Jewish history
Jewish history is the
history of the
Jewish people, faith (
Judaism) and culture. Since Jewish history encompasses nearly six thousand years and hundreds of different populations, any treatment can only be provided in broad strokes. Additional information can be found in the main articles listed below, and in the specific
country histories listed in this article.
Ancient Israelites
For the first two periods the history of the Jews is mainly that of the
Fertile Crescent. It begins among those peoples which occupied the area lying between the
Nile river on the one side and the
Tigris and the
Euphrates rivers on the other. Surrounded by ancient seats of culture in
Egypt and
Babylonia, by the deserts of
Arabia, and by the highlands of
Asia Minor, the land of
Canaan (later known as
Israel, then at various times
Judah,
Coele-Syria,
Judea,
Palestine, the
Levant, and finally Israel again) was a meeting place of civilizations. The land was traversed by old-established trade routes and possessed important harbors on the
Gulf of Akaba and on the
Mediterranean coast, the latter exposing it to the influence of other cultures of the Fertile Crescent.
Traditionally Jews around the world claim descendance mostly from the ancient Israelites (also known as
Hebrews), who settled in the land of Israel. The Israelites traced their common lineage to the biblical patriarch
Abraham through
Isaac and
Jacob. Jewish tradition holds that the Israelites were the descendants of Jacob's twelve sons (one of which was named
Judah), who settled in Egypt. Their direct descendants respectively divided into twelve tribes, who were enslaved under the rule of an Egyptian
pharaoh, often identified as
Ramses II. In the Jewish faith, the emigration of the Israelites from
Egypt to Canaan (the
Exodus), led by the prophet
Moses, marks the formation of the Israelites as a people.
Jewish tradition and the Word of God (Genesis through Malachi) has it that after forty years of wandering in the desert, the Israelites arrived to
Canaan and conquered it under the command of
Joshua, dividing the land among the twelve tribes. For a period of time, the united twelve tribes were led by a series of rulers known as
Judges. After this period, an Israelite monarchy was established under
Saul, and continued under King
David and
Solomon. King David conquered
Jerusalem (first a Canaanite, then a Jebusite town) and made it his capital. After
Solomon's reign the nation split into two kingdoms,
Israel, consisting of ten of the tribes (in the north), and
Judah, consisting of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin (in the south). Israel was conquered by the
Assyrian ruler Shalmaneser V in the
8th century BCE. There is no commonly accepted historical record of those ten tribes, which are sometimes referred to as the
Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
Exilic and Post-Exilic Periods
The kingdom of Judah was conquered by a
Babylonian army in the early
6th century BCE. The Judahite elite was exiled to Babylon, but later at least a part of them returned to their homeland, led by prophets
Ezra and
Nehemiah, after the subsequent conquest of Babylonia by the
Persians.
Zoroastrianism was the state religion of the Persian Empire. The extent to which Zoroastrianism has been an influence in the development of
Judaism is a subject of some debate among scholars (
See Christianity and world religions#Possible relationship with Zoroastrianism through Judaism).
Already at this point the extreme fragmentation among the Israelites was apparent, with the formation of political-religious factions, the most important of which would later be called
Sadduccees and
Pharisees.
The Hasmonean Kingdom and Roman rule
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1759 map of the tribal allotments of Israel |
After the Persians were defeated by
Alexander the Great, his demise, and the division of Alexander's empire among his generals, the
Seleucid Kingdom was formed. A deterioration of relations between hellenized Jews and religious Jews led the Seleucid king
Antiochus IV Epiphanes to impose decrees banning certain
Jewish religious rites and traditions. Consequently, the orthodox Jews revolted under the leadership of the
Hasmonean family, (also known as the
Maccabees). This revolt eventually led to the formation of an independent Jewish kingdom, known as the
Hasmonaean Dynasty, which lasted from
165 BCE to
63 BCE. The Hasmonean Dynasty eventually disintegrated as a result of civil war between the sons of
Salome Alexandra,
Hyrcanus II and
Aristobulus II. The people, who did not want to be governed by a king but by theocratic clergy, made appeals in this spirit to the Roman authorities. A Roman campaign of conquest and annexation, led by
Pompey, soon followed.
Judea under Roman rule was at first an independent Jewish kingdom, but gradually the rule over Judea became less and less Jewish, until it became under the direct rule of Roman administration (and renamed the
Iudaea Province), which was often callous and brutal in its treatment of its Judean subjects. In
66 CE, Judeans began to revolt against the Roman rulers of Judea. The revolt was defeated by the Roman emperors
Vespasian and
Titus Flavius. The Romans destroyed much of the Temple in Jerusalem and, according to some accounts, stole artifacts from the temple, such as the
Menorah. Judeans continued to live in their land in significant numbers, and were allowed to practice their religion, until the
2nd century when
Julius Severus ravaged Judea while putting down the
bar Kokhba revolt. After
135, Jews were not allowed to enter the city of Jerusalem, although this ban must have been at least partially lifted, since at the destruction of the rebuilt city by the Persians in the
7th century, Jews are said to have lived there.
The diaspora
Many of the Judaean Jews were sold into slavery while others became citizens of other parts of the
Roman Empire. This is the traditional explanation to the diaspora. However, a majority of the Jews in Antiquity were most likely descendants of convertites in the cities of the Hellenistic-Roman world, especially in Alexandria and Asia Minor, and were only affected by the
diaspora in its spiritual sense, as the sense of loss and homelessness which became a cornerstone of the Jewish creed, much supported by persecutions in various parts of the world. The policy of conversion, which spread the Jewish religion throughout the
Hellenistic civilization, seems to have ended with the wars against the Romans and the following reconstruction of Jewish values for the post-Temple era.
Of critical importance to the reshaping of Jewish tradition from the Temple-based religion it was to the traditions of the Diaspora was the development of the interpretations of the Torah found in the
Mishnah and
Talmud.
The experience of Jews varied from country to country and region to region. See the main articles
Jews in the Middle Ages in Europe and the
History of Jews in Arab lands.
Europe
Jews settled throughout Europe, especially in the area of the former Roman Empire. There are records of Jewish communities in France (see
History of the Jews in France) and Germany (see
History of the Jews in Germany) from the 4th century, and substantial Jewish communities in Spain even earlier. By and large, Jews were heavily persecuted in Christian Europe. Since they were the only people allowed to lend money for interest (forbidden to Catholics by the church), some Jews became prominent moneylenders. Christian rulers gradually saw the advantage of having a class of men like the Jews who could supply capital for their use without being liable to excommunication, and the money trade of western Europe by this means fell into the hands of the Jews. However, in almost every instance where large amounts were acquired by Jews through banking transactions the property thus acquired fell either during their life or upon their death into the hands of the king. Jews thus became imperial "servi cameræ," the property of the King, who might present them and their possessions to princes or cities.
Jews were frequently massacred and exiled from various European countries. The persecution hit its first peak during the
Crusades. In the
First Crusade (1096) flourishing communities on the Rhine and the Danube were utterly destroyed; see
German Crusade, 1096. In the
Second Crusade (
1147) the Jews in France were subject to frequent massacres. The Jews were also subjected to attacks by the
Shepherds' Crusades of
1251 and
1320.The Crusades were followed by explusions, including in,
1290, the banishing of all English Jews; in
1396, 100,000 Jews were expelled from France; and, in
1421 thousands were expelled from Austria. Many of the expelled Jews fled to Poland.
The worst of the expulsions occurred following the reconquest of Muslim Spain, which was followed by
Spanish Inquisition in
1492, when the entire Spanish population of around 200,000
Sephardic Jews were expelled. This was followed by expulsions in
1493 in
Sicily (37,000 Jews) and Portugal in
1496. The expelled Spanish Jews fled mainly to the Ottoman Empire, Holland, and North Africa, others migrating to Southern Europe and the Middle East.
In the 17th century, almost no Jews lived in Western Europe. The relatively tolerant Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe, but the calm situation for the Jews there ended when Polish and Lithuanian Jews were slaughtered in the hundreds of thousands by the Cossack
Chmielnicki (
1648) and by the
Swedish wars (
1655). Driven by these and other persecutions, Jews moved back to Western Europe in the 17th century. The last ban on Jews (of the English) was revoked in
1654, but periodic expulsions from individual cities still occurred, and Jews were often restricted from land ownership, or forced to live in
ghettos.
Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East
During the Middle Ages, Jews were generally better treated by Islamic rulers than Christian ones. Despite second-class citizenship, Jews played prominent roles in Muslim courts, and experienced a "Golden Age" in the
Moorish Spain about 900-1100, though the situation deteriorated after that time. History of Jewish communities indigenous to the
Middle East and
North Africa is described in the article
Mizrahi Jew.
During the period of the
European Renaissance and Enlightenment, significant changes were happening within the Jewish community. The
Haskalah movement paralleled the wider Enlightenment, as Jews began in the
1700s to campaign for emancipation from restrictive laws and integration into the wider European society. Secular and scientific education was added to the traditional religious instruction received by students, and interest in a national Jewish identity, including a revival in the study of Jewish history and Hebrew, started to grow. Haskalah gave birth to the Reform and Conservative movements and planted the seeds of
Zionism while at the same time encouraging cultural assimilation into the countries in which Jews resided. At around the same time another movement was born, one preaching almost the opposite of Haskalah,
Hasidic Judaism. Hasidic Judiasm began in the 1700s by
Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, and quickly gained a following with its more exuberant, mystical approach to religion. These two movements, and the traditional orthodox approach to Judiasm from which they spring, formed the basis for the modern divisions within Jewish observance.
At the same time, the outside world was changing, and debates began over the potential emancipation of the Jews (granting them equal rights). The first country to do so was France, during the
French Revolution in
1789. Even so, Jews were expected to integrate, not continue their traditions. This ambivalence is demonstrated in the famous speech of
Clermont-Tonnerre before the
National Assembly in 1789:
:"We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individuals. We must withdraw recognition from their judges; they should only have our judges. We must refuse legal protection to the maintenance of the so-called laws of their Judaic organization; they should not be allowed to form in the state either a political body or an order. They must be citizens individually. But, some will say to me, they do not want to be citizens. Well then! If they do not want to be citizens, they should say so, and then, we should banish them. It is repugnant to have in the state an association of non-citizens, and a nation within the nation. . . "
Though persecution still existed, emanicipation spread throughout Europe in the
1800s.
Napoleon invited Jews to leave the
Jewish ghettos in Europe and seek refuge in the newly created tolerant political regimes that offered equality under Napoleonic Law (see
Napoleon and the Jews). By
1871, with Germany's emancipation of Jews, every European country except Russia had emancipated its Jews.
Despite increasing integration of the Jews with secular society, a new form of anti-Semitism emerged, based on the ideas of race and nationhood rather than the religious hatred of the Middle Ages. This form of anti-Semitism held that Jews were a separate and inferior race from the
Aryan people of Western Europe, and led to the emergence of political parties in France, Germany, and Austria-Hungary that campaigned on a platform of rolling back emancipation. This form of anti-Semitism emerged frequently in European culture, most famously in the
Dreyfus Trial in France. These persecutions, along with state-sponsored
pogroms in Russia in the late 1800s, led a number of Jews to believe that they would only be safe in their own nation. See
Theodor Herzl and
Zionism.
At the same time, Jewish migration to the United States (
see Jews in the United States) created a new community in large part freed of the restrictions of Europe. Over 2 million Jews arrived in the United States between 1890 and 1924, most from Russia and Eastern Europe.
Though Jews became increasingly integrated in Europe, fighting for their home countries in
World War I and playing important roles in culture and art during the
1920s and
1930s, racial
anti-Semitism remained. It reached its most virulent form in the killing of approximately six million Jews during the
Holocaust, almost completely obliterating the two-thousand year history of the Jews in Europe. In 1948, the Jewish state of
Israel was founded, creating the first Jewish nation since the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, subsequent wars between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and the flight in the face of persecution of almost all of the 900,000 Jews previously living in Arab countries. Today, the largest Jewish communities are in the United States and Israel, with major communities in France, Russia, England, and Canada.
For historical and contemporary Jewish populations by country, see
Jews by country.
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History of the Jews during World War II*
Judaism*
Jew*
Timeline of Jewish history*
Jewish population**
Historical Jewish population comparisons*
Jews by country*
Lists of Jews*
Jewish ethnic divisions*
Jewish refugees*
Jewish exodus from Arab lands*
Crypto-Judaism*
Josephus, a famous Jewish historian from
Roman times
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Resources> Modern Period> 20th Cent.> History of Israel> State of Israel The Jewish History Resource Center, Project of the Dinur Center for Research in Jewish History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
*
Jewish Virtual Library. Extremely comprehensive
*
Jewish History Resources. Indexes 6,000 sites/
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Internet Jewish History Sourcebook offering homework help and online texts
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Israelite Religion to Judaism: the Evolution of the Religion of Israel.
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Greek Influence on Judaism from the Hellenistic Period Through the Middle Ages c. 300 BCE- 1200 CE.
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Jewish Sects of the Second Temple Period.
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The Origin and Nature of the Samaritans and their Relationship to Second Temple Jewish Sects.
*
Jewish History Tables.
*Barnavi, Eli (Ed.).
A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1992. ISBN 0-679-40332-9
*
Crash Course in Jewish History*
Jewish History chabad.org
*
Review of Simon Dubnow's The History of the Jews in Russia and Poland
