Jewish peoplehood

Jewish peoplehood (Hebrew: עמיות יהודית, Amiut Yehudit), also sometimes referred to as the whole of Israel (Hebrew: כלל ישראל, Klal Yisrael), is the sense of belonging to the Jewish people.

The concept of peoplehood has a double meaning. The first is descriptive, as a concept factually describing the existence of the Jews as a people, i.e. an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. The second is normative, as a value that describes the feeling of belonging and commitment to the Jewish people.

Some believe that the concept of Jewish peoplehood is a paradigm shift in Jewish life. Insisting that the mainstream of Jewish life is focused on Jewish nationalism (Zionism), they argue that Jewish life should instead focus on Jewish peoplehood.

Others maintain that the concept of peoplehood has permeated Jewish life for millennia, and to focus on it does not constitute a shift from the focus on Jewish nationhood. Jews have been extremely effective in sustaining a sense of joint responsibility towards their people and its members for over 2,000 years, with persecutions such as the expulsion of Roman Jews from the vicinity of Jerusalem and the districts of Gophna, Herodion, and Aqraba resulting in more than 100,000 slaves taken as war captives in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt which contributed to a significant rise in the historical Jewish diaspora, subsequently since the late Roman period significant recovery through common religious practices, shared ancestry, continuous communication, and population transfers between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews, during which time the former had a "Hebrew Golden Age", subsequently though with Zionist aliyah (immigration since the birth of Zionism to political entities in the region of Palestine and the State of Israel) resulting in Israeli scholar Eliezer Schweid warning against a Zionist "negation of the Diaspora".

At the same time, the concepts of Jews as a nation and as a peoplehood are not necessarily at odds with one another. The very concept of defining Judaism as a people or a "civilization" suggests a wide variety of values within the context of Judaism.