Moldova
Moldova the Republic of Moldova, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north and south. The capital city is Chișinău. Most of the Moldovan territory was a part of the Principality of Moldavia from the 14th century until 1812, when it was ceded to the Russian Empire by the Ottoman Empire and became known as Bessarabia. In 1856, southern Bessarabia was returned to Moldavia, which three years united with Wallachia to form Romania, but Russian rule was restored over the whole of the region in 1878. During the 1917 Russian Revolution, Bessarabia became autonomous and the independent Moldavian Democratic Republic until it was integrated into Romania in 1918 following a vote of its assembly; the decision was disputed by Soviet Russia, which in 1924 allowed the establishment, within the Ukrainian SSR, of a Moldavian autonomous republic on partial Moldovan-inhabited territories to the east of the Dniester. In 1940, as a consequence of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Romania was compelled to cede Bessarabia to the Soviet Union, leading to the creation of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, which included the greater part of Bessarabia and the westernmost strip of the former MASSR.
On 27 August 1991, as the dissolution of the Soviet Union was under way, the Moldavian SSR declared independence and took the name Moldova. The Constitution of Moldova was adopted in 1994; the strip of the Moldovan territory on the east bank of the Dniester river has been under the de facto control of the breakaway government of Transnistria since 1990. Due to a decrease in industrial and agricultural output following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the service sector has grown to dominate Moldova's economy and is over 60% of the nation's GDP, its economy is the poorest in Europe in per capita terms and has the lowest Human Development Index in the continent. Moldova is the least visited country in Europe by tourists with only 11,000 annually recorded visitors from abroad. Moldova is a parliamentary republic with a president as head of state and a prime minister as head of government, it is a member state of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation and aspires to join the European Union.
The name "Moldova" is derived from the Moldova River. The origin of the name of the river remains unclear. According to a legend recounted by Moldavian chroniclers Dimitrie Cantemir and Grigore Ureche, Prince Dragoș named the river after hunting an aurochs: following the chase, the prince's exhausted hound Molda drowned in the river; the dog's name, given to the river, extended to the Principality. For a short time in the 1990s, at the founding of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the name of the current Republic of Moldova was spelled "Moldavia". After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country began to use Moldova; the name Republic of Moldova is designated by the United Nations. The prehistory of Moldova covers the period from the Upper Paleolithic which begins with the presence of Homo sapiens in the area of Southeastern Europe some 44,000 years ago and extends into the appearance of the first written records in Classical Antiquity in Greece. In 2010 N. K. Anisjutkin discovered Oldowan flint tools at Bayraki.
During the Neolithic stone-age era, Moldova's territory stood at the centre of the large Cucuteni–Trypillia culture that stretched east beyond the Dniester River in Ukraine and west up to and beyond the Carpathian Mountains in Romania. The people of this civilization, which lasted from 5500 to 2750 BC, practised agriculture, raised livestock and made intricately-designed pottery. In antiquity, Moldova's territory was inhabited by Dacian tribes. Between the 1st and 7th centuries AD, the south was intermittently under the Roman, Byzantine Empires. Due to its strategic location on a route between Asia and Europe, the territory of modern Moldova was invaded many times in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, including by Goths, Avars, Magyars, Cumans and Tatars. Friar William of Rubruck, who visited the court of the Great Khan in the 1250s, listed "the Blac", or Vlachs, among the peoples who paid tribute to the Mongols, but the Vlachs' territory is uncertain. Rubruck described "Blakia" as "Assan's territory" south of the Lower Danube, showing that he identified it with the northern regions of the Second Bulgarian Empire.
The Bolohoveni, a Vlach population, is mentioned by the Hypatian Chronicle in the 13th century. The chronicle shows that this land is bordered on the principalities of Halych and Kiev. Archaeological research identified the location of 13th-century fortified settlements in this region. Alexandru V. Boldur identified Voscodavie, Voloscovti, Volcovti and their other towns and villages between the middle course of the rivers Nistru/Dniester and Nipru/Dnieper; the Bolohoveni disappeared from chronicles after their defeat in 1257 by Daniel of Galicia's troops. In the early 13th century, the Brodniks, a possible Slavic–Vlach vassal state of Halych, were present, alongside the Vlachs, in much of the region's territory. On the border between Halych and the
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register, adopting its current name on 1 January 1788; the Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, itself wholly owned by News Corp. The Times and The Sunday Times do not share editorial staff, were founded independently, have only had common ownership since 1967. In 1959, the historian of journalism Allan Nevins analysed the importance of The Times in shaping the views of events of London's elite: For much more than a century The Times has been an integral and important part of the political structure of Great Britain, its news and its editorial comment have in general been coordinated, have at most times been handled with an earnest sense of responsibility. While the paper has admitted some trivia to its columns, its whole emphasis has been on important public affairs treated with an eye to the best interests of Britain.
To guide this treatment, the editors have for long periods been in close touch with 10 Downing Street. The Times is the first newspaper to have borne that name, lending it to numerous other papers around the world, such as The Times of India and The New York Times. In countries where these other titles are popular, the newspaper is referred to as The London Times or The Times of London, although the newspaper is of national scope and distribution; the Times is the originator of the used Times Roman typeface developed by Stanley Morison of The Times in collaboration with the Monotype Corporation for its legibility in low-tech printing. In November 2006 The Times began printing headlines in Times Modern; the Times was printed in broadsheet format for 219 years, but switched to compact size in 2004 in an attempt to appeal more to younger readers and commuters using public transport. The Sunday Times remains a broadsheet; the Times had an average daily circulation of 417,298 in January 2019. An American edition of The Times has been published since 6 June 2006.
It has been used by scholars and researchers because of its widespread availability in libraries and its detailed index. A complete historical file of the digitised paper, up to 2010, is online from Gale Cengage Learning; the Times was founded by publisher John Walter on 1 January 1785 as The Daily Universal Register, with Walter in the role of editor. Walter had lost his job by the end of 1784 after the insurance company where he worked went bankrupt due to losses from a Jamaican hurricane. Unemployed, Walter began a new business venture. Henry Johnson had invented the logography, a new typography, reputedly faster and more precise. Walter bought the logography's patent and with it opened a printing house to produce a daily advertising sheet; the first publication of the newspaper The Daily Universal Register in Great Britain was 1 January 1785. Unhappy because the word Universal was omitted from the name, Walter changed the title after 940 editions on 1 January 1788 to The Times. In 1803, Walter handed editorship to his son of the same name.
In spite of Walter Sr's sixteen-month stay in Newgate Prison for libel printed in The Times, his pioneering efforts to obtain Continental news from France, helped build the paper's reputation among policy makers and financiers. The Times used contributions from significant figures in the fields of politics, science and the arts to build its reputation. For much of its early life, the profits of The Times were large and the competition minimal, so it could pay far better than its rivals for information or writers. Beginning in 1814, the paper was printed on the new steam-driven cylinder press developed by Friedrich Koenig. In 1815, The Times had a circulation of 5,000. Thomas Barnes was appointed general editor in 1817. In the same year, the paper's printer James Lawson and passed the business onto his son John Joseph Lawson. Under the editorship of Barnes and his successor in 1841, John Thadeus Delane, the influence of The Times rose to great heights in politics and amongst the City of London.
Peter Fraser and Edward Sterling were two noted journalists, gained for The Times the pompous/satirical nickname'The Thunderer'. The increased circulation and influence of the paper was based in part to its early adoption of the steam-driven rotary printing press. Distribution via steam trains to growing concentrations of urban populations helped ensure the profitability of the paper and its growing influence; the Times was the first newspaper to send war correspondents to cover particular conflicts. W. H. Russell, the paper's correspondent with the army in the Crimean War, was immensely influential with his dispatches back to England. In other events of the nineteenth century, The Times opposed the repeal of the Corn Laws until the number of demonstrations convinced the editorial board otherwise, only reluctantly supported aid to victims of the Irish Potato Famine, it enthusiastically supported the Great Reform Bill of 1832, which reduced corruption and increased the electorate from 400,000 people to 800,000 people.
During the American Civil War, The Times represented the view of the wealthy classes, favouring the secessionists, but it was not a supporter of slavery. The third John Walter, the founder's grandson, succeeded his father in 1847; the paper continued as more or less independent, but from t
Martyr
A martyr is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, refusing to renounce, or refusing to advocate a belief or cause as demanded by an external party. This refusal to comply with the presented demands results in the punishment or execution of the martyr by the oppressor. Applied only to those who suffered for their religious beliefs, the term has come to be used in connection with people killed for a political cause. Most martyrs are considered holy or are respected by their followers, becoming symbols of exceptional leadership and heroism in the face of difficult circumstances. Martyrs play significant roles in religions. Martyrs have had notable effects in secular life, including such figures as Socrates, among other political and cultural examples. In its original meaning, the word martyr, meaning witness, was used in the secular sphere as well as in the New Testament of the Bible; the process of bearing witness was not intended to lead to the death of the witness, although it is known from ancient writers and from the New Testament that witnesses died for their testimonies.
During the early Christian centuries, the term acquired the extended meaning of believers who are called to witness for their religious belief, on account of this witness, endures suffering or death. The term, in this sense, entered the English language as a loanword; the death of a martyr or the value attributed. The early Christians who first began to use the term martyr in its new sense saw Jesus as the first and greatest martyr, on account of his crucifixion; the early Christians appear to have seen Jesus as the archetypal martyr. The word martyr is used in English to describe a wide variety of people. However, the following table presents a general outline of common features present in stereotypical martyrdoms. In the Bahá'í Faith, martyrs are those who sacrifice their lives serving humanity in the name of God. However, Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, discouraged the literal meaning of sacrificing one's life. Instead, he explained. Martyrdom was extensively promoted by the Kuomintang party in modern China.
Revolutionaries who died fighting against the Qing dynasty in the Xinhai Revolution and throughout the Republic of China period, furthering the cause of the revolution, were recognized as martyrs. In Christianity, a martyr, in accordance with the meaning of the original Greek martys in the New Testament, is one who brings a testimony written or verbal. In particular, the testimony is that of the Christian Gospel, or more the Word of God. A Christian witness is a biblical witness. However, over time many Christian testimonies were rejected, the witnesses put to death, the word martyr developed its present sense. Where death ensues, the witnesses follow the example of Jesus in offering up their lives for truth; the concept of Jesus as a martyr has received greater attention. Analyses of the Gospel passion narratives have led many scholars to conclude that they are martyrdom accounts in terms of genre and style. Several scholars have concluded that Paul the Apostle understood Jesus' death as a martyrdom.
In light of such conclusions, some have argued that the Christians of the first few centuries would have interpreted the crucifixion of Jesus as a martyrdom. In the context of church history, from the time of the persecution of early Christians in the Roman Empire, it developed that a martyr was one, killed for maintaining a religious belief, knowing that this will certainly result in imminent death; this definition of martyr is not restricted to the Christian faith. Though Christianity recognizes certain Old Testament Jewish figures, like Abel and the Maccabees, as holy, the New Testament mentions the imprisonment and beheading of John the Baptist, Jesus's possible cousin and his prophet and forerunner, the first Christian witness, after the establishment of the Christian faith, to be killed for his testimony was Saint Stephen, those who suffer martyrdom are said to have been "crowned." From the time of Constantine, Christianity was decriminalized, under Theodosius I, became the state religion, which diminished persecution.
As some wondered how they could most follow Christ there was a development of desert spirituality, desert monks, self-mortification, following Christ by separation from the world. This was a kind of white martyrdom, dying to oneself every day, as opposed to a red martyrdom, the giving of one's life in a violent death. In Christianity, death in sectarian persecution can be viewed as martyrdom. For example, there were martyrs recognised on both sides of the schism between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England after 1534, with two hundred and eighty Christians martyred for their faith by public burning between 1553 and 1558 by the Roman Catholic Queen Mary I in England leading to the reversion to the Church of England under Queen Elizabeth I in 1559 and three hundred Roman Catholics martyred by the Church authorities in England over the following hundred and fifty years in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. More modern day accounts of martyrdom for Christ exist, depicted in books such as Jesus Freaks though the numbers are disputed.
There are claims that the numbers of Christians killed for their faith annually are exaggerated. Despite the promotion of ahimsa within Sanatana Dharma
Israel Zangwill
Israel Zangwill was a British author at the forefront of cultural Zionism during the 19th century, was a close associate of Theodor Herzl. He rejected the search for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and became the prime thinker behind the territorial movement. Zangwill was born in London on 21 January 1864, in a family of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire, his father, Moses Zangwill, was from what is now Latvia, his mother, Ellen Hannah Marks Zangwill, was from what is now Poland. He dedicated his life to championing the cause of people he considered oppressed, becoming involved with topics such as Jewish emancipation, Jewish assimilation, territorialism and women's suffrage, his brother was novelist Louis Zangwill. Zangwill received his early schooling in Bristol; when he was nine years old, Zangwill was enrolled in the Jews' Free School in Spitalfields in east London, a school for Jewish immigrant children. The school offered a strict course of both secular and religious studies while supplying clothing and health care for the scholars.
At this school he excelled and taught part-time becoming a full-fledged teacher. While teaching, he studied for his degree from the University of London, earning a BA with triple honours in 1884, he had written a tale entitled The Premier and the Painter in collaboration with Louis Cowen, when he resigned his position as a teacher owing to differences with the school managers and ventured into journalism. He initiated and edited Ariel, The London Puck, did miscellaneous work for the London press. Zangwill's work earned him the nickname "the Dickens of the Ghetto", he wrote a influential novel Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People, which the late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing called "a powerful book". The use of the metaphorical phrase "melting pot" to describe American absorption of immigrants was popularised by Zangwill's play The Melting Pot, a success in the United States in 1909–10; when The Melting Pot opened in Washington D. C. on 5 October 1909, former President Theodore Roosevelt leaned over the edge of his box and shouted, "That's a great play, Mr. Zangwill, that's a great play."In 1912 Zangwill received a letter from Roosevelt in which Roosevelt wrote of the Melting Pot "That particular play I shall always count among the strong and real influences upon my thought and my life."The protagonist of the play, emigrates to America after the Kishinev pogrom in which his entire family is killed.
He writes a great symphony named "The Crucible" expressing his hope for a world in which all ethnicity has melted away, becomes enamored of a beautiful Russian Christian immigrant named Vera. The dramatic climax of the play is the moment when David meets Vera's father, who turns out to be the Russian officer responsible for the annihilation of David's family. Vera's father admits guilt, the symphony is performed to accolades and Vera live ever after, or, at least, agree to wed and kiss as the curtain falls. "Melting Pot celebrated America's capacity to absorb and grow from the contributions of its immigrants." Zangwill was writing as "a Jew. His real hope was for a world in which the entire lexicon of racial and religious difference is thrown away."Zangwill wrote many other plays, including, on Broadway, Children of the Ghetto, a dramatisation of his own novel, directed by James A. Herne and starring Blanche Bates, Ada Dwyer, Wilton Lackaye. Liebler & Co. produced all three plays as well as The Melting Pot.
Daniel Frohman produced Zangwill's 1904 play, The Serio-Comic Governess, featuring Cecilia Loftus, Kate Pattison-Selten, Julia Dean. In 1931 Jules Furthman adapted Merely Mary Ann for a Janet Gaynor film. Zangwill's simulation of Yiddish sentence structure in English aroused great interest, he wrote mystery works, such as The Big Bow Mystery, social satire such as The King of Schnorrers, a picaresque novel. His Dreamers of the Ghetto includes essays on famous Jews such as Baruch Spinoza, Heinrich Heine and Ferdinand Lassalle; the Big Bow Mystery was the first locked room mystery novel. It has been continuously in print since 1891 and has been used as the basis for three commercial movies. Another produced play was The Lens Grinder, based on the life of Spinoza; the following is a list of his "of the Ghetto" books: Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People Grandchildren of the Ghetto Dreamers of the Ghetto Ghetto Tragedies, Ghetto Comedies, Other books by the author: Chosen Peoples, The Big Bow Mystery The King of Schnorrers The Master The Melting Pot The Old Maid’s Club The Bachelors' Club The Serio-Comic Governess Without Prejudices Merely Mary Ann The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes which include The Grey Wig.
The hero of his produced play, The Melting Pot, proclaims: "America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming... Germans and Frenchmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians – into the Crucible with you all! G
Chișinău
Chișinău known as Kishinev, is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Moldova. The city is Moldova's main industrial and commercial center, is located in the middle of the country, on the river Bâc, a tributary of Dniester. According to the results of the 2014 census, the city proper had a population of 532,513, while the number of population in the Municipality of Chișinău was 662,836. Chișinău is its largest transportation hub; the origin of the city's name is unclear, but in one version, the name comes from the archaic Romanian word chișla and nouă, because it was built around a small spring, at the corner of Pușkin and Albișoara streets. The other version, formulated by Ștefan Ciobanu, Romanian historian and academician, holds that the name was formed the same way as the name of Chișineu in Western Romania, near the border with Hungary, its Hungarian name is Kisjenő, from. Kisjenő comes from kis "small" and the "Jenő", one of the seven Hungarian tribes that entered the Carpathian Basin in 896.
At least 24 other settlements are named after the "Jenő" tribe. Chișinău is known in Russian as Кишинёв, it is written Kişinöv in the Latin Gagauz alphabet. It was written as "Chișineu" in pre-20th-century Romanian and as "Кишинэу" in the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet; the English language name for the city, "Kishinev", was based on the modified Russian one because it entered the English language via Russian at the time Chișinău was part of the Russian Empire. Therefore, it remains a common English name in some historical contexts. Otherwise, the Romanian-based "Chișinău" has been gaining wider currency in written language; the city is historically referred to as German: Kischinau, Polish: Kiszyniów, Ukrainian: Кишинів, or Yiddish: קעשענעװ, translit. Keshenev. Founded in 1436 as a monastery village, the city was part of the Principality of Moldavia. At the beginning of the 19th century Chișinău was a small town of 7,000 inhabitants. In 1812, in the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War, the eastern half of Moldavia was ceded to the Russian Empire.
The newly acquired territories became known as Bessarabia. Chișinău became the capital of the newly annexed oblast of Bessarabia. By 1834, an imperial townscape with broad and long roads had emerged as a result of a generous development plan, which divided Chișinău into two areas: the old part of the town, with its irregular building structures, a newer city center and station. Between 26 May 1830 and 13 October 1836 the architect Avraam Melnikov established the Catedrala Nașterea Domnului with a magnificent bell tower. In 1840 the building of the Triumphal arch, planned by the architect Luca Zaushkevich, was completed. Following this the construction of numerous buildings and landmarks began. On 28 August 1871, Chișinău was linked by rail with Tiraspol, in 1873 with Cornești. Chișinău-Ungheni-Iași railway was opened on 1 June 1875 in preparation for the Russo-Turkish War; the town played an important part in the war between Russia and Ottoman Empire, as the main staging area of the Russian invasion.
During the Belle Époque, the mayor of the city was Carol Schmidt, considered one of Chisinau's best mayors. Its population had grown to 92,000 by 1862, to 125,787 by 1900. In the late 19th century due to growing anti-Semitic sentiment in the Russian Empire and better economic conditions, many Jews chose to settle in Chișinău. By the year 1897, 46% of the population of Chișinău was Jewish, over 50,000 people. A large anti-Semitic riot took place in the town on April 19–20, 1903, which would be known as the Kishinev pogrom; the rioting continued for three days, resulting in 47 Jews dead, 92 wounded, 500 suffering minor injuries. In addition, several hundred houses and many businesses were destroyed; the pogroms are believed to have been incited by anti-Jewish propaganda in the only official newspaper of the time, Bessarabetz. Mayor Schmidt disapproved of the incident and resigned in 1903; the reactions to this incident included a petition to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia on behalf of the American people by US President Theodore Roosevelt in July 1905.
On 22 August 1905 another violent event occurred: The police opened fire on an estimated 3,000 demonstrating agricultural workers. Only a few months 19–20 October 1905, a further protest occurred, helping to force the hand of Nicholas II in bringing about the October Manifesto. However, these demonstrations turned into another anti-Jewish pogrom, resulting in 19 deaths. Following the Russian October Revolution, Bessarabia declared independence from the crumbling empire, as the Moldavian Democratic Republic, before joining the Kingdom of Romania; as of 1919, Chișinău, with an estimated population of 133,000, became the second largest city in Romania. Between 1918 and 1940, the center of the city undertook large renovation work. Romania granted important subsidies to its province and initiated large scale investment programs in the infrastructure of the main cities in Bessarabia, expanded the railroad infrastructure and started an extensive program to eradicate illiteracy. In 1927, the Stephen the Great Monument, by the sculptor Alexandru Plămădeală, was erected.
In 1933, the f
Sefer Torah
A Sefer Torah is a handwritten copy of the Torah, the holiest book in Judaism. It must meet strict standards of production; the Torah scroll is used in the ritual of Torah reading during Jewish prayers. At other times, it is stored in the holiest spot within a synagogue, the Torah ark, an ornate curtained-off cabinet or section of the synagogue built along the wall that most faces Jerusalem, the direction Jews face when praying; the text of the Torah is commonly printed and bound in book form for non-ritual functions. It is known as a Chumash, is accompanied by commentaries or translations. Torah reading from a Sefer Torah is traditionally reserved for Monday and Thursday mornings, as well as for Shabbat and Jewish holidays; the presence of a minyan is required for the reading of the Torah to be held in public during the course of the worship services. As the Torah is sung, following the dense text is aided by a yad, a metal or wooden hand-shaped pointer that protects the scrolls by avoiding unnecessary contact of the skin with the parchment.
All Jews do a prayer with Berakhah thanking God for Matan Torah, before Torah reading and all days during first Berakhot of Shacharit. According to halakha, a Sefer Torah is a copy of the formal Hebrew text of the Torah hand-written on gevil or klaf by using a quill dipped in ink. Producing a sefer Torah fulfills one of the 613 commandments. “The k'laf/parchment on which the Torah scroll is written, the hair or sinew with which the panels of parchment are sewn together, the quill pen with which the text is written all must come from ritually clean —that is, kosher— animals.”Written in Hebrew, a sefer Torah contains 304,805 letters, all of which must be duplicated by a trained sofer, an effort which may take as long as one and a half years. An error during transcription may render the sefer Torah pasul. According to the Talmud, all scrolls must be written on gevil parchment, treated with salt, flour and m'afatsim in order to be valid. Scrolls not processed in this way are considered invalid; the calfskin or parchment on which the sacred Hebrew text is written is mounted into a wooden housing called עץ חיים in Hebrew.
The housing has two rollers, each of which has two handles used for scrolling the text, four handles in all. Between the handles and the rollers are round plates or disks which are carved with images of holy places, engraved with dedications to the donor's parents or other loved ones, decorated with gold or silver. Most modern Sifrei Torah are written with forty-two lines of text per column. Strict rules about the position and appearance of the Hebrew alphabet are observed. See for example the Mishnah Berurah on the subject. Any of several Hebrew scripts may be used, most of which are ornate and exacting; the fidelity of the Hebrew text of the Tanakh, the Torah in particular, is considered paramount, down to the last letter: translations or transcriptions are frowned upon for formal service use, transcribing is done with painstaking care. Some errors are inevitable in the course of production. If the error involves a word other than the name of God, the mistaken letter may be obliterated from the scroll by scraping the letter off the scroll with a sharp object.
If the name of God is written in error, the entire page must be cut from the scroll and a new page added, the page written anew from the beginning. The new page is sewn into the scroll to maintain continuity of the document; the old page is treated with appropriate respect, is buried with respect rather than being otherwise destroyed or discarded. The completion of the Sefer Torah is a cause for great celebration, honored guests of the individual who commissioned the Torah are invited to a celebration wherein each of the honored guests is given the opportunity to write one of the final letters, it is a great honor to be chosen for this. It is a mitzvah for every Jewish male to either have written for him a Sefer Torah. Of the 613 commandments, one – the 82nd as enumerated by Rashi, the final as it occurs in the text the Book of Deuteronomy – is that every Jewish male should write a Sefer Torah in his lifetime. In modern times, it is usual for some scholars to become soferim and to be paid to complete a Sefer Torah under contract on behalf of a community or by individuals to mark a special occasion or commemoration.
Because of the work involved, these can cost tens of thousands of United States dollars to produce to ritually proper standards. A printed version of the Torah is known colloquially as a Chumash. Although speaking it is known as Chamishah Chumshei Torah, they are treated as respected texts, but not anywhere near the level of sacredness accorded a Sefer Torah, a major possession of a Jewish community. A chumash contains the Torah and other writings organised for liturgical use, sometimes accompanied by some of the main classic commentaries. There are three types of specially processed animal skin or parchment: gevil and duchsustos, the latter two being one half of a split animal hide; these are Hebrew words to describe different types of parchment, although the term duchsustos is Greek. These are used for the production of a mezuzah, tefill
Western world
The Western world known as the West, refers to various nations depending on the context, most including at least part of Europe and the Americas, with the status of Latin America in dispute. There are many accepted definitions, all interrelated; the Western world is known as the Occident, in contrast to the Orient, or Eastern world. Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome are considered to be the birthplaces of Western civilization: the former due to its impact on philosophy, democracy and art, building designs and proportions, architecture. Western civilization is founded upon Christianity, in turn shaped by Hellenistic philosophy and Roman culture; the ancient Hellenes had been affected by ancient Near East civilizations, including Judaism and Early Christianity. In the modern era, Western culture has been influenced by the Renaissance, the Ages of Discovery and Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolutions. Through extensive imperialism and Christianization by Western powers in the 15th to 20th centuries, much of the rest of the world has been influenced by Western culture.
The concept of the Western part of the earth has its roots in the theological and emphatical division between the Western Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. West was literal, opposing Catholic Europe with the cultures and civilizations of Orthodox Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the remote Far East, which early-modern Europeans saw as the East. By the mid-20th century. Worldwide export of Western culture went through the new mass media: film and television and recorded music, while the development and growth of international transport and telecommunication played a decisive role in modern globalization. In modern usage, Western world sometimes refers to Europe and to areas whose populations originate from Europe, through the Age of Discovery. Western culture was influenced by many older great civilizations of the ancient Near East, such as Phoenicia, Ancient Israel, Minoan Crete, Sumer and Ancient Egypt, it originated in its vicinity.
Over time, their associated empires grew first to the east and west to include the rest of Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal areas and absorbing. They expanded to the north of the Mediterranean Sea to include Western and Southeastern Europe. Christianization of Ireland, Christianization of Bulgaria, Christianization of Kievan Rus', Christianization of Scandinavia and Christianization of Lithuania brought the rest of present-day European territory into Western civilization. Historians, such as Carroll Quigley in "The Evolution of Civilizations", contend that Western civilization was born around AD 500, after the total collapse of the Western Roman Empire, leaving a vacuum for new ideas to flourish that were impossible in Classical societies. In either view, between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Renaissance, the West experienced a period of first, considerable decline, readaptation and considerable renewed material and political development; this whole period of a millennium is known as the Middle Ages, its early part forming the "Dark Ages", designations that were created during the Renaissance and reflect the perspective on history, the self-image, of the latter period.
The knowledge of the ancient Western world was preserved during this period due to the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire and the introduction of the Catholic Church. Since the Renaissance, the West evolved beyond the influence of the ancient Greeks and Romans and the Islamic world, due to the successful Second Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial revolutions peaked with the 18th century's Age of enlightenment, through the Age of exploration's expansion of peoples of Western and Central European empires the globe-spanning colonial empires of 18th and 19th centuries. Numerous times, this expansion was accompanied by Catholic missionaries, who attempted to proselytize Christianity. There is debate among some as to. Whether Russia should be categorized as "East" or "West" has been "an ongoing discussion" for centuries; the term "Western culture" is used broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, specific artifacts and technologies.
Western culture may imply: a Biblical Christian cultural influence in spiritual thinking and either ethic or moral traditions, around the Post-Classical Era and after. European cultural influences concerning artistic, folkloric and oral traditions, whose themes have been further developed by Romanticism. A Graeco-Roman Classical and Renaissance cultural influence, concerning artistic, philosophic and legal themes and traditions, the cultural social effec
Rosenthal, Herman; Rosenthal, Max (1901–1906). "Kishinef (Kishinev)". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
