Editing Jewish diaspora (section)

====American Jews====
{{See also|List of American Jews}}
[[File:Welcome to the land of freedom.png|thumb|250px|European Jewish immigrants arriving in New York]]
The ancestry of most [[American Jews]] goes back to [[Ashkenazi Jewish]] communities that immigrated to the US in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as more recent influxes of Persian and other Mizrahi Jewish immigrants. The American Jewish community is considered to contain the highest percentage of mixed marriages between Jews and non-Jews, resulting in both increased assimilation and a significant influx of non-Jews becoming identified as Jews. The most widespread practice in the U.S. is [[Reform Judaism]], which does not require members to prove, or consider the Jews to possess direct descent from the ethnic Jews or Biblical Israelites.<ref>{{Cite web |title=How does Reform Judaism define who is a Jew? |url=https://reformjudaism.org/learning/answers-jewish-questions/how-does-reform-judaism-define-who-jew |website=Reform Judaism.org}}</ref> These attitudes had been present in Reform Judaism for many years but were codified in a 1983 decree by the [[Central Conference of American Rabbis]], ''On Patrilineal Descent''. Among other assertions, the 1983 decree holds that [[Matrilineality in Judaism|matrilineal descent]] is not necessary for a person to be considered Jewish.<ref>{{Cite web |title=On Patrilineal Descent Archives |url=https://www.ccarnet.org/responsa-topics/on-patrilineal-descent/ |access-date=2024-12-29 |website=Central Conference of American Rabbis |language=en-US}}</ref> This is in marked contrast to [[Orthodox Judaism]], whose adherents represent around 30% of the Jews in Israel. Orthodox Judaism considers the Jewish people to be a closed ethnoreligious community and consequently possesses very strict procedures for conversion, a practice that it does not generally encourage.<ref>{{Cite web |last=adubin |title=Home |url=https://judaismconversion.org/ |access-date=2024-12-29 |website=Judaism Conversion |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |title=Conversions - RabbiDov.com |url=https://rabbidov.com/conversions#:~:text=Orthodox%20Jewish%20practice%20does%20not%20encourage%20conversions%20to%20Judaism |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240125095658/https://rabbidov.com/conversions#:~:text=Orthodox%20Jewish%20practice%20does%20not%20encourage%20conversions%20to%20Judaism |archive-date=2024-01-25 |access-date=2024-12-29 |work=RabbiDov.com |language=en-US |url-status=live }}</ref>