Jewish texts

Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly interrelated, as Judaism is their ethnic religion, though it is not practiced by all ethnic Jews. Despite this, religious Jews regard converts to Judaism as members of the Jewish nation, pursuant to the long-standing conversion process.

The Israelites emerged from the pre-existing Canaanite peoples to establish Israel and Judah in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. 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'. Originally, Jews referred to the inhabitants of the kingdom of JudahCf. Marcus Jastrow's ''Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Babli, Talmud Yerushalmi and Midrashic Literature'', and the source he used: Megilla 13a:2 (Talmud).and were distinguished from the gentiles and the Samaritans.Amy-Jill Levine. ''The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus''. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006, page 162 According to the Hebrew Bible from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob."Jew", ''Oxford English Dictionary''. The tribe of Benjamin were another significant demographic in Judah and were considered Jews too. By the late 6th century BCE, Judaism had evolved from the Israelite religion, dubbed Yahwism (for Yahweh) by modern scholars, having a theology that religious Jews believe to be the expression of the Mosaic covenant between God and the Jewish people. After the Babylonian exile, Jews referred to followers of Judaism, descendants of the Israelites, citizens of Judea, or allies of the Judean state. Jewish migration within the Mediterranean region during the Hellenistic period, followed by population transfers, caused by events like the Jewish–Roman wars, gave rise to the Jewish diaspora, consisting of diverse Jewish communities that maintained their sense of Jewish history, identity, and culture.

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'' (Iberian Peninsula), and the ''Mizrahim'' (Middle East and North Africa).Dosick (2007), pp. 59, 60. While these three major divisions account for most of the world's Jews, there are other smaller Jewish groups outside of the three. Prior to World War II, the global Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million,, based on representing around 0.7% of the world's population at that time. During World War II, approximately six million Jews throughout Europe were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany in a genocide known as the Holocaust. Since then, the population has slowly risen again, and , was estimated to be at 15.2 million by the demographer Sergio Della Pergola or less than 0.2% of the total world population in 2012. Today, over 85% of Jews live in Israel or the United States. Israel, whose population is 73.9% Jewish, is the only country where Jews comprise more than 2.5% of the population.

Jews have significantly influenced and contributed to the development and growth of 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." governance, business, art, music, comedy, theatre, cinema, architecture, food, medicine,Shatzmiller, Joseph. Doctors to Princes and Paupers: Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society. Berkeley: U of California, 1995. Print. and religion. Jews founded 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 and others, Jews have 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 term "Jew" is derived from the Hebrew word , with the plural . Endonyms in other Jewish languages include the Ladino (plural , ) and the Yiddish (plural ).

Though Genesis 29:35 and 49:8 connect "Judah" with the verb , meaning "praise", scholars generally agree that "Judah" most likely derives from the name of a Levantine geographic region dominated by gorges and ravines. The gradual ethnonymic shift from "Israelites" to "Jews", regardless of their descent from Judah, although not contained in the Torah, is made explicit in the Book of Esther (4th century BCE) of the Tanakh