Posted By admin on November 22, 2023
My Jewish cultural identity is wrapped up in food. But some events are so momentous they blunt the appetite The Guardian
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Posted By admin on November 20, 2023
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Posted By admin on November 20, 2023
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In Berlin, Erdogan says Germany cant criticize Israel because of the Holocaust - The Times of Israel
Posted By admin on November 20, 2023
Jewish writer Mitch Albom enters new territory with Holocaust novel The Little Liar The Times of Israel
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Posted By admin on November 20, 2023
Lucille Selig was born in Atlanta in 1888 to a prominent Jewish family. Her maternal grandfather, Levi Cohen, was the co-founder of the Temple, the citys reform synagogue. Her uncle, Simon Selig, owned a thriving Atlanta business called West Disinfecting, where Lucilles father worked. And other family relatives owned and operated successful clothing and department stores in Atlanta and Athens, Georgia.
Despite these family connections to wealth and prominence, Lucille Selig joined the work force after graduating from Atlantas Girls High School in 1906. Drawing on the secretarial skills she was taught in school, Lucille was employed first as a stenographer at the Jewish-owned Atlanta Paper Mills Company and later in a similar position at the regional offices of Swift Meats.
On November 30, 1910, Lucille Selig married Leo Frank, a factory superintendent from Brooklyn and a graduate of Cornell University. The wedding took place in the home of Lucilles parents and was presided over by Dr. David Marx, the rabbi of the Temple. The first years of Lucille and Leos marriage were, by all accounts, happy and without incident. As Lucille later recalled I suppose there are many husbands in the world as good as Leo, and it may be therefore that I am foolishly fond of him. But he is my husband, and I have the right to love him very much indeed and I do. If I make too much of him, perhaps it is because he has made too much of me.
In 1913, however, Lucille and Leo Franks lives and marriage were forever changed when the body of a thirteen-year-old, white female employee named Mary Phagan, was discovered in the basement of the factory where Leo was superintendent and part owner.
Mary Phagan had been fired the week before her murder and had visited the factory to collect her final paycheck from Mr. Frank. Though not initially a suspect in the crime, Leo Frank was eventually arrested and charged with assault and murder, based largely on the frequently changing testimony of Jim Conley, a Black janitor at the factory. (This was one of the rare times in the early twentieth century South in which the testimony of an African American male was used to prosecute a white man.)
The trial that followed took place in a highly charged atmosphere marked by sensationalist press coverage and virulent antisemitism. Crowds of locals gathered outside the open windows of the courthouse to cheer on the prosecution of the Jewish factory manager. The judge, worried that an innocent verdict might incite the crowd to lynch Leo Frank, suggested that the defendant and his lawyers not be present when the verdict was announced. Amid loud chants of Hang the Jew from spectators, the jury met and in less than four hours pronounced Frank guilty. The judge sentenced him to death by hanging.
In the years following the verdict, Leo Franks lawyers filed multiple appeals, including three to the Supreme Court of Georgia and two more to the U.S. Supreme Court. When these appeals were exhausted, Franks attorneys sought a pardon from Georgia Governor John Slaton. After reviewing over 10,000 pages of court documents and touring the pencil factory where the murder had taken place, Slaton concluded that Frank was innocent and commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment. Frank was transported to the state prison farm at Milledgeville, Georgia to serve his sentence.
Governors Slatons decision was applauded by many national publications and even some local newspapers (including the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Georgian), but his decision also enraged many white Georgians, leading to demonstrations in Atlanta and elsewhere in the state and the march of an estimated 5,000 angry protestors to the governors mansion. In response to these threats, Governor Slaton declared martial law and called out the National Guard to maintain peace. When his term as governor ended a few days later, Slaton and his wife left the state, not to return for a decade.
Despite the danger, violence, and constant threats that surrounded Leo Franks trial, his initial verdict, and the Governors commutation of his sentence, Lucille remained steadfast, unshaken and resolute in the defense of her husband against all charges and active in the push to have his sentence overturned. She was present and clearly visible in the courtroom sitting close by her husband during his trial and wearing nice clothes to ensure the jury saw that the man accused of such a heinous crime had a doting and loving wife who believed strongly in his innocence. Lucille also issued public statements to the newspapers denouncing charges and allegations made by the prosecution and its witnesses about Leo.
After the initial guilty verdict and throughout the appeals process, Lucille Frank continued to visit her husband in prison and managed his correspondence. She brought letters from friends, family, and strangers alike and made sure his responses were mailed out. She also wrote a letter to the Prison Commission as part of the campaign to commute her husbands sentenceand she managed Leos finances while he was imprisoned and sent him money and supplies to improve his living conditions at the Milledgeville prison farm.
During his first week at the prison farm, Lucille wrote her husband to say:
Everyone is so happy that you are going to have the chance that we have prayed for to prove your innocence to all the doubting Thomasses. Of course the world as a whole knows you are guiltless, but you must be vindicated.
Leos correspondence indicates that he shared this vision and looked forward to the possibility of proving his innocence and winning his freedom.
But even in the relative security of the prison farm, his life was still in grave danger. On the evening of July 17, 1915, hours after spending time in conversation with his wife, Leo Frank was brutally stabbed while sleeping in his bunk by a prisoner and convicted murderer named William Creen. Frank miraculously survived his near-fatal stabbing. But one month later, a group of 25 prominent men from Marietta, Georgia, (the hometown of Mary Phagan), who called themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan, stormed the prison hospital where Frank was recovering, kidnapped him, and drove him more than 100 miles back to Marietta where they hanged him from an oak tree.
Lucille was extremely distraught when she learned of her husbands kidnapping and lynching. Despite not sleeping at all for more than two days after receiving the news, she once again shouldered the responsibility of managing her late husbands affairssettling accounts with merchants, responding to telegrams of condolences, arranging for Leos belongings to be collected from the prison farm, and planning his funeral. Determined that Leo would not be buried in the same state that had contributed to his brutal death, Lucille made the arrangements to take Leos body up to New York for burial at the Mount Caramel Cemetery.
Lucille Frank made only one public statement regarding her husbands lynching, and it was published in the Augusta Chronicle on October 1, 1915 (six weeks after the lynching):
I am a Georgia girl, born and reared in this state, and educated in her schools. I am a Jewess; some will throw that in my face, I know, but I have no apologies to make for my religion. I am also a Georgian, an American, and I do not apologize for that, either. I only pray that those who destroyed Leos life will realize the truth before they meet their Godthey perhaps are not entirely to blame, fed as they were on lies unspeakable, their passions aroused by designing persons. Some of them, I am sure, did not realize the horror of their act. But those who inspired these men to this awful act, what of them? Will not their consciences make for them a hell on earth, and will not their associates, in their hearts, despise them?
In time, Lucille stopped speaking publicly or privately about Leo and became more withdrawn and depressed because of the events she had experienced surrounding her husbands trial and murder. She was only 27 when Leo Frank died, but she never remarried and supported herself by working as a sales clerk in various stores. According to friends, she continued to sign her name as Mrs. Leo Frank, and they believe that she never stopped mourning for her husband. It was also revealed after her death that Mrs. Frank had continued writing private letters to her husband after he died.
Lucille Selig Frank died on April 23, 1957 from heart disease, forty-two years after her husbands murder. As she requested, her body was cremated, and her ashes were buried in Oakland Cemetery between the headstones of her parents, Emil Selig and Josephine Cohen Selig.
Lucille Frank did not live long enough to see justice for Leo Frank and his wrongful death at hands of a violent mob. But in 1982, Alonzo Mann, who had been an office boy at the pencil factory in 1913 where Mary Phagan was murdered, revealed that he had seen Jim Conley (the janitor) carrying the dead body of Phagan to the basement the day she died. Threatened with death by Conley if he ever talked and urged by his mother to keep silent, Mann was never questioned by the police and had never told anyone else about what he witnessed. In 1986, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles finally granted Leo Frank a posthumous pardonnot because they found him innocent of the crimes he was accused of, but instead because his lynching deprived Frank of his right to further appeal.
See original here:
The Life and Times of Lucille and Leo Frank | Atlanta History Center
Posted By admin on November 20, 2023
The movement to deny that the Nazis murdered approximately six million Jews during World War II the historical event known as the Holocaust emerged in the years immediately following the war. In the United States, the movement was spearheaded by American adherents of the Nazi cause, including Francis Parker Yockey and George Lincoln Rockwell.
Their early propaganda efforts to rehabilitate Adolf Hitlers image, which would motivate generations of Holocaust deniers, evolved in the 1970s to incorporate a new pseudo-scientific element, as right-wing extremists began making methodologically flawed but technically sophisticated arguments to challenge the historical record.
This so-called revisionist effort was facilitated by Willis Carto, one of the most virulent antisemitic propagandists in the United States, who founded the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) in 1979. Although it focused on Holocaust denial and other conspiracy theories, IHR presented itself as a legitimate research institution, complete with a pseudo-academic journal and annual conferences where Holocaust deniers from around the world would present papers about their latest research.
Carto not only generated more technically advanced iterations of Holocaust denial -- he also shared this content to a broader audience via more established antisemitic organizations like Liberty Lobby, which Carto founded in the late 1950s. He promoted Holocaust denial in The Spotlight, Liberty Lobbys flagship weekly publication which at its peak in the early 1980s had a circulation of approximately 300,000. The magazine repeatedly shared claims that Anne Franks diary was a fabrication, that Hitler had noble intentions, that Zionists colluded with the Nazis and that lethal gas chambers at Auschwitz were an impossibility.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, IHR engaged in outreach campaigns to the mainstream U.S. media and general public. In 1991, Bradley Smith, a former IHR employee, created his own organization called the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) to carry out this goal of broadcasting Holocaust denial to the masses, which included the placement of Holocaust denial advertisements in student-run college newspapers.
Example of an advertisement placed by Bradley Smith and CODOH in a college newspaper in 2009.
By the 2000s, Holocaust denial was an enterprise populated by a mix of self-styled technical experts and right-wing propagandists. The technical experts focused on topics like the toxicity of Zyklon B gas, whether the geography of Auschwitz-Birkenau could support open-air incineration of dead bodies and how quickly a crematorium could dispose of a corpse. Right-wing propagandists tried to popularize some of the more accessible elements of Holocaust denial with liberal doses of antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
Holocaust revisionists reveled in the controversy and attention sparked by mainstream media coverage of their arguments and publicity stunts and were quick to claim persecution or censorship by Jews, Zionists or the elite when anyone questioned their lies.
During this time, western Holocaust deniers benefitted from relationships with people and institutions in Middle Eastern countries where Holocaust denial had been adopted by the media and promoted by religious and political leaders as a tool in their rhetorical war against Israel and its alleged global Zionist influence.
In late 2000, IHR announced that its 14th international conference would take place in Beirut, Lebanon; the resulting furor forced the Lebanese government to shut down the conference before it began. In December 2006, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad convened a global conference devoted to Holocaust denial and anti-Zionism in Tehran which attracted Holocaust deniers from around the world, including Americans Bradley Smith and white supremacist leader David Duke.
American white supremacist leader David Duke (center) attends the Holocaust denial conference convened by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran in December 2006. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian)
Shifting strategies By 2010, the Holocaust denial movement had fallen on hard times and was hamstrung by infighting among its most prominent figures and institutions, including within IHR, which discontinued its flagship journal. Meanwhile, mainstream media and publishing companies had grown wise to the lies of Holocaust deniers, who were finding it increasingly difficult to share their message outside their own hateful circles.
Around this time, several prominent Holocaust deniers including David Irving, Ernst Zundel and Germar Rudolf lost important civil lawsuits or were convicted in criminal proceedings. (Although Holocaust denial in the U.S. is protected by the First Amendment, in many European countries certain elements of Holocaust denial rhetoric are illegal, including the promotion of racial hatred, and in Germany, the revitalization of National Socialism and defaming the memory of the dead). Some European countries denied visas to notable Holocaust deniers.
Holocaust denial was always grounded in antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish and Zionist power, but as the movement faced increasing setbacks, the theme of Jewish and Zionist power played an increasingly important role in the narrative and agenda.
In 2009, IHR director Mark Weber published an article lamenting that Holocaust denial was not having its intended effect of undermining Jewish power.
Jewish-Zionist power is a palpable reality[and] the task of exposing and countering this power is a crucially important one, Weber wrote. But in the real world struggle against Jewish-Zionist power, Holocaust revisionism has proved to be as much a hindrance as a help.
In making this statement, a prominent Holocaust denier acknowledged the truth of the movement: Denying the Holocaust had become less about rehabilitating Hitlers image or correcting the historical record, and more about defaming and attacking Jews and Zionists.
Recent trends in Holocaust denial By the early 2010s, the burgeoning world of social media provided abundant opportunities for antisemites to spread their hatred of Jews and Zionists on platforms like Facebook. At the time, Facebook had policies which broadly prohibited hate speech but did not bar antisemitic attacks on the factual and historical validity of the Holocaust under the guise of debate.
Over time, Facebook did deplatform many Holocaust denial groups and propagandists for explicit antisemitism, but it wasnt until late 2020 that Facebook enacted a specific policy ostensibly prohibiting Holocaust denial. Days later, Twitter announced that it would remove posts denying the Holocaust as well. However, as of 2023, both Facebook and Twitter continue to host some of this content.
Other mainstream social media platforms have taken similar approaches: for years, YouTubes policies prohibited general hate speech, which allowed for action on some of the more explicitly antisemitic expressions of Holocaust denial, but YouTube only explicitly banned Holocaust denial in 2019. Reddit claims that Holocaust denial was always prohibited under its policy against violent content, but in 2020 the platform clarified that Holocaust denial was covered by its broader rules against hateful content.
As of 2023, Holocaust denial content continues to exist on YouTube and Reddit, but Holocaust deniers can no longer act with impunity, and violative content is often removed when it is reported. (ADL conducts periodic assessments of how mainstream social media companies deal with Holocaust denial content; see our latest report card here.)
In spite of the steps taken by more mainstream social media platforms to curb this type of content, antisemitic and extremist trolls continue to drive Holocaust denial in highly visible mainstream spaces. Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist leader of the Groypers, demonstrated this trolling approach when he compared Jews murdered in the Holocaust to cookies burned in an oven; the video circulated on both alternative and mainstream platforms. Antisemites and white supremacists, including those affiliated with the Goyim Defense League (GDL) and the Daily Stormer Book Clubs (SBC), have promoted Holocaust denial in their nationwide on-the-ground antisemitic propaganda campaigns and livestreams.
Fliers distributed by white supremacist groups promoting Holocaust denial.
Holocaust deniers continue to seize opportunities to mainstream their views: In late 2022, Ye, the highly influential figure formerly known as Kanye West, made a series of antisemitic comments disputing the facts of the Holocaust and defending Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. The Holocaust is not what happened, he claimed during an interview on Alex Joness InfoWars show, alleging that the Nazis didnt kill six million Jews; thats just, like, factually incorrect. His comments further emboldened antisemites and extremists, who celebrated his Holocaust denial and cited Ye in their own antisemitic activities.
Despite these efforts to enter the mainstream, Holocaust denials antisemitic arguments truly thrive in the darker corners of the internet. On 4chan and 8kun, where vile, explicitly hateful and racist speech is the norm, anonymous trolls rehash old Holocaust denial talking points from the 1980s and 1990s, sometimes repackaged in forms that resonate with modern meme culture. Holocaust denial also has a foothold on poorly regulated messaging platforms like Telegram, where entire channels and threads are devoted to denying the Holocaust and touting antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish and Zionist global control.
Holocaust denial has also found a home on fringe media-hosting platforms like Bitchute and Rumble, where Holocaust denial videos are used to attract views and to convince audiences of a purported global effort by Jews, Zionists or the elite to support Israel, dominate public opinion and exert social control by limiting the topics open to free public discourse.
Some of the older Holocaust denial figures remain active, creating content for their obscure online journals and blogs dedicated to revisionist history. This includes a small, core group of self-styled experts who are always looking for new Holocaust facts to debunk. Holocaust denial continues to appear in certain popular right-wing extremist publications and on websites like The Barnes Review and American Free Press.
Today, Holocaust denial, which grew and matured among right-wing extremists, has joined the mix of disjointed, fantastical content that circulates and metastasizes in the diverse, largely online subcultures of conspiracy theorists, trolls, antisemites and even some extreme anti-Zionists.
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A Short History of Holocaust Denial in the United States | ADL
Posted By admin on November 20, 2023
The U.S. Department of State has used the working definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion since its adoption by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 2013. It was adopted by consensus at the IHRA Plenary in Toronto as a non-legally binding working definition. As a member of IHRA, the United States embraces this working definition and has encouraged other governments and international organizations to use it as well.
The working definition was developed by IHRA experts in the Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial in cooperation with the IHRAs governmental representatives for use as a practical working tool. It laid the foundation for further IHRA resources on recognizing and countering Holocaust denial and distortion, including an action-oriented toolkit, the #ProtectTheFacts campaign, policy recommendations, a lecture by former IHRA Honorary Chair Professor Yehuda Bauer, ashort film, a publication, and a paper.
It has also inspired action outside the IHRA. The United Nations General Assembly, for example, made use of the working definition in its Resolution A/76/L.30, which condemned denial and distortion of the Holocaust and commended the IHRA for its work. The resolution was adopted on 20 January 2022.
Toronto, 10 October 2013
The present definition is an expression of the awareness that Holocaust denial and distortion have to be challenged and denounced nationally and internationally and need examination at a global level. IHRA hereby adopts the following legally non-binding working definition as its working tool.
Holocaust denial is discourse and propaganda that deny the historical reality and the extent of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices during World War II, known as the Holocaust or the Shoah. Holocaust denial refers specifically to any attempt to claim that the Holocaust/Shoah did not take place.
Holocaust denial may include publicly denying or calling into doubt the use of principal mechanisms of destruction (such as gas chambers, mass shooting, starvation and torture) or the intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people.
Holocaust denial in its various forms is an expression of antisemitism. The attempt to deny the genocide of the Jews is an effort to exonerate National Socialism and antisemitism from guilt or responsibility in the genocide of the Jewish people. Forms of Holocaust denial also include blaming the Jews for either exaggerating or creating the Shoah for political or financial gain as if the Shoah itself was the result of a conspiracy plotted by the Jews. In this, the goal is to make the Jews culpable and antisemitism once again legitimate.
The goals of Holocaust denial often are the rehabilitation of an explicit antisemitism and the promotion of political ideologies and conditions suitable for the advent of the very type of event it denies.
Distortion of the Holocaust refers,inter alia, to:
Continued here:
Defining Holocaust Distortion and Denial - United States Department of ...
Posted By admin on November 18, 2023
Pro-Palestine protestors force their way into University of Michigan administration building MLive.com
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Posted By admin on November 16, 2023
Hebrew is a member of the Canaanite group of Semitic languages. It was the language of the early Jews, but from 586 BC it started to be replaced by Aramaic. By 200 AD use of Hebrew as an everyday language had largely ceased, but it continued to be used for literary and religious functions, as well as a lingua franca among Jews from different countries.
During the mid-19th century the first efforts were made to revive Hebrew as a everyday language. One man who played a major role in these efforts was Eliezer Ben Yehuda (1858-1922), who was the first to make exclusive use of Hebrew in his home, and encouraged the use of Hebrew among others, as well as its use in schools.
Today Hebrew is spoken by some 5 million people mainly in Israel, where it is an official language along with Arabic. and a further 2 million people speak the language in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, Panama, the UK and USA.
The first alphabet used to write Hebrew emerged during the late second and first millennia BC. It is closely related to the Phoenician alphabet. The modern Hebrew alphabet was developed from an alphabet known as Proto-Hebrew/Early Aramaic.
The Hebrew alphabet is also known as the Hebrew Square Script, the square script, the block script, the Jewish script or Ktav Ashuri ( - Assyrian script).
This system of indicating vowels was devised by the Masoretic scholars in Tiberias in around 750 AD. It is known as Tiberian vocalization, Tiberian pointing, or Tiberian niqqud, or in Hebrew.
Hear the Modern Hebrew alphabet, with example words:
Biblical or Classical Hebrew is the form of Hebrew used in Israel and Judah from about the 10th century BC until the 2nd century AD. Texts include the Hebrew Bible, and other religious and historical writings. It was written without vowel indication at first, and over time some consonants, known as matres lectionis, came to be used to indicate vowels.
Biblical Hebrew was first written with the Phoenician script, which developed into the Paleo-Hebrew script by the 10th or 9th century BC. By the 6th century BC the Aramaic script began to replace the Paleo-Hebrew script.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Hebrew
Hear the Biblical Hebrew alphabet:
This is the reconstructed pronunciation of the Hebrew used between 750-950 AD by Masoretic scholars living in the Jewish community of Tiberias in ancient Judea.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberian_Hebrew
Hear the Tiberian Hebrew alphabet:
The Rashi style is used mainly to write commentaries on texts. It is named after Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (1040-1105 AD) a.k.a. Rashi, one of the greatest medieval Jewish scholars and Bible commentators. Rashi did not use the Rashi sytle to write his commentaries but it is named in honour of him.
Download a Hebrew alphabet chart in Word or PDF format
Kol benei ha'adam noldu benei xorin veshavim be'erkam uvizxuyoteihem. Kulam xonenu batevuna uvematspun, lefixax xova 'aleihem linhog ish bere'ehu beruax shel axava.
A recording of this text by (Gal Weisberg)
Another recording of this text by Tal Barnea
Kol benei ha'adam noldu benei xorin veshavim be'erkam uvizxuyoteihem. Kulam xonenu batevuna uvematspun, v xova 'aleihem linhog ish bere'ehu beruax shel axava.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
Corrections and text samples provided by Tal Barnea
Information about Hebrew | Phrases | Numbers | Time | Tower of Babel | Articles | Hebrew links | Hebrew learning materials
Information about the Hebrew language and alphabet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language http://judaism.about.com/od/hebre1/Hebrew.htm http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0008_0_08629.html
Modern Hebrew lessons and courses http://www.zigzagworld.com/hebrewforme http://www.hebrewpodcasts.com http://www.ulpan.net http://hebrewspeaker.blogspot.com http://www.linguanaut.com/learn_hebrew.htm http://foundationstone.com.au http://www.hebraico.pro.br http://polymath.org/hebrew.php http://www.hebrewpod101.com/ Biblical Hebrew lessons and courses http://www.netwaysglobal.com http://www.shalom.50megs.com http://www.hebrew4christians.net http://visualhebrew.blogspot.ie/
Learn Hebrew online with HebrewPod101 Practical Hebrew - learn to speak the Hebrew that really matters Learn Hebrew with Ling
Learn Conversational Hebrew
Learn Hebrew with dictionaries, online courses and easy Hebrew magazines
Free Hebrew fonts http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_Hebrew.html http://opensiddur.org/tools/fonts/ http://oketz.com/fonts/ http://www.daniella.co.il/daniella/bloog/font/Hebrew-font-page1.htm
More Hebrew language links
Akkadian, Amharic, Arabic (Algerian), Arabic (Bedawi), Arabic (Chadian), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Gulf), Arabic (Hassaniya), Arabic (Hejazi), Arabic (Lebanese), Arabic (Modern Standard), Arabic (Moroccan), Arabic (Najdi), Arabic (Syrian), Aramaic, Argobba, Assyrian / Neo-Assyrian, Canaanite, Chaha, Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, Ge'ez, Hadhramautic, Harari, Hebrew, Himyaritic, Jewish Neo-Aramaic, Maltese, Mandaic, Nabataean, Neo-Mandaic, Phoenician, Punic, Qatabanic, Sabaean, Sabaic, Silt'e, Syriac, Tigre, Tigrinya, Turoyo, Ugaritic, Western Neo-Aramaic
Aramaic, Bukhori, Domari, Hebrew, Jewish Neo-Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian, Juhuri, Knaanic, Ladino, Mozarabic, Yiddish, Yevanic
Ancient Berber, Arabic, Aramaic, Chorasmian, Elymaic, Hatran, Hebrew, Manichaean, Nabataean, North Arabian, Pahlavi, Palmyrene, Parthian, Phoenician, Paleo-Hebrew, Proto-Sinaitic / Proto-Canaanite, Psalter, Punic, Sabaean, Samaritan, Sogdian, South Arabian, Syriac, Tifinagh, Ugaritic
Other writing systems
ALPHABETUM - a Unicode font specifically designed for ancient scripts, including classical & medieval Latin, ancient Greek, Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian, Faliscan, Messapic, Picene, Iberian, Celtiberian, Gothic, Runic, Old & Middle English, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Old Nordic, Ogham, Kharosthi, Glagolitic, Old Cyrillic, Phoenician, Avestan, Ugaritic, Linear B, Anatolian scripts, Coptic, Cypriot, Brahmi, Old Persian cuneiform: http://guindo.pntic.mec.es/~jmag0042/alphabet.html
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Posted By admin on November 16, 2023
Core group of ancient Hebrew scriptures
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh[a] (;[1] Hebrew:
The authoritative form of the modern Hebrew Bible used in Rabbinic Judaism is the Masoretic Text (7th to 10th century CE), which consists of 24 books, divided into chapters and pesuqim (verses). The Hebrew Bible developed during the Second Temple Period, as the Jews decided which religious texts were of divine origin; the Masoretic Text, compiled by the Jewish scribes and scholars of the Early Middle Ages, comprises the Hebrew and Aramaic 24 books that they considered authoritative.[2]
The Hellenized Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria produced a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible called "the Septuagint", that included books later identified as the Apocrypha, while the Samaritans produced their own edition of the Torah, the Samaritan Pentateuch; according to the DutchIsraeli biblical scholar and linguist Emanuel Tov, professor of Bible Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, both of these ancient editions of the Hebrew Bible differ significantly from the medieval Masoretic Text.[2]
In addition to the Masoretic Text, modern biblical scholars seeking to understand the history of the Hebrew Bible use a range of sources.[4] These include the Septuagint, the Syriac language Peshitta translation, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Dead Sea Scrolls collection, and quotations from rabbinic manuscripts. These sources may be older than the Masoretic Text in some cases and often differ from it.[5] These differences have given rise to the theory that yet another text, an Urtext of the Hebrew Bible, once existed and is the source of the versions extant today.[6] However, such an Urtext has never been found, and which of the three commonly known versions (Septuagint, Masoretic Text, Samaritan Pentateuch) is closest to the Urtext is debated.[7]
There are many similarities between the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. The Protestant Old Testament has the same books as the Hebrew Bible, but the books are arranged in different orders. The Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox churches include the Deuterocanonical books, which are not included in the Hebrew Bible.[8]
Tanakh is an acronym, made from the first Hebrew letter of each of the Masoretic Text's three traditional divisions: Torah (literally 'Instruction' or 'Law'),[9] Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings)hence TaNaKh.
The three-part division reflected in the acronym Tanakh is well attested in the rabbinic literature.[10] During that period, however, Tanakh was not used. Instead, the proper title was Mikra (or Miqra, , meaning reading or that which is read) because the biblical texts were read publicly. The acronym 'Tanakh' is first recorded in the medieval era.[11] Mikra continues to be used in Hebrew to this day, alongside Tanakh, to refer to the Hebrew scriptures. In modern spoken Hebrew, they are interchangeable.[12]
Many biblical studies scholars advocate use of the term Hebrew Bible (or Hebrew Scriptures) as a substitute for less-neutral terms with Jewish or Christian connotations (e.g. Tanakh or Old Testament).[13][14] The Society of Biblical Literature's Handbook of Style, which is the standard for major academic journals like the Harvard Theological Review and conservative Protestant journals like the Bibliotheca Sacra and the Westminster Theological Journal, suggests that authors "be aware of the connotations of alternative expressions such as... Hebrew Bible [and] Old Testament" without prescribing the use of either.[15]
"Hebrew" refers to the original language of the books, but it may also be taken as referring to the Jews of the Second Temple era and their descendants, who preserved the transmission of the Masoretic Text up to the present day.[16] The Hebrew Bible includes small portions in Aramaic (mostly in the books of Daniel and Ezra), written and printed in Aramaic square-script, which was adopted as the Hebrew alphabet after the Babylonian exile.
The heart of the biblical story is God's covenant with the nation of Israel.[17] The Tanakh begins with the Genesis creation narrative and traces Israelite origins to the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob and his family settle in Egypt where their descendants live for 430 years. After the Exodus, the Israelites wander in the wilderness for 40 years.[18]
God gives the Israelites the Law of Moses to guide their behavior. The law includes rules for both religious ritual and ethics
God leads Israel into the promised land of Canaan, which they conquer after five years. For the next 470 years, the Israelites were led by judges. Afterwards, the government transitioned to a monarchy. The united Kingdom of Israel was ruled first by Saul and then by David and his son Solomon. It was Solomon who built the First Temple in Jerusalem. After Solomon's death, the united kingdom split into the northern Kingdom of Israel with its capital at Samaria and the southern Kingdom of Judah centered at Jerusalem.
The northern kingdom survived for 200 years until it was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BCE. The Kingdom of Judah survived for longer, but it was conquered by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. The Temple was destroyed, and many Judeans were exiled to Babylon. In 539 BCE, Babylon was conquered by Cyrus the Great of Persia, who allowed the exiles to return to Judah. Between 520 and 515 BCE, the Temple was rebuilt
The books that make up the Hebrew Bible were composed and edited in stages over several hundred years. There is no scholarly consensus as to when the Hebrew Bible canon was fixed: some scholars argue that it was fixed by the Hasmonean dynasty,[24] while others argue it was not fixed until the second century CE or even later.[25]
Traditionally, Moses was considered the author of the Torah, and this part of the Tanakh achieved authoritative or canonical status first, possibly as early as the 5th century BCE. This is suggested by Ezra 7:6, which describes Ezra as "a scribe skilled in the law (torah) of Moses that the Lord the God of Israel had given".[26]
The Nevi'im had gained canonical status by the 2nd century BCE. There are references to the "Law and the Prophets" in the Book of Sirach, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the New Testament. The Book of Daniel, written c.164 BCE, was not grouped with the Prophets presumably because the Nevi'im collection was already fixed by this time.
The Ketuvim was the last part of the Tanakh to achieve canonical status. The prologue to the Book of Sirach mentions "other writings" along with the Law and Prophets but does not specify content. The Gospel of Luke refers to "the Law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms" (Luke 24:44). These references suggest that the content of the Writings remained fluid until the canonization process was completed in the 2nd century CE.
According to Louis Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews, the twenty-four book canon of the Hebrew Bible was fixed by Ezra and the scribes in the Second Temple period.[29]
According to the Talmud, much of the Tanakh was compiled by the men of the Great Assembly (Anshei K'nesset HaGedolah), a task completed in 450BCE, and it has remained unchanged ever since.[30]
The 24-book canon is mentioned in the Midrash Koheleth 12:12: Whoever brings together in his house more than twenty four books brings confusion.[31]
The original writing system of the Hebrew text was an abjad: consonants written with some applied vowel letters ("matres lectionis"). During the early Middle Ages, scholars known as the Masoretes created a single formalized system of vocalization. This was chiefly done by Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, in the Tiberias school, based on the oral tradition for reading the Tanakh, hence the name Tiberian vocalization. It also included some innovations of Ben Naftali and the Babylonian exiles.[32] Despite the comparatively late process of codification, some traditional sources and some Orthodox Jews hold the pronunciation and cantillation to derive from the revelation at Sinai, since it is impossible to read the original text without pronunciations and cantillation pauses.[33] The combination of a text ( mikra), pronunciation ( niqqud) and cantillation ( te`amim) enable the reader to understand both the simple meaning and the nuances in sentence flow of the text.
The number of distinct words in the Hebrew Bible is 8,679, of which 1,480 are hapax legomena,[34]:112 words or expressions that occur only once. The number of distinct Semitic roots, on which many of these biblical words are based, is roughly 2000.[34]:112
The Tanakh consists of twenty-four books, counting as one book each 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel, 1 Kings and 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles, and EzraNehemiah. The Twelve Minor Prophets ( ) are also counted as a single book. In Hebrew, the books are often referred to by their prominent first words.
The Torah (, literally "teaching") is also known as the "Pentateuch", or as the "Five Books of Moses". Printed versions (rather than scrolls) of the Torah are often called Chamisha Chumshei Torah ( "Five fifth-sections of the Torah") and informally as Chumash.
Nevi'im ( Nm, "Prophets") is the second main division of the Tanakh, between the Torah and Ketuvim. This division includes the books which cover the time from the entrance of the Israelites into the Land of Israel until the Babylonian captivity of Judah (the "period of prophecy"). Their distribution is not chronological, but substantive.
The Former Prophets ( Nevi'im Rishonim)
The Latter Prophets ( Nevi'im Aharonim)
The Twelve Minor Prophets ( , Trei Asar, "The Twelve"), which are considered one book:
Km (, "Writings") consists of eleven books.
In Masoretic manuscripts (and some printed editions), Psalms, Proverbs and Job are presented in a special two-column form emphasizing the parallel stichs in the verses, which are a function of their poetry. Collectively, these three books are known as Sifrei Emet (an acronym of the titles in Hebrew, , , yields Emet ", which is also the Hebrew for "truth").
These three books are also the only ones in Tanakh with a special system of cantillation notes that are designed to emphasize parallel stichs within verses. However, the beginning and end of the book of Job are in the normal prose system.
The five relatively short books of the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther are collectively known as the amesh Megillot (Five Megillot).
In many Jewish communities, these books are read aloud in the synagogue on particular occasions, the occasion listed below in parentheses.
Besides the three poetic books and the five scrolls, the remaining books in Ketuvim are Daniel, EzraNehemiah and Chronicles. Although there is no formal grouping for these books in the Jewish tradition, they nevertheless share a number of distinguishing characteristics.
The Jewish textual tradition never finalized the order of the books in Ketuvim. The Talmud gives their order as Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Daniel, Scroll of Esther, Ezra, Chronicles.[36] This order is roughly chronological (assuming traditional authorship).
In Tiberian Masoretic codices (including the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex), and often in old Spanish manuscripts as well, the order is Chronicles, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra.[37] This order is more thematic (e.g. the megillot are listed together).
The Hebrew Bible is generally considered to consist of 24 books, but this number is somewhat arbitrary, as (for example) it regards 12 separate books of minor prophets as a single book.[38] The traditional rabbinic count of 24 books appears in the Talmud[36] and numerous works of midrash.[39] In several early nonrabbinic sources, the number of books given is 22.[40] This number corresponds to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet; according to Athanasius there were 27 books, corresponding to the alphabet with final letter forms (sofiot).
The count of 24 was said to be equal to the number of priestly divisions.[41] According to a modern source, the number of books may be related to the division of the Iliad and Odyssey into 24 books, corresponding to the letters of the Greek alphabet. Both the Bible and Homer formed "foundational literature" of their respective cultures, studied by children and considered distillations of the society's values. The division of the Bible into 22 books may be a conversion of the Greek system to the Hebrew alphabet, while the division into 24 may be an adoption of the "perfect" number 24 as befitting the Bible's stature in Jewish eyes.[38]
Nach, also anglicized
It is a major subject in the curriculum of Orthodox high schools for girls and in the seminaries which they subsequently attend,[42] and is often taught by different teachers than those who teach Chumash.[44] The curriculum of Orthodox high schools for boys includes only some portions of Nach, such as the book of Joshua, the book of Judges,[46] and the Five Megillot.[47] See Yeshiva Torah and Bible study.
The major commentary used for the Chumash is the Rashi commentary. The Rashi commentary and Metzudot commentary are the major commentaries for the Nach.[48][49]
There are two major approaches to the study of, and commentary on, the Tanakh. In the Jewish community, the classical approach is a religious study of the Bible, where it is assumed that the Bible is divinely inspired.[50] Another approach is to study the Bible as a human creation.[51] In this approach, Biblical studies can be considered as a sub-field of religious studies. The latter practice, when applied to the Torah, is considered heresy[52] by the Orthodox Jewish community.[53] As such, much modern day Bible commentary written by non-Orthodox authors is considered forbidden[54] by rabbis teaching in Orthodox yeshivas. Some classical rabbinic commentators, such as Abraham Ibn Ezra, Gersonides, and Maimonides, used many elements of contemporary biblical criticism, including their knowledge of history, science, and philology. Their use of historical and scientific analysis of the Bible was considered acceptable by historic Judaism due to the author's faith commitment to the idea that God revealed the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai.[citation needed]
The Modern Orthodox Jewish community allows for a wider array of biblical criticism to be used for biblical books outside of the Torah, and a few Orthodox commentaries now incorporate many of the techniques previously found in the academic world,[55] e.g. the Da'at Miqra series. Non-Orthodox Jews, including those affiliated with Conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism, accept both traditional and secular approaches to Bible studies. "Jewish commentaries on the Bible", discusses Jewish Tanakh commentaries from the Targums to classical rabbinic literature, the midrash literature, the classical medieval commentators, and modern-day commentaries.
Christianity has long asserted a close relationship between the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.[56] In Protestant Bibles, the Old Testament is the same as the Hebrew Bible, but the books are arranged differently. Catholic Bibles and Eastern Orthodox Bibles contain books not included in the Hebrew Bible
The ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible currently used by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches are based on the Septuagint, which was considered the authoritative scriptural canon by the early Christians.[58] The Septuagint was influential on early Christianity as it was the Hellenistic Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible primarily used by the 1st-century Christian authors.[59]
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