Jewish - Jewish Synagogues
Napa Valley, San Francisco North Bay, Ca. USA

A Jew - Hebrew -Yehudi - Yehudim, Ladino, Djudio Djudios Yiddish, Yid, Yidn is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnic group originating in the

 Israelites of the ancient Middle East. The ethnicity and the religion of Judaism, the traditional faith of the Jewish nation, are strongly interrelated, and converts to Judaism are both included and have been absorbed within the Jewish people throughout the millennia.

The Jews have suffered a long history of persecution in many different lands, and their population and distribution per region has fluctuated throughout the centuries. Today, most authorities place the number of Jews between 12 and 14 million, the largest number of whom live in the United States (40.5% in 2002) and Israel (34.4% in 2002), with the remainder distributed in communities of varying sizes in almost every country. The total world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure and is subject to the controversy of secular, halakhic or other parameters of defining who is a Jew.