Jewish population history

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http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v2/n1 ... a_BX1.html

Jewish population history
From the following article:
A genetic profile of contemporary Jewish populations
Harry Ostrer
Nature Reviews Genetics 2, 891-898 (November 2001)
doi:10.1038/35098506



An early history of the Jewish people is found in the Bible, although the accuracy of Biblical sources has been called into question by contemporary historians66. Most now believe that a Jewish identity can be ascribed only from the time of the Greek Hasmoneans, in the second century before the common era (C.E.). According to their area of long-term residence, contemporary Jewish populations are divided into three groups (inset figure). Middle Eastern (or Oriental) Jews lived in contemporary Israel and Palestine, as well as in Iran, Iraq, Central Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. Sephardic Jews (from the Hebrew word for Spanish) resided in Spain and Portugal up to the Spanish Inquisition in the late fifteenth century, during which time Jews were persecuted by the Catholic Church, and then migrated to North Africa, Italy, the Balkans, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and the Americas67. Ashkenazi Jews (from the Hebrew word for German) moved north of the Alps, probably from Italy, during the first millennium of the common era34. During the ninth century, the ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews settled in the cities of the Rhineland and developed their own language, Yiddish (a form of middle-high German with words also derived from Hebrew and Slavic languages). In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Ashkenazi Jews were expelled from the countries of Western Europe and were granted charters to settle in Poland and Lithuania. As a result, the centre of Ashkenazi Jewry shifted to the East, where it remained for the following five centuries.

Jews refer to themselves as a 'people' because this is an inclusive term that reflects a common religion, and, to some extent, a shared culture, historic experience and language. The term is deemed preferable to 'race', because Jews do not share characteristic physical features across groups68. In addition, the term 'race' was discredited by the pseudoscientific nature of phrenology and racial hygiene studies that led to disastrous eugenic practices in the early and mid-twentieth century69. The term 'people' is deemed preferable to 'nation' because throughout most of their history Jews have not shared a common political or governing authority.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the centre of Ashkenazi Jewry shifted westwards (main figure), with large migration to the Americas, Western Europe, Australia and South Africa. In the twentieth century, three important events influenced Jewish demography — the Jewish Holocaust of the Second World War, leading to the death of six million people, the immigration of Jews from many of the countries of the diaspora to Israel, and the intermarriage of Jews, either with partners coming from different Jewish groups or with one partner being non-Jewish10.