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Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The people of the Kingdom of Israel and the ethnic and religious group known as the Jewish people that descended from them have been subjected to a number of forced migrations in their history" and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah. Jewish ethnicity, nationhood, and religion are strongly interrelated, "Historically, the religious and ethnic dimensions of Jewish identity have been closely interwoven. In fact, so closely bound are they, that the traditional Jewish lexicon hardly distinguishes between the two concepts. Jewish religious practice, by definition, was observed exclusively by the Jewish people, and notions of Jewish peoplehood, nation, and community were suffused with faith in the Jewish God, the practice of Jewish (religious) law and the study of ancient religious texts" "This identification in the Jewish attitude between the ethnic group and religious identity is so close that the reception into this religion of members not belonging to its ethnic group has become impossible." as Judaism is the ethnic religion of the Jewish people, although its observance varies from strict to none. "A person born Jewish who refutes Judaism may continue to assert a Jewish identity, and if he or she does not convert to another religion, even religious Jews will recognize the person as a Jew"

Jews originated as an ethnic and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, in a part of the Levant known as the Land of Israel. The Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE (Late Bronze Age). The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, John Day (2005), ''In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel,'' Bloomsbury Publishing, pp. 47.5 8'In this sense, the emergence of ancient Israel is viewed not as the cause of the demise of Canaanite culture but as its upshot'. consolidated their hold in the region with the emergence of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Some consider that these Canaan-sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as the "Hebrews". Though few sources mention the exilic periods in detail, the experience of life in the Jewish diaspora, from the Babylonian captivity and exile to the Roman occupation and exile, and the historical relations between Jews and their homeland in the Levant thereafter became a major feature of Jewish history, identity, culture, and memory.

In the following millennia, Jewish diaspora communities coalesced into three major ethnic subdivisions according to where their ancestors settled: the ''Ashkenazim'' (Central and Eastern Europe), the ''Sephardim'' (initially in the Iberian Peninsula), and the ''Mizrahim'' (Middle East and North Africa).Dosick (2007), pp. 59, 60. Prior to World War II, the global Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million,, based on representing around 0.7 percent of the world population at that time. During World War II, approximately 6 million Jews throughout Europe were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Since then, the population has slowly risen again, and , was estimated to be at 14.6–17.8 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank, comprising less than 0.2 percent of the total world population.

The modern State of Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. It defines itself as a Jewish and democratic state in its Basic Laws, particularly in ''Human Dignity and Liberty''—which is based on the Israeli Declaration of Independence—and ''Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People''. Israel's Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to Jews who have expressed their desire to settle in the Jewish state.

Jews have significantly influenced and contributed to human progress in many fields, both historically and in modern times, including in science and technology, philosophy, ethics, literature,"Upon the foundation of Judaism, two civilizations centered on monotheistic religion emerged, Christianity and Islam. To these civilizations, the Jews added a leaven of astonishing creativity in business, medicine, letters, science, the arts, and a variety of other leadership roles." politics, business, art, music, comedy, theatre, cinema, architecture, food, medicine, and religion. Jews wrote the Bible, "During the subsequent five hundred years, under Persian, Greek and Roman domination, the Jews wrote, revised, admitted and canonized all the books now comprising the Jewish Old Testament""The fact that Jesus and his followers who wrote the New Testament were first-century Jews, then, produces as many questions as it does answers concerning their experiences, beliefs, and practices" were the founders of early Christianity,"Early Christianity began as a Jewish movement in first-century Palestine" and had an indirect but profound influence on Islam. "Judaism also contributed to the religion of Islam for Islam derives its ideas of holy text, the Qur'an, ultimately from Judaism. The dietary and legal codes of Islam are based on those of Judaism. The basic design of the mosque, the Islamic house of worship, comes from that of the early synagogues. The communal prayer services of Islam and their devotional routines resembles those of Judaism." In these ways, Jews have also played a significant role in the development of Western culture.Cambridge University Historical Series, ''An Essay on Western Civilization in Its Economic Aspects'', p. 40: "Hebraism, like Hellenism, has been an all-important factor in the development of Western Civilization; Judaism, as the precursor of Christianity, has indirectly had much to do with shaping the ideals and morality of Western nations since the Christian era."

Name and etymology

The English word "Jew" continues Middle English '. These terms were loaned via the Old French ', which itself evolved from the earlier ', which in turn derived from ' which through elision had dropped the letter "d" from the Medieval Latin ''Iudaeus'', which, like the New Testament Greek term ''Ioudaios'', meant both "Jew" and "Judean" / "of Judea". The Greek term was a loan from Aramaic ', corresponding to Hebrew , originally the term for the people of the kingdom of Judah. According to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe of Judah and the kingdom of Judah derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. Genesis 29:35 and 49:8 connect the name "Judah" with the verb , meaning "praise", but scholars generally agree that the name of both the patriarch and the kingdom instead have a geographic origin—possibly referring to the gorges and ravines of the region.

The Hebrew word for "Jew" is , with the plural . Endonyms in other Jewish languages include the Ladino (plural , ) and the Yiddish (plural ).

The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., يَهُودِيّ ''yahūdī'' (sg.), ''al-yahūd'' (pl.), in Arabic, "Jude" in German, "judeu" in Portuguese, "Juif" (m.)/"Juive" (f.) in French, "jøde" in Danish and Norwegian, "judío/a" in Spanish, "jood" in Dutch, "żyd" in Polish etc., but derivations of the word "Hebrew" are also in use to describe a Jew, e.g., in Italian (''Ebreo''), in Persian ("Ebri/Ebrani" ( fa, عبری/عبرانی)) and Russian (''Еврей, Yevrey''). The German word "Jude" is pronounced , the corresponding adjective "jüdisch" (Jewish) is the origin of the word "Yiddish".

According to ''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language'', fourth edition (2000),

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

Identity

Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation, "The Jews are a nation and were so before there was a Jewish state of Israel" "That there is a Jewish nation can hardly be denied after the creation of the State of Israel" "Jews are a people, a nation (in the original sense of the word), an ethnos" an ethnicity, a religion, and a culture,: "Judaism is a culture and a civilization which embraces the secular as well": Although culture - and Judaism is a culture (or cultures) as well as religion - can be subdivided into different analytical categories...": "Although Judaism is a culture - or rather has a culture - it is eminently more than a culture" making the definition of who is a Jew vary slightly depending on whether a religious or national approach to identity is used. Generally, in modern secular usage Jews include three groups: people who were born to a Jewish family regardless of whether or not they follow the religion, those who have some Jewish ancestral background or lineage (sometimes including those who do not have strictly matrilineal descent), and people without any Jewish ancestral background or lineage who have formally converted to Judaism and therefore are followers of the religion.

Historical definitions of Jewish identity have traditionally been based on ''halakhic'' definitions of matrilineal descent, and halakhic conversions. These definitions of who is a Jew date back to the codification of the Oral Torah into the Babylonian Talmud, around 200 CE. Interpretations by Jewish sages of sections of the Tanakh – such as , which forbade intermarriage between Jews' Israelite ancestors and seven non-Israelite nations: "for that .e. giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,would turn away your children from following me, to serve other gods" – are used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and gentiles. says that the son in a marriage between a Hebrew woman and an Egyptian man is "of the community of Israel." This is complemented by , where Israelites returning from Babylon vow to put aside their gentile wives and their children. A popular theory is that the rape of Jewish women in captivity brought about the law of Jewish identity being inherited through the maternal line, although scholars challenge this theory citing the Talmudic establishment of the law from the pre-exile period. Another argument is that the rabbis changed the law of patrilineal descent to matrilineal descent due to the widespread rape of Jewish women by Roman soldiers. Since the anti-religious ''Haskalah'' movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries, ''halakhic'' interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged.

According to historian Shaye J. D. Cohen, the status of the offspring of mixed marriages was determined patrilineally in the Bible. He brings two likely explanations for the change in Mishnaic times: first, the Mishnah may have been applying the same logic to mixed marriages as it had applied to other mixtures ('' Kil'ayim''). Thus, a mixed marriage is forbidden as is the union of a horse and a donkey, and in both unions the offspring are judged matrilineally. Second, the Tannaim may have been influenced by Roman law, which dictated that when a parent could not contract a legal marriage, offspring would follow the mother. Rabbi Rivon Krygier follows a similar reasoning, arguing that Jewish descent had formerly passed through the patrilineal descent and the law of matrilineal descent had its roots in the Roman legal system.

Origins

A factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities and variety, written in at least ten Near Eastern languages. As archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. The prehistory and ethnogenesis of the Jews are closely intertwined with archaeology, biology, and historical textual records, as well as religious literature and mythology. The ethnic stock to which Jews originally trace their ancestry was a confederation of Iron Age Semitic-speaking tribes known as the Israelites that inhabited a part of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods. Modern Jews are named after and also descended from the southern Israelite Kingdom of Judah.

According to the Hebrew Bible narrative, Jewish ancestry is traced back to the Biblical patriarchs such as Abraham, his son Isaac, Isaac's son Jacob, and the Biblical matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel, who lived in Canaan. The Twelve Tribes are described as descending from the twelve sons of Jacob. Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacob's son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs' descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, after which the Israelites conquered Canaan under Moses' successor Joshua, went through the period of the Biblical judges after the death of Joshua, then through the mediation of Samuel became subject to a king, Saul, who was succeeded by David and then Solomon, after whom the United Monarchy ended and was split into a separate Kingdom of Israel and a Kingdom of Judah. The Kingdom of Judah is described as comprising the Tribe of Judah, the Tribe of Benjamin, partially the Tribe of Levi, and later adding remnants of other tribes who migrated there from the Kingdom of Israel. Modern Jews claim lineage from those tribes since the ten northern tribes were lost following Assyrian captivity.

Modern archaeology and the current historical view has largely discarded the historicity of this narrative. It has been reframed as constituting the Israelites' inspiring national myth narrative. The Israelites and their culture, according to the modern archaeological and historical account, did not overtake the region by force, but instead branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion of Yahwism centered on Yahweh, one of the gods of the Canaanite pantheon. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of cultic practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group, setting them apart from other Canaanites.

The Israelites become visible in the historical record as a people between 1200 and 1000 BCE. It is not certain if a period like that of the Biblical judges occurred nor if there was ever a United Monarchy. There is well accepted archeological evidence referring to "Israel" in the Merneptah Stele, which dates to about 1200 BCE, and the Canaanites are archeologically attested in the Middle Bronze Age. There is debate about the earliest existence of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their extent and power, but historians agree that a Kingdom of Israel existed by c. 900 BCE and that a Kingdom of Judah existed by c. 700 BCE. It is widely accepted that the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed around 720 BCE, when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

History

The term Jew originated from the Roman "Judean" and denoted someone from the southern kingdom of Judah. The shift of ethnonym from "Israelites" to "Jews" (inhabitant of Judah), although not contained in the Torah, is made explicit in the Book of Esther (4th century BCE), a book in the Ketuvim, the third section of the Jewish Tanakh