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For the Jewish religion, see Judaism. For other uses, see Jew (disambiguation). A Jew (Hebrew language: יְהוּדִי, Yehudi (singular); , Yehudim (plural); Ladino language: ג׳ודיו, Djudio (singular); ג׳ודיוס, Djudios (plural); Yiddish language: ייִד, Yid (sl.); , Yidn (pl.))Etymology of the word Jew#Negative use of the term "Jew" are tainted by historical antisemitism. 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" 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. However, when used as a noun, the term "Jew" is preferred, except in situations where it is used to objectification 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 a member of the Jewish people, an ethnic group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The ethnicity and the religion of Judaism, the traditional faith of the Jewish nation, are strongly interrelated, and Conversion to Judaism are both Non-exclusive ethnic group within the Jewish people throughout the millennia.

The Jews have suffered a long history of persecution in many different lands, and their population and distribution per region has fluctuated throughout the centuries. Today, most authorities place the number of Jews between 12 and 14 million. According to the Jewish Agency, for the year 2007 there are 13.2 million Jews worldwide; 5.4 million (40.9%) in Israel, 5.3 million (40.2%) in the United States, and the remainder distributed in communities of varying sizes around the world. These numbers include all those who consider themselves Jews whether or not affiliated, and, with the exception of Israel's Jewish population, do not include those who do not consider themselves Jews or who are not Who is a Jew#Religious definitions. The total world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure. In addition to Halakha considerations, there are secular, Law of Return, and Who is a Jew#Non-religious ethnic and cultural definitions factors in defining Who is a Jew? that increase the figure considerably.

Jews and Judaism The origin of the Jews is traditionally dated to around 1800 BCE with the biblical account of the birth of Judaism.

The Merneptah Stele, dated to 1200 BCE, is one of the earliest archaeological records of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, where Judaism, a monotheism religion, developed. According to Bible accounts, the Jews enjoyed periods of self-determination first under the Biblical judges from Othniel through Samson, then in (c. 1000s BCE), David established Jerusalem as the capital of the United Monarchy (the United Monarchy) and from there ruled the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

In 970 BCE, his son Solomon became Kingdom of Israel. Within a decade, Solomon began to build the Temple of Jerusalem known as the First Temple. Upon Solomon's death (c. 930 BCE), the Ten Lost Tribes split off to form the Kingdom of Israel. In 722 BCE the Assyrians conquered the Kingdom of Israel and exiled its Jews starting a Jewish diaspora. At a time of limited mobility and travel, Jews became some of the first and most visible immigrants. Then as now, immigrants were treated with suspicion.

The First Temple period ended around 586 BCE as the Babylonians conquered the Kingdom of Judah and destroyed the Jewish Temple. In 538 BCE, after fifty years of Babylonian captivity, Persian Empire List of kings of Persia Cyrus the Great permitted the Jews to return to rebuild Jerusalem and the holy temple. Construction of the Second Temple, was completed in 516 BCE during the reign of Darius I of Persia seventy years after the destruction of the First Temple. When Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire, the Land of Israel fell under Hellenistic Greece control, eventually falling to the Ptolemaic dynasty who lost it to the Seleucid Empire. The Seleucid attempt to recast Jerusalem as a Hellenistic civilization polis came to a head in 168 BCE with the successful Maccabean revolt of Mattathias the High Priest and his five sons against Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and their establishment of the Hasmonean in 152 BCE with Jerusalem again as its capital. The Hasmonean Kingdom lasted over one hundred years, but then as Roman Empire became stronger it installed Herod the Great as a Jewish satellite state. The Herodian Kingdom also lasted over a hundred years. Defeats by the Jews in the First Jewish revolt in 70 Common Era, the first of the Jewish-Roman Wars and the Bar Kochba's revolt in 135 CE 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 into slavery throughout the Roman Empire. Since then, Jews have lived in almost every country of the world, primarily in Europe and the greater Middle East, surviving discrimination, oppression, poverty, and even genocide (see: anti-Semitism, The Holocaust), with occasional periods of cultural, economic, and individual prosperity in various locations (such as History of the Jews in Spain, History of the Jews in Portugal, History of the Jews in Germany, History of Jews in Poland and the American Jews).

Until the late 18th century, the terms Jews and adherents of Judaism were practically synonymous, and Judaism was the prime binding factor of the Jewish people regardless of the degree of adherence. Following the Age of Enlightenment and its Jewish counterpart Haskalah, a gradual transformation occurred during which 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) originally referred to the tribe of Judah. Later, when the Northern Kingdom of Israel split from the Southern Kingdom of Israel, the Southern Kingdom of Israel began to refer to itself by the name of its predominant tribe, or as the 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 the tribe or Kingdom of Judah. The English word Jew is ultimately derived from Yehudi (see Jew#Etymology). Its first use in the Tanakh to refer to the Jewish people as a whole is in the Book of Esther.

Etymology 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 language Ioudaios (). The Latin simply means Judaean, from the land of Judea. The Hebrew for Jew, יהודי , 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 יהודי in English would be Jew.

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

Who is a Jew? of late 19th century Eastern Europe are portrayed in Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur (1878), by Maurycy Gottlieb. was Jewish. Her Diary of Anne Frank tells the story of her life in hiding during the persecution of Jews in Amsterdam in World War II; she died in the Holocaust.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. 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 Conversion 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 Halakha 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 Talmud. Interpretations of sections of the Tanach, such as Deuteronomy 7:1-5, by learned Jewish sages, are used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews because " non-Jewish male spouse 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 Book of Ezra 10:2-3, where Israelites returning from Babylon, vow to put aside their gentile wives and their children. Since the Haskalah, these halakhic interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged.

Jewish culture Judaism guides its adherents in both practice and belief, and has been called not only a religion, but also a "way of life," Neusner (1991) p. 64 which has made drawing a clear distinction between Judaism, Jewish culture, and Jewish nationality rather difficult. In many times and places, such as in the ancient Ancient Greece world, in Europe before and after the The Age of 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 their surroundings, others from the inner social and cultural dynamics of the community, as opposed to from the religion itself.

Ethnic divisions The most commonly used terms to describe ethnic divisions among Jews currently are: Ashkenazi (meaning "Germany" in Hebrew, denoting their Central European base); and Sephardi (meaning "Spain" or "Iberian peninsula" in Hebrew, denoting their Spanish and Portugal base). They refer to both religious and ethnic divisions.

Other Jewish ethnic groups include Mizrahi Jews (a term referring to a heterogeneous collection of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish communities), which are often in modern usage termed Sephardi due to similar styles of liturgy despite independant evolutions from Sephardim proper; Teimanim from the Yemen and Oman; and such smaller groups as the Gruzim and Juhurim from the Caucasus (geographic region); Jews in India including the Bene Israel, Bnei Menashe, Cochin Jews and Telugu Jews; the Romaniotes of Greece; the Italkim or Bené Roma of Italy; various Jews and Judaism in Africa, including most numerously the Beta Israel of Ethiopia; the Bukharan Jews of Central Asia; and History of the Jews in China, most notably the Kaifeng Jews, as well as various other distinct but now extinct communities.

Despite this diversity, Ashkenazim 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 during the wartime periods, Ashkenazim also represent the overwhelming majority of Jews in the New World continents and in countries previously without native Jewish communities, such as the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and South Africa. In France, emigration of Mizrahim from North Africa has led them to outnumber pre-existing European Jews. 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.

Population Significant geographic populations There are an estimated 13 million Jews worldwide.Data based on a study by Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI): "World Jewry was estimated at 13,085,000 at thebeginning of 2006, an overall increase of 0.4% over 2005." See Jewish people near zero growth by Tovah Lazaroff, Jerusalem Post, June 24, 2004. 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 population.

{| class="toccolours sortable" border="1" cellpadding="3" style="border-collapse:collapse"|+|- bgcolor=#6495ED!Country or Region!Jewish population!Total Population!% Jewish!Notes|-|United States|style="text-align: right"|5,391,800|style="text-align: right"|7,114,400|style="text-align: right"|76%||-|[Europe|style="text-align: right"|30,000|style="text-align: right"|10,419,000|style="text-align: right"|0.3%| (est.)|-|style="text-indent: 2em"|[France|style="text-align: right"|228,000|style="text-align: right"|142,400,000|style="text-align: right"|0.15%|(Territory of the former [Soviet Union. (est.) Some estimates are much higher.)The US State Department Religious Freedom Report estimates the number of Jews in Russia alone at 600,000 to 1 million.]|style="text-align: right"|267,000|style="text-align: right"|60,609,153|style="text-align: right"|0.4%|(2001 census)|-|style="text-indent: 2em"|[Germany|style="text-align: right"|103,591|style="text-align: right"|46,481,000|style="text-align: right"|0.2%|(2001 Census)
250,000 to 500,000 (Local Jewish agency estimate)|-|style="text-indent: 2em"|[Italy|style="text-align: right"|371,000|style="text-align: right"|32,874,400|style="text-align: right"|1.1%|(est.)|-|[Turkey|style="text-align: right"|250,000|style="text-align: right"|39,921,833|style="text-align: right"|0.6%|(est.) Jewish Virtual Library, JewFAQ|-|[Brazil|style="text-align: right"|106,000|style="text-align: right"|47,432,000|style="text-align: right"|0.2%|(est.)|-|[Australia (excl. Israel)|style="text-align: right"|50,000|style="text-align: right"|3,900,000,000|style="text-align: right"|0.001%|(est.)|-|style="text-indent: 2em"|[Iran|style="text-align: right"|40,000–50,000|style="text-align: right"|108,700,000|style="text-align: right"|0.04%|(est.)|-|Total|style="text-align: right"|15,871,000|style="text-align: right"|6,453,628,000|style="text-align: right"|0.25%|style="text-align: right"|(est.)|}

State of Israel (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. Israel was established as an independent Democracy state on May 14, 1948. Of the 120 members in its parliament, the Knesset, 9 members are Israeli Arabs and 2 are Israeli Druze. 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.

Jews in Israel have immigrated from a variety of countries over its almost sixty years of existence. These include Holocaust survivors from Western and Central Europe, Sephardic from the Mediterranean basin, the Balkans and descendants in Latin America, Mizrahi Jews from North Africa and the Middle East, Persian Jews from Iran, Yemenite Jews from Yemen, and other Jewish groups from the Caucasus and Central Asia. Israel also has a large population of Ethiopian Jews, many of whom were airlifted to Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s. . In the 1990s nearly a million immigrants arrived in Israel from the former Soviet Union. A trickle of immigrants from other communities has also arrived, including Indian Jews and others, as well as some descendants of Ashkenazi Jews Holocaust survivors who had settled in countries such as the United States, Argentina 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.

Diaspora (outside Israel) The waves of immigration to the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century due to the pogroms in Russia, the 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 twentieth century. 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, Argentina and Brazil, and smaller populations in Mexico(45,000 2000 Tabulados de Religión), 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 East 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 World of North Africa and the Middle East were home to around 900,000 Jews in 1945. Fueled by anti-Zionism 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 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 Kehilla, 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 religious practice. The result is that most countries in the Jewish diaspora have steady or slightly declining religiously Jewish populations as Jews continue to assimilate into the countries in which they live.

Population changes: Wars against the Jews that they were required to wear) being killed by Christian knights. French Bible illustration from 1255.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; 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, Portugal, England, France, Germany, and other countries in which the Jews had settled. 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 1942 to 1945.

According to James P. Carroll, "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million."Carroll, James. Constantine's Sword (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) ISBN 0-395-77927-8 p.26 Of course, there are many other complex demographic factors involved; the rate of population growth, migration, assimilation, and conversion could all have played major roles in the current size of the global Jewish population.

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 Judaism 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.

Jewish languages Hebrew language 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.Grintz, Jehoshua M. "Hebrew as the Spoken and Written Language in the Last Days of the Second Temple." Journal of Biblical Literature. March, 1960. By the third century BCE, Jews of the diaspora were speaking Ancient Greek. Modern Hebrew is now one of the two official languages of the State of Israel along with Arabic.

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 Tannaim times.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 Shabbat.Parfitt, T. V. "The Use of Hebrew in Palestine 1800–1822." Journal of Semitic Studies , 1972. For centuries, Jews worldwide have spoken the local or dominant languages of the regions they migrated to, oftentimes developing distinctive dialectal forms or branching off as independent languages. Yiddish language is the Judæo-German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Central Europe, and Ladino language is the Judæo-Spanish language developed by Sephardi Jews 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, Judeo-Arabic languages, Judeo-Berber language, Krymchak language, Judæo-Malayalam and many others, have largely fallen out of use.

History of the Jews See also: Schisms among the Jews

Jews and migrations in Shanghai, PRC during World War II. Shanghai offered unconditional asylum for tens of thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe escaping the Holocaust.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 immigrate and Emigration (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 Chaldea.
• The Children of Israel experienced the Exodus (meaning "departure" or "exit" 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, then returned to Judea, and then many were exiled again by the Roman Empire.
• 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 History of the Jews in Iraq to the Golden age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula to History of the Jews in Poland to the Jewish American 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 South 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 I of France.
• 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 arrived back in large numbers at their original historical homeland in Israel.
• The Iranian Revolution, forced many Persian 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 . (1695 Amsterdam Haggada)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 Bible patriarch Abraham through Isaac and Jacob. A United Monarchy was established under Saul the King 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 Greeks under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, supported by Hellenization Jews (those who had adopted Greek culture), attempted to convert the Jewish Temple to a temple of Zeus, the 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 Edom family and became a very successful client king under the Romans. He significantly expanded the Temple in Jerusalem.

depicts enslaved Judeans and objects from the Temple being brought to Rome.

Upon his death in 4 BCE the Romans directly ruled Judea and there were frequent changes of policies by conflicting and empire-building Caesar (title), 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 Roman religion, 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 Jews in Judea began a First Jewish-Roman War against Rome. The revolt was smashed by Titus, the son and successor of the Roman emperor Vespasian. 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 Romans all but destroyed Jerusalem; only a single "Western Wall" of the Second Temple remained. After the end of this first revolt, the Jews 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 Jews again revolted led by Bar Kokhba's revolt. Hadrian responded with overwhelming force, putting down the revolt 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 the rabbis took on a more prominent position 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 Greco-Roman, 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 related to the peoples of the nations surrounding Israel and being relatively far from their European neighbours, despite physical features that sometimes are 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. These types of assumptions are not supported by any historical account, and the extent of similarities in physical features between Ashkenazi Jews and non-Jewish European ethnic groups is disputed., the synagogue of the Sephardic community

During the first few hundred years of the Diaspora, the most important Jewish communities were in History of the Jews in Iraq, where the Babylonian 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. In the belief of restoration to come, the Jews made an alliance with the Persians who invaded Palestine in 614, fought at their side, overwhelmed the Byzantine garrison in Jerusalem, and for three years governed the city. But the Persians made their peace with the Emperor Heraclius. Christian rule was re-established, and those Jews who survived the consequent slaughter were once more banished from Jerusalem. Katz, Shmuel , Battleground (1974)

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. The Jews were among the most vigorous defenders of Jerusalem against the Crusaders. When the city fell, the Crusaders gathered the Jews in a synagogue and burned them. The Jews almost single-handedly defended Haifa against the Crusaders, holding out in the besieged town for a whole month (June-July 1099). At this time, a full thousand years after the fall of the Jewish state, there were Jewish communities all over the country. Fifty of them are known to us; they include Jerusalem, Tiberias, Ramleh, Ashkelon, Caesarea Maritima, and Gaza. Katz, Shmuel , Battleground (1974)

reading the Passover story in Golden age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula, from a 14th century Iberian Haggadah.

Middle Ages: Europe Jews settled in Europe during the time of the Roman Empire, but the rise of the Roman 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 money-lending 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, History of the Jews in Poland. The final mass expulsion of the Jews, and the largest, occurred after the Christian conquest (Reconquista) of Iberian Peninsula in 1492 (see History of the Jews in Spain and History of the Jews in Portugal). 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. By the beginning of the twentieth century, most European Jews lived in the so-called Pale of Settlement, the Western frontier of the Russian Empire comprised generally of the modern day countries of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and neighboring regions.

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 Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula from about 900 to 1200, when Iberia 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 Alhambra decree after the Christian reconquest. Many of these Jews found refuge in the History of the Jews in Turkey, which remained tolerant of its Jewish population for much of its history.

Enlightenment and emancipation the Jews, represented by the woman with the menorah, an 1804 French print.

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.

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, For the Jewish religion, see Judaism. For other uses, see Jew (disambiguation). A Jew (Hebrew language: יְהוּדִי, Yehudi (singular); , Yehudim (plural); Ladino language: ג׳ודיו, Djudio (singular); ג׳ודיוס, Djudios (plural); Yiddish language: ייִד, Yid (sl.); , Yidn (pl.))Etymology of the word Jew#Negative use of the term "Jew" are tainted by historical antisemitism. 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" 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. However, when used as a noun, the term "Jew" is preferred, except in situations where it is used to objectification 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 a member of the Jewish people, an ethnic group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The ethnicity and the religion of Judaism, the traditional faith of the Jewish nation, are strongly interrelated, and Conversion to Judaism are both Non-exclusive ethnic group within the Jewish people throughout the millennia.

The Jews have suffered a long history of persecution in many different lands, and their population and distribution per region has fluctuated throughout the centuries. Today, most authorities place the number of Jews between 12 and 14 million. According to the Jewish Agency, for the year 2007 there are 13.2 million Jews worldwide; 5.4 million (40.9%) in Israel, 5.3 million (40.2%) in the United States, and the remainder distributed in communities of varying sizes around the world. These numbers include all those who consider themselves Jews whether or not affiliated, and, with the exception of Israel's Jewish population, do not include those who do not consider themselves Jews or who are not Who is a Jew#Religious definitions. The total world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure. In addition to Halakha considerations, there are secular, Law of Return, and Who is a Jew#Non-religious ethnic and cultural definitions factors in defining Who is a Jew? that increase the figure considerably.

Jews and Judaism The origin of the Jews is traditionally dated to around 1800 BCE with the biblical account of the birth of Judaism.

The Merneptah Stele, dated to 1200 BCE, is one of the earliest archaeological records of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, where Judaism, a monotheism religion, developed. According to Bible accounts, the Jews enjoyed periods of self-determination first under the Biblical judges from Othniel through Samson, then in (c. 1000s BCE), David established Jerusalem as the capital of the United Monarchy (the United Monarchy) and from there ruled the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

In 970 BCE, his son Solomon became Kingdom of Israel. Within a decade, Solomon began to build the Temple of Jerusalem known as the First Temple. Upon Solomon's death (c. 930 BCE), the Ten Lost Tribes split off to form the Kingdom of Israel. In 722 BCE the Assyrians conquered the Kingdom of Israel and exiled its Jews starting a Jewish diaspora. At a time of limited mobility and travel, Jews became some of the first and most visible immigrants. Then as now, immigrants were treated with suspicion.

The First Temple period ended around 586 BCE as the Babylonians conquered the Kingdom of Judah and destroyed the Jewish Temple. In 538 BCE, after fifty years of Babylonian captivity, Persian Empire List of kings of Persia Cyrus the Great permitted the Jews to return to rebuild Jerusalem and the holy temple. Construction of the Second Temple, was completed in 516 BCE during the reign of Darius I of Persia seventy years after the destruction of the First Temple. When Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire, the Land of Israel fell under Hellenistic Greece control, eventually falling to the Ptolemaic dynasty who lost it to the Seleucid Empire. The Seleucid attempt to recast Jerusalem as a Hellenistic civilization polis came to a head in 168 BCE with the successful Maccabean revolt of Mattathias the High Priest and his five sons against Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and their establishment of the Hasmonean in 152 BCE with Jerusalem again as its capital. The Hasmonean Kingdom lasted over one hundred years, but then as Roman Empire became stronger it installed Herod the Great as a Jewish satellite state. The Herodian Kingdom also lasted over a hundred years. Defeats by the Jews in the First Jewish revolt in 70 Common Era, the first of the Jewish-Roman Wars and the Bar Kochba's revolt in 135 CE 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 into slavery throughout the Roman Empire. Since then, Jews have lived in almost every country of the world, primarily in Europe and the greater Middle East, surviving discrimination, oppression, poverty, and even genocide (see: anti-Semitism, The Holocaust), with occasional periods of cultural, economic, and individual prosperity in various locations (such as History of the Jews in Spain, History of the Jews in Portugal, History of the Jews in Germany, History of Jews in Poland and the American Jews).

Until the late 18th century, the terms Jews and adherents of Judaism were practically synonymous, and Judaism was the prime binding factor of the Jewish people regardless of the degree of adherence. Following the Age of Enlightenment and its Jewish counterpart Haskalah, a gradual transformation occurred during which 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) originally referred to the tribe of Judah. Later, when the Northern Kingdom of Israel split from the Southern Kingdom of Israel, the Southern Kingdom of Israel began to refer to itself by the name of its predominant tribe, or as the 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 the tribe or Kingdom of Judah. The English word Jew is ultimately derived from Yehudi (see Jew#Etymology). Its first use in the Tanakh to refer to the Jewish people as a whole is in the Book of Esther.

Etymology 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 language Ioudaios (). The Latin simply means Judaean, from the land of Judea. The Hebrew for Jew, יהודי , 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 יהודי in English would be Jew.

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

Who is a Jew? of late 19th century Eastern Europe are portrayed in Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur (1878), by Maurycy Gottlieb. was Jewish. Her Diary of Anne Frank tells the story of her life in hiding during the persecution of Jews in Amsterdam in World War II; she died in the Holocaust.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. 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 Conversion 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 Halakha 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 Talmud. Interpretations of sections of the Tanach, such as Deuteronomy 7:1-5, by learned Jewish sages, are used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews because " non-Jewish male spouse 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 Book of Ezra 10:2-3, where Israelites returning from Babylon, vow to put aside their gentile wives and their children. Since the Haskalah, these halakhic interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged.

Jewish culture Judaism guides its adherents in both practice and belief, and has been called not only a religion, but also a "way of life," Neusner (1991) p. 64 which has made drawing a clear distinction between Judaism, Jewish culture, and Jewish nationality rather difficult. In many times and places, such as in the ancient Ancient Greece world, in Europe before and after the The Age of 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 their surroundings, others from the inner social and cultural dynamics of the community, as opposed to from the religion itself.

Ethnic divisions The most commonly used terms to describe ethnic divisions among Jews currently are: Ashkenazi (meaning "Germany" in Hebrew, denoting their Central European base); and Sephardi (meaning "Spain" or "Iberian peninsula" in Hebrew, denoting their Spanish and Portugal base). They refer to both religious and ethnic divisions.

Other Jewish ethnic groups include Mizrahi Jews (a term referring to a heterogeneous collection of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish communities), which are often in modern usage termed Sephardi due to similar styles of liturgy despite independant evolutions from Sephardim proper; Teimanim from the Yemen and Oman; and such smaller groups as the Gruzim and Juhurim from the Caucasus (geographic region); Jews in India including the Bene Israel, Bnei Menashe, Cochin Jews and Telugu Jews; the Romaniotes of Greece; the Italkim or Bené Roma of Italy; various Jews and Judaism in Africa, including most numerously the Beta Israel of Ethiopia; the Bukharan Jews of Central Asia; and History of the Jews in China, most notably the Kaifeng Jews, as well as various other distinct but now extinct communities.

Despite this diversity, Ashkenazim 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 during the wartime periods, Ashkenazim also represent the overwhelming majority of Jews in the New World continents and in countries previously without native Jewish communities, such as the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and South Africa. In France, emigration of Mizrahim from North Africa has led them to outnumber pre-existing European Jews. 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.

Population Significant geographic populations There are an estimated 13 million Jews worldwide.Data based on a study by Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI): "World Jewry was estimated at 13,085,000 at thebeginning of 2006, an overall increase of 0.4% over 2005." See Jewish people near zero growth by Tovah Lazaroff, Jerusalem Post, June 24, 2004. 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 population.

{| class="toccolours sortable" border="1" cellpadding="3" style="border-collapse:collapse"|+|- bgcolor=#6495ED!Country or Region!Jewish population!Total Population!% Jewish!Notes|-|United States|style="text-align: right"|5,391,800|style="text-align: right"|7,114,400|style="text-align: right"|76%||-|[Europe|style="text-align: right"|30,000|style="text-align: right"|10,419,000|style="text-align: right"|0.3%| (est.)|-|style="text-indent: 2em"|[France|style="text-align: right"|228,000|style="text-align: right"|142,400,000|style="text-align: right"|0.15%|(Territory of the former [Soviet Union. (est.) Some estimates are much higher.)The US State Department Religious Freedom Report estimates the number of Jews in Russia alone at 600,000 to 1 million.]|style="text-align: right"|267,000|style="text-align: right"|60,609,153|style="text-align: right"|0.4%|(2001 census)|-|style="text-indent: 2em"|[Germany|style="text-align: right"|103,591|style="text-align: right"|46,481,000|style="text-align: right"|0.2%|(2001 Census)
250,000 to 500,000 (Local Jewish agency estimate)|-|style="text-indent: 2em"|[Italy|style="text-align: right"|371,000|style="text-align: right"|32,874,400|style="text-align: right"|1.1%|(est.)|-|[Turkey|style="text-align: right"|250,000|style="text-align: right"|39,921,833|style="text-align: right"|0.6%|(est.) Jewish Virtual Library, JewFAQ|-|[Brazil|style="text-align: right"|106,000|style="text-align: right"|47,432,000|style="text-align: right"|0.2%|(est.)|-|[Australia (excl. Israel)|style="text-align: right"|50,000|style="text-align: right"|3,900,000,000|style="text-align: right"|0.001%|(est.)|-|style="text-indent: 2em"|[Iran|style="text-align: right"|40,000–50,000|style="text-align: right"|108,700,000|style="text-align: right"|0.04%|(est.)|-|Total|style="text-align: right"|15,871,000|style="text-align: right"|6,453,628,000|style="text-align: right"|0.25%|style="text-align: right"|(est.)|}

State of Israel (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. Israel was established as an independent Democracy state on May 14, 1948. Of the 120 members in its parliament, the Knesset, 9 members are Israeli Arabs and 2 are Israeli Druze. 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.

Jews in Israel have immigrated from a variety of countries over its almost sixty years of existence. These include Holocaust survivors from Western and Central Europe, Sephardic from the Mediterranean basin, the Balkans and descendants in Latin America, Mizrahi Jews from North Africa and the Middle East, Persian Jews from Iran, Yemenite Jews from Yemen, and other Jewish groups from the Caucasus and Central Asia. Israel also has a large population of Ethiopian Jews, many of whom were airlifted to Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s. . In the 1990s nearly a million immigrants arrived in Israel from the former Soviet Union. A trickle of immigrants from other communities has also arrived, including Indian Jews and others, as well as some descendants of Ashkenazi Jews Holocaust survivors who had settled in countries such as the United States, Argentina 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.

Diaspora (outside Israel) The waves of immigration to the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century due to the pogroms in Russia, the 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 twentieth century. 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, Argentina and Brazil, and smaller populations in Mexico(45,000 2000 Tabulados de Religión), 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 East 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 World of North Africa and the Middle East were home to around 900,000 Jews in 1945. Fueled by anti-Zionism 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 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 Kehilla, 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 religious practice. The result is that most countries in the Jewish diaspora have steady or slightly declining religiously Jewish populations as Jews continue to assimilate into the countries in which they live.

Population changes: Wars against the Jews that they were required to wear) being killed by Christian knights. French Bible illustration from 1255.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; 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, Portugal, England, France, Germany, and other countries in which the Jews had settled. 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 1942 to 1945.

According to James P. Carroll, "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million."Carroll, James. Constantine's Sword (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) ISBN 0-395-77927-8 p.26 Of course, there are many other complex demographic factors involved; the rate of population growth, migration, assimilation, and conversion could all have played major roles in the current size of the global Jewish population.

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 Judaism 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.

Jewish languages Hebrew language 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.Grintz, Jehoshua M. "Hebrew as the Spoken and Written Language in the Last Days of the Second Temple." Journal of Biblical Literature. March, 1960. By the third century BCE, Jews of the diaspora were speaking Ancient Greek. Modern Hebrew is now one of the two official languages of the State of Israel along with Arabic.

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 Tannaim times.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 Shabbat.Parfitt, T. V. "The Use of Hebrew in Palestine 1800–1822." Journal of Semitic Studies , 1972. For centuries, Jews worldwide have spoken the local or dominant languages of the regions they migrated to, oftentimes developing distinctive dialectal forms or branching off as independent languages. Yiddish language is the Judæo-German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Central Europe, and Ladino language is the Judæo-Spanish language developed by Sephardi Jews 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, Judeo-Arabic languages, Judeo-Berber language, Krymchak language, Judæo-Malayalam and many others, have largely fallen out of use.

History of the Jews See also: Schisms among the Jews

Jews and migrations in Shanghai, PRC during World War II. Shanghai offered unconditional asylum for tens of thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe escaping the Holocaust.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 immigrate and Emigration (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 Chaldea.
• The Children of Israel experienced the Exodus (meaning "departure" or "exit" 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, then returned to Judea, and then many were exiled again by the Roman Empire.
• 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 History of the Jews in Iraq to the Golden age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula to History of the Jews in Poland to the Jewish American 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 South 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 I of France.
• 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 arrived back in large numbers at their original historical homeland in Israel.
• The Iranian Revolution, forced many Persian 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 . (1695 Amsterdam Haggada)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 Bible patriarch Abraham through Isaac and Jacob. A United Monarchy was established under Saul the King 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 Greeks under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, supported by Hellenization Jews (those who had adopted Greek culture), attempted to convert the Jewish Temple to a temple of Zeus, the 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 Edom family and became a very successful client king under the Romans. He significantly expanded the Temple in Jerusalem.

depicts enslaved Judeans and objects from the Temple being brought to Rome.

Upon his death in 4 BCE the Romans directly ruled Judea and there were frequent changes of policies by conflicting and empire-building Caesar (title), 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 Roman religion, 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 Jews in Judea began a First Jewish-Roman War against Rome. The revolt was smashed by Titus, the son and successor of the Roman emperor Vespasian. 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 Romans all but destroyed Jerusalem; only a single "Western Wall" of the Second Temple remained. After the end of this first revolt, the Jews 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 Jews again revolted led by Bar Kokhba's revolt. Hadrian responded with overwhelming force, putting down the revolt 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 the rabbis took on a more prominent position 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 Greco-Roman, 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 related to the peoples of the nations surrounding Israel and being relatively far from their European neighbours, despite physical features that sometimes are 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. These types of assumptions are not supported by any historical account, and the extent of similarities in physical features between Ashkenazi Jews and non-Jewish European ethnic groups is disputed., the synagogue of the Sephardic community

During the first few hundred years of the Diaspora, the most important Jewish communities were in History of the Jews in Iraq, where the Babylonian 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. In the belief of restoration to come, the Jews made an alliance with the Persians who invaded Palestine in 614, fought at their side, overwhelmed the Byzantine garrison in Jerusalem, and for three years governed the city. But the Persians made their peace with the Emperor Heraclius. Christian rule was re-established, and those Jews who survived the consequent slaughter were once more banished from Jerusalem. Katz, Shmuel , Battleground (1974)

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. The Jews were among the most vigorous defenders of Jerusalem against the Crusaders. When the city fell, the Crusaders gathered the Jews in a synagogue and burned them. The Jews almost single-handedly defended Haifa against the Crusaders, holding out in the besieged town for a whole month (June-July 1099). At this time, a full thousand years after the fall of the Jewish state, there were Jewish communities all over the country. Fifty of them are known to us; they include Jerusalem, Tiberias, Ramleh, Ashkelon, Caesarea Maritima, and Gaza. Katz, Shmuel , Battleground (1974)

reading the Passover story in Golden age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula, from a 14th century Iberian Haggadah.

Middle Ages: Europe Jews settled in Europe during the time of the Roman Empire, but the rise of the Roman 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 money-lending 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, History of the Jews in Poland. The final mass expulsion of the Jews, and the largest, occurred after the Christian conquest (Reconquista) of Iberian Peninsula in 1492 (see History of the Jews in Spain and History of the Jews in Portugal). 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. By the beginning of the twentieth century, most European Jews lived in the so-called Pale of Settlement, the Western frontier of the Russian Empire comprised generally of the modern day countries of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and neighboring regions.

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 Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula from about 900 to 1200, when Iberia 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 Alhambra decree after the Christian reconquest. Many of these Jews found refuge in the History of the Jews in Turkey, which remained tolerant of its Jewish population for much of its history.

Enlightenment and emancipation the Jews, represented by the woman with the menorah, an 1804 French print.

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.

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,

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