The Jews (Hebrew Extinct as a regularly spoken language by the 4th century CE, but survived as a liturgical and literary language; revived in the 1880s: יְהוּדִים‎ "Yehudim" IPA The International Phonetic Alphabet [note 1] is a system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic Association as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by foreign language students and teachers, linguists, speech pathologists and therapists, singers,: jɛhuːdiːm), also known as the Jewish people, are a nation A nation is a group of people who share common history, culture, ethnic origin and language, often possessing or seeking its own government. The development and conceptualization of a nation is closely related to the development of modern industrial states and nationalist movements in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although and ethnoreligious group An ethnoreligious group is an ethnic group of people whose members are also unified by a common religious background.[citation needed] Ethnoreligious communities define their ethnic identity neither exclusively by ancestral heritage nor simply by religious affiliation, but often through a combination of both[citation needed] (a long shared history; originating in the Israelites The term "Israelites" means both a people, the descendants of the patriarch Jacob/Israel, and those who worship the god of the people Israel, regardless of ethnic origin. In the biblical history an Israelite can be: (a) a descendant of the patriarch Jacob; (b) a member of the holy and inclusive community of those who follow the God of or Hebrews Hebrews is a term used in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and is regarded by many scholars as being synonymous with the Israelites of the Ancient Near East The Ancient Near East refers to early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia , ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Iran (Elam, Media, Parthia and Persia), Armenia, Anatolia (modern Turkey) and the Levant (modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Cyprus, and Crete). As such, it is a. The Jewish ethnicity An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, consisting of a common language, a common culture (often including a shared religion) and a tradition of common ancestry (corresponding to a history of endogamy), nationality Nationality is membership of a nation or sovereign state. Nationality can be acquired by birth within the jurisdiction of a state, by inheritance from parents, or by a process of naturalization. Nationality affords the state jurisdiction over the person and affords the person the protection of the state, and religion Religion (from O.Fr. religion "religious community," from L. religionem "respect for what is sacred, reverence for the gods," "obligation, the bond between man and the gods" is the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or more in general a set of beliefs explaining the existence of and giving meaning to the universe, are strongly interrelated, as Judaism Judaism is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people. Judaism, originating in the Hebrew Bible and explored in later texts such as the Talmud, is considered by Jews to be the expression of the covenantal relationship God developed with the Children of Israel. According to traditional Rabbinic Judaism, God revealed is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation A nation is a group of people who share common history, culture, ethnic origin and language, often possessing or seeking its own government. The development and conceptualization of a nation is closely related to the development of modern industrial states and nationalist movements in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although.[5][6][7] Converts to Judaism Conversion to Judaism is a formal act undertaken by a non-Jewish person who wishes to be recognised as a full member of the Jewish community. A Jewish conversion is both a religious act and an expression of association with the Jewish people. A formal conversion is also sometimes undertaken to remove any doubt as to the Jewishness of a person who, whose status as Jews within the Jewish ethnos An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage that is real or assumed- sharing cultural characteristics This shared heritage may be based upon putative common ancestry, history, kinship, religion, language, shared territory, nationality or physical appearance. Members of an ethnic group are is equal to those born into it, have been absorbed into the Jewish people throughout the millennia.

In Jewish tradition, Jewish ancestry is traced to the Biblical patriarchs Abraham Abraham is the founding patriarch of the Israelites, Ishmaelites, Edomites, and the Midianites and kindred peoples, according to the book of Genesis, Isaac Isaac as described in the Hebrew Bible, was the only son Abraham had with his wife Sarah, and was the father of Jacob and Esau. Isaac is one of the three patriarchs of the Jewish people. According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born, and Sarah was beyond childbearing years and Jacob Jacob , also known as Israel (Hebrew: יִשְׂרָאֵל‎, Standard Yisraʾel, Tiberian Yiśrāʾēl; Septuagint Greek: Ἰσραήλ Israēl; Arabic: إِسْرَائِيل‎ Isrāʾīl; "persevere with God"), as described in the Hebrew Bible, was the third patriarch of the Jewish people whom God made a covenant with, and ancestor in the second millennium BCE. The Jews have experienced three periods of political autonomy in their national homeland, the Land of Israel The Land of Israel is, according to the Hebrew Bible, the region which was promised by God to the descendants of Abraham through his son Isaac and to the Israelites, descendants of Jacob, Abraham's grandson. This land forms part of the Abrahamic, Jacob and Israel covenants. Mainstream Jewish tradition regards the promise as applying to all Jews, twice during ancient history Ancient history is the study of the written past from the beginning of recorded human history in the Old World to the Early Middle Ages in Europe, and currently once again, since 1948 1948 was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the 1948 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar, with the establishment of the modern State of Israel Israel officially the State of Israel (Hebrew: מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל (help·info), Medinat Yisra'el; Arabic: دَوْلَةُ إِسْرَائِيلَ‎, Dawlat Isrā'īl), is a country in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east,. The first of the two ancient eras spanned from 1350[8] to 586 BCE, and encompassed the periods of the Judges The Book of Judges is a book of the Bible originally written in Hebrew. It appears in the Tanakh and in the Christian Old Testament. Its title refers to its contents; it contains the history of Biblical judges (not to be confused with modern judges), who helped rule and guide the ancient Israelites, and of their times, the United Monarchy The united Kingdom of Israel was a kingdom that existed in the Land of Israel, according to the Bible, a period referred to by scholars as the United Monarchy. Historians date the kingdom from c. 1020 BC to c. 930 BC, though there are differences of opinion as to exact dates, and the Divided Monarchy of the Kingdoms of Israel The Kingdom of Israel ) was one of the successor states to the older United Monarchy (also often called the 'Kingdom of Israel'). It existed roughly from the 930s BC until about the 720s BC, when the kingdom was conquered by the Assyrian Empire. The major cities of the kingdom were Shechem, Tirzah, and Shomron (Samaria) and Judah The Kingdom of Judah existed at two periods in Jewish history. According to the Hebrew Bible, a kingdom emerged in Judah after the death of Saul, when the tribe of Judah elevated David, who came from the Tribe of Judah, to rule over it. After seven years David became king of a reunited Kingdom of Israel, and David moved the capital from Hebron to, ending with the destruction of the First Temple According to the Hebrew Bible, Solomon's Temple, also known as the First Temple, was constructed by Solomon, king of the ancient Israelites, on mount Moriah in Jerusalem. It housed the Ark of the Covenant and functioned as a religious focal point in ancient Judaism for the worship of YHWH. The second era was the period of the Hasmonean The Hasmoneans were the ruling dynasty of the Hasmonean Kingdom of Israel (140–37 BC), an independent religious Jewish state in the Land of Israel. The Hasmonean dynasty was established under the leadership of Simon Maccabaeus, two decades after his brother Judas the Maccabee ("Hammer") defeated the Seleucid army during the Maccabean Kingdom spanning from 140 to 37 BCE. Since the destruction of the First Temple, the diaspora The Jewish diaspora <di-ASP-ora> is the English term used to describe the Galut גלות, or 'exile' that encompassed several forced expulsions of Israelites from what is now the states of Israel, Jordan and parts of Lebanon. The modern Hebrew term of Tefutzot תפוצות, "scattered", was introduced by the American academic Simon has been the home of most of the world's Jews.[9] Except in the modern State of Israel, Jews are a minority in every country in which they live, and they have frequently experienced persecution Persecution of Jews has occurred on numerous occasions and at widely different geographical locations. As well as being a major component in Jewish history, it has significantly impacted the general history and social development of the countries and societies in which the persecuted Jews lived throughout history, resulting in a population that fluctuated both in numbers and distribution over the centuries.

According to the Jewish Agency for Israel The Jewish Agency for Israel , also known as the Sochnut or JAFI, served as the pre-state Jewish government before the establishment of Israel and later became the mandated organization in charge of immigration and absorption of Jews from the Diaspora, as of 2007, there were 13–14 million Jews worldwide, 5.4 million of whom lived in Israel Israel , officially the State of Israel (Hebrew: מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל (help·info), Medīnat Yisrā'el; Arabic: دَوْلَةُ إِسْرَائِيلَ‎, Dawlat Isrā'īl), is a country in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan and the, 5.3 million in the United States ^ b. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language, and the remainder distributed in communities of varying sizes around the world; this represents 0.2% of the current estimated world population The world population is the population of humans on the planet Earth. In 2009, the United Nations estimated the population to reach 7,000,000,000 in 2011; current estimates by the United States Census Bureau put the population at 6,858,200,000.[1] (Other sources cite higher estimates. For example, the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics , abbreviated CBS, is an Israeli government office established in 1949 to carry out research and publish statistical data on all aspects of Israeli life, including population, society, economy, industry, education and physical infrastructure estimates the number of Israeli Jews Israeli Jews are found mostly in Israel, as well as many other countries in diaspora. Israeli Jews mostly speak Hebrew and most practice Judaism in some form to be 5.6 million and the U.S. Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau is the government agency that is responsible for the United States Census. It also gathers other national demographic and economic data. As part of the United States Department of Commerce, the Census Bureau serves as a leading source of data about America's people and economy estimates the American Jewish population to be as many as 6.4 million.[2][3]) These numbers include all those who consider themselves Jews whether or not affiliated with a Jewish organization.[10] The total world Jewish population Jewish population refers to the number of Jews in the world. Precise figures are difficult to calculate because the definition of "Who is a Jew" is a source of controversy, however, is difficult to measure. In addition to halakhic Halakha — also transliterated Halocho (Ashkenazic Hebrew pronunciation) and Halacha — is the collective body of Jewish religious law, including biblical law (the 613 mitzvot) and later talmudic and rabbinic law, as well as customs and traditions considerations, there are secular, political, and ancestral identification factors in defining who is a Jew "Who is a Jew?" is a basic question about Jewish identity and considerations of Jewish self-identification. The question has gained particular prominence in connection with several legal cases in Israel since 1962, and in 2009 there was a prominent and controversial court case, in the United Kingdom, about the question that increase the figure considerably.[10]

Contents

Name and etymology

Main article: Jew (word) The Jewish ethnonym in Hebrew is יהודים Yehudim which is the origin of the English word Jew. The Hebrew name is derived from the region name Judah (Yehudah יהודה). Originally the name referred to the territory alloted to the tribe descended from Judah the fourth son of the patriarch Jacob (Numbers). Judah was one of the twelve sons of

The English word Jew continues Middle English Middle English is the name given by historical linguists to the diverse forms of the English language in use between the late 11th century and about 1470, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton in the late 1470s Gyw, Iewe, a loan from Old French Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century. It is a direct descendent of Old Gallo-Romance. It was then known as the langue d'oïl to distinguish it from the langue d'oc (Occitan language, giu, earlier juieu, ultimately from Latin Latin or sometimes Roman is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Although often considered a dead language, in view of the fact that it has no native, fluent speakers, Latin continues to be taught in schools and has been, and currently is, used in the process of new word production in modern languages from many Iudaeum. The Latin Iudaeus simply means Judaean, "from the land of Judaea Judea or Judæa is the name given to the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel (Hebrew: ארץ ישראל‎ Eretz Yisrael) during the period of Classical Antiquity, from roughly the 8th century BCE (Assyrian rule) to the 2nd century CE, when Roman Judea was renamed to Syria Palaestina following Bar Kokhba's revolt". The Latin term itself, like the corresponding Greek Ἰουδαῖος, is a loan from Aramaic Y'hūdāi, corresponding to Hebrew Extinct as a regularly spoken language by the 4th century CE, but survived as a liturgical and literary language; revived in the 1880s: יְהוּדִי‎, Yehudi (sg.); יְהוּדִים, Yehudim (pl. In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker (morpheme) is used distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one. Plurality is a linguistic universal, represented variously among the languages as a), in origin the term for a member of the tribe of Judah According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Judah was one of the twelve Tribes of Israel or the people of the kingdom of Judah The Kingdom of Judah existed at two periods in Jewish history. According to the Hebrew Bible, a kingdom emerged in Judah after the death of Saul, when the tribe of Judah elevated David, who came from the Tribe of Judah, to rule over it. After seven years David became king of a reunited Kingdom of Israel, and David moved the capital from Hebron to. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי, is pronounced [jəhuˈdiː], with the stress on the final syllable.[11]

The Ladino Judaeo-Spanish, commonly referred to as Ladino, and known locally as Judezmo, Djudeo-Espanyol, Djudezmo, Djudeo-Kasteyano, Spaniolit and other names, is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish. As a Jewish language, it is influenced heavily by Hebrew and Aramaic, but also Arabic, Turkish and to a lesser extent Greek and other languages where name is ג׳ודיו, Djudio (sg.); ג׳ודיוס, Djudios (pl.); Yiddish Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages. It is written in the Hebrew alphabet: ייִד: Yid (sg.); ייִדן, Yidn (pl.).

The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., "Jude" in German, "juif" in French, "jøde" in Danish, "judío" in Spanish, etc., but derivations of the word "Hebrew" are also in use to describe a Jewish person, e.g., in Italian (Ebreo), and Russian: Еврей, (Yevrey).[12] The German word "Jude" is pronounced [ˈjuːdə], and is the origin of the word Yiddish.[13] (See Jewish ethnonyms for a full overview.)

According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (2000):

It is widely recognized that the attributive use of the noun Jew, in phrases such as Jew lawyer or Jew ethics, is both vulgar and highly offensive. In such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a practice that carries risks of its own. In a sentence such as There are now several Jews on the council, which is unobjectionable, the substitution of a circumlocution like Jewish people or persons of Jewish background may in itself cause offense for seeming to imply that Jew has a negative connotation when used as a noun.[14]

Judaism

Main article: Judaism

Judaism guides its adherents in both practice and belief, and has been called not only a religion, but also a "way of life,"[15] 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,[16] in Europe before and after The Age of Enlightenment (see Haskalah),[17] in Islamic Spain and Portugal,[18] in North Africa and the Middle East,[18] India,[19] and China,[20] or the contemporary United States[21] and Israel,[22] cultural phenomena have developed that are in some sense characteristically Jewish without being at all specifically religious. Some factors in this come from within Judaism, others from the interaction of Jews or specific communities of Jews with their surroundings, others from the inner social and cultural dynamics of the community, as opposed to from the religion itself. This phenomenon has led to considerably different Jewish cultures unique to their own communities, each as authentically Jewish as the next.[23]

Who is a Jew?

Main article: Who is a Jew?

Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation, an ethnicity, a religion, and a culture, making the definition of who is a Jew vary slightly depending on whether a religious or national approach to identity is used.[24] 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.[25] At times, conversion has accounted for a substantial part of Jewish population growth. In the first century of the Christian era, for example, the population more than doubled, from 4 to 8–10 million within the confines of the Roman Empire, in good part as a result of a wave of conversion.[26]

Historical definitions of Jewish identity have traditionally been based on halakhic definitions of matrilineal descent, and halakhic conversions. Historical definitions of who is a Jew date back to the codification of the oral tradition into the Babylonian Talmud. Interpretations of sections of the Tanakh, such as Deuteronomy 7:1–5, by learned Jewish sages, are used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews because "[the non-Jewish husband] will cause your child to turn away from Me and they will worship the gods of others." Leviticus 24:10 says that the son in a marriage between a Hebrew woman and an Egyptian man is "of the community of Israel." This contrasts with Ezra 10:2–3, where Israelites returning from Babylon vow to put aside their gentile wives and their children.[27][28] Since the Haskalah, these halakhic interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged.[29]

Ethnic divisions

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

Within the world's Jewish population there are distinct ethnic divisions, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, and subsequent independent evolutions. An array of Jewish communities were established by Jewish settlers in various places around the Old World, often at great distances from one another resulting in effective and often long-term isolation from each other. During the millennia of the Jewish diaspora the communities would develop under the influence of their local environments; political, cultural, natural, and populational. Today, manifestation of these differences among the Jews can be observed in Jewish cultural expressions of each community, including Jewish linguistic diversity, culinary preferences, liturgical practices, religious interpretations, as well as degrees and sources of genetic admixture.[30]

Jews are often identified as belonging to one of two major groups: the Ashkenazim, or "Germanics" (Ashkenaz meaning "Germany" in Medieval Hebrew, denoting their Central European base), and the Sephardim, or "Hispanics" (Sefarad meaning "Spain/Hispania" or "Iberia" in Hebrew, denoting their Spanish, and Portuguese, base). The Mizrahim, or "Easterners" (Mizrach being "East" in Hebrew), that is, the diverse collection of Middle Eastern and North African Jews, constitute a third major group, although they are sometimes termed Sephardi for liturgical reasons.[31]

Smaller groups include, but are not restricted to, Indian Jews such as the Bene Israel, Bnei Menashe, Cochin Jews, and Bene Ephraim; the Romaniotes of Greece; the Italian Jews ("Italkim" or "Bené Roma"); the Teimanim from Yemen and Oman; various African Jews, including most numerously the Beta Israel of Ethiopia; and Chinese Jews, most notably the Kaifeng Jews, as well as various other distinct but now almost extinct communities.[32]

The divisions between all these groups are approximate and their boundaries are not always clear. The Mizrahim for example, are a heterogeneous collection of North African, Central Asian, Caucasian, and Middle Eastern Jewish communities that are often as unrelated to each other as they are to any of the earlier mentioned Jewish groups. In modern usage, however, the Mizrahim are sometimes termed Sephardi due to similar styles of liturgy, despite independent development from Sephardim proper. Thus, among Mizrahim there are Iraqi Jews, Egyptian Jews, Berber Jews, Lebanese Jews, Kurdish Jews, Libyan Jews, Syrian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, and various others. The Teimanim from Yemen and Oman are sometimes included, although their style of liturgy is unique and they differ in respect to the admixture found among them to that found in Mizrahim. In addition, there is a differentiation made between Sephardi migrants who established themselves in the Middle East and North Africa after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s and the pre-existing Jewish communities in those regions.[32]

Despite this diversity, Ashkenazi Jews represent the bulk of modern Jewry, with at least 70% of Jews worldwide (and up to 90% prior to World War II and the Holocaust). As a result of their emigration from Europe, Ashkenazim also represent the overwhelming majority of Jews in the New World continents, in countries such as the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and Brazil. In France, emigration of Mizrahim from North Africa has led them to outnumber the Ashkenazim and Sephardim.[33] 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.[34]

Jewish languages

Main article: Jewish languages

Hebrew is the liturgical language of Judaism (termed lashon ha-kodesh, "the holy tongue"), the language in which the Hebrew scriptures (Tanakh) were composed, and the daily speech of the Jewish people for centuries. By the fifth century BCE, Aramaic, a closely related tongue, joined Hebrew as the spoken language in Judea.[35] By the third century BCE, Jews of the diaspora were speaking Greek.[36] Modern Hebrew is now one of the two official languages of the State of Israel along with Arabic.[37]

Hebrew was revived as a spoken language by Eliezer ben Yehuda, who arrived in Palestine in 1881. It hadn't been used as a mother tongue since Tannaic times.[35] 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.[38] For centuries, Jews worldwide have spoken the local or dominant languages of the regions they migrated to, often developing distinctive dialectal forms or branching off as independent languages. Yiddish is the Judæo-German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Central Europe, and Ladino is the Judæo-Spanish language developed by Sephardic Jews who migrated to the Iberian peninsula. Due to many factors, including the impact of the Holocaust on European Jewry, the Jewish exodus from Arab lands, and widespread emigration from other Jewish communities around the world, ancient and distinct Jewish languages of several communities, including Gruzinic, Judæo-Arabic, Judæo-Berber, Krymchak, Judæo-Malayalam and many others, have largely fallen out of use.[39]

The three most commonly spoken languages among Jews today are Hebrew, English and Russian. Some Romance languages, such as French, and Spanish are also widely used.[39]

Yiddish has been spoken by more Jews in history than any other language, closely followed by English and Hebrew (if modern and biblical are counted as one variety).[40]

Genetic studies

Main article: Genetic studies on Jews See also: Y-chromosomal Aaron, Genealogical DNA test, and Matrilineality

Genetic studies indicate various lineages found in modern Jewish populations; however, most of these populations share a lineage in common, traceable to an ancient population that underwent geographic branching and subsequent independent evolutions.[41] While DNA tests have demonstrated inter-marriage in all of the various Jewish ethnic divisions over the last 3,000 years, it was substantially less than in other populations.[42] The findings lend support to traditional Jewish accounts accrediting their founding to exiled Israelite populations, and counters theories that many or most of the world's Jewish populations were founded entirely by local populations that adopted the Jewish religion, devoid of any actual Israelite genetic input.[42][43]

DNA analysis further determined that modern Jews of the priesthood tribe—"Kohanim"—share an ancestor dating back about 3,000 years.[44] This result is consistent for all Jewish populations around the world.[44] The researchers estimated that the most recent common ancestor of modern Kohanim lived between 1000 BCE (roughly the time of the Biblical Exodus) and 586 BCE, when the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple.[45] They found similar results analyzing DNA from Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews.[45] The scientists estimated the date of the original priest based on genetic mutations, which indicated that the priest lived roughly 106 generations ago, between 2,650 and 3,180 years ago depending whether one counts a generation as 25 or 30 years.[45]

Although individual and groups of converts to Judaism have historically been absorbed into contemporary Jewish populations, it is unlikely that they formed a large percentage of the ancestors of modern Jewish groups, and much less that they represented their genesis as Jewish communities.[46][47]

Male lineages: Y chromosomal DNA

A study published by the National Academy of Sciences found that "the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population", and suggested that "most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora".[41] Researchers expressed surprise at the remarkable genetic uniformity they found among modern Jews, no matter where the diaspora has become dispersed around the world.[41]

Other Y-chromosome findings show that the world's Jewish communities are closely related to Kurds, Syrians and Palestinians.[44][48] Skorecki and colleague wrote that "the extremely close affinity of Jewish and non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations observed ... supports the hypothesis of a common Middle Eastern origin".[44] According to another study of the same year, more than 70% of Jewish men and half of the Arab men (inhabitants of Israel and the territories only) whose DNA was studied inherited their Y-chromosomes from the same paternal ancestors who lived in the region within the last few thousand years. The results are consistent with the Biblical account of Jews and Arabs having a common ancestor. About two-thirds of Israeli Arabs and Arabs in the territories and a similar proportion of Israeli Jews are the descendants of at least three common ancestors who lived in the Middle East in the Neolithic period. However, the Palestinian Arab clade includes two Arab modal haplotypes which are found at only very low frequency among Jews, reflecting divergence and/or large scale admixture from non-local populations to the Palestinians.[49]

A study of haplotypes of the Y chromosome, published in 2000, addressed the paternal origins of Ashkenazi Jews. Hammer et al.[41] found that the Y chromosome of some Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews contained mutations that are also common among Middle Eastern peoples, but uncommon in the general European population. This suggested that the male ancestors of the Ashkenazi Jews could be traced mostly to the Middle East. The proportion of male genetic admixture in Ashkenazi Jews amounts to less than 0.5% per generation over an estimated 80 generations, with "relatively minor contribution of European Y chromosomes to the Ashkenazim," and a total admixture estimate "very similar to Motulsky's average estimate of 12.5%." This supported the finding that "Diaspora Jews from Europe, Northwest Africa, and the Near East resemble each other more closely than they resemble their non-Jewish neighbors." However, when all haplotypes were included in the analysis, m (the admixture percentage) increased to 23% ± 7%. In addition, of the Jewish populations in this cluster, the Ashkenazim were closest to South European populations, specifically the Greeks.[41]

In Jewish populations, Haplogroup J1 (defined by the 267 marker) constitutes 30% of the Yemenite Jews[50] 20.0% of the Ashkenazim results and 12% of the Sephardic results[50][51][52][53]. However, J1 is most frequent in Yemen(76%)[54][55], Saudi (64%)[56] Qatar (58%) [55]. J1 is generally frequent amongst Negev Bedouins (62%[57]). It is also very common among other Arabs such as those of the Levant, i.e. Palestinian (38.4%) [51], Syria (30%), Lebanon (25%).[58] In Europe higher frequencies have been reported in the central Adriatic regions of Italy Gargano (17.2%)[59], Pescara (15%)[59], in the Mediterranean Paola (11.1%)[59], South Sicilian Ragusa (10.7%)[60], Crete (8.3%)[61], Malta (7.8%), Cyprus (6.2%)[62], Greece (5.3%)[61].

Haplogroup J2 which is found in the Sephardic Jews(29%)[63] and Ashkenazi Jews(23%)[63], or 19%[64]. is found mainly in the Fertile Crescent, the Caucasus,[65] Anatolia, the Balkans, Italy, the Mediterranean littoral, the Iranian plateau, Central Asia, and South Asia.[63] More specifically it is found in Iraq,[66] Syria, Lebanon,[67] Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Greece, Italy and the eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula[68], and more frequently in Iraqis 29.7% [69], Lebanese 25%[70], Palestinians 16.8%[63], Syrians 22.5% [71], Kurds 28.4%, Saudi Arabia 15.92%[72], Jordan 14.3%, Oman 10-15%[73], UAE 10.4%, Yemen 9.7%[74], in Israel[63], in Palestine[63], and in Turkey.[75]

Female lineages: Mitochondrial DNA

Before 2006, geneticists largely attributed the genesis of most of the world's Jewish populations to founding acts by males who migrated from the Middle East and "by the women from each local population whom they took as wives and converted to Judaism." However, more recent findings of studies of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA, at least in Ashkenazi Jews, has led to a review of this archetype.[76] This research has suggested that, in addition to Israelite male, significant female founder ancestry might also derive from the Middle East.[76] In addition, Behar (2006) suggested that the rest of Ashkenazi mtDNA is originated from about 150 women, most of those were probably of Middle Eastern origin.[77] Approximately 32% of people with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry belong to the mtDNA haplogroup K. This high percentage points to a genetic bottleneck occurring some 100 generations ago.[78]

Research in 2008 found significant founder effects in many non-Asheknazi Jewish populations. In Belmonte, Azerbaijani, Georgian, Bene Israel and Libyan Jewish communities "a single mother was sufficient to explain at least 40% of their present-day mtDNA variation". In addition, "the Cochin and Tunisian Jewish communities show an attenuated pattern with two founding mothers explaining >30% of the variation." In contrast, Bulgarian, Turkish, Moroccan and Ethiopian Jews were heterogeneous with no evidence "for a narrow founder effect or depletion of mtDNA variation attributable to drift". The authors noted that "the first three of these communities were established following the Spanish expulsion and/or received large influxes of individuals from the Iberian Peninsula and high variation presently observed, probably reflects high overall mtDNA diversity among Jews of Spanish descent. Likewise, the mtDNA pool of Ethiopian Jews reflects the rich maternal lineage variety of East Africa." Jewish communities from Iraq, Iran, and Yemen showed a "third and intermediate pattern... consistent with a founding event, but not a narrow one".[79]

In this and other studies Yemenite Jews differ from other Mizrahim, as well as from Ashkenazim, in the proportion of sub-Saharan African gene types which have entered their gene pools.[80] African-specific Hg L(xM,N) lineages were found only in Yemenite and Ethiopian Jewish populations.[79] Among Yemenites, the average stands at 35% lineages within the past 3,000 years.[80]

Demographics

Main article: Jewish population

Population centres

There are an estimated 13–14 million Jews worldwide.[1] The table below lists countries with significant populations. Please note that these populations represent low-end estimates of the worldwide Jewish population, accounting for around 0.2% of the world's population.

Country or Region Jewish population Total Population % Jewish Notes
Israel 5,393,000 7,117,000 75.8% [1]
United States 5,275,000 301,469,000 1.7% [1]
Europe 1,506,000 710,000,000 0.2% [4]
France 490,000 64,102,000 0.8% [1]
Canada 374,000 32,874,000 1.1% [1]
United Kingdom 295,000 60,609,000 0.5% [1]
Russia 225,000 142,400,000 0.2% [1]
Argentina 184,000 39,922,000 0.5% [1]
Germany 120,000 82,310,000 0.1% [1]
Australia 104,000 20,788,000 0.5% [1]
Poland 100,000 38,163,895 0.27% [citation needed]
Brazil 96,000 188,078,000 0.05% [1]
Ukraine 77,000 46,481,000 0.2% [1]
South Africa 72,000 47,432,000 0.2% [1]
Hungary 49,000 10,053,000 0.5% [1]
Mexico 40,000 108,700,000 0.04% [1]
Asia (excl. Israel) 39,500 3,900,000,000 0.001% [4]
Belgium 31,200 10,419,000 0.3% [4]
Italy 28,600 58,884,000 0.05% [4]
Turkey 17,800 72,600,000 0.02% [4]
Iran 10,800 68,467,000 0.02% [4]
Romania 10,100 21,500,000 0.05% [4]
New Zealand 7,000 4,306,400 0.2% [4]
Greece 5,500 11,100,000 0.05% [4]
Cuba 1,500 11,450,000 0.013% [81]
Total 13,156,500 6,455,078,000 0.2% [1]

State of Israel

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

Israel, the Jewish nation-state, is the only country in which Jews make up a majority of the citizens.[82][83] Israel was established as an independent democratic state on May 14, 1948.[84] Of the 120 members in its parliament, the Knesset,[85] currently, 12 members of the Knesset are Arab citizens of Israel, most representing Arab political parties and one of Israel's Supreme Court judges is a Palestinian Arab.[86] Between 1948 and 1958, the Jewish population rose from 800,000 to two million.[87] Currently, Jews account for 75.8% of the Israeli population, or 5.4 million people.[1] The early years of the state of Israel were marked by the mass immigration of Holocaust survivors and Jews fleeing Arab lands.[88] Israel also has a large population of Ethiopian Jews, many of whom were airlifted to Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s.[89] Between 1974 and 1979 nearly 227,258 immigrants arrived in Israel, about half being from the Soviet Union.[90] This period also saw an increase in immigration to Israel from Western Europe, Latin America, and the United States[91] A trickle of immigrants from other communities has also arrived, including Indian Jews and others, as well as some descendants of Ashkenazi Holocaust survivors who had settled in countries such as the United States, Argentina, Australia and South Africa. Some Jews have emigrated from Israel elsewhere, due to economic problems or disillusionment with political conditions and the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict. Jewish Israeli emigrants are known as yordim.[92]

Diaspora (outside Israel)

Main article: Jewish diaspora

The waves of immigration to the United States and elsewhere at the turn of the nineteenth century, the founding of Zionism and later events, including pogroms in Russia, the massacre of European Jewry during the Holocaust, and the founding of the state of Israel, with the subsequent Jewish exodus from Arab lands, all resulted in substantial shifts in the population centers of world Jewry by the end of the twentieth century.[93]

In this Rosh Hashana greeting card from the early 1900s, Russian Jews, packs in hand, gaze at the American relatives beckoning them to the United States. Over two million Jews would flee the pogroms of the Russian Empire to the safety of the US from 1881–1924.[94]

Currently, the largest Jewish community in the world is located in the United States, with 5.3 million or 6.4 million Jews by various estimates. Elsewhere in the Americas, there are also large Jewish populations in Canada, Argentina, and Brazil, and smaller populations in Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Chile, and several other countries (see History of the Jews in Latin America).[1][3]

Western Europe's largest Jewish community can be found in France, home to 490,000 Jews, the majority of whom are immigrants or refugees from North African Arab countries such as Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia (or their descendants).[95] There are 295,000 Jews in the United Kingdom. In Eastern Europe, there are anywhere from 350,000 to one million Jews living in the former Soviet Union, but exact figures are difficult to establish. The fastest-growing Jewish community in the world, outside Israel, is the one in Germany, especially in Berlin, its capital. Tens of thousands of Jews from the former Eastern Bloc have settled in Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall.[96]

The Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East were home to around 900,000 Jews in 1945. Fueled by anti-Zionism[97] after the founding of Israel, systematic persecution caused almost all of these Jews to flee to Israel, North America, and Europe in the 1950s (see Jewish exodus from Arab lands). Today, around 8,000 Jews remain in all Arab nations combined.[4]

Iran is home to around 10,800 Jews, down from a population of 100,000 Jews before the 1979 revolution. After the revolution some of the Iranian Jews emigrated to Israel or Europe but most of them emigrated (with their non-Jewish Iranian compatriots) to the United States (especially Los Angeles, where the principal community is called "Tehrangeles").[4][98]

Outside Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and the rest of Asia, there are significant Jewish populations in Australia and South Africa.[4]

Demographic changes

Assimilation

Since at least the time of the Ancient Greeks, a proportion of Jews have assimilated into the wider non-Jewish society around them, by either choice or force, ceasing to practice Judaism and losing their Jewish identity.[99] Assimilation took place in all areas, and during all time periods,[99] with some Jewish communities, for example the Kaifeng Jews of China, disappearing entirely.[100] The advent of the Jewish Enlightenment of the 1700s (see Haskalah) and the subsequent emancipation of the Jewish populations of Europe and America in the 1800s, 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.[101] Rates of interreligious marriage vary widely: In the United States, they are just under 50%,[102] in the United Kingdom, around 53%, in France, around 30%,[103] and in Australia and Mexico, as low as 10%.[104][105] In the United States, only about a third of children from intermarriages affiliate themselves with Jewish religious practice.[106] The result is that most countries in the Diaspora have steady or slightly declining religiously Jewish populations as Jews continue to assimilate into the countries in which they live.

War and persecution

Main article: Persecution of Jews
Related articles: Antisemitism, History of antisemitism, New antisemitism
Jews (identifiable by the distinctive hats that they were required to wear) being killed by Christian knights. French Bible illustration from 1255. WW I poster shows a soldier cutting the bonds from a Jewish man, who says, "...now let me help you set others free!"

The Jewish people and Judaism have experienced various persecutions throughout Jewish history. During late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages the Roman Empire (in its later phases known as the Byzantine Empire) repeatedly repressed the Jewish population, first by ejecting them from their homelands during the pagan Roman era and later by officially establishing them as second-class citizens during the Christian Roman era.[107][108] 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."[109] Of course, there are many other complex demographic factors involved; the rate of population growth, epidemics, migration, assimilation, and conversion could all have played major roles in the current size of the global Jewish population.

Later in medieval Western Europe, further persecutions of Jews in the name of Christianity occurred, notably during the Crusades—when Jews all over Germany were massacred—and a series of expulsions from England, Germany, France, and, in the largest expulsion of all, Spain and Portugal after the Reconquista (the Catholic Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula), where both unbaptized Sephardic Jews and the ruling Muslim Moors were expelled.[110][111] In the Papal States, which existed until 1870, Jews were required to live only in specified neighborhoods called ghettos.[112] In the 19th and (before the end of World War II) 20th centuries, the Roman Catholic Church adhered to a distinction between "good antisemitism" and "bad antisemitism". The "bad" kind promoted hatred of Jews because of their descent. This was considered un-Christian because the Christian message was intended for all of humanity regardless of ethnicity; anyone could become a Christian. The "good" kind criticized alleged Jewish conspiracies to control newspapers, banks, and other institutions, to care only about accumulation of wealth, etc.[113]

Islam and Judaism have a complex relationship. Traditionally Jews and Christians living in Muslim lands, known as dhimmis, were allowed to practice their religions and to administer their internal affairs, but subject to certain conditions.[114] They had to pay the jizya (a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-Muslim males) to the Islamic state.[114] 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.[115] Many of the disabilities were highly symbolic. The one described by Bernard Lewis as "most degrading"[116] was the requirement of distinctive clothing, not found in the Qur'an or hadith but invented in early medieval Baghdad; its enforcement was highly erratic.[116] 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.[117] Notable exceptions include the massacre of Jews and/or forcible conversion of some Jews by the rulers of the Almohad dynasty in Al-Andalus in the 12th century,[118] as well as in Islamic Persia,[119] and the forced confinement of Morrocan Jews to walled quarters known as mellahs beginning from the 15th century and especially in the early 19th century.[120] 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."[121]

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

Throughout history, many rulers, empires and nations have oppressed their Jewish populations or sought to eliminate them entirely. Methods employed ranged from expulsion to outright genocide; within nations, often the threat of these extreme methods was sufficient to silence dissent. The history of antisemitism includes the First Crusade which resulted in the massacre of Jews;[110] the Spanish Inquisition (led by Torquemada) and the Portuguese Inquisition, with their persecution and Auto de fé against the New Christians and Marrano Jews;[122] the Bohdan Chmielnicki Cossack massacres in Ukraine;[123] the Pogroms backed by the Russian Tsars;[124] as well as expulsions from Spain, Portugal, England, France, Germany, and other countries in which the Jews had settled.[111] The persecution reached a peak in Adolf Hitler's Final Solution, which led to the Holocaust and the slaughter of approximately 6 million Jews from 1939 to 1945.[125] According to a recent study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics 19.8% of the modern Iberian population has Sephardic Jewish ancestry,[126] indicating that the number of conversos may have been much higher than originally thought.[127][128]

The most notable modern day persecution of Jews remains the Holocaust — the state-led systematic persecution and genocide of European Jews (and certain communities of North African Jews in European controlled North Africa) and other minority groups of Europe during World War II by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.[129] 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.[130] Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labour until they died of exhaustion or disease.[131] Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings.[132] Jews and Roma were crammed into ghettos before being transported hundreds of miles by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were killed in gas chambers.[133] 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."[134]

Migrations

Etching of the expulsion of the Jews from Frankfurt on August 23, 1614. The text says: "1380 persons old and young were counted at the exit of the gate" Jewish refugees in China in the Shanghai Ghetto during World War II. Shanghai offered unconditional asylum for tens of thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe escaping the Holocaust.[135]

Throughout Jewish history, Jews have repeatedly been directly or indirectly expelled from both their original homeland, and the areas in which they have resided. This experience as both immigrants and emigrants (see: Jewish refugees) has shaped Jewish identity and religious practice in many ways, and is thus a major element of Jewish history.[136] An incomplete list of such migrations includes:

Growth

Israel is the only country with a consistently growing Jewish population due to natural population increase, though the Jewish populations of other countries in Europe and North America have recently increased due to immigration. In the Diaspora, in almost every country the Jewish population in general is either declining or steady, but Orthodox and Haredi Jewish communities, whose members often shun birth control for religious reasons, have experienced rapid population growth.[158]

Orthodox and Conservative Judaism discourage proselytism to non-Jews, but many Jewish groups have tried to reach out to the assimilated Jewish communities of the Diaspora in order for them to reconnect to their Jewish roots. Additionally, while in principle Reform Judaism favors seeking new members for the faith, this position has not translated into active proselytism, instead taking the form of an effort to reach out to non-Jewish spouses of intermarried couples.[159] There is also a trend of Orthodox movements pursuing secular Jews in order to give them a stronger Jewish identity so there is less chance of intermarriage. As a result of the efforts by these and other Jewish groups over the past twenty-five years, there has been a trend of secular Jews becoming more religiously observant, known as the Baal Teshuva movement, though the demographic implications of the trend are unknown.[160] Additionally, there is also a growing movement of Jews by Choice by gentiles who make the decision to head in the direction of becoming Jews.[161]

Jewish leadership

Main article: Jewish leadership

There is no single governing body for the Jewish community, nor a single authority with responsibility for religious doctrine.[162] 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.[163]

Notable Jews

Main articles: Lists of Jews and Judaism by country

Jews have made contributions in a broad range of human endeavors, including the sciences, arts, politics, and business.[164][165] The number of Jewish Nobel prize winners is far out of proportion to the percentage of Jews in the world's population.[165][166]

See also

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

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah (PDF) Annual Assessment, Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (Jewish Agency for Israel), 2007, p. 15, http://www.jpppi.org.il/JPPPI/SendFile.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&GID=489 , based on American Jewish Year Book. 106. American Jewish Committee. 2006. http://www.ajcarchives.org/main.php?GroupingId=10142.
  2. ^ a b (DOC) Statistical Abstract of Israel, Central Bureau of Statistics, 2009, http://www1.cbs.gov.il/www/hodaot2009n/11_09_208b.doc
  3. ^ a b c (PDF) Statistical Abstract, U.S. Census Bureau, 2007, http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/09s0076.pdf
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad "The Jewish Population of the World (2006)". Jewish Virtual Library. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/jewpop.html. , based on American Jewish Year Book. 106. American Jewish Committee. 2006. http://www.ajcarchives.org/main.php?GroupingId=10142.
  5. ^ [1] "The Jewish Problem: How To Solve It," U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, "Jews are a distinctive nationality of which every Jew, whatever his country, his station or shade of belief, is necessarily a member" (April 25, 1915), University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, Retrieved on June 15, 2009
  6. ^ [2] Palmer, Henry, A History of the Jewish Nation (1875), D. Lothrop & Co., Retrieved on June 15, 2009
  7. ^ [3] "The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. 7: Berlin Years," U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, "The Jewish Nation is a living fact" (June 21, 1921), Princeton University Press, Retrieved on June 15, 2009
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  57. ^ 21/31 Nebel et al. 2001
  58. ^ combined (Wells et al. 2001 19%) & (Zalloua et al. 2008 20%) Wells et al. 2001: 32.0% E-M96, 30.0% J1-M267, 30.0% J2-M172, 2.0% L-M20, 6.0% R1-M173. (Zalloua et al. 2008) 184 out of 914, Y-chromosomal diversity in Lebanon is structured by recent historical events, Zalloua et al. 2008
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