The People of Israel
The state of Israel has a population of seven and a half million people. The biggest part of the population is Jews 75%, Arabs 20% and others. The Jewish majority can be divided into four big groups.
Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews are the Jews whose origins can be traced to the medieval Jewish communities near the Rhine river between Alsace and Rhineland modern day Germany. Later, they migrated to the east and settled in Hungary, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Russia, and Ukraine between the 11th and the 19th century. Their migration eastward was mostly due to Christian prosecutions during the era. The group developed a language called Yiddish that is based on German and has a lot of influence from Hebrew and Slavic languages.
In the 11th century the Ashkenazi Jews represented only 3% of the global Jewish population and in 1931 they were almost 92%. Today, they form about 80% of the Jewish population. The majority of Jews who came from Europe back to Israel and those who went to North America are Ashkenazi Jews.
Mizrahi Jews
Mizrahi Jews are descendants of the Jews that settled in the Middle East, North Africa and the Caucuses. They are mostly Sephardic Jews as a denomination within the Judaism faith. Today they make up more than half of Israel’s Jewish population. They speak Arabic, Judeo-Arabic dialects and the languages of the Muslim states they settled in.
Sephardi Jews
The Sephardi Jews are the offspring of the Jews that lived in the Iberian peninsula before they expulsion from there in the 15th century. They speak Judeo-Spanish called Ladino.
Beta Jews
Beta Jews are Jews that lived in the territories of the Ethiopian Empire. The great majority of the Ethiopian Jews returned to Israel during the 1980s under the Law of Return. That law allows Jews and people with Jewish descent as well as their spouses and children to receive Israeli citizenship. A few operations were mounted in order to help the safe migration of these people in the war and famine-torn country of Ethiopia.
Arabs
During the Palestinian exodus of 1948 the great majority of the Arab people of the territories of Israel left. Many remained. As of the end of this decade roughly 20% of the population of Israel is Arabic. They are particularly Sunni Muslims. They speak Arabic and Hebrew.