Origins of Judaism and the Jews (Abraham to Moses and the eviction from the land of Israel)

In class yesterday we talked about the origins of the Jewish people. Though Jews make only a tiny fraction of the worlds population, but their influence on Western civilization has been great. For most of early mans history people were polytheist, worshipers of many different Gods. According to Jewish tradition around 1948 BCE a man in Mesopotamia received a revelation from what he understood to be from the "One God." Abraham brought the world the idea of monotheism.
Through the covenant the these ideas about ethical monotheism challenged and would eventually change the way people thought about religion. Moses is remembered as the greatest leader of the Jewish people when he led his people from slavery in Egypt and for teaching the Jewish people the Torah. Eventually, the Jewish people founded a country, Israel and built a temple to their God in Jerusalem. Years later, the Jewish people will be uprooted from the land, first by the Babylonians, but in the end they would return to rebuild Jerusalem and its temple.
Then the Roman Empire that you will read about next eventually in the year 70 will destroy the Jewish temple at Jerusalem and force all the the Jewish people out of Israel.
Jews are scattered all over the world, most Jews will eventually go to Europe and bring their religion and culture there and but some Jews go to other parts of the Middle East and Africa. Where every they go, Jews brought the ideas of monotheism with them. The land that was Israel is renamed Palestine and eventually Arabs will move in and take over, but we will deal with that episode in history at a later time.

(Important: Your personal religious beliefs are not on trial in this paper) what I want to know is according to these sources or others that you may have do you think that Judaism has had an effect on world culture and if so what has that effect been. Want you to write a five paragraph essay detailing what that effect has or has not been using facts from these or other readings to form a clear argument. Have a good weekend.

read more about Abraham, father of monotheism
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/abraham.html

read more about Moses, important figure in Judaism, Christianity and Islam
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/moses.html

See sites of Jerusalem
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Facts+About+Israel/State/JERUSALEM.htm

see a reconstruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herod%27s_Temple

optional: this is the link to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Israel
http://www.imj.org.il/