 Finally, in Judaism, the term "Israelite" is, broadly speaking, used to refer to a lay member of the Jewish ethnoreligious group, as opposed to the priestly orders of Kohanim and Levites.In texts of Jewish law such as the Mishnah and Gemara, the term יהודי ("Yehudi"), meaning Jew, is rarely used, and instead the ethnonym ישראלי ("Yisraeli"), or Israelite, is widely used to refer to Jews.Samaritans are not and never call themselves "Jews" יהודים ("Yehudim"), but commonly refer to themselves and to Jews collectively as Israelites, and they describe themselves as Israelite Samaritans

The term "Israelite" is the English name for the descendants of the biblical patriarch Jacob in ancient times, which is derived from the Greek Ἰσραηλῖται, which was used to translate the Biblical Hebrew term "b'nei yisrael", יִשְׂרָאֵל as either "sons of Israel" or "children of Israel".