Jewish ethnic divisions in the context of "Romaniotes"

Jews originated from the Israelites and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah, two related kingdoms that emerged in the Levant during the Iron Age. The earliest mention of Israelites is inscribed on the Merneptah Stele c. 1213–1203 BCE; later religious literature tells the story of Israelites going back at least as far as c. 1500 BCE. Traditionally, the name Israel is said to originate with the Hebrew patriarch Jacob, who provides a narrative etiology for the name – after wrestling with an angel, Jacob is renamed Israel, meaning "he who struggles with God". The Kingdom of Israel based in Samaria fell to the Neo-Assyrian Empire c. 720 BCE, and the Kingdom of Judah to the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE. Part of the Judean population was exiled to Babylon. The Assyrian and Babylonian captivities are regarded as representing the start of the Jewish diaspora.

After the Achaemenid Empire conquered the region, the exiled Jews were allowed to return and rebuild the temple; these events mark the beginning of the Second Temple period. After several centuries of foreign rule, the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire led to an independent Hasmonean kingdom, but it was gradually incorporated into the Roman imperial system. The Jewish–Roman wars, a series of unsuccessful revolts against the Romans in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple, and the expulsion of many Jews. The Jewish population in Syria Palaestina gradually decreased during the following centuries, enhancing the role of the Jewish diaspora and shifting the spiritual and demographic centre from the depopulated Judea to Galilee and then to Babylon, with smaller communities spread out across the Roman Empire. During the same period, the Mishnah and the Talmud, central Jewish texts, were composed. In the following millennia, the diaspora communities coalesced into three major ethnic subdivisions according to where their ancestors settled: the Ashkenazim in Central and Eastern Europe, the Sephardim initially in Iberia, and the Mizrahim in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Romaniote Jews or the Romaniotes (Greek: Ῥωμανιῶτες, Rhōmaniôtes; Hebrew: רומניוטים, romanized: Romanyotim) are a Greek-speaking ethnic Jewish community. They are one of the oldest Jewish communities in existence and the oldest Jewish community in Europe. The Romaniotes have been, and even remain historically distinct from the Sephardim that have settled in Ottoman Greece after the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal after 1492.

Their distinct language was Yevanic, a Greek dialect that contained Hebrew along with some Aramaic and Turkish words, but today's Romaniotes speak Modern Greek or the languages of their new home countries. Their name is derived from the endonym Rhōmanía (Ῥωμανία), which refers to the Eastern Roman Empire ("Empire of the Romans", Βασιλεία Ρωμαίων). Large Romaniote communities were located in Thessaloniki, Ioannina, Arta, Preveza, Volos, Chalcis, Thebes, Corinth, Patras, and on the islands of Corfu, Crete, Zakynthos, Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Rhodes, and Cyprus, among others. Additionally, the historically large community of Jews in Bulgaria was Romaniote until the arrival of Sephardim and Ashkenazim fleeing persecution in other parts of Europe.

"Who is a Jew?" (Hebrew: מיהו יהודי, romanized: mihu yehudi, pronounced [ˈmi(h)u je(h)uˈdi]), is a basic question about Jewish identity and considerations of Jewish self-identification. The question pertains to ideas about Jewish personhood, which have cultural, ethnic, religious, political, genealogical, and personal dimensions. Orthodox Judaism and Conservative Judaism follow Jewish law (halakha), deeming people to be Jewish if their mothers are Jewish or if they underwent a halakhic conversion. Reform Judaism and Reconstructionist Judaism accept both matrilineal and patrilineal descent as well as conversion. Karaite Judaism predominantly follows patrilineal descent as well as conversion.

Jewish identity is also commonly defined through ethnicity. Opinion polls have suggested that the majority of modern Jews see being Jewish as predominantly a matter of ancestry and culture, rather than religion.

Yemenite Jews, also known as Yemeni Jews or Temanim (Hebrew: יהודי תימן, romanized: Yehudei Teman; Arabic: اليهود اليمنيون, romanized: al-yahūd al-yamaniyyūn), are a Jewish diaspora group who live or once lived in Yemen and their descendants who maintain their customs. After several waves of persecution, the vast majority of Yemenite Jews emigrated to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet between June 1949 and September 1950. Most Yemenite Jews now live in Israel, with smaller communities in the United States and elsewhere. As of 2024, reputedly only one Jew, Levi Marhabi, remains in Yemen. However, Ynet cited local sources stating that the actual number is five.

Yemenite Jews observe a unique religious tradition that distinguishes them from Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews, and other Jewish groups. They have been described as "the most Jewish of all Jews" and "the ones who have preserved the Hebrew language the best". Yemeni Jews are considered Mizrahi or "Eastern" Jews. However, they differ from other Mizrahis, who have undergone a process of total or partial assimilation to Sephardic law and customs. While the Shami Yemeni Jews did adopt a Sephardic-influenced rite, this was primarily due to it being forced upon them, and did not reflect a demographic or general cultural shift among the vast majority of Yemenite Jews.

Israeli Jews or Jewish Israelis (Hebrew: יהודים ישראלים Yêhūdīm Yīśrāʾēlīm) comprise Israel's largest ethnic and religious community. The core of their demographic consists of those with a Jewish identity and their descendants, including ethnic Jews and religious Jews alike. About 46% of the global Jewish population resides in Israel; yerida is uncommon and is offset exponentially by aliyah, but those who do emigrate from the country typically move to the Western world. As such, the Israeli diaspora is closely tied to the broader Jewish diaspora.

Israel is widely described as a melting pot for the various Jewish ethnic divisions, primarily consisting of Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews, and Mizrahi Jews, as well as many smaller Jewish communities, such as the Beta Israel, the Cochin Jews, the Bene Israel, and the Karaite Jews, among others. Over 25% of Jewish children and 35% of Jewish newborns in Israel are of mixed Ashkenazi and Sephardic or Mizrahi descent, and these figures have been increasing by approximately 0.5% annually: over 50% of Israel's entire Jewish population identifies as having Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi admixture. The integration of Judaism in Israeli Jewish life is split along four categories: the secularists (33%), the traditionalists (24%), the Orthodox (9%), and the Ultra-Orthodox (7%). In addition to religious influences, both Jewish history and Jewish culture serve as important aspects defining Israel's Jewish society, thereby contributing significantly to Israel's identity as the world's only Jewish-majority country.

American Jews (Hebrew: יהודים אמריקאים, romanized: Yehudim Amerikaim; Yiddish: אמעריקאנער אידן, romanized: Amerikaner Idn) or Jewish Americans are American citizens who are Jewish, whether by ethnicity, religion, or culture. According to a 2020 poll conducted by Pew Research, approximately two thirds of American Jews identify as Ashkenazi, 3% identify as Sephardic, and 1% identify as Mizrahi. An additional 6% identify as some combination of the three categories, and 25% do not identify as any particular category.

During the colonial era, Sephardic Jews who arrived via Portugal and via Brazil (Dutch Brazil) – see Congregation Shearith Israel – represented the bulk of America's then small Jewish population. While their descendants are a minority nowadays, they represent the remainder of those original American Jews along with an array of other Jewish communities, including more recent Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, Beta Israel-Ethiopian Jews, various other Jewish ethnic groups, as well as a smaller number of gerim (converts). The American Jewish community manifests a wide range of Jewish cultural traditions, encompassing the full spectrum of Jewish religious observance.

The history of the Jews in Portugal reaches back over two thousand years and is directly related to Sephardi history, a Jewish ethnic division that represents communities that originated in the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Portuguese Jews emigrated to a number of European cities outside Portugal, where they established new Portuguese Jewish communities, including in Hamburg, Antwerp, and the Netherlands, which remained connected culturally and economically, in an international commercial network during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.