|
Y DNA studies tend to imply a small number of founders in an old population whose members parted and followed different migration paths.[110] In most Jewish populations, these male line ancestors appear to have been mainly Middle Eastern. For example, Ashkenazi Jews share more common paternal lineages with other Jewish and Middle Eastern groups than with non-Jewish populations in areas where Jews lived in Eastern Europe, Germany and the French Rhine Valley. This is consistent with Jewish traditions in placing most Jewish paternal origins in the region of the Middle East.[111][112] The maternal lineages of Jewish populations, studied by looking at mitochondrial DNA, are generally more heterogeneous.[113] Scholars such as Harry Ostrer and Raphael Falk believe this indicates that many Jewish males found new mates from European and other communities in the places where they migrated in the diaspora after fleeing ancient Israel.[114] In contrast, Behar has found evidence that about 40% of Ashkenazi Jews originate maternally from just four female founders, who were of Middle Eastern origin. The populations of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish communities "showed no evidence for a narrow founder effect."[113] Subsequent studies carried out by Feder et al. confirmed the huge portion of non-local maternal origin among Ashkenazi Jews. Reflecting on their findings related to the maternal origin of Ashkenazi Jews, the authors conclude "Clearly, the differences between Jews and non-Jews are far larger than those observed among the Jewish communities. Hence, differences between the Jewish communities can be overlooked when non-Jews are included in the comparisons."[115] Beside Ashkenazi Jews, evidence for founder females of Middle Eastern origin has been found in all other major Jewish groups[116][117] Studies of autosomal DNA, which look at the entire DNA mixture, have become increasingly important as the technology develops. They show that Jewish populations have tended to form relatively closely related groups in independent communities, with most in a community sharing significant ancestry in common.[118] For Jewish populations of the diaspora, the genetic composition of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi Jewish populations show a predominant amount of shared Middle Eastern ancestry. According to Behar, the most parsimonious explanation for this shared Middle Eastern ancestry is that it is "consistent with the historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant" and "the dispersion of the people of ancient Israel throughout the Old World".[119] North African, Italian and others of Iberian origin show variable frequencies of admixture with non-Jewish historical host populations among the maternal lines. In the case of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews (in particular Moroccan Jews), who are apparently closely related, the non-Jewish component is mainly southern European. Behar et al. have remarked on an especially close relationship to modern Italians.[119][120][121] The studies show that the Bene Israel and Cochin Jews of India, Beta Israel of Ethiopia, and a portion of the Lemba people of southern Africa, while more closely resembling the local populations of their native countries, have some ancient Jewish descent.[122][123][124][117] Demographics Further information: Jewish population by country Population centers Main article: Jewish population by urban areas Country[34] Jews, № Jews, % Israel Israel 5,916,200[125] 75.52% United States United States 5,275,000 1.71% France France 483,500 0.77% Canada Canada 375,000 1.11% United Kingdom United Kingdom 292,000 0.47% Brazil Brazil 207,329 0.10% Russia Russia 205,000 0.15% Argentina Argentina 182,300 0.45% Germany Germany 119,000 0.15% Australia Australia 107,500 0.50% Ukraine Ukraine 71,500 0.16% South Africa South Africa 70,800 0.14% Hungary Hungary 48,600 0.49% Mexico Mexico 39,400 0.04% Belgium Belgium 30,300 0.28% Netherlands Netherlands 30,000 0.18% Italy Italy 28,400 0.05% World 13,558,300 0.21% According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics there were 13,421,000 Jews worldwide in 2009, roughly 0.19% of the world's population at the time.[126] According to the 2007 estimates of The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, the world's Jewish population is 13.2 million.[127] Adherents.com cites figures ranging from 12 to 18 million.[128] These statistics incorporate both practicing Jews affiliated with synagogues and the Jewish community, and approximately 4.5 million unaffiliated and secular Jews. Israel Main article: Israeli Jews Israel, the Jewish nation-state, is the only country in which Jews make up a majority of the citizens.[129] Israel was established as an independent democratic and Jewish state on May 14, 1948.[130] Of the 120 members in its parliament, the Knesset,[131] currently, 12 members of the Knesset are Arab citizens of Israel, most representing Arab political parties. One of Israel's Supreme Court judges is also an Arab citizen of Israel.[132] Between 1948 and 1958, the Jewish population rose from 800,000 to two million.[133] Currently, Jews account for 75.4% of the Israeli population, or 6 million people.[134][135] The early years of the State of Israel were marked by the mass immigration of Holocaust survivors and Jews fleeing Arab lands.[136] Israel also has a large population of Ethiopian Jews, many of whom were airlifted to Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s.[137] Between 1974 and 1979 nearly 227,258 immigrants arrived in Israel, about half being from the Soviet Union.[138] This period also saw an increase in immigration to Israel from Western Europe, Latin America, and North America.[139] A trickle of immigrants from other communities has also arrived, including Indian Jews and others, as well as some descendants of Ashkenazi Holocaust survivors who had settled in countries such as the United States, Argentina, Australia, Chile, and South Africa. Some Jews have emigrated from Israel elsewhere, because of economic problems or disillusionment with political conditions and the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict. Jewish Israeli emigrants are known as yordim.[140] Diaspora (outside Israel) Main article: Jewish diaspora The waves of immigration to the United States and elsewhere at the turn of the 19th century, the founding of Zionism and later events, including pogroms in Russia, the massacre of European Jewry during the Holocaust, and the founding of the state of Israel, with the subsequent Jewish exodus from Arab lands, all resulted in substantial shifts in the population centers of world Jewry by the end of the 20th century.[141] Public Hanukkah menorah in Nicosia, Cyprus In this Rosh Hashana 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 fled the pogroms of the Russian Empire to the safety of the U.S. between 1881 and 1924.[142] More than half of the Jews live in the Diaspora (see Population table). Currently, the largest Jewish community outside Israel, and either the largest or second-largest Jewish community in the world, is located in the United States, with 5.2 million to 6.4 million Jews by various estimates. Elsewhere in the Americas, there are also large Jewish populations in Canada (315,000), Argentina (180,000-300,000), and Brazil (196,000-600,000), and smaller populations in Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Chile, and several other countries (see History of the Jews in Latin America).[143] Demographers disagree on whether the United States has a larger Jewish population than Israel, with many maintaining that Israel surpassed the United States in Jewish population during the 2000s, while others maintain that the United States still has the largest Jewish population in the world. Currently, a major national Jewish population survey is planned to ascertain whether or not Israel has overtaken the United States in Jewish population.[144] Western Europe's largest Jewish community, and the third-largest Jewish community in the world, can be found in France, home to between 483,000 and 500,000 Jews, the majority of whom are immigrants or refugees from North African Arab countries such as Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia (or their descendants).[145] The United Kingdom has a Jewish community of 292,000. In Eastern Europe, there are anywhere from 350,000 to one million Jews living in the former Soviet Union, but exact figures are difficult to establish. In Germany, the 102,000 Jews registered with the Jewish community are a slowly declining population,[146] despite the immigration of tens of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union since the fall of the Berlin Wall.[147] Thousands of Israelis also live in Germany, either permanently or temporarily, for economic reasons.[148] The Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East were home to around 900,000 Jews in 1945. Fueled by anti-Zionism[149] 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 all Arab nations combined.[150] Iran is home to almost 9,000 Jews, and has the second-largest Jewish population in the Middle East after Israel. From 1948 to 1953, about one-third of Iranian Jews, most of them poor, emigrated to Israel. Before the 1979 revolution, there were 100,000 Jews living in the country. After the revolution, most of them left Iran for Israel, Europe, or the United States. Most Iranian-Jewish emigres, along with many non-Jewish Iranians, went to the US, especially Los Angeles, where the principal Iranian community is called "Tehrangeles".[150][151] Outside Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and the rest of Asia, there are significant Jewish populations in Australia (120,000) and South Africa (70,000).[150] There is also a 7,000-strong community in New Zealand. Demographic changes Main article: Historical Jewish population comparisons Assimilation Main article: Jewish 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.[152] Assimilation took place in all areas, and during all time periods,[152] with some Jewish communities, for example the Kaifeng Jews of China, disappearing entirely.[153] The advent of the Jewish Enlightenment of the 18th century (see Haskalah) and the subsequent emancipation of the Jewish populations of Europe and America in the 19th century, accelerated the situation, encouraging 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.[154] Rates of interreligious marriage vary widely: In the United States, it is just under 50%,[155] in the United Kingdom, around 53%; in France; around 30%,[156] and in Australia and Mexico, as low as 10%.[157][158] In the United States, only about a third of children from intermarriages affiliate with Jewish religious practice.[159] The result is that most countries in the Diaspora have steady or slightly declining religiously Jewish populations as Jews continue to assimilate into the countries in which they live. War and persecution Main article: Persecution of Jews Further information: Antisemitism, Orientalism, Islam and antisemitism, History of antisemitism and New antisemitism World War I poster shows a soldier cutting the bonds from a Jewish man, who says, "You have cut my bonds and set me free - now let me help you set others free!" The Jewish people and Judaism have experienced various persecutions throughout Jewish history. During late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages the Roman Empire (in its later phases known as the Byzantine Empire) repeatedly repressed the Jewish population, first by ejecting them from their homelands during the pagan Roman era and later by officially establishing them as second-class citizens during the Christian Roman era.[160][161] According to James 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."[162] Later in medieval Western Europe, further persecutions of Jews in the name of Christianity occurred, notably during the Crusades—when Jews all over Germany were massacred—and a series of expulsions from England, Germany, France, and, in the largest expulsion of all, Spain and Portugal after the Reconquista (the Catholic Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula), where both unbaptized Sephardic Jews and the ruling Muslim Moors were expelled.[163][164] In the Papal States, which existed until 1870, Jews were required to live only in specified neighborhoods called ghettos.[165] In the 19th and (before the end of World War II) 20th centuries, the Roman Catholic Church adhered to a distinction between "good antisemitism" and "bad antisemitism". The "bad" kind promoted hatred of Jews because of their descent. This was considered un-Christian because the Christian message was intended for all of humanity regardless of ethnicity; anyone could become a Christian. The "good" kind criticized alleged Jewish conspiracies to control newspapers, banks, and other institutions, to care only about accumulation of wealth, etc.[166] Islam and Judaism have a complex relationship. Traditionally Jews and Christians living in Muslim lands, known as dhimmis, were allowed to practice their religions and administer their internal affairs, but they were subject to certain conditions.[167] They had to pay the jizya (a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-Muslim males) to the Islamic state.[167] Dhimmis had an inferior status under Islamic rule. They had several social and legal disabilities such as prohibitions against bearing arms or giving testimony in courts in cases involving Muslims.[168] Many of the disabilities were highly symbolic. The one described by Bernard Lewis as "most degrading"[169] was the requirement of distinctive clothing, not found in the Quran or hadith but invented in early medieval Baghdad; its enforcement was highly erratic.[169] On the other hand, Jews rarely faced martyrdom or exile, or forced compulsion to change their religion, and they were mostly free in their choice of residence and profession.[170] Notable exceptions include the massacre of Jews and/or forcible conversion of some Jews by the rulers of the Almohad dynasty in Al-Andalus in the 12th century,[171] as well as in Islamic Persia,[172] and the forced confinement of Moroccan Jews to walled quarters known as mellahs beginning from the 15th century and especially in the early 19th century.[173] In modern times, it has become commonplace for standard antisemitic themes to be conflated with anti-Zionist publications and pronouncements of Islamic movements such as Hezbollah and Hamas, in the pronouncements of various agencies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and even in the newspapers and other publications of Turkish Refah Partisi."[174] Jews in Minsk, 1941. Before World War II some 40% of the population was Jewish. By the time the Red Army retook the city on 3 July 1944, there were only a few Jewish survivors. 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;[163] the Spanish Inquisition (led by Torquemada) and the Portuguese Inquisition, with their persecution and autos-da-fé against the New Christians and Marrano Jews;[175] the Bohdan Chmielnicki Cossack massacres in Ukraine;[176] the Pogroms backed by the Russian Tsars;[177] as well as expulsions from Spain, Portugal, England, France, Germany, and other countries in which the Jews had settled.[164] According to a 2008 study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, 19.8% of the modern Iberian population has Sephardic Jewish ancestry,[178] indicating that the number of conversos may have been much higher than originally thought.[179][180] The persecution reached a peak in Nazi Germany's Final Solution, which led to the Holocaust and the slaughter of approximately 6 million Jews.[181] Of the world's 15 million Jews in 1939, more than a third were killed in The Holocaust.[182][183] The Holocaust — the state-led systematic persecution and genocide of European Jews (and certain communities of North African Jews in European controlled North Africa) and other minority groups of Europe during World War II by Germany and its collaborators remains the most notable modern day persecution of Jews.[184] The persecution and genocide were accomplished in stages. Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II.[185] Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labour until they died of exhaustion or disease.[186] Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings.[187] Jews and Roma were crammed into ghettos before being transported hundreds of miles by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were killed in gas chambers.[188] Virtually every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal nation."[189] Migrations Etching of the expulsion of the Jews from Frankfurt on August 23, 1614. The text says: "1380 persons old and young were counted at the exit of the gate" Jews fleeing pogroms, 1882 Throughout Jewish history, Jews have repeatedly been directly or indirectly expelled from both their original homeland and many of the areas in which they have settled. This experience as refugees has shaped Jewish identity and religious practice in many ways, and is thus a major element of Jewish history.[190] The incomplete list of major and other noteworthy migrations that follows includes numerous instances of expulsion or departure under duress: The patriarch Abraham was a migrant to the land of Canaan from Ur of the Chaldees[191] after an attempt on his life by King Nimrod.[192] The Children of Israel experienced the Exodus (meaning "departure" or "exit" in Greek) from ancient Egypt, as recorded in the Book of Exodus.[193] The Kingdom of Israel was sent into permanent exile by Assyria, initially to the Upper Mesopotamian provinces of the Assyrian Empire,[194] from whence they scattered all over the world (or at least to unknown locations).[195] The Kingdom of Judah was exiled by Babylonia,[196] then returned to Judea by Cyrus the Great of the Persian Achaemenid Empire,[197] and then many were exiled again by the Roman Empire.[198] 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, settled wherever they could live freely enough to practice their religion. Over the course of the diaspora the center of Jewish life moved from Babylonia[199] to the Iberian Peninsula[200] to Poland[201] to the United States[202] and, as a result of Zionism, back to Israel.[203] 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.[204] 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 Southern Europe and the Middle East.[205] 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).[206] 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.[207] The Pogroms in Eastern Europe,[177] the rise of modern antisemitism,[208] the Holocaust,[209] and the rise of Arab nationalism[210] 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.[203] The Islamic Revolution of Iran caused many Iranian 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.[211] When the Soviet Union collapsed, many of the Jews in the affected territory (who had been refuseniks) were suddenly allowed to leave. This produced a wave of migration to Israel in the early 1990s.[140] Growth A man praying at the Western Wall Israel is the only country with a Jewish population that is consistently growing through natural population increase, though the Jewish populations of other countries, in Europe and North America, have recently increased through immigration. In the Diaspora, in almost every country the Jewish population in general is either declining or steady, but Orthodox and Haredi Jewish communities, whose members often shun birth control for religious reasons, have experienced rapid population growth.[212] Orthodox and Conservative Judaism discourage proselytism to non-Jews, but many Jewish groups have tried to reach out to the assimilated Jewish communities of the Diaspora in order for them to reconnect to their Jewish roots. 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.[213] 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 25 years, there has been a trend (known as the Baal Teshuva movement) for secular Jews to become more religiously observant, though the demographic implications of the trend are unknown.[214] Additionally, there is also a growing rate of conversion to Jews by Choice of gentiles who make the decision to head in the direction of becoming Jews.[215] |
About us|Jobs|Help|Disclaimer|Advertising services|Contact us|Sign in|Website map|Search|
GMT+8, 2015-9-11 21:03 , Processed in 0.179302 second(s), 16 queries .
