Judaism

Judaism is one of the oldest religions in the world; according to tradition it took shape in the Near East in the 2nd millennium BC, and it is the religion of the Jewish people. The people’s names are linked in tradition to the prophet Jacob (also called Israel) and his son Judah, while “Hebrew” goes back to an ancient Semitic root. According to Jewish tradition, Abraham led the first generations out of Mesopotamia, the people left Egypt under Moses (many researchers place this in the 13th century BC, i.e. c. 1250 BC), and David united the kingdom c. 1000 BC. In 722 BC the kingdom of Israel was conquered by Assyria and in 586 BC the kingdom of Judah by Babylon; after the Persian king Cyrus II took Babylon (539 BC), part of the exiles began to return from 538 BC. In AD 70 the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and the Western Wall is revered as a surviving part of it. The sacred texts are the Tanakh – Torah, Prophets (Nevi’im) and Writings (Ketuvim) – and the Talmud, a traditional collection of commentary on the Torah. In Central Asia Jewish communities lived from ancient times in Silk Road cities (finds at Merv are interpreted as belonging to the early centuries); in the 19th century they became known as “Bukharan Jews” in the Emirate of Bukhara, and Samarkand had a large community.