text:
Talk:Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi

Old VfD
from VfD:

I do not believe this show is famous enough to warrant its own article. -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:08, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Also, the image on the page has very very questionable copyright. Image:Hihipuffy.JPG -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:12, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * It's pretty notable; I'd contend that all cartoons featured on Cartoon Network are. I know it's legitimate, I remember reading about it in Disney Adventures.. The image is probably nix on copyright. [[User:Rhymeless|Rhymeless | (Methyl Remiss)]] 08:22, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * The show only started this year. -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:49, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Comment: If nothing else, the lyrics have got to go. Copyrights, et al. - Vague | Rant 11:07, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)
 * Cut out the image (and put it on Images for Deletion) and the lyrics, and then clean up. Geogre 13:11, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep: even short lived cartoons may be notable. FWIW, if the image is a single instance of unaltered publicity material, it is about as certainly fair use as anything can be. -- Smerdis of Tlön 17:19, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * COMMENT: Puffy Ami Yumi is definitely notable, and this is about them, so it's probably notable... 132.205.45.110 18:34, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * KEEP: you're wasting everybody's time with this. Check the Deletion Policy first next time. I don't see any test for famousness in the policy. Mdchachi|Talk 19:16, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Apparently deletion policy is made up on the spot "refined and created" by the peer review which takes place here. Non-famous things might be regarded as non-notable, and thus get deleted. Kappa 19:27, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * The formal deletion policy is hopelessly outdated, and likely to remain that way, as it is nearly impossible to get consensus on any changes to anything related to deletion. What Wikipedia is not and Votes for deletion phrases much more accurately document current practice. Niteowlneils 22:27, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the links. Well in any case a nationally syndicated tv show featuring Japanese pop stars is unquestionably notable if not a life-changing phenomenon. :-) Mdchachi|Talk 20:29, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Keep, expand and lose the copyvio'd lyrics. Cartoon Network is pushing this show big time.  Once you get past the title, the show's actually pretty good.  There's an image from Cartoon Network posted on the "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends" page that's free use with the caveat that the image is used strictly in promotional material.  This image is probably OK to use as well. - Lucky 6.9 21:20, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. Very peculiar arguments for deletion as of late. [[User:GRider|GRider\talk]] 21:21, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. Current culture is notable. Well-pushed shows on a notable television network are notable. And I don't know how meaningful this is to you, but both the 5 year old and 10 year old in my house are enamored with H. I. Puffnstuf Ami YuGiOh. Or whatever it's called. :) - [[User:KeithTyler|Keith D. Tyler  [ flame ]  ]] 00:58, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. National release or better, hence verifiable. - RedWordSmith 04:06, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. utcursch 11:14, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)
 * Extreme keep. Regardless of whether or not the show only started this year, it is still verfiably notable and worthy of inclusion.  —[[en:RaD Man|RaD Man (talk)]] 16:34, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep; show is well advertised and annoying, making it notable. A2Kafir 00:43, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep They're famous in Japan, so it has some cross-cultural values Jdjuice 07:28, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Note that we are discussing the article about the cartoon show based on the band, and not the article for the band itself, Puffy AmiYumi. I'm not sure if this will affect your opinion or not, but the distiction should probably be made anyway. - RedWordSmith 16:43, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)
 * KeepPlease I love the show.

end moved discussion
 * Not inspired by anime? Well, not very.. but it's inaccurate to say not _at all_ .. i'd say perhaps as much as jackie chan adventures is. Definitely not as much as one would expect.

Unoffical fine site
Can i add the link of the unoffical fan site of the show at the links? http://shinhihipuffyamiyumidreams.b1.jcink.com/index.php? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.212.155.196 (talk) 18:16, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I think that you can add it to the list, other shows on wikipedia also have unoffical fan sites links Hgwqhge

Ami's hair
It looks like the buns in Ami's hair are hovering in mid-air. — J I P | Talk 07:29, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Wow..it does...Man, if I knew her in person, I'd feel so tempted to give her hair a flick, lol. Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 02:37, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes!I noticed it,too!Well,the show is a bit like a mix of anime style and occidental animation style,even my friend told me one day:"The show was drawed in japanese and fairly oddparents/danny phantom style!",well,and actually,Ami's buns are "floating" in middle air like Sam Manson(Danny Phantom)hairstyle!SharkGirlX 00:51, 29 August 2006 (UTC)ComicSansGirlSharkGirlX 00:51, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Curious... That music sounds familiar...
Often, the show uses a piece of scary music like the one used in the episode where Ami gets a job at a circus. It sounds suspiciously similar to "Deterioration" - Track Number 25 of the Baten Kaitos ~Neverending Wings and the Lost Sea~ Original Soundtrack.

Can anybody help me verify whether it is the exact same tune? Only, everytime I try to view the credits (I live in the UK), its impossible because it is shrunk to one half of the screen, making the words illegible.

Wolf ODonnell 20:50, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Cartoon Network says...
Believe it or not according to Cartoon Network's US website, the upcoming Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi episode on April 7, "The Golden Fleas" is going to be the first full 30 minute episode. If "Sitcom Yumi" is on there, it may not air until later or as part of another episode. Just to keep a heads up on that. NoseNuggets 1:23 AM US EST Mar 30 206.

How to pronounce Tekirai
How do you say Ami's cat's name?--BigMac1212 03:14, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

 * "Teh-Keer-I"--User:Zeldamaster3 17:35, 11 May 2006
 * That must be an Americanization of the word then, because if it was pronouced in correct Japanese it would be "Teh-key-lrah-ee"--SeizureDog 00:38, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I think it is the same pronunciation - the letter "I" in English, if pronounced slowly, is pronounced "ah-ee". "-rai" is pronounced like "rye", which rhymes with "I".  Now "I" in romanized Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, etc., is pronounced like the letter "E" - "eee".  If it's really a concern, give a pronunciation using IPA.  --Geopgeop 08:49, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

The logic of a American show on a Japanese band
The article fails to explain Cartoon Network's reason for creating such a show. I'm really interested as to why they would make an American show based off of a Japanese band that, before the show, was hardly known in America. --SeizureDog 00:40, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm speculating, but based on the Teen Titans franchise's success, and that Puffy AmiYumi performed the theme songs to that show, I'd say it was a giveback by Cartoon Network? --Geopgeop 08:52, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I forget the site, but I read that the guy who made the show heard their music and loved it, and wanted to make them famous over here. --DarkAdonis255 16:16, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

His name is Sam Register. He's a BIG puffy fan! --Zeldamaster3 12:48, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

 * Interesting read. Late comment, but I always wondered this. Thank you. NightFall60 (talk) 19:46, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

If this is an American animated TV series.....
.....why is there Japanese writing at the beginning of the article? (Plainnym 16:54, 12 June 2006 (UTC))
 * The show is about a band from Japan, hence the Japanese characters.--BigMac1212 01:53, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Canceled?!?
They canceled it?!?!?!?!?!?!? '''I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR OVER 4 MONTHS AND THEY JUST DROP IT LIKE THAT?! I DON"T THINK SO! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!''' I loved that show and they canceled it with five more episodes ready to air? Why? I'd like to know right nowChikinpotato11 21:53, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Cartoon Network has never officially commented, so it is impossible to tell why for sure. The number of viewers may have gone down, causing it to not be very profitable for CN to show.  They almost never showed it other than when a new episode would air, which didn't help to attract more viewers.  It is a huge shame that Cartoon Network didn't treat it very well.--DarkAdonis255 22:30, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Wanna know why? Cartoon Network wanted to hire Renegade Animation to do Milt Appleday's characters in Out of Jimmy's Head. This and the idea of live-action shows pissed Sam Register off so much, that he left Cartoon Network and moved to Warner Bros. Animation. --SpaceGoofsGeekerBoy (talk) 17:50, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh, wow. I did not know this. I'm laughing at how behind I am on this. NightFall60 (talk) 19:48, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Kaz.gif
Image:Kaz.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in Wikipedia articles constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 15:49, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Puffyparade6 edited.jpg
Image:Puffyparade6 edited.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 04:10, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Pronouciation
Does Tasukete contain 3 or 4 syllabils? In the show, the 3 main characters all say it in just 3 syllabils.--BigMac1212 18:20, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Three. See comment above.--Edtropolis 14:40, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Character4.gif
Image:Character4.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 19:44, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Puf.gif
Image:Puf.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 05:31, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The DVD's
What are on the DVD's? Complete seasons or select episodes? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.74.162.173 (talk) 01:47, 31 March 2009 (UTC) The series box set has just been realised http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8BdNbtoKi8  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hgwqhge (talk • contribs) 19:24, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Article tags added
I have tagged the article on what needs to be done to make this article better, please do not remove the tags without discussing here first and/or without improving the article with needed sources. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 22:47, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 5 external links on Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100615124038/http://animationinsider.net/article.php?articleID=76&document=6 to http://www.animationinsider.net/article.php?articleID=76&document=6
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100615124004/http://animationinsider.net/article.php?articleID=76&document=4 to http://www.animationinsider.net/article.php?articleID=76&document=4
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.cartoonnetwork.com.au/asp/tv/default.asp
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070930003543/http://www.rubies.com/landingpage.cfm?ItemNumber=882325 to http://rubies.com/landingpage.cfm?ItemNumber=882325
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070930003537/http://www.rubies.com/landingpage.cfm?ItemNumber=882323 to http://rubies.com/landingpage.cfm?ItemNumber=882323

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 00:12, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Developer credits
I don't see Developed By credits in the intro or outro credits. Can anyone justify why we're including this content in the infobox and article body? Sam Register is credited as series creator, but I don't see Shakeh Haghnazarian's name in the credits of the sample episode I checked. Haghnazarian appears to be the lead character designer. I've removed this content in this edit until it can be sourced. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 00:00, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Not a writer
Robert Lamoreaux and Steven Banks were writers on the show but Kit Boyce was a background painter working in the Flash program. 98.113.120.62 (talk) 22:39, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prabhasakshi

Prabhasakshi
Webpage vanity Evil Monkey → Talk 08:08, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)
 * Comment/no vote. Alexa page rank is respectable, regularly breaking into the top 100000: . I don't know anything about Indian web portals so I don't know if this site really is well-known or well-established. If it is, the article could certainly use cleanup. Aerion 08:24, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete: The question is whether it's the leading Hindi page or merely one that strives to be.  If it's the Hindi Yahoo, then it should be rewritten to strip out the press-release copy and put into standard punctuation.  If it's not, then it should be deleted.  The current copy is advertising copy, although the article isn't an ad.  I agree that it's borderline.  My vote is essentially "delete if not improved."  Geogre 13:17, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete: I agree with Geogre's reasons completely and have nothing to add to them. *Kat* 13:46, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)
 * Comment: The website is significant, however the current article is a vanity post. I say wipe, make a stub saying its a popular Indian web portal, and let someone who uses it regularly see what they can do with it (or perhaps transwiki an article from the Hindi wikipedia if an article for it exists) EagleFalconn 20:25, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * del. Mikkalai 08:58, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. My mother-tongue is Hindi and I don't think this is a very notable website. utcursch 11:19, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

The following votes are invalid. They all are IP Edits by 203.200.126.241. utcursch 07:28, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

 * Keep. Hindipremi 18:25, 15 Dec 2004: It is a significant website. Even the Indian parliament's upper house (Rajya Sabha) has a link to it: rajyasabha.nic.in/general/newspaper.html. Government of India's IT ministry has also featured it in major Hindi resources: www.tdil.mit.gov.in/.../asp_files/ query17.asp?pub=Portal+and+Web+Sites+on+Indian+Languages&currentPage=9. Similarly, Microsoft's Hindi portal is all praise for it: http://www.bhashaindia.com/SoW/site_review.aspx?id=15 . When we search for 'Prabhasakshi' on Google, it throws up thousands of results and hundreds of links. I think it would be injustice if it is deleted.
 * Edit and Keep. Sudhanshu 12:17, 16 Dec 2004: It is one of the most comprehensive Hindi portals. Keep it, though the article needs to be edited. The portal figures in Samachar.com which is like Google News and which re-publishes news available at select Indian portals.
 * Modify. Aadhar I agree with Sudhanshu. Let someone edit the article and keep it. This site is a good source of information for non resident Indians living outside India.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Jew (word)

The English term Jew is originally derived from the Hebrew term Yehudi (lit. 'of Judah'), which passed into Greek as Ioudaios and into Latin as Iudaeus, in turn evolving into the Old French term giu after the letter "d" was dropped. A variety of related forms are found in early English from about the year 1000, including Iudea, Gyu, Giu, Iuu, Iuw, and Iew, which eventually developed into the modern English word for the Jewish people.

Yehudi in the Hebrew Bible
According to the Book of Genesis, Judah (, Yehudah) was the name of the fourth son of the patriarch Jacob. During the Exodus, the name was given to the Tribe of Judah, descended from the patriarch Judah. After the conquest and settlement of the land of Canaan, Judah also referred to the territory allocated to the tribe. After the splitting of the united Kingdom of Israel, the name was used for the southern kingdom of Judah. The kingdom now encompassed the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Simeon, along with some of the cities of the Levites. With the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel (Samaria), the kingdom of Judah became the sole Jewish state and the term y'hudi was applied to all Israelites.

The term Yehudi occurs 74 times in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible. The plural, Yehudim first appears in  where it refers to a defeat for the Yehudi army or nation, and in, where it refers to the language of the Yehudim. has the earliest singular usage of the word Yehudi. In, the name "Yehudi" has a generic aspect, in this case referring to a man from the tribe of Benjamin:

 * "There was a man a Yehudi (Jewish man) in Shushan the capital, whose name was Mordecai the son of Jair the son of Shimei the son of Kish, a Benjamite; who had been exiled from Jerusalem with the exile that was exiled with Jeconiah, king of Judah, which Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had exiled."

The name appears in the Bible as a verb in which states:

 * "Many of the people of the land became Yehudim (in the generic sense) (, mityahadim) because the fear of the Yehudim fell on them."

In some places in the Talmud the word Israel(ite) refers to somebody who is Jewish but does not necessarily practice Judaism as a religion: "An Israel(ite) even though he has sinned is still an Israel(ite)" (Tractate Sanhedrin 44a). More commonly the Talmud uses the term Bnei Yisrael, i.e. "Children of Israel", ("Israel" being the name of the third patriarch Jacob, father of the sons that would form the twelve tribes of Israel, which he was given and took after wrestling with an angel, see Genesis 32:28–29 ) to refer to Jews. According to the Talmud then, there is no distinction between "religious Jews" and "secular Jews."

In modern Hebrew, the same word is still used to mean both Jews and Judeans ("of Judea"). In Arabic the terms are yahūdī (sg.), al-yahūd (pl.), and بَنُو اِسرَائِيل banū isrāʼīl. The Aramaic term is .

Development in European languages
The Septuagint (reputedly a product of Hellenistic Jewish scholarship) and other Greek documents translated, Yehudi and the Aramaic  using the Koine Greek term Ioudaios (Ἰουδαῖος; pl. Ἰουδαῖοι Ioudaioi), which had lost the 'h' sound. The Latin term, following the Greek version, is Iudaeus, and from these sources the term passed to other European languages. The Old French giu, earlier juieu, had elided (dropped) the letter "d" from the Latin Iudaeus. The Middle English word Jew derives from Old English where the word is attested as early as 1000 in various forms, such as Iudeas, Gyu, Giu, Iuu, Iuw, Iew. The Old English name is derived from Old French. The modern French term is "Juif/Juive" (m/f).

Most European languages have retained the letter "d" in the word for "Jew". Etymological equivalents are in use in other languages, e.g. Jude in German, judeu in Portuguese, jøde in Danish and Norwegian, judío in Spanish, jood in Dutch. In some languages, derivations of the word "Hebrew" are also in use to describe a Jew, e.g., Ebreo in Italian and Spanish, Ebri / Ebrani in Persian and Еврей Yevrey in Russian. (See List of Jewish ethnonyms for a full overview.) The German word Jude is cognate with the Yiddish word for "Jew", Yid.

Jewish dictionary definitions and etymologies
According to the Klein dictionary by rabbi Ernest Klein, the Hebrew word for Jew, Judean, or Jewish יְהוּדִי which is "yehudi" in Hebrew orig. meant 'member of the tribe Judah', later also 'member of the Kingdom of Judah'. When after the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in 722 B.C.E. only the Kingdom of Judah survived, yehudi יֽהוּדִי came to denote 'Jew', resp. 'Jewish'. cp. 'Judaic', 'Jew', 'Chueta' and 'Yiddish'.

According to rabbi Marcus Jastrow's dictionary, yehudi is defined as "worshipper of one God" and rejecting idolatry.

"Meg. 12b קרי ליה י׳ אלמא מיהודה וכ׳ he is called Y'hudi (Esth. II, 5), which would indicate that he belongs to the tribe of Judah, and yet he is called ish y'mini &c.?, v. נִימוֹס. Ib. 13a ... ואמאי י׳ ... שכל הכופר בע'ז נקרא י׳ but why is he designated as Y'hudi? Because he disowned idolatry; for whosoever disowns idolatry, is called a Jew (ref. to Dan. III, 12); Esth. R. to II, 5 לפי שייחד ... נקרא י׳ לומר י׳ יחירי because he professed the unity of God, he was called Y'hudi, meaning to say, a Y'hudi, a believer in One God."

Modern use

In modern English and other contemporary languages, the term "Israelite" was used to refer to contemporary Jews as well as to Jews of antiquity until the mid-20th-century. Since the foundation of the State of Israel, it has become less common to use "Israelite" of Jews in general. Instead, citizens of the state of Israel, whether Jewish or not, are called "Israeli", while "Jew" is used as an ethno-religious designation.

Perception of offensiveness
The word Jew has been used often enough in a disparaging manner by antisemites that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was frequently avoided altogether, and the term Hebrew was substituted instead (e.g. Young Men's Hebrew Association). The German counterpart Jude was extensively used during the Nazi period as a part of its anti-semitic campaign (eventually leading to genocide). The word has become more often used in a neutral fashion, as it underwent a process known as reappropriation. Even today some people are wary of its use, and prefer to use "Jewish". Indeed, when used as an adjective (e.g. "Jew lawyer") or verb (e.g. "to Jew-down someone" ), the term Jew is purely pejorative. According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (2000): "It is widely recognized that the attributive use of the noun Jew, in phrases such as Jew lawyer or Jew ethics, is both vulgar and highly offensive. In such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a practice that carries risks of its own. In a sentence such as There are now several Jews on the council, which is unobjectionable, the substitution of a circumlocution like Jewish people or persons of Jewish background may in itself cause offense for seeming to imply that Jew has a negative connotation when used as a noun."

title: Jew (word)


text:
Bulu (Fijian mythology)

In Fijian mythology, Bulu (pronounced: Mbúlu) is a name for the 'world of spirits' (presumably the underworld). In the month called Vula-i-Ratumaibulu, the god Ratumaibulu comes from Bulu, the world of spirits, to make the breadfruit and other fruit trees blossom and yield fruit. Ratumaibulu is a god of great importance who presides over agriculture.

Another source refers to a "place called 'Nabagatai' on the road to 'Bulu', the separate state or land of souls".

The most westerly point of the island of Vanua Levu was the place from which the departed spirits started out for Bulu, the eternal abode of the blessed (Freese 2005:70).

title: Bulu (Fijian mythology)


text: Category:Swiss cheeses

title: Category:Swiss cheeses


text:
Jewish ethnic divisions

Jewish ethnic divisions refer to many distinctive communities within the world's Jewish population. Although considered a self-identifying ethnicity, there are distinct ethnic subdivisions among Jews, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, mixing with local communities, and subsequent independent evolutions.

As long ago as Biblical times, cultural and linguistic differences between Jewish communities, even within the area of Ancient Israel and Judea, are observed both within the Bible and archeological remains. In more recent human history, an array of Jewish communities were established by Jewish settlers in various places around the Old World, often at great distances from one another, resulting in significant and often long-term isolation from each other. During the millennia of the Jewish diaspora, the communities would develop under the influence of their local environments; political, cultural, natural and demographic. Today, the manifestation of these differences among the Jews can be observed in Jewish cultural expressions of each community, including Jewish linguistic diversity, culinary preferences, liturgical practices, religious interpretations, and degrees and sources of genetic admixture.

Ancient Israel and Judah
The full extent of the cultural, linguistic, religious or other differences among the Israelites in antiquity is unknown. Following the defeat of the Kingdom of Israel in the 720s BCE and the Kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE, the Jewish people became dispersed throughout much of the Middle East and Africa, especially in Egypt and North Africa to the west, as well as in Yemen to the south, and in Mesopotamia to the east. The Jewish population in ancient Israel was severely reduced by the Jewish–Roman wars and by the later hostile policies of the Christian emperors against non-Christians, but the Jews always retained a presence in the Levant. Paul Johnson writes of this time: "Wherever towns survived, or urban communities sprang up, Jews would sooner or later establish themselves. The near-destruction of Palestinian Jewry in the second century turned the survivors of Jewish rural communities into marginal town-dwellers. After the Arab conquest in the seventh century, the large Jewish agricultural communities in Babylonia were progressively wrecked by high taxation, so that there too the Jews drifted into towns and became craftsmen, tradesmen, and dealers. Everywhere these urban Jews, the vast majority literate and numerate, managed to settle, unless penal laws or physical violence made it impossible."

Jewish communities continued to exist in Palestine in relatively small numbers: during the early Byzantine 6th century there were 43 communities; during the Islamic period and the intervening Crusades there were 50 (including Jerusalem, Tiberias, Ramleh, Ashkelon, Caesarea, and Gaza); and during the early Ottoman 14th century there were 30 (including Haifa, Shechem, Hebron, Ramleh, Jaffa, Gaza, Jerusalem, and Safed). The majority of the Jewish population during the High Middle Ages lived in Iberia (what is now Spain and Portugal) and in the region of Mesopotamia and Persia (what is now Iraq and Iran), the former known as the Sefardim and the latter known as the Mizrahim. A substantial population existed also in central Europe, the so-called Ashkenazim. Following the expulsion of Sephardim from Iberia during the 15th century, a mass migration into the Ottoman Empire swelled the size of many eastern communities including those in Palestine; the town of Safed reached 30,000 Jews by end of the 16th century. The 16th century saw many Ashkenazi Kabbalists drawn to the mystical aura and teachings of the Jewish holy city. Johnson notes that in the Arab-Muslim territories, which included most of Spain, all of North Africa, and the Near East south of Anatolia in the Middle Ages, the Jewish condition was easier as a rule, than it was in Europe.

Over the centuries following the Crusades and Inquisition, Jews from around the world began emigrating in increasing numbers. Upon arrival, these Jews adopted the customs of the Mizrahi and Sephardi communities into which they moved.

Diaspora
Following the failure of the second revolt against the Romans and the exile, Jewish communities could be found in nearly every notable center throughout the Roman Empire, as well as scattered communities found in centers beyond the Empire's borders in northern Europe, in eastern Europe, in southwestern Asia, and in Africa. Farther to the east along trade routes, Jewish communities could be found throughout Persia and in empires even farther east including in India and China. In the Early Middle Ages of the 6th to 11th centuries, the Radhanites traded along the overland routes between Europe and Asia earlier established by the Romans, dominated trade between the Christian and the Islamic worlds, and used a trade network that covered most areas of Jewish settlement.

In the middle Byzantine period, the khan of Khazaria in the northern Caucasus and his court converted to Judaism, partly in order to maintain neutrality between Christian Byzantium and the Islamic world. This event forms the framework for Yehuda Halevi's work The Kuzari (c.1140), but how much the traces of Judaism within this group survived the collapse of the Khazar empire is a matter of scholarly debate. Arthur Koestler, in his book The Thirteenth Tribe (1976), and more recently Shlomo Sand in his book The Invention of the Jewish People (2008) theorized that East-European Jews are more ethnically Khazar than they are Semitic. However, numerous genetic studies have not supported this theory.

In western Europe, following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476, and especially after the re-orientation of trade caused by the Moorish conquest of Iberia in the early 8th century, communications between the Jewish communities in northern parts of the former western empire became sporadic. At the same time, rule under Islam, even with dhimmi status, resulted in freer trade and communications within the Muslim world, and the communities in Iberia remained in frequent contact with Jewry in North Africa and the Middle East, but communities further afield, in central and south Asia and central Africa, remained more isolated, and continued to develop their own unique traditions. For the Sephardim in Spain, it resulted in a "Hebrew Golden Age" in the 10th to 12th centuries. The 1492 expulsion from Spain by the Catholic Monarchs however, made the Sephardic Jews hide and disperse to France, Italy, England, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, parts of what is now northwestern Germany, and to other existing communities in Christian Europe, as well as to those within the Ottoman Empire, to the Maghreb in North Africa and smaller numbers to other areas of the Middle East, and eventually to the Americas in the early 17th century.

In northern and Christian Europe during this period, financial competition developed between the authority of the Pope in Rome and nascent states and empires. In western Europe, the conditions for Jewry differed between the communities within the various countries and over time, depending on background conditions. With both pull and push factors operating, Ashkenazi emigration to the Americas would increase in the early 18th century with German-speaking Ashkenazi Jews, and end with a tidal wave between 1880 and the early 20th century with Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim, as conditions in the east deteriorated under the failing Russian Empire. After the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of more than 6 million Jews living in Europe, North America became the place where the majority of Jews live.

Modern divisions
Historically, European Jews have been classified as belonging to two major groups: the Ashkenazim, or "Germanics" (Ashkenaz meaning "Germany" in Medieval Hebrew), denoting their Central European base, and the Sephardim, or "Hispanics" (Sefarad meaning "Hispania" or "Iberia" in Hebrew), denoting their Spanish, Portuguese or North African base. A third historic term Mizrahim, or "Easterners" (Mizrach being "east" in Hebrew) has been used to describe other non-European Jewish communities which have bases which are located further to the east, but its usage has changed both over time and relative to the location where it was used. One definition is the Jews who never left the Middle East, in contrast to the Sephardim who went west to Spain, Portugal, and North Africa. A similar three-part distinction in the Jewish community of 16th-century Venice is noted by Johnson as being "divided into three nations, the Penentines from Spain, the Levantines who were Turkish subjects, and the Natione Tedesca or Jews of German origin..." The far more recent meaning of the term, to include both Middle Eastern and North African Jews in a single term, developed within Zionism in the mid-1940s, when Jews from these countries were all combined in one category as the target of an immigration plan. According to some sources, the current sense of the term, as an ethnic group which is distinct from European-born Jews, was invented at this time. The term constitutes a third major layer to some, and following the partition of Mandatory Palestine and Israeli independence, the Mizrahim's often-forced migration, led to their re-established communities in Israel.

The divisions between these major groups are rough and their boundaries are not solid. The Mizrahim for example, are a heterogeneous collection of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish communities which are often as unrelated to each other as they are to any of the earlier mentioned Jewish groups. In traditional religious usage and sometimes in modern usage, however, the Mizrahim are also termed Sephardi due to similar styles of liturgy, despite independent evolutions from Sephardim proper. Thus, among such Mizrahim there are Iranian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Egyptian Jews, Sudanese Jews, Tunisian Jews, Algerian Jews, Moroccan Jews, Lebanese Jews, Libyan Jews, Syrian Jews, and various others. Other Asian groups that evolved separately from Sephardim include the Georgian and Mountain Jews from the Caucasus, Indian Jews including the Malabar Yehuddim (Cochin Jews), Bene Israel, Bnei Menashe and Bene Ephraim, the Afghan Jews and Bukharan Jews of Central Asia, and Chinese Jews, most notably the Kaifeng Jews. Yemenite Jews ("Teimanim") from Yemen and Kurdish Jews are sometimes included, although their style of liturgy is unique and they differ in respect to the admixture found among them to that found in Mizrahim. Additionally, there is a difference between the pre-existing Middle Eastern and North African Jewish communities as distinct from the descendants of those Sephardi migrants who established themselves in the Middle East and North Africa after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, and in 1497 from the expulsion decreed in Portugal.

Distinct smaller Jewish groups include the Italian rite Jews (i.e. only descendants of ancient Italian Jewish community without later migrants to Italy); the Romaniotes of Greece; various African Jews, including most numerously the Beta Israel of Ethiopia; as well as various other distinct but now extinct communities.

Despite this diversity, Ashkenazi Jews represent the bulk of modern Jewry, estimated at between 70% and 80% of all Jews worldwide; prior to World War II and the Holocaust however, it was 90%. Ashkenazim developed in Europe, but underwent massive emigration in search of better opportunities and during periods of civil strife and warfare. As a result of this, they became the overwhelming majority of Jews in the New World continents and countries, which previously were without native European or Jewish populations. These include the United States, Mexico, Canada, United Kingdom, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and South Africa, but with Venezuela and Panama being exceptions since Sephardim still compose the majority of the Jewish communities in these two countries. In France, more recent Sephardi Jewish immigrants from North Africa and their descendants now outnumber the pre-existing Ashkenazim.

Genetic studies
Despite the evident diversity displayed by the world's distinctive Jewish populations, both culturally and physically, genetic studies have demonstrated most of these to be genetically related to one another, having ultimately originated from a common ancient Israelite population that underwent geographic branching and subsequent independent evolutions.

A study published by the National Academy of Sciences stated that "The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora." Researchers expressed surprise at the remarkable genetic uniformity they found among modern Jews, no matter where the diaspora has become dispersed around the world.

Moreover, DNA tests have demonstrated substantially less inter-marriage in most of the various Jewish ethnic divisions over the last 3,000 years than in other populations. The findings lend support to traditional Jewish accounts accrediting their founding to exiled Israelite populations, and counters theories that many or most of the world's Jewish populations were founded by entirely gentile populations that adopted the Jewish faith, as in the notable case of the historic Khazars. Although groups such as the Khazars could have been absorbed into modern Jewish populations – in the Khazars' case, absorbed into the Ashkenazim – it is unlikely that they formed a large percentage of the ancestors of modern Ashkenazi Jews, and much less that they were the genesis of the Ashkenazim.

Previously, the Israelite origin identified in the world's Jewish populations was attributed only to the males who had migrated from the Middle East and then forged the current known communities with "the women from each local population whom they took as wives and converted to Judaism". Research in Ashkenazi Jews has suggested that, in addition to the male founders, significant female founder ancestry might also derive from the Middle East, with about 40% of the current Ashkenazi population descended matrilineally from just four women, or "founder lineages", that were "likely from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool" originating in the Near East in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE.

Points in which Jewish groups differ are the source and proportion of genetic contribution from host populations. For example, the Teimanim differ to a certain extent from other Mizrahim, as well as from Ashkenazim in the proportion of sub-Saharan African gene types which have entered their gene pools. Among Yemenite Jews, the average stands at 5–10%, due to the relative genetic isolation of Yemenite Jews this is only a quarter of the frequency of the non-Jewish Yemenite sample, which can reach 35%. In Ashkenazi Jews, the proportion of male indigenous European genetic admixture amounts to around 0.5% per generation over an estimated 80 generations, and a total admixture estimate around 12.5%. The only exception to this among Jewish communities is in the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews); a 1999 genetic study came to the conclusion that "the distinctiveness of the Y-chromosome haplotype distribution of Beta Israel Jews from conventional Jewish populations and their relatively greater similarity in haplotype profile to non-Jewish Ethiopians are consistent with the view that the Beta Israel people descended from ancient inhabitants of Ethiopia who converted to Judaism." Another 2001 study did, however, find a possible genetic similarity between 11 Ethiopian Jews and 4 Yemenite Jews from the population samples.

DNA analysis further determined that modern Jews of the priesthood tribe—"Cohanim"—share a common ancestor dating back about 3,000 years. This result is consistent for all Jewish populations around the world. The researchers estimated that the most recent common ancestor of modern Cohanim lived between 1000 BCE (roughly the time of the Biblical Exodus) and 586 BCE, when the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple. They found similar results analyzing DNA from Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews. The scientists estimated the date of the original priest based on genetic mutations, which indicated that the priest lived roughly 106 generations ago, between 2,650 and 3,180 years ago depending whether one counts a generation as 25 or 30 years.

A study of Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA by Richards et al. (2013) suggested that, though Ashkenazi paternal lineages were of Middle Eastern origin, the four main female Ashkenazi founders had descent lines that were established in Europe 10,000 to 20,000 years in the past while most of the remaining minor founders also have a deep European ancestry. The majority of Ashkenazi maternal lineages were not brought from the Levant, nor recruited in the Caucasus, but were assimilated within Europe. The study estimated that 80 percent of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry comes from women indigenous to Europe, 8 percent from the Near East, and the remainder undetermined. According to the study these findings 'point to a significant role for the conversion of women in the formation of Ashkenazi communities.' Some geneticists, such as Doron Behar, a geneticist at Gene by Gene in Houston, US, and Karl Skorecki, at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, are skeptical of these results.

A 2014 study by Fernández et al. found that Ashkenazi Jews display a frequency of haplogroup K in their maternal DNA, suggesting an ancient Near Eastern matrilineal origin, similar to the results of the Behar study in 2006. Fernández noted that this observation clearly contradicts the results of the 2013 study led by Richards that suggested a European source for 3 exclusively Ashkenazi K lineages.

A study by Haber et al. (2013) noted that while previous studies of the Levant, which had focused mainly on diaspora Jewish populations, showed that the "Jews form a distinctive cluster in the Middle East", these studies did not make clear "whether the factors driving this structure would also involve other groups in the Levant". The authors found strong evidence that modern Levant populations descend from two major apparent ancestral populations. One set of genetic characteristics which is shared with modern-day Europeans and Central Asians is most prominent in the Levant among "Lebanese, Armenians, Cypriots, Druze and Jews, as well as Turks, Iranians and Caucasian populations". The second set of inherited genetic characteristics is shared with populations in other parts of the Middle East as well as some African populations. Levant populations in this category today include "Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians, as well as North Africans, Ethiopians, Saudis, and Bedouins". Concerning this second component of ancestry, the authors remark that while it correlates with "the pattern of the Islamic expansion", and that "a pre-Islamic expansion Levant was more genetically similar to Europeans than to Middle Easterners," they also say that "its presence in Lebanese Christians, Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, Cypriots and Armenians might suggest that its spread to the Levant could also represent an earlier event". The authors also found a strong correlation between religion and apparent ancestry in the Levant: "all Jews (Sephardi and Ashkenazi) cluster in one branch; Druze from Mount Lebanon and Druze from Mount Carmel are depicted on a private branch; and Lebanese Christians form a private branch with the Christian populations of Armenia and Cyprus placing the Lebanese Muslims as an outer group. The predominantly Muslim populations of Syrians, Palestinians and Jordanians cluster on branches with other Muslim populations as distant as Morocco and Yemen."

A 2013 study by Doron M. Behar, Mait Metspalu, Yael Baran, Naama M. Kopelman, Bayazit Yunusbayev et al. using integration of genotypes on newly collected largest data set available to date (1,774 samples from 106 Jewish and non-Jewish populations) for assessment of Ashkenazi Jewish genetic origins from the regions of potential Ashkenazi ancestry:(Europe, the Middle East, and the region historically associated with the Khazar Khaganate) concluded that "This most comprehensive study... does not change and in fact reinforces the conclusions of multiple past studies, including ours and those of other groups (Atzmon and others, 2010; Bauchet and others, 2007; Behar and others, 2010; Campbell and others, 2012; Guha and others, 2012; Haber and others; 2013; Henn and others, 2012; Kopelman and others, 2009; Seldin and others, 2006; Tian and others, 2008). We confirm the notion that the Ashkenazi, North African, and Sephardi Jews share substantial genetic ancestry and that they derive it from Middle Eastern and European populations, with no indication of a detectable Khazar contribution to their genetic origins."

The authors also reanalyzed the 2012 study of Eran Elhaik, and found that "The provocative assumption that Armenians and Georgians could serve as appropriate proxies for Khazar descendants is problematic for a number of reasons as the evidence for ancestry among Caucasus populations do not reflect Khazar ancestry". Also, the authors found that "Even if it were allowed that Caucasus affinities could represent Khazar ancestry, the use of the Armenians and Georgians as Khazar proxies is particularly poor, as they represent the southern part of the Caucasus region, while the Khazar Khaganate was centered in the North Caucasus and further to the north. Furthermore, among populations of the Caucasus, Armenians and Georgians are geographically the closest to the Middle East, and are therefore expected a priori to show the greatest genetic similarity to Middle Eastern populations." Concerning the similarity of South Caucasus populations to Middle Eastern groups which was observed at the level of the whole genome in one recent study (Yunusbayev and others, 2012). The authors found that "Any genetic similarity between Ashkenazi Jews and Armenians and Georgians might merely reflect a common shared Middle Eastern ancestry component, actually providing further support to a Middle Eastern origin of Ashkenazi Jews, rather than a hint for a Khazar origin". The authors claimed "If one accepts the premise that similarity to Armenians and Georgians represents Khazar ancestry for Ashkenazi Jews, then by extension one must also claim that Middle Eastern Jews and many Mediterranean European and Middle Eastern populations are also Khazar descendants. This claim is clearly not valid, as the differences among the various Jewish and non-Jewish populations of Mediterranean Europe and the Middle East predate the period of the Khazars by thousands of years".

A 2014 study by Carmi et al. published by Nature Communications found that the Ashkenazi Jewish population originates from an approximately even mixture of Middle Eastern and European ancestry. According to the authors, that mixing likely occurred some 600–800 years ago, followed by rapid growth and genetic isolation (rate per generation 16–53%;). The study found that all Ashkenazi Jews descent from around 350 individuals, and that the principal component analysis of common variants in the sequenced AJ samples, confirmed previous observations, namely, the proximity of Ashkenazi Jewish cluster to other Jewish, European and Middle Eastern populations".

Geographic distribution

Because of the independence of local communities, Jewish ethnic divisions, even when they circumscribe differences in liturgy, language, cuisine and other cultural accoutrements, are more often a reflection of geographic and historical isolation from other communities. It is for this reason that communities are referred to by referencing the historical region in which the community cohered when discussing their practices, regardless of where those practices are found today.The smaller groups number in the hundreds to tens of thousands, with the Georgian Jews (also known as Gruzinim or Qartveli Ebraeli) and Beta Israel being most numerous at somewhat over 100,000 each. Many members of these groups have now emigrated from their traditional homelands, largely to Israel. For example, only about 10 percent of the Gruzinim remain in Georgia.

A brief description of the extant communities, by the geographic regions with which they are associated, is as follows:

Europe
Ashkenazi Jews (plural Ashkenazim) are the descendants of Jews who migrated into northern France and Germany around 800–1000, and later into Eastern Europe.

Among the Ashkenazim there are a number of major subgroups:
 * Yekkes, or German Jews, stemming from the Lowlands, historical Germany, Switzerland, and Scandinavia. They originally spoke Western Yiddish, which had less Slavic influence than other Yiddish dialects. By the early 20th century, Yiddish was in decline in this population, and assimilation was proceeding rapidly.
 * Litvaks, or Lithuanian Jews, emerged as a distinct group in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia and the northeastern Suwałki region of Poland). They have historically spoken the Eastern Yiddish dialect Litvish (Lithuanian Yiddish).
 * Galitzianers, or Galician Jews, trace their origins to Galicia, Western Ukraine (current Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Ternopil regions) and South-Eastern Poland.
 * Jews from central Poland (origins from former Congress Poland), while having fewer specificities and innovations in local cultures than neighboring Litvaks or Galitzianers, nevertheless have had a significant coherent Ashkenazi culture for centuries, and the Poylish dialect of Eastern Yiddish.
 * Oberlanders, originating in the Oberland region of Hungary and the district surrounding Bratislava in Slovakia, originally spoke Western Yiddish. In modern times before the Holocaust, many Oberlander Jews migrated to urban centers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and adopted German or Hungarian as their first language.
 * Unterlanders, who resided in the northeastern region of the Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Slovakia, Zakarpattia Oblast in Ukraine and Northern Transylvania.)
 * According to some sources, Jews in Udmurtia and Tatarstan can be seen as ethnic group - dos udmurtishe yidntum.
 * Russian Jews, who have had a presence in Russia and areas connected to it since the times of the Kievan Rus.

Sephardi Jews (plural Sephardim) are Jews whose ancestors lived in Iberia prior to 1492.

There are multiple subgroups among the Sephardim:
 * Western Sephardim, or the Spanish and Portuguese Jews are a distinct subgroup of Iberian Jews. They are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the immediate generations following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497.
 * Eastern Sephardim are a subgroup of Iberian Jews descended from families exiled from Iberia in the 15th century. Most of them settled in various parts of the Ottoman Empire, while some settled as far as the Malabar coast, importing their culture and customs to the local Cochin Jews.
 * North African Sephardim descend from exiled Iberic Jewish families of the late 15th century and North African Maghrebi Jewish communities already settled in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. They have historically spoken Haketia, a Judaeo-Spanish language derived from Old Spanish, Hebrew and Aramaic.
 * Belmonte Jews are a Jewish community in Belmonte that lived in Portugal as Crypto-Jews for centuries. They survived in secrecy for hundreds of years by maintaining a tradition of endogamy and hiding all external signs of their faith.
 * Xuetes, or Majorcan Jews, are descendants of Jews who were forcibly converted to Christianity and today live in the Balearic Islands. Some maintained their faith, while others observed a syncretist form of Christian worship known as Xueta Christianity.

Jewish communities in Europe that are neither Ashkenazic nor Sephardic:
 * Italkim trace their origins as far back as the 2nd century BCE. It is thought that some families descend from Jews deported from Judaea in 70 CE. They have traditionally spoken a variety of Judeo-Italian languages (Italkian) and used Italian Hebrew as a pronunciation system.
 * Romaniotes are a distinct Jewish community that has resided in Greece and neighboring areas for over 2,000 years. They have historically spoken the Judæo-Greek dialect Yevanic, although due to the majority of them being murdered in the Holocaust, combined with assimilation post-WW2 there are no longer any speakers of it.
 * San Nicandro Jews – A group of mid-20th century converts from Italy.

The Caucasus and the Crimea

 * Juhurim, better known as the Mountain Jews, are descendants of Persian Jews from Iran and Babylonian Jews from Baghdad who settled in the eastern and northern Caucasus (modern Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia). It's believed that they had reached Persia from Ancient Israel as early as the 8th century BCE. The Juhuro survived numerous historical vicissitudes by settling in extremely remote and mountainous areas. They were known to be accomplished warriors and horseback riders. Their language is Judeo-Tat, an ancient Southwest Iranian language which integrates many elements of Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic.
 * Gruzim, or the Georgian Jews, are one of the oldest surviving Jewish communities tracing back to the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BCE. The 2,600-year history of the Georgian Jews was unique in its complete absence of antisemitism prior to Russia's annexation of Georgia. They have traditionally spoken Kivruli, a Judaeo-Georgian dialect with a lot of Hebrew and Aramaic loan words. As a result of the Post-Soviet aliyah, the vast majority of Georgian Jews now live in Israel.
 * Krymchaks and Crimean Karaites are Turkic-speaking Jews of the Crimea and Eastern Europe. The Krymchaks practice Rabbinic Judaism, while the Karaim practice Karaite Judaism. Whether they are primarily the descendants of Israelite Jews who adopted Turkic language and culture, or the descendants of Turkic converts to Judaism, is still debated, although the question is irrelevant as far as Jewish law is concerned, according to which they are Jews, regardless of whether by Israelite descent or by conversion.
 * Subbotniks are a dwindling group of Jews from Azerbaijan and Armenia, whose ancestors were Russian peasants who converted to Judaism for unknown reasons in the 19th century.

North Africa
Mostly Sephardi Jews and collectively known as Maghrebi Jews and sometime considered part of the wider Mizrahi group:
 * Moroccan Jews migrated to this area after the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem and settled among the Berbers. They were later met by a second wave of migration from the Iberian peninsula in the period immediately preceding and following the 1492 Alhambra Decree, when the Jews were expelled from kingdoms of Spain and Portugal. Their descendants in the Amazon basin are known as Amazonian Jews, many of whom remain in traditional Jewish communities  but others mixed into the local population and developed a separate ethnic identity, often with mixed religious practices.
 * Algerian Jews: There is evidence of Jewish settlements in Algeria since at least the late Roman period, followed by Jewish immigrants came to North Africa after fleeing from the persecutions of the Visigothic king Sisebut, and finally the largest segment which were Sephardic Jews forced from Spain due to the Inquisition.
 * Libyan Jews stretch back to the 3rd century BCE, when Cyrenaica was under Greek rule. The Jewish population of Libya, a part of the Berber Jewish community, continued to populate the area continuously until the modern times.
 * Tunisian Jews: similar to the Libyan Jews
 * Berber Jews: Jewish communities of the Atlas Mountains
 * Sudanese Jews are Jewish community that lived in Sudan, and was concentrated in the capital Khartoum, they were mainly of Sephardic background, who had constructed a synagogue and a Jewish school.
 * Egyptian Jews are generally Jews thought to have descended from the great Jewish communities of Hellenistic Alexandria, mixed with many more recent groups of immigrants. These include Babylonian Jews following the Muslim conquest; Jews from Palestine following the Crusades; Sephardim following the expulsion from Spain; Italian Jews settling for trading reasons in the 18th and 19th centuries; and Jews from Aleppo in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

West Asia
Jews originating from West Asia are generally called by the catch-all term Mizrahi Jews, more precise terms for particular groups are:
 * Babylonian Jews, also known as Iraqi Jews, are descendants of the Jewish people whom have lived in Mesopotamia since the time of the Assyrian conquest of Samaria.
 * Kurdish Jews from Kurdistan, as distinct from the Persian Jews of central and eastern Persia, as well as from the lowland Babylonian Jews of Mesopotamia.
 * Persian Jews from Iran (commonly called Parsim in Israel, from the Hebrew) have a 2700-year history. One of the oldest Jewish communities of the world, Persian Jews constitute the largest Jewish community in West Asia outside Israel.
 * Yemenite Jews (called Temanim, from the Hebrew) are Oriental Jews whose geographic and social isolation from the rest of the Jewish community allowed them to maintain a liturgy and set of practices that are significantly distinct from other Oriental Jewish groups; they themselves comprise three distinctly different groups, though the distinction is one of religious law and liturgy rather than of ethnicity.
 * Palestinian Jews are Jewish inhabitants of Palestine throughout certain periods of Middle Eastern history. After the modern State of Israel was born, nearly all native Palestinian Jews became citizens of Israel, and the term "Palestinian Jews" largely fell into disuse.

 * Lebanese Jews are the Jews that lived around Beirut. After the Lebanese Civil War, the community's emigration appears to have been completed; few remain in Lebanon today.
 * Omani Jews are the early Jewish community of Sohar. They are thought to be descendants of Ishaq bin Yahuda, a Sohari merchant around the first millennium. This community is believed to have disappeared by 1900.
 * Syrian Jews are generally divided into two groups: those who inhabited Syria from ancient times (according to their own traditions, from the time of King David (1000 BC)), and those who fled to Syria after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492), at the invitation of the Ottoman sultan. There were large communities in both Aleppo and Damascus for centuries. In the early 20th century, a large percentage of Syrian Jews emigrated to the U.S., South America, and Israel. Today, there are almost no Jews left in Syria. The largest Syrian-Jewish community is located in Brooklyn, New York, and is estimated at 40,000.

Sub-Saharan Africa

 * Beta Israel or Falashim of Ethiopia, tens of thousands migrated to Israel during Operation Moses (1984), Operation Sheba (1985) and Operation Solomon (1991). There are now over 160,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel, making up approximately 2% of the total Israeli population.
 * Descendants of the Jews of the Bilad el-Sudan (West Africa). Jews whose ancestry was derived from the communities that once existed in the Ghana, Mali, and Songhay Empire. Anusim in and around Mali who descend from Jewish migrations from North Africa, East Africa, and Spain.
 * The Lemba people in Malawi which number as many as 40,000. This group claims descent from ancient Israelite tribes that migrated down to southern Africa via southern Arabia. Genetic testing has partially upheld these claims. Genetic testing suggests some males have Middle Eastern Ancestry but could not confirm Jewish ancestry.
 * South African Jews make up the largest community of Jews in Africa. Dutch Sephardic Jews were among the first permanent residents of Cape Town when the city was founded by the VOC in 1652. Today, however, most of South Africa's Jews are Ashkenazi and, in particular, of Lithuanian descent.
 * Communities also existed in São Tomé e Príncipe, descended from Portuguese Jewish youths expelled during the Inquisition.

South, East, and Central Asia

 * Cochin Jews are Indian Jews from Malabar in south-western India, and one of the oldest extant groups in India. Most of them now reside in Israel. The community spoke Judeo-Malayalam language.
 * Bene Israel are the Jews of Mumbai, most of whom now reside in Israel. The community believes that their ancestors fled Judea during the persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes. They spoke Judeo-Marathi language.
 * Bukharan Jews are descendants of Iranian and Babylonian Jews who settled in Central Asia. They get their name from the former Central Asian Emirate of Bukhara, which once had a large Jewish population.
 * Baghdadi Jews are those Jews who came from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Arab countries and settled in India in the 18th century. Most of these Jews settled in Calcutta. They spoke Judeo-Urdu language.
 * Bnei Menashe is a community of Jews living in Manipur and Mizoram in north-eastern India, claiming descent from the dispersed Biblical Tribe of Menasseh since 1951.
 * Bene Ephraim are Telugu-speaking Jews of Kottareddipalem in Andhra Pradesh, India. They claim to be descendants of the Tribe of Ephraim, one of the Ten Lost Tribes.
 * Paradesi Jews are Jews who immigrated to the Indian subcontinent during the 15th and 16th centuries following the expulsion of Jews from Spain. The word Pardesi means foreign in Indian languages.
 * Desi Jews is the term used to refer to communities of Bene Israel and Cochin Jews that had been integrated into South Asian culture and society. The Desi Jewish communities are some of the oldest in world, with more than 2000 years of continuity in the Indian subcontinent.
 * Chinese Jews: most prominent were the Kaifeng Jews, an ancient Jewish community in China, descended from merchants living in China from at least the era of the Tang dynasty. Today functionally extinct, although several hundred descendants have recently begun to explore and reclaim their heritage.
 * Goan Jews were Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal who fled to Goa in India after the commencement of the Inquisition in those countries. They were the primary targets of the Goa Inquisition.
 * Pakistani Jews: There was a thriving Jewish community in Pakistan particularly around the city of Karachi but also in other urban areas up north such as in Peshawer, Rawalpindi and Lahore. The origins of the Jewish community was mixed with some being Bene Israel, Bukharan Jews and Baghdadi Jews. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Jewish refugees from Iran had also came via Pakistan's Balochistan province and reached Karachi until the Iranian government closed down the operation. Most of Pakistan's Jewish community has not relocated to Israel and Pakistan's Jewish population is believed to number around 700. Also the Jews of Allahdad have residence in this area.
 * Bangladeshi Jews areJews of Bangladesh who are reported to have been Baghdadi Jews, Cochin Jews and the Bene Israel. Most of these Jews emigrated by the 1960s. Now, only a few Jewish families live in Bangladesh (practicing Crypto-Judaism) due to government policy towards Israel.
 * Afghan Jews: Records of a Jewish population in Afghanistan go back to the 7th century. Before the arrival of Islam in Kabul, Kabul and Gandhara were trading places for Jewish merchants. The Afghan Jewish community has disappeared since the 1950s due to gradual emigration to Israel. Since the Mughal period, there had also been a historiographical tradition of the Afghans themselves being descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel.
 * Tamil Thattar Jews in Sri Lanka are Jews who have had a presence on the island nation since at least the 9th century.

Americas
Most Jewish communities in the Americas are descendants of Jews who found their way there at different times of modern history. The first Jews to settle in the Americas were of Spanish/Portuguese origin. Today, however, the great majority of recognized Jews on both the North American and South American continents are Ashkenazi, particularly among Jews in the United States. There are also Mizrahim and other diaspora groups represented (as well as mixes of any or all of these) as mentioned above. Some unique communities associated with the Americas include:

 * Sephardic Bnei Anusim are the descendants of Sephardi Jewish nominal converts (conversos) to Catholicism who immigrated to the New World escaping the Spanish Inquisition in Spain and Portugal. Following the establishment of the Inquisition in the Iberian colonies, again they hid their ancestry and beliefs. Their numbers are difficult to ascertain as most are at least nominally Catholic, having been converted by force or coercion, or married into the religion. Collectively, people of Sephardic Bnei Anusim Jewish descent in Latin America is in the millions. Most would be of mixed ancestry, although a few claim some communities may have been able to maintain a degree of endogamy (marrying only other Crypto-Jews) throughout the centuries. They may or may not consider themselves Jewish, some may continue to preserve some of their Jewish heritage in secrecy, many others may not even be aware of it. The majority would not be halakhically Jewish, but small numbers of various communities have formally returned to Judaism over the past decade, legitimizing their status as Jews. See also Anusim.
 * Amazonian Jews are mainly the descendants of Moroccan Jews who migrated to the Amazon basin in the 19th and early 20th centuries. While many remain in traditional Jewish communities in the region, mostly in the northern Brazilian cities of Belém and Manaus, or as part of larger Jewish communities in other Brazilian cities, others scattered in the region and mixed into the local population.
 * Iquitos Jews are mostly the mixed descendants of Moroccan Jewish traders who arrived in the Peruvian city of Iquitos during the rubber boom of the 1880s and the local mestizo or Amerindian population. In the late 20th century they began to explore their Jewish heritage, and as most of them lacked a Jewish matrilineal descent, a formal conversion would be required for them to be recognized as Jews under religious law. After years of study, with the help of Conservative rabbis from Lima, the United States, Argentina and Chile, most of them converted to Judaism and moved to Israel between 2003 and 2014.
 * B'nai Moshe are converts to Judaism originally from Trujillo, Peru. They are also known as Inca Jews, a name derived from the fact that they can trace indigenous Amerindian descent, as most are mestizos (persons of both Spanish and Amerindian descent) though none with any known ancestors from other Jewish communities. Again, there is no interaction between Peru's small Ashkenazi population and the Inca Jews. At the neglect of the Ashkenazi community, the conversions were conducted under the auspices of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Most have made aliyah and now live in Israel, while a few hundred more of the same community are awaiting conversions.
 * Veracruz Jews are a recently emergent community of Jews in Veracruz, Mexico. Whether they are gentile converts to Judaism or descendants of anusim returning to Judaism is speculative. Most claim they descend from anusim.

Israel
At the time when the establishment of the State of Israel was proclaimed, the majority of the Jews who lived in both the state and the region were Ashkenazi. However, by the 1990s, the majority of Israeli Jews were Mizrahi. As of 2005, 61% of Israeli Jews are of Mizrahi ancestry.

Following the declaration of the establishment of the state, a flood of Jewish migrants and refugees entered Israel from the Arab world in particular and the Muslim world in general. Most of them were Sephardim and Mizrahim, and they included Jews from the Maghreb, Yemenite Jews, Bukharan Jews, Persian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Kurdish Jews, and smaller communities, principally, communities from Libya, Egypt and Turkey. More recently, other communities have also arrived, and they include communities of Ethiopian Jews and Indian Jews. Because of the relative homogeneity of Ashkenazic Jewry, especially in comparison to the diversity of the many smaller Jewish communities, over time in Israel, all Jews from Europe came to be called "Ashkenazi" in Israel, even those Jews from Europe who did not have any connection to Germany, while Jews from Africa and Asia have come to be called "Sephardi", even those Jews from Africa and Asia who did not have any connection to Spain. One reason for this categorization is due to the fact that most African and Asian Jewish communities perform the Sephardic prayer ritual and they also abide by the rulings of the Sephardic rabbinic authorities, and as a result, they consider themselves "Sephardim" in the broader sense of the term "Jews of the Spanish rite" because they do not consider themselves "Sephardim" in the narrower sense of the term "Spanish Jews". Similarly, the term "Ashkenazim" has the broader sense of the term "Jews of the German rite".

Cultural and/or racial biases against the newcomers were compounded by the fledgling state's lack of financial resources as well as by inadequate housing for the massive population influx. Thus, hundreds of thousands of new Sephardic immigrants were sent to live in tent cities in outlying areas. Sephardim (in its wider meaning) were frequently victims of discrimination and sometimes, they were called schvartze (meaning "black" in Yiddish).

Worse than housing discrimination was the differential treatment which was accorded to the children of these immigrants, many of whom were enrolled in dead-end "vocational" schools by the largely European educational establishment, without any real assessment of their intellectual capacities. Mizrahi Jews protested against the unfair treatment of them, and they even established the Israeli Black Panthers movement with the purpose of working for social justice.

The effects of this early policy of discrimination still linger a half-century later, according to studies which were conducted by the Adva Center, a think tank on social equality, and by other Israeli academic research (cf., for example, Tel Aviv University Professor Yehuda Shenhav's article in Hebrew documenting the gross underrepresentation of Sephardic Jewry in Israeli high school history textbooks. Every Israeli prime minister has been Ashkenazi, although Sephardim and Mizrahim have attained the (ceremonial) presidency and other high positions. The student bodies of Israel's universities remain overwhelmingly European in origin, despite the fact that roughly half the country's population is non-European. And the tent cities of the 1950s morphed into so-called "development towns". Scattered over border areas of the Negev Desert and the Galilee, far from the bright lights of Israel's major cities, most of these towns never had the critical mass or ingredients to succeed as places to live, and they continue to suffer from high unemployment, inferior schools, and chronic brain drain. Prof. Smadar Lavie, Mizrahi U.S.-Israeli anthropologist, has documented and analyzed the discriminatory treatment Mizrahi single mothers endure from the Ashkenazi-dominated Israeli regime, suggesting that Israeli bureaucracy is based on a theological notion that inserts the categories of religion, gender, and race into the foundation of citizenship. Lavie connects intra-Jewish racial and gendered dynamics to the 2014 Gaza War in her widely reviewed book, Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture, and analyzes the racial and gender justice protest movements in the State of Israel from the 2003 Single Mothers’ March to the 2014 New Black Panthers.

Even though the Israeli Black Panthers no longer exist, the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition and many other NGOs carry on their struggle for equal access and opportunity in housing, education, and employment on behalf of the country's underprivileged populace – still largely composed of Sephardim and Mizrahim, now joined by newer immigrants from Ethiopia and the Caucasus Mountains.

Intermarriage between members of all of these regathered Jewish ethnic groups was initially uncommon, partially as a result of the distances which separated each group's settlement in Israel, and partially because of cultural and/or racial biases. In recent generations, however, the barriers were lowered by the state-sponsored assimilation of all of the Jewish ethnic groups into a common Sabra (native-born Israeli) identity, a policy which facilitated extensive mixed-marriages.

title: Jewish ethnic divisions


text: Category:Danish cheeses

title: Category:Danish cheeses


text: Wikipedia:Picture of the day/December 11, 2004


text: Wikipedia:POTD/December 11, 2004

title: Wikipedia:POTD/December 11, 2004