Jew
:''This article describes some ethnic,
historic, and
cultural aspects of the Jewish identity; for a consideration of the Jewish religion, refer to the article
Judaism.
Jews (
Hebrew: יְ"וּ"ִים,
Yehudim;
Yiddish: ייִ"ן,
Yiden) are followers of
Judaism or, more generally, members of the Jewish people (also known as the Jewish nation, or the
Children of Israel), an
ethno-
religious group descended from the ancient
Israelites and from converts who joined their religion. The term also includes those who have undergone an officially recognized formal process of religious conversion to Judaism. The current Jewish population is over 14.5 million, the majority of whom live in the
United States and
Israel.
The origin of the Jews
[Some uses of the term "Jew" are tainted by historic anti-Jewish bigotry. The correct adjectival form is "Jewish"; the use of "Jew" as an adjective (as in "Jew lawyer" rather than "Jewish lawyer") is associated with bigotry. The use of "Jew" or "jew" as a verb (as in "to jew someone down": to bargain for a lower price) is generally seen as an extremely offensive expression based on stereotypes. Even when used in a grammatically correct manner as a noun, the term "Jew" has been used to objectify and separate Jews from the remainder of the population, often by referring to the majority population by the name of the country ("Countrymen") but referring to Jewish citizens as "Jews."] is traditionally dated to around 1800
BCE with the biblical account of the birth of Judaism.
The
Merneptah Stele, dated at 1200 BCE, is one of the earliest archaeological records of the Jewish people in the
Land of Israel, where they further developed a
monotheistic religion,
Judaism, and enjoyed periods of
self-determination. As a result of foreign conquests and expulsions starting in the 8th century BCE, a
Jewish diaspora was formed. Defeats in the
Jewish-Roman Wars in the years 70
CE and 135 notably contributed to the numbers and
geography of the diaspora, as significant numbers of the Jewish population of the Land of Israel were expelled and sold to
slavery throughout the empire. Since then, Jews lived throughout
Europe, the greater
Middle East and even in the Indian subcontinent, surviving discrimination, oppression, poverty, and even
genocide (see the article
anti-Semitism), with occasional periods of cultural, economic, and individual prosperity in various locations (such as the
United States).
Until the late 18th century, the terms
Jews and
adherents of Judaism were practically synonymous, and Judaism was the prime binding factor among the Jews, although it was not strictly required to be followed in order to belong to the Jewish people. Following the
Age of Enlightenment and its Jewish counterpart
Haskalah, a gradual transformation occurred where many Jews came to view being a member of the Jewish nation as separate from adhering to the Jewish faith.
The Hebrew name
Yehudi (plural
Yehudim) came into being when the
Kingdom of Israel was split between the northern
Kingdom of Israel and the southern
Kingdom of Judah. The term originally referred to the people of the southern kingdom, although the term
B'nei Yisrael (Israelites) was still used for both groups. After the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom leaving the southern kingdom as the only Israelite state, the word
Yehudim gradually came to refer to people of the Jewish faith as a whole, rather than those specifically from Judah. The English word
Jew is ultimately derived from
Yehudi (see
Etymology). Its first use in the
Bible to refer to the Jewish people as a whole is in the
Book of Esther.
There are many different views as to the origin of the
English language word
Jew. The most common view is that the
Middle English word
Jew is from the
Old French giu, earlier
juieu, from the
Latin iudeus from the
Greek Ioudaios (Ιουδαίος). The Latin simply means
Judaean, from the land of
Judaea. The Hebrew for Jew, י"ו"י , is pronounced ye-hoo-DEE. The Hebrew letter
Yodh (or Yud), י, used as a 'y' in the Hebrew language (as in the word ye-hoo-DEE), becomes a 'j' in languages using the Latin-based alphabet when the Yodh is used as a consonant rather than as a vowel. Therefore, a rough transliteration of י"ו"י in English would be
Jew.
The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., "Jude" in
German, "juif" in
French, "jøde," in
Danish, etc., but derivations of the word "Hebrew" are also in use to describe a Jewish person, e.g., in
Italian (Ebreo) and , (
Yevrey). (See
Jewish ethnonyms for a full overview.)
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. For discussions of the religious views on who is a Jew and how these views differ from each other, please see
Who is a Jew?. Generally, in modern secular usage, Jews include three groups: people who practice Judaism and have a Jewish ethnic background (sometimes including those who do not have strictly matrilineal descent), people without Jewish parents who have converted to Judaism; and those Jews who, while not practicing Judaism as a religion, still identify themselves as Jewish by virtue of their family's Jewish descent and their own cultural and historical identification with the Jewish people.
Historical definitions of Jewish identity have traditionally been based on
Halakhic definitions of matrilineal descent, and halachic conversions. Historical definitions of who is a Jew date back to the codification of the oral tradition into the
Babylonian Talmud. Biblical interpretations of sections in the
Tanach, such as
Deuteronomy 7:1-5, by learned Jewish sages, is used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and non Jews because "[the non-Jewish male spouse] will cause your child to turn away from Me and they will worship the gods of others."
Leviticus 24:10 speaks of the son in a marriage between a Hebrew woman and an Egyptian man to be "of the community of Israel.", which contrasts with
Ezra 10:2-3, where Israelites returning from Egypt, vowed to put aside their gentile wives and their children. Since the
Haskalah, these halakhic interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged.
Judaism guides its adherents in both practice and belief, and has been called not only a religion, but also a "way of life," which has made drawing a clear distinction between Judaism, Jewish culture, and Jewish nationality rather difficult. In many times and places, such as in the ancient
Hellenic world, in
Europe before and after the
Enlightenment (see
Haskalah), and in contemporary United States and Israel, 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 with others around them, others from the inner social and cultural dynamics of the community, as opposed to religion itself.
The most commonly used terms to describe ethnic divisions among Jews currently are:
Ashkenazi (meaning "
German" in Hebrew, denoting the Central European base of Jewry); and
Sephardi (meaning "
Spanish" or "
Iberian" in Hebrew, denoting their Spanish, Portuguese and
North African location). They refer to both religious and ethnic divisions.
Other Jewish ethnic groups include
Mizrahi Jews (a term overlapping
Sephardi, but emphasizing North African and Middle Eastern rather than Spanish history, and including the
Maghrebim);
Teimanim (
Yemenite and
Omani Jews); and such smaller groups as the
Gruzim and
Juhurim from the
Caucasus, the
Bene Israel,
Bnei Menashe,
Cochin and
Telugu Jews of India, the
Romaniotes of
Greece, the
Italkim (Bené Roma) of
Italy, various
African Jews (most notably the
Beta Israel or
Ethiopian Jews), the
Bukharan Jews of Central Asia,
Kaifeng Jews from
China, and the
Persian Jews of Iran.
Prior to
World War II the world population of Jews was approximately 18 million.
The Holocaust reduced this number to approximately 12 million. Today, there are an estimated 13 million
[Data based on a study by Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI). See Jewish people near zero growth by Tovah Lazaroff, Jerusalem Post, June 24, 2004.] to 14.6 million
[See, for example Jews by country page for higher estimates.] Jews worldwide in over 134 countries.
Significant geographic 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!Notes | | United States | 5,671,000 | (est.) |
| Israel | 5,466,800 | (est.)[Data based on a study by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. See [1] (Updated to June 2005).] (about 79% of Israel's population) |
| Europe | 2,000,000 | (fewer than) |
| France | 600,000 | (est.) |
| Russia | 400,000 | (Territory of the former Soviet Union. Some estimates are much higher.)[1993 Russian census. Some estimates are much higher; the US State Department Religious Freedom Report [2] estimates the number of Jews in Russia alone at 600,000 to 1 million.] |
| United Kingdom | 267,000 | (2001 census) |
| Germany | 100,000 | (2004 est.) or 60,000 (est.) |
| Turkey | 30,000 | (2001 census) |
| Italy | 30,000 | (Jewish communities est.) |
| Canada | 371,000 | (est.) |
| Argentina | 250,000 | (est.) [Jewish Virtual Library, JewFAQ] |
| Brazil | 130,000 | (est.) |
| South Africa | 106,000 | (est.) |
| Australia | 100,000 | (est.) |
| Asia (excl. Israel) | 50,000 | (est.) |
| Iran | 11,000 | (est.) |
| Mexico | 40,000–50,000 | (est.) |
| Total | 15,471,000 | (est.) |
State of Israel
Israel, the Jewish nation-state, is the only country in which Jews make up a majority of the citizens. It was established as an independent
democratic state on
May 14,
1948. Of the 120 members in its parliament, the
Knesset, 9 members are Israeli
Arabs and 2 are Israeli
Druzes. At the time of its independence, approximately 600,000 Jews lived in Israel. Since then, the country's Jewish population has increased by about one million over each decade as more immigrants arrived and more Israelis were born, resulting in one of the most significant global Jewish population shifts in over 2,000 years.
All the
Arab Israeli Wars have not slowed Israel's growth. Israel opened its doors to the
Holocaust survivors. It has absorbed a majority of the
Sephardic and
Mizrahi Jews from the
Islamic countries. It has taken in hundreds of thousands of Jews from the former
USSR, and has airlifted tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews
to Israel. In the past decade nearly a million immigrants went to Israel from the former Soviet Union. Some Jews migrated from Israel elsewhere, known as
yerida ("descent" [from the Holy Land]), due to its economic problems or due to disillusionment with political conditions and the continuing
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Diaspora (outside Israel)
The waves of immigration to the United States at the turn of the 19th century, massacre of European Jewry during
the Holocaust, and the foundation of the state of Israel (and subsequent
Jewish exodus from Arab lands) all resulted in substantial shifts in the population centers of world Jewry during the 20th century.
 |
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. |
Currently, the largest Jewish community in the world is located in the United States, with almost 5.7 million Jews. Elsewhere in the Americas, there are also large Jewish populations in Canada and Argentina, and smaller populations in
Brazil,
Mexico ,
Uruguay,
Venezuela,
Chile, and several other countries (see
History of the Jews in Latin America).
Western Europe's largest Jewish community can be found in
France, home to 600,000 Jews, the majority of whom are immigrants or refugees from North African Arab countries such as
Algeria,
Morocco, and
Tunisia (or their descendants). There are over 265,000 Jews in the
United Kingdom. In
Eastern Europe, there are anywhere from 500,000 to over two 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.
The Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East were home to around 900,000 Jews in 1945. Systematic persecution after the founding of Israel caused almost all of these Jews to flee to Israel, North America, and Europe in the 1950s. Today, around 8,000 Jews remain in Arab nations.
Iran is home to around 25,000 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).
Outside Europe, Asia and the Americas, significant Jewish populations exist in
Australia and
South Africa.
Population 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. Some Jewish communities, for example the
Kaifeng Jews of China, have disappeared entirely, but assimilation has remained relatively low over much of the past millennium, as Jews were often not allowed to integrate with the wider communities in which they lived. The advent of the Jewish Enlightenment (see
Haskalah) of the 1700s and the subsequent emancipation of the Jewish populations of Europe and America in the 1800s, changed the situation, allowing 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. Rates of
interreligious marriage vary widely: In the United States, they are just under 50%
, in the United Kingdom, around 50%, and in Australia and Mexico, as low as 10%
, and in France, they may be as high as 75%. In the United States, only about a third of children from intermarriages affiliate themselves with Jewish practice. Additionally, since non-religious Jews generally tend to marry later and have fewer children than the general population, the Jewish community in many countries is aging. The result is that most countries in the
Diaspora have steady or slightly declining Jewish populations as Jews continue to assimilate into the countries in which they live.
Population changes: Wars against the Jews
 |
Jews (identifiable by the distinctive hats that they were required to wear) being killed by Christian knights. French Bible illustration from 1250. |
Throughout history, many rulers, empires and nations have oppressed their Jewish populations, or sought to eliminate them entirely. Methods employed have ranged from expulsion to outright genocide; within nations, often the threat of these extreme methods was sufficient to silence dissent. Some examples in the
history of anti-Semitism are: the
Great Jewish Revolt against the
Roman Empire; the
First Crusade which resulted in the massacre of Jews; the
Spanish Inquisition led by
Torquemada and the
Auto de fé against the
Marrano Jews; the
Bohdan Chmielnicki Cossack massacres in
Ukraine; the
Pogroms backed by the Russian
Tsars; as well as expulsions from Spain, England, France, Germany, and other countries in which the Jews had settled. The persecution continued in
Adolf Hitler's
Final Solution, which led to
the Holocaust and the slaughter of approximately 6 million Jews from 1939 to 1945. It is also often said that there have been three 20th century wars against the Jews " in addition to the Holocaust, there was the Soviet Union's anti-Semitic streak enduring throughout the Union's existence, reaching its bloody height when Stalin's contempt for the Jews coincided with the Great Purges which led to the deportation or murder of large amounts of Soviet Jews. It is for partly this reason that Jews of Russian and other Soviet origins make up about half of Israel's population. The third war against the Jews is said to be happening in the Middle East, against the state of Israel. This, however, is a war of disproportionate strength " despite the Middle East's enormous Arab population and contempt of Israel's existence, Israel remains the regional superpower (also possessing nuclear arms) and has used this military strength and American backing to fend off any sizable loss of its citizenry. 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 0395779278 p.26]Population changes: 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, with rates near 4% per year for Haredi Jews in Israel, and similar rates in other countries.
Orthodox and Conservative Judaism discourage proselytization to non-Jews, but many Jewish groups have tried to reach out to the assimilated Jewish communities of the Diaspora in order to increase the number of Jews. 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. 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. 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.
Hebrew is the
liturgical language of Judaism (termed
lashon ha-kodesh, "the holy tongue"), and is one of the two official languages of the State of Israel (the other being
Arabic). It was revived by
Eliezer ben Yehuda, who arrived in Palestine in 1881 at a time when no one spoke the Hebrew language. Diaspora Jews (outside Israel) today speak the local languages of their respective countries.
Yiddish is the historic language of many
Ashkenazi Jews, and
Ladino of many
Sephardic Jews.
See also: Historical Schisms among the JewsJews and 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" |
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) have shaped Jewish identity and religious practice in many ways. An incomplete list of such migrations includes:
*The patriarch
Abraham was a migrant to the land of
Canaan from
Ur of the
Chaldees.
*The
Children of Israel experienced
the Exodus (meaning "departure" or "going forth" in Greek) from
ancient Egypt, as recorded in the
Book of Exodus.
*The
Kingdom of Israel was sent into permanent exile and scattered all over the world (or at least to unknown locations) by
Assyria.
*The
Kingdom of Judah was exiled by
Babylonia, returned to the
Levant, and then the Kingdom was exiled again by
Rome.
*The 2,000 year dispersion of the
Jewish diaspora beginning under the
Roman Empire, as Jews were spread throughout the Roman world and, driven from land to land, and settled wherever they could live freely enough to practice their religion. Over the course of the diaspora the center of Jewish life moved from
Babylonia to
Spain to
Poland to the
United States and to
Israel.
*Many expulsions 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
Eastern Europe, especially
Poland.
*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.
*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), which was encouraged by
Napoleon Bonaparte.
*The arrival of millions of Jews in the
New World, including immigration of over two million Eastern European Jews to the United States from 1880-1925, see
History of the Jews in the United States and
History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union.
*The
Pogroms in Eastern Europe, the rise of modern
Anti-Semitism,
the Holocaust and the rise of
Arab nationalism all served to fuel the movements and migrations of huge segments of Jewry from land to land and continent to continent, until they have now arrived back in large numbers at their original historical homeland in Israel.
*The
Islamic Revolution of Iran, forced many
Iranian Jews to flee Iran. Most found refuge in the US (particularly Los Angeles, CA) and Israel. Smaller communities of
Persian Jews exist in Canada and Western Europe.
Kingdoms of Israel and Judah
Jews descend 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. A
United 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, the
Kingdom of Israel (in the north) and the
Kingdom of Judah (in the south). The
Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the
Assyrian ruler
Shalmaneser V in the
8th century BCE and spread all over the Assyrian empire, where they were assimilated into other cultures and came to be known as the
Ten Lost Tribes. The
Kingdom of Judah continued as an independent state until it was conquered by a Babylonian army in the early
6th century BCE, destroying the
First Temple that was at the centre of Jewish worship. The Judean elite was exiled to Babylonia, but later at least a part of them returned to their homeland after the subsequent conquest of Babylonia by the Persians seventy years later, a period known as the
Babylonian Captivity. A new
Second Temple was constructed funded by Persian Kings, and old religious practices were resumed.
Persian, Greek, and Roman rule
See related article Jewish-Roman wars.
The
Seleucid Kingdom, which arose after the Persians were defeated by
Alexander the Great, sought to introduce Greek culture into the Persian world. When the Seleucid king
Antiochus IV Epiphanes, supported by
Hellenized Jews (those who had adopted Greek culture), attempted to convert the Jewish Temple to a temple of
Zeus, the non-Hellenized Jews revolted under the leadership of the
Maccabees and rededicated the Temple to the Jewish God (hence the origins of
Hanukkah) and created an independent Jewish kingdom known as the
Hasmonaean Kingdom which lasted from 165 BCE to 63 BCE, when the kingdom came under influence of the
Roman Empire. During the early part of Roman rule, the Hasmonaeans remained in power, until the family was annihilated by
Herod the Great. Herod came from a wealthy
Idumean family and became a very successful client-king under the Romans. He significantly expanded the Temple in Jerusalem.
Upon his death in 4 BCE the Romans directly ruled Judea and there were frequent changes of policies by conflicting and empire-building
Caesars, generals, governors, and consuls who often acted cruelly or to maximize their own wealth and power. Rome's attitudes swung from tolerance to hostility against its Jewish subjects, who had since moved throughout the Empire. The Romans, worshiping a
large pantheon, could not readily accommodate the exclusive
monotheism of Judaism, and the religious Jews could not accept Roman
polytheism. (It was in this tumultuous climate that
Christianity first emerged, among a small group of Jews.) After a famine and riots in 66 CE, the Judeans began to revolt against their Roman rulers. The revolt was smashed by
Titus Flavius, a Roman general who later succeeded his father
Vespasian as
emperor. In Rome the
Arch of Titus still stands, showing enslaved Judeans and a
menorah being brought to Rome. It is customary for Jews to walk around, rather than through, this arch.
|
The Arch of Titus depicts enslaved Judeans and objects from the Temple being brought to Rome. |
The Romans all but destroyed
Jerusalem; only a single "
Western Wall" of the
Second Temple remained. After the end of this first revolt, the Judeans continued to live in their land in significant numbers, and were allowed to practice their religion. In the second century the Roman Emperor
Hadrian began to rebuild Jerusalem as a pagan city while restricting some Jewish practices. Angry at this affront, the Judeans again revolted led by
Simon Bar Kokhba.
Hadrian responded with overwhelming force, putting down the revolution and killing as many as half a million Jews. After the Roman Legions prevailed in 135, Jews were not allowed to enter the city of Jerusalem and most Jewish worship was forbidden by Rome. Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Jews, Jewish worship stopped being centrally organized around the Temple, and instead was rebuilt around rabbis who acted as teachers and leaders of individual communities. No new books were added to the Jewish Bible after the Roman period, instead major efforts went into interpreting and developing the
Halakhah, or oral law, and writing down these traditions in the
Talmud, the key work on the interpretation of Jewish law, written during the first to fifth centuries CE.
Beginning of the Diaspora
Though Jews had settled outside Israel since the time of the Babylonians, the results of the Roman response to the Jewish revolt shifted the center of Jewish life from its ancient home to the diaspora. While some Jews remained in Judea, renamed Palestine by the Romans, some Jews were sold into
slavery, while others became citizens of other parts of the
Roman Empire. This is the traditional explanation to the
Jewish diaspora, almost universally accepted by past and present rabbinical or Talmudical scholars, who believe that Jews are almost exclusively biological descendants of the Judean exiles, a belief backed up at least partially by DNA evidence. Some secular historians speculate that a majority of the Jews in Antiquity were most likely descendants of converts in the cities of the Graeco-Roman world, especially in Alexandria and Asia Minor. They were only affected by the diaspora in its spiritual sense and by the sense of loss and homelessness which became a cornerstone of the Jewish creed, much supported by persecutions in various parts of the world. Any such policy of conversion, which spread the Jewish religion throughout Hellenistic civilization, seems to have ended with the wars against the Romans and the following reconstruction of Jewish values for the post-Temple era. DNA evidence of this theory has been spotty, however, some historians believe based on some historical records that at the dawn of
Christianity as many as 10% of the population of the Roman Empire were
Jewish, a figure that could only be explained by local conversion. This theory could also solve the paradox of DNA studies noted above that show
Ashkenazi Jews to be somewhat related to the peoples of the nations surrounding
Israel despite physical features that more closely resembles that of the peoples of southern and central
Europe; as one explanation would be a large
miscegenation millennia ago followed by almost no outside genetic contact thereafter.
During the first few hundred years of the Diaspora, the most important Jewish communities were in
Babylonia, where the Talmud was written, and where relatively tolerant regimes allowed the Jews freedom. The situation was worse in the Byzantine Empire which treated the Jews much more harshly, refusing to allow them to hold office or build places of worship. The conquest of much of the Byzantine Empire and Babylonia by Islamic armies generally improved the life of the Jews, though they were still considered second-class citizens. In response to these Islamic conquests, the
First Crusade of 1096 attempted to reconquer Jerusalem, resulting in the destruction of many of the remaining Jewish communities in the area.
Middle Ages: Europe
Jews settled in
Europe during the time of the Roman Empire, but the rise of the
Catholic Church resulted in frequent expulsions and persecutions. The Crusades routinely attacked Jewish communities, and increasingly harsh laws restricted them from most economic activity and land ownership, leaving open only moneylending and a few other trades. Jews were subject to expulsions from England, France, and the Holy Roman Empire throughout the Middle Ages, with most of the population moving to Eastern Europe and especially Poland,
which was uniquely tolerant of the Jews through the 1700s. The final mass expulsion of the Jews, and the largest, occurred after the Christian conquest (
reconquista) of Spain in 1492 (see
History of the Jews in Spain). Even after the end of the expulsions in the 17th century, individual conditions varied from country to country and time to time, but, as rule, Jews in Western Europe generally were forced, by decree or by informal pressure, to live in highly segregated
ghettos and
shtetls.
Middle Ages: Islamic Europe, North Africa and Asia
During the Middle Ages, Jews in Islamic lands generally had more rights than under Christian rule, with a
Golden Age of coexistence in Islamic Spain from about 900 to 1200, when Spain became the center of the richest, most populous, and most influential Jewish community of the time. The rise of more radical Muslim regimes, such as that of the
Almohades ended this period by the thirteenth century, and Jews were soon
expelled from Spain after the Christian reconquest. Many of these Jews found refuge in the
Ottoman Empire, which remained tolerant of its Jewish population for much of its history. In the Islamic lands Jews at times were driven by necessity to engage in despised occupations, becoming
dancing boys or tavernkeepers.
Enlightenment and emancipation
During the
Age of Enlightenment, significant changes occurred 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.
 |
Napoleon emancipating the Jews, represented by the woman with the menorah, and 1804 French print. |
The Haskalah movement influenced the birth of all the modern Jewish denominations, and planted the seeds of
Zionism. At the same time, it contributed to 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 Judaism began in the 1700s by Israel ben Eliezer, the
Baal Shem Tov, and quickly gained a following with its exuberant, mystical approach to religion. These two movements, and the traditional orthodox approach to Judaism from which they spring, formed the basis for the modern divisions within Jewish observance.
At the same time, the outside world was changing. France was the first country to
emancipate its Jewish population in 1796, granting them equal rights under the law.
Napoleon further spread emancipation, inviting Jews to leave the
Jewish ghettos in Europe and seek refuge in the newly created tolerant political regimes (see
Napoleon and the Jews). Other countries such as
Denmark,
England, and
Sweden also adopted liberal policies toward Jews during the period of Enlightenment, with some resulting immigration. By the mid-19th century, almost all Western European countries had
emancipated their Jewish populations, with the notable exception of the
Papal States, but persecution continued in Eastern Europe including massive
pogroms at the end of the 19th century and throughout the
Pale of Settlement. The persistence of anti-semitism, both violently in the east and socially in the west, led to a number of
Jewish political movements, culminating in
Zionism.
Zionism and immigration
 |
Hungarian and Romanian poster promoting Zionism, 1930s |
Many of the newly secular Jews who had embraced Haskalah found themselves deeply troubled by the continuing virulent anti-semitism of the late 1800s, especially the massive
pogroms of the 1880s in Russia and the
Dreyfus Affair, which occurred in
France in 1894, a country many Jews had previously thought of as particularly accepting. Many Jews in Eastern Europe embraced
socialism as a potential escape from persecution, but another group, the Zionists, led by
Theodor Herzl, viewed the only solution as the creation of a Jewish state. The interplay between Jewish national and religious identities was evident in Zionism, which was initially an entirely secular movement, but drew inspiration and support from the religious connection between Jews and the Land of Israel. Zionism contributed to the growth of the Jewish population there, which at the time was the
Palestine province of the
Ottoman Empire, and later the
British Mandate of Palestine. Zionism, initially one out of a number of competing
Jewish political movements, gained nearly universal support from the world Jewish population following the near-complete destruction of the Jews of Europe in
the Holocaust, and led to the foundation of the
State of Israel.
In addition to responding politically, during the late 19th century, Jews began to flee the persecutions of Eastern Europe in large numbers, mostly by heading to the United States, but also to Canada and Western Europe. By 1924, almost two million Jews had emigrated to the US alone, creating a large community in a nation relatively free of the persecutions of rising European
anti-Semitism (see
History of the Jews in the United States).
The Holocaust
This anti-Semitism reached its most destructive form in the policies of
Nazi Germany, which made the destruction of the Jews a priority, culminating in the killing of approximately six million Jews during
the Holocaust from 1941 to 1945. Originally, the Nazis used death squads, the
Einsatzgruppen, to conduct massive open-air killings of Jews in territory they conquered. By 1942, the Nazi leadership decided to implement the
Final Solution, the
genocide of the Jews of Europe, and to increase the pace of the Holocaust by establishing
extermination camps specifically to kill Jews. This was an industrial method of genocide. Millions of Jews who had been confined to diseased and massively overcrowded
Ghettos were transported (often by train) to
"Death-camps" where some were herded into a specific location (often a
gas chamber), then either gassed or shot. Afterwards, their remains were buried or burned. Others were interned in the camps were they given little food and disease was common. Many Jews tried to escape Europe before or during the Holocaust, but were unable to find refuge, giving new urgency to the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish homeland.
 |
Immigration immediately after the establishment of Israel. |
Israel
In 1948, the Jewish state of
Israel was founded, creating the first Jewish nation since the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. After a series of wars with neighboring Arab countries, almost all of the 900,000 Jews previously living in North Africa and the Middle East fled to the Jewish state, joining an increasing number of immigrants from post-War Europe. By the end of the 20th century, Jewish population centers had shifted dramatically, with the United States and Israel being the centers of Jewish secular and religious life.
Related articles: Anti-Semitism, History of anti-Semitism, New anti-SemitismThe Jewish people and
Judaism have experienced various
persecutions throughout
Jewish history. In
medieval Europe, many 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. In the
Papal States, which existed until 1870, Jews were required to live only in specified neighborhoods called
ghettos. In the 19th and (before the end of the second World War) 20th centuries, the Roman Catholic church adhered to a distinction between "good anti-Semitism" and "bad anti-Semitism". 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.
Islam and Judaism have a complex relationship. The political conflict between
Muhammad and the Jews of
Medina in the 7th century left ample ideological fuel for
Islam and anti-Semitism through the centuries. During the
Middle Ages, Jews typically had a better status in the Muslim world than in
Christendom. As the Muslim empire expanded during the centuries, the status of the non-Muslim communities was at times precarious, and they were generally subject to
dhimmi laws. These laws freed them from military service and paying
zakah, but placed additional
jizyah and land taxes on them.
The most notable modern day persecution of Jews remains the
Holocaust — the state-led systematic
persecution and
genocide of the Jews and other
minority groups of Europe and North Africa during
World War II by
Nazi Germany and its
collaborators[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." There is a debate among scholars over whether the Holocaust only refers to Jewish victims, or to all groups targeted by the Nazis, or to some subset of those groups. All scholars agree that other groups were targeted by the Nazis, but not all believe that the victims are part of the Holocaust. This article uses a wide definition of the Holocaust to include all groups systematically targeted by the Nazis.] During the Holocaust, the
Middle East was in turmoil. Britain prohibited Jewish immigration to the
British Mandate of Palestine. While the
Allies and the
Axis were fighting for the oil-rich region, the Mufti of Jerusalem
Amin al-Husayni staged a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq and organized the
Farhud pogrom which marked the turning point for about 150,000 Iraqi Jews who, following this event and the hostilities generated by the
war with Israel in 1948, were targeted for violence, persecution, boycotts, confiscations, and near complete expulsion in 1951. In the French
Vichy territories of
Algeria and
Syria plans were drawn up for the liquidation of their Jewish populations were the
Axis powers to triumph.
The tensions of the
Arab-Israeli conflict were also a factor in the rise of animosity to Jews all over the Middle East, as hundreds of thousands of Jews fled as
refugees, the main waves being soon after the 1948 and 1956 wars. In reaction to the
Suez Crisis of 1956, the Egyptian government expelled almost 25,000 Egyptian Jews and confiscated their property, and sent approximately 1,000 more Jews to prisons and detention camps. The population of Jewish communities of Muslim Middle East and North Africa was reduced from about 900,000 in 1948 to less than 8,000 today.
There is no single governing body for the Jewish community, nor a single authority with responsibility for religious doctrine. 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.
Jews have made contributions in a broad range of human endeavors, including the sciences, arts, politics, business, etc.
A full guide to topics related to the Jews is available from the
guide at the top of this page. Additional topics of interest include:
*
Judaism, for information on the Jewish religion
* Europe
**
History of the Jews in England**
History of the Jews in France**
History of the Jews in Germany**
History of the Jews in Greece**
History of the Jews in Hungary**
History of the Jews in Ireland**
History of the Jews in Italy**
History of the Jews in the Netherlands**
History of the Jews in Poland**
History of the Jews in Portugal**
History of the Jews in Russia and Soviet Union**
History of the Jews in Spain*Americas
**
History of the Jews in Canada**
History of the Jews in the United States and
Jewish American**
History of the Jews in Latin America*Western Asia and Africa
**
History of the Jews in Turkey**
History of the Jews in Tunisia**
History of the Jews in Algeria**
History of the Jews in Morocco**
History of the Jews in Egypt**
History of the Jews in Iraq**
History of the Jews in Iran**
History of the Jews in Israel**
History of the Jews in Yemen**
Jews of the Bilad el-Sudan (West Africa)*East Asia
**
History of the Jews in China**
History of the Jews in JapanGeneral
*
Encarta Encyclopedia entry on Jews*
Jewish Virtual Library - collection of many articles on many topics, including Jewish history
*
1906 Jewish Encyclopedia*
Jewish Telegraphic Agency - news bureau reporting on contemporary Jewish news and issues
*
Legends of the Jews - online text of classic work by Louis Ginzberg
*
Encyclopedia of Jewish ReligionMaps
*
Map collection related to Jewish history and culture from Routledge Publishing
Photos
*
Zion Ozeri Photography - photos of many Jewish communities worldwide (requires
Macromedia Flash player)
Major Jewish secular organizations
*
Anti-Defamation League*
B'nai B'rith International*
American Jewish Committee*
United Jewish Communities: The Federations of North America*
American Jewish Congress*
Jewish Student OrganizationsGlobal Jewish communities
*
Jewish Communities of the World - large list of Jewish communities in many countries
*
List of international Jewish organizations*
Board of Deputies of British Jews*
Canadian Jewish Congress - Jewish advocacy organisation representing Canadian Jewry
*
Jews in Estonia*
Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS (Russia)*
Communaute Online: France*
Jewish Argentina*
African Jews - also contains information about various small Jewish communities elsewhere
*
Chinese Jews - history of Jews in China
*
The Database of Jewish Communities*
Global Chabad-Lubavitch Centers and Institutions DirectoryZionist institutions
*
World Zionist Organization*
Zionist Organization of America*
Hadassah - Women's Zionist Organization, also operates a number of prominent hospitals
*
Habonim Dror - Union of Progressive Zionists
Israeli institutions
*
The Jewish Agency*
Yad VaShem - The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority
*
Israel Museum*
Beth Hatefutsoth - The Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish DiasporaNotable Jews
*
Jewish Nobel Prize Laureates*
Prominent Jewish Scientific and Cultural FiguresReligious links
* Orthodox (in general):
The Orthodox Union* Conservative:
United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism* Karaite:
The Karaite Korner* Reform:
Union for Reform Judaism* Humanistic:
Society for Humanistic Judaism* Reconstructionist:
Jewish Reconstructionist Federation* Chabad-Lubavitch:
Chabad* Sephardic:
American Sephardi Federation
