jews

Verb

jews

1. (offensive) Third-person singular simple present indicative form of jew.

The Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים‎ "Yehudim" IPA: jɛhuːdiːm), also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and 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. 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 currently enjoy political autonomy in the State of Israel, which is located in their national homeland, the Land of Israel. They have also experienced political autonomy twice during ancient history. 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. 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 13–14 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. (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.) These numbers include all those who consider themselves Jews whether or not affiliated with a Jewish organization. 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.

Quotes about Jews

Contents

• 1 Sourced
• 2 Disputed
• 3 Misattributed
• 4 See also
• 5 External links

Sourced

Listed alphabetically by author.

• I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of the other sect, who believe, or pretend to believe that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.
  • John Adams, in a letter to F. A. Vanderkemp (16 February 1809), as quoted in The Roots of American Order (1974) by Russel Kirk.
  • Paraphrased variant: The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.

• Some people take offense when it is suggested that the Jews killed Christ. Personally, I'm proud to say that we did our part.
  • Jacob Appel, American playwright, Causa Mortis

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Thu Sep 2 23:31:16 2010