Jew

– wrestling with the angel in this painting by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn – was the father of the tribes of Israel.]]
The **Jews** or **Jewish people** are an ethnic and religious group whose religion is Judaism. A Jew is someone who is of Jewish heritage or who has converted to the Jewish religion.  Judaism has been described as a religion, a race, an ethnic group, a culture, a nation, and an extended family.
## Demographics
Israel is the only modern country with a Jewish majority, but there are Jewish minorities in many places in the world. Most of them live in large cities in the United States, Argentina, Europe and Australia.  Both Israel and the U.S. have over five million Jews. In the Soviet Union there were more than two million Jews, but many of them moved to Israel, the U.S. and other Western countries since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
 
Jews have been victims of various persecutions. The most well known happened during the Second World War, when at least 6,000,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis. The event is known as the Holocaust.

## Jewish ethnic groups
All ethnic (non-convert) Jews have genetic heritage from the Levant (the region now known as Israel and/or Palestine). Within all of the world's Jews, there are Jewish ethnic groups. The two biggest are called Ashkenazi (who have historically lived in Central and Eastern Europe) and Sephardic (who have historically lived in lands around the Mediterranean Sea, particularly Spain and Portugal). Jews from the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia are called Mizrahi Jews. There are also Ethiopian Jews, Indian Jews (Bene Israel) and Chinese Jews (Kaifeng Jews).  Many of these groups have moved from one place to another.  For example, many Ashkenazi Jews live in the United States, and many Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews live in France.

Jews speak the languages of the countries where they live. Hebrew is the  language of Judaism because it is the language in which the Bible was written. It is still used for prayers. In Israel, Ivrit, which is the name for the new Hebrew language, is the common language. There are also other Jewish languages such as Yiddish and Ladino which are still spoken and written by some Jews.

## History
### Origin
Judaism began with a man named *Abram* who lived in the city of Ur in modern-day Iraq. As per the Midrash, Abram strongly believed that the people in Ur were wrong to pray to different gods and statues. He believed that there was really only one god who was not a statue. The Torah tells that God spoke to Abram and told him to leave Ur with his family and move to Canaan, where he started a new religion. God told him that his name would be changed to Abraham. The Midrash also says that angels taught Abraham a new holy language, which Jews believe is the language today known as Hebrew. Hebrew continues to be the language of Judaism. Abraham's grandson Jacob is said to be the one who first had the name of "Israel".

The Bible says that the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt. God helped Moses to set them free. After this, Moses met God on Mount Sinai and received the Torah from God.  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. 
#### Cold War
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. Britain then 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 7,181,000 Jews in Israel. 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.

### Today
Jewish history continues today in both Israel and the Diaspora. Outside of Israel, there are many Jews in the United States; Great Britain; France, Germany,  Russia, Ukraine,   Argentina, Brazil, 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.:.

## Famous Jews 
, who came up with the equation *E=mc2*, had Jewish heritage.]]

Many Jewish people have done great things in Science, Literature, Business, and the Arts.  Some of the most famous include:

* David Ben-Gurion, Israeli politician
* Mel Brooks, movie director
* Noam Chomsky, American linguist and writer
* Aaron Copland, composer
* Bob Dylan, American singer
* Albert Einstein, scientist
* Anne Frank, writer
* Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis
* George Gershwin, composer
* Emma Goldman, anarchist
* Theodor Herzl, founder of modern Zionism
* Jesus, central figure of Christianity
* Franz Kafka, writer
* Henry Kissinger, former American Secretary of State
* Emma Lazarus, author
* Rosa Luxemburg, politician
* Moses Maimonides, Jewish philosopher
* Marx Brothers, comedians
* Golda Meir, Israeli politician
* Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli politician
* Shimon Peres, Israeli politician
* Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli politician
* Natalie Portman, actress
* Philip Roth, American writer
* Mark Rothko, American painter
* Bernie Sanders, United States senator
* Steven Spielberg, movie director
* Baruch Spinoza, philosopher
* Mark Spitz, swimmer
*Three Stooges,comedians
* Barbra Streisand, singer and actress

## References