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Hamas — profile of the State Department designated …

Posted By on October 5, 2015

By Amy Zalman, Ph.D.

Name:

"Hamas" is both an acronym for the group's name (in Arabic): Harakat Al Muqawama Al Islamiyya (Islamic Resistance Movement), and a word in itself that means "zeal" or "enthusiasm."

Founded In:

1987 as an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, a religious and political organization originating in Egypt in 1928. It was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the leader of its predecessor, a charity called Mujama.

Yassin was assassinated in April 2004.

Home Base:

Gaza City, in the Palestinian Gaza Strip, one of the areas occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.

Backing & Affiliations :

Hamas has historically received support from Iran and from private donors, especially in Saudi Arabia and the Arabian gulf region. It has also received funds from Palestinian expatriates. Many funds historically have been directed to Hamas through Islamic charity organizations, but this funding has slowed since crackdowns on terrorist financing following 9/11.

Objectives:

Hamas aims to establish an Islamic state in the West Bank and the Gaza strip. This goal combines Islamist objectives with Palestinian nationalism, two distinct ideological frameworks that flowered in the 1960s and 1970s especially. Their charter is explicit on this point: "Hamas regards Nationalism as part and parcel of the religious faith. Nothing is loftier or deeper in Nationalism than waging Jihad agains the enemy and confronting him when he sets foot on the land of the Muslims."

Attitude toward Israel:

Historically, Hamas has called for the destruction of the state of Israel, and refused to recognize it. Its manifesto contains strong and incendiary language about the requirement for Muslims to wage jihad against foreign usurpers of Muslim lands. Although Hamas has maintained its fiery rhetoric, there are also a number of signs that Hamas' intentions are softer than the group's language.

As the chief governing party of the Palestinian territories after their election victory in January 2006, Hamas has tacitly acknowledged a more normal relationship with Israel. And:

Organization:

Hamas was first organized as a non-violent charitable organization. Several years after its founding, it had established recruitment, security and publications sections.

It also created a military wing called the Izz Al Din Qassam Brigades, which has been responsible for most Hamas violence, including its suicide bombings in Israel.

Notable Attacks:

In keeping with its early mission to cleanse Palestinian society, Hamas' first acts of violence were committed against Palestinian criminals or perceived collaborators with the Israelis. They have since claimed responsibility for hundreds of attacks against both military and civilian Israeli targets, in shootings, knifings, and short-range rocket attacks, as well as suicide attacks.

Political Activity:

On January 25, 2006, Hamas won 74 of 132 seats in Palestinian Legislative Council, beating out the ruling party, Fatah, which put Hamas in charge of the Palestinian government. Problems immediately ensued, since Western government were unwilling to fund a government run by an organization designated as a terrorist organization. Conflict between the secular Fatah and Hamas has also prevented the creation of a national government.

Historical Context:

Hamas grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian Islamist association that began in Egypt in the 1920s. In 1973, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin established a center for Muslim Brotherhood activities in Gaza, which was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, along with the West Bank. Hamas was created in 1987 as the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood but it became an independent organization when it issued its 1988 charter.

Hamas gained traction during the 1987 intifada, or "uprising." West Bank and Gaza Palestinians negatively affected the Israeli economy and morale through several years of low-tech resistance tactics, such as throwing stones at Israeli soldiers and holding strikes. One of the indirect outcomes was the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the PLO. The Accords are a much debated agreement that were meant to bring about some measure of Palestinian self-rule.

Hamas, which was founded in part on its rejection of the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians, gained popularity when it rejected the Oslo accords.

Of related interest: Suicide Terrorism: Definitions, Theories, Groups

Originally posted here:
Hamas -- profile of the State Department designated ...

History of Egypt – Lonely Planet Travel Information

Posted By on October 5, 2015

The history of Egypt is as rich as the land, as varied as the landscape, as lively as the character of its people. And it is as long as the Nile, longer than most in the world. While much of Europe was still wrapped in animal skins and wielding clubs, Egyptians enjoyed a sophisticated life, dedicated to maintaining order in the universe and to making the most of their one great commodity, the Nile.

The Greek historian Herodotus observed that Egypt was the gift of the Nile and although it might now be a clich, it also happens to be true. Ancient Egyptians called it simply iteru, the river. Without the Nile, Egypt as we know it would not exist.

The exact history is obscure, but many thousands of years ago the climate of North Africa changed dramatically. Patterns of rainfall also changed and Egypt, formerly a rich savannah, became increasingly dry. The social consequences were dramatic. People in this part of Africa lived as nomads, hunting, gathering and moving across the region with the seasons. But when their pastures turned to desert, there was only one place for them to go: the Nile.

Rainfall in east and central Africa ensured that the Nile in Egypt rose each summer; this happened some time towards the end of June in Aswan. The waters would reach their height around the Cairo area in September. In most years, this surge of water flooded the valley and left the countryside hidden. As the rains eased, the river level started to drop and water drained off the land, leaving behind a layer of rich silt washed down from the hills of Africa.

Egyptians learned that if they planted seed on this fertile land, they could grow a good crop. As more people settled along the valley, it became more important to make the best use of the annual floodwater, or there would not be enough food for the following year. A social order evolved to organise the workforce to make the most of this gift, an order that had farmers at the bottom, bureaucrats and governors in the middle and, at the top of this pyramid, the pharaoh.

Egyptian legend credited all this social development to the good king Osiris, who, so the story went, taught Egyptians how to farm, how to make best use of the Nile and how to live a good, civil life. The myth harks back to an idealised past, but also ties in with what we know of the emergence of kingship: one of the earliest attributions of kingship, the pre-dynastic Scorpion Macehead, found in Hierakonpolis around 3000 BC, shows an irrigation ritual. Which suggests that even right back in early times, making use of the rivers gift was a key part of the role of the leader.

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The rise of the Nile was a matter of continual wonder for ancient Egyptians, as it was right up to the 19th century, when European explorers settled the question of the source. There is no evidence that ancient Egyptians knew where this lifeline came from. In the absence of facts, they made up stories.

One of the least convincing of all Egyptian myths concerning the rise of the Nile places the rivers source in Aswan, beneath the First Cataract. From here, the story went, the river flowed north to the Mediterranean and south into Africa.

The rivers life-giving force was revered as a god, Hapy. He is an unusual deity in that, contrary to the usual slim outline of most gods, Hapy is usually portrayed as a pot-bellied man with hanging breasts and a headdress of papyrus. Hapy was celebrated at a feast each year when the Nile rose. In later images, he is often shown tying papyrus and lotus plants together, a reminder that the Nile bound people together.

But the most enduring and endearing of all Egyptian myths concerning the river is devoted to the figure of Isis, the mourning wife. Wherever the river originated, the annual rising of the Nile was explained as being tears shed by the mother goddess at the loss of the good king Osiris.

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Wherever it came from, the Nile was the beginning and end for most Egyptians. They were born beside it and had their first post-natal bath in its waters. It sustained them throughout their lives, made possible the vegetables in the fields, the chickens, cows, ducks and fish on their plates, and filled their drinking vessels when they were thirsty. When it was very hot or at the end of a days work, it was the Nile that provided relief, a place to bathe. Later, when they died, if they had the funds, their body would be taken along the river to the cult centre at Abydos. And it was water from the Nile that the embalmers used when they prepared the body for burial. But burial was a moment of total separation from this life-source for, if you were lucky, you were buried away from the damp, where the dry sands and rocks of the desert would preserve your remains throughout eternity.

But not everything about the river was generous for it also brought dangers in many forms: the crocodile, the sudden flood that washed away helpless children and brought the house down on your head, the diseases that thrived in water, and the creatures (among them the mosquito) that carried them. The river also brought the taxman, for it was on the level of flood that the level of tax was set. The formula was simple. Bureaucrats watched the rise of the river on Elephantine Island, where a gauge had been cut along the side of the rock. Each years flood was recorded at its height. If the water rose to the level of 14 cubits, there would be enough food to go around. If it rose to 16, there would be an abundance and abundance meant good taxation. And if there were, say, only eight cubits, then it was time to prepare for the worst because famine would come and many would follow Osiris to the land of spirits beyond the valley.

The river also dictated the rhythm of life and everything started with the beginning of the inundation: New Year fell as the waters rose. This was a time of celebration and also, for some, of relaxation for as the land was covered with water and one needed a boat to travel from one village to the next, farmers found time to catch up on long-neglected chores, fixing tools and working on their houses. This was also the period of the corve, the labour system by which it is thought many civic projects were built, among them the pyramids, the canal cut through from the Nile to the Red Sea and, in the 19th century, the Suez Canal.

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Even when the old gods were long dead, and roads and railways ran alongside the river, the Nile exerted its magic and its power. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was the way in which foreigners uncovered the mysteries of the past, sailing upriver when the winds blew from the north, and finding themselves face to face with unimaginable splendour. Even then, Egyptians clung to their habits and their dependence on the river. In the 1830s, the British Orientalist Edward Lane recorded that 17 June was still called the Night of the Drop. It is believed, he wrote, that a miraculous drop then falls into the Nile; and causes it to rise. Lane also recorded the custom of creating a figure of a girl, the Bride of the Nile, out of mud, which was then washed away as the river rose, an echo of an ancient ceremony in which effigies and perhaps also young women were sacrificed to the rising river.

Exactly 100 years later, in 1934, the Egyptologist Margaret Murray spent a mid-September night in a Coptic village, celebrating the night of the high Nile, giving thanks to the Ruler of the river, no longer Osiris, but Christ; and as of old they pray for a blessing upon their children and their homes.

This kind of spiritual bond with the river was broken when dams and barrages stopped the annual flood. But Egyptians, whether they live along the river or in one of the new satellite cities in the desert, remain as dependent as ever. Now, instead of praying to the Ruler of the river, they put their faith in engineers, who, like kings of old, help them make the most of the water, and in politicians who are currently renegotiating water-sharing agreements with Nile-basin neighbours. But wherever they pin their hopes, they know that as ever their happiness, their very existence, depends on water flowing past Aswan on its way to the Mediterranean.

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Coptic tradition states that Christianity arrived in Egypt in AD 45 in the form of St Mark. The story goes that St Mark, originally from Cyrene in modern-day Libya, was in Alexandria when his sandal broke. He took it to a cobbler, Ananias, who hurt his hand while working on the sandal and shouted O One God, at which St Mark recognised his first convert to the new religion. While there is no way to prove the story, there is no denying the basic truth that Christianity arrived early in Egypt, direct from Palestine.

The country had long been open to foreign religious influences and nowhere more so than Alexandria. At the height of their power, ancient Egyptians had exported their religions Amun of Thebes was known and feared throughout the Mediterranean. And even in times of weakness, the cult of the goddess Isis spread throughout the Roman Empire. But Egyptians were also open to foreign religious ideas. The Persians did little to impose their gods on the country when they sacked Thebes in the 6th century BC and made Egypt part of their empire. Two centuries later, Alexander the Great viewed things differently, at least in the north of the country, for while he built shrines to Amun at Karnak and was happy to be welcomed as pharaoh by the priests at Memphis, he also encouraged Greeks and Jews to bring their gods to his new city. Alexandria under the Macedonians successors, the Ptolemies, became a centre for multiculturalism, where people of many different beliefs and religions lived and worshipped side by side.

It wasnt always a happy coexistence. The citys history is scarred by fights between devotees of different religions, as St Mark discovered to his cost: he was executed for speaking out against the worship of the citys pagan god Serapis. And at times, decrees came from Rome that litigated against Christians, the worst coming from Emperor Diocletian. The persecution was so extreme and cost so many lives (some Coptic historians have estimated 144, 000) that the Coptic Church calendar, the Era of Martyrs, begins with the year of Diocletians accession, AD 284. But change was not far away.

In AD 293, Diocletian found himself sharing power with Constantine. In 312, just as Constantine went into battle against his opponents, he had a vision of a cross blazing in the sky, on which was written, In this conquer. When he emerged victorious, becoming ruler of the empire, Constantine converted to Christianity and, in 324, made Christianity the imperial religion.

By then, Egypts Christians had absorbed much from both the form and the content of the ancient pagan religion. It is impossible to make direct parallels, but the rise of the cult of Mary appears to have been influenced by the popularity of Isis: both were said to have conceived through divine intervention. According to the late Coptic musicologist Dr Ragheb Moftah, the way in which the Coptic liturgy was performed seems to have evolved from ancient rites and in it, even today, we can hear an echo of ancient Egypts rituals. Even the physical structure of Coptic churches echoes the layout of earlier pagan temples in the use of three different sacred spaces, the innermost one containing the altar reserved for priests. This is hidden from the rest of the congregation by the iconostasis, with its images of saints, just as ancient priests were hidden behind walls decorated with gods and pharaohs.

The early need to hold hidden prayer, the desire to follow Jesus example of retreat from the world, the increasing difficulty of reconciling spiritual values with the demands and temptations of urban life, and perhaps also the memory of pagan hermits, led some Christians to leave the Nile Valley and to seek a spiritual purity in the desert. The man credited with being the first is St Paul, born in Alexandria in AD 228, who is said to have fled to the Eastern Desert to escape persecution and died there in AD 343. Although there are 5th-century accounts of the man, there is still some controversy as to whether St Paul existed. There is no such problem with the man he is said to have inspired.

St Anthony was the son of wealthy landowners, but found himself orphaned at an early age. As an adult, he sold his inheritance, gave the proceeds to the poor and retreated to the desert near St Paul. Other Christians soon followed, inspired by his example and perhaps also to escape persecution. The hermit moved further up into the hills, hiding alone in a cave, while leaving his followers to a life of collective retreat a first monastery in the valley below. Although there may have been earlier religious communities in the desert, especially one in Palestine, Copts credit St Anthony with creating a new way of life that sought salvation through retreat. It was left to St Pachomius, born around AD 285, to order the life of these hermits into what we would now recognise as monasteries, which has proved to be one of the most important movements in Christianity.

Egypts Christians played a decisive role in the evolution of the young religion. In a series of meetings with Christians from across the empire, Copts argued over the nature of divinity, the duties of a Christian, the correct way to pray and many other aspects of religious life. In one matter in particular, Copts found themselves isolated. Many Christians argued that, as Jesus was born, there must have been a time when he was not divine and part of God. The Coptic clergy, particularly one Athanasius, argued that this idea of a dual nature was a throwback to polytheism. The crunch came in 325 at a council in Nicea, organised by the emperor, at which the Alexandrians triumphed: the Nicene Creed stated unequivocally that Father and Son are one. With this success, Alexandria confirmed its status as the centre of Mediterranean culture.

In 391, Emperor Theodosius issued an edict that banned people from visiting pagan temples, but also even looking at pagan statues. While the edict was ignored in some places, it was taken seriously in Alexandria, where the Temple of Serapis still stood in the city centre. The golden statue of the god remained in his sanctuary, adored by the faithful, until the Christian patriarch of Alexandria stirred a crowd and led them in an attack on the temple: the god was toppled from his plinth proving false the prophets who foresaw doom should he be damaged and then dragged through the streets and burned. The crowd also set fire to the temple library, a store of some three or four hundred scrolls, which had been one of the largest collections in the world, since the Alexandrian mother library had been burned during an attack by Julius Caesar. The patriarch then built a church over the ruins.

Constantine had moved his capital to the city of Byzantium, renamed Constantinople (now Istanbul), in 330 and from that moment power seeped from Alexandria. More than a century later, in 451, the Egyptians were officially sidelined at the Council of Chalcedon. Refusing to accept that Jesus had one person but two natures, which again seemed a revival of polytheism, the Egyptians split with the rest of Christianity, their patriarch was excommunicated and soon after Alexandria was sacked.

Yet in spite of the religious split, Egypt was still part of the Byzantine Empire, ruled by a foreign governor and its fortunes were tied to the empire. This caused ever-greater tension, which peaked in the reign of Emperor Justinian (528565). Alexandrians stoned the emperors governor, who retaliated by sending his army to punish the people. In 629, a messenger travelled to the emperor in Byzantium from Arabia. He had been sent by a man named Mohamed, to reveal a new religion, Islam. The messenger was murdered on the way. Ten years later, Arab armies invaded Egypt.

Under their brilliant leader Amr ibn al-As, the Arabs swept through a badly defended and ill-prepared Egypt, defeated the Byzantine army near Babylon and found the gates of Alexandria opened to them without a fight.

Amr didnt force Egyptians to convert to the new religion, but did levy a tax on unbelievers and showed preference to those who did convert. Slowly, inevitably, the population turned, although how fast is open to dispute. Eventually, however, some monasteries emptied and Coptic writing and language, the last version of the language of the pharaohs, stopped being spoken in public. Christian communities remained strongest in the new capital, Cairo, and in the valley south as far as the ancient capital, Thebes (Luxor). Increasingly Christians also fell back on the monasteries. In places such as Wadi Natrun and studded along the Nile Valley, monastic communities hid behind their high walls, preserving the old language, the old traditions and, in their libraries, some of the old wisdom.

By the middle of the 19th century, even the monasteries were under threat and European travellers sailing up the Nile were shocked to discover monks swimming naked up to their boats to beg for food and money. The decline continued until the 20th century. By then, only around 10% of Egyptians were Christians and the great monasteries were at their lowest ebb. Ironically it has responded to threats by enjoying something of a revival. Modernising influences in the early 20th century sparked a cultural renewal that breathed new life into, among other things, the long-defunct tradition of icon painting. Islamist violence aimed at Copts in the 1980s and 1990s had the effect of significantly increasing the number of monks. At St Anthonys Monastery it rose from 24 in 1960 to 69 in 1986, in St Bishoi from 12 to 115. But the majority of Christians in Egypt still live in towns and cities along the Nile, still coping with continual threat from Muslim extremists, still cut off from the rest of the worlds Christians and still, as ever, proud of their claim to be the true heirs of ancient Egypt.

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Every Egyptian army had its contingent of foreign soldiers, sometimes mercenaries, often slaves. When Psammetichus II sent an expedition into Nubia in 593 BC, a large contingent of Greek mercenaries went with them and left graffiti on the walls of Abu Simbel to tell us about it. In fact, no ruler of Egypt seems ever to have embarked on a large-scale campaign without foreign fighters. And often even the rulers were foreign Macedonians like Ptolemy I (323283 BC), Romans like Octavian (30 BCAD 14) and even Kurds such as Salah ad-Din (117193), the Saladin of Crusader fame.

Saladin had created a dynasty, the Ayyubids, and reinstated Sunni Islam after the Shia rule of the Fatamids (9691171). One of the last rulers of his dynasty, a man named Sultan As-Salih, brought the innovation of a permanent Turkic slave-soldier class. Most sultans relied on friends and relatives to provide a measure of security. As-Salih was so despised by all that he thought it wise to provide his own protection and did so by purchasing a large number of slaves from the land between the Urals and the Caspian. These men were freed on arrival in Egypt their name, Mamluks, means owned or slave and formed into a warrior class, which came to rule Egypt.

Mamluks owed their allegiance not to a blood line but to their original owner, the emir. New purchases maintained the groups. There was no system of hereditary lineage; instead it was rule by the strongest. Rare was the sultan who died of old age. Natural born soldiers, Mamluks fought a series of successful campaigns that gave Egypt control of all of Palestine and Syria, the Hejaz and much of north Africa, the largest Islamic empire of the late Middle Ages. Because they were forbidden to bequeath their wealth, Mamluks built on a grand scale, endowing Cairo with the most exquisite mosques, schools and tombs. During their 267-year reign (12501517), the city was the intellectual and cultural centre of the Islamic world.

The contradictions in the Mamluk constitution are typified in the figure of Sultan Qaitbey, who was bought as a slave-boy by one sultan and witnessed the brief reigns of nine more before clawing his way to power. As sultan he rapaciously taxed all his subjects and dealt out vicious punishments with his own hands, once tearing out the eyes and tongue of a court chemist who had failed to transform lead into gold. Yet Qaitbey marked his ruthless sultanship with some of Cairos most beautiful monuments, notably his mosque, which stands in the Northern Cemetery.

The funding for the Mamluks great buildings came from trade. A canal existed that connected the Red Sea with the Nile at Cairo, and thus the Mediterranean, forming a vital link in the busy commercial route between Europe and India and the Orient. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Mamluks worked with the Venetians to control eastwest trade and both grew fabulously rich from it.

The end of these fabled days came about for two reasons at the beginning of the 16th century: Vasco da Gamas discovery of the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope freed European merchants from the heavy taxes charged by Cairo; and the Ottoman Turks emerged as a mighty new force, looking to unify the Muslim world. In 1516 the Mamluks, under the command of their penultimate sultan Al-Ghouri, were obliged to meet the Turkish threat. The battle, which took place at Aleppo in Syria, resulted in complete defeat for the Mamluks. In January of the following year the Turkish sultan Selim I entered Cairo and although the Mamluks remained in power in Egypt, they never again enjoyed their former prominence or autonomy.

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The story of ancient Egypt is the story of Egypts relationships with its neighbours, for its wealth attracted some and its strategic location on the Mediterranean and Red Seas, and on the trade routes between Africa and Asia, attracted others. When it was strong, it controlled the gold of Nubia and the trade route across the Levant not for nothing was the image of Ramses II crushing the Hittites at Kadesh splashed across so many temple walls. When it was weak, it caught the attention of the power of the moment. In 663, the Assyrian leader Ashurbanipal sacked Thebes. A century later the Persians were in control of the Nile. In 331 BC, Alexander the Great moved against the Egyptians and incorporated them into his Hellenic empire. In 30 BC, Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus Caesar, annexed the country as his own property. Arab armies stormed through in the 7th century AD just as Ottoman ones did in the 16th century. But by the end of the 18th century, the arrival of Europeans heralded the start of a very different age.

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When Napoleon and his musket-armed forces blew apart the scimitar-wielding Mamluk cavalry at the Battle of the Pyramids in 1798, which he claimed he was doing with the approval of the Ottoman sultan, he dragged Egypt into the age of geopolitics. For all his professions about wanting to revive Egypts glory, free it from the yoke of tyranny and educate its masses, what he really cared about was striking a blow at Britain. Unable to invade Britain, Napoleon found a way to strike at British interests by capturing Egypt and in the process taking control of the quickest route between Europe and Britains fast-growing empire in the East.

But Napoleon had plans for the newly conquered country. He established a French-style government, revamped the tax system, brought in Africas first printing press, implemented public works projects and introduced new crops and a new system of weights and measures. He also brought 167 scholars and artists, whom he commissioned to make a complete study of Egypts monuments, crafts, arts, flora and fauna, and of its society and people. The resulting work was published as the 24-volume Description de lEgypte, which did much to stimulate the study of Egyptian antiquities.

Napoleons army was less successful than his scholars. A British fleet under Admiral Nelson had been criss crossing the Mediterranean trying to find the French force and on 1 August, just a week after Napoleon had ridden into Cairo, they found them at anchor in Aboukir Bay, off the coast of Alexandria. Only three French warships survived the ensuing Battle of the Nile. Encouraged by the British, the Ottoman sultan then sent an army that was trounced by the French, which put paid to any pretence that the French were in Egypt with the complicity of Constantinople. Relations between the occupied and occupier deteriorated rapidly and uprisings in the capital could only be quashed by shelling that left 3000 Egyptians dead.

When the British landed an army, also at Aboukir, in 1801, the French agreed to an armistice and departed the way they had come.

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The French and then British departure left Egypt politically unstable, a situation that was soon exploited by a lieutenant in an Albanian contingent of the Ottoman army, named Mohammed Ali. Within five years of the French evacuation, he had fought and conspired his way to become pasha (governor) of Egypt. Although he was nominally the vassal of Constantinople, like so many governors before him, he soon realised that the country could be his own.

The sultan in Constantinople was too weak to resist this challenge to his power. And once he had defeated a British force of 5000 men, the only threat to Mohammed Ali could come from the Mamluk beys (leaders). Any danger here was swiftly and viciously dealt with. On 1 March 1811, Mohammed Ali invited some 470 Mamluk beys to the Citadel to feast his sons imminent departure for Mecca. When the feasting was over the Mamluks mounted their lavishly decorated horses and were led in procession down the narrow, high-sided defile below what is now the Police Museum. But as they approached the Bab al-Azab, the great gates were swung closed and gunfire rained down from above. After the fusillades, Mohammed Alis soldiers waded in with swords and axes to finish the job. Legend relates that only one Mamluk escaped alive, leaping over the wall on his horse.

Mohammed Alis reign is pivotal in the history of Egypt. Having watched the old Mamluk army flounder against modern European weapons and tactics, he recognised the need to modernise his new army, as well as his new country. Under his uncompromising rule, Egypt abandoned its medieval-style feudalism and looked to Europe for innovation. In his long reign (he died in 1848), Mohammed Ali modernised the army, built a navy, built roads, cut a new canal linking Alexandria with the Nile, introduced public education, improved irrigation, built a barrage across the Nile and began planting Egypts fields with the valuable cash crop, cotton. His heirs continued the work, implementing reforms and social projects, foremost of which were the building of Africas first railway, opening factories and starting a telegraph and postal system. Egypts fledgling cotton industry boomed as production in the USA was disrupted by civil war, and revenues were directed into ever-grander schemes. Grandest of all was the Suez Canal, which opened in 1869 to great fanfare and an audience that included European royalty, foremost being the Empress Eugenie of France. In the same year that the Khedive (Viceroy) Ismail announced that Egypt was now part of Europe, not Africa, Thomas Cook led the first organised package tour to see the wonders of ancient Egypt. It was the start of an industry that was to become one of Egypts core businesses, mass tourism.

Khedive Ismail had taken on more debt than even Egypts booming economy could handle and European politicians and banks were quick to exploit his growing weakness. Six years after opening the canal, Ismail was forced to sell his controlling share to the British government and soon after that, bankruptcy and British pressure forced him to abdicate. This sort of foreign meddling in Egyptian affairs created great resentment, especially among a group of officers in the Egyptian army, who moved against the new khedive. In 1882, under the pretext of restoring order, the British fleet bombarded Alexandria, and British soldiers defeated a nationalist Egyptian army.

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The British had no desire to make Egypt a colony: their main reason for involvement was to ensure the safety of the Suez Canal. So they allowed the heirs of Mohammed Ali to remain on the throne, while real power was concentrated in the hands of the British Agent, Sir Evelyn Baring. By appointing British advisors to Egyptian ministries and himself advising the khedive, Baring operated what became known as the veiled protectorate, colonisation by another name.

British desire to ensure the safety of their passage to India coloured Egyptian policy for the next few decades. For instance, it became increasingly obvious that controlling Egypt meant controlling the Nile and therefore an Egyptian force was sent to protect that interest in Sudan. When they came up against the Islamist uprising of the Mahdi, and following the death of General Charles Gordon in Khartoum in 1885, British troops became involved on the middle Nile.

The protectorate did much to achieve its ends. The canal was secure, Egypts finances were bolstered, the bureaucracy and infrastructure improved, and there were some social advances, but the fact remained that Egypt and its resources were being used to further British foreign policy. This situation became even more frustrating for Egyptians with the outbreak of WWI. When Turkey, still officially sovereign of Egypt, sided with Germany and against Britain, the British felt the need to make Egypt an official protectorate.

The desire for self-determination was strengthened by the Allies use of the country as a barracks during a war that most Egyptians regarded as having nothing to do with them. Popular national sentiments were articulated by riots in 1919 and, more eloquently, by the likes of Saad Zaghloul, the most brilliant of an emerging breed of young Egyptian politicians, who said of the British, I have no quarrel with them personally but I want to see an independent Egypt. The British allowed the formation of a nationalist political party, called the Wafd (Delegation), and granted Egypt its sovereignty, but this was seen as an empty gesture. King Fuad enjoyed little popularity among his people and the British still kept a tight rein on the administration.

The British and their Allies came to Egypt in ever-greater numbers following the outbreak of WWII. The war wasnt all bad news for the Egyptians, certainly not for shopkeepers and businessmen who saw thousands of Allied soldiers pouring into the towns and cities with money to burn on 48-hour leave from the desert. But there was a vocal element who saw the Germans as potential liberators. Students held rallies in support of Rommel, and a small cabal of Egyptian officers, including future presidents Nasser and Sadat, plotted to aid the German generals advance on their city.

Rommel pushed the Allied forces back almost to Alexandria, which had the British hurriedly burning documents in such quantity that the skies over Cairo turned dark with the ash, but the Germans did not break through. Instead, British maintained a military and political presence in Egypt until a day of flames almost seven years after the war.

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On 26 January 1952, Black Saturday, Cairo was set on fire. After years of demonstrations, strikes and riots against foreign rule, an Anglo-Egyptian showdown over a police station in the Suez Canal zone provided the spark that ignited the capital. Shops and businesses owned or frequented by foreigners were torched by mobs and many landmarks of 70 years of British rule were reduced to charred ruins within a day.

But while the smoke cleared, the sense of agitation remained, not just against the British but also against the monarchy that most Egyptians regarded as too easily influenced by the British. King Farouk assumed the monarchy would survive the turmoil because it could count on the support of the Egyptian Army. But a faction within the officer corps, known as the Free Officers, had long been planning a coup. On 20 July 1952, the leader of the Free Officers, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, heard that a new minister of war knew of the group and had planned their arrest. Two nights later, army units loyal to the Free Officers moved on key posts in the capital and by the following morning the monarchy had fallen. King Farouk, descendant of the Albanian Mohammed Ali, departed from Alexandria harbour on the royal yacht on 26 July 1952, leaving Egypt to be ruled by Egyptians for the first time since the pharaohs.

Colonel Nasser became president in elections held in 1956. With the aim of returning some of Egypts wealth to its much-exploited peasantry, but also in an echo of the events of Russia in 1917, the countrys landowners were dispossessed and many of their assets nationalised. Nasser also moved against the countrys huge foreign community and although he did not force them to emigrate, his new measures persuaded many to sell up and ship out.

In the year of his inauguration, Nasser successfully faced down Britain and France in a confrontation over the Suez Canal, which was mostly owned by British and French investors. On 26 July, the fourth anniversary of King Farouks departure, Nasser announced that he had nationalised the Suez Canal to finance the building of a great dam that would control the flooding of the Nile and boost Egyptian agriculture. A combined British, French and Israeli invasion force, intended to take possession of the canal, resulted in diplomatic embarrassment and undignified retreat after the UN and US applied pressure. Nasser emerged from the conflict a hero of the developing world, a sort of Robin Hood and Ramses rolled into one, and the man who had finally and publicly shaken off the colonial yoke.

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Nassers show of strength in 1956 led to many years of drum-beating and antagonism between Egypt and its Arab friends, and their unwelcome neighbour Israel. On June 1967 Israel launched a surprise attack and destroyed Egypts air force before it even got into the air. With it went the confidence and credibility of Nasser and his nation.

Relations with Israel had been hostile ever since its founding in 1948. Egypt had sent soldiers to fight alongside Palestinians against the newly proclaimed Jewish state and ended up on the losing side. Since that time, the Arabs had kept up a barrage of anti-Zionist rhetoric. Although privately Nasser acknowledged that the Arabs would probably lose another war against Israel, for public consumption he gave rabble-rousing speeches about liberating Palestine. But he was a skilled orator and by early 1967 the mood engendered throughout the Arab world by these speeches was beginning to catch up with him. Soon other Arab leaders started to accuse him of cowardice and of hiding behind the UN troops stationed in Sinai since the Suez Crisis. Nasser responded by ordering the peacekeepers out and blockading the Strait of Tiran, effectively closing the southern Israeli port of Eilat. He gave Israel reassurances that he wasnt going to attack but meanwhile massed his forces east of Suez. Israel struck first.

When the shooting stopped six days later, Israel controlled all of the Sinai Peninsula and had closed the Suez Canal (which didnt reopen for another eight years). A humiliated Nasser offered to resign, but in a spontaneous outpouring of support, the Egyptian people wouldnt accept this move and he remained in office. However, it was to be for only another three years; abruptly in November 1970, the president died of a heart attack.

Anwar Sadat, another of the Free Officers and Egypts next president, instigated a reversal of foreign policy. Nasser had looked to the Soviet Union for inspiration, but Sadat looked to the US, swapping socialist principles for capitalist opportunism. Having kept a low profile for a decade and a half, the wealthy resurfaced and were joined by a large, new, moneyed middle class who grew rich on the back of Sadats much-touted al-infitah (open door policy). Sadat also believed that to revitalise Egypts economy he would have to deal with Israel. But first he needed bargaining power, a basis for negotiations.

On 6 October 1973, the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, Egypt launched a surprise attack across the Suez Canal. Its army beat back Israels superior forces and crossed their supposedly impregnable line of fortifications. Although these initial gains were later reversed, Egypts national pride was restored and Sadats negotiating strategy had succeeded.

In November 1977, a time when Arab leaders still refused to talk publicly to Israel, Sadat travelled to Jerusalem to negotiate a peace treaty with Israel. The following year, he and the Israeli premier signed the Camp David Agreement in which Israel agreed to withdraw from Sinai in return for Egyptian recognition of Israels right to exist. There was shock in the Arab world, where Sadats rejection of Nassers pan-Arabist principles was seen as a betrayal. As a result, Egypt lost much prestige among the Arabs, who moved the HQ of the Arab League out of Cairo, and Sadat lost his life. On 6 October 1981, at a parade commemorating the 1973 War, one of his soldiers, a member of an Islamist group, broke from the marching ranks and sprayed the presidential stand with gunfire. Sadat was killed instantly.

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Sadat was succeeded by another of the Free Officers, Hosni Mubarak, a former airforce general and vice president. Less flamboyant than Sadat and less charismatic than Nasser, Mubarak has been called unimaginative and indecisive, but for a long period he managed to carry out a balancing act on several fronts, abroad and at home. To the irritation of more hard-line states such as Syria and Libya, Mubarak rehabilitated Egypt in the eyes of the Arab world without abandoning the treaty with Israel. At the same time, he managed to keep the lid on the Islamist extremists at home. In the early 1990s the lid blew off.

Despite their use of religion, Egypts Islamist groups are part of a political response to harsh socio-economic conditions. More than 30 years after the revolution, government promises had failed to keep up with the population explosion and a generation of youths was living in squalid, overcrowded housing, without jobs and with little or no hope for the future. With a repressive political system that allowed little chance to voice legitimate opposition, the only hope lay with Islamist parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood and their calls for change. Denied recognition by the state as a legal political entity, in the 1980s and 1990s the Islamists turned to force. There were frequent attempts on the life of the president and his ministers, and clashes with the security forces. The matter escalated from a domestic issue to a matter of international concern when Islamists began to target one of the states most vulnerable and valuable sources of income: tourists.

Several groups of foreign tourists were shot at, bombed or otherwise assaulted throughout the 1990s, most horrifically in 1997 with the sickening one-two of the fire-bomb attack on a tour bus outside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, followed a few weeks later by the massacre of holidaymakers at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor by members of the Gamaa al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group), a Muslim Brotherhood splinter group.

The brutality of the massacre and its success at deterring foreign visitors destroyed grass-roots support for militants and the Muslim Brotherhood declared a ceasefire the following year. Things were relatively quiet until October 2004, when bombs at Taba, on the border with Israel, and the nearby Ras Shaytan camp, killed 34 and signalled the start of an unsettled 12 months.

In 2005 President Mubarak bowed to growing international pressure to bring the countrys political system in line with Western-style democracy, and proposed a constitutional amendment (subsequently approved by parliament and ratified at a national referendum) that aimed to introduce direct and competitive presidential elections. While some pundits saw this as a step in the right direction, others suspected it was a sham, particularly as popular opposition groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood were still banned and other independent candidates were required to have the backing of at least 65 members of the lower house of parliament. As the lower house was dominated by the National Democratic Party (NDP), the possibility of real change was slight. When the Kifaya! (Enough!) coalition of opposition groups protested at these restrictions, security forces cracked down. Ayman Nour, the leader of the popular Ghad (Tomorrow) party, was jailed on what many claimed were trumped-up charges and opposition rallies around the country were violently dispersed.

At this stage the banned Muslim Brotherhood began holding its own rallies and there were two isolated terrorist incidents in Cairo aimed at foreign tourists, both carried out by members of the same pro-Islamist family. Soon afterwards, three bombs at the popular beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh claimed the lives of 88 people, most of them Egyptian. Various groups claimed responsibility, tourism took an immediate hit and Egyptians braced themselves for the possibility of further terrorist incursions and domestic unrest.

President Mubarak won the 2005 election with 89% of the vote, though with a turnout of just 23% of the 32 million registered voters, he could hardly claim to have a popular mandate. Even then, opposition parties and candidates (including Ayman Nour) alleged that the vote had been rigged and that the result was invalid.

They were even more concerned when subsequent parliamentary elections in November 2005 were marred by widespread allegations that pro-government supporters had physically prevented some voters from entering polling booths and voting for Brotherhood-aligned independent candidates. Even after these intimidation tactics, the Muslim Brotherhood independents managed to win an extraordinary 88 seats in the 444-seat national parliament (six times the number that they had previously held), making the Brotherhood a major player on the national political scene despite its officially illegal status.

Fast forward seven years and the political landscape of Egypt has changed beyond recognition. Fed by a wave of unrest that began in Tunisia and swept through the Arabic-speaking world, mounting popular anger at the Mubarak regime lead to huge anti-government demonstrations and violence in Cairo's Tahrir Square in January 2011. Murabak was not only forced to step down, but also arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment over deaths during the demonstrations.

An interim military administration took charge, but their promised 'quick' transition to democracy took more than a year, with the later-annulled parliamentary elections taking place in December 2011 and January 2012, and the presidential poll in May and June. The victory of the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate, Mohammed Mursi, caused concern about the prospects for democratic gains, the status of Coptic Christians and women, and the crucial tourism industry.

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History of Egypt - Lonely Planet Travel Information

The Diaspora | Jewish Virtual Library

Posted By on October 5, 2015

The Jewish state comes to an end in 70 AD, when the Romans begin to actively drive Jews from the home they had lived in for over a millennium. But the Jewish Diaspora ("diaspora" ="dispersion, scattering") had begun long before the Romans had even dreamed of Judaea. When the Assyrians conquered Israel in 722, the Hebrew inhabitants were scattered all over the Middle East; these early victims of the dispersion disappeared utterly from the pages of history. However, when Nebuchadnezzar deported the Judaeans in 597 and 586 BC, he allowed them to remain in a unified community in Babylon. Another group of Judaeans fled to Egypt, where they settled in the Nile delta. So from 597 onwards, there were three distinct groups of Hebrews: a group in Babylon and other parts of the Middle East, a group in Judaea, and another group in Egypt. Thus, 597 is considered the beginning date of the Jewish Diaspora. While Cyrus the Persian allowed the Judaeans to return to their homeland in 538 BC, most chose to remain in Babylon. A large number of Jews in Egypt became mercenaries in Upper Egypt on an island called the Elephantine. All of these Jews retained their religion, identity, and social customs; both under the Persians and the Greeks, they were allowed to run their lives under their own laws. Some converted to other religions; still others combined the Yahweh cult with local cults; but the majority clung to the Hebraic religion and its new-found core document, the Torah.

In 63 BC, Judaea became a protectorate of Rome. Coming under the administration of a governor, Judaea was allowed a king; the governor's business was to regulate trade and maximize tax revenue. While the Jews despised the Greeks, the Romans were a nightmare. Governorships were bought at high prices; the governors would attempt to squeeze as much revenue as possible from their regions and pocket as much as they could. Even with a Jewish king, the Judaeans revolted in 70 AD, a desperate revolt that ended tragically. In 73 AD, the last of the revolutionaries were holed up in a mountain fort called Masada; the Romans had besieged the fort for two years, and the 1,000 men, women, and children inside were beginning to starve. In desperation, the Jewish revolutionaries killed themselves rather than surrender to the Romans. The Romans then destroyed Jerusalem, annexed Judaea as a Roman province, and systematically drove the Jews from Palestine. After 73 AD, Hebrew history would only be the history of the Diaspora as the Jews and their world view spread over Africa, Asia, and Europe.

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The Diaspora | Jewish Virtual Library

The African Diaspora

Posted By on October 5, 2015

Africa And The Africans In The Age Of The Atlantic Slave Trade Author: Stearns, Peter N.;Adas, Michael;Schwartz, Stuart B. Date: 1992

The African Diaspora

The slave trade was the means by which the history of the Americas and Africa became linked and a principal way in which African societies were drawn into the world economy. The import into Africa of European firearms, Indian textiles, Indonesian cowrie shells, and American tobacco in return for African ivory, gold, and especially slaves demonstrated Africa's integration into the mercantile structure of the world. Africans involved in the trade learned to deal effectively with this situation. The price of slaves rose steadily in the 18th century and the terms of trade increasingly favored African dealers. In many African ports, such as Whydah, Porto Novo, and Luanda, an African or Afro-European community developed that specialized in the slave trade and used their position as middlemen to advantage.

Slave Lives

For those carried in the trade, such considerations had little meaning. For them slavery meant destruction of their villages or capture in war, separation from friends and family, and then the forced march to an interior trading town or to the slave pens at the towns or forts of the coast. Conditions during the process were deadly and perhaps as many as one-third of the captives died along the way or in the slave pens. Eventually the slaves were loaded onto the ships. Cargo size varied and could go as high as 700 slaves packed and crowded into the dank, unhealthy conditions of the slave ships, but most cargoes were smaller and overcrowding was less of a factor in mortality than the length of the voyage or the point of origin in Africa - the Bights of Benin and Biafra being particularly unhealthy. The average rate of mortality for slaves varied over time but ran at about 18 to 20 percent until the 18th century when it declined somewhat. Still, on individual ships losses could be catastrophic, as on a Dutch ship of 1737 where 700 of the 716 slaves perished on the voyage.

The so-called Middle Passage, or slave voyage to the Americas, was a traumatic experience for the slaves. Taken from their homes, branded, confined, and shackled, they faced not only the dangers of poor hygiene, dysentery, disease, and bad treatment, but also the fear of being eaten or worse by the Europeans. Their situation led sometimes to suicide or to resistance and mutiny on the ships. However traumatic, the Middle Passage certainly did not strip Africans of their culture, and they arrived in the Americas with their languages, beliefs, artistic traditions, and strong memories of their past.

Africans In America

The destination of the slaves carried across the Atlantic was principally the plantations and mines of America. Landed estates using large amounts of often coerced labor became characteristic of American agriculture, at first in the production of sugar, and later for rice, cotton, and tobacco. The plantation system already used for producing sugar on the Atlantic islands of Spain and Portugal was transferred to the New World. After attempts to use Indian laborers in places like Brazil and Hispaniola, Africans were brought in. West Africans, in fact, coming from societies in which herding, metallurgy, and intensive agriculture were widely practiced were sought by Europeans for the specialized tasks of making sugar. In the English colonies of Barbados and Virginia, indentured servants from England were eventually replaced by enslaved ofricans when either new crops, such as sugar, were introduced or when indentured servants became less available. In any case, the plantation system of farming with a dependent or enslaved work force characterized the production of many tropical and semitropical crops in demand in Europe, and thus the plantation became the locus of African and Afro-American life.

Slaves did many other things as well. As we saw in Chapter 24, gold mining in Brazil made extensive use of black slaves and the Spanish used slaves in the silver mines of Mexico. Urban slavery was characteristic of Latin American cities, where slaves were often artisans, street vendors, and household servants. In early 17th century Lima, Peru, capital of Spain's colony in South America, blacks outnumbered Europeans. Later cities, such as Charleston and New Orleans, would also develop a large slave and free Afro-American population. In short, there was virtually no occupation that slaves did not perform, although the vast majority lived their lives as agricultural laborers.

American Slave Societies

Each American slave-based society reflected the variations of its European origin and its component African cultures, but there were certain similarities and common features. Each recognized distinctions between African-born "salt water" slaves who were almost invariably black (by European standards) and their American-born descendants, the Creole slaves, some of whom were mulattoes as a result of sexual exploitation of slave women or the process of miscegenation. In all the American slave societies, a hierarchy of status evolved in which free whites were at the top, slaves were at the bottom, and free people of color had an intermediate position. In this sense color and "race" played a role in American slavery it had not played in Africa. Among the slaves, slaveholders also created a hierarchy based on origin and color. Creole and especially mulatto slaves were given more opportunities to acquire skilled jobs or to work in the house as servants rather than in the fields or mines. They were also more likely to win their freedom by manumission.

This system of hierarchy was a creation of the slaveholders and did not necessarily reflect perceptions among the slaves. There is evidence that important African nobles or religious leaders, who for one reason or another were sold into slavery, continued to exercise authority within the slave community. Still, the distinctions between Creole and African slaves tended to divide that community, as did the distinctions between different African groups who maintained their ties and affiliations in America. Many of the slave rebellions in the Caribbean and Brazil were organized along African rebellions in the 18th century and the largest escaped-slave community in 17th century Brazil was apparently organized and led by Angolans.

While economic organization and European concepts of hierarchy imposed a certain similarity in the various colonies in which Africans formed a part, the slave-based societies also varied in their composition. In the 18th century, for example, on the Caribbean islands where the Indian population had died out or had been exterminated and where few Europeans settled, Africans and their descendants formed the vast majority. In Jamaica and St. Domingue, slaves made up over 80 percent of the population, and because mortality levels were so high, a large proportion were African-born. Brazil also had large numbers of imported Africans, but its more diverse population and economy, as well as a tradition of manumitting slaves and high levels of miscegenation, meant that slaves made up only about 35 percent of the population. Free people of color, the descendants of former slaves, however, made up about another one-third, so that together slaves and free colored constituted two-thirds of the total population.

The Caribbean and Brazil differed significantly from the southern colonies of British North America, which depended less on imported Africans because of a positive rate of growth among the slave population. There, Creoles predominated but manumission was less common and free people of color were less than ten percent of the total Afro- American origin. The result was that slavery in North America was less influenced directly by Africa: By the mid-18th century, the slave population in most places in North America was reproducing itself. By 1850 less than one percent of the slaves there were African-born. The combination of natural growth and the relatively small direct trade from Africa reduced the degree of African cultural reinforcement in comparison with Cuba or Brazil.

The People And Gods In exile

Africans brought as slaves to America faced a peculiar series of problems. Working conditions were exhausting and life for most slaves was often "nasty, brutish, and short." Family formation was made difficult because of the general shortage of women carried in the slave trade, a situation made even worse where the ratio of men to women was sometimes as much as three to one. To this was added the insecurity of slave status in which family members might be separated by sale or by the masters' whim. Still, most slaves lived in family units even if their marriages were not always sanctioned by the religion of their masters.

Throughout the Americas, wherever Africans were brought, aspects of their language, religion, artistic sensibilities, and other elements of culture survived. To some extent the amount of continuity depended on the intensity and volume of the slave trade from a particular area. Yoruba culture, for example, was particularly strong in northeastern Brazil because the trade between it and the Bight of Benin was heavy and continuous in the early 19th century. During certain periods, Akan peoples predominated in Jamaica, while Ewe or Dahomeans predominated in Haiti. Some slaveholders tried to mix up the slaves on their plantations so that strong African identities would be lost, but colonial dependence on slavers who dealt continually with the same region tended to undercut such policies. In the reality of slavery in the Americas, Africans had to adapt and change and to incorporate other African peoples and their ideas and customs. Moreover, there were also the ways and customs of the masters that were both imposed and adopted. Thus, what emerged as Afro-American culture reflected specific African roots adapted to a new reality. Afro-American culture was dynamic and creative in this sense.

Religion was an obvious example of continuity and adaptation. Slaves were converted to Catholicism by Spaniards and Portuguese, and slaves were capable of fervent devotion as members of Black Catholic brotherhoods some of which were organized by African origins. Still, African religious ideas and practices did not die out, and many African slaves were accused of "witchcraft" by the Inquisition in those colonies. In the English islands, obeah was the name given to the African religious practices, and the men and women knowledgeable in them were held in high regard within the community. In Brazilian candomble (Yoruba) and Haitian Vodun (Aja), rather fully developed versions of African religion flourished and continue until the present, despite attempts to suppress them.

The reality of the Middle Passage meant that religious ideas and concepts were easier to transfer than the institutional aspects of religion. Without religious specialists or a priestly class, aspects of African religions were changed or transformed by contact with other African peoples as well as with colonial society. In many cases slaves held their new faith in Christianity and their African beliefs at the same time, and sought to fuse the two. For Muslim Africans this was less possible. In 1835 in Bahia, the largest slave rebellion in Brazil was organized by Muslim Yoruba and Hausa slaves and directed against the whites and against nonbelievers.

Resistance and rebellion were other aspects of African- American history. Recalcitrance, running away, and direct confrontation were present wherever slaves were held. As early as 1508 African runaways disrupted communications on Hispaniola, and in 1527 a plot to rebel was uncovered in Mexico City. Throughout the Americas communities of runaway slaves formed. In Jamaica, Colombia, Venezuela, Haiti, and Brazil runaway communities were continuous and persistent. In Brazil, during the 17th century, Palmares, an enormous runaway slave kingdom with numerous villages and a population of perhaps 8,000 to 10,000 people, resisted Portuguese and Dutch attempts to destroy it for a century. Although its inhabitants were both Creoles and Africans of various backgrounds, its origins, organization, and leadership were Angolan. In Jamaica, the runaway "Maroons" were able to gain some independence and a recognition of their freedom. So-called ethnic slave rebellions organized by a particular African group were relatively common in the Caribbean and Brazil in the 18th century. In North America where reinforcement from the slave trade was less important, resistance was also important, but it was based less on African origins or ethnicities.

Perhaps, the most remarkable story of African American resistance is found in the forests of Suriname, a former Dutch plantation colony. There large numbers of slaves ran off in the 18th century and mounted an almost perpetual war in the rain forest against the various expeditions sent to hunt them down. Those captured were brutally executed, but eventually a truce developed. Today about 50,000 Maroon descendants still live in Suriname and French Guiana. The Suriname Maroons maintained many aspects of their West African background in terms of language, kinship relations, and religious beliefs, but these were fused with new forms and ways drawn from European and American Indian contacts resulting from their New World experience. From this fusion based on their own creativity, a truly Afro-American culture was created.

Africa And The End Of The Slave Trade

The end of the Atlantic slave trade and the abolition of slavery in the Atlantic world resulted from economic, political, and religious changes in Europe and in its overseas American colonies and former colonies. These changes, which were manifestations of the Enlightenment, the Age of Revolution, Christian revivalism, and perhaps the Industrial Revolution, were basically external to Africa but once again they determined the pace and nature of transformations within the African continent.

Like much else about the history of slavery, there is considerable disagreement about the end of the slave trade. It is true that some African societies began to export new "legitimate" commodities, such as peanuts, cotton, and palm oil, which made their dependence on the slave trade less important, but the supply of slaves to European merchants was not greatly affected by this development. In general, the British plantation economies were booming in the period from 1790 to 1830, and plantations in Cuba, Brazil, and the South of the United States flourished in the following decades. Thus, it is difficult to find a direct and simple link between economic self-interest and the movement to suppress the slave trade.

Opponents of slavery and the brutality of the trade had appeared in the mid-18th century, in relation to new intellectual movements in the West. The philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau in France and the political economist Adam Smith in England had both written against it. Whereas in ancient Rome during the spread of Christianity and Islam or in 16th century Europe, enslavement of "barbarians" or nonbelievers was viewed as a positive benefit, a means to civilize others. Slavery during the European Enlightenment and bourgeois revolution came to be viewed as unprogressive, retrograde, and immoral. The slave trade was particularly criticized. It was the symbol of slavery's inhumanity and cruelty.

England, as the major maritime power of the period, was the key to the end of the slave trade. Under the leadership of religious humanitarians, such as John Wesley and William Wilberforce, an abolitionist movement gained strength against its opponents made up of merchants and the "West Indies interests." After considerable parliamentary debate, the British slave trade was abolished in 1807. Having set out on this course, Britain sought to impose abolition of the slave trade on other countries throughout the Atlantic. Spain and Portugal were pressured to gradual suppression, and the British navy was used as a means to enforce these agreements by capturing illegal slave ships, though the full end of slavery in the Americas occurred only in 1888.

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The African Diaspora

Anne Frank the Writer | An Unfinished Story

Posted By on October 5, 2015

Anne Frank the Writer: An Unfinished Story is a joint exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and The Netherlands Institute For War Documentation, in association with the Anne Frank-Fonds and with support from The Anne Frank House.

It was made possible through the generous support of Eric and Lore Ross and Arthur and Toni Rock, with additional support from the Gonda Family Foundation and the Nathanson Family Foundation. The Museums exhibitions are also supported by the Lester Robbins and Sheila Johnson Robbins Traveling and Special Exhibition Fund, established in 1990.

Museum Statement on the passing of Miep Gies

Buddy Elias, Anne's closest living relative, describes Anne's personality and Otto Frank's dedication to her writings.

Use the zoom tool to get a close-up view of Anne's writings.

Sara J. Bloomfield, exhibition co-curator and director of the Museum, and Klaus Mller, co-curator, describe the exhibition and the importance of Anne's story.

Resources related to Anne Frank.

Do you remember the first time you read the Diary of Anne Frank? Do you have questions or comments?

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Anne Frank the Writer | An Unfinished Story

The First-Ever Raising of Palestine’s Flag at the U.N. Is …

Posted By on October 5, 2015

Pacific Press via Getty Images

Tomorrow, the Palestinian flag will be raised for the first time at the United Nations headquarters in New York and at other U.N. offices around the world. The sense of pride among the Palestinian people was overwhelming the day the world voted in favor of this landmark initiative. I am certain that the day our flag rises among the flags of the community of nations will also be a most emotional and proud day.

The General Assembly's vote confirmed again that we, the people of Palestine, are not alone in our quest for freedom, fulfillment of our rights and an end to decades of Israeli occupation and oppression. On September 30, we will raise our flag in a peaceful gesture that will remind all that justice and independence is ultimately possible. To get to this destination, we need the support of our friends around the world and the leadership of the U.N.

As the U.N. this year marks its 70th anniversary, its longest-standing, unresolved issue is the question of Palestine. For more than 68 years, my people have been denied their rights and denied freedom. In 1948, we were cast out of our places of birth and those of our ancestors; our homes and heritage were destroyed; we were expelled or fled into exile to what were to be temporary camps until the conflict and question of Palestinian statehood were resolved.

Today, Palestinians remain in exile, with over five million refugees denied their right to return. An illegal, oppressive Israeli occupation denies basic human rights, including the right of people to self-determination and freedom -- a foundational principle of the U.N. But the Palestinian people have not given up hope and have not given up their rightful and just quest to live in independence and peace in our homeland.

Hope is the power that helps my people endure and overcome the horrors we have too often faced. Many have compared living in Palestine to apartheid. But our situation is even more dire because Israel, the occupying power, is not only executing a system of segregation and subjugation; it persists with the blatant ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their land. While the Israeli government pays lip service to the two-state solution internationally, domestically it employs policies aimed at destroying what's left of Palestine. Israel demolishes our homes, swallows up our land and works at breaking the spirit and will of our people.

In Bethlehem, Israeli checkpoints and an illegal annexation wall cages in people, depriving them of their rights, livelihoods and access to their land. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continue to suffer the wounds of last year's barbaric war as Israel's cruel blockade imprisons the entire population and renders the Strip uninhabitable. In Occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli forces and leaders aid extremist attacks and religious zealots' attempts to assert control over Al Aqsa Mosque and ignite a religious conflict. Palestine refugees across the region are suffering repeated displacement, dispossession and trauma, denied the ability to return home.

Countless events every single day illustrate the ways in which Israel's illegal occupation devastates Palestine. But few recent events resonated with the world, like the arson attack on the Dawabsheh family home. A group of Israeli terrorist settlers smashed the windows of the Dawabsheh home and threw Molotov cocktails inside, immediately burning to death an 18-month-old baby, Ali. Both of Ali's parents have since perished due to third degree burns. More than a month later, their now-orphaned 4-year-old son remains in the hospital. The Israeli government has attempted to disassociate itself from the attack, but the truth is that its pervasive and systematic colonization of Palestine with settlements, messages of intolerance, flouting of international law and culture of impunity not only facilitated that attack but continue to encourage others like it.

Israel's pursuit of reckless policies obstructs any international progress for the two-state solution. I recall the high hopes I felt in 1993 when the Oslo Accords were signed and a five-year deadline set to achieve an end to the occupation and peace and security between the two states, the State of Palestine and Israel. That was 22 years ago. Since then, Israel has failed to negotiate in good faith while entrenching its illegal occupation. Israel is not dedicated to the international community's values of freedom, justice and peace -- let alone the two-state solution and the longstanding parameters underpinning it. It has trampled the Oslo Accords and with it the peace process.

As world leaders gather in New York to commemorate the U.N.'s 70th anniversary, these same leaders must also reflect on the U.N.'s failures. Palestine has languished on the U.N. agenda since the organization's inception. This persistent neglect has cost too many lives, dampened hope, undermined international law and stained the reputation of the U.N. World leaders must find the political will to uphold the rule of law, respect human rights and make good on the commitments they collectively made to the Palestinian people over decades. The U.N. must give my people more than hope.

A peaceful, fair and just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict exists. But the peace process must be multilateral. The same pattern of negotiations imposed for years will not work because Israel is the occupying power. Israel controls our territory, natural resources, economic affairs and our daily lives, violating every fundamental human right of the Palestinian people. We cannot directly negotiate with a power that has this level of control and exhibits such contempt for the rights and existence of our people.

That is why a collective, multilateral peace process is necessary. Such processes have made significant progress in difficult negotiations for the Balkans, Libya and Iran. They should be attempted to decisively end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict after all these years of futile attempts to achieve peace.

On the vote to raise our flag at the U.N., the international community demonstrated its solidarity with the Palestinian people. Now it must act with urgency to seize the momentum from this symbolic gesture and provide a clear plan to end the illegal Israeli occupation, uphold human rights and achieve justice. It is time to finally achieve the independence of the State of Palestine, peacefully resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict -- the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict -- as was promised long ago.

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Palestinian children play in the rubble of houses in the village of Khuzaa, Gaza, on July 7, 2015.

Palestinians enjoy a summer day on the beach of Gaza City on June 16, 2015.

A Palestinian woman walks amid the rubble in Khuzaa, Gaza, on June 1, 2015.

Mohammed al-Selek shows the site where he was injured in an Israeli mortar strike in Gaza City, Gaza.

A Palestinian child sits in front of the rubble in Khuzaa, Gaza, on June 15, 2015.

A Palestinian man dressed as a clown rests in front of destroyed houses in Gaza City, Gaza, on July 8, 2015.

A Palestinian girl stands on the side while her father paints the door of his house in the old Gaza City on June 21, 2015 photo.

A Palestinian boy rides his bike next to his family's temporary housing in Khuzaa, Gaza, on July 7, 2015.

Palestinian children play at the rubble of buildings.

Palestinian trucks unload near the Rafah crossing in the southern Gaza Strip on June 23, 2015.

A Palestinian girl displays her hair in Gaza City, Gaza, on July 7, 2015.

A Palestinian boy plays in the rubble in Khuzaa, Gaza, on July 7, 2015.

Palestinian boys sit atop the rubble in Khuzaa, Gaza, on July 7, 2015.

Palestinian women protest against the 50-day war amidst the rubble in Khuzaa, Gaza, on July 7, 2015.

Palestinian boys play by their temporary housing in Khuzaa, Gaza, on July 7, 2015.

A Palestinian boy rides his bicycle amidst the rubble in Khuzaa, Gaza, on June 15, 2015.

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The First-Ever Raising of Palestine's Flag at the U.N. Is ...

Palestine – LookLex Encyclopaedia

Posted By on October 5, 2015

Life Palestine does not perform too well on the Human Development Index where it comes in as no. 110 of the 182 states that are ranked in the world; yet in the MENA region comes in ahead of countries like Egypt and Morocco. On a scale with 1.000 as maximum, Palestine gains 0.737 points. Palestine has no currency of its own, Israeli New Shekels and Jordanian dinars are used. Palestine's economy is weak from decades of occupation and limitation on personal freedom, as well as poor administration and corruption. Foreign aid contributes greatly to the economy. With a GDP per capita at US$2,900 (2008 estimate), Palestine is 72% below world average. Unemployment is as high as 25%, and 57% of the population are below the poverty line. Economy Despite being low on the MENA ranking, health in Palestine also has a few positive sides, like a moderate child mortality and fairly good doctor density. Health Many sectors of Palestine's educational system are well-developed, which is mirrored in very high literacy rates. Academic training is in total good at all levels, but of varying quality between institutions. Education Palestinians are the most homogeneous in the Middle East, especially if one counts the few hundred thousand Jews as Israelis. Peoples Just like withe peoples, the situation for languages is largely homogeneous, Arabic being the only language of society. Languages Sunni Islam dominates in Palestine. Christianity is an old religion here, but due to emigration, the number of Christians is falling. Religions Palestinian women have about 4 children, but on the Gaza Strip they have 5. Palestine has one of highest growths in the Middle East. Demographics Are the Palestinians ancestors of the Canaanites, or simply Arab immigrants? Both views are frequently expressed. The lands the Palestinians call home has seen many important historical events through the millenniums. But the history is also a sad one, and perhaps never before have the Palestinians suffered more, being unwanted in Israel and without hope of obtaining citizenship in the Arab neighbouring states. History

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Palestine - LookLex Encyclopaedia

JUDAISM – JewishEncyclopedia.com

Posted By on October 5, 2015

The religion of the Jewish people (II Macc. ii. 21, viii. 1, xiv. 38; Gal. i. 13 = , Esth. R. iii. 7; comp. , Esth. viii. 17); their system of beliefs and doctrines, rites and customs, as presented in their sacred literature and developed under the influence of the various civilizations with which they have come in contact, widening out into a world-religion affecting many nations and creeds. In reality the name "Judaism" should refer only to the religion of the people of Judea, that is, of the tribe of Judah, the name "Yehudi" (hence "Judean," "Jew") originally designating a member of that tribe. In the course of time, however, the term "Judaism" was applied to the entire Jewish history.

A clear and concise definition of Judaism is very difficult to give, for the reason that it is not a religion pure and simple based upon accepted creeds, like Christianity or Buddhism, but is one inseparably connected with the Jewish nation as the depository and guardian of the truths held by it for mankind. Furthermore, it is as a law, or system of laws, given by God on Sinai that Judaism is chiefly represented in Scripture and tradition, the religious doctrines being only implicitly or occasionally stated; wherefore it is frequently asserted that Judaism is a theocracy (Josephus, "Contra Ap." ii. 16), a religious legislation for the Jewish people, but not a religion. The fact is that Judaism is too large and comprehensive a force in history to be defined by a single term or encompassed from one point of view.

Extending over thirty-five centuries of history and over well-nigh all the lands of the civilized globe, Judaism could not always retain the same form and character. Judaism in its formative period, that is, in the patriarchal and prophetic times, differed from exilic and post-exilic Judaism; and rabbinic or pharisaic Judaism again presents a phase quite different from Mosaic Judaism, to which the Sadducees, and afterward to some extent the Karaites, persistently clung. Similarly Judaism in the Diaspora, or Hellenistic Judaism, showed great divergences from that of Palestine. So, too, the mysticism of the Orient produced in Germany and France a different form of Judaism from that inculcated by the Arabic philosophy cultivated by the Jews of Spain. Again, many Jews of modern times more or less systematically discard that form of Judaism fixed by the codes and the casuistry of the Middle Ages, and incline toward a Judaism which they hold more in harmony with the requirements of an age of broader culture and larger aims. Far from having become 1900 years ago a stagnant or dried-up religion, as Christian theology declares, Judaism has ever remained "a river of God full of living waters," which, while running within the river-bed of a single nation, has continued to feed anew the great streams of human civilization. In this light Judaism is presented in the following columns as a historic power varying in various epochs. It is first necessary to state what are the main principles of Judaism in contradistinction to all other religions.

However tribal or exclusive the idea of the God of Israel may have been originally, Judaism boldly assumes that its God was the God of man from the very beginning; the Creator of heaven and earth, and the Ruler of the world from eternity to eternity, who brought the Flood upon a wicked generation of men, and who established the earth in righteousness and justice (Gen. i.-x.). In the light of this presentation of facts, idolatry or the worship of other gods is but a rebellious breaking away from the Most High, the King of the Nations, the universal God, besides whom there is no other (Deut. v. 39; Jer. x. 7), and to whom alone all knees must bend in humble adoration (Isa. xlv. 23, lxvi. 23). Judaism, accordingly, has for its sole object the restoration of the pure worship of God throughout the earth (Zech. xiv. 9); the Sinaitic covenant, which rendered Israel "a kingdom of priests among the nations"itself only a renewal of the covenant made with Abraham and his descendants for all timehaving been concluded for the sole purpose of giving back to mankind its God of old, the God of the Noachian covenant, which included all men (Gen. ix. 17, xviii. 18-19; Ex. xix. 3-6; Isa. xlix. 6-8). Surely there is nothing clannish in the God of the Prophets and the Psalmist, who judges all men and nations alike with justice and righteousness (Amos i.-ii., ix. 7; Jer. xxvi.; Ezek. xl.; Ps. xcvi. 13, xcviii. 9; and elsewhere). Judaism's God has through the prophetic, world-wide view become the God of history, and through the Psalms and the prayers of the asidim the God of the human heart, "the Father," and the "Lover of souls" (Isa. lxiii. 16; see Wisdom, xi. 26, and Abba). Far from departing from this standpoint, Judaism in the time of the Synagogue took the decisive forward step of declaring the Holy Name (see Adonai) ineffable, so as to allow the God of Israel to be known only as "the Lord God." Henceforth without any definite name He stood forth as the world's God without peer.

Judaism at all times protested most emphatically against any infringement of its pure monotheistic doctrine, whether by the dualism of the Gnostic (Sanh. 38a; Gen. R. i.; Eccl. R. iv. 8) or by the Trinitarianism of the Church (see Jew. Encyc. iv. 54, s.v. Christianity), never allowing such attributes as justice and pardoning love to divide the Godhead into different powers or personalities. Indeed, every contact with other systems of thought or belief served only to put Judaism on its guard lest the spirituality of God be marred by ascribing to Him human forms. Yet, far from being too transcendental, too remote from mortal man in his need (as Weber, "Jdische Theologie," 1897, pp. 157 et seq., asserts), Judaism's God "is ever near, nearer than any other help or sympathy can be" (Yer. Ber. ix. 13a); "His very greatness consists in His condescension to man" (Meg. 31a; Lev. R. i., with reference to Ps. cxiii. 6). In fact, "God appears to each according to his capacity or temporary need" (Mek., Beshalla, Shirah, iv.; see Schechter in "J. Q. R." vi. 417-427).

Judaism affirms that God is a spirit, above all limitations of form, the Absolute Being who calls Himself "I am who I am" ("Eheyeh asher Eheyeh"; Ex. iii. 14), the Source of all existence, above all things, independent of all conditions, and without any physical quality. Far, however, from excluding less philosophical views of the Deity, so ardent a Jew as R. Abraham b. David of Posquires contends against Maimonides that he who holds human conceptions of God, such as the cabalists did, is no less a Jew than he who insists on His absolute incorporeality (Haggahot to "Yad," Teshubah, iii. 7). Indeed, the daily prayers of the Jew, from "Adon 'Olam" to the "Shir ha-Yiud" of Samuel b. Kalonymus, show a wide range of thought, here of rationalistic and there of mystic character, combining in a singular manner transcendentalism and immanence or pantheism as in no other faith. While the ideas of the various ages and civilizations have thus ever expanded and deepened the conception of God, the principle of unity was ever jealously guarded lest "His glory be given to another" (Isa. xlii. 8; see God).

But the most characteristic and essential distinction of Judaism from every other system of belief and thought consists in its ethical monotheism. Not sacrifice, but righteous conduct, is what God desires (Isa. i. 12-17; Amos v. 21-24; Hos. vi. 6; Micah vi. 6-8; Jer. vii. 22; Ps. xl. 7 [A. V. 6], 1. 8-13); the whole sacrificial cult being intended only for the spiritual need of man (Pesi. vi. 57, 62; Num. R. xxi.; Lev. R. ii.). Religion's only object is to induce man to walk in the ways of God and to do right (Gen. xix. 19; Deut. x. 12), God Himself being the God of righteousness and holiness, the ideal of moral perfection (Ex. xx. 5-6, xxxiv. 7; Lev. xix. 1; Deut. vii. 9-10). While the pagan gods were "products of fear," it was precisely "the fear of God" which produced in Judaism the conscience, the knowledge of a God within, thus preventing man from sin (Gen. xlii. 18; Ex. xx. 20; Deut. x. 12; Job i. 1). Consequently thehistory of mankind from the beginning appeared as the work of a moral Ruler of the world, of "the King of the nations of whom all are in awe" (Jer. x. 7; Ps. lxv. 13, xcvi. 10; Dan. ii. 21), in whom power and justice, love and truth are united (Ps. lxxxix. 15 [A. V. 14]). As He spoke to Israel, "Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy" (Lev. xix. 1, Hebr.), so "He said unto man, Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding" (Job xxviii. 28; comp. Micah vi. 8; Isa. xxxiii. 15; Ps. xv., xxiv. 4: "He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"). Quite characteristic of rabbinical Judaism is the fact that the names used for God are chiefly taken from His ethical attributes: "The world's Righteous One" ("Zaddio shel 'olam," Gen. R. xlix.; Yoma 37a); "The Merciful One" ("Ramana"); and most frequently "The Holy One, blessed be He!" ("ha-adosh baruk hu"). Before Cain killed his brother, he said: "There is no divine judgment and no Judge" (Targ. Yer. to Gen. iv. 8). "The first question put to man at the Last Judgment will be: 'Didst thou deal honestly with thy fellow man?'" (Shab. 31a; see God).

At any rate, Judaism, while insisting upon the unity of God and His government of the world, recognizes alongside of God no principle of evil in creation. God has no counterpart either in the powers of darkness, as the deities of Egypt and Babylon had, or in the power of evil, such as Ahriman in the Zoroastrian religion is, whose demoniacal nature was transferred by the Gnostic and Christian systems to Satan. In the Jewish Scriptures Satan has his place among the angels of heaven, and is bound to execute the will of God, his master (Job i. 7); and though sin and death are occasionally ascribed to him (see Satan), he can seduce and harm only as far as God permits him, and in the end must work for good (B. B. 16a). "God is the Creator of light and darkness, the Maker of peace and of evil" (Isa. xlv. 7). Everything He made was found by Him to be very good (Gen. i. 31); "also death," says R. Mer (Gen. R. ix.). "What the Merciful does is for the good" (Ber. 60b). Whatever evil befalls man has disciplinary value: it is intended for his higher welfare (Deut. viii. 5; Ps. xciv. 12; Ta'an. 21a: "Gam zu leobah").

Because the Lord saw that the world could not stand to be measured by strict justice, He mingled the quality of mercy with that of justice and created the world with both (Gen. R. xii.). In striking contrast to the pessimistic doctrine that the world is the product of mere chance and full of evil, the Midrash boldly states that the world was (or is) a process of selection and evolution: "God created worlds after worlds until He said, 'This at last pleases Me'" (Gen. R. ix.; see Optimism).

The fundamental principle of Judaism (see Maimonides, "Moreh," iii. 17) is that man is free; that is to say, the choice between good and evil has been left to man as a participant of God's spirit. "Sin lieth at the door, and unto thee shall be its desire; but thou shalt rule over it" (Gen. iv. 7, Hebr.) says God to Cain; and herein is laid down for all time the law of man's freedom of will. Accordingly Moses says in the name of God: "See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; . . . therefore choose life" (Deut. xxx. 15, 19); and Ben Sira, commenting upon this, says: "God hath made man from the beginning and left him in the hand of his counsel. . . . He hath set fire and water before thee; thou mayest stretch forth thy hand unto whichsoever thou wilt. Before man is life and death; and whichsoever he liketh, it shall be given him" (Ecclus. [Sirach] xv. 14-17). Similarly R. Akiba declares: "All is foreseen; but the mastery [that is, free will] is granted" (Ab. iii. 15). Another rabbinical saying is, "Everything is determined by Heaven save the fear of Heaven" (Ber. 33b). Freedom of will constitutes man's responsibility; and his heavenly prerogative would be impaired were there an inheritance of sin. "Every man shall be put to death for his own sin," says the Law (Deut. xxiv. 16). It is the principle for which the prophet Ezekiel fought (Ezek. xviii. 20). Accordingly the Rabbis say: "The wicked are under the power of their hearts; the righteous have their hearts in their power" (Gen. R. lxvii.). Also, "Man is constantly led along the way he wishes to go. If he wishes to pollute himself by sin, the gates of sin will be opened for him; if he strives for purity, the gates of purity will be opened to him" (Yoma 38a; Mak. 10b; Nid. 30b). Regarding the difficulty of reconciling free will with divine omniscience, see Free Will. Notwithstanding man's propensity to sin, caused by the Yeer Ha-Ra', "the leaven in the lump" (Ber. 17a; comp. I Cor. v. 7), and the universal experience of sinfulness (Eccl. vii. 20; Ex. R. xxxi.), rabbinical Judaism denies that sin is inherited from parents, pointing to Abraham the son of Terah, Hezekiah the son of Ahaz, and others as instances to the contrary (Tan., uat, ed. Buber, p. 4, with reference to Job xiv. 4), and insists on the possibility of sinlessness as manifested by various saints (Shab. 55b; Yoma 22b; Eccl. R. i. 8, iii. 2).

Sin, according to Jewish teaching, is simply erring from the right path, owing chiefly to the weakness of human nature (Num. xv. 26; I Kings viii. 46; Ps. xix. 13, lxxviii. 39, ciii. 14; Job iv. 17-21); only in the really wicked it is insolent rebellion against God and His order ("pesha'" or "resha'"; Isa. lvii. 20; Ps. i. 4-6, xxxvi. 2; and elsewhere). And there is no sin too great to be atoned for by repentance and reparation (Ezek. xviii. 23; Yer. Peah i. 16b; id. 40b). The whole conception, then, of mankind's depravity by sin has no place in Judaism, which holds forth the reintegrating power of repentance to Gentiles and Jews, to the ordinary and the most corrupt sinners alike (Pes. 119a; R. H. 17b; Sanh. 103a, 108a; Yoma 86a, b). "Before God created the world, He created repentance for man as one of his prerequisites" (Pes. 54a; Gen. R. xxi., xxii.; see Repentance; Sin).

Israel, then, has been chosen, like Israel's ancestor Abraham, the descendant of Shem (Gen. ix. 26-27), to be a blessing to all nations on earth (ib. xii. 3, xix. 18); and the name by which the Lord calls him at the Exodus (Ex. iv. 22), "My first-born son," betokens in the language of the time his mission to be that of the priest and teacher in the house-hold of the nations, leading the rest by his precept and example to the worship of the Only One (ib. xix. 6; Isa. lxi. 6). "A people dwelling in solitude and not counted among the nations" (Num. xxiii. 9; Deut. vii. 7), but watched over by divine providence with especial care (Deut. xxvii. 18-19, xxxii. 8-12), the standard-bearer of incomparable laws of wisdom and righteousness in the sight of the nations (ib. iv. 5-8), Israel has been created to declare God's praise to the world, to be "His witnesses" (LXX., "martyrs") testifying to His unity, "the light of the nations," and the "covenant of the people to establish the earth" (Isa. xliii. 10, 21; xlix. 6-8). "To Israel's house of God the nations shall flock to be taught of His ways and to learn to walk in His paths." This is to bring humanity back to its normal condition, peace and bliss on earth, because righteousness will then prevail everywhere and the whole "earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord" (Isa. ii. 2-4, ix. 6, xi. 4-9, lxv. 25; Micah iv. 1-4). Israel, who when redeemed from Egypt proclaimed God as King (Ex. xv. 19; Lev. R. ii. 4), received the truth of Sinai as a trust; he is never to rest until his God shall become king of the whole earth, until all men and nations shall bend the knee before Him (Zech. xiv. 9; Isa. xl. 5, xlv. 13, xlix. 19; Ps. xxii. 29 [A. V. 28], xlvii. 9 [8], lxxvii. 5 [4], xcvi.-xcix.). "Israel, who proclaims God's unity, is proclaimed by God as His unique people" (Mek., Beshalla, Shirah, 3). Israel, as the people of the saints of the Most High, is to establish the kingdom of God to last forever (Dan. ii. 44, vii.). But as teacher and guardian of mankind's purest faith and loftiest hope, he is dealt with more severely by God for every transgression (Jer. ii. 21; Ezek. xx. 33-41; Amos iii. 2). Nay more, as the servant of God he has been chosen for continual martyrdom in the cause of truth and justice; he, therefore, is the "man of sorrows" whose affliction is to bring healing to the world and to lead many to righteousness (Isa. lii-liii.; see Servant of God).

Whether the expectation is that the universal kingdom of God on earth will be brought about by an ideal king from the house of David, the Messiah, as Isaiah and his followers depict the future of Israel (Isa. xi. 1 et seq.; Ezek. xxxiii. 24), or by the dispersed people of Israel itself, as the seer of the Exile (Isa. lvi.-lxvi.) indicates (see Messiah); whether or not the great day when all flesh shall worship the Lord will be preceded by a day of divine judgment when all the wicked "shall be stubble" (Mal. iii. 19, 21 [A. V. iv. 3]; see Day of the Lord; Eschatology; Gog and Magog), Judaism by its idea of a divine kingdom of truth and righteousness to be built on earth gave to mankind a hope and to history a goal for which to live and strive through the centuries. Other nations beheld in the world's process a continual decline from a golden age of happiness to an iron age of toil, until in a great catastrophe of conflagration and ruin the end of all things, of men and gods, is to be reached: Judaism points forward to a state of human perfection and bliss to be brought about by the complete unfolding of the divine in man or the revelation of God's full glory as the goal of history. And herein lies its great distinction also from Christianity. Judaism's scope lies not in the world beyond, the world of the spirit, of which man on earth can have no conception. Both the hope of resurrection and that of immortality, in some form or other familiar and indispensable to all tribes and creeds, seem evidently to have come to the Jews from withoutthe one from Persia or Babylonia, the other from Greece. Judaism itself rests on neither (see Eschatology; Immortality; Resurrection). Its sole aim and purpose is to render the world that now is a divine kingdom of truth and righteousness; and this gives it its eminently rational, ethical, and practical character.

Judaism has a twofold character: (1) universal, and (2) particular or national. The one pertains to its religious truths destined for the world; the other, to its national obligationsconnected with its priestly mission. Upon the former more stress is laid by the Prophets and by most of the sacred poets, by the Alexandrian propagandists and the Palestinian haggadists, as well as by the medieval philosophers and the modern Reform school; whereas the Mosaic law, the Halakah, and the Talmudic and cabalistic schools dwell almost exclusively upon the latter.

Judaism is, above all, the law of justice. Whereas in heathendom, except in the case of some exalted philosopher like Plato, might was deified, and the oppressed, the slave, and the stranger found no protection in religion, the declaration is everywhere made throughout Scripture that injustice committed by man against man provokes the wrath of the world's Ruler and Judge (Ex. xxi. 22-23; Gen. vi. 13, xviii. 20; Deut. xxvii. 15-26; Amos i. 3-ii. 8; and elsewhere), and that righteousness and compassionate love are demanded for the oppressed, the slave, the poor, the fatherless and homeless, the stranger, and for the criminal as having a claim on the sympathy of his fellow men; even for the dumb creature compassion is required (Ex. xxii. 20-26, xxiii. 5-6; Deut. xxii. 6; xxiv. 6, 10-xxv. 4; Job xxxi.). This is the "Torah" of which Isaiah speaks (Isa. i. 10), the "commandment" put by God upon every human heart (Deut. xxx. 11-14). And this spirit of justice permeates the Talmudic literature also. "For righteousness is one of the pillars of the world" (Ab. i. 18). "Where right is suppressed war comes upon the world" (ib. iv. 8). "The execution of justice is one of the Noachian laws of humanity" (Sanh. 56b). "Justice is demanded alike for the Gentile and the Jew" (Mak. 24a; B. . 113a; and other quotations in Baya b. Joseph's "ad ha-Kema," ch. "Gezelah"). To have due regard for the honor of all fellow creatures ("kebod aberiyyot"; Tos., B. . vii. 10) is one of the leading principles of rabbinic law (Shab. 94b).

Judaism furthermore is the law of purity. Heathenism by its orgiastic cults of Baal-peor, Astarte, and the like, fostered impurity and incest (Lev. xviii. 3, 24-30; Num. xxv. 1-9; Deut. iv. 3). The Torah warns against fornication, and teaches purity of heart and of action (Num. xv. 39; Deut. xxiii. 18-19, xxiv. 15; Prov. vii. 5-27; Job xxxi. 1), because God is too pure to tolerate unchastity in man or in woman (see Holiness; Purity). Judaism resents every act of lewdness as "nebalah" = "villainy" (Gen. xxxiv. 7, 31; Deut. xxii. 21; Judges xix. 24; II Sam. xiii. 12; see Folly), and most severely condemns lascivious talk (Isa. ix. 16; Shab. 33a).

Judaism is, moreover, the law of truth. Its God is the God of truth (Jer. x. 10). "The seal of the Holy One is truth" (Gen. R. lxxxi.; see Alpha and Omega). Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, Job, and ohelet wrestled with God in doubt until He revealed Himself to them in a higher form (Gen. xviii. 25; Ex. xxxii.-xxxiii.; Jer. xii. 1; Job xxxi. 35). And as the Prophets had perfect faith in God as the God of truth and therefore shrank from hypocrisy (Yer. Ber. vii. 11c), so did all the Jewish philosophers show perfect confidence in truth while boldly expressing their lofty views concerning the Deity and divesting God of every trace of Anthropomorphism and Anthropopathism and of every attribute infringing upon the spirituality and unity of God. It was, says the Talmud, the last will of Canaan that his children should not speak the truth and should love lasciviousness (Pes. 113b). "The Torah of Moses is truth" and "desires men to speak the truth and assent to the truth, even as God Himself assents to the truth when honestly spoken"; for "Upon truth rests the world" (B. B. 74a; Ps. xv. 2; Ab. R. N. xxxvii.; Ab. i. 18). This honest search for truth made Judaism, indeed, the world's great power for truth as well as for righteousness.

Judaism promotes and fosters education and culture. In contrast to such systems of faith as foster ignorance of the masses, it renders it a duty for the father to instruct his children and for the community to provide for the general instruction of old and young (see Education; Philosophy). It sanctifies labor, and makes the teaching of a trade whereby a livelihood may be earned a duty incumbent upon the father or upon the municipal authority (see Labor, Holiness of). It makes the systematic care of the poor a duty of the community with a view to the dignity and self-help of the recipient (See Charity). It denounces celibacy as unlawful, and enjoins each man to build a home and to contribute to the welfare of human society (see Marriage). The high priest in Israel was not allowed to officiate on the Day of Atonement unless he had a wifeliving with him (Yoma i. 1; comp. Ta'an. ii. 2). It enjoins love of country and loyalty to the government, no matter how unfriendly it be to the Jew (Jer. xxix. 7; Ab. iii. 2; Ket. 111a; see Patriotism).

Judaism is a religion of joy, and it desires that man should rejoice before God and gratefully enjoy all His gifts, at the same time filling other hearts with joy and thanksgiving. Especially are its Sabbath and festal days seasons of joy with no austerity about them. Judaism discourages asceticism (see Asceticism; Joy).

Judaism is a religion of hope. It teaches men to recognize in pain and sorrow dispensations of divine goodness. It is optimistic, because it does not defer hope merely to the world to come, but waits for the manifestation of God's plans of wisdom and goodness in the moral and spiritual advancement of man. While the present world is, in comparison to the future one, declared to be "like the vestibule wherein one prepares for the palace," it is nevertheless stated that "one hour devoted to repentance and good works in this world is more valuable than the entire life of the world to come" (Ab. iv. 16-17); for "to-day is the time for working out one's destiny, while to-morrow is the time for receiving compensation" ('Er. 22a).

As its highest aim and motive Judaism regards the love of God. Twice every day the Jew recites the Shema', which contains the words: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might" (Deut. vi. 5); this verse is understood to enjoin him to willingly surrender life and fortune whenever the cause of God demands it, while it at the same time urges him to make God beloved by all his fellow creatures through deeds of kindness, as Abraham did (Sifre, Deut. 32). This love of God implies the most unselfish devotion and the purest motive of action; that is, acting not from fear, but rather for God's sake alone (Sifre, Deut. 32, 48; Ab. ii. 12); doing good not in view of any reward in the world to come (Ab. i. 3), but for its own sake (see Schreiner, "Die Jngsten Urtheile ber das Judenthum," 1902, pp. 145-151); and it also implies the love of man (Deut. x. 12-19; see Love).

Judaism, finally, is a system of sanctification of life. It teaches that the whole of life is holy, because God is manifested in it: "Be holy, for the Lord your God is holy" (Lev. xix. 1, Hebr.). Even in the functions of animal life the presence of a holy God should be realized (Deut. xxiii. 15); and when the perfect state of humanity shall have been attained, every road will be a holy road free from impurity (Isa. xxxv. 8), and "In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, Holy unto the Lord" (Zech. xiv. 20, R. V.).

The Sinaitic covenant which rendered Israel "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Ex. xix. 6) became, the Rabbis say, "a source of hatred to the nations" (Shab. 89a: a play upon words, "Sinai""Sin'ah"), because it separated it from them by statutes and ordinances such as the dietary and the Levitical purity laws and others intended to prevent idolatrous practises. Like the priest in the Temple, whose garments and mode of life distinguished him from the rest in order to invest him with the spirit of greater sanctity and purity (I Chron. xxiii. 13), so Israel was for all time to be impressed with its priestly mission by all those ceremonies which form so prominent a feature in its religious life (see Ceremonies; Circumcision; Commandments; Dietary Laws). Particularly the Mosaic and, later on, the Pharisaic laws had for their object the separation of the Jewish people from all those influences prevalent in heathendom which led to idolatry and impurity; wherefore not only intermarriage, but also participation in any meal or other festive gathering which could possibly be connected with idol-worship was prohibited (see Worship, Idol-; Intermarriage; Jubilees, Book of.) This persistent avoidance of association with the Gentiles on the part of the Pharisees, which in the time of the Maccabees was termed = "keepingapart from the surrounding nations" (comp. II Macc. xiv. 38), became the chief cause of the accusation of a "hatred of mankind" which was brought against the Jews by the Greeks and Romans, and which has ever since been reiterated by the anti-Semites (see Schrer, "Gesch." iii. 3, 416).

In reality these very laws of seclusion fitted the Jew for his herculean task of battling for the truth against a world of falsehood, and enabled him to resist the temptations and to brave the persecutions of the nations and the ages. They imbued him with a spirit of loyalty unparalleled in human history; they inculcated in him the principle of abstinence, enabling him to endure privation and torture; and filled him with that noble pride which alone upheld him amidst the taunts and sneers of high and low. They brought out those traits of manhood which characterized Abraham, who, according to the Rabbis, was called '"Ibri " (Hebrew) because his maxim was: "Let all the world stand on the one side ["'eber ead"]I side with God and shall win in the end" (Gen. R. xlvi.). But these laws also fostered a conception of the sanctity of life unknown to other creeds or races. By investing the commonest act and event with religious obligations, they made the whole of life earnest and holy with duty. Instead of being "a yoke of servitude," as Schrer and others have it, they "filled the home and the festal seasons with higher joy" (see Schechter and Abrahams in "J. Q. R." iii. 762 et seq., xi. 626 et seq.).

Notwithstanding its unmitigated severity against heathenism with its folly and vice, and against every mode of compromise therewith, Judaism does not, like other creeds, consign the non-believer to eternal doom. It judges men not by their creed, but by their deeds, demanding righteous actions and pure motives, since "fear of God" signifies fear of Him who looketh into the heart (Sifra, Aare Mot, iii. 2). It declares through R. Joshua b. Hananiah, whose opinion is generally accepted, that "the righteous of all nations have a share in the world to come"; the Shammaite R. Eliezer in consigning all heathen to Gehenna bases his argument on the Scriptural verse Ps. ix. 18 (A. V. 17), into which he reads, "The wicked are turned to Sheol because all heathen forget God"not as R. Joshua does, "all those heathen that forget God" (Sanh. 105a). It is the moral depravity ascribed to the heathen, owing to his unchaste and violent habits, which is the cause of all the harsh haggadic expressionssuch as "the people that resemble the ass" (Ket. 111a)and halakic injunctions found in the Talmud against the heathen (Gentile or 'Akkum; see Jubilees, Book of). The latter is always under grave suspicion (see 'Ab. Zarah ii. 1; Yeb. 98a), yet, no sooner does he solemnly discard idolatry than his association is invited and he has a claim on protection (Gi. 45a).

On the contrary, Judaism waits for "the righteous nation that keeps the faith" (Isa. xxvi. 2), and opens wide "its gates that the righteous from among the heathen world may enter" (Ps. cxviii. 20; Sifra, Aare Mot, xiii.), calling the Gentiles that serve God in righteousness "priests of the Lord" ("Otiot de-R. Akiba," letter "Zayin"). It declares that the Holy Spirit may rest upon the righteous heathen as well as upon the Jew (Tanna debe Eliyahu R. ix.). It pays due homage to the wise among the heathen (Ber. 58a; Soah 35b; Bek. 8b; Gen. R. lxv.). It recognizes the existence of prophets among the heathen (B. B. 15b: "Fifteen prophets God sent to the heathen world up to the time of Moses: Balaam and his father, Job and his four friends," etc.; comp. Lev. R. i. 12, ii. 8; Tanna debe Eliyahu R. xxvi.; ib. Zua xi., etc.). The assertion made by Max Mller, Kuenen, and others, that Judaism is not a missionary religion, rests on insufficient knowledge. There existed an extensive proselyte propaganda literature, especially in Alexandria (see Didache; Propaganda); and, according to the Midrash, "the heathen world is saved by the merit of the one proselyte who is annually won" (Gen. R. xxviii.; comp. Matt. xxiii. 15; Jellinek, "B. H." vi., Introduction, xlvi.). Abraham and Sarah are represented as devoting their lives to making proselytes (Gen. R. xxxix.); and as the Psalmist accords to the proselytes"those that fear God"a special place (Ps. cxv. 11), so does the daily prayer of the Jew in the "Shemoneh 'Esreh" contain a special blessing for the proselytes ("Gere ha-ede"). Only in later centuries, when the Church interfered through apostates and by edicts, was the proselyte declared to be a plague instead of a desired accession to the house of Israel (Isa. xiv. 1); the ancient Halakah endeavored to encourage the heathen to come under the wings of the Shekinah (Yeb. 47a, b; Mas. Gerim; Lev. R. ii.). In order to facilitate the admission of Gentiles, Judaism created two classes: (1) "proselytes of righteousness," who had to bring the "sacrifices of righteousness" while submitting to the Abrahamic rite in order to become full members of the house of Israel; and (2) "proselytes of the gate" ("gere toshab"), who accepted only the seven Noachian laws (ten and thirty are also mentioned) of humanity. Occasionally the necessity of undergoing circumcision is made a matter of controversy also in the case of the full proselyte (see Circumcision). But proselytism as a system of obtaining large numbers is deprecated by Judaism.

However, the Messianic age is regarded as the one when "the fulness of the heathen world" will join Judaism (Isa. xiv. 1; Zech. viii. 23; 'Ab. Zarah 3a). Especially characteristic of the cosmopolitan spirit of Judaism is the fact that the seventy bullocks brought as sacrifice during the Sukkot festival at the Temple were taken to be peace-offerings on behalf of the supposed seventy nations representing the heathen world (Suk. 55b), a view shared by Philo ("De Monarchia," ii. 6; idem, "De Septenario," p. 26; see Treitel in "Monatsschrift," 1903, pp. 493-495). Throughout the entire ethical literature of the Jews, from Tanna debe Eliyahu R. down to the various Ethical Wills of the Rabbis, there is voiced regarding the non-Jewish world a broadly human spirit which stands in strange contrast to the narrowness with which Judaism is viewed by Christian writers, even those of high rank (see Zunz, "Z. G." pp. 122-157). The same cosmopolitan attitude was taken by Judaism whenever its representativeswere called upon to act as intermediaries between Moslem and Christian; and the parable of the three rings, put by Lessing into the mouth of Nathan der Weise, was actually of Jewish origin (see Wnsche in "Lessing-Mendelssohn Gedenkbuch," 1879, pp. 329 et seq.).

Owing to the Paulinian antithesis of law and faith or love (see Lwy, "Die Paulinische Lehre von Gesetz," in "Monatsschrift," 1903, pp. 332 et seq., 417 et seq.), the Torah, the basis and center of Judaism since Ezra, has been persistently placed in a false light by non-Jewish writers, undue stress being laid upon "the burden of the Law." In reality, the word "Torah" signifies both "law" and "doctrine"; and Judaism stands for both while antagonizing Paul's conception of faith as a blind dogmatic belief which fetters the mind. It prefers the bondage of the Law to the bondage of the spirit. It looks upon the divine commandments as a source of spiritual joy ("simah shel miwah") and as a token of God's special protection (Ber. 31a), for which it enjoins the Jew to offer Benedictions and to display zeal and enthusiastic love (Ab. v. 20). "God has given the children of Israel so many commandments in order to increase their merit [Mak. iii. 16] or to purify them" (Tan., Shemini, ed. Buber, p. 12). Every morning after having taken upon himself the yoke of God's kingdom, the Israelite has to take upon himself the yoke of the divine commandments also (Ber. ii. 2); and there is no greater joy for the true Israelite than to be "burdened with commandments" (Ber. 17a). "Even the commonest of Jews are full of merit on account of the many commandments they fulfil" (ib. 57a.)

The Law was accordingly a privilege which was granted to Israel because of God's special favor. Instead of blind faith, Judaism required good works for the protection of man against the spirit of sin (ib. 32b). The Law was to impress the life of the Jew with the holiness of duty. It spiritualized the whole of life. It trained the Jewish people to exercise self-control and moderation, and it sanctified the home. It rendered the commonest functions of life holy by prescribing for them special commandments. In this sense were the 613 commandments regarded by Judaism.

Some of these are understood to be divine marks of distinction to separate Israel from the other nationsstatutes ("ukkot") which are designated as unreasonable by the heathen world, such as laws concerning diet, dress, and the like (Sifra, Aare Mot, xiii.). Others are called "'eduyot" (testimony), in view of their having been given to make Israel testify to God's miraculous guidance, such as the festive seasons of the year; while still others are "signs" ("ot"), being tokens of the covenant between God and Israel, such as circumcision, the Sabbath (Gen. xvii. 11; Ex. xxxi. 13), the Passover (Ex. xii. 13, xiii. 9), and, according to the rabbinical interpretation, the tefillin (Deut. vi. 8, xi. 18).

Of sacraments, in the sense of mysterious rites by which a person is brought into a lifelong bodily relationship to God, Judaism has none. The Sabbath and circumcision have been erroneously called thus by Frankel (in his "Zeitschrift," 1844, p. 67): they are institutions of Judaism of an essential and, according to the generally accepted opinion, vital character; but they do not give any Jew the character of an adherent of the faith (see Ceremony; Commandments). At the same time the Sabbath and the festival seasons, with the ceremonies connected with them, have at all times been the most significant expressions of Jewish sentiment, and must be regarded as the most important factors of religious life both in the Synagogue and in the home (see Ab, Ninth of; Atonement, Day of; anukkah; New-Year; Passover; Purim; Sabbath; Shabuot; and Sukkot).

While the immutability of the Torah, that is, the law of Moses, both the written and the oral Law, is declared by Maimonides to be one of the cardinal doctrines of Judaism, there are views expressed in the Talmud that the commandments will be abrogated in the world to come (Nid. 61b). It is especially the dietary laws that will, it is said, be no longer in force in the Messianic time (Midr. Teh. on Ps. cxlvi. 4).

On the question whether the laws concerning sacrifice and Levitical purity have ceased to be integral parts of Judaism, Reform and Orthodox Judaism are at issue (on this and other points of difference between the two extreme parties of Judaism see Reform Judaism). Between the two stands the so-called "Breslau school," with Zacharias Frankel as head, whose watchword was "Positive Historical Judaism," and whose principle was "Reform tempered with Conservatism." While no longer adhering to the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch (see Grtz in "Gesch." ii. 299-318, and Schechter in "J. Q. R." iii. 760-761) and the divine character of tradition (see Frankel, "Darke ha-Mishnah"), it assigns the power and authority for reforms in Judaism only to the Jewish community as a whole, or to what Schechter calls "catholic Israel." The latter author desires "a strong authority," one which, "drawing inspiration from the past, understands also how to reconcile us [the Jews] with the present and to prepare us [them] for the future" ("J. Q. R." iv. 470). Grtz goes so far as to reduce Judaism to two fundamental principles: (1) "the religious element, which is mere negative monotheism in the widest acceptation of the term," and (2) the ethical, which offers the ideal for the moral life: "Be ye holy even as I am holy"; at the same time declaring that "prophets and Talmudists did not regard sacrifice or ritual as the fundamental and determining thing in Judaism" (Grtz, i. 9). This leads to a final statement of the principles and forces of Judaism.

The Shema', "the proclamation of God's unity, requires an undivided Israel" (Mek., Yitro, Baodesh, i.). "One God, One Israel, and One Temple" is the principle twice stated in Josephus ("Ant." iv. 8, 5; "Contra Ap." ii. 28); "One God, One Israel, and One Torah" is the principle upon which Orthodox Judaism rests. "It was an evil day for Israel when the controversies between the schools of Shammai and Hillel began, and the one Torah appearedto have become two Torot" (Sanh. 88b; where the plural "Torot" occurs, it refers to the written and oral law; Yoma 28b, with reference to Gen. xxvi. 5; comp. Shab. 31a). This Torah, both written and oral, was known to and practised in all its details by the Patriarchs (Yoma 28b; Gen. R. lxiv.; comp. Jubilees, Book of, and "Attah Ead" in the liturgy). "Whosoever denies that the whole Law, written as well as oral, was given by God to Moses on Sinai is a heretic" (Sanh. 99a; Sifra, Behar, i. 1).

The trustworthiness of the divine behest until the final codification of the Law, from this point of view, rests upon the continuous chain of tradition from Moses down to the men of the Great Synagogue (Ab. i. 1), and afterward upon the successive ordination of the Rabbis by the elders with the laying on of hands (probably originally under the influence of the Holy Spirit; see Semikah). Accordingly the stability and the immutability of the Law remained from the Orthodox standpoint one of the cardinal principles of Judaism (see M. Friedlnder, "The Jewish Religion," 1891; Samson Raphael Hirsch, "Horeb," 1837).

Independent research, however, discerns evolution and progress to have been at work in the various Mosaic legislations (Ex. xx. 22-xxiii. 19; Deut. xii.-xxi. 13; and Leviticus together with Num. xv., xviii.-xix. 22), in the prophetic and priestly as well as in the soferic activities, and it necessarily sees in revelation and inspiration as well as in tradition a spiritual force working from within rather than a heavenly communication coming from without. From this point of view, ethical monotheism presents itself as the product not of the Semitic race, which may at best have created predisposition for prophetic inspiration and for a conception of the Deity as a personality with certain moral relations to man, but solely of the Jewish genius, whose purer and tenderer conception of life demanded a pure and holy God in sharp contrast to the cruel and lascivious gods of the other Semitic races (see M. Jol, "Religis-Philosophische Zeitfragen," 1876, pp. 82-83).

It was the prophetic spirit of the Jewish nation embodied in Abraham (not the Midianite, as Budde thinks, nor some Babylonian tribe, as the Assyriologists would have it) which transformed Yhwh, an original tribal deity localized on Sinai and connected with the celestial phenomena of nature, into the God of holiness, "a power not ourselves that maketh for righteousness," the moral governor of the world. Yet this spirit works throughout the Biblical time only in and through a few individuals in each age; again and again the people lapse into idolatry from lack of power to soar to the heights of prophetic vision. Only in the small Judean kingdom with the help of the Deuteronomic Book of the Law the beginning is made, and finally through Ezra the foundation is laid for the realization of the plan of "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."

But while thus the people were won, and the former propensity to idolatry, the "yeer ha-ra'," was banished forever by the power of the men of the Great Synagogue (Yoma 69b), the light of prophetic universalism became dim. Still it found its utterance in the Synagogue with its liturgy, in the Psalms, in the Books of Jonah and Job, in the Books of Wisdom, and most singularly in the hafarah read on Sabbath and holy days often to voice the prophetic view concerning sacrifice and ritual in direct antagonism to the Mosaic precepts. Here, too, "the Holy Spirit" was at work (see Inspiration; Synagogue). It created Pharisaism in opposition to Sadducean insistence upon the letter of the Law; and the day when the injunction "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth" was abrogated, and the rationalistic interpretation of the Scribes was substituted therefor, was celebrated as a triumph of reason (Megillat Ta'an. iv. 1). While the legalists beheld God's majesty confined to "the four ells of the Halakah" (Ber. 8a), the Haggadah unfolded the spirit of freedom and progress; and when mysticism in the East threatened to benumb the spirit, philosophy under Arabian influence succeeded in enlarging the mental horizon of Judaism anew.

Thus Judaism presents two streams or currents of thought ever running parallel to each other: the one conservative, the other progressive and liberal; the one accentuating the national and ritualistic, the other the cosmopolitan and spiritual, elements; mysticism here and rationalism there, these together forming the centripetal and centrifugal forces of Judaism to keep it in continuous progress upon its God-appointed track.

Judaism, parent of both Christianity and Islam, holds forth the pledge and promise of the unity of the two ("Yad," Melakim, xi. 4; "Cuzari," iv. 23; see Jew. Encyc. iv. 56, s.v. Christianity), as it often stood as mediator between Church and Mosque during the Middle Ages (see Disputations and Judah ha-Levi). In order to be able to "unite all mankind into one bond" (New-Year's liturgy and Gen. R. lxxx viii.), it must form "one bond" (Lev. R. xxx.). It must, to use Isaiah's words, constitute a tree ever pruned while "the holy seed is the substance thereof" (Isa. vi. 13); its watchword being: "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts" (Zech. iv. 6).

For Karaitic Judaism see Karaites.

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Jews For Judaism – Keeping Jews Jewish

Posted By on October 5, 2015

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Israel limits access to Jerusalem Old City after attack …

Posted By on October 5, 2015

Story highlights

Only Israeli citizens, Old City residents, tourists, businesspeople working in the area and students studying there will be allowed to enter, police said in a statement Sunday.

They said they're also preventing Muslim men under the age of 50 from attending prayers at the holy site in the Old City that Jews call the Temple Mount and Muslims call Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary.

Palestinian officials reacted angrily to the move.

"What's happening today is a renewal of Israeli arrogance and recklessness," Hatem Abdul Qader, a Jerusalem official for the governing Palestinian party Fatah, told Palestine TV. "Jerusalem is now a military base, sons of Jerusalem are now banned from entering the Old City."

The measures follow the knife and gun attack Saturday by a 19-year-old Palestinian in the Old City in which two Israelis were killed and two others were wounded, according to authorities.

Police: Attacker kills 2 in Jerusalem

Police say they killed the attacker in a gun battle. He was identified as Mohannad Shafik Halabi from near Ramallah, in the West Bank.

Early Sunday, a 15-year-old Jewish boy was wounded in a stabbing attack by an Arab in a Jerusalem neighborhood near the Old City, Israeli police said. Police shot and killed the attacker, a spokesman said.

The official Palestinian news agency WAFA disputed the Israeli account of the incident, reporting that a 19-year-old Palestinian man was chased by Israeli settlers and then shot by police.

The bloodshed over the weekend is the latest in a spiral of violence and escalating tensions in the region.

Palestinian protesters have repeatedly clashed with Israeli police at the Temple Mount in recent weeks. The turmoil has spread to other areas as well.

Last week, an Israeli couple were shot and killed in the West Bank in front of their four children, according to Israeli officials.

And anger boiled the week before among Palestinians over the death of a teenager who was shot by Israeli soldiers at a military checkpoint at Hebron in the West Bank. The Israeli military said she attacked a soldier with a knife, an account disputed by Palestinian sources.

The United Nations issued a statement on behalf of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Sunday condemning "in the strongest terms" the attacks in the Old City of Jerusalem and subsequent incidents.

"Recalling the recent deadly attack on another Israeli family in the occupied West Bank, and in light of the wave of extremism and violence sweeping the region, the Secretary-General is deeply concerned that these latest incidents signal a dangerous slide towards escalation," the statement said. "The Secretary-General is deeply troubled by statements from Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas, praising such heinous attacks."

The U.S. State Department issued a statement Saturday, saying it "strongly condemns all acts of violence, including the tragic stabbing in the Old City of Jerusalem today."

"We are very concerned about mounting tensions in the West Bank and Jerusalem, including the Haram al Sharif/Temple Mount, and call on all sides to take affirmative steps to restore calm and avoid escalating the situation," the statement said.

CNN's Michael Schwartz reported from Jerusalem, and Jethro Mullen wrote from Hong Kong. CNN's Yousuf Basil, Erin Mclaughlin, Ralph Ellis and Kevin Wang contributed to this report.

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