Jewish lexicographers

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