1.
Vilna Governorate
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The Vilna Governorate or Government of Vilnius was a governorate of the Russian Empire created after the Third Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795. It was part of the Lithuanian General Governorate, which was called the Vilnius General Governorate after 1830, the seat was in Vilnius, where the Governors General resided. The first governorates, Vilnius Governorate and Slonim Governorate, were established after the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Just a year later, on December 12,1796, by order of Tsar Paul I they were merged into one governorate, called the Lithuanian Governorate, with its capital in Vilnius. By order of Tsar Alexander I on September 9,1801, the Lithuanian Governorate was split into the Lithuania-Vilnius Governorate, after 39 years, the word Lithuania was dropped from the two names by Nicholas I. In 1843, another reform took place, creating the Kaunas Governorate out of seven western districts of the Vilnius Governorate. The Vilnius Governorate received three additional districts, Vileyka and Dzisna from the Minsk Governorate and Lida from Grodno Governorate and it was divided to districts of Vilnius, Trakai, Disna, Oshmyany, Lida, Vileyka and Sventiany. This arrangement remained unchanged until World War I, a part of the Vilnius Governorate was then included in the Lithuania District of Ober-Ost, formed by the occupying German Empire. During the Polish-Soviet War, the area was annexed by Poland, the Council of Ambassadors and the international community recognized Polish sovereignty over Vilnus region in 1923. In 1923, the Wilno Voivodeship was created, which existed until 1939, between 1944 and 1946, about 150,000 people, mostly but not all of Polish extraction, left the area for Poland. Between 1955 and 1959, another 46,000 Poles left Lithuania, meanwhile, the Jewish population of the area, just as in the rest of Lithuania, was virtually exterminated by the Nazis during World War II. However, they reported strikingly different numbers, Ethnic history of the Vilnius region History of Vilnius Poland’s Wilno Voivodeship Byelorussia’s Vileyka Voblast
2.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
3.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
4.
Palestine (region)
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Palestine is a geographic region in Western Asia between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. It is sometimes considered to include adjoining territories, the name was used by Ancient Greek writers, and was later used for the Roman province Syria Palaestina, the Byzantine Palaestina Prima, and the Islamic provincial district of Jund Filastin. The region comprises most of the claimed for the biblical regions known as the Land of Israel. Historically, it has known as the southern portion of wider regional designations such as Canaan, Syria, ash-Sham. The boundaries of the region have changed throughout history, today, the region comprises the State of Israel and the Palestinian territories in which the State of Palestine was declared. Modern archaeology has identified 12 ancient inscriptions from Egyptian and Assyrian records recording likely cognates of Hebrew Pelesheth, the term Peleset is found in five inscriptions referring to a neighboring people or land starting from c.1150 BCE during the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt. Neither the Egyptian nor the Assyrian sources provided clear regional boundaries for the term, approximately a century later, Aristotle used a similar definition for the region in Meteorology, in which he included the Dead Sea. The term is accepted to be a translation of the Biblical name Peleshet. The term is used in the Septuagint, who used a transliteration Land of Phylistieim different from the contemporary Greek place name Palaistínē. Following the Muslim conquest, place names that were in use by the Byzantine administration generally continued to be used in Arabic, Modern archaeologists and historians of the region refer to their field of study as Levantine archaeology. The region was among the earliest in the world to see human habitation, agricultural communities, during the Bronze Age, independent Canaanite city-states were established, and were influenced by the surrounding civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Minoan Crete, and Syria. Between 1550–1400 BCE, the Canaanite cities became vassals to the Egyptian New Kingdom who held power until the 1178 BCE Battle of Djahy during the wider Bronze Age collapse. The region became part of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from c.740 BCE, in 539 BCE, the Babylonian empire was replaced by the Achaemenid Empire. In the 330s BCE, Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great conquered the region and it ultimately fell to the Seleucid Empire between 219–200 BCE. In 116 BCE, a Seleucid civil war resulted in the independence of certain regions including the Hasmonean principality in the Judaean Mountains, from 110 BCE, the Hasmoneans extended their authority over much of Palestine, creating a Judaean–Samaritan–Idumaean–Ituraean–Galilean alliance. The Judaean control over the region resulted in it also becoming known as Judaea. Between 73–63 BCE, the Roman Republic extended its influence into the region in the Third Mithridatic War, conquering Judea in 63 BCE, and splitting the former Hasmonean Kingdom into five districts. The three-year Ministry of Jesus, culminating in his crucifixion, is estimated to have occurred from 28–30 CE, in 70 CE, Titus sacked Jerusalem, resulting in the dispersal of the citys Jews and Christians to Yavne and Pella
5.
Revival of the Hebrew language
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The process began as Jews started arriving in Palestine in the first half of the nineteenth century and used Hebrew as a lingua franca. The languages revival eventually brought linguistic additions with it, historical records testify to the existence of Hebrew from the 10th century BCE to the late Second Temple period, after which the language developed into Mishnaic Hebrew. From the 2nd century CE until the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language circa 1880, Hebrew served as a literary and official language, after the spoken usage of Mishnaic Hebrew ended in the 2nd century CE, Hebrew had not been spoken as a mother tongue. Even so, during the Middle Ages, Jews used the language in a variety of disciplines. This usage kept alive a substantial portion of the characteristic of Hebrew. First and foremost, Classical Hebrew was preserved in full through well-recognized sources, chiefly the Tanakh, apart from these, Hebrew was known through hymns, prayers, midrashim, and the like. During the Middle Ages, Hebrew continued in use as a language in Rabbinical literature, including in judgments of Halakha, Responsa. Hebrew was used not only in form but also as an articulated language, in synagogues. Thus, Hebrew phonology and the pronunciation of vowels and consonants were preserved. g, for example, where we see two different vowel signs, or a consonant with or without a dogeish, a difference is also heard in the various Ashkenazic pronunciations. For example, the Dutch Sephardic pronunciation does not distinguish between the beth with and without dagesh, both are pronounced as b, the taf is always pronounced as t, with or without dagesh. Yemenite Hebrew, thought by Aaron Bar-Adon to preserve much of the Classical Hebrew pronunciation, was known when the revival took place. Within each of groups, there also existed different subsets of pronunciation. For example, differences existed between the Hebrew used by Polish Jewry and that of Lithuanian Jewry and of German Jewry, in the fifty years preceding the start of the revival process, a version of spoken Hebrew already existed in the markets of Jerusalem. The Sephardic Jews who spoke Ladino or Arabic and the Ashkenazi Jews who spoke Yiddish needed a common language for commercial purposes, the most obvious choice was Hebrew. Although Hebrew was spoken in this case, it was not a mother tongue. The linguistic situation against which background the revival process occurred was one of diglossia, in Europe, this phenomenon has waned, starting with English in the 16th century, but there were still differences between spoken street language and written language. The revival of the Hebrew language in practice advanced in two strains, The revival of written-literary Hebrew and the revival of spoken Hebrew. The two movements began to only in the beginning of the 1900s, and an important point in this process was the immigration of Haim Nahman Bialik to Palestine in 1924
6.
Hemda Ben-Yehuda
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Hemda Ben‑Yehuda was a Jewish journalist and author, and the wife of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. Hemdah Ben‑Yehuda was born Beila Jonas in Drissa, Belarus to Shelomo Naphtali Herz Jonas and she was the fifth of the seven children. During her early years she underwent several name changes, when she was nine years old, her father renamed her Belle. Upon the family’s move to Moscow she became Paula and it was not until her marriage that her husband bestowed upon her the name Hemdah. Her married name is written with or without final h, Hemda/Hemdah, in 1882, the family settled in Moscow. Here Beilla/Paula Jonas attended Russian primary and high school continuing to a women’s college of science to study chemistry. In 1891, her eldest sister Deborah, who was married to Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, only a few weeks later Ben-Yehuda, who knew Hemdah from his visits to her family, hastened to ask her to marry him, claiming that this had been Deborah’s wish before her death. In the winter of 1892, an epidemic that broke out in Jerusalem caused the death of three of the children of Deborah and Eliezer, leaving only two, Ben-Zion, and Yemima. During the entire period Ben-Yehuda’s mother had been helping him run the household, but now, in any case, his permit to reside in Moscow had expired, so that he was compelled to leave the city. Accordingly it was decided that the family would emigrate to Palestine. Jonas, his wife, Paula and the two younger children departed for Istanbul where Paula and Eliezer were married on March 29,1892, the Jonases and Ben-Yehudas arrived in Palestine on April 15 and at once proceeded to Jerusalem. Hemdah committed herself to this role as part of her marriage. She wrote, I was utterly shocked at the heavy burden which the reviver of language placed upon my shoulders. He did not ask for my consent but for a vow, Ben-Yehuda’s personality was so compelling that I did not dare to doubt my own ability. And there was no way other than to submit and accept it all with surrender, Hemdah made every effort to live up to her promises, though on her own terms. On all she did she imposed the dominant personality of a young, modern, secular woman whose principles of aesthetics, culture and enlightenment informed her choices, within six months she was fluent in basic Hebrew and from then on spoke only Hebrew in their home. Hemdah’s role in these matters was to calm things down, mediate and mend ruptured relations, the circumstances of the incident were as follows, During the week of Hanukkah Hemdah gave birth to her first child, Deborah. Since Ben-Yehuda was occupied with caring for her, her father edited the festive issue and this was mistakenly interpreted by the authorities as a call to rebellion against the Turkish regime
7.
Itamar Ben-Avi
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Itamar Ben-Avi was the son of Deborah and Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, and the stepchild of writer Hemda Ben-Yehuda. Eliezer is credited with reviving the Hebrew language, he and Hemda brought up Itamar to be the first native speaker of Hebrew in the modern era, Ben-Avi worked as a journalist, and as a Zionist activist. Ben-Zion grew up speaking Modern Hebrew with his parents, making him the first native speaker of the Hebrew language in over a thousand years. When he was young, Itamar always wanted someone to play with. He made friends with a dog which he called Maher, meaning fast in Hebrew, ben-Zion grew up without any friends, as he was the only child who spoke Hebrew. Growing up, Ben Zion experienced many troubling situations, including the death of three of his siblings from diphtheria, and the death of his mother Deborah in 1891 from tuberculosis. He and his family were also ostracized from the ultra-orthodox community, the religious community saw this as sacrilege because they viewed it as the language of the Torah and prayers, and not for use in idle chatter. After his mothers death, his father married his wifes younger sister Hemda. After his mothers death, he changed his name to Itamar, the name Itamar means Island of Dates and derives from the Hebrew root t-m-r, which is a symbol of Zionism. As his last name, he used Ben-Avi, Avi is an acronym for Eliezer Ben Yehuda and also means my father, so Ben-Avi means my fathers son. At the age of 19, Ben-Avi left Jaffa port and set sail for Europe and he returned to Palestine as a journalist, and published many successful newspapers. He was also an ardent Zionist and often took roles in supporting and spreading the idea of the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. He was the editor and journalist of Doar Hayom, the then Hebrew style-twin of the British Daily Mail. In his numerous opinion and commentary articles in Doar HaYom he also advocated the use of the International language Esperanto. He died in 1943 in NYC, doing a posting for the Zionist movement and he had two daughters who went on in their careers to be national radio news readers. He was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, the current Hebrew writing system dates back to the time of Ezra the scribe,500 BCE. He wrote a Hebrew biography of his father and this biography was titled Avi and was printed in his own made-up version of Hebrew script, using Latin letters and some variations thereof, to fit the needs of the Hebrew language. He pioneered and was editor of two short lived Hebrew weeklies in reformed Latin script
8.
Hebrew language
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Hebrew is a language native to Israel, spoken by over 9 million people worldwide, of whom over 5 million are in Israel. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, the earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE. Hebrew belongs to the West Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, Hebrew is the only living Canaanite language left, and the only truly successful example of a revived dead language. Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining since the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Aramaic and to a lesser extent Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and it survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce, and poetry. Then, in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, and, according to Ethnologue, had become, as of 1998, the language of 5 million people worldwide. After Israel, the United States has the second largest Hebrew-speaking population, with 220,000 fluent speakers, Modern Hebrew is one of the two official languages of the State of Israel, while premodern Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world today. Ancient Hebrew is also the tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Arabic is their vernacular. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Leshon Hakodesh, the modern word Hebrew is derived from the word Ivri, one of several names for the Israelite people. It is traditionally understood to be a based on the name of Abrahams ancestor, Eber. This name is based upon the root ʕ-b-r meaning to cross over. Interpretations of the term ʕibrim link it to this verb, cross over, in the Bible, the Hebrew language is called Yәhudit because Judah was the surviving kingdom at the time of the quotation. In Isaiah 19,18 it is called the Language of Canaan, Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. In turn, the Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages, according to Avraham ben-Yosef, Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah during about 1200 to 586 BCE. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a vernacular in ancient times following the Babylonian exile. In July 2008 Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa which he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating around 3000 years ago. The Gezer calendar also dates back to the 10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic Period, classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew, the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks, the Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where later Hebrew spelling requires it
9.
Hebrew
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Hebrew is a language native to Israel, spoken by over 9 million people worldwide, of whom over 5 million are in Israel. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, the earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE. Hebrew belongs to the West Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, Hebrew is the only living Canaanite language left, and the only truly successful example of a revived dead language. Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining since the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Aramaic and to a lesser extent Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and it survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce, and poetry. Then, in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, and, according to Ethnologue, had become, as of 1998, the language of 5 million people worldwide. After Israel, the United States has the second largest Hebrew-speaking population, with 220,000 fluent speakers, Modern Hebrew is one of the two official languages of the State of Israel, while premodern Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world today. Ancient Hebrew is also the tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Arabic is their vernacular. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Leshon Hakodesh, the modern word Hebrew is derived from the word Ivri, one of several names for the Israelite people. It is traditionally understood to be a based on the name of Abrahams ancestor, Eber. This name is based upon the root ʕ-b-r meaning to cross over. Interpretations of the term ʕibrim link it to this verb, cross over, in the Bible, the Hebrew language is called Yәhudit because Judah was the surviving kingdom at the time of the quotation. In Isaiah 19,18 it is called the Language of Canaan, Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. In turn, the Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages, according to Avraham ben-Yosef, Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah during about 1200 to 586 BCE. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a vernacular in ancient times following the Babylonian exile. In July 2008 Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa which he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating around 3000 years ago. The Gezer calendar also dates back to the 10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic Period, classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew, the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks, the Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where later Hebrew spelling requires it
10.
Belarusian language
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Belarusian is an official language of Belarus, along with Russian, and is spoken abroad, chiefly in Russia, Ukraine, and small parts in far-eastern Poland. Following independence, it became known as Belarusian. Belarusian is one of the East Slavic languages and shares many grammatical and lexical features with other members of the group, to some extent, Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian are mutually intelligible. Its predecessor stage is known as Ruthenian, in turn descended from Old East Slavic, at the 1999 Belarus Census, the Belarusian language was declared as a language spoken at home by about 3,686,000 Belarusian citizens. About 6,984,000 of Belarusians declared it their mother tongue, other sources put the population of the language as 6,715,000 in Belarus and 9,081,102 in all countries. According to a study done by the Belarusian government in 2009, 72% of Belarusians speak Russian at home,29. 4% of Belarusians can write, speak, and read Belarusian, while 52. 5% can only read and speak it. Although closely related to other East Slavic languages, especially Ukrainian, Belarusian phonology is distinct in a number of ways, the phoneme inventory of the modern Belarusian language consists of 45 to 54 phonemes,6 vowels and 39 to 48 consonants, depending on how they are counted. When the nine geminate consonants are excluded as mere variations, there are 39 consonants, the number 48 includes all consonant sounds, including variations and rare sounds, which may be semantically distinct in the modern Belarusian language. The Belarusian alphabet is a variant of the Cyrillic script, which was first used as an alphabet for the Old Church Slavonic language, the modern Belarusian form was defined in 1918, and consists of thirty-two letters. Before that, Belarusian had also written in the Belarusian Latin alphabet, the Belarusian Arabic alphabet. The Glagolitic script had been used, sporadically, until the 11th or 12th century, there are several systems of romanizing written Belarusian text in existence, see Romanization of Belarusian. Standardized Belarusian grammar in its form was adopted in 1959. It was developed from the form set down by Branislaw Tarashkyevich. Historically, there had existed several other alternative standardized forms of Belarusian grammar and it is mainly based on the Belarusian folk dialects of Minsk-Vilnius region. Belarusian grammar is mostly synthetic and partly analytic, and overall is similar to Russian grammar. The most significant instance of this is in the representation of vowel reduction, and in particular akannye, the merger of unstressed /a/ and /o/, Belarusian always spells this merged sound as ⟨a⟩, whereas Russian uses either ⟨a⟩ or ⟨o⟩, according to what the underlying phoneme is. This can significantly complicate the task of foreign speakers in learning these paradigms, besides the literary norm, there exist two main dialects of the Belarusian language, the North-Eastern and the South-Western. In addition, there exist the transitional Middle Belarusian dialect group, the North-Eastern dialect is chiefly characterized by the soft sounding R and strong akanye, and the South-Western dialect is chiefly characterized by the hard sounding R and moderate akanye
11.
Vitebsk Region
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Vitebsk Region, Vitsebsk Voblast, or Vitebsk Oblast is a region of Belarus with its administrative center being Vitebsk. It is located near the border with Russia, as of a 2011, the region had a population of 1,221,800. It has the lowest population density in Belarus at 30.6 p/km², important cities within the region include Vitebsk, Orsha, and Polotsk/Navapolatsk. Vitsebsk Region covers an area of 40,000 km², which is about 19. 4% of the national total, the northern extreme point of Belarus is situated in Verkhnyadzvinsk Raion of Vitebsk Region, north of Lake Osveya. In 2000 Belarusian scientists Alexey Solomonov and Valery Anoshko published a report in which they stated that the centre of Europe was located near Lake Sho in the Vitsebsk Voblast. The region is known for its numerous lakes, the largest lakes of the Vitebsk Region are, Osveyskoye, Lukomskoye, Drivyaty, Nescherdo, Snudy, Lisno, Ezerische, Strusto, Richi, Losvido, Lepelskoye. The region has more national parks, nature reserves, and wildlife preserves of national importance than any region of Belarus. Braslav Lakes and Naroch National Parks and Berezinski Biosphere Reserve comprise 3, 4% of the regions territory. Vitebsk Region has a number of important transport connections with Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic countries, the number of travel agencies in Vitebsk Region has been growing, from 25 in 2000 to 83 in 2010, most provide both agent and operator activities. The numerous lake resorts attract tourists for several-night stays, polotsk and Vitebsk are the most popular cultural tourism destinations of the region. Administrative divisions of Belarus Viciebsk Region – The Land Of Artists And Terrorists / Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee
12.
Belarus
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Its capital and most populous city is Minsk. Over 40% of its 207,600 square kilometres is forested and its strongest economic sectors are service industries and manufacturing. In the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Belarus declared independence as the Belarusian Peoples Republic, the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia became a founding constituent republic of the Soviet Union in 1922 and was renamed as the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Belarus lost almost half of its territory to Poland after the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921, during WWII, military operations devastated Belarus, which lost about a third of its population and more than half of its economic resources. The republic was redeveloped in the post-war years, in 1945 the Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations, along with the Soviet Union and the Ukrainian SSR. The parliament of the declared the sovereignty of Belarus on 27 July 1990. Alexander Lukashenko has served as the president since 1994. Belarus has been labeled Europes last dictatorship by some Western journalists, Lukashenko continued a number of Soviet-era policies, such as state ownership of large sections of the economy. Though not directly espousing communism like the five remaining communist countries of China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and North Korea, in 2000 Belarus and Russia signed a treaty for greater cooperation, with some hints of forming a Union State. Over 70% of Belaruss population of 9.49 million resides in urban areas, more than 80% of the population is ethnic Belarusian, with sizable minorities of Russians, Poles and Ukrainians. Since a referendum in 1995, the country has had two official languages, Belarusian and Russian, the Constitution of Belarus does not declare any official religion, although the primary religion in the country is Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Belarus is the only European country to retain capital punishment in both law and practice, the name Belarus is closely related with the term Belaya Rus, i. e. White Rus. There are several claims to the origin of the name White Rus, an alternate explanation for the name comments on the white clothing worn by the local Slavic population. A third theory suggests that the old Rus lands that were not conquered by the Tatars had been referred to as white, other sources claim that, before 1267, the land not conquered by the Mongols was considered White Rus. The name Rus is often conflated with its Latin forms Russia and Ruthenia, in some languages, including German and Dutch, the country is generally called White Russia to this day. The Latin term Alba Russia was used again by Pope Pius VI in 1783 to recognize the Society of Jesus there, exclaiming Approbo Societatem Jesu in Alba Russia degentem, approbo, approbo. The first known use of White Russia to refer to Belarus was in the century by Englishman Sir Jerome Horsey. During the 17th century, the Russian tsars used White Rus to describe the lands added from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
13.
Cheder
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A Cheder is a traditional elementary school teaching the basics of Judaism and the Hebrew language. Cheders were widely found in Europe before the end of the 18th century, lessons took place in the house of the teacher, known as a Melamed, whose wages were paid by the Jewish community or a group of parents. Normally, only boys would attend classes—girls were educated by their mothers in their homes, where money was scarce and the community could not afford to maintain many teachers, boys of all ages would be taught in a single group. Although traditionally boys start learning the Hebrew alphabet the day they turned three, boys typically entered cheder school around the age of 5, after learning to read Hebrew, they would immediately begin studying the Torah, starting with Leviticus and the five books of Moses. They would usually start learning Mishna at around 7 years of age, reading out loud to each other and rote learning were the main techniques used to teach these complicated studies. At the age of 13 or 14, the end of an education at the cheder would be marked by his bar mitzvah. Those who wanted to go on to become a rabbi or sofer had to continue their studies at the yeshivot, famous European yeshivot were located at Worms, Fürth and Prague, which was considered to be among the best. Towards the end of the 18th century, the system became a target of critique by members of Jewish orthodoxy as well as by members of the more liberal haskala. Orthodox critics argued that teachers were not sufficiently qualified, at that time, cheder teachers were paid so badly that many would have to supplement their incomes with menial tasks. It was fairly commonplace for a Melamed to be a butcher, singer or even a gravedigger and it was also argued that some cheder teachers would let pupils advance to the next level of learning too early because advanced pupils had to pay more money for their lessons. They proposed additional lessons in the language and a more secular vocational education. These ideas were put into practice at the end of the 18th century by German Jews who founded Reform schools or Freischulen, in more secular and assimilated Jewish communities, cheders are sometimes attended outside normal school hours much like the Christian Sunday school. There, Jewish children attending non-Jewish schools can pick up some knowledge of the Jewish religion. In Israel, where there is no legal core-curriculum, the distinction between school and Cheder is rarely made, as most haredi schools teach only a rudimentary level of secular knowledge
14.
Torah
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The Torah is the central reference of Judaism. It has a range of meanings and it can most specifically mean the first five books of the twenty-four books of the Tanakh, and it usually includes the rabbinic commentaries. In rabbinic literature the word Torah denotes both the five books and the Oral Torah, the Oral Torah consists of interpretations and amplifications which according to rabbinic tradition have been handed down from generation to generation and are now embodied in the Talmud and Midrash. According to the Midrash, the Torah was created prior to the creation of the world, traditionally, the words of the Torah are written on a scroll by a scribe in Hebrew. A Torah portion is read publicly at least once every three days in the presence of a congregation, reading the Torah publicly is one of the bases for Jewish communal life. The word Torah in Hebrew is derived from the root ירה, the meaning of the word is therefore teaching, doctrine, or instruction, the commonly accepted law gives a wrong impression. Other translational contexts in the English language include custom, theory, guidance, the earliest name for the first part of the Bible seems to have been The Torah of Moses. This title, however, is neither in the Torah itself. It appears in Joshua and Kings, but it cannot be said to refer there to the entire corpus, in contrast, there is every likelihood that its use in the post-Exilic works was intended to be comprehensive. Other early titles were The Book of Moses and The Book of the Torah, Christian scholars usually refer to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible as the Pentateuch, a term first used in the Hellenistic Judaism of Alexandria, meaning five books, or as the Law. The Torah starts from the beginning of Gods creating the world, through the beginnings of the people of Israel, their descent into Egypt, and it ends with the death of Moses, just before the people of Israel cross to the promised land of Canaan. Interspersed in the narrative are the teachings given explicitly or implicitly embedded in the narrative. This is followed by the story of the three patriarchs, Joseph and the four matriarchs, God gives to the patriarchs a promise of the land of Canaan, but at the end of Genesis the sons of Jacob end up leaving Canaan for Egypt due to a regional famine. They had heard there was a grain storage and distribution facility in Egypt. Exodus begins the story of Gods revelation to his people of Israel through Moses, Moses receives the Torah from God, and teaches His laws and Covenant to the people of Israel. It also talks about the first violation of the covenant when the Golden Calf was constructed, Exodus includes the instructions on building the Tabernacle and concludes with its actual construction. Leviticus begins with instructions to the Israelites on how to use the Tabernacle, leviticus 26 provides a detailed list of rewards for following Gods commandments and a detailed list of punishments for not following them. Numbers tells how Israel consolidated itself as a community at Sinai, set out from Sinai to move towards Canaan, even Moses sins and is told he would not live to enter the land
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Mishna
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The Mishnah or Mishna is the first major written redaction of the Jewish oral traditions known as the Oral Torah. It is also the first major work of Rabbinic literature, most of the Mishnah is written in Mishnaic Hebrew, while some parts are Aramaic. The Mishnah consists of six orders, each containing 7–12 tractates,63 in total, the word Mishnah can also indicate a single paragraph or a verse of the work itself, i. e. the smallest unit of structure in the Mishnah. For this reason the work is sometimes called by the plural. The term Mishnah originally referred to a method of teaching by presenting topics in an order, as contrasted with Midrash. The Mishnah consists of six orders, each containing 7–12 tractates,63 in total, each masechet is divided into chapters and then paragraphs. In this last context, the word means a single paragraph of the work, i. e. the smallest unit of structure, leading to the use of the plural, Mishnayot. Because of the division into six orders, the Mishnah is sometimes called Shas, in each order, tractates are arranged from biggest to smallest. A popular mnemonic consists of the acronym ZMaN NaKaT, the Babylonian Talmud states that there were either six hundred or seven hundred orders of the Mishnah. Hillel the Elder organized them into six orders to make it easier to remember, the historical accuracy of this tradition is disputed. There is also a tradition that Ezra the scribe dictated from memory not only the 24 books of the Tanakh but 60 esoteric books. It is not known whether this is a reference to the Mishnah, interestingly, Reuvein Margolies posited that there were originally seven orders of Mishnah, citing a Gaonic tradition on the existence of a seventh order containing the laws of Stam and Berachot. A number of important laws are not elaborated upon in the Mishnah and these include the laws of tzitzit, tefillin, mezuzot, the holiday of Hanukkah, and the laws of conversion to Judaism. These were later discussed in the minor tractates, nissim ben Jacobs Hakdamah Lemafteach Hatalmud argued that it was unnecessary for Judah the Prince to discuss them as many of these laws were so well known. Rabbinic commentaries on the Mishnah from the four centuries, done in the Land of Israel. In themselves they are known as Gemara, the books which set out the Mishnah in its original structure, together with the associated Gemara, are known as Talmuds. Two Talmuds were compiled, the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud, unlike the Hebrew Mishnah, the Gemara is written primarily in Aramaic. The Mishnah does not claim to be the development of new laws, the term Mishnah is related to the verb shanah, to teach or repeat, and to the adjectives sheni and mishneh, meaning second
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Talmud
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The Talmud is a central text of Rabbinic Judaism. It is also referred to as Shas, a Hebrew abbreviation of shisha sedarim, the six orders. Talmud translates literally as instruction in Hebrew, and the term may refer to either the Gemara alone, or the Mishnah, the entire Talmud consists of 63 tractates, and in standard print is over 6,200 pages long. The Talmud is the basis for all codes of Jewish law, Rabbis expounded and debated the Torah and discussed the Tanakh without the benefit of written works, though some may have made private notes, for example of court decisions. It is during this period that rabbinic discourse began to be recorded in writing, the earliest recorded oral Torah may have been of the midrashic form, in which halakhic discussion is structured as exegetical commentary on the Pentateuch. But an alternative form, organized by subject matter instead of by biblical verse, became dominant about the year 200 CE, the Oral Torah was far from monolithic, rather, it varied among various schools. The most famous two were the School of Shammai and the School of Hillel, in general, all valid opinions, even the non-normative ones, were recorded in the Talmud. The oldest full manuscript of the Talmud, known as the Munich Talmud, each tractate is divided into chapters,517 in total, that are both numbered according to the Hebrew alphabet and given names, usually using the first one or two words in the first mishnah. A perek may continue over several pages, each perek will contain several mishnayot with their accompanying exchanges that form the building-blocks of the Gemara, the name for a passage of gemara is a sugya. A sugya, including baraita or tosefta, will comprise a detailed proof-based elaboration of a Mishnaic statement. A sugya may, and often does, range widely off the subject of the mishnah, in a given sugya, scriptural, Tannaic and Amoraic statements are cited to support the various opinions. In so doing, the Gemara will highlight semantic disagreements between Tannaim and Amoraim, and compare the Mishnaic views with passages from the Baraita. Rarely are debates formally closed, in instances, the final word determines the practical law. There is a literature on the procedural principles to be used in settling the practical law when disagreements exist, see under #Logic. The Mishnah is a compilation of legal opinions and debates, statements in the Mishnah are typically terse, recording brief opinions of the rabbis debating a subject, or recording only an unattributed ruling, apparently representing a consensus view. The rabbis recorded in the Mishnah are known as the Tannaim, the Mishnahs topical organization thus became the framework of the Talmud as a whole. But not every tractate in the Mishnah has a corresponding Gemara, also, the order of the tractates in the Talmud differs in some cases from that in the Mishnah. In addition to the Mishnah, other tannaitic teachings were current at about the time or shortly thereafter
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Rabbi
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In Judaism, a rabbi /ˈræbaɪ/ is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רַבִּי rabi, meaning My Master, the word master רב rav literally means great one. The basic form of the rabbi developed in the Pharisaic and Talmudic era, the first sage for whom the Mishnah uses the title of rabbi was Yohanan ben Zakkai, active in the early to mid first century CE. Within the various Jewish denominations there are different requirements for rabbinic ordination, for example, Orthodox Judaism does not ordain women as rabbis, but other movements have chosen to do so for halakhic reasons as well as ethical reasons. Although the usage rabbim many the majority, the multitude occurs for the assembly of the community in the Dead Sea scrolls there is no evidence to support an association with the later title Rabbi, the root is cognate to Arabic ربّ rabb, meaning lord. As a sign of respect, some great rabbis are simply called The Rav. The titles Rabban and Rabbi are first mentioned in the Mishnah, the term was first used for Rabban Gamaliel the elder, Rabban Simeon his son, and Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai, all of whom were patriarchs or presidents of the Sanhedrin. The title Rabbi occurs in the books of Matthew, Mark, and John in the New Testament, other variants are rəvī and, in Yiddish, rebbə. The word could be compared to the Syriac word ܪܒܝ rabi, in ancient Hebrew, rabbi was a proper term of address while speaking to a superior, in the second person, similar to a vocative case. While speaking about a superior, in the person one could say ha-rav or rabbo. Later, the term evolved into a title for members of the Patriarchate. Thus, the title gained an irregular form, רַבָּנִים rabbanim. Rabbi as a title does not appear in the Hebrew Bible. All of the above personalities would have expected to be steeped in the wisdom of the Torah and the commandments. And honor is due only for Torah, as it is said, The wise shall inherit honor, and only Torah is truly good, as it is said, I have given you a good teaching, do not forsake My Torah. This was eventually encoded and codified within the Mishnah and Talmud and subsequent rabbinical scholarship, the title Rabbi was borne by the sages of ancient Israel, who were ordained by the Sanhedrin in accordance with the custom handed down by the elders. They were titled Ribbi and received authority to judge penal cases, Rab was the title of the Babylonian sages who taught in the Babylonian academies. After the suppression of the Patriarchate and Sanhedrin by Theodosius II in 425, a recognised scholar could be called Rab or Hacham, like the Babylonian sages
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Yeshiva
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Yeshiva is a Jewish institution that focuses on the study of traditional religious texts, primarily the Talmud and Torah study. Study is usually done through daily shiurim and in pairs called ḥavrutas. Ḥavruta-style learning is one of the features of the yeshiva. In the United States and Israel, the different levels of education have different names. In Israel, elementary-school students are enrolled in a Talmud Torah or cheder, post-bar mitzvah-age students learn in a yeshiva ketana, a kollel is a yeshiva for married men. It is common for a kollel to pay a stipend to its students. Students of Lithuanian and Hasidic yeshiva gedolas usually learn in yeshiva until they get married, historically, yeshivas were attended by males only. Today, all non-Orthodox and a few Modern Orthodox yeshivas are open to females, although there are separate schools for Orthodox women and girls, yeshivas for women do not follow the same structure or curriculum as the traditional yeshiva for boys and men. Alternate spellings and names include yeshivah (/jəˈʃiːvɑː/, Hebrew, ישיבה, sitting, metivta and mesivta, Beth midrash, Talmudical Academy, Rabbinical Academy, the word yeshiva, lit. sitting, is applied to the activity of learning in class, and hence to a learning session. The Mishnah tractate Megillah mentions the law that a town can only be called a city if it supports ten men to make up the required quorum for communal prayers. Likewise, every beth din was attended by a number of pupils up to three times the size of the court and these might be indications of the historicity of the classical yeshiva. As indicated by the Talmud, adults generally took off two months a year, Elul and Adar, the preceding the pilgrimage festivals of Sukkot and Pesach. The rest of the year they worked, the Geonic period takes its name from Gaon, the title bestowed on the heads of the three yeshivas in existence from the third to the thirteenth century. The Geonim acted as the principals of their individual yeshivot, and as spiritual leaders, the yeshiva conducted all official business in the name of its Gaon, and all correspondence to or from the yeshiva was addressed directly to the Gaon. Throughout the Geonic Period there were three yeshivot, there was however, no requirement for this, and each community could choose to associate with any of the yeshivot. The yeshiva served as the highest educational institution for the Rabbis of this period, in addition to this, the yeshiva wielded immense power as the principal body for interpreting Jewish law. In this regard, the community saw the Gaon of a yeshiva as the highest judge on all matters of Jewish law, each yeshiva ruled differently on matters of ritual and law, the other yeshivot accepted these divisions, and all three ranked as equally orthodox. The yeshiva also served as an authority, in conjunction with local communities
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Haskalah
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The Haskalah, often termed Jewish Enlightenment was an intellectual movement among the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, with certain influence on those in the West and Muslim lands. It arose as a defined ideological worldview during the 1770s, and its last stage ended around 1881, the Haskalah pursued two complementary aims. The Haskalah promoted rationalism, liberalism, freedom of thought and enquiry, the movement encompassed a wide spectrum ranging from moderates, who hoped for maximal compromise and conservatism, to radicals who sought sweeping changes. In its various changes, the Haskalah fulfilled an important, though limited, part in the modernization of Central and its activists, the maskilim, exhorted and implemented communal, educational and cultural reforms in both the public and the private spheres. The Haskalah was a multifaceted phenomenon, with many loci which rose and dwindled at different times. While Maskilic centres sometimes had loose institutions around which their members operated, in spite of this diversity, the Maskilim shared a sense of common identity and self-consciousness. These were anchored in the existence of a literary canon. Its members, like Moses Mendelssohn, Hartwig Wessely, Isaac Satanow and Isaac Euchel, authored tracts in various genres that were further disseminated, each generation, in turn, elaborated and added its own works to the growing body. The emergence of the Maskilic canon reflected the central and defining enterprise. The Maskilim researched and standardized grammar, minted countless neologisms and composed poetry, magazines, theatrical works, historians described the movement largely as a Republic of Letters, an intellectual community based on printing houses and reading societies. The Maskilims attitude toward Hebrew, as noted by Moses Pelli, was derived from Enlightenment perceptions of language as reflecting both individual and collective character, to them, a corrupt tongue mirrored the inadequate condition of the Jews which they sought to ameliorate. They turned to Hebrew as their creative medium. The Maskilim inherited the Medieval Grammarians – such as Jonah ibn Janah and Judah ben David Hayyuj – distaste of Mishnaic Hebrew and preference of the Biblical one as pristine, some activists, though, were not averse to using Mishnaic and Rabbinic forms. They also preferred the Sephardi pronunciation, considered more prestigious, to the Ashkenazi one, the movements literary canon is defined by a grandiloquent, archaic register copying the Biblical one and often combining lengthy allusions or direct quotes from verses in the prose. During a century of activity, the Maskilim produced a massive contribution, in 1755, Moses Mendelssohn began publishing Qohelet Musar, regarded as the beginning of modern writing in Hebrew and the very first journal in the language. Between 1789 and his death, Hartwig Wessely compiled Shirei Tiferet, Joseph ha-Efrati Troplowitz was the Haskalahs pioneering playwright, best known for his 1794 epic drama Melukhat Shaul which was printed in twelve editions by 1888. Solomon Löwisohn was the first to translate Shakespeare into Hebrew, monologue in Henry IV, Part 2 was included in his 1816 lyrical compilation Melitzat Yeshurun. Joseph Perl pioneered satirist writings in his biting, mocking critique of Hasidism, adam HaCohen was primarily a leading metricist, with his 1842 Shirei Sfat ha-Qodesh considered a milestone in Hebrew poetry, and also authored biblical exegesis and educational handbooks
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Daugavpils
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Daugavpils is a city in southeastern Latvia, located on the banks of the Daugava River, from which the city gets its name. It is the second largest city in the country after the capital Riga, Daugavpils is located relatively close to Belarus and Lithuania, and some 120 km from the Latvian border with Russia. Daugavpils is a railway junction and industrial centre and lies approximately midway between Riga and Minsk. The city is surrounded by lakes and nature parks. It is also known for its overwhelmingly Russian-speaking population, historically, several names in various languages have identified Daugavpils. Some are still in use today, as of 1 January 2012, the city had a population of 101,057. In Daugavpils 85% of the supported the proposal to make Russian the second state language in the 2012 referendum. The towns history began in 1275 when the Livonian Order built Dünaburg castle 20 km up the Daugava river from where Daugavpils is now situated, in 1561 it became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and, subsequently, of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. In 1621 Daugavpils became the capital of the newly formed Inflanty Voivodeship, in 1577 the Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible captured and destroyed Dünaburg castle. That same year, a new castle was built 20 km downriver, in 1582 Daugavpils was granted Magdeburg town rights. Russia returned the area to Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth following the Treaty of Andrusovo and it became part of the Russian Empire after First Partition of Poland in 1772. From 1784 onwards the city had a large and active Jewish population among them a number of prominent figures, according to the Russian census of 1897, out of a total population of 69,700, Jews numbered 32,400. As part of the Russian Empire the city was called Dvinsk from 1893 to 1920, the newly independent Latvian state renamed it Daugavpils in 1920. Latvians, Poles and Soviet troops fought the Battle of Daugavpils in the area from 1919 to 1920, Daugavpils and the whole of Latvia was under the Soviet Union rule between 1940–41 and 1944–1991, while Germany occupied it between 1941 and 1944. The Nazis established the Daugavpils Ghetto where the towns Jews were forced to live, during the Cold War the Lociki air-base operated 12 km northeast of Daugavpils itself. On 16 April 2010 an assassin shot vice-mayor Grigorijs Ņemcovs in the center of the city and he died almost immediately and the crime remains unsolved. Daugavpils is an important cultural centre in eastern Latvia, there are 22 primary and secondary schools, four vocational schools, and the Saules College of Art. More than 1,000 teachers and engineers graduate from Daugavpils University, there is also one Polish school, the only in the city, on Varšavas iela
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Zionism
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Zionism is the national movement of the Jewish people that supports the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel. Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in Central and Eastern Europe as a revival movement, in reaction to anti-Semitic. Soon after this, most leaders of the movement associated the main goal with creating the state in Palestine. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism continues primarily to advocate on behalf of Israel and to threats to its continued existence. A variety of Zionism, called cultural Zionism, founded and represented most prominently by Ahad Haam, unlike Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, Ahad Haam strived for Israel to be a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews. Advocates of Zionism view it as a liberation movement for the repatriation of a persecuted people residing as minorities in a variety of nations to their ancestral homeland. The term Zionism is derived from the word Zion, referring to Jerusalem and these groups were collectively called the Lovers of Zion and were seen to encounter a growing Jewish movement toward assimilation. The first use of the term is attributed to the Austrian Nathan Birnbaum, founder of a nationalist Jewish students movement Kadimah, the common denominator among all Zionists is the claim to Eretz Israel as the national homeland of the Jews and as the legitimate focus for Jewish national self-determination. It is based on ties and religious traditions linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. Zionism does not have an ideology, but has evolved in a dialogue among a plethora of ideologies, General Zionism, Religious Zionism, Labor Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, Green Zionism. The political movement was established by the Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl in 1897 following the publication of his book Der Judenstaat. At that time, the movement sought to encourage Jewish migration to Ottoman Palestine, although initially one of several Jewish political movements offering alternative responses to assimilation and antisemitism, Zionism expanded rapidly. In its early stages, supporters considered setting up a Jewish state in the territory of Palestine. After World War II and the destruction of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe where these alternative movements were rooted, the alliance with Britain was strained as the latter realized the implications of the Jewish movement for Arabs in Palestine but the Zionists persisted. The movement was successful in establishing Israel on May 14,1948. The proportion of the worlds Jews living in Israel has steadily grown since the movement emerged, by the early 21st century, more than 40% of the worlds Jews live in Israel, more than in any other country. These two outcomes represent the success of Zionism, and are unmatched by any other Jewish political movement in the past 2,000 years. In some academic studies, Zionism has been analyzed both within the context of diaspora politics and as an example of modern national liberation movements
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Land of Israel
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The Land of Israel is the traditional Jewish name for an area of indefinite geographical extension in the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine. The definitions of the limits of this territory vary between passages in the Hebrew Bible, with mentions in Genesis 15, Exodus 23, Numbers 34. Nine times elsewhere in the Bible, the land is referred as from Dan to Beersheba. According to the Book of Genesis, the land was first promised by God to the descendants of Abram, abrams name was later changed to Abraham, with the promise refined to pass through his son Isaac and to the Israelites, descendants of Jacob, Abrahams grandson. During the mandatory period the term Eretz Yisrael or the Land of Israel was part of the official Hebrew name of Mandatory Palestine, official Hebrew documents used the Hebrew transliteration of the word “Palestine” פלשתינה followed always by the two initial letters of Eretz Yisrael, א״י Aleph-Yod. The Land of Israel concept has been evoked by the founders of the State of Israel. It often surfaces in political debates on the status of the West Bank, Ezekiel, though generally preferring the phrase soil of Israel, employs eretz israel twice, respectively at Ezekiel 40,2 and Ezekiel 47,18. According to Anita Shapira, the term Eretz Yisrael was a term, vague as far as the exact boundaries of the territories are concerned. The Hebrew Bible provides three specific sets of borders for the Promised Land, each with a different purpose. And to their descendants after them, whilst Numbers 34, 1–15 describes the Land of Canaan which is allocated to nine, the expression Land of Israel is first used in a later book,1 Samuel 13,19. It is defined in detail in the exilic Book of Ezekiel as a land where both the tribes and the strangers in midst, can claim inheritance. The name Israel first appears in the Hebrew Bible as the name given by God to the patriarch Jacob, deriving from the name Israel, other designations that came to be associated with the Jewish people have included the Children of Israel or Israelite. The term Land of Israel occurs in one episode in the New Testament, the section in which it appears was written as a parallel to the earlier Book of Exodus. The passage describes the area as the land of the ten named ancient peoples living there. Genesis gives the border with Egypt as Nahar Mitzrayim – nahar in Hebrew denotes a river, never a wadi. Only the Red Sea and the Euphrates are mentioned to define the southern and eastern borders of the land promised to the Israelites. The Red Sea corresponding to Hebrew Yam Suf was understood in ancient times to be the Erythraean Sea, thus the entire Arabian peninsula lies within the borders described
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Jews
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The Jews, also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, the Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as Hebrews. The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II, but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Since then the population has risen again, and as of 2015 was estimated at 14.3 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank. According to the report, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel and these numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household. The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure, Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it. The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, according to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced, with the stress on the syllable, in Israeli Hebrew. The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו, Djudio, ג׳ודיוס, Djudios, Yiddish, ייִד Yid, ייִדן, Yidn. The etymological equivalent is in use in languages, e. g. but derivations of the word Hebrew are also in use to describe a Jew, e. g. in Italian. The German word Jude is pronounced, the corresponding adjective jüdisch is the origin of the word Yiddish, in such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities, as archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. In this case, it is complicated by long standing politics and religious, Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacobs son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, traditionally dated to the 13th century BCE, Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the Patriarchs and of the Exodus story, with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites inspiring national myth narrative. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group
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Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
25.
Sorbonne University
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The University of Paris, metonymically known as the Sorbonne, was a university in Paris, France. Emerging around 1150 as an associated with the cathedral school of Notre Dame de Paris. Vast numbers of popes, royalties, scientists and intellectuals were educated at the University of Paris, following the turbulence of the French Revolution, education was suspended in 1793 whereafter its faculties were partly reorganised by Napoleon as the University of France. In 1896, it was renamed again to the University of Paris, in 1970, following the May 1968 events, the university was divided into 13 autonomous universities. Others, like Panthéon-Sorbonne University, chose to be multidisciplinary, in 1150, the future University of Paris was a student-teacher corporation operating as an annex of the Notre-Dame cathedral school. The university had four faculties, Arts, Medicine, Law, the Faculty of Arts was the lowest in rank, but also the largest, as students had to graduate there in order to be admitted to one of the higher faculties. The students were divided into four nationes according to language or regional origin, France, Normandy, Picardy, the last came to be known as the Alemannian nation. Recruitment to each nation was wider than the names might imply, the faculty and nation system of the University of Paris became the model for all later medieval universities. Under the governance of the Church, students wore robes and shaved the tops of their heads in tonsure, students followed the rules and laws of the Church and were not subject to the kings laws or courts. This presented problems for the city of Paris, as students ran wild, students were often very young, entering the school at age 13 or 14 and staying for 6 to 12 years. Three schools were especially famous in Paris, the palatine or palace school, the school of Notre-Dame, the decline of royalty brought about the decline of the first. The other two were ancient but did not have much visibility in the early centuries, the glory of the palatine school doubtless eclipsed theirs, until it completely gave way to them. These two centres were much frequented and many of their masters were esteemed for their learning, the first renowned professor at the school of Ste-Geneviève was Hubold, who lived in the tenth century. Not content with the courses at Liège, he continued his studies at Paris, entered or allied himself with the chapter of Ste-Geneviève, and attracted many pupils via his teaching. Distinguished professors from the school of Notre-Dame in the century include Lambert, disciple of Fulbert of Chartres, Drogo of Paris, Manegold of Germany. Three other men who added prestige to the schools of Notre-Dame and Ste-Geneviève were William of Champeaux, Abélard, humanistic instruction comprised grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. To the higher instruction belonged dogmatic and moral theology, whose source was the Scriptures and it was completed by the study of Canon law. The School of Saint-Victor arose to rival those of Notre-Dame and Ste-Geneviève and it was founded by William of Champeaux when he withdrew to the Abbey of Saint-Victor
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Middle East
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The Middle East is a transcontinental region centered on Western Asia and Egypt. The corresponding adjective is Middle-Eastern and the noun is Middle-Easterner. The term has come into usage as a replacement of the term Near East beginning in the early 20th century. Arabs, Turks, Persians, Kurds, and Azeris constitute the largest ethnic groups in the region by population. Indigenous minorities of the Middle East include Jews, Assyrians and other Arameans, Baloch, Berbers, Copts, Druze, Lurs, Mandaeans, Samaritans, Shabaks, Tats, in the Middle East, there is also a Romani community. European ethnic groups form a diaspora in the region include Albanians, Bosniaks, Circassians, Crimean Tatars, Franco-Levantines. Among other migrant populations are Bengalis as well as other Indians, Chinese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Pakistanis, the history of the Middle East dates back to ancient times, with the importance of the region being recognized for millennia. Most of the countries border the Persian Gulf have vast reserves of crude oil. The term Middle East may have originated in the 1850s in the British India Office, however, it became more widely known when American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan used the term in 1902 to designate the area between Arabia and India. During this time the British and Russian Empires were vying for influence in Central Asia, Mahan realized not only the strategic importance of the region, but also of its center, the Persian Gulf. Mahan first used the term in his article The Persian Gulf and International Relations, published in September 1902 in the National Review, a British journal. The Middle East, if I may adopt a term which I have not seen, will some day need its Malta, as well as its Gibraltar, it does not follow that either will be in the Persian Gulf. The British Navy should have the facility to concentrate in force if occasion arise, about Aden, India, mahans article was reprinted in The Times and followed in October by a 20-article series entitled The Middle Eastern Question, written by Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol. During this series, Sir Ignatius expanded the definition of Middle East to include regions of Asia which extend to the borders of India or command the approaches to India. After the series ended in 1903, The Times removed quotation marks from subsequent uses of the term, in the late 1930s, the British established the Middle East Command, which was based in Cairo, for its military forces in the region. After that time, the term Middle East gained broader usage in Europe, the description Middle has also led to some confusion over changing definitions. Before the First World War, Near East was used in English to refer to the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire, while Middle East referred to Iran, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Turkestan. The first official use of the term Middle East by the United States government was in the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine, the Associated Press Stylebook says that Near East formerly referred to the farther west countries while Middle East referred to the eastern ones, but that now they are synonymous
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Aliyah
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Aliyah is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to the Land of Israel. Also defined as the act of going up—that is, towards Jerusalem—making Aliyah by moving to the Land of Israel is one of the most basic tenets of Zionism, the opposite action, emigration from the Land of Israel, is referred to in Hebrew as yerida. The State of Israels Law of Return gives Jews and their descendants automatic rights regarding residency, the large-scale immigration of Jews to Palestine began in 1882. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, more than 3 million Jews have moved to Israel, as of 2014, Israel and the Palestinian territories together contain 42. 9% of the worlds Jewish population. Successive waves of Jewish settlement are an important aspect of the history of Jewish life in Israel, Eretz Yisrael is the Hebrew name for the region known in English as Israel. This traditional Hebrew toponym, in turn, has lent its name to the modern State of Israel, pre-Zionist Aliyah refers to small-scale return migration of Diaspora Jews to the Land of Israel. Since the birth of Zionism, its advocates have striven to facilitate the settlement of Jewish refugees in Ottoman Palestine, Mandatory Palestine, Aliyah in Hebrew means ascent or going up. Jewish tradition views traveling to the land of Israel as an ascent, anyone traveling to Eretz Israel from Egypt, Babylonia or the Mediterranean basin, where many Jews lived in early rabbinic times, climbed to a higher altitude. Visiting Jerusalem, situated 2,700 feet above sea level, Aliyah is an important Jewish cultural concept and a fundamental component of Zionism. It is enshrined in Israels Law of Return, which accords any Jew and eligible non-Jews, someone who makes aliyah is called an oleh or olah. Many religious Jews espouse aliyah as a return to the Promised land, and regard it as the fulfillment of Gods biblical promise to the descendants of the Hebrew patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, nachmanides includes making aliyah in his enumeration of the 613 commandments. In the Talmud, at the end of tractate Ketubot, the Mishnah says, A man may compel his entire household to go up with him to the land of Israel, but may not compel one to leave. Sifre says that the mitzvah of living in Eretz Yisrael is as important as all the other mitzvot put together, there are many mitzvot such as shmita, the sabbatical year for farming, which can only be performed in Israel. In Zionist discourse, the term includes both voluntary immigration for ideological, emotional, or practical reasons and, on the other hand. The vast majority of Israeli Jews today trace their familys recent roots to outside the country, while many have actively chosen to settle in Israel rather than some other country, many had little or no choice about leaving their previous home countries. While Israel is commonly recognized as a country of immigrants, it is also, in large measure, a country of refugees. 2 Chronicles 36,23 Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the LORD God of heaven given me, and he hath charged me to him an house in Jerusalem. Who among you of all his people, the LORD his God with him, and let him go up
28.
Ottoman Empire
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After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
29.
Jerusalem
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Jerusalem is a city located on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is considered a city in the three major Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, the part of Jerusalem called the City of David was settled in the 4th millennium BCE. In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent, today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger, Modern Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old Citys boundaries. These foundational events, straddling the dawn of the 1st millennium BCE, the sobriquet of holy city was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Septuagint which Christians adopted as their own authority, was reinforced by the New Testament account of Jesuss crucifixion there, in Sunni Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city, after Mecca and Medina. As a result, despite having an area of only 0, outside the Old City stands the Garden Tomb. Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the issues in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, West Jerusalem was among the captured and later annexed by Israel while East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was captured. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed it into Jerusalem, one of Israels Basic Laws, the 1980 Jerusalem Law, refers to Jerusalem as the countrys undivided capital. All branches of the Israeli government are located in Jerusalem, including the Knesset, the residences of the Prime Minister and President, the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, and the city hosts no foreign embassies. Jerusalem is also home to some non-governmental Israeli institutions of importance, such as the Hebrew University. In 2011, Jerusalem had a population of 801,000, of which Jews comprised 497,000, Muslims 281,000, a city called Rušalim in the Execration texts of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt is widely, but not universally, identified as Jerusalem. Jerusalem is called Urušalim in the Amarna letters of Abdi-Heba, the name Jerusalem is variously etymologized to mean foundation of the god Shalem, the god Shalem was thus the original tutelary deity of the Bronze Age city. The form Yerushalem or Yerushalayim first appears in the Bible, in the Book of Joshua, according to a Midrash, the name is a combination of Yhwh Yireh and the town Shalem. The earliest extra-biblical Hebrew writing of the word Jerusalem is dated to the sixth or seventh century BCE and was discovered in Khirbet Beit Lei near Beit Guvrin in 1961. The inscription states, I am Yahweh thy God, I will accept the cities of Judah and I will redeem Jerusalem, or as other scholars suggest, the mountains of Judah belong to him, to the God of Jerusalem
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Jewish diaspora
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The Jewish diaspora or exile is the dispersion of Israelites, Judahites and later Jews out of their ancestral homeland and their subsequent settlement in other parts of the globe. While in exile, the Judahites became known as Jews —Mordecai the Jew from the Book of Esther being the first biblical mention of the term and it continued with the exile of a portion of the population of the Kingdom of Judah in 597 BCE with the Babylonian exile. The differences in content and tone of the two decrees, one in Hebrew and one in Aramaic, have caused scholars to question their authenticity. He also stated that archaeology suggests that the return was a trickle taking place over decades, following the Siege of Jerusalem in 63 BCE, the Hasmonean kingdom became a protectorate of Rome, and in 6 CE was organized as the Roman province of Judea. The Jews revolted against the Roman Empire in 66 CE during the known as the First Jewish–Roman War which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. During the siege, the Romans destroyed the Second Temple and most of Jerusalem and this event marked the beginning of the Roman exile, also called Edom exile. Jewish leaders and elite were exiled from the land, killed, in 132 CE, the remaining Jews, under Bar Kokhba, rebelled against Hadrian. In 135 CE, Hadrians army defeated the Jewish armies and Jewish independence was lost. As punishment, Hadrian exiled more Jews, sold them into slavery, changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina, turned it into a Roman pagan city and forbade the Jews from living there. Judea and Samaria were renamed by Hadrian to Syria Palaestina, after the Assyrians and Philistines respectively, the Greek word διασπορά first appears in Ancient Greek in Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War. It was later used in the translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint, in Talmudic and post-Talmudic Rabbinic literature, this phenomenon was referred to as galut, a term with strongly negative connotations, often contrasted with geula. In 722 BCE, the Assyrians, under Sargon II, successor to Shalmaneser V, conquered the Kingdom of Israel, the poorest but most fervent of the exiles returned to Judah / the Land of Israel during the reign of the Achaemenids. Under the Hasmonean princes, who were at first high priests and then kings, pompey invaded Jerusalem, the Jewish people lost their political sovereignty and independence, and Gabinius subjected the Jewish people to tribute. As early as the middle of the 2nd century BCE the Jewish author of the book of the Oracula Sibyllina addressed the chosen people, saying, Every land is full of thee. The most diverse witnesses, such as Strabo, Philo, Seneca, Luke, Cicero, see also History of the Jews in India and History of the Jews in China for pre-Roman diasporic populations. King Agrippa I, in a letter to Caligula, enumerated among the provinces of the Jewish diaspora almost all the Hellenized and non-Hellenized countries of the Orient and this enumeration was far from complete as Italy and Cyrene were not included. The epigraphic discoveries from year to year augment the number of known Jewish communities, the ancient Jewish philosopher Philo gives the number of Jewish inhabitants in Egypt as one million, one-eighth of the population. Alexandria was by far the most important of the Egyptian Jewish communities, the Jews in the Egyptian diaspora were on a par with their Ptolemaic counterparts and close ties existed for them with Jerusalem
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Yiddish
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Yiddish is the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews. Yiddish is written with a fully vocalized alphabet based on the Hebrew script, the earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז or טײַטש, a variant of tiutsch, the contemporary name for Middle High German. Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון, distinguishing it from לשון־קדש, the term Yiddish, short for Yiddish-Teitsch, did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century the language was commonly called Jewish, especially in non-Jewish contexts. Modern Yiddish has two major forms, Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern, Mideastern, and Northeastern dialects, Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by the extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern, Midwestern, and Northwestern dialects, the term Yiddish is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with Jewish, to designate attributes of Ashkenazi culture. Prior to the Holocaust, there were over 10 million speakers of Yiddish, 85% of the Jews who died in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, assimilation following World War II further decreased the use of Yiddish both among survivors and Yiddish-speakers from other countries. However, the number of speakers is increasing in global Hasidic communities, the established view is that, as with other Jewish languages, Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they then Judaized. Exactly what German base lies behind the earliest form of Yiddish is disputed, both Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum developed this model further in the mid-1950s. In Weinreichs view, this Old Yiddish substrate later bifurcated into two versions of the language, Western and Eastern Yiddish. They retained the Semitic vocabulary needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, recent linguistic research has finessed, contested, or challenged the Weinreich model, providing alternative approaches to the origins of Yiddish. Some theorists argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian dialect base, the two main candidates for the germinal matrix of Yiddish, the Rhineland and Bavaria, are not necessarily incompatible. There may have been developments in the two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish. Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged from contact between speakers of High German and Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East, wexlers model has met with little academic support, and strong critical challenges, especially among historical linguists. Alternative theories recognize the extent of Yiddishs Germanic vocabulary. Ashkenaz was centered on the Rhineland and the Palatinate, in what is now the westernmost part of Germany and its geographic extent did not coincide with the German principalities of the time, and it included northern France. Ashkenaz bordered on the inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, the Sephardim or Spanish Jews
32.
Israel
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Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Middle East, on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. The country contains geographically diverse features within its small area. Israels economy and technology center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, in 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, next year, the Jewish Agency declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied territories including the West Bank, Golan Heights and it extended its laws to the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, but not the West Bank. Israels occupation of the Palestinian territories is the worlds longest military occupation in modern times, efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have not resulted in peace. However, peace treaties between Israel and both Egypt and Jordan have successfully been signed, the population of Israel, as defined by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, was estimated in 2017 to be 8,671,100 people. It is the worlds only Jewish-majority state, with 74. 8% being designated as Jewish, the countrys second largest group of citizens are Arabs, at 20. 8%. The great majority of Israeli Arabs are Sunni Muslims, including significant numbers of semi-settled Negev Bedouins, other minorities include Arameans, Armenians, Assyrians, Black Hebrew Israelites, Circassians, Maronites and Samaritans. Israel also hosts a significant population of foreign workers and asylum seekers from Africa and Asia, including illegal migrants from Sudan, Eritrea. In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a Jewish, Israel is a representative democracy with a parliamentary system, proportional representation and universal suffrage. The prime minister is head of government and the Knesset is the legislature, Israel is a developed country and an OECD member, with the 35th-largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product as of 2016. The country benefits from a skilled workforce and is among the most educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentage of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. The country has the highest standard of living in the Middle East and the third highest in Asia, in the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term Israeli to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett. The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have historically used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel. The name Israel in these phrases refers to the patriarch Jacob who, jacobs twelve sons became the ancestors of the Israelites, also known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel or Children of Israel. The earliest known artifact to mention the word Israel as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt. The area is known as the Holy Land, being holy for all Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam
33.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
34.
Lullaby
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A lullaby, or cradle song, is a soothing song or piece of music, usually played for or sung to children. In some societies they are used to pass down cultural knowledge or tradition, perhaps one of the most important uses of lullabies is as a sleep aid for infants. As a result, the music is simple and repetitive. Lullabies can be found in countries, and have existed since ancient times. Lullabies tend to share exaggerated melodic tendencies, including simple pitch contours, large pitch ranges and these clarify and convey heightened emotions, usually of love or affection. When there is harmony, infants almost always prefer consonant intervals over dissonant intervals, furthermore, if there is a sequence of dissonant intervals in a song, an infant will usually lose interest and it becomes very difficult to regain its attention. To reflect this, most lullabies contain primarily consonant intervals, tonally, most lullabies are simple, often merely alternating tonic and dominant harmonies. In addition to pitch tendencies, lullabies share several structural similarities, the most frequent tendencies are intermittent repetitions and long pauses between sections. This dilutes the rate of material and appeals to infants slower capacity for processing music, lullabies are usually in triple meter or 6/8 time, giving them a characteristic swinging or rocking motion. This mimics the movement a baby experiences in the womb as a mother moves, in addition, infants preference for rhythm shares a strong connection with what they hear when they are bounced, and even their own body movements. The tempos of lullabies tend to be slow, and the utterances are short. Again, this aids in the processing of the song. Lullabies almost never have instrumental accompaniments, infants have shown a strong preference for unaccompanied lullabies over accompanied lullabies. Again, this appeals to more limited ability to process information. Lullabies are often used for their nature, even for non-infants. One study found lullabies to be the most successful type of music or sound for relieving stress and these characteristics tend to be consistent across cultures. It was found that adults of various cultural backgrounds could recognize, infants have shown a strong preferences for songs with these qualities. Lullabies are often used to pass down or strengthen cultural roles and practices, in an observation of the setting of lullabies in Albanian culture, lullabies tended to be paired with the rocking of the child in a cradle
35.
HaZvi
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HaZvi was a Hebrew language newspaper published in Jerusalem by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, a leading pioneer of the revival of Hebrew as a spoken tongue, from 1884 to 1914. The first issue of HaZvi was published on October 24,1884 and it began as a weekly paper and eventually developed into a daily. In 1909, the paper had a circulation of 1,200 copies,500 distributed in Jerusalem. HaZvi revolutionized Hebrew newspaper publishing in Jerusalem by introducing secular issues and techniques of modern journalism, especially after Itamar Ben-Avi, Ben-Yehudas son, influenced by the French press, Ben-Avi brought in sensational headlines and a style of reporting that differed from newspapers of the old school. HaZvi became the organ of the New Yishuv, as the first Jewish agricultural colonies were founded, the paper included translations of French literature and original Hebrew prose. The need for Hebrew words to report the news prompted Ben-Yehuda to begin his lifelong project of compiling a Hebrew dictionary. All this fit in with the Hebraist ideology that was on the rise, in 1908, the name of the paper was changed to HaOr due to licensing restrictions. The paper was banned by the Ottoman government during the First World War due to its proposals for a Jewish homeland, tongue of the Prophets, Doubleday & Company, Inc. ISBN 0-8371-2631-2 Archived issues of HaZvi HaZvi at Historical Jewish Press
36.
Mount of Olives
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The Mount of Olives or Mount Olivet is a mountain ridge east of and adjacent to Jerusalems Old City. It is named for the groves that once covered its slopes. The southern part of the Mount was the Silwan necropolis, attributed to the ancient Judean kingdom, the Mount has been used as a Jewish cemetery for over 3,000 years and holds approximately 150,000 graves, making it central in the tradition of Jewish cemeteries. Much of the top of the hill is occupied by At-Tur, the Mount of Olives is one of three peaks of a mountain ridge which runs for 3.5 kilometres just east of the Old City across the Kidron Valley, in this area called the Valley of Josaphat. The peak to its north is Mount Scopus, at 826 metres, while the peak to its south is the Mount of Corruption, the highest point on the Mount of Olives is At-Tur, at 818 m. The ridge acts as a watershed, and its side is the beginning of the Judean Desert. The ridge is formed of sedimentary rock from the Late Cretaceous, and contains a soft chalk. While the chalk is easily quarried, it is not a strength for construction. From Biblical times until the present, Jews have been buried on the Mount of Olives, the necropolis on the southern ridge, the location of the modern village of Silwan, was the burial place of Jerusalems most important citizens in the period of the Biblical kings. The religious ceremony marking the start of a new month was held on the Mount of Olives in the days of the Second Temple, roman soldiers from the 10th Legion camped on the Mount during the Siege of Jerusalem in the year 70 AD. After the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews celebrated the festival of Sukkot on the Mount of Olives and they made pilgrimages to the Mount of Olives because it was 80 meters higher than the Temple Mount and offered a panoramic view of the Temple site. It became a place for lamenting the Temples destruction, especially on Tisha BAv. From there they see the whole Temple and there they weep, in the mid-1850s, the villagers of Silwan were paid £100 annually by the Jews in an effort to prevent the desecration of graves on the mount. Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin asked to be buried on the Mount of Olives near the grave of Etzel member Meir Feinstein, however, during the 19 years the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank lasted, the committee was not formed. During this period, four roads were paved through the cemeteries, graves were also demolished for parking lots and a filling station and were even used in latrines at a Jordanian Army barracks. However, the United Nations did not condemn the Jordanian government for these actions, following the 1967 Six-Day War and the Israeli capture of East Jerusalem, its government began restoration work and re-opened the cemetery for burials. Israels 1980 unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem was condemned as a violation of law and ruled null. As of 2010, the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives has been targeted regularly by Arab vandals, notable graves that have been defaced by vandals include those of the Gerrer Rebbe and Menahem Begin
37.
Talpiot
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The Talpiot program is also an elite academic program affiliated with the IDF Talpiot is an Israeli neighborhood in southeast Jerusalem, established in 1922 by Zionist pioneers. It was built as a suburb on land purchased by the Tel Aviv-based Palestine Land Development Company. Talpiot has become a commercial center and a hub of nonprofit organizations. The Talpiot industrial zone is one of the largest in the country, with plans for expansion as a center of shopping, entertainment and industry. The name Talpiot derives from a verse in Song of Songs 4,4 – Thy neck is like the tower of David, according to rabbinic sources, Talpiot refers to the Temple. It was said to be a compound of the Hebrew words tel and piyot, in the 1920s, the Bauhaus architect Richard Kaufmann presented the British Mandate authorities with a plan for Talpiot, which he designed as a garden suburb. The plan included a building that he envisioned as a future parliament. The first residents were clerical and office personnel, living in the neighborhood required membership in a mutual society to which dues were paid. The early settlers were evacuated from Talpiot in the wake of the 1929 Hebron massacre, the British army camp in Talpiot, known as Mahane Allenby, was one of the strategic sites captured in this operation. After the Israeli War of Independence, Talpiot became the frontier, surrounded by Jordanian-occupied East Jerusalem, the neighbourhood expanded significantly after the 1967 Six-Day War. New residential districts were established in the enclave formerly controlled by the United Nations, a tent camp established on the western outskirts of Talpiot for immigrants after Israels independence was replaced by a large industrial zone to house the businesses evicted from Mamilla. On May 24,2001, the floor of the Versailles wedding hall in Talpiot collapsed during a wedding party, killing 23. The collapse was blamed on poor construction, using a system called Pal-Kal which was deemed unfit for public buildings, the incident is considered Israels worst civil disaster. Talpiot today consists of several districts, Old Talpiot is the historic residential neighborhood founded in 1922. Adjacent and south of this is Arnona, founded in 1931, north Talpiot, built after 1967, offers panoramic views of the Hinnom and Kidron Valleys, and the Old City. Across Derech Hevron to the west is the Talpiot industrial zone, to the east is the neighborhood of East Talpiot, also known as Armon HaNetziv. Mahane Allenby was torn down and 8-story residential towers were built on the land, a parcel remains undeveloped, awaiting the relocation of the U. S. Embassy from Tel Aviv. The main offices of the U. S, consulate General in Jerusalem were relocated to the eastern ridge of Talpiot in 2010
38.
Action Reconciliation Service for Peace
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The Action Reconciliation Service for Peace is a German peace organization founded to confront the legacy of Nazism. The Action Reconciliation Service for Peace was founded in 1958 by the synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany and it was prompted by the acknowledgement of guilt that Germans needed to face at the end of World War II and the Nazi era. The Action Reconciliation Service for Peace is known especially through its international volunteer programs and they also work in Israel and the United States because many Holocaust survivors fled or immigrated to these countries. Rooted in Christian faith, ARSP seeks to cooperate with all who champion a more peaceful, the beginnings of ARSP started with the actions of the Evangelical Church in Germany to reject Nazism and resist the Nazi regime. The founder of ARSP, Lothar Kreyssig, was one of the resisters within the Confessing Church. Lothar Kreyssig tried to find fellow campaigners for his service for the first time on Kirchentag 1954. That something is right and necessary, is not enough to see it materialize in time, the hour must be ripe, he later wrote in his unpublished autobiography. The Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany convened from 26 to 30 April 1958, alternating in Spandau, in West Berlin), at this point, the synod still involved the entire Evangelical Church in Germany, both east and west. There was a controversy that year over the west German military chaplaincy contract and this was the troubled atmosphere in which Praeses Kreyssig, on the last day of the Synod, read his appeal to found the Action for Reconciliation. Numerous attendees signed the appeal that evening, the appeal not only expressed an admission of guilt, it also delineated concrete consequences. The Action for Reconciliation would not offer assistance, rather, would ask to help and this humble attitude was a rejection of any patronizing functionalization of the reconciliation thought process. The attitude was to signal the readiness to get involved — that is, to learn by doing and through dialogue — because the appeal relied on conversation, response and new action. The Action for Reconciliation was initially founded as a Germany-wide organization, the two German states therefore had two organizations with a common goal, albeit different emphasis in practice. The western German ARSP began its work in 1959 with construction projects in the Netherlands and Norway and later, volunteers helped build a synagoge in Villeurbanne and the Church of Reconciliation in Taizé, Saône-et-Loire, in Burgundy, France. Work in Israel began in 1961, after the Adolph Eichmann trial was concluded, from the mid-1960s, the projects slowly changed. There was ever less construction work, but new projects emerged for memorials, for work with the elderly, by the 1980s, with World War II fading into the past, there were additional projects working with minority groups. After 1961, the Berlin Wall prevented the East German Action for Reconciliation from sending any more volunteers to the west, because the German Democratic Republic considered itself to be an anti-fascist state, it did not consider itself responsible for the consequences of German fascism. Therefore, the projects of the ASZ were initially limited to the GDR, in 1965 and 1966, volunteers were still able to travel with Catholic chaplains from Magdeburg to Auschwitz, Majdanek, Stutthof, Groß-Rosen and Breslau
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Ulpan
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An ulpan is an institute or school for the intensive study of Hebrew. Ulpan is a Hebrew word meaning studio, teaching, or instruction, the ulpan is designed to teach adult immigrants to Israel the basic language skills of conversation, writing and comprehension. Most ulpanim also provide instruction in the fundamentals of Israeli culture, history, the primary purpose of the ulpan is to help new citizens to be integrated as quickly and as easily as possible into the social, cultural and economic life of their new country. The concept of the ulpan was initiated soon after the creation of Israel in 1948 and their language and culture varied widely. The ulpan was created to help them learn the Hebrew language, Ulpan Etzion in Jerusalems Baka neighborhood was established in 1949 by Mordechai Kamerat as a model for Hebrew language education used across Israel. It was a facility for single olim between the ages 21 and 35 holding a bachelors degree. Staff and students said that the atmosphere of the campus, its central location, one of Ulpan Etzions notable alumni was Israeli satirist Ephraim Kishon. News anchor Haim Yavin taught there, the institution of the ulpan continues to serve immigrants today. There are numerous private facilities but the majority are run by the Jewish Agency, municipalities, kibbutzim, ulpanim used to be free to new immigrants to Israel. Nowadays the cost can vary depending on the type and length of the course, since the establishment of the first ulpan in Jerusalem in 1949, more than 1.3 million new immigrants have graduated from ulpanim. The ulpan framework has been adopted by other nations attempting to revive their own declining or lost languages, Wales, Scotland, and Norway have used the ulpan model for native language instruction. Certain language courses in Wales and Scotland have even retained the name ulpan, the Sami people of Norway sent a delegation to Israel in 2012 in order to experience Israels ulpan program and apply its methods toward the preservation of its own threatened linguistic heritage. A number of kibbutzim across Israel also offer ulpan courses, the course typically lasts 5 months and the Ulpanists will usually work part-time on the kibbutz in addition to their studies. Participants have the option of choosing kibbutz ulpan programs either on religious kibbutzim in the Religious Kibbutz Movement, the situation amongst the Russian immigrant population is even more dire with seventy percent of immigrants not being able to understand the Hebrew television news. As a result of study, the Knesset has set up an inter-ministerial committee to study the situation and make recommendations to improve. Several alternative teaching systems are being considered for use in the ulpan framework
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Beit Ben-Yehuda
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Beit Ben-Yehuda is a historical home built in Arnona-Talpiot Neighborhood in Jerusalem for Eliezer Ben Yehuda, known as the reviver of the Hebrew language. Eliezer died in December 16th 1922 a short time before the house was completed and his wife Chemda lived in the house until her death in 1951. Over the years Chemda turned the place into a center of Ben-Yehudas life achievement. A few years later the family of Ben-Yehuda donated the house to the Municipality of Jerusalem, in 2004 a new wing was built in the backyard of the house in order to be used as a seminar center for the German volunteers. In the same year the decision was made to found Beit Ben Yehuda as the International Meeting Center, the ambitious goal to establish a guesthouse that opens its doors for everyone and to create a place that is a cultural center for learning was set. International Youth Meeting Center in Oświęcim/Auschwitz Homepage of Beit Ben Yehuda - International Meeting Center & Guesthouse Homepage of Action Reconciliation Service for Peace
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Haaretz
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It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently still in print in Israel, and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International New York Times, both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet. In North America, it out as a weekly newspaper. It is known for its left-wing and liberal stances on domestic, as of 2016, the newspaper had a weekday exposure rate of 3. 9% in Israel, significantly lower than the countrys other national newspapers. Haaretz was first published in 1918 as a newspaper sponsored by the British military government in Palestine, in 1919, it was taken over by a group of socialist-oriented Zionists, mainly from Russia. The newspaper was established on 18 June 1919 by a group of businessmen including prominent philanthropist Isaac Leib Goldberg, later, the name was shortened to Haaretz. The literary section of the paper attracted leading Hebrew writers of the time, the newspaper was initially published in Jerusalem. From 1919 to 1922, the paper was headed by a succession of editors and it was shut down briefly due to a budgetary shortfall and reopened in Tel Aviv at the beginning of 1923 under the editorship of Moshe Glickson, who held the post for 15 years. The Tel Aviv municipality granted the financial support by paying in advance for future advertisements. Salman Schocken, a wealthy German Jewish Zionist who owned a chain of department stores in Germany and his son, Gershom Schocken, became the chief editor in 1939 and held that position until his death in 1990. Until August 2006, the Schocken family owned 100% of the Haaretz Group, the deal was negotiated with the help of former Israeli ambassador to Germany, Avi Primor. This deal was seen as controversial in Israel as DuMont Schaubergs father, Kurt Neven DuMont, was member of the German Nazi party, while his publishing house promoted Nazi ideology. On 12 June 2011, it was announced that Russian-Israeli businessman Leonid Nevzlin had purchased a 20% stake in the Haaretz Group, buying 15% from the family and this means that the Schocken family now owns 60% and M. DuMont Schauberg and Leonid Nevzlin have 20% each. In October 2012, a union strike mobilized to protest planned layoffs by the Haaretz management, as a consequence, both the Haaretz newspaper and its TheMarker business supplement were not printed for one day. According to Israel Radio, it was the first time since 1965 that a newspaper did not go to press on account of a strike, the newspapers editorial policy was defined by Gershom Schocken, who was editor-in-chief from 1939 to 1990. Schocken was succeeded as editor-in-chief by Hanoch Marmari, in 2004 David Landau replaced Marmari and was succeeded by Dov Alfon in 2008. The current editor-in-chief of the newspaper is Aluf Benn, who replaced Alfon in August 2011, charlotte Halle became editor of the English Print Edition in February 2008. Haaretz describes itself as having a liberal outlook both on domestic issues and on international affairs
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International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
