The central idea of the Jewish faith is simple: There is one God. 4000 years ago, Abraham promoted that idea, and at the time it was quite radical. Abraham was a Hebrew man from the Middle East, where everyone believed in many gods, all of which were responsible for different things. The thought of one Supreme being was far-fetched to most people.
God told Abraham and his wife, Sarah, that they would have many descendants. The couple, old and childless, had given up hope of having children by the time God said this, but soon Sarah gave birth to Isaac. Isaac later had a son named Jacob, who was also known by the name Israel. The descendants of Abraham became known as the Israelites.
Soon the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, and they dealt with many hardships. Moses, a leader of the Hebrew people, was given the Ten Commandments by God. Those Commandments form the basis of the Torah, or the religious book of the Jewish people.
After many years, the Jewish people were freed — but then they faced even more hardship. They were conquered by other peoples, and spent time enslaved as prisoners of war. The Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Romans all had a hand in the persecution of the Jews, and the Romans destroyed many of their buildings and central way of life. The Jews scattered all over the region in the hopes of staying alive. This kind of dispersion is called the Diaspora, and it continues to this day.
During World War II, the Jews faced a persecution unlike any that even the Romans had handed down in their history. The Holocaust led to the death of millions of Jews, and that led to the desire to have their own country, a place where Jewish people could live in freedom and safety. In 1948, Palestine was divided and Israel was created. The land was once called Canaan, and it was the original “promised land” given to the Jewish people by God.
Today there are fourteen million Jews in the world. About half of them live in the United States, while a quarter live in Israel, and the rest are scattered around other countries. Israel is surrounded by people of Muslim descent, and they believe the land of Israel should be theirs — and so there is, to this day, unrest and fighting in the area of Palestine and Israel.
