Jewish history is the
history of the
Jewish people,
faith, and
culture. Since Jewish history is over four
thousand years long and includes hundreds of different populations,
any treatment can only be provided in broad strokes. Additional
information can be found in the main articles listed below, and in
the specific
country
histories listed in this article.
Ancient Jewish history (to 37 BCE)
Ancient Israelites
For the first two periods the history of the Jews is mainly that of
the
Fertile Crescent.
It begins among those
people who occupied the area lying between the Nile, Tigris
and the
Euphrates rivers on the other.
Surrounded
by ancient seats of culture in Egypt
and Babylonia, by the deserts of Arabia, and by the highlands of Asia Minor
, the land of Canaan (later
known as Israel
, then at
various times Judah, Coele-Syria, Judea
, Palestine, the Levant, the
Holy Land, and finally Israel) was a
meeting place of civilizations. The land was traversed
by old-established trade routes and possessed important harbors on
the Gulf of
Akaba
and on the Mediterranean
coast, the latter exposing it to the influence of
other cultures of the Fertile Crescent.
Traditionally Jews around the world claim descent from the ancient
Israelites, who settled in the land of Israel. The Israelites
traced their common lineage to the biblical patriarch
Abraham through
Isaac and
Jacob, who were
Hebrews, descendants of
Eber.
Jewish tradition holds that the Israelites were the descendants of
Jacob's twelve sons (one of whom was named
Judah), who settled in Egypt. While in
Egypt their descendants were enslaved by the Egyptian
pharaoh, often identified as
Ramses II.
In the Jewish tradition, the Israelites
emigrated from Egypt to Canaan
(the Exodus), led by the prophet Moses. This event marks the formation of the
Israelites as a people, divided into twelve tribes named after
Jacob's sons.
1759 map of the tribal allotments of
Israel
Jewish tradition and the Bible (Genesis through Chronicles II)
tells that the Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years
after which they conquered
Canaan under the
command of
Joshua, dividing the land among
the twelve tribes. For a time, the twelve tribes were led by a
series of rulers known as
Judges.
Afterwards, an Israelite monarchy was established under
Saul, and continued under King
David and his son,
Solomon.
King David
conquered Jerusalem
(first a Canaanite, then a Jebusite town) and made
it his capital. David's son built the First
Temple
in Jerusalem. After Solomon's reign the nation split into two kingdoms,
Israel, consisting of ten of the tribes (in the north),
and Judah, consisting of the tribes
of Judah and Benjamin (in the south). Israel was conquered
by the
Assyrian ruler Shalmaneser V in the
8th century BCE. There is no
commonly accepted historical record of those ten tribes, which are
sometimes referred to as the
Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
Reconstruction of the Temple of
Solomon in Jerusalem according with the description made in the
Bible.
Babylonian captivity
The
kingdom of Judah was conquered by a Babylonian
army in the early 6th
century BCE. The Judahite elite was exiled to Babylon,
but later at least a part of them returned to their homeland, led
by prophets
Ezra and
Nehemiah, after the subsequent conquest of
Babylonia by the
Persians. Since
Zoroastrianism was the state religion
of the Persian Empire, the extent to which Zoroastrianism has been
an influence in the development of
Judaism
is a subject of some debate among scholars (
See
Christianity and world religions).
Post-exilic period
Construction of the
Second Temple was
completed under the leadership of the last three Jewish Prophets
Haggai,
Zechariah and
Malachi with Persian approval. After the death of
the last Jewish Prophets and still under Persian rule, the
leadership of the
Jewish people was in
the hands of five successive generations of
zugot ("pairs of") leaders. They flourished first
under the Persians then under the Greeks. As a result the
Pharisees and
Sadduccees
were formed. Under the Persians then under the Greeks, Jewish coins
were minted in Judea as
Yehud
coinage.
Hellenistic Judaism
Currents
of Judaism influenced by Hellenistic philosophy developed from
the 3rd century BCE, notably the Jewish
diaspora in Alexandria
, culminating in the compilation of the Septuagint. An important advocate of the
symbiosis of Jewish theology and Hellenistic thought is
Philo.
The Hasmonean Kingdom
[[Image:John Hyrcanus.jpg|175px|thumb|Prutah of
John Hyrcanus (
134 BCE
to
104 BCE).
Obv: Double cornucopia.
Rev: In ancient Hebrew script;
"Yehochanan
Kohen Gadol Chaver Hayehudim" (Yehochanan the High Priest,
Chaver of the
Jews.]]
The Persians were defeated by
Alexander the Great. After his demise,
and the division of Alexander's empire among his generals, the
Seleucid Kingdom was formed. A
deterioration of relations between hellenized Jews and religious
Jews led the Seleucid king
Antiochus IV Epiphanes to impose
decrees banning certain
Jewish religious rites
and traditions. Consequently, the orthodox Jews revolted under
the leadership of the
Hasmonean family,
(also known as the
Maccabees). This revolt
eventually led to the formation of an independent Jewish kingdom,
known as the
Hasmonaean Dynasty,
which lasted from
165 BCE to
63 BCE. The Hasmonean Dynasty eventually
disintegrated as a result of civil war between the sons of
Salome Alexandra,
Hyrcanus II and
Aristobulus II. The people, who did not want
to be governed by a king but by theocratic clergy, made appeals in
this spirit to the Roman authorities. A Roman campaign of conquest
and annexation, led by
Pompey, soon
followed.
Roman rule (63 BCE to 400 CE)
Sack of the Second Temple depicted on
the inside wall of the Arch of Titus in Rome.
Judea
under Roman rule was at first an independent Jewish kingdom first
by the Hasmonaeans then by the Herodians, but gradually their power
declined, until it came under the direct rule of Romans and renamed
the Iudaea
Province
.
The empire was often callous and brutal in its treatment of its
Jewish subjects. In
66 CE, the Jews began to
revolt against the Roman rulers of Judea. The revolt was defeated
by the future Roman emperors
Vespasian and
Titus. In the
Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the
Romans destroyed much of the Temple in Jerusalem and, according to
some accounts, plundered artifacts from the temple, such as the
Menorah. Jews continued to live in
their land in significant numbers, until the 2nd century when
Julius Severus ravaged Judea
while putting down the
Bar Kokhba
revolt. 985 villages were destroyed and most of the Jewish
population of central Judaea was essentially wiped out, killed,
sold into slavery, or forced to flee . Banished from Jerusalem, the
Jewish population now centred on
Galilee.
The diaspora
Many of the Judaean Jews were sold into
slavery while others became citizens of other parts
of the
Roman Empire. The book of
Acts in the
New Testament, as well as other
Pauline texts, make frequent reference to the large
populations of
Hellenised Jews
in the cities of the Roman world. These Hellenised Jews were only
affected by the
diaspora in its spiritual
sense, absorbing the feeling of loss and homelessness which became
a cornerstone of the Jewish creed, much supported by persecutions
in various parts of the world. The policy towards
proselytism and conversion to Judaism, which
spread the Jewish religion throughout the
Hellenistic civilization, seems to
have ended with the wars against the Romans and the following
reconstruction of Jewish values for the post-Temple era.
Of critical importance to the reshaping of Jewish tradition from
the Temple-based religion to the traditions of the Diaspora, was
the development of the interpretations of the Torah found in the
Mishnah and
Talmud.
Late Roman period
In spite of the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt, Jews remained in
the land of Israel in significant numbers. The Jews who remained
there went through numerous experiences and armed conflicts against
consecutive occupiers of the Land. Some of the most famous and
important Jewish texts were composed in Israeli cities at this
time. The
Jerusalem Talmud, the
completion of the
Mishnah and the system of
niqqud are examples.
In this
period the tannaim
and amoraim were
active, rabbis who organized and debated the
Jewish oral law. The decisions of
the
tannaim are contained in the
Mishnah,
Beraita,
Tosefta, and various
Midrash
compilations. The
Mishnah was completed
shortly after 200 CE, probably by
Judah
haNasi.
The commentaries of the amoraim
upon the Mishnah are compiled in the Jerusalem Talmud, which was completed
around 400 CE, probably in Tiberias
.
In 351 CE, the Jewish population in
Sepphoris Roman laws started a
revolt under the leadership of Patricius
against the rule of
Constantius
Gallus. The revolt was eventually subdued by
Ursicinus. According to tradition,
in 359 CE
Hillel II created the
Hebrew calendar based on the
lunar year. Until then, The entire Jewish community
outside the land of Israel depended on the calendar sanctioned by
the
Sanhedrin; this was necessary for the
proper observance of the Jewish holy days. However, danger
threatened the participants in that sanction and the messengers who
communicated their decisions to distant communities. As the
religious persecutions continued, Hillel determined to provide an
authorized calendar for all time to come.
The last
pagan Roman Emperor,
Julian II, allowed the Jews to
return to "holy Jerusalem which you have for many years longed to
see rebuilt" and to rebuild the Temple. However Julian was
killed in battle on 26 June 363 in
his failed campaign against the
Sassanid
Empire, and the Temple was not rebuilt.
Middle Ages
Byzantium
Jews were widespread throughout the Roman Empire, and this carried
on to a lesser extent in the period of Byzantine rule in the
central and eastern Mediterranean. The militant and exclusive
Christianity and
caesaropapism of the
Byzantine Empire did not treat Jews
well, and the condition and influence of diaspora Jews in the
Empire declined dramatically.
It was official Christian policy to convert Jews to Christianity,
and the Christian leadership used the official power of Rome in
their attempts. In 351 CE the Jews revolted against the added
pressures of their Governor, one named
Gallus. Gallus put down the revolt and destroyed the
major cities in the Galilee where the revolt had started. Tzippori
and Lydda (site of two of the major legal academies) never
recovered.
Nonetheless it is in this period that the Nasi in Tiberias, Hillel
II created an official calendar which needed no monthly sightings
of the moon. The months were set, and the calendar needed no
further authority from Judea. At about the same time, the Jewish
academy at Tiberius began to collate the combined Mishnah, braitot,
explanations, and interpretations developed by generations of
scholars who studied after the death of
Judah HaNasi. The text was organized according
to the order of the Mishna: each paragraph of Mishnah was followed
by a compilation of all of the interpretations, stories, and
responses associated with that Mishnah. This text is called the
Jerusalem Talmud.
The Jews of Judea received a brief respite from official
persecution during the rule of the Emperor
Julian the Apostate. Julian's policy was
to return the kingdom to Hellenism and he encouraged the Jews to
rebuild Jerusalem. Julian's rule lasted only from 361 to 363, so
there was no chance to carry out this promise before Christian rule
was restored over the Empire. Beginning in 398 with the
consecration of
St. John
Chrysostom as
Patriarch, the Christian
rhetoric against Jews continued to rise with a series of sermons
such as "Against the Jews" and "On the Statues, Homily 17" where
John preaches against "the Jewish sickness". Such heated language
would build a climate of distrust and hate of the large Jewish
settlements, such as those in Antioch and Constantinople.
In the beginning of the fifth century, the
Emperor Theodosius issued a set of
decrees which established official prosecution against Jews. Jews
were not allowed to own slaves, build new synagogues, hold public
office or try cases between a Jew and a non-Jew. Intermarriage
between Jew and non-Jew was made a capital offense as was a
Christian converting to Judaism. Theodosius, furthermore, did away
with the
Sanhedrin and abolished the post
of
Nasi. Under the
Emperor Justinian the authorities
restricted the civil rights of Jews , and threatened their
religious privileges. The emperor also interfered in the internal
affairs of the synagogue , and forbade, for instance, the use of
the Hebrew language in divine worship. The recalcitrant were
menaced with corporal penalties, exile, and loss of property. The
Jews at Borium, not far from Syrtis Major, who resisted the
Byzantine General
Belisarius in his
campaign against the
Vandals, were forced to
embrace Christianity and their synagogue was converted to a
church.
Justinian and his successors of course had concerns outside the
province of Judea, and there were insufficient troops to enforce
these regulations. As a result, ironically, the sixth century saw a
wave of new synagogues built with beautiful mosaic floors. Jews
assimilated into their lives the rich art forms of the Byzantine
culture. There exist mosaics showing people, animals, menorahs,
zodiacs, and Biblical characters. Excellent examples of these
synagogue floors have been found at Beit Alpha (which includes the
scene of Abraham sacrificing a ram instead of his son Isaac along
with a gorgeous zodiac), Tiberius, Beit Shean, and Tzippori.
The precarious existence of Jews under Byzantine rule did not long
endure, largely for the explosion of the Muslim religion out of the
remote Arabian peninsula (where large populations of Jews resided,
see
History of the
Jews under Muslim Rule for more). The
Muslim Caliphate ejected the
Byzantines from the Holy Land (or the
Levant,
defined as modern Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) within a few
years of their victory at the
Battle
of Yarmouk in 636. A testament of the cruelty of the Byzantines
towards the Jews can be noted in the great number of Jews who fled
remaining Byzantine territories in favour of residence in the
Caliphate over the subsequent centuries.
Yet, the size of the Jewish community in the Byzantine Empire was
not affected by attempts by some emperors (most notably Justinian)
to forcibly convert the Jews of Anatolia to Christianity, as these
attempts met with very little success. The exact picture of the
status of the Jews in Asian Minor during the Byzantine rule is
still being researched by historians (for a sample of views, see,
for instance, J. Starr "The Jews in the Byzantine Empire,
641-1204", S. Bowman, "The Jews of Byzantium", R. Jenkins
"Byzantium", Averil Cameron, "Byzantines and Jews: Recent Work on
Early Byzantium," Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 20) Although
there is some evidence of occasional hostility by the Byzantine
populations and authorities, no systematic persecution of the type
endemic at that time in Western Europe (pogroms, the stake, mass
expulsions etc.) has been recorded in Byzantium..
Much of the Jewish
population of Constantinople
remained in place after the conquest of the city by
Mehmet II. See also
A curious historical event did occur as a result of this
emigration. Sometime in the 7th or 8th century, the
Khazars, a
Turkic
tribe in what is now the Ukraine, seems to have converted to
Judaism.
The completeness of this conversion is
unclear, but certainly there had been a Jewish population in the
Crimea
since the
Hellenistic era, and these may have been reinforced by Jews leaving
the fickle Byzantine governance. Influenced and threatened
as they were by both Islam and the Byzantine Empire, and receiving
much tangible benefit from their Jewish population, it is
speculated that Khazar rulers converted to Judaism in an effort to
remain neutral as a safeguard to their independence. After the rise
of the
Kievan Rus' the Khazars disappear
from history, and modern DNA studies indicate no contribution to
modern Ashkenazim.
Islamic and Crusader periods
As part of the diaspora a large number of Jews had taken up
residence in the Arabian peninsula, out of the control of the Roman
state which, in both its pagan and Christian incarnations,
persecuted them greatly. The
history of the Jews under
Muslim rule was at times as unstable as their history
elsewhere: they were ejected from western Arabia shortly after the
death of
Muhammad in the mid-7th
Century.
Despite such setbacks, the Jews controlled much of the commerce in
Palestine and as
dhimmi prospered despite
certain restrictions against them. Culturally, the Jews continued
to advance, and the niqqud seems to have been invented in Tiberias
in the era of the Islamic Caliphate. Preferring the benign
discrimination of the Arabs to the outright slaughter frequently
suffered under Christian rule, the Jews together with the Muslim
forces defended Jerusalem and Haifa against the Crusaders in 1099
during the
First Crusade: failure, in
this instance, meant massacre. At the time of the First Crusade
there were Jewish communities throughout the country which included
Jerusalem, Tiberias, Ramleh, Ashkelon, Caesarea, and Gaza. While
these population centres were not specifically targeted by the
Crusader Kingdoms, Jewish quality of
life under Crusader rule was undoubtedly worse and more
dangerous.
Mamluk period
Nachmanides settles in the Old City of
Jerusalem in 1267 and since then there has been a continuous Jewish
presence there.
Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East
During the Middle Ages, Jews were generally better treated by
Islamic rulers than Christian ones.
Despite second-class citizenship, Jews
played prominent roles in Muslim courts, and experienced a "Golden
Age" in Moorish
Spain
about 900-1100, though the situation deteriorated
after that time. Riots resulting in the
deaths of Jews did however occur in North Africa through the
centuries and especially in Morocco
, Libya
and Algeria
where eventually Jews were forced to live in
ghettos.
The 11th century saw Muslim pogroms against Jews in Spain; those
occurred in Cordoba in 1011 and in
Granada in 1066.
Decrees ordering the
destruction of synagogues were enacted in the Middle Ages in
Egypt, Syria
, Iraq
and Yemen
.
Jews were
also forced to convert to Islam or face death in some parts of
Yemen, Morocco and Baghdad
at certain times. The
Almohads, who had taken control of much of Islamic
Iberia by 1172, far surpassed the
Almoravides in fundamentalist outlook, and they
treated the
dhimmis harshly.
Jews and Christians
were expelled from Morocco and Islamic Spain. Faced with the choice of
either death or conversion, many Jews emigrated. Some, such as the
family of
Maimonides, fled south and east
to the more tolerant Muslim lands, while others went northward to
settle in the growing Christian kingdoms.
Europe
Jewish populations had existed in Europe, especially in the area of
the former Roman Empire, from very early times, with converts to
Judaism joined by traders and later by member of the exodus. There
are records of Jewish communities in France (see
History of the Jews in France)
and Germany (see
History
of the Jews in Germany) from the 4th century, and substantial
Jewish communities in Spain even earlier.
Norman Cantor and other twentieth century historians dispute the
conventional idea that the Middle Ages was a uniformly difficult
time for Jews. Early medieval society, before the Church became
fully organized, was tolerant. Between 800 and 1100 there were 1.5
million Jews in Christian Europe. They were fortunate in not being
part of the feudal system as serfs or knights, thus were spared the
oppression and constant warfare that made life miserable for most
Christians. Unlike lay Christians, most Jews were literate; they
were cleaner and thus healthier than Christians , for example,
dying in fewer numbers during the Black Death; and they were able
to live under Jewish law, which was much fairer and more humane. In
relations with the Christian society, they were protected by kings,
princes and bishops, because of the crucial services they provided
in three areas: financial, administrative and as doctors .
Christian scholars interested in the Bible would even consult with
Talmudic rabbis. All this changed with the reforms and
strengthening of the Roman Catholic Church, especially the
creations of the Franciscan and Dominican preaching monks, and the
rise of envious and competitive middle-class, town-dwelling
Christians. By 1300 the friars and local priests were using the
Passion Plays at Easter time, which depicted Jews in contemporary
dress killing Christ, to teach the general populace to hate and
murder Jews . It was at this point that persecution and exile
became endemic. Finally around 1500, Jews found security and a
renewal of prosperity in Poland.
By and large, Jews were heavily persecuted in Christian Europe
after 1300. Since they were the only people allowed to lend money
for interest (forbidden to Catholics by the church), some Jews
became prominent moneylenders. Christian rulers gradually saw the
advantage of having a class of men like the Jews who could supply
capital for their use without being liable to excommunication, and
the money trade of western Europe by this means fell into the hands
of the Jews. However, in almost every instance where large amounts
were acquired by Jews through banking transactions the property
thus acquired fell either during their life or upon their death
into the hands of the king. Jews thus became imperial "servi
cameræ," the property of the King, who might present them and their
possessions to princes or cities.
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."
Jews were frequently massacred and exiled from various European
countries. The persecution hit its first peak during the
Crusades. In the
First
Crusade (1096) flourishing communities on the Rhine and the
Danube were utterly destroyed; see
German Crusade, 1096. In the
Second Crusade (1147) the Jews in France were
subject to frequent massacres. The Jews were also subjected to
attacks by the
Shepherds'
Crusades of 1251 and 1320. The Crusades were followed by
expulsions, including in, 1290, the banishing of all English Jews;
in 1396, 100,000 Jews were expelled from France; and, in 1421
thousands were expelled from Austria. Many of the expelled Jews
fled to Poland.
Early Modern period
Ottoman period
Jews lived in the geographic area of Asia Minor (modern Turkey, but
more geographically either Anatolia or Asia Minor) for more than
2,400 years. Initial prosperity in Hellenistic times faded under
Christian Byzantine rule, but recovered somewhat under the rule of
the various Muslim governments which displaced and succeeded rule
from Constantinople. For much of the
Ottoman period, Turkey was a safe haven for
Jews fleeing persecution, and it continues to have a small Jewish
population today.
At the time of the
Battle of Yarmuk
when the
Levant passed under Muslim Rule,
thirty Jewish communities existed in Haifa, Sh’chem, Hebron,
Ramleh, Gaza, Jerusalem, and many in the north. Safed became a
spiritual centre for the Jews and the
Shulchan Aruch was compiled there as well as
many Kabbalistic texts. The first Hebrew printing press, and the
first printing in Western Asia began in 1577.
The situation where Jews both enjoyed cultural and economical
prosperity at times but were widely persecuted at other times was
summarised by G.E. Von Grunebaum :
"It would not be difficult to put together the names of
a very sizeable number of Jewish subjects or citizens of the
Islamic area who have attained to high rank, to power, to great
financial influence, to significant and recognized intellectual
attainment; and the same could be done for Christians.
But it would again not be difficult to compile a
lengthy list of persecutions, arbitrary confiscations, attempted
forced conversions, or pogroms."
Historian
Martin Gilbert writes that
in the 19th century the position of Jews worsened in Muslim
countries.
There was
a massacre of Jews in Baghdad in 1828. In 1839, in the eastern Persian city of
Meshed
, a mob burst
into the Jewish Quarter, burned the synagogue, and destroyed the
Torah scrolls. It was only by
forcible conversion that a massacre was averted. There was another
massacre in Barfurush in 1867.
In 1840, the
Jews of
Damascus were falsely accused of having murdered a Christian
monk and his Muslim servant and of having
used their blood to bake
Passover bread or Matza. A Jewish barber was tortured
until he "confessed"; two other Jews who were arrested died under
torture, while a third converted to Islam to save his life.
Throughout the 1860s, the
Jews of Libya were subjected to
what Gilbert calls punitive taxation.
In 1864, around 500
Jews were killed in Marrakech
and Fez
in Morroco
. In 1869, 18 Jews were killed in Tunis
, and an Arab
mob looted Jewish homes and stores, and burned synagogues, on
Jerba
Island
. In 1875, 20 Jews were killed by a mob in
Demnat
, Morocco;
elsewhere in Morocco, Jews were attacked and killed in the streets
in broad daylight. In 1891, the leading Muslims in Jerusalem asked the Ottoman authorities in Constantinople to prohibit the entry of Jews arriving from
Russia
. In
1897, synagogues were ransacked and Jews were murdered in
Tripolitania.
Benny Morris writes that one symbol of
Jewish degradation was the phenomenon of stone-throwing at Jews by
Muslim children. Morris quotes a 19th century traveler: "I have
seen a little fellow of six years old, with a troop of fat toddlers
of only three and four, teaching [them] to throw stones at a Jew,
and one little urchin would, with the greatest coolness, waddle up
to the man and literally spit upon his Jewish
gaberdine. To all this the Jew is obliged to
submit; it would be more than his life was worth to offer to strike
a Mahommedan."
According to
Mark Cohen in
The
Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, most scholars conclude that
Arab anti-Semitism in the modern world arose in the nineteenth
century, against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab
nationalism, and was imported into the Arab world primarily by
nationalistically minded Christian Arabs (and only subsequently was
it "Islamized").
Europe
During the
European
Renaissance, the worst of the expulsions occurred following the
reconquista of
Andalus, as the
Moorish or
Arab Islamic government of Spain was known. With the ejection of
the last Muslim rulers from Grenada in 1492, the
Spanish Inquisition followed and the
entire Spanish population of around 200,000
Sephardic Jews were expelled. This was
followed by expulsions in 1493 in
Sicily
(37,000 Jews) and Portugal in 1496. The expelled Spanish Jews fled
mainly to the Ottoman Empire, Holland, and North Africa, others
migrating to Southern Europe and the Middle East.
In the 17th century, almost no Jews lived in Western Europe. The
relatively tolerant Poland had the largest Jewish population in
Europe, but the calm situation for the Jews there ended when Polish
and Lithuanian Jews were slaughtered in the hundreds of thousands
by the cossacks during
Chmielnicki
uprising (1648) and by the
Swedish
wars (1655). Driven by these and other persecutions, Jews moved
back to Western Europe in the 17th century. The last ban on Jews
(by the English) was revoked in 1654, but periodic expulsions from
individual cities still occurred, and Jews were often restricted
from land ownership, or forced to live in
ghettos.
With the
Partition of Poland in the late
18th century, the Jewish population was split between the Russian
Empire
, Austro-Hungary, and
Prussia, which divided Poland
for
themselves.
The European Enlightenment and Haskalah (18th century)
During the period of the
European
Renaissance and Enlightenment, significant changes were
happening within the Jewish community. The
Haskalah movement paralleled the wider
Enlightenment, as Jews began in the 18th century to campaign for
emancipation from restrictive laws and integration into the wider
European society. Secular and scientific education was added to the
traditional religious instruction received by students, and
interest in a national Jewish identity, including a revival in the
study of Jewish history and Hebrew, started to grow. Haskalah gave
birth to the Reform and Conservative movements and planted the
seeds of
Zionism while at the same time
encouraging cultural assimilation into the countries in which Jews
resided. At around the same time another movement was born, one
preaching almost the opposite of Haskalah,
Hasidic Judaism. Hasidic Judaism began in
the 18th century by
Rabbi
Israel Baal Shem Tov, and quickly gained a following with its
more exuberant, mystical approach to religion. These two movements,
and the traditional orthodox approach to Judaism from which they
spring, formed the basis for the modern divisions within Jewish
observance.
At the same time, the outside world was changing, and debates began
over the potential emancipation of the Jews (granting them equal
rights). The first country to do so was France, during the
French Revolution in 1789. Even so, Jews
were expected to integrate, not continue their traditions. This
ambivalence is demonstrated in the famous speech of
Clermont-Tonnerre before the
National Assembly in 1789:
"We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and
accord everything to Jews as individuals.
We must withdraw recognition from their judges; they
should only have our judges.
We must refuse legal protection to the maintenance of
the so-called laws of their Judaic organization; they should not be
allowed to form in the state either a political body or an
order.
They must be citizens individually.
But, some will say to me, they do not want to be
citizens.
Well then!
If they do not want to be citizens, they should say so,
and then, we should banish them.
It is repugnant to have in the state an association of
non-citizens, and a nation within the nation..."
19th century
Though persecution still existed, emancipation spread throughout
Europe in the 19th century.
Napoleon
invited Jews to leave the
Jewish ghettos in Europe and
seek refuge in the newly created tolerant political regimes that
offered equality under Napoleonic Law (see
Napoleon and the Jews). By 1871, with
Germany’s emancipation of Jews, every European country except
Russia had emancipated its Jews.
Despite increasing integration of the Jews with secular society, a
new form of anti-Semitism emerged, based on the ideas of race and
nationhood rather than the religious hatred of the Middle Ages.
This form of anti-Semitism held that Jews were a separate and
inferior race from the
Aryan people of Western
Europe, and led to the emergence of political parties in France,
Germany, and Austria-Hungary that campaigned on a platform of
rolling back emancipation. This form of anti-Semitism emerged
frequently in European culture, most famously in the
Dreyfus Trial in France. These persecutions,
along with state-sponsored
pogroms in Russia
in the late 19th century, led a number of Jews to believe that they
would only be safe in their own nation. See
Theodor Herzl and
History of Zionism.
During this period, Jewish migration to the United States (see
American Jews) created a large new
community mostly freed of the restrictions of Europe. Over 2
million Jews arrived in the United States between 1890 and 1924,
most from Russia and Eastern Europe.
20th century
Zionism
During the 1870s and 1880s the Jewish population in Europe started
to discuss more about immigrating to Israel and to establish a
national home to the Jewish nation.
In 1882 the first Zionistic settlement
was founded - Rishon
LeZion
, by immigrants whom belonged to the "Hovevei Zion" movement whom originated from the
Russian
empire
. Later on the "
Bilu"
movement was founded, which established many settlements in the
land of Israel.
The Zionist movement was founded officially after the
Kattowitz convention (1884) and the
World Zionist Congress (1897)
and it was
Theodor Herzl, which
started the struggle to get the world superpowers to establish a
state for the Jews.After the
First World
War, it seemed that the conditions to establish a state like
this had arrived: The United Kingdom occupied the
Palestine from the
Ottoman Empire and the Jews got a promise for
a "national home" from the British in the form of the
Balfour Declaration of 1917
which was given to
Chaim
Weizmann.
In 1920 the British Mandate of Palestine started and the British
had promised to create and foster a Jewish national home in
Palestine.
In the beginning, The pro-Jewish Herbert Samuel was appointed High
Commissioner in Palestine, the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem
was established and several big Jewish immigration
waves to Palestine occurred – the situation seemed to be going
well. Nevertheless. The Arab inhabitants of the Palestine
weren’t fond of the Jewish immigration which increased and they
began to oppose the Jewish settlement and the pro-Jewish policy of
the British government by means of violent uprising and
terror.
Arab gangs began performing terror acts and murders on convoys and
on the Jewish population. After the
1920
Arab riots and
1921 Jaffa
riots, the Jewish leadership in Palestine believed that the
British had no desire to confront local Arab gangs over their
attacks on Palestinian Jews. Realizing that they could not rely on
the British administration for protection from these gangs, the
Jewish leadership created the Haganah organization to protect their
farms and Kibbutzim.
Large riots occurred during the
Arab massacres of 1929 and the
1936-1939 Arab revolt
in Palestine.
Due to the Arab violence the United Kingdom gradually started to
backtrack from the original idea of a Jewish state and started to
speculate in a
binational
solution or an Arab state which would have a Jewish
minority.
Meanwhile, the Jews of the United States and Europe gained great
success in the fields of the science, culture and the economy. The
most prominent
physicists of Europe
during that period were Jews, prominently the scientist
Albert Einstein. In the Soviet Union, many
Jews were involved in the
October
Revolution and belonged to the communist party.
The Holocaust
In 1933, with the rise to power of
Adolf
Hitler and the
Nazi party in Germany,
The Jewish situation became more severe. Economic crises, racial
anti-Semitic laws, and a fear of an upcoming war led many Jews to
flee from Europe to Palestine, to the United States and to the
Soviet Union.
In 1939 World War II began and until 1941 Hitler occupied almost
all of Europe, including Poland—where millions of Jews were living
at that time—and France. In 1941, when the invasion of the Soviet
Union began, Hitler ordered the initiation of the
Final Solution—an extensive organized
operation on an unprecedented scale, aimed at the annihilation of
the Jews of Europe and French North Africa. This genocide, in which
six million Jews were murdered methodically and with horrifying
cruelty, is known as the Holocaust or
Shoah (Hebrew term).
In
Poland, more than one million Jews were murdered in gas chambers at
the Auschwitz
concentration camp alone.
The massive scale of the Holocaust, and the horrors which happened
during it, heavily affected the Jewish nation and world public
opinion, which only understood the dimensions of the Holocaust
after the war. After the war it became clear that it was impossible
to leave the Jews in the hands of the nations of the world anymore,
and efforts were increased to establish a shelter for the wounded
Jewish nation.
The establishment of the State of Israel
In 1945 the Jewish resistance organizations in Palestine unified
and established the Jewish Resistance Movement. The movement began
pressing the British authority and avenging the Arab rioters whom
attacked Jews. There are different opinions on the success of the
violent struggle of the divisions, and the disobedience movement
eventually stopped in 1946 in the aftermath King David Hotel
bombing. The Jewish leadership decided to center the struggle in
the illegal immigration to Palestine and began organizing massive
amount of Jewish war refugees from Europe, without the approval of
the British authorities. This immigration contributed a great deal
to the Jewish settlements in Israel in the world public opinion and
the British authorities decided to let the United Nations decide
upon the fate of Palestine.
On November 29, 1947 the United Nations decided on dividing the
country into two states: A Jewish state and an Arab state. The
Jewish leadership accepted the decision but the Arabs opposed it
and started attacking the Jewish settlements, and so the 1948
Arab–Israeli War started.
In the middle of the war, after the last soldiers of the British
mandate left Palestine, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed in 1948 the
establishment of the Jewish state of Israel. In 1949 the war ended
and the state of Israel started building the state and absorbing
massive waves of hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from all
over the world.
Since 1948, Israel has been involved in a series of major military
conflicts, including the
1956 Suez
War, 1967
Six-Day War, 1973
Yom Kippur War,
1982 Lebanon War, and
2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict,
as well as a nearly constant series of ongoing minor conflicts to
preserve its national interests.
Since 1977, an ongoing and largely unsuccessful series of
diplomatic efforts have been initiated by Israel, its neighbors,
and other parties, including the United States and the European
Union, to bring about a
peace
process to resolve conflicts between Israel and its neighbors,
mostly over the fate of the Palestinian people.
21st century
Today, Israel is a
parliamentary
democracy with a population of over 7.5 million people, of
which about 5.6 million are Jewish.
Today, the largest Jewish communities are in the United States and
Israel, with major communities in France, Argentina, Russia,
England, and Canada.
For statistics related to modern Jewish demographics see the
article
Jewish
population.
The
Jewish
Autonomous Oblast
, created during the Soviet
period,
continues to be an autonomous
oblast of the Russian state. The Chief Rabbi of Birobidzhan
, Mordechai
Scheiner, says there are 4,000 Jews in the capital city.
Governor Nikolay Mikhaylovich Volkov has
stated that he intends to, "support every valuable initiative
maintained by our local Jewish organizations." The
Birobidzhan Synagogue opened in 2004
on the 70th anniversary of the region's founding in 1934
Jewish history by country or region
For historical and contemporary Jewish populations by country, see
Jews by country.
See also
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