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Jewish identity is the objective or subjective sense of perceiving oneself as a Jew and as relating to being Jewish. [1] It encompasses elements of nationhood, [2] [3] [4] ethnicity, [5] religion, and culture.
It comprises cultural values, basic human values, mythology and religious beliefs of both Judaism and Christianity [53] Literary and theatrical expressions of secular Jewish culture may be in specifically Jewish languages such as Hebrew, Yiddish, Judeo-Tat or Ladino, or it may be in the language of the surrounding cultures, such as English or ...
The prehistory and ethnogenesis of the Jews are closely intertwined with archaeology, biology, historical textual records, mythology, and religious literature. The ethnic stock to which Jews originally trace their ancestry was a confederation of Iron Age Semitic-speaking tribes known as the Israelites that inhabited a part of Canaan during the ...
Jewish ethnic divisions refer to many distinctive communities within the world's Jewish population.Although "Jewish" is considered an ethnicity itself, there are distinct ethnic subdivisions among Jews, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, mixing with local communities, and subsequent independent evolutions.
This includes 4.9 million adults who identify their religion as Jewish, 1.2 million Jewish adults who identify with no religion, and 1.6 million Jewish children. [71] The American Jewish Yearbook population survey had placed the number of American Jews at 6.4 million, or approximately 2.1% of the total population. This figure is significantly ...
Jewish religious movements, sometimes called "denominations", include diverse groups within Judaism which have developed among Jews from ancient times. Samaritans are also considered ethnic Jews by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, although they are frequently classified by experts as a sister Hebrew people, who practice a separate branch of Israelite religion.
Righteousness, according to Jewish belief, was not restricted to those who accepted the Jewish religion. Maimonides regards the righteous among the nations who carried into practice the seven fundamental laws of the covenant with Noah and his descendants as participants in the felicity of the hereafter . [ 41 ]
Jewish people in the diaspora were united by a common history, although this did not create a unified society. Jacob Katz writes that Jews in the diaspora saw themselves as members of the same nation, and maintained educational, civil, and religious institutions based on a common tradition, although they varied from place to place. Jewish ...