Judaism is the ethnic religion of the Jewish people. It is an ancient, monotheistic, Abrahamic religion with the Torah as its foundational text. It encompasses the religion, philosophy, and culture of the Jewish people. Judaism is considered by religious Jews to be the expression of the covenant that God established with the Children of Israel. It encompasses a wide body of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization. The Torah is part of the larger text known as the Tanakh or the Hebrew Bible, and supplemental oral tradition represented by later texts such as the Midrash and the Talmud. With between 14.5 and 17.4 million adherents worldwide, Judaism is the tenth largest religion in the world.
Marranos were Spanish and Portuguese Jews living in the Iberian Peninsula who converted or were forced to convert to Christianity during the Middle Ages, yet continued to practice Judaism in secret.
Crypto-Judaism is the secret adherence to Judaism while publicly professing to be of another faith; practitioners are referred to as "crypto-Jews".
Conversion to Judaism is the religious conversion of non-Jews to become members of the Jewish religion and Jewish ethnoreligious community. The procedure and requirements for conversion depend on the sponsoring denomination. A conversion in accordance with the process of a denomination is not a guarantee of recognition by another denomination. A formal conversion is also sometimes undertaken by individuals whose Jewish ancestry is questioned, even if they were raised Jewish, but may not actually be considered Jews according to traditional Jewish law.
"Who is a Jew?" is a basic question about Jewish identity and considerations of Jewish self-identification. The question explores ideas about Jewish personhood, which have cultural, ethnic, religious, political, genealogical, and personal dimensions. Orthodox Judaism and Conservative Judaism follow Jewish law (Halakha), deeming a person to be Jewish if their mother is Jewish or they underwent a halakhic conversion. Reform Judaism and Reconstructionist Judaism accept both matrilineal and patrilineal descent. Karaite Judaism predominantly follows patrilineal descent.
The history of the Jews in Italy spans more than two thousand years. The Jewish presence in Italy dates to the pre-Christian Roman period and has continued, despite periods of extreme persecution and expulsions, until the present. As of 2007, the estimated core Jewish population in Italy numbers around 45,000.
The expulsion of the Jews from Sicily began in 1493 when the Spanish Inquisition reached the island of Sicily and its population of more than 30,000 Jews.
Italian Jews or Roman Jews can be used in a broad sense to mean all Jews living or with roots in Italy, or, in a narrower sense, to mean the Italkim, an ancient community who use the Italian liturgy as distinct from the communities dating from medieval or modern times who use the Sephardic liturgy or the Nusach Ashkenaz.
The history of the Jews in San Marino reaches back to the Middle Ages.
The history of the Jews in Naples deals with the presence of Jews in the city of Naples, Italy. The Jewish presence in the city goes back at least 2,000 years. Today, the Jewish community in Naples numbers around 200 people.
The history of the Jews in Sicily deals with Jews and the Jewish community in Sicily which possibly dates back two millennia. Sicily is a large island off the Southern Italian coast. There has been a Jewish presence in Sicily for at least 1400 years and possibly for more than 2000 years.
The Scolanova Synagogue is a medieval synagogue in Trani, Italy. It was built as a synagogue in the 13th century, confiscated by the church during a wave of antisemitism around the year 1380, and converted for use as a church known as Santa Maria in Scolanova. In 2006, the building was deconsecrated by the Church and returned to its original use.
The County of Apulia and Calabria, later the Duchy of Apulia and Calabria, was a Norman country founded by William of Hauteville in 1042 in the territories of Gargano, Capitanata, Apulia, Vulture, and most of Campania. It became a duchy when Robert Guiscard was raised to the rank of duke by Pope Nicholas II in 1059.
The History of the Jews in Campania and Basilicata is at least 2000 years old. This area, which is a mix of mountains and rich fertile plains, is south of Rome but north of Calabria and Apulia. Most of the Jewish communities were settled in the Roman Era by Jewish merchants or by Jewish captives after the fall of Jerusalem in the year 70. However, the region was mostly abandoned by the Jews by middle of the 16th century. Today, only the city on Naples has a Jewish population. And, unlike the southern provences, there seems to be no interest by neofiti descendants to revive the Jewish faith.
The Mystery of San Nicandro is a feature-length documentary inspired by the book, The Jews of San Nicandro, written by Professor John Davis, about a group of Italian Roman Catholics in a small village, who underwent a mass conversion to Judaism in Fascist Italy. And who over a period of twenty years of observing Jewish practices, left Italy and emigrated to the new state of Israel in 1949.
