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Johanan ben Zakkai

(Encyclopedia)Johanan ben Zakkai jōhănˈən bĕn zăkˈāī [key], leader of the Pharisees of Jerusalem before the destruction of the Temple in a.d. 70, afterward founder of the Jewish academy at Jamnia. He empha...

Plehve, Vyacheslav Konstantinovich

(Encyclopedia)Plehve, Vyacheslav Konstantinovich vyĕˌchĭsläfˈ kənstəntyēˈnəvĭch plyĕˈvyĭ [key], 1846–1904, Russian public official. As director of the police (1881–84), vice minister of the interi...

Wolpe, Stefan

(Encyclopedia)Wolpe, Stefan shtĕfˈän vôlˈpə [key], 1902–72, German–American composer. Of Jewish ancestry, he went to live in Palestine in 1933, but settled in the United States in 1938. Wolpe wrote severa...

Yom Kippur

(Encyclopedia)Yom Kippur [Heb.,=day of atonement], in Judaism, the most sacred holy day, falling on the 10th day of the Jewish month of Tishri (usually late September or early October). It is a day of fasting and p...

Zunz, Leopold

(Encyclopedia)Zunz, Leopold lāˈōpôlt tso͝ontsˈ [key], 1794–1886, German Jewish scholar. His critical research on Judaism became one of the cornerstones of the “science of Judaism,” the modern approach o...

Börne, Karl Ludwig

(Encyclopedia)Börne, Karl Ludwig lo͝otˈvĭkh börˈnə [key], 1786–1837, German journalist, of Jewish origin. His original name was Löb Baruch. He studied medicine and political science and held office in Fra...

Lviv

(Encyclopedia)Lviv ləvēˈo͞o, ləvēfˈ [key], Rus. Lvov, Pol. Lwów, Ger. Lemberg, city (1989 pop. 791,000), capital of Lviv region, W Ukraine, at the watershed of the Western Bug and Dniester rivers and in the...

Kitaj, R. B.

(Encyclopedia)Kitaj, R. B. (Ronald Brooks Kitaj) kĭtīˈ [key], 1932–2007, American painter, b. Chagrin Falls, Ohio. In 1958 he moved to London, where he attended the Ruskin School, Oxford, and the Royal College...

Schindler, Oskar

(Encyclopedia)Schindler, Oskar, 1908–74, German industrialist who saved more than a thousand Jews during the Holocaust. A Catholic and a member of the National Socialist (Nazi) party, Schindler relocated (1939) t...

amulet

(Encyclopedia)amulet ămˈyəlĭt [key], object or formula that credulity and superstition have endowed with the power of warding off harmful influences. The use of the amulet to avert danger and to dispel evil has...