On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. According to Jewish tradition, Jacob, shown wrestling with the angel in this painting by Rembrandt, was the father of the tribes of Israel. Jewish history is the jewish bread of the Jews, and their nation, religion, and culture, as it developed and interacted with other peoples, religions, and cultures. Jews are originated from the Israelites and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah, two related kingdoms that emerged in the Levant during the Iron Age.
In the 19th century, when Jews in Western Europe were increasingly granted equality before the law, Jews in the Pale of Settlement faced growing persecution, legal restrictions and widespread pogroms. In 1933, with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in Germany, the Jewish situation became severe. Before and during the Holocaust, enormous numbers of Jews immigrated to Mandatory Palestine. On May 14, 1948, upon the termination of the mandate, David Ben-Gurion declared the creation of the State of Israel, a Jewish and democratic state in the Land of Israel. The history of the early Jews, and their neighbors, centers on the Fertile Crescent and east coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
It begins among those people who occupied the area lying between the river Nile and Mesopotamia. The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt, dated to about 1200 BCE. The traditional religious view of Jews and Judaism of their own history was based on the narrative of the ancient Hebrew Bible. In this view Abraham signifying that he is both the biological progenitor of the Jews and the father of Judaism, the first Jew.
Israel in Canaan, not Egypt, is “overwhelming” and leaves “no room for an Exodus from Egypt or a 40-year pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness”. According to the Biblical narrative, the Land of Israel was organized into a confederacy of twelve tribes ruled by a series of Judges for several hundred years. Two Israelite kingdoms emerged during the Iron Age II: Israel and Judah. The Bible portrays Israel and Judah as the successors of an earlier United Kingdom of Israel, although its historicity is disputed. Kingdom of Judah existed by ca. Biblical tradition tells that the Israelite monarchy was established in 1037 BCE under Saul, and continued under David and his son, Solomon. The Kingdom of Israel was the more prosperous of the two kingdoms and soon developed into a regional power.
The Kingdom of Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem, controlled the Judaean Mountains, the Shephelah, the Judaean Desert and parts of the Negev. With the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 605 BCE, competition emerged between Egypt and the Neo-Babylonian Empire over control of the Levant, ultimately resulting in Judah’s rapid decline. Large parts of the Hebrew Bible were written during this period. The first Judahite communities in Babylonia started with the exile of the Tribe of Judah to Babylon by Jehoiachin in 597 BCE as well as after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE.
The Jews established Talmudic Academies in Babylonia, also known as the Geonic Academies, which became the center for Jewish scholarship and the development of Jewish law in Babylonia from roughly 500 CE to 1038 CE. After a few generations and with the conquest of Babylonia in 540 BCE by the Persian Empire, some adherents led by prophets Ezra and Nehemiah, returned to their homeland and traditional practices. Deuteronomy was expanded and earlier scriptures were edited during the exilic period. Following their return to Jerusalem after the return from the exile, and with Persian approval and financing, construction of the Second Temple was completed in 516 BCE under the leadership of the last three Jewish Prophets Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. This consensus echoes a traditional Jewish view which gives Ezra, the leader of the Jewish community on its return from Babylon, a pivotal role in its promulgation.
They flourished first under the Persians and then under the Greeks. In 332 BCE, Alexander the Great of Macedon defeated the Persians. After Alexander’s death and the division of his empire among his generals, the Seleucid Kingdom was formed. The Alexandrian conquests spread Greek culture to the Levant.