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Jews

(Encyclopedia)Jews [from Judah], traditionally, descendants of Judah, the fourth son of Jacob, whose tribe, with that of his half-brother Benjamin, made up the kingdom of Judah; historically, members of the worldwi...

Ashkenaz

(Encyclopedia)Ashkenaz ăshˈkēnăzˌ [key], eponym of a people perhaps localized in Armenia. He was grandson of Japheth. Gen. 10.3. Ashchenaz: 1 Chron. 1.6; Jer. 51.27. In modern times the term Ashkenazim refers ...

Bene Israel

(Encyclopedia)Bene Israel or Beni Israel both: bāˈnē [key] [Heb.,=sons of Israel], Jewish community of India, living mostly in and near Mumbai (formerly Bombay). Many thousands of others have settled in Israel s...

ghetto

(Encyclopedia)ghetto gĕtˈō [key], originally, a section of a city in which Jews lived; it has come to mean a section of a city where members of any racial group are segregated. In the early Middle Ages the segre...

Diaspora

(Encyclopedia)Diaspora dīăsˈpərə [key] [Gr.,=dispersion], term used today to denote the Jewish communities living outside the Holy Land. It was originally used to designate the dispersal of the Jews at the tim...

Hebrews, people

(Encyclopedia)Hebrews. For history, see Jews; for religion, see Judaism. ...

anti-Semitism

(Encyclopedia)anti-Semitism ănˌtē-sĕmˈĭtĭzˌəm, ănˌtī– [key], form of prejudice against Jews, ranging from antipathy to violent hatred. Before the 19th cent., anti-Semitism was largely religious and wa...

Holocaust

(Encyclopedia)Holocaust hŏlˈəkôstˌ, hōˈlə– [key], name given to the period of persecution and extermination of European Jews by Nazi Germany. Romani (Gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, the disabl...

Zealots

(Encyclopedia)Zealots zĕlˈəts [key], Jewish faction traced back to the revolt of the Maccabees (2d cent. b.c.). The name was first recorded by the Jewish historian Josephus as a designation for the Jewish resist...

Sephardim

(Encyclopedia)Sephardim səfärˈdəm [key], one of the two major geographic divisions of the Jewish people, consisting of those Jews whose forebears in the Middle Ages resided in the Iberian Peninsula, as distingu...