Jews

=== Modern period ===
{{further|Zionism|The Holocaust|History of Israel (1948–present)|}}
In the 19th century, when Jews in [[Western Europe]] were increasingly granted [[Jewish emancipation|equality before the law]], Jews in the [[Pale of Settlement]] faced growing persecution, legal restrictions and widespread [[pogrom]]s. Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in [[Central Europe|Central]] and [[Eastern Europe]] as a national revival movement, aiming to re-establish a Jewish polity in the Land of Israel, an endeavor to restore the Jewish people back to their ancestral homeland in order to stop the exoduses and persecutions that have plagued their history. This led to waves of Jewish migration to [[Ottoman Syria|Ottoman-controlled Palestine]]. [[Theodor Herzl]], who is considered the father of political Zionism,<ref>{{Harvard citation no brackets|Kornberg|1993}} "How did Theodor Herzl, an assimilated German nationalist in the 1880s, suddenly in the 1890s become the founder of Zionism?"</ref> offered his vision of a future Jewish state in his 1896 book ''[[Der Judenstaat]]'' (''The Jewish State''); a year later, he presided over the [[First Zionist Congress]].<ref>{{cite web |date=21 July 2005 |title=Chapter One |url=http://www.jewishagency.org/israel/content/23396 |access-date=21 September 2015 |website=The Jewish Agency for Israel1 |archive-date=10 December 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181210124104/http://www.jewishagency.org/israel/content/23396 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The antisemitism that inflicted Jewish communities in Europe also triggered a mass exodus of more than two million Jews to the [[United States]] between 1881 and 1924.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Lewin |first=Rhoda G. |date=1979 |title=Stereotype and reality in the Jewish immigrant experience in Minneapolis |url=http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/46/v46i07p258-273.pdf |url-status=live |journal=Minnesota History |volume=46 |issue=7 |page=259 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200721002023/http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/46/v46i07p258-273.pdf |archive-date=21 July 2020 |access-date=10 August 2020}}</ref> The Jews of Europe and the United States gained success in the fields of science, culture and the economy. Among those generally considered the most famous were [[Albert Einstein]] and [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]]. Many [[Nobel Prize]] winners at this time were Jewish, as is still the case.<ref name="Jewish Nobel Prize Winners">{{cite web |title=Jewish Nobel Prize Winners |url=http://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181224211039/http://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html |archive-date=24 December 2018 |access-date=7 October 2011 |publisher=jinfo.org}}</ref>[[File:Jewish people around the world.svg|thumb|Map of the Jewish diaspora:<br>
{{Legend|#000000|Israel}}
{{Legend|#00216bff|+ 1,000,000}}
{{Legend|#0038b8ff|+ 100,000}}
{{Legend|#578bffff|+ 10,000}}
{{Legend|#b3cbffff|+ 1,000}}|301x301px]]When [[Adolf Hitler]] and the [[Nazism|Nazis]] came to power in [[Nazi Germany|Germany]] in 1933, the situation for Jews deteriorated rapidly. Many Jews fled from Europe to [[Mandatory Palestine]], the United States, and the [[Soviet Union]] as a result of racial anti-Semitic laws, economic difficulties, and the fear of an impending war. [[World War II]] started in 1939, and by 1941, Hitler occupied almost all of Europe. Following the [[Operation Barbarossa|German invasion of the Soviet Union]] in 1941, the [[Final Solution]]—an extensive, organized effort with an unprecedented scope intended to annihilate the Jewish people—began, and resulted in the persecution and murder of Jews in Europe and [[North Africa]]. In Poland, three million were murdered in [[gas chambers]] in all concentration camps combined, with one million at the [[Auschwitz]] camp complex alone. The [[The Holocaust|Holocaust]] is the name given to this genocide, in which six million Jews were systematically murdered.

Before and during the Holocaust, enormous numbers of Jews immigrated to Mandatory Palestine. On 14 May 1948, upon the termination of the mandate, [[David Ben-Gurion]] declared the creation of the [[Israel|State of Israel]], a [[Jewish and democratic state]] in the Land of Israel. Immediately afterwards, all neighboring Arab states invaded, yet the newly formed [[Israel Defense Forces|IDF]] resisted. In 1949, the war ended and Israel started building the state and absorbing massive waves of [[Aliyah]] from all over the world.