor, M. The Second Jewish Revolt: The Bar Kokhba War, 132–136 CE. Brill, 2016. P471/{{Cite journal |last1=Raviv |first1=Dvir |last2=Ben David |first2=Chaim |date=27 May 2021 |title=Cassius Dio's figures for the demographic consequences of the Bar Kokhba War: Exaggeration or reliable account? |journal=Journal of Roman Archaeology |language=en |volume=34 |issue=2 |pages=585–607 |doi=10.1017/S1047759421000271 |issn=1047-7594 |s2cid=236389017 |doi-access=free}}Powell, The Bar Kokhba War AD 132-136, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, ç2017, p.80 Similar upheavals impacted the Jewish communities in the empire's eastern provinces during the Diaspora Revolt (115–117 CE), leading to the near-total destruction of Jewish diaspora communities in Libya, Cyprus and Egypt,{{Citation |last1=Kerkeslager |first1=Allen |title=The Diaspora from 66 to c. 235 ce |date=2006 |work=The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period |volume=4 |pages=62–63 |editor-last=Katz |editor-first=Steven T. |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-history-of-judaism/diaspora-from-66-to-c-235-ce/5AECAD54BE6CA31C7968EED92D6CA36A |access-date=2024-09-10 |series=The Cambridge History of Judaism |place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |doi=10.1017/chol9780521772488.004 |isbn=978-0-521-77248-8 |last2=Setzer |first2=Claudia |last3=Trebilco |first3=Paul |last4=Goodblatt |first4=David}}{{Citation |last=Zeev |first=Miriam Pucci Ben |title=The uprisings in the Jewish Diaspora, 116–117 |date=2006-06-22 |work=The Cambridge History of Judaism |pages=98 |editor-last=Katz |editor-first=Steven T. |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/CBO9781139055130A007/type/book_part |access-date=2024-09-08 |edition=1 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |doi=10.1017/chol9780521772488.005 |isbn=978-1-139-05513-0}} including the highly influential community in Alexandria.

File:Iudaea_capta_reverse_of_Vespasian_sestertius.jpg, or "captive Judea" (71 CE), representing Judea as a seated mourning woman (right), and a Jewish captive with hands tied (left)]]The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE brought profound changes to Judaism. With the Temple's central place in Jewish worship gone, religious practices shifted towards prayer, Torah study (including Oral Torah), and communal gatherings in synagogues. Judaism also lost much of its sectarian nature.{{cite book |author=Jodi Magness |title=Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History?: On Jews and Judaism before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple |publisher=Brill |year=2011 |isbn=978-90-04-21744-7 |editor1=Daniel R. Schwartz |chapter=Sectarianism before and after 70 CE |editor2=Zeev Weiss |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VecxAQAAQBAJ&q=diaspora+70+ce&pg=PA189}}{{rp|69}} Two of the three main sects that flourished during the late Second Temple period, namely the Sadducees and Essenes, eventually disappeared, while Pharisaic beliefs became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis of Rabbinic Judaism, which emerged as the prevailing form of Judaism since late antiquity.{{Cite book |last=Karesh |first=Sara E. |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/1162305378 |title=Encyclopedia of Judaism |year=2006 |publisher=Facts On File |isbn=978-1-78785-171-9 |oclc=1162305378 |quote=Until the modern period, the destruction of the Temple was the most cataclysmic moment in the history of the Jewish people. Without the Temple, the Sadducees no longer had any claim to authority, and they faded away. The sage Yochanan ben Zakkai, with permission from Rome, set up the outpost of Yavneh to continue develop of Pharisaic, or rabbinic, Judaism.}}

{{further|History of the Jews in the Roman Empire|Talmudic academies in Babylonia}}

The Jewish diaspora existed well before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and had been ongoing for centuries, with the dispersal driven by both forced expulsions and voluntary migrations.Erich S. Gruen, [https://books.google.com/books?id=t1IR4WtFjGUC&pg=PA3 Diaspora: Jews Amidst Greeks and Romans] Harvard University Press, 2009 pp. 3–4, 233–34: 'Compulsory dislocation, ....cannot have accounted for more than a fraction of the diaspora. ... The vast bulk of Jews who dwelled abroad in the Second Temple Period did so voluntarily.' (2)' .Diaspora did not await the fall of Jerusalem to Roman power and destructiveness. The scattering of Jews had begun long before-occasionally through forced expulsion, much more frequently through voluntary migration.' In Mesopotamia, a testimony to the beginnings of the Jewish community can be found in Joachin's ration tablets, listing provisions allotted to the exiled Judean king and his family by Nebuchadnezzar II, and further evidence are the Al-Yahudu tablets, dated to the 6th–5th centuries BCE and related to the exiles from Judea arriving after the destruction of the First Temple, though there is ample evidence for the presence of Jews in Babylonia even from 626 BCE.Zadok R. Judeans in Babylonia–Updating the Dossier. in U.Gabbay and Sh.Secunda. (eds.). Encounters by the Rivers of Babylon: Scholarly Conversations between Jews, Iranians and Babylonians in Antiquity, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 160. Tübingen: MohrSiebeck. pp. 109–110. In Egypt, the documents from Elephantine reveal the trials of a community founded by a Persian Jewish garrison at two fortresses on the frontier during the 5th–4th centuries BCE, and according to Josephus the Jewish community in Alexandria existed since the founding of the city in the 4th century BCE by Alexander the Great.Josephus Flavius, Against Appion. 4.II By 200 BCE, there were well established Jewish communities both in Egypt and Mesopotamia ("Babylonia" in Jewish sources) and in the two centuries that followed, Jewish populations were also present in Asia Minor, Greece, Macedonia, Cyrene, and, beginning in the middle of the first century BCE, in the city of Rome.{{cite book |author=E. Mary Smallwood |title=The Cambridge History of Judaism: The early Roman period, Volume 3 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1984 |isbn=978-0521243773 |editor1=William David Davies |chapter=The Diaspora in the Roman period before AD 70 |editor2=Louis Finkelstein |editor3=William Horbury |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AW2BuWcalXIC&q=Diaspora+before+70&pg=PA168}} Later, in the first centuries CE, as a result of the Jewish-Roman Wars, a large number of Jews were taken as captives, sold into slavery, or compelled to flee from the regions affected by the wars, contributing to the formation and expansion of Jewish communities across the Roman Empire as well as in Arabia{{Cite book |last=Bowersock |first=G. W. |author-link=G. W. Bowersock |title=The Crucible of Islam |date=2017 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-23772-8 |edition= |pages=102}} and Mesopotamia.

After the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Jewish population in Judaea, now significantly reduced in size, made efforts to recover from the revolt's devastating effects, but never fully regained its previous strength.{{Cite book |last=Ehrlich |first=Michael |title=The Islamization of the Holy Land, 634–1800 |publisher=Arc Humanities Press |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-64189-222-3 |location=Leeds, UK |pages=3–4 |oclc=1302180905 |quote=The Jewish community strove to recover from the catastrophic results of the Bar Kokhva revolt (132–135 CE). Although some of these attempts were relatively successful, the Jews never fully recovered. During the Late Roman and Byzantine periods, many Jews emigrated to thriving centres in the diaspora, especially Iraq, whereas some converted to Christianity and others continued to live in the Holy Land, especially in Galilee and the coastal plain. During the Byzantine period, the three provinces of Palestine included more than thirty cities, namely, settlements with a bishop see. After the Muslim conquest in the 630s, most of these cities declined and eventually disappeared. As a result, in many cases the local ecclesiastical administration weakened, while in others it simply ceased to exist. Consequently, many local Christians converted to Islam. Thus, almost twelve centuries later, when the army led by Napoleon Bonaparte arrived in the Holy Land, most of the local population was Muslim.}}Oppenheimer, A'haron and Oppenheimer, Nili. Between Rome and Babylon: Studies in Jewish Leadership and Society. Mohr Siebeck, 2005, p. 2. In the second to fourth centuries CE, the region of Galilee emerged as the new center of Jewish life in Syria Palaestina, experiencing a cultural and demographic flourishing. It was in this period that two central rabbinic texts, the Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud, were composed.{{Cite book |last=Leibner |first=Uzi |url=https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/43969 |title=Settlement and History in Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Galilee: An Archaeological Survey of the Eastern Galilee |date=2009 |publisher=Mohr Siebeck |isbn=978-3-16-151460-9 |pages=321–324; 362–371; 396–400; 414–416 |hdl=20.500.12657/43969 |language=English}} However, as the Roman Empire was replaced by the Christianized Byzantine Empire under Constantine, Jews came to be persecuted by the church and the authorities, and many immigrated to communities in the diaspora. In the fourth century CE, Jews are believed to have lost their position as the majority in Syria Palaestina.{{cite book |author=Edward Kessler |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=87Woe7kkPM4C&pg=PA72 |title=An Introduction to Jewish-Christian Relations |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-521-70562-2 |page=72 |quote=Jews probably remained in the majority in Palestine until some time after the conversion of Constantine in the fourth century. [...] In Babylonia, there had been for many centuries a Jewish community which would have been further strengthened by those fleeing the aftermath of the Roman revolts.}}

The long-established Jewish community of Mesopotamia, which had been living under Parthian and later Sasanian rule, beyond the confines of the Roman Empire, became an important center of Jewish study as Judea's Jewish population declined. Estimates often place the Babylonian Jewish community of the 3rd to 7th centuries at around one million, making it the largest Jewish diaspora community of that period.{{Citation |last=Gafni |first=Isaiah |title=The Political, Social, and Economic History of Babylonian Jewry, 224–638 CE |date=2006 |work=The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period |volume=4 |pages=805 |editor-last=Katz |editor-first=Steven T. |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-history-of-judaism/political-social-and-economic-history-of-babylonian-jewry-224638-ce/A4A6DB049FA37EE462757A705703A62F |access-date=2024-09-10 |series=The Cambridge History of Judaism |place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |doi=10.1017/chol9780521772488.033 |isbn=978-0-521-77248-8}} Under the political leadership of the exilarch, who was regarded as a royal heir of the House of David, this community had an autonomous status and served as a place of refuge for the Jews of Syria Palaestina. A number of significant Talmudic academies, such as the Nehardea, Pumbedita, and Sura academies, were established in Mesopotamia, and many important Amoraim were active there. The Babylonian Talmud, a centerpiece of Jewish religious law, was compiled in Babylonia in the 3rd to 6th centuries.{{cite encyclopedia |year=2008 |title=Talmud and Midrash (Judaism) :: The making of the Talmuds: 3rd–6th century |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/581644/Talmud-and-Midrash/34869/The-making-of-the-Talmuds-3rd-6th-century#ref=ref24372 |access-date=28 October 2013}}

{{further|History of the Jews in Europe|History of European Jews in the Middle Ages|Mizrahi Jews|Sephardi Jews}}

Jewish diaspora communities are generally described to have coalesced into three major ethnic subdivisions according to where their ancestors settled: the Ashkenazim (initially in the Rhineland and France), the Sephardim (initially in the Iberian Peninsula), and the Mizrahim (Middle East and North Africa).{{Cite book |last=Ben-Sasson, Haim Hillel |title=Jewish society through the ages |publisher=Schocken Books |year=1972 |editor=Ettinger, Samuel |oclc=581911264 |orig-year=1969}} Romaniote Jews, Tunisian Jews, Yemenite Jews, Egyptian Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Bukharan Jews, Mountain Jews, and other groups also predated the arrival of the Sephardic diaspora.{{Cite book |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/simo10796 |title=The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times |date=2002 |publisher=Columbia University Press |jstor=10.7312/simo10796 }}

Despite experiencing repeated waves of persecution, Ashkenazi Jews in Western Europe worked in a variety of fields, making an impact on their communities' economy and societies. In Francia, for example, figures like Isaac Judaeus and Armentarius occupied prominent social and economic positions. However, Jews were frequently the subjects of discriminatory laws, segregation, blood libels and pogroms, which culminated in events like the Rhineland Massacres (1066) and the expulsion of Jews from England (1290). As a result, Ashkenazi Jews were gradually pushed eastwards to Poland, Lithuania and Russia.Harshav, Benjamin (1999). The Meaning of Yiddish. Stanford: Stanford University Press. p. 6. "From the fourteenth and certainly by the sixteenth century, the center of European Jewry had shifted to Poland, then ... comprising the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (including today's Byelorussia), Crown Poland, Galicia, the Ukraine and stretching, at times, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, from the approaches to Berlin to a short distance from Moscow."

During the same period, Jewish communities in the Middle East thrived under Islamic rule, especially in cities like Baghdad, Cairo, and Damascus. In Babylonia, from the 7th to 11th centuries the Pumbedita and Sura academies led the Arab and to an extant the entire Jewish world. The deans and students of said academies defined the Geonic period in Jewish history.{{Cite web |title=GAON – JewishEncyclopedia.com |url=http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6511-gaon |access-date=23 June 2020 |website=www.jewishencyclopedia.com}} Following this period were the Rishonim who lived from the 11th to 15th centuries. Like their European counterparts, Jews in the Middle East and North Africa also faced periods of persecution and discriminatory policies, with the Almohad Caliphate in North Africa and Iberia issuing forced conversion decrees, causing Jews such as Maimonides to seek safety in other regions.

Initially, under Visigoth rule, Jews in the Iberian Peninsula faced persecutions, but their circumstances changed dramatically under Islamic rule. During this period, they thrived in a golden age, marked by significant intellectual and cultural contributions in fields such as philosophy, medicine, and literature by figures such as Samuel ibn Naghrillah, Judah Halevi and Solomon ibn Gabirol. However, in the 12th to 15th centuries, the Iberian Peninsula witnessed a rise in antisemitism, leading to persecutions, anti-Jewish laws, massacres and forced conversions (peaking in 1391), and the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition that same year. After the completion of the Reconquista and the issuance of the Alhambra Decree by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, the Jews of Spain were forced to choose: convert to Christianity or be expelled. As a result, around 200,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, seeking refuge in places such as the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, Italy, the Netherlands and India. A similar fate awaited the Jews of Portugal a few years later. Some Jews chose to remain, and pretended to practice Catholicism. These Jews would form the members of Crypto-Judaism.{{Cite book |last=Schloss |first=Chaim |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OV9jKGJzg3QC |title=2000 Years of Jewish History: From the Destruction of the Second Bais Hamikdash Until the Twentieth Century |date=2002 |publisher=Feldheim Publishers |isbn=978-1-58330-214-9 |language=en}}

{{further|Zionism|The Holocaust|History of Israel (1948–present)|}}

In the 19th century, when Jews in Western Europe were increasingly granted equality before the law, Jews in the Pale of Settlement faced growing persecution, legal restrictions and widespread pogroms. Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in Central and Eastern Europe as a national revival movement, aiming to re-establish a Jewish polity in the Land of Israel, an endeavor to restore the Jewish people back to their ancestral homeland in order to stop the exoduses and persecutions that have plagued their history. This led to waves of Jewish migration to Ottoman-controlled Palestine. Theodor Herzl, who is considered the father of political Zionism,{{Harvard citation no brackets|Kornberg|1993}} "How did Theodor Herzl, an assimilated German nationalist in the 1880s, suddenly in the 1890s become the founder of Zionism?" offered his vision of a future Jewish state in his 1896 book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State); a year later, he presided over the First Zionist Congress.{{cite web |date=21 July 2005 |title=Chapter One |url=http://www.jewishagency.org/israel/content/23396 |access-date=21 September 2015 |website=The Jewish Agency for Israel1 |archive-date=10 December 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181210124104/http://www.jewishagency.org/israel/content/23396 |url-status=dead }}

The antisemitism that inflicted Jewish communities in Europe also triggered a mass exodus of more than two million Jews to the United States between 1881 and 1924.{{cite journal |last=Lewin |first=Rhoda G. |date=1979 |title=Stereotype and reality in the Jewish immigrant experience in Minneapolis |url=http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/46/v46i07p258-273.pdf |url-status=live |journal=Minnesota History |volume=46 |issue=7 |page=259 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200721002023/http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/46/v46i07p258-273.pdf |archive-date=21 July 2020 |access-date=10 August 2020}} The Jews of Europe and the United States gained success in the fields of science, culture and the economy. Among those generally considered the most famous were Albert Einstein and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Many Nobel Prize winners at this time were Jewish, as is still the case.{{cite web |title=Jewish Nobel Prize Winners |url=http://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181224211039/http://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html |archive-date=24 December 2018 |access-date=7 October 2011 |publisher=jinfo.org}}[[File:Jewish people around the world.svg|thumb|Map of the Jewish diaspora:

{{Legend|#000000|Israel}}

{{Legend|#00216bff|+ 1,000,000}}

{{Legend|#0038b8ff|+ 100,000}}

{{Legend|#578bffff|+ 10,000}}

{{Legend|#b3cbffff|+ 1,000}}|301x301px]]When Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, the situation for Jews deteriorated rapidly. Many Jews fled from Europe to Mandatory Palestine, the United States, and the Soviet Union as a result of racial anti-Semitic laws, economic difficulties, and the fear of an impending war. World War II started in 1939, and by 1941, Hitler occupied almost all of Europe. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Final Solution—an extensive, organized effort with an unprecedented scope intended to annihilate the Jewish people—began, and resulted in the persecution and murder of Jews in Europe and North Africa. In Poland, three million were murdered in gas chambers in all concentration camps combined, with one million at the Auschwitz camp complex alone. The Holocaust is the name given to this genocide, in which six million Jews were systematically murdered.

Before and during the Holocaust, enormous numbers of Jews immigrated to Mandatory Palestine. On 14 May 1948, upon the termination of the mandate, David Ben-Gurion declared the creation of the State of Israel, a Jewish and democratic state in the Land of Israel. Immediately afterwards, all neighboring Arab states invaded, yet the newly formed IDF resisted. In 1949, the war ended and Israel started building the state and absorbing massive waves of Aliyah from all over the world.

{{Main|Jewish culture}}

{{Main|Judaism}}

{{See also|Jewish atheism|Jewish secularism}}

{{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.{{cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/judaism/beliefs/conversion.shtml |title=BBC Religions/Converting to Judaism: "A person who converts to Judaism becomes a Jew in every sense of the word, and is just as Jewish as someone born into Judaism." |publisher=Bbc.co.uk |access-date=2 October 2013}} However, several converts to Judaism, as well as ex-Jews, have claimed that converts are treated as second-class Jews by many born Jews.{{cite web |url=http://www.interfaithfamily.com/spirituality/conversion/Are_Converts_Treated_as_Second_Class.shtml |title=Are Converts Treated as Second Class? |work=InterfaithFamily |date=2 May 2011 |access-date=29 August 2016 |archive-date=8 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200808163226/http://www.interfaithfamily.com/spirituality/conversion/Are_Converts_Treated_as_Second_Class.shtml |url-status=dead }} Conversion is not encouraged by mainstream Judaism, and it is considered a difficult task. A significant portion of conversions are undertaken by children of mixed marriages, or would-be or current spouses of Jews.{{cite web|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-golin/the-complicated-relations_b_842806.html |title=Paul Golin: The Complicated Relationship Between Intermarriage and Jewish Conversion |date=31 March 2011 |publisher=Huffingtonpost.com |access-date=2 October 2013}}

The Hebrew Bible, a religious interpretation of the traditions and early history of the Jews, established the first of the Abrahamic religions, which are now practiced by 54 percent of the world. Judaism guides its adherents in both practice and belief, and has been called not only a religion, but also a "way of life,"Neusner (1991) p. 64 which has made drawing a clear distinction between Judaism, Jewish culture, and Jewish identity rather difficult. Throughout history, in eras and places as diverse as the ancient Hellenic world,{{cite book|last=Patai|first=Raphael|author-link=Raphael Patai|title=The Jewish Mind|year=1996|orig-year=1977|publisher=Wayne State University Press|location=Detroit|isbn=0-8143-2651-X|page=7}} in Europe before and after The Age of Enlightenment (see Haskalah),{{cite book|last=Johnson|first=Lonnie R.|title=Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends|year=1996|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|isbn=0-19-510071-9|page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780195100716/page/145 145]|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780195100716/page/145}} in Islamic Spain and Portugal,Sharot (1997), pp. 29–30. in North Africa and the Middle East, India,Sharot (1997), pp. 42–43. China,Sharot (1997), p. 42. or the contemporary United States{{cite book|last=Fishman|first=Sylvia Barack|title=Jewish Life and American Culture|url=https://archive.org/details/jewishlifeameric0000fish|url-access=registration|year=2000|publisher=State University of New York Press|location=Albany, N.Y.|isbn=0-7914-4546-1|page=[https://archive.org/details/jewishlifeameric0000fish/page/38 38]}} and Israel,{{cite book|last=Kimmerling|first=Baruch|title=The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers|url=https://archive.org/details/israelistatesoci00kimm|url-access=limited|year=1996|publisher=State University of New York Press|location=Albany, N.Y.|isbn=0-88706-849-9|page=[https://archive.org/details/israelistatesoci00kimm/page/n178 169]}} cultural phenomena have developed that are in some sense characteristically Jewish without being at all specifically religious. Some factors in this come from within Judaism, others from the interaction of Jews or specific communities of Jews with their surroundings, and still others from the inner social and cultural dynamics of the community, as opposed to from the religion itself. This phenomenon has led to considerably different Jewish cultures unique to their own communities.{{cite book|last=Lowenstein|first=Steven M.|title=The Jewish Cultural Tapestry: International Jewish Folk Traditions|year=2000|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|isbn=0-19-513425-7|page=228}}

{{main|Jewish languages}}

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.{{cite journal|doi=10.2307/3264497|title=Hebrew as the Spoken and Written Language in the Last Days of the Second Temple|first=Jehoshua M.|last=Grintz|journal=Journal of Biblical Literature|volume=79|issue=1|date=March 1960|pages=32–47|publisher=The Society of Biblical Literature|jstor=3264497}} By the 3rd century BCE, some Jews of the diaspora were speaking Greek.Feldman (2006), p. 54. Others, such as in the Jewish communities of Asoristan, known to Jews as Babylonia, were speaking Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages of the Babylonian Talmud. Dialects of these same languages were also used by the Jews of Syria Palaestina at that time.{{Citation needed|date=March 2016}}

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 Judaeo-German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Central Europe. Ladino is the Judaeo-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 Judaeo-Georgian, Judaeo-Arabic, Judaeo-Berber, Krymchak, Judaeo-Malayalam and many others, have largely fallen out of use.

File:Loew-rabin-tombstone.jpg in the Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague. The tombstones are inscribed in Hebrew.]]

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.{{cite journal |last1=Parfitt |first1=T. V. |title=The Use Of Hebrew In Palestine 1800–1822 |journal=Journal of Semitic Studies |date=1972 |volume=17 |issue=2 |pages=237–252 |doi=10.1093/jss/17.2.237 }} 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 designated as the "State language" of Israel.{{cite web |title=Basic Law: Israel – The Nation State Of The Jewish People |url=https://knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/BasicLawNationState.pdf |website=The Knesset |publisher=Knesset of the State of Israel |access-date=3 September 2020 |archive-date=10 April 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210410191721/http://knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/basiclawnationstate.pdf |url-status=dead }}

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.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0VnB2Jq3fW4C&pg=PA428|title=International Handbook of Jewish Education|author=Nava Nevo|publisher=Springer|year=2001|page=428|quote=In contrast to other peoples who are masters of their national languages, Hebrew is not the 'common possession' of all Jewish people, and it mainly—if not exclusively—lives and breathes in Israel.... Although there are oases of Hebrew in certain schools, it has not become the Jewish lingua franca and English is rapidly taking its place as the Jewish people's language of communication. Even Hebrew-speaking Israeli representatives tend to use English in their public appearances at international Jewish conventions. |isbn=978-94-007-0354-4 }}{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hEHCW7KnuG8C&pg=PA121|title=Prophets and Profits: Managerialism and the Restructuring of Jewish Schools in South Africa|author=Chaya Herman|publisher=HSRC Press|year=2006|page=121|quote=It is English rather than Hebrew that emerged as the lingua franca of the Jews towards the late 20th century.... This phenomenon occurred despite efforts to make Hebrew a language of communication, and despite the fact that the teaching of Hebrew was considered the raison d'être of the Jewish day schools and the 'nerve center' of Jewish learning.|isbn=978-0-7969-2114-7}}{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bWmMAgAAQBAJ&q=%22english+as+a+lingua+franca+for+jews+worldwide%22&pg=PA185|title=Negotiating Language Policy in Schools: Educators as Policymakers|author=Elana Shohamy|publisher=Routledge|year=2010|page=185|quote=This priority given to English is related to the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and the current status of English as a lingua franca for Jews worldwide.|isbn=978-1-135-14621-4 }}{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rUpFAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA214|title=Dynamic Belonging: Contemporary Jewish Collective Identities|author=Elan Ezrachi|publisher=Bergahn Books|year=2012|page=214|quote=As Stephen P. Cohen observes: 'English is the language of Jewish universal discourse.'|isbn=978-0-85745-258-0}}{{cite web|url=http://www.jafi.org.il/JewishAgency/English/Jewish+Education/Compelling+Content/Worldwide+Community/Connecting+to+Community/Jewish+Languages.htm |title=Jewish Languages – How Do We Talk To Each Other? |publisher=Jewish Agency |access-date=5 April 2014 |quote=Only a minority of the Jewish people today can actually speak Hebrew. In order for a Jew from one country to talk to another who speaks a different language, it is more common to use English than Hebrew. |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140307172019/http://www.jafi.org.il/JewishAgency/English/Jewish%2BEducation/Compelling%2BContent/Worldwide%2BCommunity/Connecting%2Bto%2BCommunity/Jewish%2BLanguages.htm |archive-date=7 March 2014}} 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. Yiddish has been spoken by more Jews in history than any other language,Hebrew, Aramaic and the rise of Yiddish. D. Katz. (1985) Readings in the sociology of Jewish languages but it is far less used today following the Holocaust and the adoption of Modern Hebrew by the 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.{{cite web|url=http://forward.com/articles/5434/quebec-sephardim-make-breakthroughs/|title=Quebec Sephardim Make Breakthroughs |date=2 April 2004 |publisher=forward.com|access-date=12 March 2015}}{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NYyiAgAAQBAJ&pg=PR22|title=Contemporary Sephardic Identity in the Americas: An Interdisciplinary Approach|author=Edna Aizenberg|year=2012|page=xxii|publisher=Syracuse University Press |isbn=978-0-8156-5165-9}}{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fIZ6wftL3oQC&pg=PA449|title=Canada's Jews: A People's Journey|author=Gerald Tulchinsky|pages=447–49|isbn=978-0-8020-9386-8|year=2008|publisher=University of Toronto Press }} Similarly, South African Jews adopted English rather than Afrikaans.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gbTFAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA51|title=Institutions, Ethnicity, and Political Mobilization in South Africa|author=Jessica Piombo|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|page=51|isbn=978-0-230-62382-8|year= 2009}} Due to both Czarist and Soviet policies,{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TIMoQbjAmhgC&pg=PA31|title=World War I and the Remaking of Jewish Vilna, 1914–1918|author=Andrew Noble Koss (dissertation)|publisher=Stanford University|year=2010|pages=30–31}}{{cite book|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ic5Kth7aiusC&pg=PA781|title=Jewish and Non-Jewish Creators of "Jewish Languages"|author=Paul Wexler|chapter=Chapter 38: Evaluating Soviet Yiddish Language Policy Between 1917–1950|publisher=Otto Harrassowitz Verlag|year=2006|page=780|isbn=978-3-447-05404-1}} Russian has superseded Yiddish as the language of Russian Jews, but these policies have also affected neighboring communities.{{cite web|url=http://www.jewish-languages.org/jewish-russian.html|title=Jewish Russian|author=Anna Verschik|publisher=Jewish Languages Research Website|date=25 May 2007|access-date=1 April 2014|archive-date=16 October 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141016171323/http://www.jewish-languages.org/jewish-russian.html|url-status=dead}} Today, Russian is the first language for many Jewish communities in a number of Post-Soviet states, such as Ukraine{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NoPZu79hqaEC&pg=PA1007|title=Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture, Volume 1|page=1007|isbn=978-1-85109-873-6|last1=Ehrlich|first1=Mark Avrum|year=2009|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic }}{{cite book|title=Ukraine: A History, 4th Edition|author=Subtelny, O.|date=2009|publisher=University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division|isbn=978-1-4426-9728-7|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ktyM07I9HXwC|access-date=12 March 2015}}{{cite book|title=Multicultural Perspectives in Working with Families|author1=Congress, E.P.|author2=Gonzalez, M.J.|date=2005|publisher=Springer Publishing Company|isbn=978-0-8261-3146-1|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780826131454|url-access=registration|access-date=12 March 2015}}{{cite news|url=http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/jerusalem-babylon/.premium-1.579733 |title=The Jews who said 'no' to Putin |author=Anshel Pfeffer |newspaper=Haaretz |date=14 March 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140326082731/http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/jerusalem-babylon/.premium-1.579733 |archive-date=26 March 2014}} and Uzbekistan,{{cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Bukharan_Jews.html|title=Bukharan Jews | Jewish Virtual Library|publisher=jewishvirtuallibrary.org|access-date=12 March 2015}}{{better source needed|date=May 2022}} as well as for Ashkenazic Jews in Azerbaijan,{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W_AR3BksrUcC&pg=PA135|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140704020626/http://books.google.com/books?id=W_AR3BksrUcC&pg=PA135|url-status=dead|archive-date=4 July 2014|title=Muslim Attitudes towards Jews and Israel|author=Moshe Ma'oz|pages=135, 160|isbn=978-1-84519-527-4|year=2011| publisher=Sussex Academic Press }}{{Cite web |url=http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/about/communities/AZ |title=Azerbaijan |quote=Like many immigrant communities of the Czarist and Soviet eras in Azerbaijan, Ashkenazi Jews appear to be linguistically Russified. Most Ashkenazi Jews speak Russian as their first language with Azeri being spoken as the second.}} Georgia,{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UNczHm67tjIC&pg=PA72|title=DNA & Tradition: The Genetic Link to the Ancient Hebrews|author=Yaakov Kleiman|publisher=Devora Publishing|year=2004|page=72|quote=The community is divided between 'native' Georgian Jews and Russian-speaking Ashkenazim who began migrating there at the beginning of the 19th century, and especially during World War II.|isbn=978-1-930143-89-0}} and Tajikistan.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AgkVAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA165|title=Readings in the Sociology of Jewish Languages|author=Joshua A. Fishman|year=1985|pages=165, 169–74|publisher=Brill Archive |quote=Jews in Tadzhikistan have adopted Tadzhik as their first language. The number of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazic Jews in that region is comparatively low (cf. 2,905 in 1979). Both Ashkenazic and Oriental Jews have assimilated to Russian, the number of Jews speaking Russian as their first language amounting to a total of 6,564. It is reasonable to assume that the percentage of assimilated Ashkenazim is much higher than the portion of Oriental Jews.|isbn=90-04-07237-3}}{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=idAfAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA72|title=Language in Ethnicity: A View of Basic Ecological Relations|author=Harald Haarmann|publisher=Walter de Gruyter|year=1986|pages=70–73, 79–82|isbn=978-3-11-086280-5}} 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,{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f4Mp4qy8lbUC&pg=PA234|title=Transnational Spaces and Identities in the Francophone World|page=234|isbn=978-0-8032-2465-0|last1=Gafaiti|first1=Hafid|year=2009|publisher=U of Nebraska Press }} Morocco, and the city of Tunis,{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=45exFa6wDIIC&pg=PA258|title=Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa|pages=258, 270|isbn=978-0-253-00146-7|last1=Gottreich|first1=Emily Benichou|last2=Schroeter|first2=Daniel J|year= 2011|publisher=Indiana University Press }}{{cite web|url=http://www.jdc.org/where-we-work/africa/tunisia.html|title=Tunisia|publisher=jdc.org|access-date=12 March 2015|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131016211752/http://www.jdc.org/where-we-work/africa/tunisia.html|archive-date=16 October 2013}} while most North Africans continue to use Arabic or Berber as their mother tongue.{{Citation needed|date=March 2016}}

{{main|Jewish leadership}}

There is no single governing body for the Jewish community, nor a single authority with responsibility for religious doctrine.{{cite book|last=Eisenstadt|first=S.N.|title=Explorations in Jewish Historical Experience: The Civilizational Dimension|url=https://archive.org/details/explorationsjewi00eise|url-access=limited|year=2004|publisher=Brill|location=Leiden, The Netherlands|isbn=90-04-13693-2|page=[https://archive.org/details/explorationsjewi00eise/page/n89 75]}} 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.{{cite book|last=Lewis|first=Hal M.|title=From Sanctuary to Boardroom: A Jewish Approach to Leadership|year=2006|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|location=Lanham, Md.|isbn=0-7425-5229-2|page=1}} Today, many countries have a Chief Rabbi who serves as a representative of that country's Jewry. Although many Hasidic Jews follow a certain hereditary Hasidic dynasty, there is no one commonly accepted leader of all Hasidic Jews. Many Jews believe that the Messiah will act a unifying leader for Jews and the entire world.{{Cite web|title=Messiah – Key beliefs in Judaism – GCSE Religious Studies Revision – Eduqas|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zjbyb82/revision/5|access-date=20 August 2022|website=BBC Bitesize|language=en-GB}}

File:Hebrew Bible MET DP-15507-001.jpg

A number of modern scholars of nationalism support the existence of Jewish national identity in antiquity. One of them is David Goodblatt,{{Cite web|url=https://history.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/goodblatt.html|title=David Goodblatt|website=history.ucsd.edu}} who generally believes in the existence of nationalism before the modern period. In his view, the Bible, the parabiblical literature and the Jewish national history provide the base for a Jewish collective identity. Although many of the ancient Jews were illiterate (as were their neighbors), their national narrative was reinforced through public readings. The Hebrew language also constructed and preserved national identity. Although it was not widely spoken after the 5th century BCE, Goodblatt states:{{Cite book |last=Goodblatt |first=David |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=afEhCsbbFlgC |title=Elements of Ancient Jewish Nationalism |date=2006 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-46057-6 |language=en}}{{Cite journal |last=Bakhos |first=Carol |date=2007 |title=Elements of Ancient Jewish Nationalism |url=https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2007/2007.10.56/ |journal=Bryn Mawr Classical Review}}Adam L. Porter, [http://www.jhsonline.org/reviews/reviews_new/review357.htm Review of Goodblatt, David M., Elements of ancient Jewish nationalism, 2006] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200209082632/http://jhsonline.org/reviews/reviews_new/review357.htm|date=9 February 2020}}, in Journal of Hebrew Scriptures – Volume 9 (2009)

{{Blockquote|the mere presence of the language in spoken or written form could invoke the concept of a Jewish national identity. Even if one knew no Hebrew or was illiterate, one could recognize that a group of signs was in Hebrew script. ... It was the language of the Israelite ancestors, the national literature, and the national religion. As such it was inseparable from the national identity. Indeed its mere presence in visual or aural medium could invoke that identity.}}

Anthony D. Smith, an historical sociologist considered one of the founders of the field of nationalism studies, wrote that the Jews of the late Second Temple period provide "a closer approximation to the ideal type of the nation [...] than perhaps anywhere else in the ancient world." He adds that this observation "must make us wary of pronouncing too readily against the possibility of the nation, and even a form of religious nationalism, before the onset of modernity."{{Cite book |last=Smith |first=Anthony D. |title=National Identity |date=1993 |publisher=University of Nevada Press |isbn=978-0-87417-204-1 |edition=Reprint |series=Ethnonationalism in comparative perspective |location=Reno Las Vegas |pages=48–50}} Agreeing with Smith, Goodblatt suggests omitting the qualifier "religious" from Smith's definition of ancient Jewish nationalism, noting that, according to Smith, a religious component in national memories and culture is common even in the modern era.{{Cite book |last=Goodblatt |first=David |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/elements-of-ancient-jewish-nationalism/68B5269393825257297A43E197C94A12 |title=Elements of Ancient Jewish Nationalism |date=2006 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-86202-8 |location=Cambridge |pages=11–12 |doi=10.1017/cbo9780511499067}} This view is echoed by political scientist Tom Garvin, who writes that "something strangely like modern nationalism is documented for many peoples in medieval times and in classical times as well," citing the ancient Jews as one of several "obvious examples", alongside the classical Greeks and the Gaulish and British Celts.Tom Garvin, "Ethnic Markers, Modern Nationalisms, and the Nightmare of History," in Kruger, ed., ¨ Ethnicity and Nationalism, p. 67.

Fergus Millar suggests that the sources of Jewish national identity and their early nationalist movements in the first and second centuries CE included several key elements: the Bible as both a national history and legal source, the Hebrew language as a national language, a system of law, and social institutions such as schools, synagogues, and Sabbath worship.{{Cite journal |last=Millar |first=Fergus |date=1987 |title=Empire, Community and Culture in the Roman near East: Greeks, Syrians, Jews and Arabs |url=https://doi.org/10.18647/1337/JJS-1987 |journal=Journal of Jewish Studies |volume=38 |issue=2 |pages=147–148|doi=10.18647/1337/JJS-1987 }} Adrian Hastings argued that Jews are the "true proto-nation", that through the model of ancient Israel found in the Hebrew Bible, provided the world with the original concept of nationhood which later influenced Christian nations. However, following Jerusalem's destruction in the first century CE, Jews ceased to be a political entity and did not resemble a traditional nation-state for almost two millennia. Despite this, they maintained their national identity through collective memory, religion and sacred texts, even without land or political power, and remained a nation rather than just an ethnic group, eventually leading to the rise of Zionism and the establishment of Israel.{{Cite book |last=Hastings |first=Adrian |title=The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1997 |isbn=0-521-59391-3 |location=Cambridge |pages=186–187}}

It is believed that Jewish nationalist sentiment in antiquity was encouraged because under foreign rule (Persians, Greeks, Romans) Jews were able to claim that they were an ancient nation. This claim was based on the preservation and reverence of their scriptures, the Hebrew language, the Temple and priesthood, and other traditions of their ancestors.{{cite journal|author-link1=Steven P. Weitzman | last1 = Weitzman | first1 = Steven | year = 2008| title = On the Political Relevance of Antiquity: A Response to David Goodblatt's Elements of Ancient Jewish Nationalism | journal = Jewish Social Studies | volume = 14 | issue = 3| page = 168 | jstor = 40207028 }}

{{further|Jewish population by country}}

{{main|Jewish ethnic divisions}}

File:Ashkenazim Jews American colony 1900 to 1920.jpg residing in the American colony. Photo taken between 1900 and 1920.]]

File:1900 photo of a Sephardi couple from Sarajevo.png couple from Sarajevo in traditional clothing. Photo taken in 1900.|250x250px]]

File:Yemenite Elder Blowing Shofat, February 1, 1949.jpg blows shofar, 1947]]

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.Dosick (2007), p. 60.

Jews are often identified as belonging to one of two major groups: the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim. Ashkenazim are so named in reference to their geographical origins (their ancestors' culture coalesced in the Rhineland, an area historically referred to by Jews as Ashkenaz). Similarly, Sephardim (Sefarad meaning "Spain" in Hebrew) are named in reference their origins in Iberia. The diverse groups of Jews of the Middle East and North Africa are often collectively referred to as Sephardim together with Sephardim proper for liturgical reasons having to do with their prayer rites. A common term for many of these non-Spanish Jews who are sometimes still broadly grouped as Sephardim is Mizrahim ({{lit|easterners}} in Hebrew). Nevertheless, Mizrahis and Sepharadim are usually ethnically distinct.Dosick (2007), p. 59.

Smaller groups include, but are not restricted to, Indian Jews such as the Bene Israel, Bnei Menashe, Cochin Jews, and Bene Ephraim; the 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.{{cite EJ|last=Schmelz|first=Usiel Oscar |first2=Sergio|last2=Della Pergola|title=Demography|volume=5|page=571–572}}

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, Moroccan Jews, Libyan Jews, Syrian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, Iranian Jews, Afghan Jews, and various others. The Teimanim from Yemen are sometimes included, although their style of liturgy is unique and they differ in respect to the admixture found among them to that found in Mizrahim. In addition, there is a differentiation made between Sephardi migrants who established themselves in the Middle East and North Africa after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s and the pre-existing Jewish communities in those regions.

Ashkenazi Jews represent the bulk of modern Jewry, with at least 70 percent of Jews worldwide (and up to 90 percent prior to World War II and the Holocaust). As a result of their emigration from Europe, Ashkenazim also represent the overwhelming majority of Jews in the New World continents, in countries such as the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and Brazil. In France, the immigration of Jews from Algeria (Sephardim) has led them to outnumber the Ashkenazim.{{r|EJ571}} Only in Israel is the Jewish population representative of all groups, a melting pot independent of each group's proportion within the overall world Jewish population.Dosick (2007), p. 61.

{{main|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.{{cite journal |last1=Hammer |first1=M. F. |last2=Redd |first2=A. J. |last3=Wood |first3=E. T. |last4=Bonner |first4=M. R. |last5=Jarjanazi |first5=H. |last6=Karafet |first6=T. |last7=Santachiara-Benerecetti |first7=S. |last8=Oppenheim |first8=A. |last9=Jobling |first9=M. A. |last10=Jenkins |first10=T. |last11=Ostrer |first11=H. |last12=Bonne-Tamir |first12=B. |title=Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |date=6 June 2000 |volume=97 |issue=12 |pages=6769–6774 |doi=10.1073/pnas.100115997 |pmid=10801975 |pmc=18733 |bibcode=2000PNAS...97.6769H |doi-access=free }} 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.{{cite journal |last1=Nebel |first1=Almut |last2=Filon |first2=Dvora |last3=Brinkmann |first3=Bernd |last4=Majumder |first4=Partha P. |last5=Faerman |first5=Marina |last6=Oppenheim |first6=Ariella |title=The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East |journal=The American Journal of Human Genetics |date=November 2001 |volume=69 |issue=5 |pages=1095–1112 |doi=10.1086/324070 |pmid=11573163 |pmc=1274378 }}{{cite book |last1=Frudakis |first1=Tony |chapter=Ashkezani Jews |page=383 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9vXeydpj7VkC&pg=PA383 |title=Molecular Photofitting: Predicting Ancestry and Phenotype Using DNA |date=19 July 2010 |publisher=Elsevier |isbn=978-0-08-055137-1 }}

Conversely, the maternal lineages of Jewish populations, studied by looking at mitochondrial DNA, are generally more heterogeneous.{{cite journal |last1=Behar |first1=Doron M. |last2=Metspalu |first2=Ene |last3=Kivisild |first3=Toomas |last4=Rosset |first4=Saharon |last5=Tzur |first5=Shay |last6=Hadid |first6=Yarin |last7=Yudkovsky |first7=Guennady |last8=Rosengarten |first8=Dror |last9=Pereira |first9=Luisa |last10=Amorim |first10=Antonio |last11=Kutuev |first11=Ildus |last12=Gurwitz |first12=David |last13=Bonne-Tamir |first13=Batsheva |last14=Villems |first14=Richard |last15=Skorecki |first15=Karl |title=Counting the Founders: The Matrilineal Genetic Ancestry of the Jewish Diaspora |journal=PLOS ONE |date=30 April 2008 |volume=3 |issue=4 |pages=e2062 |doi=10.1371/journal.pone.0002062 |pmid=18446216 |pmc=2323359 |bibcode=2008PLoSO...3.2062B |doi-access=free }} 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.{{Cite journal |last=Lewontin |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Lewontin |date=6 December 2012 |title=Is There a Jewish Gene? |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/12/06/is-there-a-jewish-gene/ |journal=New York Review of Books|volume=59 |issue=19 }} In contrast, Behar has found evidence that about 40 percent of Ashkenazi Jews originate maternally from just four female founders, who were of Middle Eastern origin. The populations of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish communities "showed no evidence for a narrow founder effect." Subsequent studies carried out by Feder et al. confirmed the large portion of non-local maternal origin among Ashkenazi Jews. Reflecting on their findings related to the maternal origin of Ashkenazi Jews, the authors conclude "Clearly, the differences between Jews and non-Jews are far larger than those observed among the Jewish communities. Hence, differences between the Jewish communities can be overlooked when non-Jews are included in the comparisons."{{cite journal |last1=Feder |first1=Jeanette |last2=Ovadia |first2=Ofer |last3=Glaser |first3=Benjamin |last4=Mishmar |first4=Dan |title=Ashkenazi Jewish mtDNA haplogroup distribution varies among distinct subpopulations: lessons of population substructure in a closed group |journal=European Journal of Human Genetics |date=April 2007 |volume=15 |issue=4 |pages=498–500 |doi=10.1038/sj.ejhg.5201764 |pmid=17245410 |doi-access=free}}{{cite journal |last1=Ostrer |first1=Harry |last2=Skorecki |first2=Karl |title=The population genetics of the Jewish people |journal=Human Genetics |date=February 2013 |volume=132 |issue=2 |pages=119–127 |doi=10.1007/s00439-012-1235-6 |pmid=23052947 |pmc=3543766 }} A study showed that 7% of Ashkenazi Jews have the haplogroup G2c, which is mainly found in Pashtuns and on lower scales all major Jewish groups, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese.{{cite web | title=Sign In | website=Family Tree DNA | url=https://www.familytreedna.com/sign-in?ReturnUrl=%2Fpdf%2FBehar_contrasting.pdf | access-date=1 April 2018}}{{cite journal |last1=Hammer |first1=Michael F. |last2=Behar |first2=Doron M. |last3=Karafet |first3=Tatiana M. |last4=Mendez |first4=Fernando L. |last5=Hallmark |first5=Brian |last6=Erez |first6=Tamar |last7=Zhivotovsky |first7=Lev A. |last8=Rosset |first8=Saharon |last9=Skorecki |first9=Karl |title=Extended Y chromosome haplotypes resolve multiple and unique lineages of the Jewish priesthood |journal=Human Genetics |date=8 August 2009 |volume=126 |issue=5 |pages=707–17 |doi=10.1007/s00439-009-0727-5 |pmid=19669163 |pmc=2771134 }}

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.{{cite journal |last1=Katsnelson |first1=Alla |title=Jews worldwide share genetic ties |journal=Nature |date=3 June 2010 |pages=news.2010.277 |doi=10.1038/news.2010.277 }} For Jewish populations of the diaspora, the genetic composition of Ashkenazi, Sephardic, 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".{{cite journal |last1=Behar |first1=Doron M. |last2=Yunusbayev |first2=Bayazit |last3=Metspalu |first3=Mait |last4=Metspalu |first4=Ene |last5=Rosset |first5=Saharon |last6=Parik |first6=Jüri |last7=Rootsi |first7=Siiri |last8=Chaubey |first8=Gyaneshwer |last9=Kutuev |first9=Ildus |last10=Yudkovsky |first10=Guennady |last11=Khusnutdinova |first11=Elza K. |last12=Balanovsky |first12=Oleg |last13=Semino |first13=Ornella |last14=Pereira |first14=Luisa |last15=Comas |first15=David |last16=Gurwitz |first16=David |last17=Bonne-Tamir |first17=Batsheva |last18=Parfitt |first18=Tudor |last19=Hammer |first19=Michael F. |last20=Skorecki |first20=Karl |last21=Villems |first21=Richard |title=The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people |journal=Nature |date=July 2010 |volume=466 |issue=7303 |pages=238–242 |doi=10.1038/nature09103 |pmid=20531471 |s2cid=4307824 |bibcode=2010Natur.466..238B }} 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. Behar et al. have remarked on a close relationship between Ashkenazi Jews and modern Italians.{{cite journal |last1=Zoossmann-Diskin |first1=Avshalom |title=The origin of Eastern European Jews revealed by autosomal, sex chromosomal and mtDNA polymorphisms |journal=Biology Direct |date=2010 |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=57 |doi=10.1186/1745-6150-5-57 |pmid=20925954 |pmc=2964539 |bibcode=2010Sci...328.1342B |doi-access=free }} A 2001 study found that Jews were more closely related to groups of the Fertile Crescent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to their Arab neighbors, whose genetic signature was found in geographic patterns reflective of Islamic conquests.{{cite journal |last1=Haber |first1=Marc |last2=Gauguier |first2=Dominique |last3=Youhanna |first3=Sonia |last4=Patterson |first4=Nick |last5=Moorjani |first5=Priya |last6=Botigué |first6=Laura R. |last7=Platt |first7=Daniel E. |last8=Matisoo-Smith |first8=Elizabeth |last9=Soria-Hernanz |first9=David F. |last10=Wells |first10=R. Spencer |last11=Bertranpetit |first11=Jaume |last12=Tyler-Smith |first12=Chris |last13=Comas |first13=David |last14=Zalloua |first14=Pierre A. |title=Genome-Wide Diversity in the Levant Reveals Recent Structuring by Culture |journal=PLOS Genetics |date=28 February 2013 |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=e1003316 |doi=10.1371/journal.pgen.1003316 |pmid=23468648 |pmc=3585000 |doi-access=free }}

The studies also show that Sephardic Bnei Anusim (descendants of the "anusim" who were forced to convert to Catholicism), which comprise up to 19.8 percent of the population of today's Iberia (Spain and Portugal) and at least 10 percent of the population of Ibero-America (Hispanic America and Brazil), have Sephardic Jewish ancestry within the last few centuries. The Bene Israel and Cochin Jews of India, Beta Israel of Ethiopia, and a portion of the Lemba people of Southern Africa, despite more closely resembling the local populations of their native countries, have also been thought to have some more remote ancient Jewish ancestry.{{cite web|url=http://forward.com/articles/155742/jews-are-a-race-genes-reveal/?p=all |title=Jews Are a 'Race,' Genes Reveal |date=4 May 2012 |publisher=Forward.com |access-date=12 April 2013}}{{cite news |last1=Begley |first1=Sharon |title=Genetic study offers clues to history of North Africa's Jews |url=https://in.reuters.com/article/us-science-genetics-jews/genetic-study-offers-clues-to-history-of-north-africas-jews-idINBRE8751EI20120806 |work=Reuters |date=6 August 2012 |access-date=12 October 2020 |archive-date=18 November 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151118100801/http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/06/us-science-genetics-jews-idINBRE8751EI20120806 |url-status=dead }} Views on the Lemba have changed and genetic Y-DNA analyses in the 2000s have established a partially Middle-Eastern origin for a portion of the male Lemba population but have been unable to narrow this down further.{{Citation | title = The origins of the Lemba "Black Jews" of southern Africa: evidence from p12F2 and other Y-chromosome markers. | pmid = 8900243 | pmc=1914832 | volume=59 | issue = 5 | date=November 1996 | journal=Am. J. Hum. Genet. | pages=1126–33 | last1 = Spurdle | first1 = AB | last2 = Jenkins | first2 = T}}{{cite book|author1=Himla Soodyall|author2=Jennifer G. R Kromberg|editor1-last=Kumar|editor1-first=Dhavendra|editor2-last=Chadwick|editor2-first=Ruth|title=Genomics and Society: Ethical, Legal, Cultural and Socioeconomic Implications|publisher=Academic Press/Elsevier|isbn=978-0-12-420195-8|page=316|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E9icBAAAQBAJ&q=Cohen+Modal+Haplotype+Lemba&pg=PA309|chapter=Human Genetics and Genomics and Sociocultural Beliefs and Practices in South Africa|date=29 October 2015}}

{{main list|Jewish population by city}}

File:Purim 2012 Williamsburg Brooklyn 01.jpg is home to 960,000 Jews, making it the largest Jewish community outside of Israel.]]

Although historically, Jews have been found all over the world, in the decades since World War II and the establishment of Israel, they have increasingly concentrated in a small number of countries.Johnson (1987), pp. 529, 560–62.{{cite web|url=http://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-jew/|title=Jews|date=18 December 2012}} In 2021, Israel and the United States together accounted for over 85 percent of the global Jewish population, with approximately 45.3% and 39.6% of the world's Jews, respectively. More than half (51.2%) of world Jewry resides in just ten metropolitan areas. As of 2021, these ten areas were Tel Aviv, New York, Jerusalem, Haifa, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Paris, Washington, and Chicago. The Tel Aviv metro area has the highest percent of Jews among the total population (94.8%), followed by Jerusalem (72.3%), Haifa (73.1%), and Beersheba (60.4%), the balance mostly being Israeli Arabs. Outside Israel, the highest percent of Jews in a metropolitan area was in New York (10.8%), followed by Miami (8.7%), Philadelphia (6.8%), San Francisco (5.1%), Washington (4.7%), Los Angeles (4.7%), Toronto (4.5%), and Baltimore (4.1%).

As of 2010, there were nearly 14 million Jews around the world, roughly 0.2% of the world's population at the time. According to the 2007 estimates of The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, the world's Jewish population is 13.2 million.{{cite news|title=Percent of world Jewry living in Israel climbed to 41% in 2007|first=Anshel|last=Pfeffer|url=http://www.haaretz.com/news/percent-of-world-jewry-living-in-israel-climbed-to-41-in-2007-1.236675|newspaper=Haaretz|date=6 January 2008|access-date=10 October 2012}} This statistic incorporates both practicing Jews affiliated with synagogues and the Jewish community, and approximately 4.5 million unaffiliated and secular Jews.{{Citation needed|date=March 2016}}

According to Sergio Della Pergola, a demographer of the Jewish population, in 2021 there were about 6.8 million Jews in Israel, 6 million in the United States, and 2.3 million in the rest of the world.

{{main|Israeli Jews}}

File:Mahane Yehuda Market P1020256.JPG, Israel]]

Israel, the Jewish nation-state, is the only country in which Jews make up a majority of the citizens.{{cite news|url=http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=257112|title=Iran must attack Israel by 2014|date=9 February 2012|newspaper=The Jerusalem Post|access-date=3 April 2012}} Israel was established as an independent democratic and Jewish state on 14 May 1948.{{cite web|url=https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/israel/|publisher=Central Intelligence Agency|work=The World Factbook|access-date=20 July 2007|date=19 June 2007|title=Israel}} Of the 120 members in its parliament, the Knesset,{{cite web|url=https://www.knesset.gov.il/description/eng/eng_mimshal_beh.htm|publisher=The Knesset|access-date=8 August 2007|title=The Electoral System in Israel}} {{as of|2016|lc=y}}, 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.{{cite web|url=http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/israel|title=Israel|work=Freedom in the World|publisher=Freedom House|year=2009|access-date=5 April 2012|archive-date=19 August 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120819061301/http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/israel|url-status=dead}}

Between 1948 and 1958, the Jewish population rose from 800,000 to two million.{{cite web|url=http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/shnaton/templ_shnaton_e.html?num_tab=st02_01&CYear=2006 |publisher=Israel Central Bureau of Statistics |access-date=7 August 2007 |year=2006 |title=Population, by Religion and Population Group |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930033403/http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/shnaton/templ_shnaton_e.html?num_tab=st02_01&CYear=2006 |archive-date=30 September 2007}} Currently, Jews account for 75.4 percent of the Israeli population, or 6 million people.{{cite news|url=http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4280028,00.html |title=Jewish New Year: Israel's population nears 8M mark |newspaper=Ynetnews |date=20 June 1995 |access-date=12 April 2013|last1=Drukman |first1=Yaron }}{{cite web|author=Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/01/israel-jewish-population-six-million |title=Israel's Jewish population passes 6 million mark |work=Guardian |date=1 January 2013 |access-date=12 April 2013}} 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.{{harvnb|Dekmejian|1975|p=247}}. "And most [Oriental-Sephardic Jews] came... because of Arab persecution resulting from the very attempt to establish a Jewish state in Palestine." Israel also has a large population of Ethiopian Jews, many of whom were airlifted to Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s.{{cite web|title=airlifted tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/ejhist.html#operation1/|access-date=7 July 2005}}{{cite news|url=https://www.timesofisrael.com/ethiopian-israelis-decry-separation-from-relatives-as-discriminatory/ |title=Ethiopian-Israelis decry separation from relatives as discriminatory |newspaper=Times of Israel |date=10 March 2018 |access-date=20 February 2024 |last1=Goldenberg |first1=Tia }} Between 1974 and 1979 nearly 227,258 immigrants arrived in Israel, about half being from the Soviet Union.{{cite web|url=http://www.memo.ru/history/diss/books/alexeewa/|script-title=ru:История инакомыслия в СССР|first=Lyudmila|last=Alexeyeva|author-link=Lyudmila Alexeyeva|location=Vilnius|year=1983|language=ru|trans-title=History of Dissident Movement in the USSR|access-date=5 April 2012|archive-date=9 March 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170309152800/http://www.memo.ru/history/diss/books/alexeewa/|url-status=dead}} This period also saw an increase in immigration to Israel from Western Europe, Latin America, and North America.Goldstein (1995) p. 24

A trickle of immigrants from other communities has also arrived, including Indian Jews and others, as well as some descendants of Ashkenazi Holocaust survivors who had settled in countries such as the United States, Argentina, Australia, Chile, and South Africa. Some Jews have emigrated from Israel elsewhere, because of economic problems or disillusionment with political conditions and the continuing Arab–Israeli conflict. Jewish Israeli emigrants are known as yordim.Dosick (2007), p. 340.

{{main|Jewish diaspora}}

File:Happynewyearcard.jpg 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.{{cite book|last=Gurock|first=Jeffrey S.|title=East European Jews in America, 1880–1920: Immigration and Adaptation|year=1998|publisher=Routledge|location=New York|isbn=0-415-91924-X|page=54}}]]

File:Birobidjan mainsquare.jpg dominating the main square in Birobidzhan. An estimated 70,000 Jews live in Siberia.{{cite web |url= http://www.fjc.ru/news/newsArticle.asp?AID=136974 |title= Planting Jewish roots in Siberia |publisher= Fjc.ru |date= 24 May 2004 |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20090827113526/http://www.fjc.ru/news/newsArticle.asp?AID=136974 |archive-date= 27 August 2009 |df= dmy-all}}]]

The waves of immigration to the United States and elsewhere at the turn of the 19th century, the founding of Zionism and later events, including pogroms in Imperial Russia (mostly within the Pale of Settlement in present-day Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and eastern Poland), the massacre of European Jewry during the Holocaust, and the founding of the state of Israel, with the subsequent Jewish exodus from Arab lands, all resulted in substantial shifts in the population centers of world Jewry by the end of the 20th century.Gartner (2001), p. 213.

More than half of the Jews live in the Diaspora (see Population table). Currently, the largest Jewish community outside Israel, and either the largest or second-largest Jewish community in the world, is located in the United States, with 6 million to 7.5 million Jews by various estimates. Elsewhere in the Americas, there are also large Jewish populations in Canada (315,000), Argentina (180,000–300,000), and Brazil (196,000–600,000), and smaller populations in Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Chile, Colombia and several other countries (see History of the Jews in Latin America).{{cite web|title=Annual Assessment|url=http://jppi.org.il/uploads/Annual%20Assessment%202007.pdf|year=2007|publisher=Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (Jewish Agency for Israel)|page=15}}, based on {{cite book|title=Annual Assessment 2007|publisher=American Jewish Committee|url=http://www.ajcarchives.org/main.php?GroupingId=10142|volume=106|year=2006}} According to a 2010 Pew Research Center study, about 470,000 people of Jewish heritage live in Latin America and the Caribbean.{{cite web |url=http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/jews/ |title= Jews – Pew Research Center|website= Pew Research Center|date= 2 April 2015|access-date= 28 March 2018}} 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.{{cite web|url=http://www.jewishjournal.com/demographic_duo/item/israel_may_be_main_topic_in_next_national_jewish_population_survey_of_the_u |title=Israel May Be Main Topic In Next National Jewish Population Survey of the U.S. |publisher=Jewish Journal |date=14 March 2013 |access-date=12 April 2013}}

File:DAVID BEN GURION WITH MEMBERS OF JEWISH ZIONIST YOUTH MOVEMENT IN TALLIN IN ESTONIA. דוד בן גוריון וחברי תנועת הנוער הציונית, בטאלין, אסטוניה.D683-119.jpg Youth Movement in Tallinn, Estonia, on 1 September 1933]]

Western Europe's largest Jewish community, and the third-largest Jewish community in the world, can be found in France, home to between 483,000 and 500,000 Jews, the majority of whom are immigrants or refugees from North African countries such as Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia (or their descendants).Gartner (2001), pp. 410–10. The United Kingdom has a Jewish community of 292,000. In Eastern Europe, the exact figures are difficult to establish. The number of Jews in Russia varies widely according to whether a source uses census data (which requires a person to choose a single nationality among choices that include "Russian" and "Jewish") or eligibility for immigration to Israel (which requires that a person have one or more Jewish grandparents). According to the latter criteria, the heads of the Russian Jewish community assert that up to 1.5 million Russians are eligible for aliyah.{{cite web |url=http://www.mskagency.ru/materials/2716461 |title=Исследование: Около 1,5 млн людей с еврейскими корнями проживают в России |trans-title=Study: About 1.5 Million People with Jewish Roots Live in Russia |date=20 October 2017 |publisher=Moscow Urban News Agency |access-date=28 October 2017}}{{cite web |url=http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=57988 |title=В России проживает около миллиона иудеев |trans-title=In Russia, There Are About a Million Jews |date=26 February 2015 |publisher=Interfax |access-date=28 October 2017}} In Germany, the 102,000 Jews registered with the Jewish community are a slowly declining population,{{Cite web|date=4 December 2013|title=Mitgliederstatistik der jüdischen Gemeinden und Landesverbände: Zu und Abgänge 2012|url=http://www.zwst.org/cms/documents/178/de_DE/ZWST-Mitgliederstatistik-2012-web.pdf|access-date=20 August 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131204213637/http://www.zwst.org/cms/documents/178/de_DE/ZWST-Mitgliederstatistik-2012-web.pdf |archive-date=4 December 2013 }} despite the immigration of tens of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union since the fall of the Berlin Wall.{{cite web|url=http://jppi.org.il/uploads/Annual%20Assessment%202007.pdf|title=Annual Assessment 2007|access-date=3 July 2008|last=Waxman|first=Chaim I.|year=2007|publisher=Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (Jewish Agency for Israel)|pages=40–42}} Thousands of Israelis also live in Germany, either permanently or temporarily, for economic reasons.{{cite web|url=http://www.jg-berlin.org/en/service/israelis-in-berlin.html|title=Israelis in Berlin|publisher=Jewish Community of Berlin|access-date=11 October 2012}}

Prior to 1948, approximately 800,000 Jews were living in lands which now make up the Arab world (excluding Israel). Of these, just under two-thirds lived in the French-controlled Maghreb region, 15 to 20 percent in the Kingdom of Iraq, approximately 10 percent in the Kingdom of Egypt and approximately 7 percent in the Kingdom of Yemen. A further 200,000 lived in Pahlavi Iran and the Republic of Turkey. Today, around 26,000 Jews live in Arab countries{{Cite book|last=Rosenberg|first=Jerry M.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bdAdAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA44|title=The Rebirth of the Middle East|date=28 September 2009|publisher=Hamilton Books|isbn=978-0-7618-4846-2|language=en}} 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.{{cite book |editor1-last=Simon |editor1-first=Reeva Spector |editor2-last=Laskier |editor2-first=Michael Menachem |editor3-last=Reguer |editor3-first=Sara |year=2003 |title=The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-50759-2 |page=327 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VxEJrEY22egC&pg=PA327 |quote=Before the 1940s only two communities, Yemen and Syria, made substantial aliyah. }} The exodus from Arab and Muslim countries took place primarily from 1948. The first large-scale exoduses took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily in Iraq, Yemen and Libya, with up to 90 percent of these communities leaving within a few years. The peak of the exodus from Egypt occurred in 1956. The exodus in the Maghreb countries peaked in the 1960s. Lebanon was the only Arab country to see a temporary increase in its Jewish population during this period, due to an influx of refugees from other Arab countries, although by the mid-1970s the Jewish community of Lebanon had also dwindled. In the aftermath of the exodus wave from Arab states, an additional migration of Iranian Jews peaked in the 1980s when around 80 percent of Iranian Jews left the country.{{Citation needed|date=March 2016}}

Outside Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and the rest of Asia, there are significant Jewish populations in Australia (112,500) and South Africa (70,000). There is also a 6,800-strong community in New Zealand.{{Cite web|last=Congress|first=World Jewish|title=World Jewish Congress|url=https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/about/communities/NZ|access-date=20 August 2022|website=World Jewish Congress|language=EN}}

{{main|Historical Jewish population comparisons}}

{{main|Jewish assimilation|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.Johnson (1987), p. 171. Assimilation took place in all areas, and during all time periods, with some Jewish communities, for example the Kaifeng Jews of China, disappearing entirely.{{cite web|url=http://www.shavei.org/communities/kaifeng_jews/articles-kaifeng_jews/chinese-jews-reverence-for-ancestors/ |title=Chinese Jews: Reverence for Ancestors |last=Edinger |first=Bernard |date=15 December 2005 |publisher=Shavei Israel |access-date=2 April 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121003094552/http://www.shavei.org/communities/kaifeng_jews/articles-kaifeng_jews/chinese-jews-reverence-for-ancestors/ |archive-date=3 October 2012}} 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.Elazar (2003), p. 434.

Rates of interreligious marriage vary widely: In the United States, it is just under 50 percent,{{cite web|title=NJPS: Defining and Calculating Intermarriage |url=http://www.jewishfederations.org/page.aspx?id=46252 |website=The Jewish Federations of North America |access-date=2 April 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110812024158/http://www.jewishfederations.org/page.aspx?id=46252 |archive-date=12 August 2011}} in the United Kingdom, around 53 percent; in France; around 30 percent,{{cite web |url=http://www-prod.akadem.org/medias/documents/Rapport-Erik-Cohen.pdf |title=Les juifs de France: La lente progression des mariages mixtes |trans-title=The Jews of France: The slow progression of mixed marriages |last=Cohen |first=Erik H. |date=November 2002 |publisher=Akadem |language=fr |access-date=12 October 2020 |archive-date=16 April 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210416230622/http://www-prod.akadem.org/medias/documents/Rapport-Erik-Cohen.pdf |url-status=dead }} and in Australia and Mexico, as low as 10 percent.{{cite web|title=Australia|url=http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/communities/show/id/2|publisher=World Jewish Congress|access-date=2 April 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120521082932/http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/communities/show/id/2|archive-date=21 May 2012}} In the United States, only about a third of children from intermarriages affiliate with Jewish religious practice.{{cite web|url=http://jppi.org.il/uploads/Annual%20Assessment%202007.pdf|title=Annual Assessment 2007|access-date=3 July 2008|last=Waxman|first=Chaim I.|year=2007|publisher=Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (Jewish Agency for Israel)|page=61}} 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|date=March 2016}}

{{further|Persecution of Jews|Antisemitism|Jewish military history}}

File:The Emperor sends Vespasian with an army to destroy the Jews (f. 177v) Cropped.jpg sends Vespasian with an army to destroy the Jews, 69 CE.]]

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.Goldenberg (2007), pp. 131, 135–36.Johnson (1987), pp. 164–65.

According to James Carroll, "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million."Carroll, James. Constantine's Sword (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) {{ISBN|0-395-77927-8}} p. 26

Later in medieval Western Europe, further persecutions of Jews by Christians occurred, notably during the Crusades—when Jews all over Germany were massacred—and in a series of expulsions from the Kingdom of England, Germany, and France. Then there occurred the largest expulsion of all, when Spain and Portugal, after the Reconquista (the Catholic Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula), expelled both unbaptized Sephardic Jews and the ruling Muslim Moors.

In the Papal States, which existed until 1870, Jews were required to live only in specified neighborhoods called ghettos.Johnson (1987), pp. 243–44.

File:The Jews the world over love liberty poster.jpg poster showing 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!"]]

Islam and Judaism have a complex relationship. Traditionally Jews and Christians living in Muslim lands, known as dhimmis, were allowed to practice their religions and administer their internal affairs, but they were subject to certain conditions.Lewis (1984), pp. 10, 20 They had to pay the jizya (a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-Muslim males) to the Islamic state. Dhimmis had an inferior status under Islamic rule. They had several social and legal disabilities such as prohibitions against bearing arms or giving testimony in courts in cases involving Muslims.Lewis (1987), pp. 9, 27 Many of the disabilities were highly symbolic. The one described by Bernard Lewis as "most degrading" was the requirement of distinctive clothing, not found in the Quran or hadith but invented in early medieval Baghdad; its enforcement was highly erratic.Lewis (1999), p.131 On the other hand, Jews rarely faced martyrdom or exile, or forced compulsion to change their religion, and they were mostly free in their choice of residence and profession.Lewis (1999), p. 131; (1984), pp. 8, 62

Notable exceptions include the massacre of Jews and forcible conversion of some Jews by the rulers of the Almohad dynasty in Al-Andalus in the 12th century,Lewis (1984), p. 52; Stillman (1979), p. 77 as well as in Islamic Persia,Lewis (1984), pp. 17–18, 94–95; Stillman (1979), p. 27 and the forced confinement of Moroccan Jews to walled quarters known as mellahs beginning from the 15th century and especially in the early 19th century.Lewis (1984), p. 28. In modern times, it has become commonplace for standard antisemitic themes to be conflated with anti-Zionist publications and pronouncements of Islamic movements such as Hezbollah and Hamas, in the pronouncements of various agencies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and even in the newspapers and other publications of Turkish Refah Partisi."{{cite journal|url=http://www.meforum.org/396/muslim-anti-semitism|title=Muslim Anti-Semitism|first=Bernard|last=Lewis|author-link=Bernard Lewis|journal=Middle East Quarterly|publisher=Middle East Forum|date=June 1998}}{{better source needed|date=May 2022}}

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;Johnson (1987), pp. 207–08. the Spanish Inquisition (led by Tomás de Torquemada) and the Portuguese Inquisition, with their persecution and autos-da-fé against the New Christians and Marrano Jews;Johnson (1987), pp. 226–29. the Bohdan Chmielnicki Cossack massacres in Ukraine;Johnson (1987), pp. 259–60. the Pogroms backed by the Russian Tsars;Johnson (1987), pp. 364–65. as well as expulsions from Spain, Portugal, England, France, Germany, and other countries in which the Jews had settled.Johnson (1987), pp. 213, 229–31. According to a 2008 study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, 19.8 percent of the modern Iberian population has Sephardic Jewish ancestry,{{cite journal|last=Adams|first=Susan M.|year=2008|title=The Genetic Legacy of Religious Diversity and Intolerance: Paternal Lineages of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula|journal=The American Journal of Human Genetics|volume=83|issue=6|pages=725–36|issn=0002-9297|doi=10.1016/j.ajhg.2008.11.007|pmid=19061982|pmc=2668061}} indicating that the number of conversos may have been much higher than originally thought.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/world/europe/04iht-gene.4.18411385.html|title=DNA study shows 20 percent of Iberian population has Jewish ancestry|newspaper=The New York Times|date=4 December 2008}}{{cite journal |last1=Adams |first1=Susan M. |last2=Bosch |first2=Elena |last3=Balaresque |first3=Patricia L. |last4=Ballereau |first4=Stéphane J. |last5=Lee |first5=Andrew C. |last6=Arroyo |first6=Eduardo |last7=López-Parra |first7=Ana M. |last8=Aler |first8=Mercedes |last9=Grifo |first9=Marina S. Gisbert |last10=Brion |first10=Maria |last11=Carracedo |first11=Angel |last12=Lavinha |first12=João |last13=Martínez-Jarreta |first13=Begoña |last14=Quintana-Murci |first14=Lluis |last15=Picornell |first15=Antònia |last16=Ramon |first16=Misericordia |last17=Skorecki |first17=Karl |last18=Behar |first18=Doron M. |last19=Calafell |first19=Francesc |last20=Jobling |first20=Mark A. |title=The Genetic Legacy of Religious Diversity and Intolerance: Paternal Lineages of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula |journal=The American Journal of Human Genetics |date=December 2008 |volume=83 |issue=6 |pages=725–736 |doi=10.1016/j.ajhg.2008.11.007 |pmid=19061982 |pmc=2668061 }}

File:Bundesarchiv N 1576 Bild-006, Minsk, Juden.jpg, 1941. Before World War II, some 40 percent 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.]]

The persecution reached a peak in Nazi Germany's Final Solution, which led to the Holocaust and the slaughter of approximately 6 million Jews.Johnson (1987), p. 512. Of the world's 16 million Jews in 1939, almost 40% were murdered in the Holocaust.{{Cite web |date=9 February 2015 |title=The continuing decline of Europe's Jewish population |url=http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/09/europes-jewish-population/ |archive-date=1 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200401012738/http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/09/europes-jewish-population/ |url-status=live }} 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.Donald L Niewyk, The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust, Columbia University Press, 2000, p. 45: "The Holocaust is commonly defined as the murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews by the Germans in World War II." However, the Holocaust usually includes all of the different victims who were systematically murdered. The persecution and genocide were accomplished in stages. Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II.Johnson (1987), pp. 484–88. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labour until they died of exhaustion or disease.Johnson (1987), pp. 490–92. Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in Eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings.{{cite news|title=Ukrainian mass Jewish grave found|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6724481.stm|newspaper=BBC News Online|date=5 June 2007|access-date=10 October 2012}} Jews and Roma were crammed into ghettos before being transported hundreds of kilometres by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were murdered in gas chambers.Johnson (1987), pp. 493–98. Virtually every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal nation."Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must Know," United States Holocaust Museum, 2006, p. 103.

{{further|Expulsions of Jews}}

File:Expulsion judios-en.svg

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.de Lange (2002), pp. 41–43. The patriarch Abraham is described as a migrant to the land of Canaan from Ur of the ChaldeesJohnson (1987), p. 10. after an attempt on his life by King Nimrod.{{cite Jewish Encyclopedia|title=NIMROD|url=http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11548-nimrod|first1=Emil G.|last1=Hirsch|author-link1=Emil G. Hirsch|first2=Max|last2=Seligsohn|author-link2=Max Seligsohn|first3=Wilhelm|last3=Bacher|author-link3=Wilhelm Bacher}} His descendants, the Children of Israel, in the Biblical story (whose historicity is uncertain) undertook the Exodus (meaning "departure" or "exit" in Greek) from ancient Egypt, as recorded in the Book of Exodus.Johnson (1987), p. 30.

File:Vertreibung der Juden 1614.jpg in 1614. The text says: "1380 persons old and young were counted at the exit of the gate".]]

File:Jewish refugees Liverpool 1882.jpg

Centuries later, Assyrian policy was to deport and displace conquered peoples, and it is estimated some 4,500,000 among captive populations suffered this dislocation over three centuries of Assyrian rule. With regard to Israel, Tiglath-Pileser III claims he deported 80% of the population of Lower Galilee, some 13,520 people.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3hc1Yp0VcjoC|title=The Study of the Ancient Near East in the Twenty-first Century|year=1996 |isbn=9780931464966 |last1=Cooper |first1=Jerrold S. |last2=Schwartz |first2=Glenn M. |publisher=Eisenbrauns }} Some 27,000 Israelites, 20 to 25% of the population of the Kingdom of Israel, were described as being deported by Sargon II, and were replaced by other deported populations and sent into permanent exile by Assyria, initially to the Upper Mesopotamian provinces of the Assyrian Empire.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Qjkz_8EMoaUC|title=Biblical History and Israel S Past|isbn=9780802862600 |last1=Moore |first1=Megan Bishop |last2=Kelle |first2=Brad E. |date=17 May 2011 |publisher=Wm. B. Eerdmans }}{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NPoQkBwjnVcC|title=Mixing Metaphors|isbn=9780826469694 |last1=Dille |first1=Sarah J. |date=July 2004 |publisher=A&C Black }} Between 10,000 and 80,000 people from the Kingdom of Judah were similarly exiled by Babylonia,{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1YhMAwAAQBAJ|title=The Religion of the Landless|isbn=9781608994786 |last1=Smith-Christopher |first1=Daniel L. |date=14 January 2015 |publisher=Wipf and Stock Publishers }} but these people were then returned to Judea by Cyrus the Great of the Persian Achaemenid Empire.Johnson (1987), pp. 85–86.

Many Jews were exiled again by the Roman Empire.Johnson (1987), p. 147. The 2,000 year dispersion of the Jewish diaspora beginning under the Roman Empire,{{Cite web |date=31 May 2005 |title=The Post-Second Temple Period |url=https://archive.jewishagency.org/israel-diaspora-relations/content/23757 |access-date=10 December 2023 |website=The Jewish Agency |language=en}} as Jews were spread throughout the Roman world and, driven from land to land,{{Cite book |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvh9w1wk |title=Next Year in Jerusalem: Exile and Return in Jewish History |date=2019 |publisher=Purdue University Press |doi=10.2307/j.ctvh9w1wk |jstor=j.ctvh9w1wk |isbn=978-1-55753-875-8|s2cid=263234025 }} settled wherever they could live freely enough to practice their religion. Over the course of the diaspora the center of Jewish life moved from BabyloniaJohnson (1987), p. 163. to the Iberian PeninsulaJohnson (1987), p. 177. to PolandJohnson (1987), p. 231. to the United StatesJohnson (1987), p. 460. and, as a result of Zionism, back to Israel.Gartner (2001), p. 431.

There were also many expulsions of Jews during the Middle Ages and Enlightenment in Europe, including: 1290, 16,000 Jews were expelled from England, see the (Statute of Jewry); in 1396, 100,000 from France; in 1421, thousands were expelled from Austria. Many of these Jews settled in East-Central Europe, especially Poland.Gartner (2001), pp. 11–12. Following the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, the Spanish population of around 200,000 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.Johnson (1987), pp. 229–31.

During the 19th century, France's policies of equal citizenship regardless of religion led to the immigration of Jews (especially from Eastern and Central Europe).Johnson (1987), p. 306. This contributed to the arrival of millions of Jews in the New World. Over two million Eastern European Jews arrived in the United States from 1880 to 1925.Johnson (1987), p. 370.

In summary, the pogroms in Eastern Europe, the rise of modern antisemitism,Gartner (2001), pp. 213–15. the Holocaust,Gartner (2001), pp. 357–70. as well as the rise of Arab nationalism,Johnson (1987), pp. 529–30. all served to fuel the movements and migrations of huge segments of Jewry from land to land and continent to continent until they arrived back in large numbers at their original historical homeland in Israel.

In the latest phase of migrations, the Islamic Revolution of Iran caused many Iranian Jews to flee Iran. Most found refuge in the US (particularly Los Angeles, California, and Long Island, New York) and Israel. Smaller communities of Persian Jews exist in Canada and Western Europe.{{cite EJ|last=Netzer|first=Amnon|title=Iran|volume=10|page=13}} Similarly, 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.

File:Western Wall, Jerusalem, (16037897867).jpg]]

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.Gartner (2001), pp. 400–01.

Orthodox and Conservative Judaism discourage proselytism to non-Jews, but many Jewish groups have tried to reach out to the assimilated Jewish communities of the Diaspora in order for them to reconnect to their Jewish roots. Additionally, while in principle Reform Judaism favours seeking new members for the faith, this position has not translated into active proselytism, instead taking the form of an effort to reach out to non-Jewish spouses of intermarried couples.Kaplan (2003), p. 301.

There is also a trend of Orthodox movements reaching out to secular Jews in order to give them a stronger Jewish identity so there is less chance of intermarriage. As a result of the efforts by these and other Jewish groups over the past 25 years, there has been a trend (known as the Baal teshuva movement) for secular Jews to become more religiously observant, though the demographic implications of the trend are unknown.{{cite book |doi=10.1002/9780470758014.ch27 |chapter=The 'Return' to Traditional Judaism at the End of the Twentieth Century: Cross-Cultural Comparisons |title=The Blackwell Companion to Judaism |year=2008 |last1=Danzger |first1=M. Herbert |pages=495–511 |isbn=978-0-470-75801-4 }} Additionally, there is also a growing rate of conversion to Jews by Choice of gentiles who make the decision to head in the direction of becoming Jews.de Lange (2002), p. 220.

{{Clear}}

{{see also|Lists of Jews}}

Jewish individuals have played a significant role in the development and growth of Western culture, advancing many fields of thought, science and technology, both historically and in modern times,{{cite book|last=Schwartz|first=Richard H.|title=Judaism and Global Survival|year=2001|publisher=Lantern Books|location=New York|isbn=1-930051-87-5|page=153}} including through discrete trends in Jewish philosophy, Jewish ethics{{cite book |last1=Sekine |first1=Seizo |title=A Comparative Study of the Origins of Ethical Thought: Hellenism and Hebraism |date=20 January 2005 |publisher=Sheed & Ward |isbn=978-1-4616-7459-7 }}{{page needed|date=October 2020}} and Jewish literature, as well as specific trends in Jewish culture, including in Jewish art, Jewish music, Jewish humor, Jewish theatre, Jewish cuisine and Jewish medicine. Jews have established various Jewish political movements, religious movements, and, through the authorship of the Hebrew Bible and parts of the New Testament,{{cite book|author=Max I. Dimont|title=Jews, God, and History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Lm5U0YSPmBUC&pg=PT102|year= 2004|publisher=Penguin Publishing Group|isbn=978-1-101-14225-7|pages=102–}} "During the subsequent five hundred years, under Persian, Greek and Roman domination, the Jews wrote, revised, admitted and canonized all the books now comprising the Jewish Old Testament"{{cite book|author=Julie Galambush|title=The Reluctant Parting: How the New Testament's Jewish Writers Created a Christian Book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=52nkWb8GNMAC&pg=PA3|year=2011|publisher=HarperCollins|isbn=978-0-06-210475-5|pages=3–}}"The fact that Jesus and his followers who wrote the New Testament were first-century Jews, then, produces as many questions as it does answers concerning their experiences, beliefs, and practices" provided the foundation for Christianity and Islam. More than 20 percent{{cite book|last=Shalev|first=Baruch|title=100 Years of Nobel Prizes|year=2005|page=57|quote=A striking fact... is the high number of Laureates of the Jewish faith—over 20% of the total Nobel Prizes (138); including: 17% in Chemistry, 26% in Medicine and Physics, 40% in Economics and 11% in Peace and Literature each. These numbers are especially startling in light of the fact that only some 14 million people (0.2% of the world's population) are Jewish.}}{{cite news|url=http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/16556/as-the-nobel-prize-marks-centennial-jews-constitute-1-5-of-laureates/|title=As the Nobel Prize marks centennial, Jews constitute 1/5 of laureates|access-date=3 April 2012|last=Dobbs|first=Stephen Mark|date=12 October 2001|newspaper=J. The Jewish News of Northern California|quote=Throughout the 20th century, Jews, more so than any other minority, ethnic or cultural group, have been recipients of the Nobel Prize—perhaps the most distinguished award for human endeavor in the six fields for which it is given. Remarkably, Jews constitute almost one-fifth of all Nobel laureates. This, in a world in which Jews number just a fraction of 1 percent of the population.}}{{cite web|url=http://www.jewishbiography.com/biographies/list-of-jews/jewish-nobel-prize-winners/index.html|title=Jewish Nobel Prize Winners|access-date=25 November 2011|archive-date=19 October 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171019170057/http://www.jewishbiography.com/biographies/list-of-jews/jewish-nobel-prize-winners/index.html|url-status=dead}}{{cite book|title=Judaism for dummies|chapter=28|year=2001|quote=Similarly, because Jews make up less than a quarter of one percent of the world's population, it's surprising that over 20 percent of Nobel prizes have been awarded to Jews or people of Jewish descent.|author1=Ted Falcon |author2=David Blatner |publisher=John Wiley & Sons}}{{cite book|title=The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It|author=Lawrence E. Harrison|page=102|year=2008|publisher=Oxford University Press|quote=That achievement is symbolized by the fact that 15 to 20 percent of Nobel Prizes have been won by Jews, who represent two tenths of one percent of the world's population.}}{{cite book|title=The History of the Jewish People: Ancient Israel to 1880s America|page=1|year=2006|publisher=Behrman House, Inc.|quote=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!|author1=Jonathan B. Krasner |author2=Jonathan D. Sarna}} of the awarded Nobel Prize have gone to individuals of Jewish descent.{{cite web|title=Jewish Nobel Prize Winners|url=http://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html|website=Jinfo.org|access-date=16 March 2016|quote=At least 194 Jews and people of half- or three-quarters-Jewish ancestry have been awarded the Nobel Prize, accounting for 22% of all individual recipients worldwide between 1901 and 2015, and constituting 36% of all US recipients during the same period. In the scientific research fields of Chemistry, Economics, Physics, and Physiology/Medicine, the corresponding world and US percentages are 26% and 38%, respectively. Among women laureates in the four research fields, the Jewish percentages (world and US) are 33% and 50%, respectively. Of organizations awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, 22% were founded principally by Jews or by people of half-Jewish descent. Since the turn of the century (i.e., since the year 2000), Jews have been awarded 25% of all Nobel Prizes and 28% of those in the scientific research fields.}} Due to the Jewish contribution to the Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb was labeled as a “Jewish gift to mankind.”Pais-Greenapple, Nadav (23 October 2023). “Moshe Rabbenu splits the atom: Writers of the Forverts react to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki,” In Geveb, https://ingeveb.org/blog/moshe-rabbenu-splits-the-atom The Jews excel in IQ testsCochran & Gregory; Hardy, Jason & Harpending, Henry (September 2006). "Natural history of Ashkenazi intelligence," Journal of Biosocial Science. 38 (5): 659–693, https://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf and significantly contributed to the lists of chess champions and billionaires.

{{Notelist}}

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• {{Cite book|editor-last=Coogan|editor-first=Michael D.|title=The Oxford History of the Biblical World|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1998|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zFhvECwNQD0C|isbn=978-0-19-513937-2|access-date=4 April 2018|archive-date=15 November 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201115173430/https://books.google.com/books?id=zFhvECwNQD0C|url-status=live}}
• {{cite book|last=Dekmejian|first=R. Hrair|title=Patterns of Political Leadership: Egypt, Israel, Lebanon|publisher=State University of New York Press|year=1975|isbn=0-87395-291-X}}
• {{Cite book |last=Dever |first=William |title=Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? |publisher=Eerdmans |year=2003 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8WkbUkKeqcoC |isbn=978-0-8028-0975-9 |access-date=4 April 2018 |archive-date=21 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200421082836/https://books.google.com/books?id=8WkbUkKeqcoC |url-status=live }}
• {{cite book| title = The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts

| last1 = Finkelstein | first1 = Israel

| last2 = Silberman | first2 = Neil Asher

| publisher = Simon and Schuster

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=lu6ywyJr0CMC

| date = 2002

| isbn = 978-0-7432-2338-6

}}

• {{cite book|title=Theodor Herzl: From Assimilation to Zionism|last=Kornberg|first=Jacques|isbn=978-0-253-33203-5|publisher=Indiana University Press|year=1993}}
• {{Cite book |title=A History of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Judah |last=Lipiński |first=Edward |publisher=Peeters |year=2020 |isbn=978-90-429-4212-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qGy6zQEACAAJ |series=Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta |volume=287}}
• {{Cite book |last=McNutt |first=Paula |title=Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel |publisher=Westminster John Knox Press |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-664-22265-9 }}
• {{harvc |last=Stager |first=Lawrence |c=Forging an Identity: The Emergence of Ancient Israel |in=Coogan |year=1998}}
• {{Cite book |chapter=The Tribes That Were Not Lost: The Samaritans |last=Tobolowsky |first=Andrew |year=2022 |title=The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel: New Identities Across Time and Space |publisher=Cambridge University Press |place=Cambridge |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/myth-of-the-twelve-tribes-of-israel/tribes-that-were-not-lost/BAEE997B6F05C26B49864979B0705E9D |pages=69–70; 73–75 |doi=10.1017/9781009091435.003 |isbn=978-1-316-51494-8}}

{{Refend}}

{{Sister project links |wikt=Jew |s=Portal:Judaism |v=Portal:Jewish Studies |d=Q7325}}

• [https://www.jewishdatabank.org/databank Official website] of the Berman Jewish DataBank
• [https://www.jewishagency.org/ Official website] of the Jewish Agency for Israel
• [https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/ Official website] of The Jewish Encyclopedia
• [https://www.jta.org/ Official website] of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
• [http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/0415236614/resources/indi.asp Maps related to Jewish history] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120323194258/http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/0415236614/resources/indi.asp |date=23 March 2012 }}
• [https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/ Official website] of the World Jewish Congress

{{Jews and Judaism|state=expanded}}

{{Authority control}}

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