Judeu e Israelense é a mesma coisa?! O que quer dizer judeu, israelita, hebreu e israelense?

Shalom and welcome back to my home here in Jerusalem! For those who are new, welcome to Israel with Aline, and today's question is: what is the difference between Jewish and Israeli? Or is it all the same thing?

What is it to be a Hebrew, and what is it to be an Israelite, let's explain and put order to it all. So if you are ready, get started! Let's start with what it is to be Jewish, Judaism is a religion and those who practice Judaism, are considered Jews, both those who were born within Judaism, as is my case, and those who converted to Judaism.

There are nowadays Jews living all over the world, and I am going to show you a map that shows this; there are 14. 5 million Jews living in the world today you can see that they are well spread out, and even in Brazil today there are 120 thousand Brazilian Jews living in Brazil, and today the largest Jewish Community in the world is in Israel, and the second largest is in the United States. And very quickly, what is Judaism?

Judaism is the first monotheist religion in the world, that is, the first religion to believe in only one God. In addition, Judaism believes in the Tanach, which can be called the Hebrew Bible, and it is very similar to the Old Testament for Christians. And within Judaism there are currents, that is to say, there are strands.

There is Orthodox Judaism, Reform Judaism, Modern Judaism, Traditional Judaism, Secular Jews, I mean, there is still a lot of variety within Judaism itself, and the term Jew comes from the name Judah, which was one of the twelve sons of Jacob, and which gave origin to one of the twelve tribes of Israel, you can see here on the map, that the tribe of Judah was the largest tribe of Israel, and also today we believe that most Jews are descendants of the tribe of Judah, and that's why it ended up becoming the name Jewish-Jewish, for all the people of Israel. So what does it mean to be Israeli? To be Israeli is to live and have citizenship in Israel, is every Israeli a Jew?

No! Israel is a democratic country, and people of different religions live here, today almost 75 percent of the population of Israel are Jews, seventeen percent Muslims, two percent Christians, less than two percent Drze which is another religion, very interesting that lives here in Israel, maybe one day I will make a video about them too, and we have less than five percent of other religious minorities living here in Israel. A little asterisk* for those who watch us from Portugal, I know that in Portuguese from Portugal we don't use the word Israeli, we use the word Israelite also for the modern Jews and also as a Biblical term, but in Brazilian Portuguese we use the two separate concepts, which also makes life a little easier to differentiate what we are talking about, and speaking of which, what does Israelite mean in Brazilian Portuguese?

Israelites are the children of Israel, and who was Israel? Israel is the name given to Jacob after he fights with the angel as it is written in the book of Genesis in Chapter 32, so Jacob who is one of the three patriarchs of Judaism, he will have a second name added, which is the name Israel, and therefore all his descendants are the children of Israel and so Israelite and so Israelite refers to the biblical people. So Jewish is religion, Israeli is the nationality and citizenship today, and Israelite means the people of Israel in its Biblical sense.

And lastly, who are the Hebrews? This in my opinion is the most interesting concept of all, it is there in the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 14, when the Bible calls Abraham the Hebrew. This means that all the descendants of Abraham are called the Hebrews, and now everybody fasten your seatbelts because I am going to put here at the side a family tree, we are going to talk about a little bit of Biblical genealogy, we are going to start with Noah, going to Shem, Shem is one of Noah's sons, and from him will come later the people of Israel which is a Semitic people, it is not the only one, but it is one of the peoples which is a descendant of Shem, and that is why the expression anti-semitism: those who have hatred for Jews, they speak antisemitism for Jews, they would be a Semitic people.

And after Sem we go on to Eber, and from there comes the concept of probably the Hebrew, why do I say probably? Because there are several theories about this, in my opinion, this is the most accepted theory and the one I want to tell you about, which is the following: since Abraham is a descendant of Eber, he is called a Hebrew, and therefore all his descendants are also called Hebrews. Furthermore, Eber spoke Hebrew, and that is why until today we speak the same language, which is the Hebrew language, although at that time it was Biblical Hebrew, today it is modern Hebrew, it has its differences, but it is the same language.

And the one who is Abraham's grandson is Jacob, and Jacob again is Israel, and the people of Israel, the children of Israel are called Israelites. So in reality the concept of Hebrews and Israelites, they are very similar biblical concepts. And then we see the importance of the patriarchs, the three patriarchs of Judaism: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

And we carry their names to this day. In short, Judaism is a religion, to be an Israeli is to have citizenship, to be a Hebrew is to be a descendant of Eber and Abraham, who later became the people of Israel, which are the descendants of Jacob. And that is why when we talk about Judaism today, we are talking about something very complex, something that includes a country with a Jewish majority in our Biblical Land.

We also speak about religion; a religious practice, and we also speak about a people; the people of Israel or the Hebrew people. I hope you enjoyed this video, and I hope it was clear. If you have any questions, you can ask in the comments, I will try to answer them for everyone if by chance you are not yet subscribed to the channel, take the opportunity now to subscribe and leave that like and we'll see you next time!