jew

Jew

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For the Jewish religion, see Judaism. For other uses, see Jew (disambiguation).
Jews
יהודים (Yehudim) Jews.jpg
Albert Einstein • Maimonides • Golda Meir • Emma Lazarus
Total population
13,155,000[1]
Regions with significant populations
Israel 5,393,000[1] – 5,569,000[2]
United States 5,275,000[1] – 6,444,000 [3]
France 490,000 [1]
Canada 374,000 [1]
United Kingdom 295,000 [1]
Russia 225,000 [1]
Argentina 184,000 [1]
Germany 120,000 [1]
Australia 104,000 [1]
Brazil 96,000 [1]
Ukraine 77,000 [1]
South Africa 72,000 [1]
Hungary 49,000 [1]
Mexico 40,000 [1]
Belgium 31,200 [4]
Netherlands 30,000 [4]
Italy 28,600 [4]
Chile 20,700 [4]
Belarus 18,200 [4]
Uruguay 18,000 [4]
Switzerland 17,900 [4]
Turkey 17,800 [4]
Venezuela 15,400 [4]
Sweden 15,000 [4]
Spain 12,000 [4]
Iran 10,800 [4]
Romania 10,100 [4]
Latvia 9,800 [4]
Austria 9,000 [4]
Azerbaijan 6,800 [4]
Denmark 6,400 [4]
Panama 5,000 [4]
Languages
Historical Jewish languages
Hebrew · Yiddish · Ladino · others
Liturgical languages
Hebrew · Aramaic
Predominant spoken languages
The vernacular language of each home nation in the Jewish diaspora, including, significantly, English, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian.
Religion

Judaism
Part of a series of articles on
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v • d • e

The Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים‎, Yehudim), also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation.[5][6][7] Converts to Judaism, whose status as Jews within the Jewish ethnos is equal to those born into it, have been absorbed into the Jewish people throughout the millennia.

In Jewish tradition, Jewish ancestry is traced to the Biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the second millennium BCE. The Jews have enjoyed three periods of political autonomy in their national homeland, the Land of Israel, twice during ancient history, and currently once again, since 1948, with the establishment of the modern State of Israel. The first of the two ancient eras spanned from 1350 to 586 BCE, and encompassed the periods of the Judges, the United Monarchy, and the Divided Monarchy of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, ending with the destruction of the First Temple. The second era was the period of the Hasmonean Kingdom spanning from 140 to 37 BCE. Since the destruction of the First Temple, the diaspora has been the home of most of the world's Jews.[8] Except in the modern State of Israel, Jews are a minority in every country in which they live, and they have frequently experienced persecution throughout history, resulting in a population that fluctuated both in numbers and distribution over the centuries.

According to the Jewish Agency for Israel, as of 2007 there were 13.2 million Jews worldwide, 5.4 million of whom lived in Israel, 5.3 million in the United States, and the remainder distributed in communities of varying sizes around the world; this represents 0.2% of the current estimated world population.[1] (Other sources cite higher estimates. For example, the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics estimates the number of Israeli Jews to be 5.6 million and the U.S. Census Bureau estimates the American Jewish population to be as many as 6.4 million.[2][3]) These numbers include all those who consider themselves Jews whether or not affiliated with a Jewish organization.[9] The total world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure. In addition to halakhic considerations, there are secular, political, and ancestral identification factors in defining who is a Jew that increase the figure considerably.[9]
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Name and etymology
* 2 Population
o 2.1 Population centres
+ 2.1.1 State of Israel
+ 2.1.2 Diaspora (outside Israel)
o 2.2 Population changes
+ 2.2.1 Assimilation
+ 2.2.2 War and persecution
+ 2.2.3 Growth
* 3 Ethnic divisions
o 3.1 Genetic studies
+ 3.1.1 Male lineages: Y chromosomal DNA
+ 3.1.2 Female lineages: Mitochondrial DNA
* 4 Jewish culture
o 4.1 Who is a Jew?
o 4.2 Jewish languages
o 4.3 Jewish leadership
o 4.4 Notable Jews
* 5 History of the Jews
o 5.1 Jews and Judaism
o 5.2 Jews and migrations
o 5.3 Persecution
o 5.4 Kingdoms of Israel and Judah
o 5.5 Persian, Greek, and Roman rule
o 5.6 Beginning of the Diaspora
o 5.7 Middle Ages: Europe
o 5.8 Middle Ages: Islamic Europe, North Africa, Middle East
o 5.9 Enlightenment and emancipation
o 5.10 Zionism and emigration from Europe
o 5.11 World War II and the Holocaust
o 5.12 Israel
* 6 See also
* 7 Notes
* 8 References
* 9 External links
o 9.1 General
o 9.2 Secular organizations
o 9.3 Religious organizations
o 9.4 Zionist organizations

Name and etymology
Main article: Jew (word)

The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, a loan from Old French giu, earlier juieu, ultimately from Latin Iudaeum. The Latin Iudaeus simply means Judaean, "from the land of Judaea". The Latin term itself, like the corresponding Greek Ἰουδαῖος, is a loan from Aramaic Y'hūdāi, corresponding to Hebrew: יְהוּדִי‎, Yehudi (sg.); יְהוּדִים, Yehudim (pl.), in origin the term for a member of the tribe of Judah or the people of the kingdom of Judah. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי, is pronounced [jəhuˈdiː], with the stress on the final syllable.[10]

The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו, Djudio (sg.); ג׳ודיוס, Djudios (pl.); Yiddish: ייִד: Yid (sg.); ייִדן, Yidn (pl.).

The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., "Jude" in German, "juif" in French, "jøde" in Danish, "judío" in Spanish, etc., but derivations of the word "Hebrew" are also in use to describe a Jewish person, e.g., in Italian (Ebreo), and Russian: Еврей, (Yevrey).[11] The German word "Jude" is pronounced [ˈjuːdə], and is the origin of the word Yiddish.[12] (See Jewish ethnonyms for a full overview.)

According to the 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.[13]