Judaism is, literally, the belief of the people of Judah. It centers on the covenant relationship that a powerful deity initiated with a select group of people in the ancient Near East in the eighteenth century B.C.E. The texts of Judaism—biblical and otherwise—chart the history of this covenant relationship from its beginnings with Abraham. The covenant continued with the formal Jewish community established by Moses, to the various exiles of the people during the prophetic period, and onward through the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E., which dispersed the Jewish people throughout the world.
Judaism is more than just a faith. The Jews are a people; that is, they are a group of people with a shared sense of history, identity, and relationship that spans millennia. This sense of being a people has contributed to one of the most remarkable phenomena on the world's religious landscape, namely, the survival of the Jewish religion despite severe, repeated, worldwide persecution. This persecution reached an apex in the genocide carried out by Nazi Germany in the 1940s during World War II. In 1948, after the war, Jews established the state of Israel as a homeland where they hoped to be free of persecution.
Judaism historically has been small in number compared to other religions, and today it has only about 17 million members. But Jews have contributed enormously to world culture. Both Christianity and Islam have their roots in the monotheism of the Jewish tradition. In modern times, people like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud rank among the world's greatest thinkers.
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