When the Jews were turned into slaves in Egypt, God told Moses to ask for the 12 tribes of Israel to be freed. Pharaoh said "No" time and again and each time he did God sent many terrible punishments to the Egyptians to make him to free the Hebrews. Finally, the Pharaoh let the Hebrews go free, but then decided to send the Egyptian army to capture the Jews back. To help them escape God commanded the Red Sea to open a path for them. The waters then returned and drowned the Egyptian army. The Torah says that after this, Moses met with God on Mount Sinai and received the Ten Commandments and the Torah from God.
The Hebrews or Israelites, in twelve tribes, began a country called Israel in Canaan. They fought many wars against other peoples in the area. The name "Jew" comes from the name of one of these tribes, Judah. Later Judah was conquered by Babylonia in the early 6th century BC, and its people were taken captive to Babylon. They were allowed to go back to Judah again when Babylon was conquered by the Persian Empire. Some Jewish people stayed in Babylon (now Iraq) and others also lived in other countries.
By 50 BC, Judah (then called Judea) was ruled by the Roman Empire. During this time, the main language of Judea was Aramaic. The Jews did not like the Roman government or customs, and often made trouble for the Romans. In 70 AD, after a revolt against the government by the Jewish community, the Romans destroyed Judea's capital city, Jerusalem and sent almost all Jews into exile.
After this, the Jewish people did not have their own country. They were a small minority in almost every place they lived. This time is called the Diaspora, when Jews spread around the world. They lived in many other countries. Jews living in Spain and Portugal used the language Ladino (also called "Judeo-Spanish"). Jews living in Germany, Poland, Russia, and other countries in Central-Eastern Europe spoke the language Yiddish. Jews living in North Africa spoke Judeo-Arabic or Haketia, the local name for Ladino. Jews have lived in most, but not all, places in the world, including India, China, Yemen, and Ethiopia. Even today, Jews who do not live in Israel are often said to live "in the Diaspora". In some places, like India, Jews lived without any problems. In other places, like most of Europe and Islamic countries, there was bigotry or even hatred against Jews and they lived under discriminatory laws. Sometimes Jews suffered from outright persecution (that is: systematic hatred and violence), sometimes they were forced to dress in special, ugly clothes, pay higher taxes than others, not build higher houses than others, not to ride a horse or donkey, wear certain badges etc. In Europe, where the Roman Catholic church forbade Christians from lending money against interest, some Jews worked as bankers and money-lenders, and became known as skillful bankers.
One nomad nation, the Khazars, converted to Judaism in the 8th century. The Khazar khanate, which was in the modern Ukraine and Byelorussia, was the only independent Jewish state before modern day Israel. The Khazar state was destroyed by the Eastern Vikings (Rus) in 987.
The Jewish People have always believed that they have a special mission from God. They do things in their own ways, such as having special rules about food and eating, not working on the Shabbat, keeping their own holidays, and not marrying people from other religions. Because of this, people in many different times and countries have thought that the Jews were strange, and maybe dangerous. Many countries made laws that the Jews could not work in some jobs or live in some places. Sometimes Jewish people were killed because of their religion. The word "antisemitism" describes the hatred for Jews.
During the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazi, or "National Socialist" government of Germany conquered most of Europe. They did terrible things to the Jewish people. The Nazi government killed more than six million Jewish people. Before they were killed, often by means of a gas chamber, many of the Jews were made to be forced workers, and some of them were forced to help in the killing and capturing of the others.
In 1948 after World War II, the United Nations made the country of Israel for the Jews in Palestine, which is in the same place as the original Israel, in the Middle East. The land had been part of the Ottoman Empire before World War I. Then Britain controlled the area under the oversight of the United Nations. Many Jews moved back to Israel, then called Palestine, starting in the late 1800s. When the country of Israel was made in 1948, there were about 600,000 Jews in it. Today there are about 5,600,000 Jews in it.
When Jews moved back to Palestine, there were some people living there now. Most of them did not want to live in a Jewish country. This was the beginning of the Israeli-Arab or Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which continues today.
Jews have come to Israel from all over the world, bringing different languages, music, food, and history to create a unique culture. Israel is the only country in the world where most people are Jews and where Hebrew is the main language.
Jewish history continues today in both Israel and the Diaspora. Outside of Israel, there are many Jews in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, France, Russia, the Ukraine, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, and Australia. There are smaller numbers of Jews living in other parts of the world.
Some of the major problems faced by the Jewish people today include resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and dealing with high rates of assimilation (loss of Jewish identity) in some countries, like the United States.
Many Jewish people have done great things in science, literature, business, and the arts. Some of the most famous include:
Gough Whitlam
Edward Gough Whitlam (11 July 1916 – 21 October 2014), known "Gough Whitlam", was an Australian politician. He was the 21st Prime Minister of Australia., and the only Prime Minister to have been dismissed from office by a Governor-General. He was Prime Minister for three years. His Labor Party was elected after 23 years of government by the Liberal-Country Party Coalition, and his government made a lot of new changes. Whitlam is the only Prime Minister who has lived in the lifetime of all the other Prime Ministers.
Whitlam was born in Kew, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria. He studied at the University of Sydney. Whitlam served at the Royal Australian Air Force from 1941 through 1945 during World War II.
Whitlam became Prime Minister in December 1972. He succeeded William McMahon. His government, for most of the time it lasted, did not have a majority in the Senate (the upper house of the Australian Parliament). This made it hard for Whitlam's government to make laws. The Whitlam government nevertheless made progress in many areas including free health care for everyone, equal rights for women, equal rights for Aboriginal people including the right to own or control land, no more compulsory military service, trade relations with communist China, free tertiary education, and the chance for people with low incomes to get a lawyer to defend their rights.