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One month into the war in Ukraine, we have an assessment. The war looks very different than people expected. Russian invaders were expected to seize the capital quickly. Instead, Russia's military reputation is shattered, though Russian artillery and missiles have destroyed many buildings and many lives. That is the situation as President Biden meets NATO leaders in Europe this week. Our assessment of the war comes from there and from here. NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman covers the U.S. military. NPR's Tim Mak has covered the war since he arrived in Kyiv last month on one of the last commercial flights into the country.
Tim, let's start with you in Ukraine. How has the country changed in this past month?
TIM MAK, BYLINE: The first thing that comes to mind is what has happened with civilians. Now, the U.N. has said that 3.6 million people have left Ukraine to escape the war, and millions more have had to leave their homes. But something that happens when you have a number that large is that it can obscure the reality on the ground, that for every single one of those people, there were dreams and aspirations that they had for the place they lived, and these are aspirations that are now eliminated or at the very least postponed. For many of them, it's been stressful trips on crowded train cars with crying toddlers and hours of waiting in the dark, wondering what's going to happen next. And over the past month, I've seen blank stares and anxiety of fleeing women and children. I've seen the care that many Ukrainians have for their pets, the dogs and cats and even rabbits that residents of Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine have taken with them as they travel across Ukraine to escape to safety. And I've seen the hope, despite the war, and the happiness that comes when loved ones are still together.
INSKEEP: Tim, stay with us. I'm going to bring Tom Bowman into the conversation. And, Tom, didn't Pentagon officials expect a different war than the one that has evolved?
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: There was an expectation - get this, Steve - that the Russians could take Kyiv in as little as two days and maybe take the entire country in about two weeks. So what's surprising is just how bad the Russians are across the board. They're having problems with coordinating their aircraft, armor and troops into one powerful fist. They lack leadership, supplies even - both food and fuel. They've not gained any of their objectives after a month. They've not taken Kyiv. And now small Ukrainian forces are actually pushing back the Russians in the suburbs northwest of Kyiv. And for at least a week or not - more, the Russians have been stuck eight miles outside of Kyiv to the northwest, 18 miles to the east. And they've not moved, again, in quite some time.
The other big surprise is how hard the Ukrainians are fighting in these small units and making particularly a very good use of anti-tank weapons, like around Kyiv, and also using anti-aircraft weapons to shoot down Russian helicopters and jets. Steve, the assumption was Ukrainians would mount a stiff counterinsurgency after a quick Russian victory. Instead, we're seeing the Ukrainians fight like terriers right off the bat and denying the Russians pretty much everything.
INSKEEP: Tim, what are you hearing from the troops who are fighting that battle on the Ukrainian side?
MAK: I think what I've been hearing about is a lot of pride in outperforming the world's expectations. I'm told over and over again by Ukrainians that they thought the prospect of an all-out war was overhyped. They never thought it would actually happen. And so in the first days of the war, soldiers all across the country were hastily putting together fighting positions and checkpoints. They had a lot of nervous men with guns lining the road without much training and poor trigger discipline.
BOWMAN: You know, I was talking to a Ukrainian general who raised a very good point. He said, you people - meaning the U.S. and NATO - have been fighting a counterinsurgency for 20 years. We've actually been fighting a conventional war against the Russians in the Donbas area. He said every general has experience fighting the Russians with tanks and armor and aircraft and artillery. So I think that's why you're seeing the Ukrainians do so well. And I think that's what the Pentagon failed to see, was these were hardened troops fighting the Russians for many years in the eastern part of their country.
INSKEEP: Tim Mak, have the Ukrainians then been able to take that skill and bring it up to scale, become more and more skilled as they've spent the past month fighting the Russians on a large scale?
MAK: I think that what's really happened is that there have been these success stories that Tom's been talking about that have really proliferated, and so you do see an evolution of the attitude of regular troops, that these checkpoints and the soldiers that are at them, they become a little bit more relaxed, especially away from the front lines, you know, whereas in the first days of the war, I - myself, you know, I'm a foreign journalist - I would have been regularly confronted, asked for my passport. And that just hasn't happened nearly as much over the past week. And, you know, in some of these military checkpoints, I'm seeing smiles and jokes. We even saw an impromptu barbecue at a checkpoint outside Odesa earlier this week.
INSKEEP: Tom Bowman, I want to ask about the next couple of weeks. It's speculated that perhaps Russian forces are running low on ammunition, running low on missiles, running low on food, running low on supplies.
BOWMAN: Right. And some military analysts are saying this could be over for the Russians in 10 days or so if they don't get resupplies or get more troops in. People I talk with say, listen; don't count the Russians out just yet. They still have a lot of combat power, especially missiles and artillery that you're seeing being used not only in Kyiv but also this scorched-earth policy, especially in the south around Mariupol. Now, the Russians could possibly break out and move closer to Kyiv and then start hammering the city even more. They're trying to box in Ukrainian forces in the east, around the Donbas area. And that's where roughly half the Ukrainian army is located. But again, you know, military intelligence officials say the Russians are expected to bring in Russian replacement troops from either the Russian mainland or outside the country from maybe places like Georgia or maybe Syria. But again, the Russians are not doing well at all. And they may, in the end, just go to this scorched-earth policy, just hammer and hammer the cities into, basically, oblivion.
INSKEEP: Tim Mak, what's the human cost of that?
MAK: Right now we're hearing a lot of the stories of the war from the eyes of civilians who are fleeing west into safer areas. And earlier this week, I spoke to a man named Arytom (ph). He had been in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, a few years ago as a sniper. He talked about holding an 18-year-old friend as he died. He recounted his friend was asking if he was going to be OK. I think a lot more of these stories will start to filter out to the public soon. From a human perspective, the situation is improving for Ukrainians logistically. As we traveled west, I saw truck after truck after truck carrying fuel and food eastwards and in Kyiv and east in the country. And I think we'll see some continuing resilience of Ukrainian citizens who are living under constant threat of bombardment everywhere across the country.
INSKEEP: NPR's Tim Mak is finishing a month of reporting in Ukraine. Tim, thanks for all your work. Really appreciate it.
MAK: Thank you.
INSKEEP: And we were also joined by NPR's Tom Bowman, who has covered the past month of war from the Pentagon. Tom, thanks to you.
BOWMAN: You're welcome, Steve. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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Prominent gay rights magazine honors Pope on 77th birthday
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The oldest gay rights magazine in the United States named Pope Francis its "Person of the Year" as the pontiff marked his 77th birthday on Tuesday by inviting homeless people to join him for breakfast in the Vatican.
The Advocate magazine said it gave Francis the honor because, although he is still against homosexual marriage, his pontificate so far had shown "a stark change in (anti-gay) rhetoric from his two predecessors".
It hailed as a landmark his famous response last July to a reporter who asked about gay people in the Church: "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?"
The Advocate noted that the Catholic gay organisation "Equally Blessed" called the phrase "some of the most encouraging words a pontiff has ever spoken about gay and lesbian people".
The Vatican has stressed the Pope's words did not change Church teachings that homosexual tendencies are not sinful but homosexual acts are.
Still, the gay community and many heterosexuals in the Church have welcomed what they see as a shift in emphasis and a call for the Church to be more compassionate and less condemning.
The Advocate said no-one should "underestimate any pope's capacity for persuading hearts and minds in opening to LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual) people".
Last week, Time magazine gave Francis the same honor, crediting him with shifting the message of the Catholic Church towards mercy and away from condemnation while capturing the imagination of millions.
The Vatican said the Pope, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario of Argentina, marked his 77th birthday with his customary morning Mass in the guest house where he has opted to live instead of spacious papal apartments used by his predecessors.
Four homeless people who live on the streets near the Vatican were invited to take part by a Vatican official who administers the Pope's charity and stayed for breakfast with the Pope and his aides, the Vatican said.

subset: commoncrawl


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Scribendi.com Utilizes Social Media to Gain "Likes" and Followers
Local business launches iPad giveaway to reward fans and followers
June 9, 2010
Scribendi.com has led competitors in the online editing and proofreading industry since 1997, and we have secured our leadership position by embracing social media and launching an online iPad Giveaway. This social media campaign aims to reward our Facebook fans and Twitter followers, many of whom are our loyal customers, with the chance to win one of two Apple iPads.
"We have a lot of fun with things like Facebook and Twitter, and we know the iPad is a hot commodity right now," said Chandra Clarke, president of Scribendi.com. "We thought it was a great idea to reward our fans with a chance to win one of these."
When Scribendi.com reaches 5,000 fans on both Facebook and Twitter, we will give away two iPads; one to a Facebook fan and one to a follower on Twitter. Our Facebook and Twitter profiles feature free and informative resources, such as writing advice for business professionals, students, corporations and governments, people who speak English as a second language, authors, and people wanting to improve their writing.
"In addition to offering professional editing and proofreading services, we want to offer free resources to our customers and fans to help them improve their writing," explained Clarke. "What better way to do this than share our articles and advice directly with our customers through Facebook and Twitter."


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General Info: email@example.com
Volunteer Info: firstname.lastname@example.com
History as written by Founder Mike Morgan:
I started this blog after watching the pure nonsense on TV where Congress and the public were outraged about $185 million in AIG bonuses, while companies like Goldman Sachs walked quietly out the back door with $180 billion. For most Americans, they have no idea what a billion is. Hey folks, it's 1,000 millions. So while you were watching the penny, companies like Goldman Sachs walked off with $10 bills. Goldman Sachs walked off with more than $12 billion.
So after watching guys like Carney Frank run the circus in Washington, I decided to put this blog up to have a place to vent a bit, and maybe educate a few folks. That's when Goldman Sachs decided to tell me I could not do what I was doing. They sent a cease and desist letter, and I filed a Complaint in the United States District Court.
The next thing you know, I am being written up in thousands of blogs and a few newspapers overseas. You see, not a single U.S. newspaper would dare write anything about this, because that would draw the wrath of Goldman Sachs. In fact, only Bloomberg mentioned this website on TV . . . once. After a few weeks of blog attention and foreign media, the New York Post finally had the guts to do a piece about this website.
As for me personally, I was a Registered Investment Advisor, so I got to see and experience the power and clout of Goldman Sachs. I have shut down my investment business as a result of my heart attack and bypass surgery. I also own a real estate brokerage in Florida http://www.floridahomes.pro/ which I am in the process of transferring to my assistant. And my Internet skills come from my former corporate life, which is now a boutique Internet Marketing company, m3 Interactive. After my bypass surgery, I also transferred my Internet Marketing business to the Director of Operations.
October 2009 Update - As many of you know I had a heart attack and bypass surgery at the end of May. Although I am back to work, I have had to cut a lot of my former projects out of my life. I was simply working too many hours. This is one project I have had to cut back on, so that is why things seem a bit weak since mid-May through the end of September. That is when all of my 666 sites were turned over to a terrific group of volunteers that will carry on the work.
I applaud the volunteers and hope the Team continues to grow. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan have taken over the financial system and own our government. If Americans really cared guys like Larry Flynt, Glenn Beck and Michael Moore would put their money where their big, loud, hypocritcal yaps are. But these phonies, just like the Banksters are only interested in their own pockets. I feel sorry for the next generation. What Goldman Sachs and the others have done is criminal and has been approved by the politicians we elected to protect us.
So please contact the lead volunteer, Larry Rubinoff, who is now directing all efforts on the 666 blogs. See below.
Update from Larry Rubinoff - Oct. 6, 2009
While Mike is taking a necessary and well deserved break from GoldmanSachs666.com and the other 666 blogs he created, the effort is still very much alive and ongoing.
I have stepped in and up to the plate to take over the day to day operations of the site. This effort is too important and the message we bring is vital to the future of our nation. I am committed to this effort along with my effort (forgive the plug) on TheMortgageCornerFORUM .
Both Mike and I have used the phrase, " WAKE UP AMERICA" as that is what we need to do to wrestle back control of our country from those that have taken it away from us.
The "truth" needs to be told and will continue to be told here.
I can be reached by email at mailto:email@example.com
Should you have any questions or comments, please contact me directly: email@example.com
Beware the words of Meyer Rothschild, the creator of the Central Banking system we call the Federal Reserve, whose plan in the late 1700's was to control the world by controlling the world's economies., a plan still in effect today by his heirs and by those he put into financial power.
"Let me control the money of a nation and I care not who makes its' laws".
It is now 2011 and much has happened since MIke founded this site. Much has been exposed about Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citi and the others but very little has been done. Our government continues to aid and abet, The Federal Reserve continues to lead this organized crime ring and the American people, you and I are paying the ultimate price (to them) for their actions.
Mike Morgan is officially retired from this and the other 666 sites and as I have said earlier, I now own, control and publish them. Our goal is still the same. Expose them for who and what they really are and work towards getting justice served. Criminal acts and criminals regardless of who they are or how much money they have should be punished.
My background has been in Real Estate and Finance with my heaviest concentration in the mortgage industry since 1994. It was the actions of the big banks in conjunction with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, The Federal Reserve and our Federal Government that prompted me to enter the blogging world. I first published www.TheMortgageCorner.org - a web site - to begin to set the record straight as to all of the allegations and blame that was being put on the mortgage industry as big brother and his bank of merry banks were throwing off their blame and laying it on us. As a result, it wiped out most of the mortgage broker/lender industry, myself and many of my friends. I began to write to express my feelings and beliefs and to make the public aware of "the truth" in hopes that someone out there in our justice system would take appropriate actions against the wrongs and continued crimes of our financial system and institutions.
I was a guest writer for a real estate and mortgage fraud fighting blog - flippingfrenzy.com - where again I would attempt to set the record straight.
I began at GoldmanSachs666.com also as a volunteer, guest author hoping this additional avenue would help promote the truth and expose those who were to blame. GoldmanSachs666 was an excellent forum for this as Goldman Sachs, the company, was a key player in the creation of the real estate boom and its' ultimate collapse. I believed then and still believe today that they participated with high level government official to orchestrate thie entire financial crisis which, as we have seen, they and their brethren in the financial industry have profited so greatly from.
When Mike had his heart attack and announced the need to step back, he also announced to us volunteers that he would have to shut the sites down due to his limited time availability. It was at that pint that I decided that the site MUST continue and I stepped in to take over.
In March, 2010, I too had a heart attack and I too had open heart surgery in May of 2010. During my absence other volunteer - specifically RobertM stepped in to publish daily and keep the blog alive.
Mike Morgan had created several other ...666 sites, BarackObama666.com, JPMorgan666.com and HankPaulson666.com. In addition he had registered several other ...666 domains which I also inherited. The undertaking of operating several blogs of this nature, each aimed at a similar audience but targeting a specific agenda, was and still is a massive undertaking especially for folks recovering from heart surgery. It was with much regret that I slowly diminished publishing in all but the GS666 site even giving up my original MortgageCornerFORUM blog.
I have recently taken another needed break from writing (not publishing) am have been very grateful to Joyce R. for volunteering her time and talents in maintaining our daily publishing.
I hope this brings many of you up to date on who we are. We (I) am still here with the same level of commitment to expose the truth and punish the guilty. This site will continue on.
There is still much work to be done and many of you have written recently as a result of the Telegraph article of 2009 reappearing and getting attention via reprints in several other blogs. There have been new offers of help and volunteering as well as some donations which are badly needed.
I have always maintained that "Together We Can Make a Difference". I welcome your help and input.
FLORIDA BLOGGER WAGES WAR ON STREET Giant
New York Post
April 14, 2009
And if you Google "mike morgan" "goldman sachs" you will find dozens and dozens of articles and blog posts from around the globe.


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Some of this website in now available in French!
Certaines sections du site sont disponibles en français.
The very diverse experience of Canadians during the Great War 1914-1918 has been largely obscured by dominant national histories both in print and on-line. Although the national story remains important, we recognize that the way individuals experienced the war varied greatly from community to community. The farmer in Trois Rivieres, the office worker in Toronto and the Chinese merchant in Victoria lived through those turbulent times in very different ways. Their attitudes and decisions were shaped more by their local circumstances than by any grand national theme. Religion, education, geography, class, gender and ethnic origin all played a role. Our focus allows us to gather together a useful body of primary source material in an on-line archive together with a robust set of service records to support research into the lived experience of the very diverse communities that are the component parts of our cities. For our purposes, a community might be defined by a local neighbourhood, a common workplace, a place of worship, a school or even membership in a social club or sports team. These very local communities can have a powerful influence on attitudes and behavior particularly during times of dramatic change. Our aim is to tell the stories of these diverse communities by providing a digital platform for researchers studying Canadian cities in the Great War.
Cities at War
Victoria at War
The site has been launched using the City of Victoria as a model for the approach. The Victoria site provides some initial contextual material to set the stage for the researcher. Research is supported by an on-line archive of primary source material and a database of over 6000 service records. During the four years spanning the Great War centennial, the History Department at the University of Victoria will offer a microhistory course that will lead teams of researchers to work with community groups, develop additional linked micro-history web sites, and add further material to the archive and records of service database available on this site.
You may now download a recently completed paper on Victoria in the Great War. Kempling_James_PhD_2019
Saanich at War
The Saanich Archives has generously supported A City Goes to War by contributing more than 100 documents to the document archive. You can learn more about Saanich and view documents relating to Saanich under the "Cities" tab at the top of the page.
Add your community here
If you are interested in adding your community to this project we can help. Contact Jim Kempling at (250) 658-8546
The Teaching Package
Our teaching package encourages students and teachers in secondary schools to begin the fascinating detective work that is the essence of historical research. Although the initial set of material is focused on Victoria, it is easily adaptable to other communities. Students can explore the history of their community by building a "Fakebook" page that parallels the popular Facebook model using primary source material about real people.
A Digital Platform for Micro History
As researchers work with our material, we invited them to share additional archival material uncovered by their research. We also offer a peer reviewed platform for the publication of that research by hosting micro-history websites developed primarily in a WordPress environment. Any research material added to this site will be covered by a creative commons license. [fb_button]


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Deluxe Anti-Exposure Coverall & Work Suit – Orange/Black – XXXL
Mustang Survival's MS2175 Deluxe Anti-Exposure Coverall and Flotation Work Suit are designed with Mustang's Airsoft™ foam for a light and comfortable fit. Comfort Cuff™ technology creates a relaxed, comfortable fit around the wrists, and is matched by the overall relaxed and comfortable fit of the suit design.
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When I was around six years old, I begged my parents for a younger sister. When she failed to materialize, I dreamed up Shelly, who showed up in family portraits I drew in art class with a frilly dress and a Pebbles ponytail. When friends came over, I told them she was with the babysitter. At school, I bragged about my bottle-feeding skills. After my teacher made a concerned phone call about my lies, my mother-a journalist and feminist activist who had me at 42-sat me on her lap, and we had a surprisingly candid conversation about why she wasn't going to have another baby. In her late 40s, she could have copped out and told me that biology wouldn't let her. Instead, she brushed a curl from my face and said: "We're happy with just you."
I thought about this moment halfway through Lauren Sandler's new book, One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child, and the Joy of Being One, when the author turns to the question of what happiness means for parents. Does it mean fulfilling one's biological or God-given purpose to reproduce? Or does it mean having the freedom to live the life you want to live? Sandler defends the range of options-from having no kids to having five-but One and Only seeks to redeem one particularly maligned demographic: only children and their parents, who are often viewed as selfish for depriving their kid of a sibling and society of its lifeblood. Underlying the discussion is a fundamental question-Why should we reproduce?-the essence of which comes down to "no less than the meaning of life itself."
Were my writerly parents selfish for keeping our household to three? Maybe, Sandler says, but that's okay.
These questions have never been more relevant. In the past 20 years, the percentage of American women who only bear one child has more than doubled, from 10 percent in the early 1990s (back when my small family felt like an anomaly) to more than 23 percent today. With two thirds of Americans feeling that they can't afford to have another baby post-recession, some demographers expect the number of families with only one child to surpass the Great Depression record of 30 percent. This has sparked panic among conservatives such as Jonathan Last, Phillip Longman, and the younger Ross Douthat, who warn of America's "vanishing labor supply" and impending social collapse-often with outsized, racially-tinged concern for educated white women on birth control. Sandler brings the discussion back to personal satisfaction, and rejects pronatalist alarmism by framing small families as financially and environmentally sound and pointing to our stubbornly high unemployment rate.
The first half of One and Only assures singleton parents that they aren't shortchanging their child. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, only children are not little emperors who think the world revolves around them, or pitiable weirdos alone in the sandbox. A mountain of research shows the opposite: Not only is there no evidence that only children are maladjusted, they are actually more cooperative and generous than children with siblings. There are other benefits to having an only child that stem from lack of "resource dilution": Because they are showered with more attention and their parents have more money, only children often have better vocabularies, higher rates of self esteem and early achievement, and go on to lead more successful professional lives. I often imagine an alternate universe where I grew up with a sibling: Could my parents have afforded private college for both of us? Would they have had time to assist with twice as much math homework? Or read an endless number of bedtime books?
Of course, there can be benefits to bigger families. Parents interviewed in Sandler's book expressed that multiple children "take care of each other"-both when they're small and when their parents are gone. A relationship with a sibling, and your child's relationship with their aunt or uncle, can be special and fruitful. I got to see different models side by side. I grew up knowing but not living with Michael and Kim, two much older half-siblings born to my dad's first wife in the 1950s. I witnessed the playful back-and-forth between them, and am still jealous of their shorthand and their shared memories. But as a kid, Michael was annoyed by his younger sister, who in turn felt shunned by him. They still bicker all the time. Sandler presents the sibling relationship as a game of roulette, just as likely to end up in indifference or estrangement as it is lifelong friendship. Besides, as Sandler points out, onlies tend to regard friends as surrogate siblings, with whom they are often just as close, especially in urban areas where the population is denser and it's easier to get around. Without Shelly, I ended up forming bonds with playmates a few city blocks away. Writes Sandler: "In Brooklyn, I can spontaneously take Dahlia down the block to play dress-up with her friend (while I drink wine in the kitchen with the friend's mother)."
There's a lot wrapped up in that glass of wine: For Sandler, it's just as important as Dahlia's playdate. In a society that stacks the deck against working mothers, single-child parents are often more satisfied and less-stressed out than those with more. Sandler proclaims that sex, friends, and time to curl up with a good book are worth fighting for-and these things are more easily preserved by having just one child.
The prospect of losing these things certainly made my mother nervous. "Children are a 24-hour-a day responsibility," she wrote five years before I was born, "yet parents have legitimate needs for personal freedom, privacy, and spontaneity in their lives." Childrearing is too big a job, she added, without "an unnatural degree of self-sacrifice." But as with many parents, desire overcame dogma, especially when my dad explained that he was willing to split childcare duties fifty-fifty. My father solidified our family's fate as a threesome when he made it clear that, after me, he was done reproducing. But in a sense, my mother had made the choice to have an only child years earlier, waiting until her 40s to take the plunge after decades of prioritizing not only her career, but her freedom to go on months-long reporting trips or run to a diner for blintzes at 3 a.m. After I was born, she still struggled to balance everything, but was relieved to discover that motherhood didn't obliterate her previous identity. She was lucky to have an equal partner and a flexible schedule, and yes, having an only child probably helped. The fewer kids we have, Sandler reminds us, the more manageable these priorities often become.
I'm 28, and my friends have started to diverge into two groups: the ones getting married and thinking about kids, and the ones avoiding those traps at all costs. I feel stuck in between. I'm coupled up, and often have idle late-night chats with my partner about parenthood. We both agree we want them-one day, far, far away-but we squabble about the number. He always votes for two, and I, ever my mother's daughter, stay firm at maybe one. My argument usually comes down to money, both the amount a child costs-an average of $226,920 to raise to age eighteen, according to the USDA-and the amount I stand to lose as a working mom. Just that price tag alone can be a compelling deterrent for a generation facing an economy of stagnant wages and crunched time. Sandler herself admits that if she hadn't stumbled into a larger home during the boom, she may not have had her daughter, Dahlia.
Yet the choice to have another child seldom hinges on economics alone. Sandler lambasts social scientists like Bryan Caplan who argue that multiple kids are a bang for your buck, akin to buying a second sweater for half off at the GAP. She also side-eyes the notion that anyone would stop at one to save our planet's resources. "Children are a desire, not a calculation," she writes. "It's not a rational decision." My arguments with my partner usually end up with him asking, "If we were millionaires, would you have more than one child then?" which prompts me to dig in my heels and say something dramatic like: "No. I don't want my life taken over by kids."
Because even if they're not totally rational, these decisions do have ramifications-not just in terms of controlling our own fertility, but what our lives look like once we start families. Sandler takes aim at the type of all-consuming parenthood that results from America's quarantined nuclear families. As soon as we have children, we become our own little unit, "cocooning" our families off from the rest of the world. In a nation unsupported by universal daycare, adequate parental leave, or single-payer health care, your kids are "your problem." Alice Rossie and other researchers find that Americans segregate our kids from larger society, not receiving much assistance from the community, more than pretty much everywhere else in the world.
Of course, these issues are far more of a sticking point for secular families than what Sarah Palin combatively calls the Real America, where fertility rates are compensating for secular families who decide to have one or no children. Religious families have on average five more kids than secular ones. But, Sandler quips, "none of us secularists breed to change the world." While non-religious parents may want to hang onto their autonomous pre-kid life, church-going families, who often consider childbearing a divine mandate, tend to be happier the bigger they get.
Maybe it's because childrearing is a far less isolating experience for them than it is for the typical secular family. Churches provide parents with babysitting, used clothes, and "freezers full of casseroles labeled with other women's handwriting." Hispanic and immigrant communities, another demographic steadily reproducing, tend to have multigenerational households that reduce the need for nannies and nursing homes.
I found myself growing envious reading about those casseroles and free babysitters. Unfortunately, these perks usually come with accepting a whole host of troubling gender paradigms, and most garden-variety young progressives are simply delaying the daunting prospect of parenthood, rather than actively rallying for family policy or experimenting with communal models. It's startling how quickly a conversation about raising our kids in one big brownstone is cast as a fantasy. At one point, Sandler describes her own cohousing arrangement-her family shares a house with a couple good friends-then wistfully adds that while her living situation "feels like a radical departure," it's "nothing compared to true communal responsibility for children." And even an idyllic commune would doubtless have the kinds of tradeoffs Americans so desperately try to transcend.
One of the strengths of Sandler's book is that it addresses this narrative messiness. She points out that "even if Shulamith Firestone were drafting our family policy, we'd still pay a price to parent." One and Only is peppered with lyrical anecdotes of her daily life (a tangle of limbs in a "family hug," a bedtime standoff) that seem to remind us of every family's own intense, wonderful, maddening dynamic. She admits that all the data in the world supporting only children didn't prevent ambivalent tears after her husband suggested a vasectomy. I've spent the past few years spouting reasons, logical and otherwise, for why I'll likely follow in my parents' footsteps. But, paradoxically, Sandler's defense of only childhood reminded me to prepare for my best-laid plans to explode-or at least not to freak out when my own child pencils in an imaginary sibling in her family portrait.


text:
Total population | |
14.6–17.8 millionEnlarged population (includes full or partial Jewish ancestry):20.7 million[2](2018, est.) | |
Regions with significant populations | |
Israel | |
6,558,100–6,958,300[2] | |
United States | 5,700,000–10,000,000[2] |
France | 453,000–600,000[2] |
Canada | 390,500–550,000[2] |
290,000–370,000[2] | |
Argentina | 180,300–330,000[2] |
Russia | 172,000–440,000[2] |
Germany | 116,000–225,000[2] |
Australia | 113,400–140,000[2] |
Brazil | 93,200–150,000[2] |
South Africa | 69,000–80,000[2] |
Ukraine | 50,000–140,000[2] |
Hungary | 47,400–100,000[2] |
Mexico | 40,000–50,000[2] |
Netherlands | 29,800–52,000[2] |
Belgium | 29,200–40,000[2] |
Italy | 27,500–41,000[2] |
Switzerland | 18,600–25,000[2] |
Chile | 18,300–26,000[2] |
Uruguay | 16,700–25,000[2] |
Turkey | 15,000–21,000[2] |
Sweden | 15,000–25,000[2] |
Languages | |
Religion | |
Judaism | |
Related ethnic groups |
Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים ISO 259-3 Yehudim, Israeli pronunciation [jehuˈdim]) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group[11] and a nation,[12][13][14] originating from the Israelites[15][16][17] and Hebrews[18][18] of historical Israel and Judah. Jewish ethnicity, nationhood, and religion are strongly interrelated,[20][11] as Judaism is the ethnic religion of the Jewish people, while its observance varies from strict observance to complete nonobservance.[22]
Jews originated as an ethnic and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE,[10] in the part of the Levant known as the Land of Israel.[23] The Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE (Late Bronze Age).[24][25] The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population,[26] consolidated their hold with the emergence of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as 'Hebrews'.[27] Though few sources mention the exilic periods in detail,[28] the experience of diaspora life, from the Ancient Egyptian rule over the Levant, to Assyrian captivity and exile, to Babylonian captivity and exile, to Seleucid Imperial rule, to the Roman occupation and exile, and the historical relations between Jews and their homeland thereafter, became a major feature of Jewish history, identity and memory.[29] Prior to World War II, the worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million,[30] representing around 0.7% of the world population at that time. Approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust.[31][32] Since then the population has slowly risen again, and as of 2018 was estimated at 14.6–17.8 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank,[2] less than 0.2% of the total world population.[33][1]
The modern State of Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. It defines itself as a Jewish and democratic state in the Basic Laws, Human Dignity and Liberty in particular, which is based on the Declaration of Independence. Israel's Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to Jews who have expressed their desire to settle in Israel.[35]
Despite their small percentage of the world's population, Jews have significantly influenced and contributed to human progress in many fields, both historically and in modern times, including philosophy,[36] ethics,[37] literature,[38] politics,[38] business,[38] fine arts and architecture,[38] music, theatre[39] and cinema, medicine,[40][41] and science and technology,[38] as well as religion; Jews authored the Bible,[42][43] founded Early Christianity[44] and had a profound influence on Islam.[45] Jews have also played a significant role in the development of Western Civilization.[46][47]
Total population | |
14.6–17.8 millionEnlarged population (includes full or partial Jewish ancestry):20.7 million[2](2018, est.) | |
Regions with significant populations | |
Israel | |
6,558,100–6,958,300[2] | |
United States | 5,700,000–10,000,000[2] |
France | 453,000–600,000[2] |
Canada | 390,500–550,000[2] |
290,000–370,000[2] | |
Argentina | 180,300–330,000[2] |
Russia | 172,000–440,000[2] |
Germany | 116,000–225,000[2] |
Australia | 113,400–140,000[2] |
Brazil | 93,200–150,000[2] |
South Africa | 69,000–80,000[2] |
Ukraine | 50,000–140,000[2] |
Hungary | 47,400–100,000[2] |
Mexico | 40,000–50,000[2] |
Netherlands | 29,800–52,000[2] |
Belgium | 29,200–40,000[2] |
Italy | 27,500–41,000[2] |
Switzerland | 18,600–25,000[2] |
Chile | 18,300–26,000[2] |
Uruguay | 16,700–25,000[2] |
Turkey | 15,000–21,000[2] |
Sweden | 15,000–25,000[2] |
Languages | |
Religion | |
Judaism | |
Related ethnic groups |
Name and etymology
The English word "Jew" continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe. These terms derive from Old French giu, earlier juieu, which through elision had dropped the letter "d" from the Medieval Latin Iudaeus, which, like the New Testament Greek term Ioudaios, meant both "Jew" and "Judean" / "of Judea".[48] The Greek term was a loan from Aramaic Y'hūdāi, corresponding to Hebrew יְהוּדִי Yehudi, originally the term for a member of the tribe of Judah or the people of the kingdom of Judah. According to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob.[49] Genesis 29:35 and 49:8 connect the name "Judah" with the verb yada, meaning "praise", but scholars generally agree that the name of both the patriarch and the kingdom instead have a geographic origin—possibly referring to the gorges and ravines of the region.[50]
The Hebrew word for "Jew" is יְהוּדִי Yehudi, with the plural יְהוּדִים Yehudim.[51] Endonyms in other Jewish languages include the Ladino ג׳ודיו Djudio (plural ג׳ודיוס, Djudios) and the Yiddish ייִד Yid (plural ייִדן Yidn).
The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., يَهُودِيّ yahūdī (sg.), al-yahūd (pl.), in Arabic, "Jude" in German, "judeu" in Portuguese, "Juif" (m.)/"Juive" (f.) in French, "jøde" in Danish and Norwegian, "judío/a" in Spanish, "jood" in Dutch, "żyd" in Polish etc., but derivations of the word "Hebrew" are also in use to describe a Jew, e.g., in Italian (Ebreo), in Persian ("Ebri/Ebrani" (Persian: عبری/عبرانی)) and Russian (Еврей, Yevrey).[52] The German word "Jude" is pronounced [ˈjuːdə], the corresponding adjective "jüdisch" [ˈjyːdɪʃ] (Jewish) is the origin of the word "Yiddish".[53]
According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
It is widely recognized that the attributive use of the noun Jew, in phrases such as Jew lawyer or Jew ethics, is both vulgar and highly offensive. In such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a practice that carries risks of its own. In a sentence such as There are now several Jews on the council, which is unobjectionable, the substitution of a circumlocution like Jewish people or persons of Jewish background may in itself cause offense for seeming to imply that Jew has a negative connotation when used as a noun.[54]
Who is a Jew?
Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation,[12][13][14][55][56][57] an ethnicity,[11] a religion, and a culture,[58][59][60] making the definition of who is a Jew vary slightly depending on whether a religious or national approach to identity is used.[61][62] Generally, in modern secular usage Jews include three groups: people who were born to a Jewish family regardless of whether or not they follow the religion, those who have some Jewish ancestral background or lineage (sometimes including those who do not have strictly matrilineal descent), and people without any Jewish ancestral background or lineage who have formally converted to Judaism and therefore are followers of the religion.[63]
Historical definitions of Jewish identity have traditionally been based on halakhic definitions of matrilineal descent, and halakhic conversions. These definitions of who is a Jew date back to the codification of the Oral Torah into the Babylonian Talmud, around 200 CE. Interpretations of sections of the Tanakh, such as Deuteronomy 7:1–5, by Jewish sages, are used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and Canaanites because "[the non-Jewish husband] will cause your child to turn away from Me and they will worship the gods (i.e., idols) of others."[26] Leviticus 24:10 [325] says that the son in a marriage between a Hebrew woman and an Egyptian man is "of the community of Israel." This is complemented by Ezra 10:2–3 [326], where Israelites returning from Babylon vow to put aside their gentile wives and their children.[64][65] A popular theory is that the rape of Jewish women in captivity brought about the law of Jewish identity being inherited through the maternal line, although scholars challenge this theory citing the Talmudic establishment of the law from the pre-exile period.[66] Another argument is that the rabbis changed the law of patrilineal descent to matrilineal descent due to the widespread rape of Jewish women by Roman soldiers.[67] Since the anti-religious Haskalah movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries, halakhic interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged.[68]
According to historian Shaye J. D. Cohen, the status of the offspring of mixed marriages was determined patrilineally in the Bible. He brings two likely explanations for the change in Mishnaic times: first, the Mishnah may have been applying the same logic to mixed marriages as it had applied to other mixtures (Kil'ayim). Thus, a mixed marriage is forbidden as is the union of a horse and a donkey, and in both unions the offspring are judged matrilineally.[69] Second, the Tannaim may have been influenced by Roman law, which dictated that when a parent could not contract a legal marriage, offspring would follow the mother.[69] Rabbi Rivon Krygier follows a similar reasoning, arguing that Jewish descent had formerly passed through the patrineal descent and the law of matrilineal descent had its roots in the Roman legal system.[66]
Map of Canaan
A factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor.
It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities and variety written in at least ten near Eastern languages.
As archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory.
The prehistory and ethnogenesis of the Jews are closely intertwined with archaeology, biology, and historical textual records, as well as religious literature and mythology.
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 tribal and monarchic periods.[70] Modern Jews are named after and also descended from the southern Israelite Kingdom of Judah.[71][72][18][74][75][76]
According to the Hebrew Bible narrative, Jewish ancestry is traced back to the Biblical patriarchs such as Abraham, his son Isaac, Isaac's son Jacob, and the Biblical matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel, who lived in Canaan. The Twelve Tribes are described as descending from the twelve sons of Jacob. Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacob's son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs' descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, after which the Israelites conquered Canaan under Moses' successor Joshua, went through the period of the Biblical judges after the death of Joshua, then through the mediation of Samuel became subject to a king, Saul, who was succeeded by David and then Solomon, after whom the United Monarchy ended and was split into a separate Kingdom of Israel and a Kingdom of Judah. The Kingdom of Judah is described as comprising the Tribe of Judah, the Tribe of Benjamin, partially the Tribe of Levi, and later adding remnants of other tribes who migrated there from the Kingdom of Israel.[77][78] Modern Jews claim lineage from those tribes since the ten northern tribes were lost following Assyrian captivity.[79]
Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of this narrative,[80] with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites' inspiring national myth narrative. The Israelites and their culture, according to the modern archaeological account, did not overtake the region by force, but instead branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion centered on Yahweh. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of cultic practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group, setting them apart from other Canaanites.[81][82][83]
The Israelites become visible in the historical record as a people between 1200 and 1000 BCE.[84] It is not certain if a period like that of the Biblical judges occurred[85][86][87][88][89] nor if there was ever a United Monarchy.[90][91][92][93] There is well accepted archeological evidence referring to "Israel" in the Merneptah Stele, which dates to about 1200 BCE,[24][25] and the Canaanites are archeologically attested in the Middle Bronze Age.[94][95] There is debate about the earliest existence of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their extent and power, but historians agree that a Kingdom of Israel existed by ca. 900 BCE[91] [92][93] and that a Kingdom of Judah existed by ca. 700 BCE.[96] It is widely accepted that the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed around 720 BCE, when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire.[77]
The term Jew originated from the Roman "Judean" and denoted someone from the southern kingdom of Judah.[97] The shift of ethnonym from "Israelites" to "Jews" (inhabitant of Judah), although not contained in the Torah, is made explicit in the Book of Esther (4th century BCE),[98] a book in the Ketuvim, the third section of the Jewish Tanakh. In 587 BCE Nebuchadnezzar II, King of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, besieged Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple, and deported the most prominent citizens of Judah.[99]
According to the Book of Ezra, the Persian Cyrus the Great ended the Babylonian exile in 538 BCE,[100] the year after he captured Babylon.[101] The exile ended with the return under Zerubbabel the Prince (so-called because he was a descendant of the royal line of David) and Joshua the Priest (a descendant of the line of the former High Priests of the Temple) and their construction of the Second Temple in the period 521–516 BCE.[100] The Cyrus Cylinder, an ancient tablet on which is written a declaration in the name of Cyrus referring to restoration of temples and repatriation of exiled peoples, has often been taken as corroboration of the authenticity of the biblical decrees attributed to Cyrus,[102] but other scholars point out that the cylinder's text is specific to Babylon and Mesopotamia and makes no mention of Judah or Jerusalem.[102] Professor Lester L. Grabbe asserted that the "alleged decree of Cyrus" regarding Judah, "cannot be considered authentic", but that there was a "general policy of allowing deportees to return and to re-establish cult sites". He also stated that archaeology suggests that the return was a "trickle" taking place over decades, rather than a single event.[103]
As part of the Persian Empire, the former Kingdom of Judah became the province of Judah (Yehud Medinata)[104] with different borders, covering a smaller territory.[103] The population of the province was greatly reduced from that of the kingdom, archaeological surveys showing a population of around 30,000 people in the 5th to 4th centuries BCE.[91] The region was under control of the Achaemenids until the fall of their empire in c. 333 BCE to Alexander the Great. Jews were also politically independent during the Hasmonean dynasty spanning from 110 to 63 BCE and to some degree under the Herodian dynasty from 37 BCE to 6 CE.[105] Since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, most Jews have lived in diaspora.[106]
Genetic studies on Jews show that most Jews worldwide bear a common genetic heritage which originates in the Middle East, and that they share certain genetic traits with other Gentile peoples of the Fertile Crescent.[107][108][109] The genetic composition of different Jewish groups shows that Jews share a common gene pool dating back four millennia, as a marker of their common ancestral origin.[110] Despite their long-term separation, Jewish communities maintained their unique commonalities, propensities, and sensibilities in culture, tradition, and language.[111]
Babylon and Rome
After the destruction of the Second Temple, Judaism lost much of its sectarian nature.[112] Nevertheless, a significant Hellenized Diaspora remained, centered in Alexandria, at the time the largest urban Jewish community in the world. Hellenism was a force not just in the Diaspora but also in the Land of Israel over a long period of time. Generally, scholars view Rabbinic Judaism as having been meaningfully influenced by Hellenism.
Without a Temple, Greek-speaking Jews no longer looked to Jerusalem in the way they had before.
Judaism separated into a linguistically Greek and a Hebrew / Aramaic sphere.[113] The theology and religious texts of each community were distinctively different.[113] Hellenized Judaism never developed yeshivas to study the Oral Law. Rabbinic Judaism (centered in the Land of Israel and Babylon) almost entirely ignores the Hellenized Diaspora in its writings.[113] Hellenized Judaism eventually disappeared as its practitioners assimilated into Greco-Roman culture, leaving a strong Rabbinic eastern Diaspora with large centers of learning in Babylon.[113]
By the first century, the Jewish community in Babylonia, to which Jews were exiled after the Babylonian conquest as well as after the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE, already held a speedily growing[114] population of an estimated one million Jews, which increased to an estimated two million[115] between the years 200 CE and 500 CE, both by natural growth and by immigration of more Jews from the Land of Israel, making up about one-sixth of the world Jewish population at that era.[115] The 13th-century author Bar Hebraeus gave a figure of 6,944,000 Jews in the Roman world; Salo Wittmayer Baron considered the figure convincing.[116] The figure of seven million within and one million outside the Roman world in the mid-first century became widely accepted, including by Louis Feldman. However, contemporary scholars now accept that Bar Hebraeus based his figure on a census of total Roman citizens, the figure of 6,944,000 being recorded in Eusebius' Chronicon.[117][118] Louis Feldman, previously an active supporter of the figure, now states that he and Baron were mistaken.[119] Feldman's views on active Jewish missionizing have also changed. While viewing classical Judaism as being receptive to converts, especially from the second century BCE through the first century CE, he points to a lack of either missionizing tracts or records of the names of rabbis who sought converts as evidence for the lack of active Jewish missionizing.[119]*Judaism%20And%20Hellenism%20Re]]*Feldman maintains that conversion to Judaism was common and the Jewish population was large both within the Land of Israel and in the Diaspora. of the Jewish population growth, due to various factors such as the illegality of male conversion to Judaism in the Roman world from the mid-second century. Another factor that made conversion difficult in the Roman world was the halakhic requirement of circumcision, a requirement that proselytizing Christianity quickly dropped. The Fiscus Judaicus, a tax imposed on Jews in 70 CE and relaxed to exclude Christians in 96 CE, also limited Judaism's appeal.[120]
The Jewish people and the religion of Judaism are strongly interrelated. Converts to Judaism typically have a status within the Jewish ethnos equal to those born into it.[121] However, several converts to Judaism, as well as ex-Jews, have claimed that converts are treated as second-class Jews by many born Jews.[122] Conversion is not encouraged by mainstream Judaism, and it is considered a difficult task.
A significant portion of conversions are undertaken by children of mixed marriages, or would-be or current spouses of Jews.[123]
The Hebrew Bible, a religious interpretation of the traditions and early history of the Jews, established the first of the Abrahamic religions, which are now practiced by 54% of the world. Judaism guides its adherents in both practice and belief, and has been called not only a religion, but also a "way of life,"[124] which has made drawing a clear distinction between Judaism, Jewish culture, and Jewish identity rather difficult. Throughout history, in eras and places as diverse as the ancient Hellenic world,[125] in Europe before and after The Age of Enlightenment (see Haskalah),[126] in Islamic Spain and Portugal,[127] in North Africa and the Middle East,[127] India,[128] China,[129] or the contemporary United States[130]*Jewish%20Life%20and%20Am]]*ic communities of Jews with their surroundings, and still others from the inner social and cultural dynamics of the community, as opposed to from the religion itself. This phenomenon has led to considerably different Jewish cultures unique to their own communities.[132]
Hebrew is the liturgical language of Judaism (termed lashon ha-kodesh, "the holy tongue"), the language in which most of the Hebrew scriptures (Tanakh) were composed, and the daily speech of the Jewish people for centuries. By the 5th century BCE, Aramaic, a closely related tongue, joined Hebrew as the spoken language in Judea.[133] By the 3rd century BCE, some Jews of the diaspora were speaking Greek.[134] Others, such as in the Jewish communities of Babylonia, were speaking Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages of the Babylonian Talmud. These languages were also used by the Jews of Israel at that time.
For centuries, Jews worldwide have spoken the local or dominant languages of the regions they migrated to, often developing distinctive dialectal forms or branches that became independent languages. Yiddish is the Judæo-German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Central Europe. Ladino is the Judæo-Spanish language developed by Sephardic Jews who migrated to the Iberian peninsula. Due to many factors, including the impact of the Holocaust on European Jewry, the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, and widespread emigration from other Jewish communities around the world, ancient and distinct Jewish languages of several communities, including Judæo-Georgian, Judæo-Arabic, Judæo-Berber, Krymchak, Judæo-Malayalam and many others, have largely fallen out of use.[3]
For over sixteen centuries Hebrew was used almost exclusively as a liturgical language, and as the language in which most books had been written on Judaism, with a few speaking only Hebrew on the Sabbath.[135] Hebrew was revived as a spoken language by Eliezer ben Yehuda, who arrived in Palestine in 1881. It had not been used as a mother tongue since Tannaic times.[133] Modern Hebrew is now one of the two official languages of the State of Israel along with Modern Standard Arabic.[136]
Despite efforts to revive Hebrew as the national language of the Jewish people, knowledge of the language is not commonly possessed by Jews worldwide and English has emerged as the lingua franca of the Jewish diaspora.[137][138][139][140][141] Although many Jews once had sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to study the classic literature, and Jewish languages like Yiddish and Ladino were commonly used as recently as the early 20th century, most Jews lack such knowledge today and English has by and large superseded most Jewish vernaculars. The three most commonly spoken languages among Jews today are Hebrew, English, and Russian. Some Romance languages, particularly French and Spanish, are also widely used.[3] Yiddish has been spoken by more Jews in history than any other language,[142] but it is far less used today following the Holocaust and the adoption of Modern Hebrew by the Zionist movement and the State of Israel. In some places, the mother language of the Jewish community differs from that of the general population or the dominant group. For example, in Quebec, the Ashkenazic majority has adopted English, while the Sephardic minority uses French as its primary language.[143][144][145] Similarly, South African Jews adopted English rather than Afrikaans.[146] Due to both Czarist and Soviet policies,[147][148] Russian has superseded Yiddish as the language of Russian Jews, but these policies have also affected neighboring communities.[149] Today, Russian is the first language for many Jewish communities in a number of Post-Soviet states, such as Ukraine[150][151][152][153] and Uzbekistan,[154] as well as for Ashkenazic Jews in Azerbaijan,[155][156] Georgia,[157] and Tajikistan.[158][159] Although communities in North Africa today are small and dwindling, Jews there had shifted from a multilingual group to a monolingual one (or nearly so), speaking French in Algeria,[160] Morocco,[155] and the city of Tunis,[161][162] while most North Africans continue to use Arabic or Berber as their mother tongue.
There is no single governing body for the Jewish community, nor a single authority with responsibility for religious doctrine.[163]*Explorations%20in%20Jewish%20H]]*Explorations%20in%20Jewish%20H]]*Explorations%20in%20Jewish%20H]]*Explorations%20in%20Jewish%20H]]*Explorations%20in%20Jewish%20H]]*Explorations%20in%20Jewish%20H]]*Explorations%20in%20Jewish%20H]]*Explorations%20in%20Jewish%20H]]*Explorations%20in%20Jewish%20H]]*Explorations%20in%20Jewish%20H]]*Explorations%20in%20Jewish%20H]]*Explorations%20in%20Jewish%20H]]*nstead, a variety of secular and religious institutions at the local, national, and international levels lead various parts of the Jewish community on a variety of issues.
Ethnic divisions
Ashkenazi Jews of late-19th-century Eastern Europe portrayed in Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur (1878), by Maurycy Gottlieb
Sephardi Jewish couple from Sarajevo in traditional clothing. Photo taken in 1900.
Yemenite Jew blows shofar, 1947
Within the world's Jewish population there are distinct ethnic divisions, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, and subsequent independent evolutions. An array of Jewish communities was established by Jewish settlers in various places around the Old World, often at great distances from one another, resulting in effective and often long-term isolation. During the millennia of the Jewish diaspora the communities would develop under the influence of their local environments: political, cultural, natural, and populational. Today, manifestations of these differences among the Jews can be observed in Jewish cultural expressions of each community, including Jewish linguistic diversity, culinary preferences, liturgical practices, religious interpretations, as well as degrees and sources of genetic admixture.[165]
Jews are often identified as belonging to one of two major groups: the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim. Ashkenazim, or "Germanics" (Ashkenaz meaning "Germany" in Hebrew), are so named denoting their German Jewish cultural and geographical origins, while Sephardim, or "Hispanics" (Sefarad meaning "Spain/Hispania" or "Iberia" in Hebrew), are so named denoting their Spanish/Portuguese Jewish cultural and geographic origins. The more common term in Israel for many of those broadly called Sephardim, is Mizrahim (lit. "Easterners", Mizrach being "East" in Hebrew), that is, in reference to the diverse collection of Middle Eastern and North African Jews who are often, as a group, referred to collectively as Sephardim (together with Sephardim proper) for liturgical reasons, although Mizrahi Jewish groups and Sephardi Jews proper are ethnically distinct.[166]
Smaller groups include, but are not restricted to, Indian Jews such as the Bene Israel, Bnei Menashe, Cochin Jews, and Bene Ephraim; the Romaniotes of Greece; the Italian Jews ("Italkim" or "Bené Roma"); the Teimanim from Yemen; various African Jews, including most numerously the Beta Israel of Ethiopia; and Chinese Jews, most notably the Kaifeng Jews, as well as various other distinct but now almost extinct communities.[167]
The divisions between all these groups are approximate and their boundaries are not always clear.
The Mizrahim for example, are a heterogeneous collection of North African, Central Asian, Caucasian, and Middle Eastern Jewish communities that are no closer related to each other than they are to any of the earlier mentioned Jewish groups. In modern usage, however, the Mizrahim are sometimes termed Sephardi due to similar styles of liturgy, despite independent development from Sephardim proper. Thus, among Mizrahim there are Egyptian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Lebanese Jews, Kurdish Jews, Moroccan Jews, Libyan Jews, Syrian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, Iranian Jews, Afghan Jews, and various others. The Teimanim from Yemen are sometimes included, although their style of liturgy is unique and they differ in respect to the admixture found among them to that found in Mizrahim. In addition, there is a differentiation made between Sephardi migrants who established themselves in the Middle East and North Africa after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s and the pre-existing Jewish communities in those regions.[167]
Ashkenazi Jews represent the bulk of modern Jewry, with at least 70% of Jews worldwide (and up to 90% prior to World War II and the Holocaust). As a result of their emigration from Europe, Ashkenazim also represent the overwhelming majority of Jews in the New World continents, in countries such as the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and Brazil. In France, the immigration of Jews from Algeria (Sephardim) has led them to outnumber the Ashkenazim.[167] Only in Israel is the Jewish population representative of all groups, a melting pot independent of each group's proportion within the overall world Jewish population.[169]
Genetic studies
Y DNA studies tend to imply a small number of founders in an old population whose members parted and followed different migration paths.[108] 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.[171][172] Conversely, the maternal lineages of Jewish populations, studied by looking at mitochondrial DNA, are generally more heterogeneous.[173] 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.[174] 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."[173] Subsequent studies carried out by Feder et al. confirmed the large 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."[10][176][177] A study showed that 7% of Ashkenazi Jews have the haplogroup G2c, which is mainly found in Pashtuns and on lower scales all major Jewish groups, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese.[178][179] 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.[180] 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".[181] 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 closely related, the source of non-Jewish admixture is mainly southern European, while Mizrahi Jews show evidence of admixture with other Middle Eastern populations. Behar et al. have remarked on a close relationship between Ashkenazi Jews and modern Italians.[181][182][183] A 2001 study found that Jews were found to be more closely related to groups of the Fertile Crescent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to their Arab neighbors, the geographic distribution of whose genetic signature was found to correlate with the pattern of the Islamic conquests.[171][185]
The studies also show that persons of Sephardic Bnei Anusim origin (those who are descendants of the "anusim" who were forced to convert to Catholicism) throughout today's Iberia (Spain and Portugal) and Ibero-America (Hispanic America and Brazil), estimated at up to 19.8% of the modern population of Iberia and at least 10% of the modern population of Ibero-America, have Sephardic Jewish ancestry within the last few centuries. The Bene Israel and Cochin Jews of India, Beta Israel of Ethiopia, and a portion of the Lemba people of Southern Africa, meanwhile, despite more closely resembling the local populations of their native countries, also have some more remote ancient Jewish descent.[186][187][188][177]
Population centers
Although historically, Jews have been found all over the world, in the decades since World War II and the establishment of Israel, they have increasingly concentrated in a small number of countries.[189][190] In 2013, the United States and Israel were collectively home to more than 80% of the global Jewish population, each country having approximately 41% of the world's Jews.[191]
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.[192]
According to the 2007 estimates of The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, the world's Jewish population is 13.2 million.[193] Adherents.com cites figures ranging from 12 to 18 million.[194] These statistics incorporate both practicing Jews affiliated with synagogues and the Jewish community, and approximately 4.5 million unaffiliated and secular Jews.
According to Sergio Della Pergola, a demographer of the Jewish population, in 2015 there were about 6.3 million Jews in Israel, 5.7 million in the United States, and 2.3 million in the rest of the world.[195]
Israel, the Jewish nation-state, is the only country in which Jews make up a majority of the citizens.[196] Israel was established as an independent democratic and Jewish state on 14 May 1948.[197] Of the 120 members in its parliament, the Knesset,[198] as of 2016, 14 members of the Knesset are Arab citizens of Israel (not including the Druze), most representing Arab political parties. One of Israel's Supreme Court judges is also an Arab citizen of Israel.[199]
Between 1948 and 1958, the Jewish population rose from 800,000 to two million.[200] Currently, Jews account for 75.4% of the Israeli population, or 6 million people.[201][202] The early years of the State of Israel were marked by the mass immigration of Holocaust survivors in the aftermath of the Holocaust and Jews fleeing Arab lands.[203] Israel also has a large population of Ethiopian Jews, many of whom were airlifted to Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s.[204] Between 1974 and 1979 nearly 227,258 immigrants arrived in Israel, about half being from the Soviet Union.[205] This period also saw an increase in immigration to Israel from Western Europe, Latin America, and North America.[206]
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.[207]
Diaspora (outside Israel)
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.[208]
Public Hanukkah menorah in Nicosia, Cyprus
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.[209]
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, Colombia and several other countries (see History of the Jews in Latin America).[30] According to a 2010 Pew Research Center study, about 470,000 people of Jewish heritage live in Latin-America and the Caribbean.[211] 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.[212]
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 countries such as Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia (or their descendants).[213] The United Kingdom has a Jewish community of 292,000. In Eastern Europe, the exact figures are difficult to establish. The number of Jews in Russia varies widely according to whether a source uses census data (which requires a person to choose a single nationality among choices that include "Russian" and "Jewish") or eligibility for immigration to Israel (which requires that a person have one or more Jewish grandparents). According to the latter criteria, the heads of the Russian Jewish community assert that up to 1.5 million Russians are eligible for aliyah.[214][215] In Germany, the 102,000 Jews registered with the Jewish community are a slowly declining population,[216] despite the immigration of tens of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union since the fall of the Berlin Wall.[217] Thousands of Israelis also live in Germany, either permanently or temporarily, for economic reasons.[218]
Prior to 1948, approximately 800,000 Jews were living in lands which now make up the Arab world (excluding Israel). Of these, just under two-thirds lived in the French-controlled Maghreb region, 15–20% in the Kingdom of Iraq, approximately 10% in the Kingdom of Egypt and approximately 7% in the Kingdom of Yemen. A further 200,000 lived in Pahlavi Iran and the Republic of Turkey. Today, around 26,000 Jews live in Arab countries[219] and around 30,000 in Iran and Turkey. A small-scale exodus had begun in many countries in the early decades of the 20th century, although the only substantial aliyah came from Yemen and Syria.[220] The exodus from Arab and Muslim countries took place primarily from 1948. The first large-scale exoduses took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily in Iraq, Yemen and Libya, with up to 90% of these communities leaving within a few years. The peak of the exodus from Egypt occurred in 1956. The exodus in the Maghreb countries peaked in the 1960s. Lebanon was the only Arab country to see a temporary increase in its Jewish population during this period, due to an influx of refugees from other Arab countries, although by the mid-1970s the Jewish community of Lebanon had also dwindled. In the aftermath of the exodus wave from Arab states, an additional migration of Iranian Jews peaked in the 1980s when around 80% of Iranian Jews left the country.
Outside Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and the rest of Asia, there are significant Jewish populations in Australia (112,500) and South Africa (70,000).[30] There is also a 6,800-strong community in New Zealand.[221]
Demographic changes
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.[222] Assimilation took place in all areas, and during all time periods,[222] with some Jewish communities, for example the Kaifeng Jews of China, disappearing entirely.[223] 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.[224]
Rates of interreligious marriage vary widely: In the United States, it is just under 50%,[225] in the United Kingdom, around 53%; in France; around 30%,[226] and in Australia and Mexico, as low as 10%.[227][228] In the United States, only about a third of children from intermarriages affiliate with Jewish religious practice.[217] 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
The Roman Emperor Nero sends Vespasian with an army to destroy the Jews, 69 CE.
World War I poster showing 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!"
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.
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.[230][231]
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."[232]
Later in medieval Western Europe, further persecutions of Jews by Christians occurred, notably during the Crusades—when Jews all over Germany were massacred—and a series of expulsions from the Kingdom of 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.[233][234]
In the Papal States, which existed until 1870, Jews were required to live only in specified neighborhoods called ghettos.[235]
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.[236] They had to pay the jizya (a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-Muslim males) to the Islamic state.[236] 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.[237] Many of the disabilities were highly symbolic. The one described by Bernard Lewis as "most degrading"[238] was the requirement of distinctive clothing, not found in the Quran or hadith but invented in early medieval Baghdad; its enforcement was highly erratic.[238] 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.[239]
Notable exceptions include the massacre of Jews and forcible conversion of some Jews by the rulers of the Almohad dynasty in Al-Andalus in the 12th century,[240] as well as in Islamic Persia,[241] 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.[242] 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."[243]
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;[233] the Spanish Inquisition (led by Tomás de Torquemada) and the Portuguese Inquisition, with their persecution and autos-da-fé against the New Christians and Marrano Jews;[244] the Bohdan Chmielnicki Cossack massacres in Ukraine;[245] the Pogroms backed by the Russian Tsars;[246] as well as expulsions from Spain, Portugal, England, France, Germany, and other countries in which the Jews had settled.[234] According to a 2008 study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, 19.8% of the modern Iberian population has Sephardic Jewish ancestry,[247] indicating that the number of conversos may have been much higher than originally thought.[248][249]
The persecution reached a peak in Nazi Germany's Final Solution, which led to the Holocaust and the slaughter of approximately 6 million Jews.[250] Of the world's 15 million Jews in 1939, more than a third were murdered in the Holocaust.[251][252] 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.[253] 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.[254] Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labour until they died of exhaustion or disease.[255] Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in Eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings.[256] 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 murdered in gas chambers.[257] 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."[258]
Etching of the expulsion of the Jews from Frankfurt in 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, the Land of Israel, 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.[259] The patriarch Abraham is described as a migrant to the land of Canaan from Ur of the Chaldees[260] after an attempt on his life by King Nimrod.[261] His descendants, the Children of Israel, in the Biblical story (whose historicity is uncertain) undertook the Exodus (meaning "departure" or "exit" in Greek) from ancient Egypt, as recorded in the Book of Exodus.[262]
Centuries later, Assyrian policy was to deport and displace conquered peoples, and it is estimated some 4,500,000 among captive populations suffered this dislocation over 3 centuries of Assyrian rule.[263] With regard to Israel, Tiglath-Pileser III claims he deported 80% of the population of Lower Galilee, some 13,520 people.[264] Some 27,000 Israelites, 20–25% of the population of the Kingdom of Israel, were described as being deported by Sargon II, and were replaced by other deported populations and sent into permanent exile by Assyria, initially to the Upper Mesopotamian provinces of the Assyrian Empire,[265][266] Between 10,000 and 80,000 people from the Kingdom of Judah were similarly exiled by Babylonia,[263] but these people were then returned to Judea by Cyrus the Great of the Persian Achaemenid Empire.[267]
Many Jews were exiled again by the Roman Empire.[268] 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[269] to the Iberian Peninsula[270] to Poland[271] to the United States[272] and, as a result of Zionism, back to Israel.[273]
There were also many expulsions of Jews 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.[274] 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.[275]
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).[276] This contributed to the arrival of millions of Jews in the New World. Over two million Eastern European Jews arrived in the United States from 1880 to 1925.[277]
In summary, the pogroms in Eastern Europe,[278] the rise of modern antisemitism,[279] the Holocaust,[280] and the rise of Arab nationalism[281] 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.[273]
In the latest phase of migrations, the Islamic Revolution of Iran caused many Iranian Jews to flee Iran. Most found refuge in the US (particularly Los Angeles, California and Long Island, New York) and Israel. Smaller communities of Persian Jews exist in Canada and Western Europe.[282] Similarly, 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.[207]
A man praying at the Western Wall
Israel is the only country with a Jewish population that is consistently growing through natural population growth, although 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.[283]
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.[284]
There is also a trend of Orthodox movements reaching out to 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.[285] 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.[286]
Notable individuals
Jews have made a myriad of contributions to humanity in a broad and diverse range of fields, including the sciences, arts, politics, and business.[287]*Judaism%20and%20Global%20S]]*lthough Jews comprise only 0.2% of the world's population, over 20%[289][290][291]Judaism%20f]] [293]Nobel Prize multiple winners in each category.
See also
Jewish studies