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Intangible Cultural Heritage of Israel Center
COMMUNITIES
As of 2019, Israel's population was an estimated 9.021.560, of whom 74.5% were recorded by the civil government as Jews. Arabs comprised 20.9% of the population. Three quarters of the population are Jews from a diversity of Jewish backgrounds. Approximately 77% of Israeli Jews were born in Israel, 16% are immigrants from Europe and the Americas, and 7% are immigrants from Asia and Africa. Jews from Europe and the former Soviet Union and their descendants born in Israel, including Ashkenazi Jews, constitute approximately 50% of Jewish Israelis. Jews who left or fled Arab and Muslim countries and their descendants, including both Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews, form most of the rest of the Jewish population.
As a country of immigrants, many languages can be heard on the streets. Due to mass immigration from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia (some 130,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel), Russian and Amharic are widely spoken. More than one million Russian-speaking immigrants arrived in Israel from the post-Soviet states between 1990 and 2004. French is spoken by around 700,000 Israelis, mostly originating from France and North Africa.
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Israel comprises a major part of the Holy Land, a region of significant importance to all Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Druze and Bahá'í Faith. The city of Jerusalem is of special importance to Jews, Muslims and Christians as it is the home of sites that are pivotal to their religious beliefs.
The different jewish communities in Israel
Sabra (Jewish israelis who were born in Israel), Argentine Jews , Ashkenazi Jews , Australian Jews, Bukharan Jews , Bulgarian Jews , Ethiopian Jews , French Jews , Georgian Jews , Indians Jews, Iranian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Kurdish Jews , Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews, Moroccan Jews , Mountain Jews , Pakistani Jews, Romanian Jews , Russian Jews , South African Jews , Turkish Jews, Uruguayan Jews , Venezuelan Jews, Yemenite Jews and more.
The others ethnies
Palestinians, Negev Bedouin, Druze, Maronites, Copts, Arameans. Armenians, Assyrians, Circassians, Samaritans, Africans, Caucasians, East, Europeans, Finns, Vietnamese and more.
Ethiopian Jews
Jews from Arab countries
Jews from India
Jews from Yemen
Jews from Europe
Jews from Iraq
Jews from Marocco and Algeria
Jews from Russia
Kurdish Jews
Chinese Jews
The Druze
Israeli Arabs
Armenians
Bedouins of Israel
Israel History
The term "Israelite" refers to members of the Jewish tribes from the Hebrew Bible. The term "Israeli" refers to the citizens of the modern State of Israel, regardless of them being Jewish, Arabs, or of any other ethnicity.
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The modern State of Israel revived a name known from the Hebrew Bible and from historical sources, that of the Kingdom of Israel uniting all twelve biblical Israelite tribes, with the common capital known as the City of David (Jerusalem).
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The northern Kingdom of Israel was destroyed in 720 BCE by the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its population was forcibly restructured through imperial policy. The southern Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire (586 BCE), inherited by the Achaemenid Empire, conquered by Alexander the Great (332 BCE), ruled by the resulting Hellenistic empires, from which it regained authonomy and eventually independence under the Hasmoneans, conquered by the Roman Republic in 63 BCE, ruled by the kings of the Herodian dynasty, and finally transformed into a Roman province during the first century.
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Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire from 1516 until it was taken by British forces in 1918. The British establishment of colonial political boundaries allowed the Jews to develop autonomous institutions such as the Histadrut and the Knesset. Since the late nineteenth century, the Jews started to immigrate to Palestine and refurbish its land area, considerable but partially uninhabitable due to an abundance of swamps and desert. The resulting influx of Jewish immigrants, was crucial for the functioning of these new institutions in what would, on 14 May 1948, become the State of Israel.
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