Jews

Jews (}}, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah and traditionally adhering 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 within the Canaanite peoples to establish Israel and Judah in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. 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 their ancestors and God. The Babylonian captivity of the people of Judah following their kingdom's destruction, the movement of Jewish groups around the Mediterranean during the Hellenistic period, and subsequent periods of conflict and violent dispersion, such as the Jewish–Roman wars, gave rise to the Jewish diaspora, which is a worldwide dispersion of Jewish communities that have 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). 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, 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, governance, business, art, music, comedy, theatre, cinema, architecture, food, medicine, and religion. Jews founded Christianity and had an indirect but profound influence on Islam. In these ways and others, Jews have played a significant role in the development of Western culture. Provided by Wikipedia