Ancient Israel, home to what became the Jewish people, was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E., 1950 years ago. This was the last time that a large majority of the Jewish people lived in the land of Israel, and the last time there was a unified Jewish culture. Today there are several different Jewish cultures, even within Israel.

         In the case of the Jewish people, we can consider culture as including language and literature, music, the visual arts and cuisine.

         Before the 2^nd Temple was destroyed, a large majority of Jews lived in the land of Israel. For most of the period of the 1^st and 2^nd Temples, the Jews spoke Hebrew. Towards the end of the 2^nd Temple, Hebrew was being slowly supplanted by Aramaic. However, literary works were still mostly written in Hebrew and the scholarly elite still was fluent in Hebrew. During the time the Temple stood, the most important music was sung by the choirs of the Levi’im (the Levites) in the Temple. The art was mainly stylized and decorative. The cuisine was based on both Jewish dietary laws and the plants and animals native to the eastern Mediterranean. The folkways were based on Jewish law and stories and legends derived from the Bible.

            After the 2^nd Temple was destroyed, in 70 C.E., 1950 years ago, the Jews were expelled from the land of Judah. Some travelled to Babylon (present day southern Iraq), with other groups travelling onward to North Africa, Spain, the Balkans and the rest of what became the Muslim world. In the Middle East and North Africa, the Jews initially spoke Aramaic, as did the rest of the population. After the Islamic conquests of the Middle East and North Africa during the

period 632 to 661 C.E., Arabic became the dominant language in an area that stretched from the eastern Mediterranean to North Africa. The Jews both learned Arabic and became fluent speakers of it. They also developed a written and spoken language called Judeo-Arabic. Judeo-Arabic was written using Hebrew letters. Written Arabic was (and is) a very formal language, on a much higher level linguistically than colloquially-spoken Arabic. By contrast, written Judeo-Arabic overwhelmingly used colloquial Arabic vocabulary, as well as a small percentage of Hebrew and Aramaic. Owing to the fact that Muslim dietary laws are similar to Jewish ones, except for the fact that Jews are also prohibited from eating shellfish and camel meat, the result was that Jewish cuisine of the Middle East and North Africa was and is similar to that of the rest of the population.

            When the Muslims ruled Spain, and especially between 950 and 1150 C.E. (between 1070 and 870 years ago) there was a flowering of Hebrew-language poetry, copying Arabic language genres, prosody and rhetoric, but strictly Jewish in content.

 In North Africa, prior to the coming of Christianity, some of the Berber tribes converted to Judaism. Later, after 323 C.E., (approximately 1697 years ago) when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, many of the non-Jewish Berbers converted to Christianity. During the second half of the 7th century CE when the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750 CE) of Damascus (Syria) conquered North Africa by military force, most of the people became Muslim, except the already existing Jewish population. Among other cultural habits the Jews of North Africa retained from their Berber origins was the habit of making pilgrimages to and praying at the graves of holy men.

            After the 2^nd Temple was destroyed, in 70 C.E., 1950 years ago, after the Jews were expelled from the land of Judah, some Jews went to Rome, northern Italy, France, Germany and eventually central and eastern Europe. A Jewish community was established in Cologne, Germany in approximately 321 C.E. (699 years ago). The Jews living in Rome spoke Latin.

The Roman Empire came to a final end in 476 C.E. Those who lived in what is now France spoke Latin or Gallo-Romance or Frankish, which eventually gave way to medieval French. Those who lived in what is now Germany spoke Alemannic, Bavarian, Frankish, or Saxon, which eventually gave way to medieval German. The Jewish cuisine of those times and places was similar to that of the local population, but with major adaptations to conform to Jewish dietary laws.

The Jews came to England with the conquest of England by William the 2^nd of Normandy in 1066 over the last Anglo-Saxon monarch, Harold. So, during most of the medieval period most of them spoke the Norman dialect of French.

During the medieval period in Europe- from 476 C.E. to 1453 C.E. (from 1544 to 567 years ago), in most European countries at that time, either Jews were initially not allowed to own land, or gradually restricted from owning land, to the point where they were totally prohibited from owning land. Over time, their choice of professions became more and more restricted and by the end of the period, most Jews had become craftsmen, moneylenders, tavern keepers, or similar service occupations. A few were physicians.

It was towards the middle of the medieval period that the differences between Sephardi culture and Ashkenazi culture became pronounced. Sephardi culture originated from “Sepharad”, the Hebrew word for Spain, and this culture spread to the entire Middle East and North Africa. Ashkenazi culture originated from “Ashkenaz” which originally designated Turkey, which came to mean regions to the north and west of the land of Israel, and has, for more than the last 800 years, come to designate the culture of German Jews which spread to the Jews living in central, eastern and western Europe. 

     In the late 9^th century, approximately 1200 years ago, possibly as many as 50% of the Sorbs (a Slavic tribe living in what is now eastern Germany/ western Poland) converted to Judaism. The Sorbs spoke Sorbian, a west Slavic language.

            In the 9^th century (approximately 1200 years ago), some Jews began moving from Germany to Central Europe and Poland, and so the Yiddish language began to develop. It was a High German–derived language which also was influenced by the Slavic languages spoken in Poland i.e. Sorbian and Polish. This arose from the encounter of Jews from Germany with both the Jewish Sorbs and Slavic culture in general. The result was that Yiddish is primarily Slavic grammar, with mainly High German vocabulary, written using Hebrew letters. Later, during the 14^th century some of the Jews who were expelled from England, from France, as well as Jews who were persecuted in Germany migrated to Poland during the reign of Casimir III at his invitation, during the period from 1330 to 1370 and afterward. This was a larger group than the much earlier group which immigrated to Poland during the 9^th century.

            The Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (from 1386 to 1569 C.E.) and its successor state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (from 1569 to 1795) became, from the late medieval period onward,  home to the largest population of Jews in Europe. By 1768, the kingdom had become very weak, and it totally disappeared in 1795, divided up between the Russian Empire, the Habsburg/ Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. During this time (1386 to 1795 C.E.), and in this area, most Jews were craftsmen, moneylenders, timber or fur merchants, pedlars, small wholesalers, tavern keepers, or similar service occupations. A few were physicians. The reason for this was that Jews were barred from most other occupations. Jewish cuisine at this time was similar to that of the general population, with major adaptations to conform to Jewish dietary laws. A type of music developed, called “klezmer”. It was influenced by Ukrainian, Romani (Gypsy), Polish, Romanian and Turkish folk music. It was primarily instrumental music, played at weddings and other celebrations.

            From earliest times until the 19^th century, Jewish literature or literature produced by Jews was mainly religious in nature. It included the Jewish Bible and  the entire corpus of post-Biblical law including the Mishna and the Talmud (which is a commentary on the Mishna) as well as books on ethics, spirituality, and religious philosophy. Exceptions were histories such as those written by Josephus, or Zacuto; travelogues such as those of Benjamin of Tudela, or Jacob d’Ancona; personal memoirs such as those of Gluckel of Hameln or Dona Gracia Nasi and others; poetry by Yehuda Halevy and others. However, the vast majority of Jewish literature until the 19^th century was religious in nature.

            The Napoleonic period, from 1796 to 1815 was a period which saw a great cultural opening in many European countries. Many countries in Europe freed the Jews from ghettos and other segregated housing. So, many Jews joined the European cultural mainstream, becoming musicians, composers of mainstream European music and writers of secular novels and poetry.

            The 19^th century saw the beginning of the flowering of Jewish cultural, scientific and political achievement. Famous Jewish musicians of the period include Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Mahler, Meyerbeer, Albéniz, Halévy, Offenbach. Famous Jewish philosophers, political thinkers and writers of the period include Karl Marx, Moses Mendelssohn and Heinrich Heine. Famous Jewish painters of this period included Camille Pissarro.

            The 20^th century saw a further increase in intellectual activity by Jews in Europe. In the fields of science and mathematics this included Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Robert Oppenheimer, Sigmund Freud, and John von Neumann. For the first time in many centuries, many Jews became involved in politics, including Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev, Léon Blum, Pierre Mendès-France. Also, in the visual arts, famous Jewish artists included Marc Chagall and Amedeo Modigliani.

            Today, there are about 14.7 million Jews in the world, of whom about 6 million live in the U.S.A., and about 6.8 million live in Israel. The rest of the Jewish population is scattered around the world, with France, Canada and the U.K. being other centres of Jewish population. Among the total worldwide Jewish population of 14.7 million, the majority (9.5 million) are of European origin, mainly of eastern European origin and Ashkenazi culture. Of the balance 5.2 million, most are of Middle Eastern and North African origin, and of Sephardi culture, as well as the ancient Jewish communities of Ethiopia and India, of whom most members now live in Israel.