Speaking of monotheism, I remember my 7th grade Social Studies teacher saying that the great contribution of Judaism to this planet was monotheism. Putting aside the accuracy of that, I inquired as to just why the belief in one God was superior to the belief in many Gods. She just restated her opinion. I told her that I thanked her for her opinion, but that she failed to answer my question. I told her that I did not find her opinion to be intuitively obviously true at all.
I wonder if a case can be made that the rise of monotheism also gave rise to more religious intolerance. I mean, if there is but one God, and you know who it is, and the other guy's God is an impostor, and heretical, there doesn't seem much room for compromise, and live and let live, now does there? It seemed that the only way out of the box was the rise of secularism (at least then you killed for non-religious reasons). But I did not say that to the 7th grade teacher alas. I only thought of that this minute in fact. 
I believe the common analysis of early judaism these days is that it propagated the exclusive worship of one God, but that it was still pretty far from being what we would call 'monotheistic'. Just have a look at the etymology of the very name 'Israel'.
But then the thing about early judaism seems to be that we know so very, very little about it.
A Venn Diagram distinction between "Jews" and "Israelites" is in order for precisely that reason
..there aren't many "Jews" until the Babylonian exile and its aftermath. There may have been tens of thousands of subjects of the Kingdom of Judah in 600 BC but aside from Jeremiah and co. it's not a particularly Jewish lot.
Edit: though Hebrew doesn't make a distinction between the words for "member of the Jewish faith" and "subject of the Kingdom of Judah/member of the tribe of Judah", rendering both as Yehudim, English makes a nice distinction between Judahite and Jew that's very useful to this issue.
