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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_molecule] | [TOKENS: 2297] |
Contents Organic compound Organic compounds are a subclass of chemical compounds of carbon. Little consensus exists among chemists on the exact definition of organic compound; the only universally accepted definition is the quasi-tautological "organic compounds are the subject matter of organic chemistry". Generally, any large chemical compound containing a carbon–hydrogen or carbon–carbon bond is accepted as an organic compound. Thus alkanes (e.g. ethane, CH3−CH3) and their derivatives are typically considered organic. For historical and disciplinary reasons, small molecules containing carbon are generally not accepted: cyanide ion (CN−), hydrogen cyanide (HCN), chloroformic acid (ClCO2H), carbon dioxide (CO2), and carbonate ion (CO2−3) may all be excluded. Because of carbon's ability to catenate (form chains with other carbon atoms), millions of organic compounds are known. Although organic compounds make up only a small percentage of Earth's crust, they are of central importance because all known life is based on organic compounds. Living things incorporate inorganic carbon compounds into organic compounds through a network of processes (the carbon cycle) that convert carbon dioxide and a hydrogen source like water into simple sugars and other organic molecules. In the chemical industry, synthetic organic compounds are ultimately derived from petrochemicals, mainly hydrocarbons. Petrochemicals are themselves formed from the geologic degradation of biological matter at high pressures and temperatures underground. Historically, organic compounds were defined as compounds originating in living things, an expression of early-modern scientific vitalism. As vitalism became increasingly untenable, organic chemistry broadened its scope to study all large molecules; at the time, all known large molecules contained carbon. Organic molecules discovered in biological contexts are now known as natural products. In the 20th century, chemists discovered new large molecular species amongst the metal complexes. Such objects are not admitted into general organic chemistry unless they also contain carbon; otherwise their study is a new and separate field, metalorganic chemistry. In chemical nomenclature, an organyl group, frequently represented by the letter R, refers to any monovalent substituent whose open valence is on a carbon atom. Definition For historical reasons discussed below, a few types of carbon-containing compounds, such as carbides, carbonates (excluding carbonate esters), simple oxides of carbon (for example, CO and CO2) and cyanides are generally considered inorganic compounds. Different forms (allotropes) of pure carbon, such as diamond, graphite, fullerenes and carbon nanotubes are also excluded because they are simple substances composed of a single element and so not generally considered chemical compounds. The word "organic" in this context does not mean "natural". History Vitalism was a widespread conception that substances found in organic nature are formed from the chemical elements by the action of a "vital force" or "life-force" (vis vitalis) that only living organisms possess. In the 1810s, Jöns Jacob Berzelius argued that a regulative force must exist within living bodies. Berzelius also contended that compounds could be distinguished by whether they required any organisms in their synthesis (organic compounds) or whether they did not (inorganic compounds). Vitalism taught that formation of these "organic" compounds were fundamentally different from the "inorganic" compounds that could be obtained from the elements by chemical manipulations in laboratories. Vitalism survived for a short period after the formulation of modern ideas about the atomic theory and chemical elements. It first came under question in 1824, when Friedrich Wöhler synthesized oxalic acid, a compound known to occur only in living organisms, from cyanogen. A further experiment was Wöhler's 1828 synthesis of urea from the inorganic salts potassium cyanate and ammonium sulfate. Urea had long been considered an "organic" compound, as it was known to occur only in the urine of living organisms. Wöhler's experiments were followed by many others, in which increasingly complex "organic" substances were produced from "inorganic" ones without the involvement of any living organism, thus disproving vitalism. Although vitalism has been discredited, scientific nomenclature retains the distinction between organic and inorganic compounds. The modern meaning of organic compound is any compound that contains a significant amount of carbon—even though many of the organic compounds known today have no connection to any substance found in living organisms. The term carbogenic has been proposed by E. J. Corey as a modern alternative to organic, but this neologism remains relatively obscure. The organic compound L-isoleucine molecule presents some features typical of organic compounds: carbon–carbon bonds, carbon–hydrogen bonds, as well as covalent bonds from carbon to oxygen and to nitrogen. As described in detail below, any definition of organic compound that uses simple, broadly-applicable criteria turns out to be unsatisfactory, to varying degrees. The modern, commonly accepted definition of organic compound essentially amounts to any carbon-containing compound, excluding several classes of substances traditionally considered "inorganic". The list of substances so excluded varies from author to author. Still, it is generally agreed upon that there are (at least) a few carbon-containing compounds that should not be considered organic. For instance, almost all authorities would require the exclusion of alloys that contain carbon, including steel (which contains cementite, Fe3C), as well as other metal and semimetal carbides (including "ionic" carbides, e.g, Al4C3 and CaC2 and "covalent" carbides, e.g. B4C and SiC, and graphite intercalation compounds, e.g. KC8). Other compounds and materials that are considered 'inorganic' by most authorities include: metal carbonates, simple oxides of carbon (CO, CO2, and arguably, C3O2), the allotropes of carbon, cyanide derivatives not containing an organic residue (e.g., KCN, (CN)2, BrCN, cyanate anion OCN−, etc.), and heavier analogs thereof (e.g., cyaphide anion CP−, CSe2, COS; although carbon disulfide CS2 is often classed as an organic solvent). Halides of carbon without hydrogen (e.g., CF4 and CClF3), phosgene (COCl2), carboranes, metal carbonyls (e.g., nickel tetracarbonyl), mellitic anhydride (C12O9), and other exotic oxocarbons are also considered inorganic by some authorities.[citation needed] Nickel tetracarbonyl (Ni(CO)4) and other metal carbonyls are often volatile liquids, like many organic compounds, yet they contain only carbon bonded to a transition metal and to oxygen, and are often prepared directly from metal and carbon monoxide. Nickel tetracarbonyl is typically classified as an organometallic compound as it satisfies the broad definition that organometallic chemistry covers all compounds that contain at least one carbon to metal covalent bond; it is unknown whether organometallic compounds form a subset of organic compounds. For example, the evidence of covalent Fe-C bonding in cementite, a major component of steel, places it within this broad definition of organometallic, yet steel and other carbon-containing alloys are seldom regarded as organic compounds. Thus, it is unclear whether the definition of organometallic should be narrowed, whether these considerations imply that organometallic compounds are not necessarily organic, or both.[citation needed] Metal complexes with organic ligands but no carbon-metal bonds (e.g., (CH3CO2)2Cu) are not considered organometallic; instead, they are called metal-organic compounds (and might be considered organic). The relatively narrow definition of organic compounds as those containing C–H bonds excludes compounds that are (historically and practically) considered organic. Neither urea CO(NH2)2 nor oxalic acid (COOH)2 are organic by this definition, yet they were two key compounds in the vitalism debate. However, the IUPAC Blue Book on organic nomenclature specifically mentions urea and oxalic acid as organic compounds. Other compounds lacking C–H bonds but traditionally considered organic include benzenehexol, mesoxalic acid, and carbon tetrachloride. Mellitic acid, which contains no C–H bonds, is considered a possible organic compound in Martian soil. Terrestrially, it, and its anhydride, mellitic anhydride, are associated with the mineral mellite (Al2C6(COO)6·16H2O). A slightly broader definition of the organic compound includes all compounds bearing C–H or C–C bonds. This would still exclude urea. Moreover, this definition still leads to somewhat arbitrary divisions in sets of carbon-halogen compounds. For example, CF4 and CCl4 would be considered by this rule to be "inorganic", whereas CHF3, CHCl3, and C2Cl6 would be organic, though these compounds share many physical and chemical properties.[citation needed] Classification Organic compounds may be classified in a variety of ways. One major distinction is between natural and synthetic compounds. Organic compounds can also be classified or subdivided by the presence of heteroatoms, e.g., organometallic compounds, which feature bonds between carbon and a metal, and organophosphorus compounds, which feature bonds between carbon and a phosphorus.[citation needed] Another distinction, based on the size of organic compounds, distinguishes between small molecules and polymers. Natural compounds refer to those that are produced by plants or animals. Many of these are still extracted from natural sources because they would be more expensive to produce artificially. Examples include most sugars, some alkaloids and terpenoids, certain nutrients such as vitamin B12, and, in general, those natural products with large or stereoisometrically complicated molecules present in reasonable concentrations in living organisms. Further compounds of prime importance in biochemistry are antigens, carbohydrates, enzymes, hormones, lipids and fatty acids, neurotransmitters, nucleic acids, proteins, peptides and amino acids, lectins, vitamins, and fats and oils. Compounds that are prepared by reaction of other compounds are known as "synthetic". They may be either compounds that are already found in plants/animals or those artificial compounds that do not occur naturally.[citation needed] Most polymers (a category that includes all plastics and rubbers) are organic synthetic or semi-synthetic compounds. Many organic compounds—two examples are ethanol and insulin—are manufactured industrially using organisms such as bacteria and yeast. Typically, the DNA of an organism is altered to express compounds not ordinarily produced by the organism. Many such biotechnology-engineered compounds did not previously exist in nature. Databases A great number of more specialized databases exist for diverse branches of organic chemistry. Structure determination The main tools are proton and carbon-13 NMR spectroscopy, IR spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, UV-Vis spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shefa-Amr] | [TOKENS: 4639] |
Contents Shefa-Amr Shefa-Amr or Shefar'am (Arabic: شفاعمرو, romanized: Šafāʻamru; Hebrew: שְׁפַרְעָם, romanized: Šəfarʻam) is an Arab city in the Northern District of Israel. In 2023 it had a population of 43,408 with a Sunni Muslim majority and large Christian Arab and Druze minorities. Etymology Palmer writes that the name meant: "The margin or edge of 'Amr. Locally and erroneously supposed to mean the healing of 'Amer (ed Dhaher)." The city is identified with Shefar'am, an ancient Jewish town of great significance during Talmudic times. Some have proposed that its original meaning may be linked to the Hebrew words "Shefer" (שֶׁפֶר), signifying something nice, beautiful or good, and "'Am", (עַם) which translates to people. History Walls, installations and pottery sherds from the Early Bronze Age IB and the Middle Bronze Age IIB, Iron, Hellenistic and Roman periods have been excavated at Shefa-ʻAmr. Shefa-Amr is first mentioned under the name Shefar'am (Hebrew: שפרעם) in the Tosefta (Tractate Mikvaot 6:1), followed by the Talmud redacted in 500 CE where it is mentioned in several places, in Tractate Avodah Zarah 8b and Rosh Hashanah 31b, et al. Settlement has existed there without interruption since the Roman period, when it was one of the cities mentioned in the Talmud as containing the seat of the Jewish Sanhedrin during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. The seat of the Sanhedrin was traditionally thought to be where the Old Synagogue "Maḥaneh Shekhinah" was built in later times. Old Shefa-'Amr was settled in the area where are now built the Police Station, the various Churches and Jews' Street. Decorated burial caves were documented by the Survey of Western Palestine in the late nineteenth century; they were found to be Christian tombs from the Byzantine era, dating to the 5th and 6th century CE. Greek inscriptions were also found. Archaeological excavations of a cave and quarries revealed that they were used in the Roman and Byzantine eras. Shefa-ʻAmr contains Byzantine remains, including a church and tombs. A salvage dig was conducted in the southern quarter of the old city exposing remains from five phases in the Late Byzantine and early Umayyad periods. Finds include a tabun oven, a pavement of small fieldstones, a mosaic pavement that was probably part of a wine press treading floor, a small square wine press, handmade kraters, an imported Cypriot bowl and an open cooking pot. Also discovered were glass and pottery vessels. Under the Crusaders the place was known as "Safran", "Sapharanum", "Castrum Zafetanum", "Saphar castrum" or "Cafram". The Crusaders built a fortress, used by the Knights Templar, in the village. At the foot of the castle was a fortified settlement with a church, inhabited either by local Christians or Crusaders. The village, then called "Shafar 'Am", was used by Muslim leader Saladin between 1190–91 and 1193-94 as a military base for attacks on Acre. By 1229, the place was back in Crusader hands; this was confirmed by Sultan Baybars in the peace treaty of 1271, and by Sultan Qalawun in 1283. Italian monk Riccoldo da Monte di Croce visited the village in 1287–88, and noted that it had Christian inhabitants. It apparently was under Mamluk control by 1291, as it was mentioned in that year when sultan al-Ashraf Khalil allocated the town's income to a charitable organization in Cairo. The region became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517. In the Ottoman tax census of 1525–26, Shefa-Amr had a population of 150, 90% of whom were Muslims and 10% Jews. The population increased to 388 in the 1538–39 census, with Jews constituting 13% of the inhabitants. According to the records of 1547–48 and 1555–56, Shefa-Amr had a population 423 and 594 respectively, all Muslims. In 1564, the revenues of the village of Shefa-Amr were designated for the new waqf (endowment) of Hasseki Sultan Imaret in Jerusalem, established by Hasseki Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana), the wife of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. In the census of c. 1572, the village had a population of 510 Muslims. A 1573 firman (decree) mentioned that Shefa-Amr was among a group of villages in the nahiya (sub district) of Acre in rebellion against the state. By 1577, the village had accumulated an arsenal of 200 muskets. In the 1596 tax records, Shefa-Amr was part of the nahiya of Acre, part of Safed Sanjak, with a population of 83 households (khana), and eight bachelors, all Muslims. The total revenue was 13,600 akçe, most of which was given in fixed amounts. The taxable produce also comprised occasional revenues, goats and beehives, and the inhabitants paid for the use or ownership of an olive oil press. During the 18th century Shefa-Amr was the center of its own fiscal district in the province of Sidon. Its importance derived from its position in the heart of the Galilee's cotton-growing area and its natural and man-made defenses. The significance of cotton to the growth of Shefa-Amr was fundamental. Tax returns for the village attest to the large returns expected of this crop. Its local prominence was headed by the sheikhs of the Zayadina (sing. Zaydani), a local family of multazims (limited-term tax farmers), in charge of collecting taxes for the governor of Sidon. As early as 1704, the village was held as a tax farm by the Zaydani sheikh Ali ibn Salih, along with other villages in the Lower Galilee. At an unknown point after, the Zayadina lost Shefa-Amr but Ali's son Muhammad of al-Damun had regained control of it by c. 1740, during a period when the Zayadina were expanding their holdings across the Galilee under the leadership of Daher al-Umar (Muhammad's first cousin). It is known that there was a castle in the village by this time. Its fortifications were strengthened by the Zayadina in c. 1742 during a respite in the sieges of the Zaydani stronghold of Tiberias by the governor of Damascus. Afterward, in 1743, Muhammad was arrested and executed by Daher's order to remove him as an obstacle to Daher's regional ambitions. In 1761, Daher offered to grant Shefa-Amr to his son Uthman in exchange for the latter assassinating Daher's brother Sa'd. Although Uthman complied, Daher reneged following protestations by Shefa-Amr's inhabitants. Uthman and his brothers Ahmad and Sa'id besieged the village in 1765 but were repulsed by its local defenders with Daher's support. Uthman was nevertheless granted Shefa-Amr at some point by Daher. He is generally credited as the builder of its large fortress. After Daher's death in 1775, the Ottoman-appointed governor Jazzar Pasha allowed Uthman to continue as subgovernor of Shefa-Amr in return for a promise of loyalty and advance payment of taxes. Jazzar Pasha ignored orders from Constantinople to demolish the village's fortress. Several years later Uthman was removed and replaced by Ibrahim Abu Qalush, an appointee of Jazzar Pasha, who rebelled against him in 1789. A map by Pierre Jacotin from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 showed the place, named as Chafa Amr. A Jewish community had been established in the village under the auspices of Daher's rule. In 1839, Moses Montefiore counted 107 Sephardic Jews living in Shefa-Amr. Their condition worsened with the departure of the autonomous leader of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha, during which time Shefa-Amr was nearly emptied of its Jewish residents, who had opted to move to Haifa and Tiberias. James Finn wrote in 1877 that "The majority of the inhabitants are Druses. There are a few Moslems and a few Christians; but [in 1850] there were thirty Jewish families living as agriculturists, cultivating grain and olives on their own landed property, most of it family inheritance; some of these people were of Algerine descent. They had their own synagogue and legally qualified butcher, and their numbers had formerly been more considerable." However, "they afterwards dwindled to two families, the rest removing to [Haifa] as that port rose in prosperity." Conder and Kitchener, who visited in 1875, was told that the community consisted of "2,500 souls—1,200 being Moslems, the rest Druses, Greeks, and Latins." The town's Druze community dwindled considerably in the 1880s as its members migrated east to the Hauran plain to avoid conscription by the Ottoman authorities. A population list from about 1887 showed that Shefa-Amr had about 2,750 inhabitants; 795 Muslims, 95 Greek Catholics, 1,100 Catholics, 140 Latins, 175 Maronites/Protestants, 30 Jews and 440 Druze. That year, some 42 Jewish families from Morocco settled in Shefa-Amr. The British Mandate of Palestine was established in 1920. By then, all of Shefa-Amr's Jews had moved out. According to the 1922 census of Palestine, Shefa-Amr had a population of 2,288: 1,263 Christians, 623 Muslims, and 402 Druze. Of the Christians, 1,054 were Melkites (Greek Catholics), 94 Anglicans, 70 Roman Catholics, 42 Greek Orthodox and three Maronitew. By the 1931 census, Shefa-Amr had 629 occupied houses and a population of 1,321 Christians, 1,006 Muslims, 496 Druze, and one Jew. A further 1,197 Muslims in 234 occupied houses was recorded for "Shafa 'Amr Suburbs". Statistics compiled by the Mandatory government in the 1945 statistics showed an urban population of 1,560 Christians, 1,380 Muslims, 10 Jews and 690 "others" (presumably Druze) and a rural population of 3,560 Muslims. In 1948 Shefa-Amr was captured by the Israeli Army during the first phase of Operation Dekel, from 8 to 14 July. The Druze population actively cooperated with the IDF. The Muslim quarter was heavily shelled and thousands of inhabitants fled to Saffuriyeh. Following the fall of Nazareth some of the refugees were allowed to return to their homes. After the end of the war, the Arab population was placed under strict martial law until 1967. Ibraheem Nimr Hussein, a former mayor of Shefa-Amr, was chairman of the Committee of Arab Mayors in Israel (later the Arab Follow-Up Committee) from its inception in 1975. In 1981 an NGO to promote health care in the Arab community was set up in Shefa-Amr. It called itself The Galilee Society [Wikidata] - the Arab National Society for Health Research and Services. In 1982, following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Mayor Ibrahim Nimr Husayn formed the "Supreme Follow-Up Committee" based on a committee that had been formed following Land Day. It consisted of 11 heads of local councils as well as Arab Members of Knesset. By the 1990s the committee, meeting in Nazareth, had expanded and become a mini-parliament representing Palestinians in the Galilee. On 16 May 2004, Whehebe Moheen, a man in his sixties, murdered Manal Najeeb Abu Raed, his widowed daughter-in-law, wife of his son, and mother of his two granddaughters. Manal had lost her husband to cancer two years earlier, and was living in the couple's home, in the Druze village of Daliat El Carmel, near Haifa. Following this event there was conflict between the families of the victim and of the killer. The final reconciliation took place on 27 February 2009, when about 300 family members, dignitaries and residents of the mixed city of Shefa-Amr and Daliyat al-Carmel participated in the reconciliation ritual. They gathered, along with Christian and Muslim dignitaries, including mayors of the two towns involved, Knesset members (Druze and Muslim), the religious leader of Israel's Druze community, and a sizable contingent of Druze religious leaders from many villages in northern Israel. Following the speeches, the dignitaries signed the sulha (reconciliation) agreement, and after the document was declared officially endorsed, the killer's family handed the leader of the sulha committee, Sheikh Muafak Tarif, a bag containing the blood money (diya) compensation, and Tarif handed the bag to cousins of the murdered woman. The bag contained 200,000 NIS (about US$50,000), about half what a "normal" conciliation payment would be, but the killer's family refused to bring more money, claiming that they had no resources, and were not prepared to make themselves bankrupt because of a "crazy" uncle. On 4 August 2005, an Israeli soldier who was absent without leave, Eden Natan-Zada, opened fire while aboard a bus in the city, killing four Arab residents and wounding twenty-two others. After the shooting, Natan-Zada was overcome by nearby crowds, lynched and beaten with rocks. According to witnesses, the bus driver was surprised to see a kippah-wearing Jewish soldier making his way to Shefa-Amr via public bus, so inquired of Natan-Zada whether he was certain he wanted to take his current route. The four fatalities were two sisters in their early twenties, Hazar and Dina Turki, and two men, bus driver Michel Bahouth and Nader Hayek. In the days following the attack, 40,000 people attended mass funeral services for the victims. The sisters were buried in an Islamic cemetery and the men were buried in the Catholic cemetery. The wounded were taken to Rambam Hospital in Haifa. The Shefa-Amr municipality established a monument to commemorate the victims. In January 2008, Mayor Ursan Yassin met with officials of the Israeli state committee on the celebrations for the 60th anniversary of independence, and announced that Shefa-Amr intended to take part in the celebrations. In 2011, 7,000 Christians, Druze and Muslims held a solidarity march in support of Christians in Iraq and Egypt who were suffering from religious persecution. On November 18, 2024, a Hezbollah rocket struck a residential building in the city, killing a woman in her 50s and causing injuries to 56 others, including 18 children and teenagers. Geography Shefa-Amr is located in the North District of Israel at the entrance to the Galilee. It is located 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) from the Mediterranean Sea and 20 kilometres (12 mi) from each of three cities, Haifa, Acre and Nazareth, where many of the inhabitants are employed. The city is located on seven hills, which gives it the name "Little Rome". [citation needed] The elevation of the city and its strategic location as the connection between the valleys and mountains of Galilee made it more than once the center of its district, especially in the period of Uthman, the son of Daher al-Umar, who built a castle in it, and towers around it. The bay of Haifa with the sea stretching between Haifa and Acre and the high mountains of Galilee and the valleys surrounding the city could be seen from high points in the city. Demographics In 1951, the population was 4450, of whom about 10% were internally displaced persons from other villages. During the early 1950s, about 25,000 dunams of the land of Shefa-Amr were expropriated by the following method: the land was declared a closed military area, then after enough time had passed for it to have become legally "uncultivated", the Minister of Agriculture used his powers to "ensure that it was cultivated" by giving it to neighboring Jewish majority communities. Some of the land was owned by Jews. Another 7,579 dunams were expropriated in 1953–4. The total land holdings of the village fell from 58,725 dunams in 1945 to 10,371 dunams in 1962. According to CBS, in 2012 the religious and ethnic makeup of the city was mostly Arabs (consisting of 59.2% Muslim, 26.5% Christian, and 14.3% Druze). Shefa-Amr is home to the fourth-largest Arab Christian community in Israel, and are mostly Greek-Melkite Catholics. According to CBS, in 2012 there were 38,300 registered citizens in the city. 40.4% of the population was not over 19 years old, 14.9% between 20 and 29, 21.1% between 30 and 44, 17.8% from 45 to 64, and 5.7% 65 or older. In 2022, 62% of the population was Muslim, 24.4% was Christian and 13.6% was Druze. Population in Shefa-Amr over the years: Economy According to CBS, in 2012 there were 12,494 salaried and 1062 self-employed workers in the city. The mean monthly wage in 2012 for a salaried worker in the city was ILS 5,412. Salaried males had a mean monthly wage of ILS 6,312 versus ILS 3,904 for females. The mean income for the self-employed was ILS 7,381. 235 people received unemployment benefits and 3,971 received an income guarantee. Education and culture In 2012, there were 24 schools serving a student population of 9,459: 15 elementary schools with 5,360 students and 13 high schools with 4,099 students. In 2012, 53.7% of twelfth grade students earned a matriculation certificate. In the eastern part of the city, Mifal HaPayis built a public computer center, a public library, a large events hall and more. Shefa-Amr is also home to Tamrat El Zeitoun, an elementary school (about 150 students) notable for serving Muslim, Christian, and Druze together and being the only Arabic language Waldorf school. In collaboration with Waldorf educators at Harduf the school developed a language curriculum accommodating the differences between written and spoken Arabic. The school celebrates the festivals from all three religions. The Beit Almusica conservatory was founded in 1999 by musician Aamer Nakhleh in the center of Shefa-ʻAmr. It offers a year-round programs of music studies in various instruments, and holds music performances and concerts. Every year Shefa-ʻAmr holds a music festival known as the "Fort Festival." Arab children from all over the country compete in singing classic Arabic songs and one is chosen as "Voice of the Year." The Ba'ath choir, established by Raheeb Haddad, performs all over the country and participates in many international events. [citation needed] Singer Reem Talhami performs all over the Arab world. Oud player and violinist Tayseer Elias, on the Beit Almusica staff, is a composer, conductor and musicologist who also lectures at Bar-Ilan University. Butrus Lusia, a painter, specializes in icons.[citation needed] The first plays in Shefa-Amr were performed in the 1950s by the Christian scouts. Since the 1970s, many theaters have opened. among them the sons of Shefa-ʻAmr theater, Athar theater, house of the youth theater, Alghurbal Al Shefa-Amry theater and Al Ufok theater. The largest theater in the city is the Ghurbal Establishment, a national Arab theater. Sa'eed Salame, an actor, comedian and pantomimist, established a 3-day international pantomime festival that is held annually.[citation needed] Shefa-Amr is known for its mastic-based ice cream, bozet Shefa-'Amr.The Nakhleh Coffee Company is the leading coffee producer in Israel's Arab community. New restaurant-cafes opened in parts of the old city[when?] and encouraged nightlife, being patronised by the youth of Shefa-ʻAmr. The Awt Cafe started holding musical nights where local singers and instruments players including oud and others perform for the audience.[citation needed] Landmarks and religious sites Notable people See also References Bibliography External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergio_Della_Pergola] | [TOKENS: 581] |
Contents Sergio Della Pergola Sergio Della Pergola (Hebrew: סרג'ו דלה-פרגולה; born 7 September 1942) is an Italian-born Israeli demographer, statistician, and professor. He is an expert in demography and statistics related to the global Jewish population. Biography Della Pergola was born to a Jewish family in Trieste in September 1942. His grandfather was a rabbi. After World War II, the family settled in Milan, where Della Pergola was an active member of Jewish youth movements and student organizations. He immigrated to Israel in 1966, settling down in Jerusalem. He holds an MA in political science from the University of Pavia and a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is Professor Emeritus of population studies at the Hebrew University’s Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, where he was the Institute Chair and Director of the Division of Jewish Demography and Statistics and held the Shlomo Argov Chair in Israel–Diaspora Relations. Della Pergola is married to Miriam Toaff (daughter of Elio Toaff), with whom he has four children. Career Della Pergola is a specialist on the demography of world Jewry and has published numerous books and over two hundred papers on historical demography, the family, international migration, Jewish identification, and population projections in the Jewish diaspora and in Israel. He has written extensively about demography in Israel and Palestine. He has lectured at over 70 universities and research centres in Western Europe, North America, and Latin America, and served as a senior policy consultant to the President of Israel, the Government of Israel, the Jerusalem Municipality, and many major national and international organizations. He served on the National Technical Advisory Committee for the 1990 and 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Surveys and on the experts committee of the 2013 survey of Jewish Americans by the Pew Research Center in the United States. He was Visiting Professor at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in 2002-2003, at Brandeis University in 2006, at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2009, and at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2010. He is a member of the Yad Vashem Committee for the Righteous of the Nations. Awards In 1999, Della Pergola won the Marshall Sklare Award for distinguished achievement from the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (ASSJ) and his award presentation was entitled: "Thoughts of a Jewish Demographer in the Year 2000". In 2013, he was awarded the Michael Landau Prize for Migration and Demography. References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venusberg_(mythology)] | [TOKENS: 1464] |
Contents Venusberg (mythology) Venusberg (German pronunciation: [ˈveːnʊsbɛʁk] ⓘ, lit. 'Mountain of Venus') is a motif of European folklore rendered in various legends and epics since the Late Middle Ages. It is a variant of the folktale topos of "a mortal man seduced by the fairy queen visits the otherworld" (as in Thomas the Rhymer). In German folklore of the 16th century, the narrative becomes associated with the minnesinger Tannhäuser who becomes obsessed with worshipping the goddess Venus. Origin Venusberg as a name of the otherworld or fairyland is first mentioned in German in Formicarius by Johannes Nider (1437/38) in the context of the rising interest in witchcraft at the time. The earliest version of the narrative of the legend, a knight seeking forgiveness for having adored a pagan goddess in an enchanted mountain, but being rejected by the pope and returning to the mountain, even though a miracle prompts the pope to send emissaries after him to call him back, is first recorded in the form of a ballad by the Provencal writer Antoine de la Sale, part of the compilation known as La Salade (c. 1440). In this version, likely based on an Italian original, the "queen of the fairies" is named Sibylla rather than Venus and there is no association with Tannhäuser. Tannhauser folk ballad The narrative of La Sale's ballad becomes conflated with the name of Tannhäuser in German folklore of the early 16th century. A German Tannhauser folk ballad is recorded in numerous versions beginning around 1510, both in High German and Low German variants. Folkloristic versions were still collected from oral tradition in the early-to-mid 20th century, especially in the Alpine region (a Styrian variant with the name Waldhauser was collected in 1924). Early written transmission around the 1520s was by the means of printed single sheets popular at the time, with examples known from Augsburg, Leipzig, Straubing, Vienna, and Wolfenbüttel. The earliest extant version is from Jörg Dürnhofers Liederbuch, printed by Gutknecht of Nuremberg about 1515. This Lied von dem Danheüser explores the life of the legendary knight Tannhauser, who spent a year at the mountain worshiping Venus and returned there after believing that he had been denied forgiveness for his sins by Pope Urban IV. The Nuremberg version also identifies Venusberg with the Hörselberg hill chain near Eisenach in Thuringia, although other versions identify other geographical locations, as for instance in Swabia, near Waldsee. The popularity of the ballad continues unabated well into the 17th century. Versions are recorded by Heinrich Kornmann (1614) and Johannes Praetorius (1668). Interpretation The Venusberg legend has been interpreted as a Christianised version of the well-known folk-tale type of a mortal visiting the Otherworld: A human being seduced by an elf or fairy experiences the delights of the enchanted realm but later the longing for his earthly home is overwhelming. His desire is granted, but he is not happy (often noting that many years have passed in the world during his absence) and in the end returns to fairy-land. Modern reception The ballad was then received in German Romanticism. Ludwig Tieck published the tale in his Romantische Dichtungen collection of 1799. The Praetorius version of 1668 was included in Des Knaben Wunderhorn, a compilation of German folk poems published by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano in 1806. A summary was included in the Deutsche Sagen collection by the Brothers Grimm in 1816. Later adaptions include Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff's novella Das Marmorbild (The Marble Statue, 1818), as well as works by Ludwig Bechstein (1835) and Ludwig Uhland (Volkslieder, 1844). In Heinrich Heine's laconic poem Tannhäuser: A Legend (1837), the hero spent seven years there before departing for Rome, while Carl Borromäus von Miltitz' short story "Die zwölf Nächte" ('The Twelve Nights') tells a different story set at a castle near the Venusberg, which the hero and Venus return to haunt once a year. Aubrey Beardsley started to write an erotic treatment of the legend which was never to be finished due to his conversion to Catholicism, repudiation of his past works, and subsequent illness and death; the first parts of it were published in The Savoy and later issued in book form by Leonard Smithers with the title Under the Hill. In 1907, the original manuscript was published and entitled The Story of Venus and Tannhäuser. William Morris retells the story in "The Hill of Venus", the final story of his epic 1868–1870 poem The Earthly Paradise. Guy Willoughby in his book Art and Christhood: The Aesthetics of Oscar Wilde asserts that the blossoming staff of the eponymous Young King in Oscar Wilde's fairy tale evokes that of Tannhäuser. H. G. Wells' Sleeper watches an adaption in The Sleeper Awakes (1910). He also references it in his short story "The Man Who Could Work Miracles" (1898). John Heath-Stubbs wrote a poem on the legend called "Tannhauser's End" (Collected Poems page 294). Aleister Crowley wrote a play called Tannhauser which follows the characters Tannhauser and Venus. English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne's "Laus Veneris" ("In Praise of Venus") is a telling of the Tannhauser legend in the first person. Swinburne also composed the medieval French epigraph that purports to be its source. Anthony Powell called an early novel of his Venusberg. Another visitor was Thomas the Rhymer (Thomas Ercildoune, c. 1220–1297). The Tannhauser Gate motif of film (Blade Runner, 1982) and cyberpunk fiction originated as an allusion to the pathway that the knight used to discover and travel to this supposed place of ultimate erotic adventure. The "Castle Anthrax" episode in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) was based on the Venusberg myth. Author Philip José Farmer references Tannhäuser and Venusberg in the 1967 science fiction novella Riders of the Purple Wage. The plot of Neil Gaiman's story "Neverwhere" broadly mirrors the Tannhauser legend, as does the BBC TV series Life on Mars. References Sources External links |
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Contents United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous states border Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, with the semi-exclave of Alaska in the northwest and the archipelago of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The United States also asserts sovereignty over five major island territories and various uninhabited islands in Oceania and the Caribbean.[j] It is a megadiverse country, with the world's third-largest land area[c] and third-largest population, exceeding 341 million.[k] Paleo-Indians first migrated from North Asia to North America at least 15,000 years ago, and formed various civilizations. Spanish colonization established Spanish Florida in 1513, the first European colony in what is now the continental United States. British colonization followed with the 1607 settlement of Virginia, the first of the Thirteen Colonies. Enslavement of Africans was practiced in all colonies by 1770 and supplied most of the labor for the Southern Colonies' plantation economy. Clashes with the British Crown began as a civil protest over the illegality of taxation without representation in Parliament and the denial of other English rights. They evolved into the American Revolution, which led to the Declaration of Independence and a society based on universal rights. Victory in the 1775–1783 Revolutionary War brought international recognition of U.S. sovereignty and fueled westward expansion, further dispossessing native inhabitants. As more states were admitted, a North–South division over slavery led the Confederate States of America to declare secession and fight the Union in the 1861–1865 American Civil War. With the United States' victory and reunification, slavery was abolished nationally. By the late 19th century, the U.S. economy outpaced the French, German and British economies combined. As of 1900, the country had established itself as a great power, a status solidified after its involvement in World War I. Following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. entered World War II. Its aftermath left the U.S. and the Soviet Union as rival superpowers, competing for ideological dominance and international influence during the Cold War. The Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 ended the Cold War, leaving the U.S. as the world's sole superpower. The U.S. federal government is a representative democracy with a president and a constitution that grants separation of powers under three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. The United States Congress is a bicameral national legislature composed of the House of Representatives (a lower house based on population) and the Senate (an upper house based on equal representation for each state). Federalism grants substantial autonomy to the 50 states. In addition, 574 Native American tribes have sovereignty rights, and there are 326 Native American reservations. Since the 1850s, the Democratic and Republican parties have dominated American politics. American ideals and values are based on a democratic tradition inspired by the American Enlightenment movement. A developed country, the U.S. ranks high in economic competitiveness, innovation, and higher education. Accounting for over a quarter of nominal global GDP, its economy has been the world's largest since about 1890. It is the wealthiest country, with the highest disposable household income per capita among OECD members, though its wealth inequality is highly pronounced. Shaped by centuries of immigration, the culture of the U.S. is diverse and globally influential. Making up more than a third of global military spending, the country has one of the strongest armed forces and is a designated nuclear state. A member of numerous international organizations, the U.S. plays a major role in global political, cultural, economic, and military affairs. Etymology Documented use of the phrase "United States of America" dates back to January 2, 1776. On that day, Stephen Moylan, a Continental Army aide to General George Washington, wrote a letter to Joseph Reed, Washington's aide-de-camp, seeking to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the Revolutionary War effort. The first known public usage is an anonymous essay published in the Williamsburg newspaper The Virginia Gazette on April 6, 1776. Sometime on or after June 11, 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote "United States of America" in a rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, which was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. The term "United States" and its initialism "U.S.", used as nouns or as adjectives in English, are common short names for the country. The initialism "USA", a noun, is also common. "United States" and "U.S." are the established terms throughout the U.S. federal government, with prescribed rules.[l] "The States" is an established colloquial shortening of the name, used particularly from abroad; "stateside" is the corresponding adjective or adverb. "America" is the feminine form of the first word of Americus Vesputius, the Latinized name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512);[m] it was first used as a place name by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann in 1507.[n] Vespucci first proposed that the West Indies discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 were part of a previously unknown landmass and not among the Indies at the eastern limit of Asia. In English, the term "America" usually does not refer to topics unrelated to the United States, despite the usage of "the Americas" to describe the totality of the continents of North and South America. History The first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia approximately 15,000 years ago, either across the Bering land bridge or along the now-submerged Ice Age coastline. Small isolated groups of hunter-gatherers are said to have migrated alongside herds of large herbivores far into Alaska, with ice-free corridors developing along the Pacific coast and valleys of North America in c. 16,500 – c. 13,500 BCE (c. 18,500 – c. 15,500 BP). The Clovis culture, which appeared around 11,000 BCE, is believed to be the first widespread culture in the Americas. Over time, Indigenous North American cultures grew increasingly sophisticated, and some, such as the Mississippian culture, developed agriculture, architecture, and complex societies. In the post-archaic period, the Mississippian cultures were located in the midwestern, eastern, and southern regions, and the Algonquian in the Great Lakes region and along the Eastern Seaboard, while the Hohokam culture and Ancestral Puebloans inhabited the Southwest. Native population estimates of what is now the United States before the arrival of European colonizers range from around 500,000 to nearly 10 million. Christopher Columbus began exploring the Caribbean for Spain in 1492, leading to Spanish-speaking settlements and missions from what are now Puerto Rico and Florida to New Mexico and California. The first Spanish colony in the present-day continental United States was Spanish Florida, chartered in 1513. After several settlements failed there due to starvation and disease, Spain's first permanent town, Saint Augustine, was founded in 1565. France established its own settlements in French Florida in 1562, but they were either abandoned (Charlesfort, 1578) or destroyed by Spanish raids (Fort Caroline, 1565). Permanent French settlements were founded much later along the Great Lakes (Fort Detroit, 1701), the Mississippi River (Saint Louis, 1764) and especially the Gulf of Mexico (New Orleans, 1718). Early European colonies also included the thriving Dutch colony of New Nederland (settled 1626, present-day New York) and the small Swedish colony of New Sweden (settled 1638 in what became Delaware). British colonization of the East Coast began with the Virginia Colony (1607) and the Plymouth Colony (Massachusetts, 1620). The Mayflower Compact in Massachusetts and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established precedents for local representative self-governance and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies. While European settlers in what is now the United States experienced conflicts with Native Americans, they also engaged in trade, exchanging European tools for food and animal pelts.[o] Relations ranged from close cooperation to warfare and massacres. The colonial authorities often pursued policies that forced Native Americans to adopt European lifestyles, including conversion to Christianity. Along the eastern seaboard, settlers trafficked Africans through the Atlantic slave trade, largely to provide manual labor on plantations. The original Thirteen Colonies[p] that would later found the United States were administered as possessions of the British Empire by Crown-appointed governors, though local governments held elections open to most white male property owners. The colonial population grew rapidly from Maine to Georgia, eclipsing Native American populations; by the 1770s, the natural increase of the population was such that only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas. The colonies' distance from Britain facilitated the entrenchment of self-governance, and the First Great Awakening, a series of Christian revivals, fueled colonial interest in guaranteed religious liberty. Following its victory in the French and Indian War, Britain began to assert greater control over local affairs in the Thirteen Colonies, resulting in growing political resistance. One of the primary grievances of the colonists was the denial of their rights as Englishmen, particularly the right to representation in the British government that taxed them. To demonstrate their dissatisfaction and resolve, the First Continental Congress met in 1774 and passed the Continental Association, a colonial boycott of British goods enforced by local "committees of safety" that proved effective. The British attempt to then disarm the colonists resulted in the 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord, igniting the American Revolutionary War. At the Second Continental Congress, the colonies appointed George Washington commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, and created a committee that named Thomas Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence. Two days after the Second Continental Congress passed the Lee Resolution to create an independent, sovereign nation, the Declaration was adopted on July 4, 1776. The political values of the American Revolution evolved from an armed rebellion demanding reform within an empire to a revolution that created a new social and governing system founded on the defense of liberty and the protection of inalienable natural rights; sovereignty of the people; republicanism over monarchy, aristocracy, and other hereditary political power; civic virtue; and an intolerance of political corruption. The Founding Fathers of the United States, who included Washington, Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, Thomas Paine, and many others, were inspired by Classical, Renaissance, and Enlightenment philosophies and ideas. Though in practical effect since its drafting in 1777, the Articles of Confederation was ratified in 1781 and formally established a decentralized government that operated until 1789. After the British surrender at the siege of Yorktown in 1781, American sovereignty was internationally recognized by the Treaty of Paris (1783), through which the U.S. gained territory stretching west to the Mississippi River, north to present-day Canada, and south to Spanish Florida. The Northwest Ordinance (1787) established the precedent by which the country's territory would expand with the admission of new states, rather than the expansion of existing states. The U.S. Constitution was drafted at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to overcome the limitations of the Articles. It went into effect in 1789, creating a federal republic governed by three separate branches that together formed a system of checks and balances. George Washington was elected the country's first president under the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791 to allay skeptics' concerns about the power of the more centralized government. His resignation as commander-in-chief after the Revolutionary War and his later refusal to run for a third term as the country's first president established a precedent for the supremacy of civil authority in the United States and the peaceful transfer of power. In the late 18th century, American settlers began to expand westward in larger numbers, many with a sense of manifest destiny. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 from France nearly doubled the territory of the United States. Lingering issues with Britain remained, leading to the War of 1812, which was fought to a draw. Spain ceded Florida and its Gulf Coast territory in 1819. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, attempted to balance the desire of northern states to prevent the expansion of slavery into new territories with that of southern states to extend it there. Primarily, the compromise prohibited slavery in all other lands of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36°30′ parallel. As Americans expanded further into territory inhabited by Native Americans, the federal government implemented policies of Indian removal or assimilation. The most significant such legislation was the Indian Removal Act of 1830, a key policy of President Andrew Jackson. It resulted in the Trail of Tears (1830–1850), in which an estimated 60,000 Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River were forcibly removed and displaced to lands far to the west, causing 13,200 to 16,700 deaths along the forced march. Settler expansion as well as this influx of Indigenous peoples from the East resulted in the American Indian Wars west of the Mississippi. During the colonial period, slavery became legal in all the Thirteen colonies, but by 1770 it provided the main labor force in the large-scale, agriculture-dependent economies of the Southern Colonies from Maryland to Georgia. The practice began to be significantly questioned during the American Revolution, and spurred by an active abolitionist movement that had reemerged in the 1830s, states in the North enacted laws to prohibit slavery within their boundaries. At the same time, support for slavery had strengthened in Southern states, with widespread use of inventions such as the cotton gin (1793) having made slavery immensely profitable for Southern elites. The United States annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845, and the 1846 Oregon Treaty led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. Dispute with Mexico over Texas led to the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). After the victory of the U.S., Mexico recognized U.S. sovereignty over Texas, New Mexico, and California in the 1848 Mexican Cession; the cession's lands also included the future states of Nevada, Colorado and Utah. The California gold rush of 1848–1849 spurred a huge migration of white settlers to the Pacific coast, leading to even more confrontations with Native populations. One of the most violent, the California genocide of thousands of Native inhabitants, lasted into the mid-1870s. Additional western territories and states were created. Throughout the 1850s, the sectional conflict regarding slavery was further inflamed by national legislation in the U.S. Congress and decisions of the Supreme Court. In Congress, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 mandated the forcible return to their owners in the South of slaves taking refuge in non-slave states, while the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 effectively gutted the anti-slavery requirements of the Missouri Compromise. In its Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Supreme Court ruled against a slave brought into non-slave territory, simultaneously declaring the entire Missouri Compromise to be unconstitutional. These and other events exacerbated tensions between North and South that would culminate in the American Civil War (1861–1865). Beginning with South Carolina, 11 slave-state governments voted to secede from the United States in 1861, joining to create the Confederate States of America. All other state governments remained loyal to the Union.[q] War broke out in April 1861 after the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter. Following the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, many freed slaves joined the Union army. The war began to turn in the Union's favor following the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg and Battle of Gettysburg, and the Confederates surrendered in 1865 after the Union's victory in the Battle of Appomattox Court House. Efforts toward reconstruction in the secessionist South had begun as early as 1862, but it was only after President Lincoln's assassination that the three Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution were ratified to protect civil rights. The amendments codified nationally the abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for crimes, promised equal protection under the law for all persons, and prohibited discrimination on the basis of race or previous enslavement. As a result, African Americans took an active political role in ex-Confederate states in the decade following the Civil War. The former Confederate states were readmitted to the Union, beginning with Tennessee in 1866 and ending with Georgia in 1870. National infrastructure, including transcontinental telegraph and railroads, spurred growth in the American frontier. This was accelerated by the Homestead Acts, through which nearly 10 percent of the total land area of the United States was given away free to some 1.6 million homesteaders. From 1865 through 1917, an unprecedented stream of immigrants arrived in the United States, including 24.4 million from Europe. Most came through the Port of New York, as New York City and other large cities on the East Coast became home to large Jewish, Irish, and Italian populations. Many Northern Europeans as well as significant numbers of Germans and other Central Europeans moved to the Midwest. At the same time, about one million French Canadians migrated from Quebec to New England. During the Great Migration, millions of African Americans left the rural South for urban areas in the North. Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867. The Compromise of 1877 is generally considered the end of the Reconstruction era, as it resolved the electoral crisis following the 1876 presidential election and led President Rutherford B. Hayes to reduce the role of federal troops in the South. Immediately, the Redeemers began evicting the Carpetbaggers and quickly regained local control of Southern politics in the name of white supremacy. African Americans endured a period of heightened, overt racism following Reconstruction, a time often considered the nadir of American race relations. A series of Supreme Court decisions, including Plessy v. Ferguson, emptied the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of their force, allowing Jim Crow laws in the South to remain unchecked, sundown towns in the Midwest, and segregation in communities across the country, which would be reinforced in part by the policy of redlining later adopted by the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation. An explosion of technological advancement, accompanied by the exploitation of cheap immigrant labor, led to rapid economic expansion during the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. It continued into the early 20th, when the United States already outpaced the economies of Britain, France, and Germany combined. This fostered the amassing of power by a few prominent industrialists, largely by their formation of trusts and monopolies to prevent competition. Tycoons led the nation's expansion in the railroad, petroleum, and steel industries. The United States emerged as a pioneer of the automotive industry. These changes resulted in significant increases in economic inequality, slum conditions, and social unrest, creating the environment for labor unions and socialist movements to begin to flourish. This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era, which was characterized by significant economic and social reforms. Pro-American elements in Hawaii overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy; the islands were annexed in 1898. That same year, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam were ceded to the U.S. by Spain after the latter's defeat in the Spanish–American War. (The Philippines was granted full independence from the U.S. on July 4, 1946, following World War II. Puerto Rico and Guam have remained U.S. territories.) American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the Second Samoan Civil War. The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917. The United States entered World War I alongside the Allies in 1917 helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers. In 1920, a constitutional amendment granted nationwide women's suffrage. During the 1920s and 1930s, radio for mass communication and early television transformed communications nationwide. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 triggered the Great Depression, to which President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal plan of "reform, recovery and relief", a series of unprecedented and sweeping recovery programs and employment relief projects combined with financial reforms and regulations. Initially neutral during World War II, the U.S. began supplying war materiel to the Allies of World War II in March 1941 and entered the war in December after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Agreeing to a "Europe first" policy, the U.S. concentrated its wartime efforts on Japan's allies Italy and Germany until their final defeat in May 1945. The U.S. developed the first nuclear weapons and used them against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, ending the war. The United States was one of the "Four Policemen" who met to plan the post-war world, alongside the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China. The U.S. emerged relatively unscathed from the war, with even greater economic power and international political influence. The end of World War II in 1945 left the U.S. and the Soviet Union as superpowers, each with its own political, military, and economic sphere of influence. Geopolitical tensions between the two superpowers soon led to the Cold War. The U.S. implemented a policy of containment intended to limit the Soviet Union's sphere of influence; engaged in regime change against governments perceived to be aligned with the Soviets; and prevailed in the Space Race, which culminated with the first crewed Moon landing in 1969. Domestically, the U.S. experienced economic growth, urbanization, and population growth following World War II. The civil rights movement emerged, with Martin Luther King Jr. becoming a prominent leader in the early 1960s. The Great Society plan of President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration resulted in groundbreaking and broad-reaching laws, policies and a constitutional amendment to counteract some of the worst effects of lingering institutional racism. The counterculture movement in the U.S. brought significant social changes, including the liberalization of attitudes toward recreational drug use and sexuality. It also encouraged open defiance of the military draft (leading to the end of conscription in 1973) and wide opposition to U.S. intervention in Vietnam, with the U.S. totally withdrawing in 1975. A societal shift in the roles of women was significantly responsible for the large increase in female paid labor participation starting in the 1970s, and by 1985 the majority of American women aged 16 and older were employed. The Fall of Communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union from 1989 to 1991 marked the end of the Cold War and left the United States as the world's sole superpower. This cemented the United States' global influence, reinforcing the concept of the "American Century" as the U.S. dominated international political, cultural, economic, and military affairs. The 1990s saw the longest recorded economic expansion in American history, a dramatic decline in U.S. crime rates, and advances in technology. Throughout this decade, technological innovations such as the World Wide Web, the evolution of the Pentium microprocessor in accordance with Moore's law, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, the first gene therapy trial, and cloning either emerged in the U.S. or were improved upon there. The Human Genome Project was formally launched in 1990, while Nasdaq became the first stock market in the United States to trade online in 1998. In the Gulf War of 1991, an American-led international coalition of states expelled an Iraqi invasion force that had occupied neighboring Kuwait. The September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 by the pan-Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda led to the war on terror and subsequent military interventions in Afghanistan and in Iraq. The U.S. housing bubble culminated in 2007 with the Great Recession, the largest economic contraction since the Great Depression. In the 2010s and early 2020s, the United States has experienced increased political polarization and democratic backsliding. The country's polarization was violently reflected in the January 2021 Capitol attack, when a mob of insurrectionists entered the U.S. Capitol and sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in an attempted self-coup d'état. Geography The United States is the world's third-largest country by total area behind Russia and Canada.[c] The 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia have a combined area of 3,119,885 square miles (8,080,470 km2). In 2021, the United States had 8% of the Earth's permanent meadows and pastures and 10% of its cropland. Starting in the east, the coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way to inland forests and rolling hills in the Piedmont plateau region. The Appalachian Mountains and the Adirondack Massif separate the East Coast from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The Mississippi River System, the world's fourth-longest river system, runs predominantly north–south through the center of the country. The flat and fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast. The Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, peaking at over 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rocky Mountains, the Yellowstone Caldera, is the continent's largest volcanic feature. Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and the Chihuahuan, Sonoran, and Mojave deserts. In the northwest corner of Arizona, carved by the Colorado River, is the Grand Canyon, a steep-sided canyon and popular tourist destination known for its overwhelming visual size and intricate, colorful landscape. The Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast. The lowest and highest points in the contiguous United States are in the State of California, about 84 miles (135 km) apart. At an elevation of 20,310 feet (6,190.5 m), Alaska's Denali (also called Mount McKinley) is the highest peak in the country and on the continent. Active volcanoes in the U.S. are common throughout Alaska's Alexander and Aleutian Islands. Located entirely outside North America, the archipelago of Hawaii consists of volcanic islands, physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania. In addition to its total land area, the United States has one of the world's largest marine exclusive economic zones spanning approximately 4.5 million square miles (11.7 million km2) of ocean. With its large size and geographic variety, the United States includes most climate types. East of the 100th meridian, the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south. The western Great Plains are semi-arid. Many mountainous areas of the American West have an alpine climate. The climate is arid in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in coastal Oregon, Washington, and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar. Hawaii, the southern tip of Florida and U.S. territories in the Caribbean and Pacific are tropical. The United States receives more high-impact extreme weather incidents than any other country. States bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur in the country, mainly in Tornado Alley. Due to climate change in the country, extreme weather has become more frequent in the U.S. in the 21st century, with three times the number of reported heat waves compared to the 1960s. Since the 1990s, droughts in the American Southwest have become more persistent and more severe. The regions considered as the most attractive to the population are the most vulnerable. The U.S. is one of 17 megadiverse countries containing large numbers of endemic species: about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and over 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland. The United States is home to 428 mammal species, 784 birds, 311 reptiles, 295 amphibians, and around 91,000 insect species. There are 63 national parks, and hundreds of other federally managed monuments, forests, and wilderness areas, administered by the National Park Service and other agencies. About 28% of the country's land is publicly owned and federally managed, primarily in the Western States. Most of this land is protected, though some is leased for commercial use, and less than one percent is used for military purposes. Environmental issues in the United States include debates on non-renewable resources and nuclear energy, air and water pollution, biodiversity, logging and deforestation, and climate change. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the federal agency charged with addressing most environmental-related issues. The idea of wilderness has shaped the management of public lands since 1964, with the Wilderness Act. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 provides a way to protect threatened and endangered species and their habitats. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service implements and enforces the Act. In 2024, the U.S. ranked 35th among 180 countries in the Environmental Performance Index. Government and politics The United States is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The U.S. asserts sovereignty over five unincorporated territories and several uninhabited island possessions. It is the world's oldest surviving federation, and its presidential system of federal government has been adopted, in whole or in part, by many newly independent states worldwide following their decolonization. The Constitution of the United States serves as the country's supreme legal document. Most scholars describe the United States as a liberal democracy.[r] Composed of three branches, all headquartered in Washington, D.C., the federal government is the national government of the United States. The U.S. Constitution establishes a separation of powers intended to provide a system of checks and balances to prevent any of the three branches from becoming supreme. The three-branch system is known as the presidential system, in contrast to the parliamentary system where the executive is part of the legislative body. Many countries around the world adopted this aspect of the 1789 Constitution of the United States, especially in the postcolonial Americas. In the U.S. federal system, sovereign powers are shared between three levels of government specified in the Constitution: the federal government, the states, and Indian tribes. The U.S. also asserts sovereignty over five permanently inhabited territories: American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Residents of the 50 states are governed by their elected state government, under state constitutions compatible with the national constitution, and by elected local governments that are administrative divisions of a state. States are subdivided into counties or county equivalents, and (except for Hawaii) further divided into municipalities, each administered by elected representatives. The District of Columbia is a federal district containing the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C. The federal district is an administrative division of the federal government. Indian country is made up of 574 federally recognized tribes and 326 Indian reservations. They hold a government-to-government relationship with the U.S. federal government in Washington and are legally defined as domestic dependent nations with inherent tribal sovereignty rights. In addition to the five major territories, the U.S. also asserts sovereignty over the United States Minor Outlying Islands in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean. The seven undisputed islands without permanent populations are Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll, and Palmyra Atoll. U.S. sovereignty over the unpopulated Bajo Nuevo Bank, Navassa Island, Serranilla Bank, and Wake Island is disputed. The Constitution is silent on political parties. However, they developed independently in the 18th century with the Federalist and Anti-Federalist parties. Since then, the United States has operated as a de facto two-party system, though the parties have changed over time. Since the mid-19th century, the two main national parties have been the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The former is perceived as relatively liberal in its political platform while the latter is perceived as relatively conservative in its platform. The United States has an established structure of foreign relations, with the world's second-largest diplomatic corps as of 2024[update]. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and home to the United Nations headquarters. The United States is a member of the G7, G20, and OECD intergovernmental organizations. Almost all countries have embassies and many have consulates (official representatives) in the country. Likewise, nearly all countries host formal diplomatic missions with the United States, except Iran, North Korea, and Bhutan. Though Taiwan does not have formal diplomatic relations with the U.S., it maintains close unofficial relations. The United States regularly supplies Taiwan with military equipment to deter potential Chinese aggression. Its geopolitical attention also turned to the Indo-Pacific when the United States joined the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with Australia, India, and Japan. The United States has a "Special Relationship" with the United Kingdom and strong ties with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Israel, and several European Union countries such as France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Poland. The U.S. works closely with its NATO allies on military and national security issues, and with countries in the Americas through the Organization of American States and the United States–Mexico–Canada Free Trade Agreement. The U.S. exercises full international defense authority and responsibility for Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau through the Compact of Free Association. It has increasingly conducted strategic cooperation with India, while its ties with China have steadily deteriorated. Beginning in 2014, the U.S. had become a key ally of Ukraine. After Donald Trump was elected U.S. president in 2024, he sought to negotiate an end to the Russo-Ukrainian War. He paused all military aid to Ukraine in March 2025, although the aid resumed later. Trump also ended U.S. intelligence sharing with the country, but this too was eventually restored. The president is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces and appoints its leaders, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Department of Defense, headquartered at the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., administers five of the six service branches, which are made up of the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force. The Coast Guard is administered by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and can be transferred to the Department of the Navy in wartime. Total strength of the entire military is about 1.3 million active duty with an additional 400,000 in reserve. The United States spent $997 billion on its military in 2024, which is by far the largest amount of any country, making up 37% of global military spending and accounting for 3.4% of the country's GDP. The U.S. possesses 42% of the world's nuclear weapons—the second-largest stockpile after that of Russia. The U.S. military is widely regarded as the most powerful and advanced in the world. The United States has the third-largest combined armed forces in the world, behind the Chinese People's Liberation Army and Indian Armed Forces. The U.S. military operates about 800 bases and facilities abroad, and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries. The United States has engaged in over 400 military interventions since its founding in 1776, with over half of these occurring between 1950 and 2019 and 25% occurring in the post-Cold War era. State defense forces (SDFs) are military units that operate under the sole authority of a state government. SDFs are authorized by state and federal law but are under the command of the state's governor. By contrast, the 54 U.S. National Guard organizations[t] fall under the dual control of state or territorial governments and the federal government; their units can also become federalized entities, but SDFs cannot be federalized. The National Guard personnel of a state or territory can be federalized by the president under the National Defense Act Amendments of 1933; this legislation created the Guard and provides for the integration of Army National Guard and Air National Guard units and personnel into the U.S. Army and (since 1947) the U.S. Air Force. The total number of National Guard members is about 430,000, while the estimated combined strength of SDFs is less than 10,000. There are about 18,000 U.S. police agencies from local to national level in the United States. Law in the United States is mainly enforced by local police departments and sheriff departments in their municipal or county jurisdictions. The state police departments have authority in their respective state, and federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have national jurisdiction and specialized duties, such as protecting civil rights, national security, enforcing U.S. federal courts' rulings and federal laws, and interstate criminal activity. State courts conduct almost all civil and criminal trials, while federal courts adjudicate the much smaller number of civil and criminal cases that relate to federal law. There is no unified "criminal justice system" in the United States. The American prison system is largely heterogenous, with thousands of relatively independent systems operating across federal, state, local, and tribal levels. In 2025, "these systems hold nearly 2 million people in 1,566 state prisons, 98 federal prisons, 3,116 local jails, 1,277 juvenile correctional facilities, 133 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian country jails, as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories." Despite disparate systems of confinement, four main institutions dominate: federal prisons, state prisons, local jails, and juvenile correctional facilities. Federal prisons are run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and hold pretrial detainees as well as people who have been convicted of federal crimes. State prisons, run by the department of corrections of each state, hold people sentenced and serving prison time (usually longer than one year) for felony offenses. Local jails are county or municipal facilities that incarcerate defendants prior to trial; they also hold those serving short sentences (typically under a year). Juvenile correctional facilities are operated by local or state governments and serve as longer-term placements for any minor adjudicated as delinquent and ordered by a judge to be confined. In January 2023, the United States had the sixth-highest per capita incarceration rate in the world—531 people per 100,000 inhabitants—and the largest prison and jail population in the world, with more than 1.9 million people incarcerated. An analysis of the World Health Organization Mortality Database from 2010 showed U.S. homicide rates "were 7 times higher than in other high-income countries, driven by a gun homicide rate that was 25 times higher". Economy The U.S. has a highly developed mixed economy that has been the world's largest nominally since about 1890. Its 2024 gross domestic product (GDP)[e] of more than $29 trillion constituted over 25% of nominal global economic output, or 15% at purchasing power parity (PPP). From 1983 to 2008, U.S. real compounded annual GDP growth was 3.3%, compared to a 2.3% weighted average for the rest of the G7. The country ranks first in the world by nominal GDP, second when adjusted for purchasing power parities (PPP), and ninth by PPP-adjusted GDP per capita. In February 2024, the total U.S. federal government debt was $34.4 trillion. Of the world's 500 largest companies by revenue, 138 were headquartered in the U.S. in 2025, the highest number of any country. The U.S. dollar is the currency most used in international transactions and the world's foremost reserve currency, backed by the country's dominant economy, its military, the petrodollar system, its large U.S. treasuries market, and its linked eurodollar. Several countries use it as their official currency, and in others it is the de facto currency. The U.S. has free trade agreements with several countries, including the USMCA. Although the United States has reached a post-industrial level of economic development and is often described as having a service economy, it remains a major industrial power; in 2024, the U.S. manufacturing sector was the world's second-largest by value output after China's. New York City is the world's principal financial center, and its metropolitan area is the world's largest metropolitan economy. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, both located in New York City, are the world's two largest stock exchanges by market capitalization and trade volume. The United States is at the forefront of technological advancement and innovation in many economic fields, especially in artificial intelligence; electronics and computers; pharmaceuticals; and medical, aerospace and military equipment. The country's economy is fueled by abundant natural resources, a well-developed infrastructure, and high productivity. The largest trading partners of the United States are the European Union, Mexico, Canada, China, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Vietnam, India, and Taiwan. The United States is the world's largest importer and second-largest exporter.[u] It is by far the world's largest exporter of services. Americans have the highest average household and employee income among OECD member states, and the fourth-highest median household income in 2023, up from sixth-highest in 2013. With personal consumption expenditures of over $18.5 trillion in 2023, the U.S. has a heavily consumer-driven economy and is the world's largest consumer market. The U.S. ranked first in the number of dollar billionaires and millionaires in 2023, with 735 billionaires and nearly 22 million millionaires. Wealth in the United States is highly concentrated; in 2011, the richest 10% of the adult population owned 72% of the country's household wealth, while the bottom 50% owned just 2%. U.S. wealth inequality increased substantially since the late 1980s, and income inequality in the U.S. reached a record high in 2019. In 2024, the country had some of the highest wealth and income inequality levels among OECD countries. Since the 1970s, there has been a decoupling of U.S. wage gains from worker productivity. In 2016, the top fifth of earners took home more than half of all income, giving the U.S. one of the widest income distributions among OECD countries. There were about 771,480 homeless persons in the U.S. in 2024. In 2022, 6.4 million children experienced food insecurity. Feeding America estimates that around one in five, or approximately 13 million, children experience hunger in the U.S. and do not know where or when they will get their next meal. Also in 2022, about 37.9 million people, or 11.5% of the U.S. population, were living in poverty. The United States has a smaller welfare state and redistributes less income through government action than most other high-income countries. It is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation nationally and one of a few countries in the world without federal paid family leave as a legal right. The United States has a higher percentage of low-income workers than almost any other developed country, largely because of a weak collective bargaining system and lack of government support for at-risk workers. The United States has been a leader in technological innovation since the late 19th century and scientific research since the mid-20th century. Methods for producing interchangeable parts and the establishment of a machine tool industry enabled the large-scale manufacturing of U.S. consumer products in the late 19th century. By the early 20th century, factory electrification, the introduction of the assembly line, and other labor-saving techniques created the system of mass production. In the 21st century, the United States continues to be one of the world's foremost scientific powers, though China has emerged as a major competitor in many fields. The U.S. has the highest research and development expenditures of any country and ranks ninth as a percentage of GDP. In 2022, the United States was (after China) the country with the second-highest number of published scientific papers. In 2021, the U.S. ranked second (also after China) by the number of patent applications, and third by trademark and industrial design applications (after China and Germany), according to World Intellectual Property Indicators. In 2025 the United States ranked third (after Switzerland and Sweden) in the Global Innovation Index. The United States is considered to be a world leader in the development of artificial intelligence technology. In 2023, the United States was ranked the second most technologically advanced country in the world (after South Korea) by Global Finance magazine. The United States has maintained a space program since the late 1950s, beginning with the establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958. NASA's Apollo program (1961–1972) achieved the first crewed Moon landing with the 1969 Apollo 11 mission; it remains one of the agency's most significant milestones. Other major endeavors by NASA include the Space Shuttle program (1981–2011), the Voyager program (1972–present), the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes (launched in 1990 and 2021, respectively), and the multi-mission Mars Exploration Program (Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance). NASA is one of five agencies collaborating on the International Space Station (ISS); U.S. contributions to the ISS include several modules, including Destiny (2001), Harmony (2007), and Tranquility (2010), as well as ongoing logistical and operational support. The United States private sector dominates the global commercial spaceflight industry. Prominent American spaceflight contractors include Blue Origin, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and SpaceX. NASA programs such as the Commercial Crew Program, Commercial Resupply Services, Commercial Lunar Payload Services, and NextSTEP have facilitated growing private-sector involvement in American spaceflight. In 2023, the United States received approximately 84% of its energy from fossil fuel, and its largest source of energy was petroleum (38%), followed by natural gas (36%), renewable sources (9%), coal (9%), and nuclear power (9%). In 2022, the United States constituted about 4% of the world's population, but consumed around 16% of the world's energy. The U.S. ranks as the second-highest emitter of greenhouse gases behind China. The U.S. is the world's largest producer of nuclear power, generating around 30% of the world's nuclear electricity. It also has the highest number of nuclear power reactors of any country. From 2024, the U.S. plans to triple its nuclear power capacity by 2050. The United States' 4 million miles (6.4 million kilometers) of road network, owned almost entirely by state and local governments, is the longest in the world. The extensive Interstate Highway System that connects all major U.S. cities is funded mostly by the federal government but maintained by state departments of transportation. The system is further extended by state highways and some private toll roads. The U.S. is among the top ten countries with the highest vehicle ownership per capita (850 vehicles per 1,000 people) in 2022. A 2022 study found that 76% of U.S. commuters drive alone and 14% ride a bicycle, including bike owners and users of bike-sharing networks. About 11% use some form of public transportation. Public transportation in the United States is well developed in the largest urban areas, notably New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco; otherwise, coverage is generally less extensive than in most other developed countries. The U.S. also has many relatively car-dependent localities. Long-distance intercity travel is provided primarily by airlines, but travel by rail is more common along the Northeast Corridor, the only high-speed rail in the U.S. that meets international standards. Amtrak, the country's government-sponsored national passenger rail company, has a relatively sparse network compared to that of Western European countries. Service is concentrated in the Northeast, California, the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest, and Virginia/Southeast. The United States has an extensive air transportation network. U.S. civilian airlines are all privately owned. The three largest airlines in the world, by total number of passengers carried, are U.S.-based; American Airlines became the global leader after its 2013 merger with US Airways. Of the 50 busiest airports in the world, 16 are in the United States, as well as five of the top 10. The world's busiest airport by passenger volume is Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2022, most of the 19,969 U.S. airports were owned and operated by local government authorities, and there are also some private airports. Some 5,193 are designated as "public use", including for general aviation. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has provided security at most major airports since 2001. The country's rail transport network, the longest in the world at 182,412.3 mi (293,564.2 km), handles mostly freight (in contrast to more passenger-centered rail in Europe). Because they are often privately owned operations, U.S. railroads lag behind those of the rest of the world in terms of electrification. The country's inland waterways are the world's fifth-longest, totaling 25,482 mi (41,009 km). They are used extensively for freight, recreation, and a small amount of passenger traffic. Of the world's 50 busiest container ports, four are located in the United States, with the busiest in the country being the Port of Los Angeles. Demographics The U.S. Census Bureau reported 331,449,281 residents on April 1, 2020,[v] making the United States the third-most-populous country in the world, after India and China. The Census Bureau's official 2025 population estimate was 341,784,857, an increase of 3.1% since the 2020 census. According to the Bureau's U.S. Population Clock, on July 1, 2024, the U.S. population had a net gain of one person every 16 seconds, or about 5400 people per day. In 2023, 51% of Americans age 15 and over were married, 6% were widowed, 10% were divorced, and 34% had never been married. In 2023, the total fertility rate for the U.S. stood at 1.6 children per woman, and, at 23%, it had the world's highest rate of children living in single-parent households in 2019. Most Americans live in the suburbs of major metropolitan areas. The United States has a diverse population; 37 ancestry groups have more than one million members. White Americans with ancestry from Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa form the largest racial and ethnic group at 57.8% of the United States population. Hispanic and Latino Americans form the second-largest group and are 18.7% of the United States population. African Americans constitute the country's third-largest ancestry group and are 12.1% of the total U.S. population. Asian Americans are the country's fourth-largest group, composing 5.9% of the United States population. The country's 3.7 million Native Americans account for about 1%, and some 574 native tribes are recognized by the federal government. In 2024, the median age of the United States population was 39.1 years. While many languages and dialects are spoken in the United States, English is by far the most commonly spoken and written. De facto, English is the official language of the United States, and in 2025, Executive Order 14224 declared English official. However, the U.S. has never had a de jure official language, as Congress has never passed a law to designate English as official for all three federal branches. Some laws, such as U.S. naturalization requirements, nonetheless standardize English. Twenty-eight states and the United States Virgin Islands have laws that designate English as the sole official language; 19 states and the District of Columbia have no official language. Three states and four U.S. territories have recognized local or indigenous languages in addition to English: Hawaii (Hawaiian), Alaska (twenty Native languages),[w] South Dakota (Sioux), American Samoa (Samoan), Puerto Rico (Spanish), Guam (Chamorro), and the Northern Mariana Islands (Carolinian and Chamorro). In total, 169 Native American languages are spoken in the United States. In Puerto Rico, Spanish is more widely spoken than English. According to the American Community Survey (2020), some 245.4 million people in the U.S. age five and older spoke only English at home. About 41.2 million spoke Spanish at home, making it the second most commonly used language. Other languages spoken at home by one million people or more include Chinese (3.40 million), Tagalog (1.71 million), Vietnamese (1.52 million), Arabic (1.39 million), French (1.18 million), Korean (1.07 million), and Russian (1.04 million). German, spoken by 1 million people at home in 2010, fell to 857,000 total speakers in 2020. America's immigrant population is by far the world's largest in absolute terms. In 2022, there were 87.7 million immigrants and U.S.-born children of immigrants in the United States, accounting for nearly 27% of the overall U.S. population. In 2017, out of the U.S. foreign-born population, some 45% (20.7 million) were naturalized citizens, 27% (12.3 million) were lawful permanent residents, 6% (2.2 million) were temporary lawful residents, and 23% (10.5 million) were unauthorized immigrants. In 2019, the top countries of origin for immigrants were Mexico (24% of immigrants), India (6%), China (5%), the Philippines (4.5%), and El Salvador (3%). In fiscal year 2022, over one million immigrants (most of whom entered through family reunification) were granted legal residence. The undocumented immigrant population in the U.S. reached a record high of 14 million in 2023. The First Amendment guarantees the free exercise of religion in the country and forbids Congress from passing laws respecting its establishment. Religious practice is widespread, among the most diverse in the world, and profoundly vibrant. The country has the world's largest Christian population, which includes the fourth-largest population of Catholics. Other notable faiths include Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, New Age, and Native American religions. Religious practice varies significantly by region. "Ceremonial deism" is common in American culture. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in a higher power or spiritual force, engage in spiritual practices such as prayer, and consider themselves religious or spiritual. In the Southern United States' "Bible Belt", evangelical Protestantism plays a significant role culturally; New England and the Western United States tend to be more secular. Mormonism, a Restorationist movement founded in the U.S. in 1847, is the predominant religion in Utah and a major religion in Idaho. About 82% of Americans live in metropolitan areas, particularly in suburbs; about half of those reside in cities with populations over 50,000. In 2022, 333 incorporated municipalities had populations over 100,000, nine cities had more than one million residents, and four cities—New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston—had populations exceeding two million. Many U.S. metropolitan populations are growing rapidly, particularly in the South and West. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), average U.S. life expectancy at birth reached 79.0 years in 2024, its highest recorded level. This was an increase of 0.6 years over 2023. The CDC attributed the improvement to a significant fall in the number of fatal drug overdoses in the country, noting that "heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in the United States, followed by cancer and unintentional injuries." In 2024, life expectancy at birth for American men rose to 76.5 years (+0.7 years compared to 2023), while life expectancy for women was 81.4 years (+0.3 years). Starting in 1998, life expectancy in the U.S. fell behind that of other wealthy industrialized countries, and Americans' "health disadvantage" gap has been increasing ever since. The Commonwealth Fund reported in 2020 that the U.S. had the highest suicide rate among high-income countries. Approximately one-third of the U.S. adult population is obese and another third is overweight. The U.S. healthcare system far outspends that of any other country, measured both in per capita spending and as a percentage of GDP, but attains worse healthcare outcomes when compared to peer countries for reasons that are debated. The United States is the only developed country without a system of universal healthcare, and a significant proportion of the population that does not carry health insurance. Government-funded healthcare coverage for the poor (Medicaid) and for those age 65 and older (Medicare) is available to Americans who meet the programs' income or age qualifications. In 2010, then-President Obama passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.[x] Abortion in the United States is not federally protected, and is illegal or restricted in 17 states. American primary and secondary education, known in the U.S. as K–12 ("kindergarten through 12th grade"), is decentralized. School systems are operated by state, territorial, and sometimes municipal governments and regulated by the U.S. Department of Education. In general, children are required to attend school or an approved homeschool from the age of five or six (kindergarten or first grade) until they are 18 years old. This often brings students through the 12th grade, the final year of a U.S. high school, but some states and territories allow them to leave school earlier, at age 16 or 17. The U.S. spends more on education per student than any other country, an average of $18,614 per year per public elementary and secondary school student in 2020–2021. Among Americans age 25 and older, 92.2% graduated from high school, 62.7% attended some college, 37.7% earned a bachelor's degree, and 14.2% earned a graduate degree. The U.S. literacy rate is near-universal. The U.S. has produced the most Nobel Prize winners of any country, with 411 (having won 413 awards). U.S. tertiary or higher education has earned a global reputation. Many of the world's top universities, as listed by various ranking organizations, are in the United States, including 19 of the top 25. American higher education is dominated by state university systems, although the country's many private universities and colleges enroll about 20% of all American students. Local community colleges generally offer open admissions, lower tuition, and coursework leading to a two-year associate degree or a non-degree certificate. As for public expenditures on higher education, the U.S. spends more per student than the OECD average, and Americans spend more than all nations in combined public and private spending. Colleges and universities directly funded by the federal government do not charge tuition and are limited to military personnel and government employees, including: the U.S. service academies, the Naval Postgraduate School, and military staff colleges. Despite some student loan forgiveness programs in place, student loan debt increased by 102% between 2010 and 2020, and exceeded $1.7 trillion in 2022. Culture and society The United States is home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and customs. The country has been described as having the values of individualism and personal autonomy, as well as a strong work ethic and competitiveness. Voluntary altruism towards others also plays a major role; according to a 2016 study by the Charities Aid Foundation, Americans donated 1.44% of total GDP to charity—the highest rate in the world by a large margin. Americans have traditionally been characterized by a unifying political belief in an "American Creed" emphasizing consent of the governed, liberty, equality under the law, democracy, social equality, property rights, and a preference for limited government. The U.S. has acquired significant hard and soft power through its diplomatic influence, economic power, military alliances, and cultural exports such as American movies, music, video games, sports, and food. The influence that the United States exerts on other countries through soft power is referred to as Americanization. Nearly all present Americans or their ancestors came from Europe, Africa, or Asia (the "Old World") within the past five centuries. Mainstream American culture is a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of European immigrants with influences from many other sources, such as traditions brought by slaves from Africa. More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has added to a cultural mix that has been described as a homogenizing melting pot, and a heterogeneous salad bowl, with immigrants contributing to, and often assimilating into, mainstream American culture. Under the First Amendment to the Constitution, the United States is considered to have the strongest protections of free speech of any country. Flag desecration, hate speech, blasphemy, and lese majesty are all forms of protected expression. A 2016 Pew Research Center poll found that Americans were the most supportive of free expression of any polity measured. Additionally, they are the "most supportive of freedom of the press and the right to use the Internet without government censorship". The U.S. is a socially progressive country with permissive attitudes surrounding human sexuality. LGBTQ rights in the United States are among the most advanced by global standards. The American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high levels of social mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants. Whether this perception is accurate has been a topic of debate. While mainstream culture holds that the United States is a classless society, scholars identify significant differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values. Americans tend to greatly value socioeconomic achievement, but being ordinary or average is promoted by some as a noble condition as well. The National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities is an agency of the United States federal government that was established in 1965 with the purpose to "develop and promote a broadly conceived national policy of support for the humanities and the arts in the United States, and for institutions which preserve the cultural heritage of the United States." It is composed of four sub-agencies: Colonial American authors were influenced by John Locke and other Enlightenment philosophers. The American Revolutionary Period (1765–1783) is notable for the political writings of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. Shortly before and after the Revolutionary War, the newspaper rose to prominence, filling a demand for anti-British national literature. An early novel is William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy, published in 1791. Writer and critic John Neal in the early- to mid-19th century helped advance America toward a unique literature and culture by criticizing predecessors such as Washington Irving for imitating their British counterparts, and by influencing writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, who took American poetry and short fiction in new directions. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller pioneered the influential Transcendentalism movement; Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden, was influenced by this movement. The conflict surrounding abolitionism inspired writers, like Harriet Beecher Stowe, and authors of slave narratives, such as Frederick Douglass. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850) explored the dark side of American history, as did Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851). Major American poets of the 19th century American Renaissance include Walt Whitman, Melville, and Emily Dickinson. Mark Twain was the first major American writer to be born in the West. Henry James achieved international recognition with novels like The Portrait of a Lady (1881). As literacy rates rose, periodicals published more stories centered around industrial workers, women, and the rural poor. Naturalism, regionalism, and realism were the major literary movements of the period. While modernism generally took on an international character, modernist authors working within the United States more often rooted their work in specific regions, peoples, and cultures. Following the Great Migration to northern cities, African-American and black West Indian authors of the Harlem Renaissance developed an independent tradition of literature that rebuked a history of inequality and celebrated black culture. An important cultural export during the Jazz Age, these writings were a key influence on Négritude, a philosophy emerging in the 1930s among francophone writers of the African diaspora. In the 1950s, an ideal of homogeneity led many authors to attempt to write the Great American Novel, while the Beat Generation rejected this conformity, using styles that elevated the impact of the spoken word over mechanics to describe drug use, sexuality, and the failings of society. Contemporary literature is more pluralistic than in previous eras, with the closest thing to a unifying feature being a trend toward self-conscious experiments with language. Twelve American laureates have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Media in the United States is broadly uncensored, with the First Amendment providing significant protections, as reiterated in New York Times Co. v. United States. The four major broadcasters in the U.S. are the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), American Broadcasting Company (ABC), and Fox Broadcasting Company (Fox). The four major broadcast television networks are all commercial entities. The U.S. cable television system offers hundreds of channels catering to a variety of niches. In 2021, about 83% of Americans over age 12 listened to broadcast radio, while about 40% listened to podcasts. In the prior year, there were 15,460 licensed full-power radio stations in the U.S. according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Much of the public radio broadcasting is supplied by National Public Radio (NPR), incorporated in February 1970 under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. U.S. newspapers with a global reach and reputation include The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today. About 800 publications are produced in Spanish. With few exceptions, newspapers are privately owned, either by large chains such as Gannett or McClatchy, which own dozens or even hundreds of newspapers; by small chains that own a handful of papers; or, in an increasingly rare situation, by individuals or families. Major cities often have alternative newspapers to complement the mainstream daily papers, such as The Village Voice in New York City and LA Weekly in Los Angeles. The five most-visited websites in the world are Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and ChatGPT—all of them American-owned. Other popular platforms used include X (formerly Twitter) and Amazon. In 2025, the U.S. was the world's second-largest video game market by revenue (after China). In 2015, the U.S. video game industry consisted of 2,457 companies that employed around 220,000 jobs and generated $30.4 billion in revenue. There are 444 game publishers, developers, and hardware companies in California alone. According to the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the U.S. is the top location for video game development, with 58% of the world's game developers based there in 2025. The United States is well known for its theater. Mainstream theater in the United States derives from the old European theatrical tradition and has been heavily influenced by the British theater. By the middle of the 19th century, America had created new distinct dramatic forms in the Tom Shows, the showboat theater and the minstrel show. The central hub of the American theater scene is the Theater District in Manhattan, with its divisions of Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway. Many movie and television celebrities have gotten their big break working in New York productions. Outside New York City, many cities have professional regional or resident theater companies that produce their own seasons. The biggest-budget theatrical productions are musicals. U.S. theater has an active community theater culture. The Tony Awards recognizes excellence in live Broadway theater and are presented at an annual ceremony in Manhattan. The awards are given for Broadway productions and performances. One is also given for regional theater. Several discretionary non-competitive awards are given as well, including a Special Tony Award, the Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre, and the Isabelle Stevenson Award. Folk art in colonial America grew out of artisanal craftsmanship in communities that allowed commonly trained people to individually express themselves. It was distinct from Europe's tradition of high art, which was less accessible and generally less relevant to early American settlers. Cultural movements in art and craftsmanship in colonial America generally lagged behind those of Western Europe. For example, the prevailing medieval style of woodworking and primitive sculpture became integral to early American folk art, despite the emergence of Renaissance styles in England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The new English styles would have been early enough to make a considerable impact on American folk art, but American styles and forms had already been firmly adopted. Not only did styles change slowly in early America, but there was a tendency for rural artisans there to continue their traditional forms longer than their urban counterparts did—and far longer than those in Western Europe. The Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century movement in the visual arts tradition of European naturalism. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. art scene. American Realism and American Regionalism sought to reflect and give America new ways of looking at itself. Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others experimented with new and individualistic styles, which would become known as American modernism. Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein developed largely in the United States. Major photographers include Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, James Van Der Zee, Ansel Adams, and Gordon Parks. The tide of modernism and then postmodernism has brought global fame to American architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan is the largest art museum in the United States and the fourth-largest in the world. American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, or roots music. Many traditional songs have been sung within the same family or folk group for generations, and sometimes trace back to such origins as the British Isles, mainland Europe, or Africa. The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African-American music in particular have influenced American music. Banjos were brought to America through the slave trade. Minstrel shows incorporating the instrument into their acts led to its increased popularity and widespread production in the 19th century. The electric guitar, first invented in the 1930s, and mass-produced by the 1940s, had an enormous influence on popular music, in particular due to the development of rock and roll. The synthesizer, turntablism, and electronic music were also largely developed in the U.S. Elements from folk idioms such as the blues and old-time music were adopted and transformed into popular genres with global audiences. Jazz grew from blues and ragtime in the early 20th century, developing from the innovations and recordings of composers such as W.C. Handy and Jelly Roll Morton. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington increased its popularity early in the 20th century. Country music developed in the 1920s, bluegrass and rhythm and blues in the 1940s, and rock and roll in the 1950s. In the 1960s, Bob Dylan emerged from the folk revival to become one of the country's most celebrated songwriters. The musical forms of punk and hip hop both originated in the United States in the 1970s. The United States has the world's largest music market, with a total retail value of $15.9 billion in 2022. Most of the world's major record companies are based in the U.S.; they are represented by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Mid-20th-century American pop stars, such as Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, became global celebrities and best-selling music artists, as have artists of the late 20th century, such as Michael Jackson, Madonna, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey, and of the early 21st century, such as Eminem, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. The United States has the world's largest apparel market by revenue. Apart from professional business attire, American fashion is eclectic and predominantly informal. Americans' diverse cultural roots are reflected in their clothing; however, sneakers, jeans, T-shirts, and baseball caps are emblematic of American styles. New York, with its Fashion Week, is considered to be one of the "Big Four" global fashion capitals, along with Paris, Milan, and London. A study demonstrated that general proximity to Manhattan's Garment District has been synonymous with American fashion since its inception in the early 20th century. A number of well-known designer labels, among them Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Tom Ford and Calvin Klein, are headquartered in Manhattan. Labels cater to niche markets, such as preteens. New York Fashion Week is one of the most influential fashion shows in the world, and is held twice each year in Manhattan; the annual Met Gala, also in Manhattan, has been called the fashion world's "biggest night". The U.S. film industry has a worldwide influence and following. Hollywood, a district in central Los Angeles, the nation's second-most populous city, is also metonymous for the American filmmaking industry. The major film studios of the United States are the primary source of the most commercially successful movies selling the most tickets in the world. Largely centered in the New York City region from its beginnings in the late 19th century through the first decades of the 20th century, the U.S. film industry has since been primarily based in and around Hollywood. Nonetheless, American film companies have been subject to the forces of globalization in the 21st century, and an increasing number of films are made elsewhere. The Academy Awards, popularly known as "the Oscars", have been held annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1929, and the Golden Globe Awards have been held annually since January 1944. The industry peaked in what is commonly referred to as the "Golden Age of Hollywood", from the early sound period until the early 1960s, with screen actors such as John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe becoming iconic figures. In the 1970s, "New Hollywood", or the "Hollywood Renaissance", was defined by grittier films influenced by French and Italian realist pictures of the post-war period. The 21st century has been marked by the rise of American streaming platforms, which came to rival traditional cinema. Early settlers were introduced by Native Americans to foods such as turkey, sweet potatoes, corn, squash, and maple syrup. Of the most enduring and pervasive examples are variations of the native dish called succotash. Early settlers and later immigrants combined these with foods they were familiar with, such as wheat flour, beef, and milk, to create a distinctive American cuisine. New World crops, especially pumpkin, corn, potatoes, and turkey as the main course are part of a shared national menu on Thanksgiving, when many Americans prepare or purchase traditional dishes to celebrate the occasion. Characteristic American dishes such as apple pie, fried chicken, doughnuts, french fries, macaroni and cheese, ice cream, hamburgers, hot dogs, and American pizza derive from the recipes of various immigrant groups. Mexican dishes such as burritos and tacos preexisted the United States in areas later annexed from Mexico, and adaptations of Chinese cuisine as well as pasta dishes freely adapted from Italian sources are all widely consumed. American chefs have had a significant impact on society both domestically and internationally. In 1946, the Culinary Institute of America was founded by Katharine Angell and Frances Roth. This would become the United States' most prestigious culinary school, where many of the most talented American chefs would study prior to successful careers. The United States restaurant industry was projected at $899 billion in sales for 2020, and employed more than 15 million people, representing 10% of the nation's workforce directly. It is the country's second-largest private employer and the third-largest employer overall. The United States is home to over 220 Michelin star-rated restaurants, 70 of which are in New York City. Wine has been produced in what is now the United States since the 1500s, with the first widespread production beginning in what is now New Mexico in 1628. In the modern U.S., wine production is undertaken in all fifty states, with California producing 84 percent of all U.S. wine. With more than 1,100,000 acres (4,500 km2) under vine, the United States is the fourth-largest wine-producing country in the world, after Italy, Spain, and France. The classic American diner, a casual restaurant type originally intended for the working class, emerged during the 19th century from converted railroad dining cars made stationary. The diner soon evolved into purpose-built structures whose number expanded greatly in the 20th century. The American fast-food industry developed alongside the nation's car culture. American restaurants developed the drive-in format in the 1920s, which they began to replace with the drive-through format by the 1940s. American fast-food restaurant chains, such as McDonald's, Burger King, Chick-fil-A, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Dunkin' Donuts and many others, have numerous outlets around the world. The most popular spectator sports in the U.S. are American football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and ice hockey. Their premier leagues are, respectively, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, and the National Hockey League, All these leagues enjoy wide-ranging domestic media coverage and, except for the MLS, all are considered the preeminent leagues in their respective sports in the world. While most major U.S. sports such as baseball and American football have evolved out of European practices, basketball, volleyball, skateboarding, and snowboarding are American inventions, many of which have become popular worldwide. Lacrosse and surfing arose from Native American and Native Hawaiian activities that predate European contact. The market for professional sports in the United States was approximately $69 billion in July 2013, roughly 50% larger than that of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa combined. American football is by several measures the most popular spectator sport in the United States. Although American football does not have a substantial following in other nations, the NFL does have the highest average attendance (67,254) of any professional sports league in the world. In the year 2024, the NFL generated over $23 billion, making them the most valued professional sports league in the United States and the world. Baseball has been regarded as the U.S. "national sport" since the late 19th century. The most-watched individual sports in the U.S. are golf and auto racing, particularly NASCAR and IndyCar. On the collegiate level, earnings for the member institutions exceed $1 billion annually, and college football and basketball attract large audiences, as the NCAA March Madness tournament and the College Football Playoff are some of the most watched national sporting events. In the U.S., the intercollegiate sports level serves as the main feeder system for professional and Olympic sports, with significant exceptions such as Minor League Baseball. This differs greatly from practices in nearly all other countries, where publicly and privately funded sports organizations serve this function. Eight Olympic Games have taken place in the United States. The 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, were the first-ever Olympic Games held outside of Europe. The Olympic Games will be held in the U.S. for a ninth time when Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Summer Olympics. U.S. athletes have won a total of 2,968 medals (1,179 gold) at the Olympic Games, the most of any country. In other international competition, the United States is the home of a number of prestigious events, including the America's Cup, World Baseball Classic, the U.S. Open, and the Masters Tournament. The U.S. men's national soccer team has qualified for eleven World Cups, while the women's national team has won the FIFA Women's World Cup and Olympic soccer tournament four and five times, respectively. The 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup was hosted by the United States. Its final match was attended by 90,185, setting the world record for largest women's sporting event crowd at the time. The United States hosted the 1994 FIFA World Cup and will co-host, along with Canada and Mexico, the 2026 FIFA World Cup. See also Notes References This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA IGO 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from World Food and Agriculture – Statistical Yearbook 2023, FAO, FAO. External links 40°N 100°W / 40°N 100°W / 40; -100 (United States of America) |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixter] | [TOKENS: 571] |
Contents Pixter Pixter was among the first portable handheld touch screen drawing toys for children invented by Rehco, LLC and marketed by Fisher Price from 2000 through 2007. Pixter was pre-programmed with fun content and repeatable play. Pixter also could accept cartridge-based games and other activities. Pixter was originally marketed successfully with a black-and-white display but later was upgraded to a color display. Inspired by the Apple Newton, the Pixter line has become something of an obscurity, with little information left on the internet about the history of it, sales records, original pricing, release dates, etc. It also included licensed content from Nickelodeon, Disney, Cartoon Network, BBC, etc. The Pixter remains, as of 2017, the second to last console Mattel has released, after the HyperScan, but the Pixter is Fisher Price's first and only handheld game system. Gameplay The original Pixter had a black and white LCD display. Its touch-sensitive LCD screen was activated by a drawing stylus. It used 4 AA batteries. Models The original Pixter came in several colors, but otherwise they are the same unit. Similar to the original Pixter, except with a "Plus" subcategory of 10 additional activities in the Pixter's main menu and 20 times more storage space than the original Pixter unit. It also has a flexible screen light. Played the same cartridges as the original, but included digital drawing and quick-paint tools, as well as a wireless link. The wireless link could be used to send messages and pictures between other Pixter 2.0's. It used 4 AA batteries. Pixter Color is similar to the original Pixter, but with 128 colors and double the screen resolution. It used newer cartridges that could not be used with the original Pixter. With the use of an adapter, Pixter Color could play original Pixter titles. It used 4 AA batteries. The main menu of the system contains 2 unique music tracks, but outside of games or the home menu music is not implemented. The system uses a custom built LH75411 system, with a 70 MHz ARM7TDMI CPU, and 32 kilobytes of SRAM, working as Random Access Memory and storage for one picture at a time in local memory. The Pocket Pixters were key-chain sized dedicated consoles that included a drawing program centered around a theme and a built-in game. They used three Button Cell (LR44) batteries. The Pixter Multi-Media System reportedly had 100 creative tools, games, and activities-built in, including a touch screen with stylus and had streaming video capabilities. There were also exclusive cartridges available for the system. It used 4 AA batteries. Games/media released References External links XGP |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Time_Protocol] | [TOKENS: 4826] |
Contents Network Time Protocol The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a networking protocol for clock synchronization between computer systems over packet-switched, variable-latency data networks. In operation since before 1985, NTP is one of the oldest Internet protocols in current use. NTP was designed by David L. Mills of the University of Delaware. NTP is intended to synchronize participating computers to within a few milliseconds of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).: 3 It uses the intersection algorithm, a modified version of Marzullo's algorithm, to select accurate time servers and is designed to mitigate the effects of variable network latency. NTP can usually maintain time to within tens of milliseconds over the public Internet, and can achieve better than one millisecond accuracy in local area networks under ideal conditions. Asymmetric routes and network congestion can cause errors of 100 ms or more. The protocol is usually described in terms of a client–server model, but can as easily be used in peer-to-peer relationships where both peers consider the other to be a potential time source.: 20 Implementations send and receive timestamps using the User Datagram Protocol (UDP); the service is normally on port number 123, and in some modes both sides use this port number.: 16 They can also use broadcasting or multicasting, where clients passively listen to time updates after an initial round-trip calibrating exchange. NTP supplies a warning of any impending leap second adjustment, but no information about local time zones or daylight saving time is transmitted. The current protocol is version 4 (NTPv4), which is backward compatible with version 3. Clock synchronization algorithm A typical NTP client regularly polls one or more NTP servers. The client must compute its time offset and round-trip delay. Time offset θ is the positive or negative (client time > server time) difference in absolute time between the two clocks. It is defined by θ = ( t 1 − t 0 ) + ( t 2 − t 3 ) 2 , {\displaystyle \theta ={\frac {(t_{1}-t_{0})+(t_{2}-t_{3})}{2}},} and the round-trip delay δ by δ = ( t 3 − t 0 ) − ( t 2 − t 1 ) , {\displaystyle \delta ={(t_{3}-t_{0})-(t_{2}-t_{1})},} where To derive the expression for the offset, note that for the request packet, t 0 + θ + δ / 2 = t 1 {\displaystyle t_{0}+\theta +\delta /2=t_{1}} and for the response packet, t 3 + θ − δ / 2 = t 2 {\displaystyle t_{3}+\theta -\delta /2=t_{2}} Solving for θ yields the definition of the time offset. The values for θ and δ are passed through filters and subjected to statistical analysis ("mitigation"). Outliers are discarded and an estimate of time offset is derived from the best three remaining candidates. The clock frequency is then adjusted to reduce the offset gradually ("discipline"), creating a feedback loop.: 20 Accurate synchronization is achieved when both the incoming and outgoing routes between the client and the server have symmetrical nominal delay. If the routes do not have a common nominal delay, a systematic bias exists of half the difference between the forward and backward travel times. A number of approaches have been proposed to measure asymmetry, but among practical implementations only chrony seems to have one included. History In 1979, network time synchronization technology was used in what was possibly the first public demonstration of Internet services running over a trans-Atlantic satellite network, at the National Computer Conference in New York. The technology was later described in the 1981 Internet Engineering Note (IEN) 173 and a public protocol was developed from it that was documented in RFC 778. The technology was first deployed in a local area network as part of the Hello routing protocol and implemented in the Fuzzball router, an experimental operating system used in network prototyping, where it ran for many years. Other related network tools were available both then and now. They include the Daytime and Time protocols for recording the time of events, as well as the ICMP Timestamp messages and IP Timestamp option (RFC 781). More complete synchronization systems, although lacking NTP's data analysis and clock disciplining algorithms, include the Unix daemon timed, which uses an election algorithm to appoint a server for all the clients; and the Digital Time Synchronization Service (DTSS), which uses a hierarchy of servers similar to the NTP stratum model. In 1985, NTP version 0 (NTPv0) was implemented in both Fuzzball and Unix, and the NTP packet header and round-trip delay and offset calculations, which have persisted into NTPv4, were documented in RFC 958. Despite the relatively slow computers and networks available at the time, accuracy of better than 100 milliseconds was usually obtained on Atlantic spanning links, with accuracy of tens of milliseconds on Ethernet networks. In 1988, a much more complete specification of the NTPv1 protocol, with associated algorithms, was published in RFC 1059. It drew on the experimental results and clock filter algorithm documented in RFC 956 and was the first version to describe the client–server and peer-to-peer modes. In 1991, the NTPv1 architecture, protocol and algorithms were brought to the attention of a wider engineering community with the publication of an article by David L. Mills in the IEEE Transactions on Communications. In 1989, RFC 1119 was published defining NTPv2 by means of a state machine, with pseudocode to describe its operation. It introduced a management protocol and cryptographic authentication scheme which have both survived into NTPv4, along with the bulk of the algorithm. However the design of NTPv2 was criticized for lacking formal correctness by the DTSS community, and the clock selection procedure was modified to incorporate Marzullo's algorithm for NTPv3 onwards. In 1992, RFC 1305 defined NTPv3. The RFC included an analysis of all sources of error, from the reference clock down to the final client, which enabled the calculation of a metric that helps choose the best server where several candidates appear to disagree. Broadcast mode was introduced. In subsequent years, as new features were added and algorithm improvements were made, it became apparent that a new protocol version was required. In 2010, RFC 5905 was published containing a proposed specification for NTPv4. Following the retirement of Mills from the University of Delaware, the reference implementation is currently maintained as an open source project led by Harlan Stenn. On the IANA side, a ntp (network time protocols) work group is in charge of reviewing proposed drafts. The protocol has significantly progressed since NTPv4. As of 2022[update], three RFC documents describing updates to the protocol have been published, not counting the numerous peripheral standards such as Network Time Security. Mills had mentioned plans for a "NTPv5" on his page, but one was never published. An unrelated draft termed "NTPv5" by M. Lichvar of chrony was initiated in 2020 and includes security, accuracy, and scaling changes. SNTP As NTP replaced the old Time Protocol, some use cases nevertheless found the full protocol too complicated. In 1992, Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP) was defined to fill this niche. The SNTPv3 standard describes a way to use NTPv3 such that no storage of state over an extended period is needed. The topology becomes essentially the same as with the Time Protocol, as only one server is used. In 1996, SNTP was updated to SNTPv4, with some features of the then-in-development NTPv4. SNTPv4 was merged into the main NTPv4 standard in 2010. SNTP is fully interoperable with NTP since it does not define a new protocol: §14 , as it utilizes the same packet format and port as NTP, ensuring compatibility with NTP servers. However, client/server will lack the complex algorithms required to filter network jitter, analyze clock drift, or cross-reference multiple time sources. This makes it suitable for IoT devices and basic hardware that require "good enough" time without the overhead of a full NTP application stack. An SNTP client typically operates by querying a single server and applying the received time directly to the local clock. However, the simple algorithms provide times of reduced accuracy and thus it is inadvisable to sync time from an SNTP source. However, RFC 5905 notes that because the additional complexity of the full on-wire protocol is minimal, full implementation is encouraged even for simple clients. Clock strata NTP uses a hierarchical, semi-layered system of time sources. Each level of this hierarchy is termed a stratum and is assigned a number starting with zero for the reference clock at the top. A server synchronized to a stratum n server runs at stratum n + 1. The number represents the distance from the reference clock and is used to prevent cyclical dependencies in the hierarchy. Stratum is not always an indication of quality or reliability; it is common to find stratum 3 time sources that are higher quality than some stratum 2 time sources.[a] Brief descriptions of strata 0, 1, 2 and 3 are provided below. The upper limit for stratum is 15; stratum 16 is used to indicate that a device is unsynchronized. The NTP algorithms on each computer interact to construct a Bellman–Ford shortest-path spanning tree, to minimize the accumulated round-trip delay to the stratum 1 servers for all the clients.: 20 In addition to stratum, the protocol is able to identify the synchronization source for each server in terms of a reference identifier (refid). For servers on stratum 2 and below, the refid is an encoded form of the upstream time server's IP address. For IPv4, this is simply the 32-bit address; for IPv6, it would be the first 32 bits of the MD5 hash of the source address. Refids serve to detect and prevent timing loops to the first degree. The refid field is filled with status words in the case of kiss-o'-death (KoD) packets, which tell the client to stop sending requests so that the server can rest. Some examples are INIT (initialization), STEP (step time change), and RATE (client requesting too fast). The program output may additionally use codes not transmitted in the packet to indicate error, such as XFAC to indicate a network disconnection. The IANA maintains a registry for refid source names and KoD codes. Informal assignments can still appear. Software implementations The NTP reference implementation, along with the protocol, has been continuously developed for over 20 years. Backwards compatibility has been maintained as new features have been added. It contains several sensitive algorithms, especially to discipline the clock, that can misbehave when synchronized to servers that use different algorithms. The software has been ported to almost every computing platform, including personal computers. It runs as a daemon called ntpd under Unix or as a service under Windows. Reference clocks are supported and their offsets are filtered and analysed in the same way as remote servers, although they are usually polled more frequently.: 15–19 This implementation was audited in 2017, finding 14 potential security issues. All Microsoft Windows versions since Windows 2000 include the Windows Time service (W32Time), which has the ability to synchronize the computer clock to an NTP server. W32Time was originally implemented for the purpose of the Kerberos version 5 authentication protocol, which required time to be within 5 minutes of the correct value to prevent replay attacks. The network time server in Windows 2000 Server (and Windows XP) does not implement NTP disciplined synchronization, only locally disciplined synchronization with NTP/SNTP correction. Beginning with Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista, the NTP provider for W32Time became compatible with a significant subset of NTPv3. Microsoft states that W32Time cannot reliably maintain time synchronization with one second accuracy. If higher accuracy is desired, Microsoft recommends using a newer version of Windows or different NTP implementation. Beginning with Windows 10 version 1607 and Windows Server 2016, W32Time can be configured to reach time accuracy of 1 s, 50 ms or 1 ms under certain specified operating conditions. In 2004, Henning Brauer of OpenBSD presented OpenNTPD, an NTPv3/SNTPv4 implementation with a focus on security and encompassing a privilege separated design. Whilst it is aimed more closely at the simpler generic needs of OpenBSD users, it also includes some protocol security improvements while still being compatible with existing NTP servers. The simpler code base sacrifices accuracy, deemed unnecessary in this use case. A portable version is available in Linux package repositories. NTPsec is a fork of the reference implementation that has been systematically security-hardened. The fork point was in June 2015 and was in response to a series of compromises in 2014. The first production release shipped in October 2017. Between removal of unsafe features, removal of support for obsolete hardware, and removal of support for obsolete Unix variants, NTPsec has been able to pare away 75% of the original codebase, making the remainder easier to audit. A 2017 audit of the code showed eight security issues, including two that were not present in the original reference implementation, but NTPsec did not suffer from eight other issues that remained in the reference implementation. chrony is an independent NTP implementation mainly sponsored by Red Hat, who uses it as the default time program in their distributions. Being written from scratch, chrony has a simpler codebase allowing for better security and lower resource consumption. It does not however compromise on accuracy, instead syncing faster and better than the reference ntpd in many circumstances. It is versatile enough for ordinary computers, which are unstable, go into sleep mode or have intermittent connection to the Internet. It is also designed for virtual machines, a more unstable environment. chrony has been evaluated as "trustworthy", with only a few incidents. It is able to achieve improved precision on LAN connections, using hardware timestamping on the network adapter. Support for Network Time Security (NTS) was added on version 4.0. chrony is available under GNU General Public License version 2, was created by Richard Curnow in 1997 and is currently maintained by Miroslav Lichvar. ntpd-rs is a security-focused implementation of the NTP protocol, founded by the Internet Security Research Group as part of their Prossimo initiative for the creation of memory safe Internet infrastructure. ntpd-rs is implemented in Rust programming language which offers memory safety guarantees in addition to the real-time computing capabilities which are required for an NTP implementation. ntpd-rs is used in security-sensitive environments such as the Let's Encrypt non-profit Certificate Authority. Support for NTS is available. ntpd-rs is part of the "Pendulum" project which also includes a Precision Time Protocol implementation "statime". Both projects are available under Apache and MIT software licenses. Leap seconds On the day of a leap second event, ntpd receives notification from either a configuration file, an attached reference clock, or a remote server. Although the NTP clock is actually halted during the event, because of the requirement that time must appear to be strictly increasing, any processes that query the system time cause it to increase by a tiny amount, preserving the order of events. If a negative leap second should ever become necessary, it would be deleted with the sequence 23:59:58, 00:00:00, skipping 23:59:59. An alternative implementation, called leap smearing, consists in introducing the leap second incrementally during a period of 24 hours, from noon to noon in UTC time. This implementation is used by Google (both internally and on their public NTP servers), Amazon AWS, and Facebook. chrony supports leap smear in smoothtime and leapsecmode configurations, but such use is not to be mixed with a public NTP pool as leap smear is non-standard and will throw off client calculation in a mix. Security concerns Because adjusting system time is generally a privileged operation, part or all of NTP code has to be run with some privileges in order to support its core functionality. Only a few other security problems have been identified in the reference implementation of the NTP codebase, but those that appeared in 2009[which?] were cause for significant concern. The protocol has been undergoing revision and review throughout its history. The codebase for the reference implementation has undergone security audits from several sources for several years. A stack buffer overflow exploit was discovered and patched in 2014. Apple was concerned enough about this vulnerability that it used its auto-update capability for the first time. On systems using the reference implementation, which is running with root user's credential, this could allow unlimited access. Some other implementations, such as OpenNTPD, have smaller code base and adopted other mitigation measures like privilege separation, are not subject to this flaw. A 2017 security audit of three NTP implementations, conducted on behalf of the Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative, suggested that both NTP and NTPsec were more problematic than chrony from a security standpoint. NTP servers can be susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks unless packets are cryptographically signed for authentication. The computational overhead involved can make this impractical on busy servers, particularly during denial of service attacks. NTP message spoofing from a man-in-the-middle attack can be used to alter clocks on client computers and allow a number of attacks based on bypassing of cryptographic key expiration. Some of the services affected by fake NTP messages identified are TLS, DNSSEC, various caching schemes (such as DNS cache), Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Bitcoin [citation needed]and a number of persistent login schemes. NTP has been used in distributed denial of service attacks. A small query is sent to an NTP server with the return IP address spoofed to be the target address. Similar to the DNS amplification attack, the server responds with a much larger reply that allows an attacker to substantially increase the amount of data being sent to the target. To avoid participating in an attack, NTP server software can be upgraded or servers can be configured to ignore external queries. NTP itself includes support for authenticating servers to clients. NTPv3 supports a symmetric key mode, which is not useful against MITM. The public key system known as "autokey" in NTPv4 adapted from IPSec offers useful authentication, but is not practical for a busy server. Autokey was also later found to suffer from several design flaws, with no correction published, save for a change in the message authentication code. Autokey should no longer be used. Network Time Security (NTS) is a secure version of NTPv4 with TLS and AEAD. The main improvement over previous attempts is that a separate "key establishment" server handles the heavy asymmetric cryptography, which needs to be done only once. If the server goes down, previous users would still be able to fetch time without fear of MITM. NTS is supported by several NTP servers including Cloudflare and Netnod. It can be enabled on chrony, NTPsec, and ntpd-rs. Microsoft also has an approach to authenticate NTPv3/SNTPv4 packets using a Windows domain identity, known as MS-SNTP. This system is implemented in the reference ntpd and chrony, using samba for the domain connection. NTP packet header format The 64-bit binary fixed-point timestamps used by NTP consist of a 32-bit part for seconds and a 32-bit part for fractional second, giving a time scale that rolls over every 232 seconds (136 years) and a theoretical resolution of 2−32 seconds (233 picoseconds). NTP uses an epoch of January 1, 1900. Therefore, the first rollover occurs on February 7, 2036. NTPv4 introduces a 128-bit date format: 64 bits for the second and 64 bits for the fractional-second. However, the 128-bit format is never transmitted as the standard states that eras "cannot be produced by NTP directly, nor is there need to do so." The most-significant 32 bits of this format is the Era Number which would resolve rollover ambiguity in most cases. According to Mills, "The 64-bit value for the fraction is enough to resolve the amount of time it takes a photon to pass an electron at the speed of light. The 64-bit second value is enough to provide unambiguous time representation until the universe goes dim."[b] NTP and Timezone configuration via DHCP DHCPv4 allows clients to automatically obtain time sources as part of initial network configuration. It is commonly used in managed networks to ensure dynamic time synchronisation without manual configuration. RFC 2132 defines a dedicated DHCPv4 option for distributing NTP server addresses to clients. The Network Time Protocol Servers option carries a list of IPv4 addresses identifying NTP servers available to the client. Servers should be listed in order of preference, allowing the client to select the most appropriate source. While the Network Time Protocol (NTP) is responsible for synchronising system clocks to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), it does not distribute local time zone information. Time zone configuration is handled separately at the operating system level. This is especially useful for networks where devices are moving in and out, like cellular network. Reduce the need to defined directly on device. These options are defined in RFC 4833 and apply to both DHCP for IPv4 (DHCPv4) and IPv6 (DHCPv6). The following DHCPv4 options are defined: Both options contain a variable-length string and are not null-terminated. This option carries a time zone definition using the POSIX TZ environment variable format (as specified in IEEE 1003.1), except that the string must not begin with a colon (:). Example: This describes: For this option to be useful, the client must already have a local copy of the time zone database. If the client recognizes the provided name, it should prefer this option over the POSIX string. If the name is unknown, the option must be ignored. This option contains the name of a zone from the IANA Time Zone Database , such as: RFC 4833 defines equivalent options for DHCPv6 with different option codes: The semantics and string formats are identical to those used in DHCPv4; only the binary encoding differs due to protocol differences between DHCPv4 and DHCPv6. NTP distributes only absolute time (UTC) and does not include any information about local time zones or daylight saving rules. DHCP time zone options complement NTP by allowing clients to automatically configure their local time representation after their clocks have been synchronised. In typical deployments: This separation keeps NTP simple and avoids embedding region-specific political and legal time rules into the time synchronisation protocol. See also Notes References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Ant] | [TOKENS: 121] |
Contents Anthony Ant Anthony Ant is a 1999 children's animated television series based on the book of the same name by Graham Philpot and Lorna Philpot. The series is produced by HIT Entertainment in association with YTV, with animation production by Funbag Animation Studios. The series takes place takes place in "Antville," an underground city where Anthony and his friends must avoid being stepped on by the "Bigfeet" (humans) who live on the surface. Characters Episodes References External links This animated television series–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Israeli_Cabinet] | [TOKENS: 124] |
Template talk:Israeli Cabinet There is no such a portfolio "improvement of government services" or "imtelligence & atomic energy". There are ministers who were given the responsebility for these issues, but they have no portfolio. According to th Israeli law, they are considerd as ministers without portfolio, and the PM and/or the government decides what issues will be given to them. Itay Talk pages are where people discuss how to make content on Wikipedia the best that it can be. You can use this page to start a discussion with others about how to improve the "Template:Israeli Cabinet" page. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_astronomy] | [TOKENS: 3435] |
Contents Babylonian astronomy Babylonian astronomy was the study or recording of celestial objects during the early history of Mesopotamia. The numeral system used, sexagesimal, was based on 60, as opposed to ten in the modern decimal system. This system simplified the calculating and recording of unusually great and small numbers. During the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Babylonian astronomers developed a new empirical approach to astronomy. They began studying and recording their belief system and philosophies dealing with an ideal nature of the universe and began employing an internal logic within their predictive planetary systems. This was an important contribution to astronomy and the philosophy of science, and some modern scholars have thus referred to this approach as a scientific revolution. This approach to astronomy was adopted and further developed in Greek and Hellenistic astrology. Classical Greek and Latin sources frequently use the term Chaldeans for the philosophers, who were considered as priest-scribes specializing in astronomical and other forms of divination. Babylonian astronomy paved the way for modern astrology and is responsible for its spread across the Graeco-Roman empire during the 2nd-century Hellenistic Period. The Babylonians used the sexagesimal system to trace the planets' transits, by dividing the 360 degree sky into 30 degrees, they assigned 12 zodiacal signs to the stars along the ecliptic. Only fragments of Babylonian astronomy have survived, consisting largely of contemporary clay tablets containing astronomical diaries, ephemerides and procedure texts, hence current knowledge of Babylonian planetary theory is in a fragmentary state. Nevertheless, the surviving fragments show that Babylonian astronomy was the first "successful attempt at giving a refined mathematical description of astronomical phenomena" and that "all subsequent varieties of scientific astronomy, in the Hellenistic world, in India, in Islam, and in the West ... depend upon Babylonian astronomy in decisive and fundamental ways". Old Babylonian astronomy An object labelled the ivory prism was recovered from the ruins of Nineveh. First presumed to be describing rules to a game, its use was later deciphered to be a unit converter for calculating the movement of celestial bodies and constellations. Babylonian astronomers developed zodiacal signs. They are made up of the division of the sky into three sets of thirty degrees and the constellations that inhabit each sector. The MUL.APIN contains catalogues of stars and constellations as well as schemes for predicting heliacal risings and settings of the planets, and lengths of daylight as measured by a water clock, gnomon, shadows, and intercalations. The Babylonian GU text arranges stars in 'strings' that lie along declination circles and thus measure right-ascensions or time intervals, and also employs the stars of the zenith, which are also separated by given right-ascensional differences. The Babylonians were the first civilization known to possess a functional theory of the planets. The oldest surviving planetary astronomical text is the Babylonian Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa, a 7th-century BC copy of a list of observations of the motions of the planet Venus that probably dates as early as the second millennium BC. The Babylonian astrologers also laid the foundations of what would eventually become Western astrology. The Enuma anu enlil, written during the Neo-Assyrian period in the 7th century BC, comprises a list of omens and their relationships with various celestial phenomena including the motions of the planets. In contrast to the world view presented in Mesopotamian and Assyro-Babylonian literature, particularly in Mesopotamian and Babylonian mythology, very little is known about the cosmology and world view of the ancient Babylonian astrologers and astronomers. This is largely due to the current fragmentary state of Babylonian planetary theory, and also due to Babylonian astronomy and cosmology largely being separate endeavors. Nevertheless, traces of cosmology can be found in Babylonian literature and mythology. It was a common Mesopotamian belief that gods could and did indicate future events to mankind through omens; sometimes through animal entrails, but most often they believed omens could be read through astronomy and astrology. Since omens via the planets were produced without any human action, they were seen as more powerful. But they believed the events these omens foretold were also avoidable. The relationship Mesopotamians had with omens can be seen in the Omen Compendia, a Babylonian text composed starting from the beginning of the second millennium on-wards. It is the primary source text that tells us that ancient Mesopotamians saw omens as preventable. The text also contains information on Sumerian rites to avert evil, or “nam-bur-bi”, a term later adopted by the Akkadians as “namburbu”, meaning roughly, “[the evil] loosening”. The god Ea was the one believed to send the omens. Concerning the severity of omens, eclipses were seen as the most dangerous. The Enuma Anu Enlil is a series of cuneiform tablets that gives insight on different sky omens Babylonian astronomers observed. Celestial bodies such as the Sun and Moon were given significant power as omens. Reports from Nineveh and Babylon, circa 2500-670 B.C., show lunar omens observed by the Mesopotamians. "When the moon disappears, evil will befall the land. When the moon disappears out of its reckoning, an eclipse will take place". The astrolabes (not to be mistaken for the later astronomical measurement device of the same name) are one of the earliest documented cuneiform tablets that discuss astronomy and date back to the Old Babylonian Kingdom. They are a list of thirty-six stars connected with the months in a year, generally considered to be written between 1800 and 1100 B.C. No complete texts have been found, but there is a modern compilation by Theophilus Pinches, assembled from texts housed in the British Museum that is considered excellent by other historians who specialize in Babylonian astronomy. Two other texts concerning the astrolabes that should be mentioned are the Brussels and Berlin compilations. They offer similar information to the Pinches anthology, but do contain some differing information from each other. The thirty-six stars that make up the astrolabes are believed to be derived from the astronomical traditions from three Mesopotamian city-states, Elam, Akkad, and Amurru. The stars followed and possibly charted by these city-states are identical stars to the ones in the astrolabes. Each region had a set of twelve stars it followed, which combined equals the thirty-six stars in the astrolabes. The twelve stars of each region also correspond to the months of the year. The two cuneiform texts that provide the information for this claim are the large star list “K 250” and “K 8067”. Both of these tablets were translated and transcribed by Weidner. During the reign of Hammurabi these three separate traditions were combined. This combining also ushered in a more scientific approach to astronomy as connections to the original three traditions weakened. The increased use of science in astronomy is evidenced by the traditions from these three regions being arranged in accordance to the paths of the stars of Ea, Anu, and Enlil, an astronomical system contained and discussed in the MUL.APIN. MUL.APIN is a collection of two cuneiform tablets (Tablet 1 and Tablet 2) that document aspects of Babylonian astronomy such as the movement of celestial bodies and records of solstices and eclipses. Each tablet is also split into smaller sections called Lists. It was comprised in the general time frame of the astrolabes and Enuma Anu Enlil, evidenced by similar themes, mathematical principles, and occurrences. Tablet 1 houses information that closely parallels information contained in astrolabe B. The similarities between Tablet 1 and astrolabe B show that the authors were inspired by the same source for at least some of the information. There are six lists of stars on this tablet that relate to sixty constellations in charted paths of the three groups of Babylonian star paths, Ea, Anu, and Enlil. There are also additions to the paths of both Anu and Enlil that are not found in astrolabe B. The exploration of the Sun, Moon, and other celestial bodies affected the development of Mesopotamian culture. The study of the sky led to the development of a calendar and advanced mathematics in these societies. The Babylonians were not the first complex society to develop a calendar globally and nearby in North Africa, the Egyptians developed a calendar of their own. The Egyptian calendar was solar based, while the Babylonian calendar was lunar based. A potential blend between the two that has been noted by some historians is the adoption of a crude leap year by the Babylonians after the Egyptians developed one. The Babylonian leap year shares no similarities with the leap year practiced today. It involved the addition of a thirteenth month as a means to re-calibrate the calendar to better match the growing season. Babylonian priests were the ones responsible for developing new forms of mathematics and did so to better calculate the movements of celestial bodies. One such priest, Naburimannu, is the first documented Babylonian astronomer. He was a priest for the moon god and is credited with writing lunar and eclipse computation tables as well as other elaborate mathematical calculations. The computation tables are organized in seventeen or eighteen tables that document the orbiting speeds of planets and the Moon. His work was later recounted by astronomers during the Seleucid dynasty. A team of scientists at the University of Tsukuba studied Assyrian cuneiform tablets, reporting unusual red skies which might be aurorae incidents, caused by geomagnetic storms between 680 and 650 BC. Neo-Babylonian astronomy Neo-Babylonian astronomy refers to the astronomy developed by Chaldean astronomers during the Neo-Babylonian, Achaemenid, Seleucid, and Parthian periods of Mesopotamian history. The systematic records in Babylonian astronomical diaries allowed for the observation of a repeating 18-year Saros cycle of lunar eclipses. Though there is a lack of surviving material on Babylonian planetary theory, it appears most of the Chaldean astronomers were concerned mainly with ephemerides and not with theory. It had been thought that most of the predictive Babylonian planetary models that have survived were usually strictly empirical and arithmetical, and usually did not involve geometry, cosmology, or speculative philosophy like that of the later Hellenistic models, though the Babylonian astronomers were concerned with the philosophy dealing with the ideal nature of the early universe. Babylonian procedure texts describe, and ephemerides employ, arithmetical procedures to compute the time and place of significant astronomical events. More recent analysis of previously unpublished cuneiform tablets in the British Museum, dated between 350 and 50 BC, demonstrates that Babylonian astronomers sometimes used geometrical methods, prefiguring the methods of the Oxford Calculators, to describe the motion of Jupiter over time in an abstract mathematical space. Aside from occasional interactions between the two, Babylonian astronomy was largely independent from Babylonian cosmology. Whereas Greek astronomers expressed "prejudice in favor of circles or spheres rotating with uniform motion", such a preference did not exist for Babylonian astronomers. Contributions made by the Chaldean astronomers during this period include the discovery of eclipse cycles and saros cycles, and many accurate astronomical observations. For example, they observed that the Sun's motion along the ecliptic was not uniform, though they were unaware of why this was; it is today known that this is due to the Earth moving in an elliptic orbit around the Sun, with the Earth moving swifter when it is nearer to the Sun at perihelion and moving slower when it is farther away at aphelion. The only surviving planetary model from among the Chaldean astronomers is that of the Hellenistic Seleucus of Seleucia (b. 190 BC), who supported the Greek Aristarchus of Samos' heliocentric model. Seleucus is known from the writings of Plutarch, Aetius, Strabo, and Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi. The Greek geographer Strabo lists Seleucus as one of the four most influential astronomers, who came from Hellenistic Seleuceia on the Tigris, alongside Kidenas (Kidinnu), Naburianos (Naburimannu), and Sudines. Their works were originally written in the Akkadian language and later translated into Greek. Seleucus, however, was unique among them in that he was the only one known to have supported the heliocentric theory of planetary motion proposed by Aristarchus, where the Earth rotated around its own axis which in turn revolved around the Sun. According to Plutarch, Seleucus even proved the heliocentric system through reasoning, though it is not known what arguments he used. According to Lucio Russo, his arguments were probably related to the phenomenon of tides. Seleucus correctly theorized that tides were caused by the Moon, although he believed that the interaction was mediated by the Earth's atmosphere. He noted that the tides varied in time and strength in different parts of the world. According to Strabo (1.1.9), Seleucus was the first to state that the tides are due to the attraction of the Moon, and that the height of the tides depends on the Moon's position relative to the Sun. According to Bartel Leendert van der Waerden, Seleucus may have proved the heliocentric theory by determining the constants of a geometric model for the heliocentric theory and by developing methods to compute planetary positions using this model. He may have used trigonometric methods that were available in his time, as he was a contemporary of Hipparchus. None of his original writings or Greek translations have survived, though a fragment of his work has survived only in Arabic translation, which was later referred to by the Persian philosopher Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (865-925). Babylonian influence on Hellenistic astronomy Many of the works of ancient Greek and Hellenistic writers (including mathematicians, astronomers, and geographers) have been preserved up to the present time, or some aspects of their work and thought are still known through later references. However, achievements in these fields by earlier ancient Near Eastern civilizations, notably those in Babylonia, were forgotten for a long time. Since the discovery of key archaeological sites in the 19th century, many cuneiform writings on clay tablets have been found, some of them related to astronomy. Most known astronomical tablets have been described by Abraham Sachs and later published by Otto Neugebauer in the Astronomical Cuneiform Texts (ACT). Herodotus writes that the Greeks learned such aspects of astronomy as the gnomon and the idea of the day being split into two halves of twelve from the Babylonians. Other sources point to Greek pardegms, a stone with 365-366 holes carved into it to represent the days in a year, from the Babylonians as well. In 1900, Franz Xaver Kugler demonstrated that Ptolemy had stated in his Almagest IV.2 that Hipparchus improved the values for the Moon's periods known to him from "even more ancient astronomers" by comparing eclipse observations made earlier by "the Chaldeans", and by himself. However Kugler found that the periods that Ptolemy attributes to Hipparchus had already been used in Babylonian ephemerides, specifically the collection of texts nowadays called "System B" (sometimes attributed to Kidinnu). Apparently Hipparchus only confirmed the validity of the periods he learned from the Chaldeans by his newer observations. Later Greek knowledge of this specific Babylonian theory is confirmed by 2nd-century papyrus, which contains 32 lines of a single column of calculations for the Moon using this same "System B", but written in Greek on papyrus rather than in cuneiform on clay tablets. Historians have found evidence that Athens during the late 5th century may have been aware of Babylonian astronomy, astronomers, or astronomical concepts and practices through the documentation by Xenophon of Socrates telling his students to study astronomy to the extent of being able to tell the time of night from the stars. This skill is referenced in the poem of Aratus, which discusses telling the time of night from the zodiacal signs. See also References Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherically_symmetric_spacetime] | [TOKENS: 1714] |
Contents Spherically symmetric spacetime In physics, spherically symmetric spacetimes are commonly used to obtain analytic and numerical solutions to Einstein's field equations in the presence of radially moving matter or energy. Because spherically symmetric spacetimes are by definition irrotational, they are not realistic models of black holes in nature. However, their metrics are considerably simpler than those of rotating spacetimes, making them much easier to analyze. Spherically symmetric models are not entirely inappropriate: many of them have Penrose diagrams similar to those of rotating spacetimes, and these typically have qualitative features (such as Cauchy horizons) that are unaffected by rotation. One such application is the study of mass inflation due to counter-moving streams of infalling matter in the interior of a black hole. Formal definition A spherically symmetric spacetime is a spacetime whose isometry group contains a subgroup which is isomorphic to the rotation group SO(3) and the orbits of this group are 2-spheres (ordinary 2-dimensional spheres in 3-dimensional Euclidean space). The isometries are then interpreted as rotations and a spherically symmetric spacetime is often described as one whose metric is "invariant under rotations". The spacetime metric induces a metric on each orbit 2-sphere (and this induced metric must be a multiple of the metric of a 2-sphere). Conventionally, the metric on the 2-sphere is written in polar coordinates as and so the full metric includes a term proportional to this. Spherical symmetry is a characteristic feature of many solutions of Einstein's field equations of general relativity, especially the Schwarzschild solution and the Reissner–Nordström solution. A spherically symmetric spacetime can be characterised in another way, namely, by using the notion of Killing vector fields, which, in a very precise sense, preserve the metric. The isometries referred to above are actually local flow diffeomorphisms of Killing vector fields and thus generate these vector fields. For a spherically symmetric spacetime M {\displaystyle M} , there are precisely 3 rotational Killing vector fields. Stated in another way, the dimension of the Killing algebra K ( M ) {\displaystyle K(M)} is 3; that is, dim K ( M ) = 3 {\displaystyle \dim K(M)=3} . In general, none of these are time-like, as that would imply a static spacetime. It is known (see Birkhoff's theorem) that any spherically symmetric solution of the vacuum field equations is necessarily isometric to a subset of the maximally extended Schwarzschild solution. This means that the exterior region around a spherically symmetric gravitating object must be static and asymptotically flat. Spherically symmetric metrics Conventionally, one uses spherical coordinates x μ = ( t , r , θ , ϕ ) {\displaystyle x^{\mu }=(t,r,\theta ,\phi )} , to write the metric (the line element). Several coordinate charts are possible; these include: Circumferential radius metric One popular metric, used in the study of mass inflation, is Here, g ( Ω ) {\displaystyle g(\Omega )} is the standard metric on the unit radius 2-sphere Ω = ( θ , ϕ ) {\displaystyle \Omega =(\theta ,\phi )} . The radial coordinate r {\displaystyle r} is defined so that it is the circumferential radius, that is, so that the proper circumference at radius r {\displaystyle r} is 2 π r {\displaystyle 2\pi r} . In this coordinate choice, the parameter β t {\displaystyle \beta _{t}} is defined so that β t = d r / d τ {\displaystyle \beta _{t}=dr/d\tau } is the proper rate of change of the circumferential radius (that is, where τ {\displaystyle \tau } is the proper time). The parameter β r {\displaystyle \beta _{r}} can be interpreted as the radial derivative of the circumferential radius in a freely-falling frame; this becomes explicit in the tetrad formalism. Note that the above metric is written as a sum of squares, and therefore it can be understood as explicitly encoding a vierbein, and, in particular, an orthonormal tetrad. That is, the metric tensor can be written as a pullback of the Minkowski metric η i j {\displaystyle \eta _{ij}} : where the e μ i {\displaystyle e_{\;\mu }^{i}} is the inverse vierbein. The convention here and in what follows is that the roman indexes refer to the flat orthonormal tetrad frame, while the greek indexes refer to the coordinate frame. The inverse vierbein can be directly read off of the above metric as where the signature was take to be ( − + + + ) {\displaystyle (-+++)} . Written as a matrix, the inverse vierbein is The vierbein itself is the inverse(-transpose) of the inverse vierbein That is, ( e μ i ) T e i ν = e μ i e i ν = δ μ ν {\displaystyle (e_{\;\mu }^{i})^{T}e_{i}^{\;\nu }=e_{\mu }^{\;\;i}e_{i}^{\;\nu }=\delta _{\mu }^{\nu }} is the identity matrix. The particularly simple form of the above is a prime motivating factor for working with the given metric. The vierbein relates vector fields in the coordinate frame to vector fields in the tetrad frame, as The most interesting of these two are ∂ t {\displaystyle \partial _{t}} which is the proper time in the rest frame, and ∂ r {\displaystyle \partial _{r}} which is the radial derivative in the rest frame. By construction, as noted earlier, β t {\displaystyle \beta _{t}} was the proper rate of change of the circumferential radius; this can now be explicitly written as Similarly, one has which describes the gradient (in the free-falling tetrad frame) of the circumferential radius along the radial direction. This is not in general unity; compare, for example, to the standard Swarschild solution, or the Reissner–Nordström solution. The sign of β r {\displaystyle \beta _{r}} effectively determines "which way is down"; the sign of β r {\displaystyle \beta _{r}} distinguishes incoming and outgoing frames, so that β r > 0 {\displaystyle \beta _{r}>0} is an ingoing frame, and β r < 0 {\displaystyle \beta _{r}<0} is an outgoing frame. These two relations on the circumferential radius provide another reason why this particular parameterization of the metric is convenient: it has a simple intuitive characterization. The connection form in the tetrad frame can be written in terms of the Christoffel symbols Γ i j k {\displaystyle \Gamma _{ijk}} in the tetrad frame, which are given by and all others zero. A complete set of expressions for the Riemann tensor, the Einstein tensor and the Weyl curvature scalar can be found in Hamilton & Avelino. The Einstein equations become where ∇ t {\displaystyle \nabla _{t}} is the covariant time derivative (and ∇ {\displaystyle \nabla } the Levi-Civita connection), p {\displaystyle p} the radial pressure (not the isotropic pressure!), and f {\displaystyle f} the radial energy flux. The mass M ( r ) {\displaystyle M(r)} is the Misner-Thorne mass or interior mass, given by As these equations are effectively two-dimensional, they can be solved without overwhelming difficulty for a variety of assumptions about the nature of the infalling material (that is, for the assumption of a spherically symmetric black hole that is accreting charged or neutral dust, gas, plasma or dark matter, of high or low temperature, i.e. material with various equations of state.) See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Justice_in_Palestine] | [TOKENS: 4505] |
Contents Students for Justice in Palestine Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP; Arabic: طلاب من أجل العدالة في فلسطين, romanized: Ṭullāb min ajl al-ʿAdāla fī Filasṭīn) is a pro-Palestinian college student activism organization in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. Founded at the University of California, Berkeley in 1993, it has campaigned for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and organized events about Israel's human rights violations. In 2011, The New York Times called it "the leading pro-Palestinian voice on campus". As of 2024, SJP reported having over 350 chapters in North America. Names Some SJP chapters in the U.S. have adopted the name Palestine Solidarity Committee or Students for Palestinian Equal Rights. In Canada, some SJP chapters have adopted the name Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR). In Quebec, some use the name Solidarité pour les droits humains des Palestiniennes et Palestiniens (SDHPP), which means the same thing in French. History Students for Justice in Palestine was founded at the University of California, Berkeley in 1993. It was cofounded by Hatem Bazian, now the chairman of American Muslims for Palestine. It held several events in spring 1993, and was officially recognized by the university in the fall. After the organization's status briefly lapsed in 1999, it was revived at the time of the Second Palestinian Intifada, which began in September 2000. In 2002, the Berkeley chapter organized the first National Student Conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) to coordinate Palestine solidarity activism nationwide. Subsequent national conferences were held at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor, Ohio State University, Duke University, and Georgetown University. On 16 October 2011, the SJP organized its first national conference that resolved the organization's Points of Unity, stating: Students for Justice in Palestine is a student organization that works in solidarity with the Palestinian people and supports their right to self-determination. It is committed to ending Israel’s occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Separation Wall. It recognizes the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality. It calls for respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194. Mission and organization The SJP's mission statement is to develop "a connected, disciplined movement that is equipped with the tools necessary to contribute to the fight for Palestinian liberation", with an emphasis on intersectionality. SJP chapters agree to guard against "homophobia, sexism, racism, bigotry, classism, colonialism, and discrimination of any form". The organization claims over 200 chapters nationwide, though this cannot be confirmed. Structure and funding The National Students for Justice in Palestine is sponsored by the Westchester People’s Action Committee (WESPAC) Foundation. WESPAC also sponsors Adalah NY, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Palestinian Feminist Collective, Palestine Freedom Project, and Within Our Lifetime. WESPAC does not disclose information about its donors, which include charity organizations such as Elias Foundation and Tides Foundation. The Palestinian Solidarity Movement (PSM), the previous national hub organization, was sponsored by American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). At a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee, author Jonathan Schanzer criticized the SJP and AMP for the AMP's links to several now-defunct charities the U.S. government shut down for alleged indirect funding of Hamas, including the Holy Land Foundation. Protests Students for Justice in Palestine became known for theatrical protests dramatizing Palestinian life for people on university campuses, including through protests recreating Israeli military checkpoints, detentions, and the West Bank separation wall, which they call an "Apartheid Wall". Some SJP chapters encourage activists to cover their faces when protesting, and to avoid using their real names and photos on social media, to avoid doxing. In 2001, SJP's University of California, Berkeley chapter chose the memorial of the Deir Yassin massacre to occupy a campus building and disrupt a midterm exam in progress for over 600 students as part of a protest against the university's investments in Israel. Police broke up the occupation after warning the students of trespassing. Seventy-nine protesters were arrested for trespassing and resisting arrest. One protester was jailed on a charge of felony battery after he bit a police officer. Following the arrests, SJP was banned from operating at UC Berkeley, prompting an SJP protest by 200 demonstrators a month later. University Chancellor Berdahl said, "It is important to understand that this is neither an issue of free speech, nor of the right to hold demonstrations on campus. The issue is the occupation of an academic building, interfering with the rights of other students to continue their education." Students and faculty members at Berkeley said SJP's protests heightened polarization, and were more "hostile" than other protests at Berkeley. One student remembers a demonstrator with a sign comparing the Star of David to the swastika. Students for Justice in Palestine picked up a nickname among critics, “Students for Just Us in Palestine.” On April 9, 2002, SJP staged a sit-in at Wheeler Hall, one of the University of California, Berkeley's largest classroom buildings. Police were called to the scene and the students were ordered to leave or face arrest. 41 students did not leave and were arrested and charged with various violations of the university's Code of Student Conduct. The university also banned SJP from engaging in on-campus protests. In 2006, Auckland University's SJP led demonstrations against the local weapons industry Rakon, a company that sells components to the U.S. military. On 28 September 2015, members of the Victoria University of Wellington's SJP branch picketed a talk by two visiting former Israeli soldiers that had been organized by the Australasian Union of Jewish Students. In April 2011, while speaking at Brandeis University, Avi Dichter, a member of the Knesset and of Israel's centrist and Kadima party, was interrupted by protesters from the university's SJP calling him a war criminal and accusing him of torture and crimes against humanity. Every year the International Studies (IS) program at Vassar College has a course that sends students on a trip abroad. In 2013, it was decided that the trip would be to Israel and Palestine to study water issues for a course called The Jordan River Watershed. The trip drew the ire of SJP for, among other things, being coordinated with the Israeli research institute Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. On February 6, nine SJP members picketed an IS class and handed out leaflets criticizing Israel and Israeli appropriation of Palestinian water sources. On September 9, 2014, at Loyola University Chicago, students were manning a Hillel table promoting Birthright Israel, a program that pays for Jews to visit Israel. A group of Palestinian students affiliated with SJP lined up at the table and tried to register for trips to Israel. After conversations with the students manning the table, they were turned away because they were not Jews. The Palestinian students then lined up for a photo op some distance away with signs that read: "My family is from the ethnically cleansed village of [each place name] BUT I DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO RETURN." According to members of SJP, the point of trying to register for Birthright Israel was to expose the program's racism. The Hillel students complained and accused the Palestinian students of having harassed and verbally assaulted them "in an attempt to intimidate Jewish students." After two months of investigation, the university cleared SJP of those allegations, but found both Hillel and SJP responsible for having violated the university's Free Expression and Demonstration policy, Hillel for not having registered its table and SJP for not having registered its impromptu action, having learned about Hillel's tabling the night before. As punishment, Hillel was required to attend an event on how to register events, while SJP was sanctioned with probation for the remainder of the school year, which prohibited it from requesting funds from the school for the duration. It was also required to attend "InterGroup Dialogue Training." Campaigns In May 2015, after a more than yearlong campaign, the SJP campaign at Bowdoin College to boycott Israel ended with 20% of students voting in favor, 21% abstaining, and 59% voting against. In February 2009, following a two-year campaign by SJP, signed by over 800 students, professors, and alumni, Hampshire College in Massachusetts became the first U.S. college to divest from companies involved in the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The board of trustees decided to divest from Caterpillar, United Technologies, General Electric, ITT Corporation, Motorola, and Terex. Hampshire College President Ralph Hexter said the decision to divest from those companies was not aimed at Israel but related to socially responsible investing criteria, and criticized SJP for suggesting otherwise.[citation needed] SJP replied that the college was shying away from the "political implications of its action". In November 2010, SJP at DePaul University began a campaign to have Sabra brand hummus removed from the university. The parent company of Sabra is the Strauss Group, an Israeli food company that supports two Israeli brigades, the Givati Brigade and the Golani Brigade. The university initially agreed, but reversed its stance a few days later by reinstating Sabra hummus in the dining halls. The university spokeswoman said, "in this instance the sale of Sabra hummus was temporarily suspended, by mistake, prior to review by the Fair Business Practices Committee. We have reinstated sales to correct that error by staff personnel." In May 2011, the DePaul SJP presented a referendum to the Student Government on Sabra. The result was 1,127 in favor, 332 against, and 8 extraneous write-ins. The number of votes were 32 short of the 1,500 needed for the referendum to be valid. Stanford's BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) defeat was notably followed by two quick BDS victories at University of California, Riverside, and University of California, San Diego. On March 8, 2013, substantial campaigning by SJP at University of California, Riverside (UCR) produced a victory when the Senate voted 11–5 to endorse BDS and divest from Caterpillar and Hewlett Packard. The vote in support of BDS at UCR was large enough to avoid a veto by the undergraduate student body president who opposed the resolution. In 2016, Columbia's SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace chapters formed the Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition. The organization's campaigns resulted in two student referendums, held by the Barnard College Student Government Association in 2018 and the Colombia College Student Council in 2020. Students voted to divest from Israel in both votes, but Columbia University President Lee Bollinger declined to divest the university's holdings. On October 25, 2023, hundreds of Columbia University affiliates, in coordination with SJP and other Palestinian advocacy groups, participated in a walkout protesting violence in Israel and Gaza, as well as the university's ties to Israel. The event, co-organized by Columbia's SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace, called for a ceasefire, divestment from companies profiting from Israeli activities, and the cancellation of the Tel Aviv Global Center opening. The walkout did not receive university approval, and participants faced doxxing threats. Counterprotesters supporting Israel were also present. In November, Columbia University suspended the group for violating campus event policies that require 10 days' notice for events. The suspension was effective until the end of the fall semester, and the group could not receive university funding or hold events on university grounds during this period. The campus event policy was updated to 12 days' notice before SJP held a walkout. Criticizing the changes, the executive committee of the Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors wrote the administration a letter saying that the change "flagrantly contravenes University rules and procedures" and calling on the administration to "commit to shared faculty governance, and to nullify improperly authorized committees, actions, and policies that circumvent channels of governance at the University and the core principle of free speech." During the Israel–Hamas war that began in October 2023, SJP and various other organizations coordinated nationwide student walkouts on college campuses on October 25, 2023, and February 7, 2024. Their objective was to protest Israeli assaults on Gaza and denounce U.S. financial support for Israel. The walkouts were scheduled at campuses ranging from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, to the University of California, Los Angeles. The National SJP helped organize the National March on Washington: Free Palestine held on November 4, 2023. SJP organizers reportedly estimated that the 150 active SJP chapters at the beginning of the war were joined by interested students at an additional 80 campuses during fall 2023. An internal document the national SJP distributed shortly after Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel praised the attack as a "historic win for the Palestinian resistance". It advocated a "day of resistance" on October 12, involving demonstrations by its chapters at over 200 colleges in the U.S. and Canada. Some university administrators criticized the organization for this. In September 2024, National Students for Justice in Palestine shared and later deleted a post saying that the ultimate goal of divestment is "the total collapse of the university structure and the American empire itself. To divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it". The Tufts University SJP branch faced criticism for expressing support for Hamas's 2023 attack on Israel in an email. In a letter, Tufts SJP commended Hamas's "creativity" in launching the attack. The university disapproved of the statement, emphasizing that no student group speaks for the university. The Anti-Defamation League New England chapter condemned Tufts SJP's remarks as "obscene". Harvard's Hillel called the student group's letter an "outrageous statement that blames Israel for the violence carried out by Hamas terrorists—a group that has opposed peace and called for Israel's destruction since it was founded." The Tufts SJP chapter organized an October 10 vigil mourning the lives lost in Gaza over the preceding days, then numbering nearly 1,000. In October 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis directed state universities to ban SJP on campuses, alleging that it illegally supported Hamas militants who attacked Israel. State university system Chancellor Ray Rodrigues issued the directive, basing the ban on a "toolkit" the national organization gave its chapters calling Hamas's attack "the resistance" and asserting that "Palestinian students in exile are integral to this movement". The university system cited Florida law criminalizing support for designated foreign terrorist organizations. SJP was active at at least two Florida universities, the University of Florida and the University of South Florida. The move was described as part of DeSantis's heightened pro-Israel stance during the Gaza war and drew criticism for potentially suppressing speech on campuses. On October 25, the Anti-Defamation League, in collaboration with the Brandeis Center, sent an open letter to over 200 colleges urging them to investigate SJP chapters for supporting Hamas. The ADL wrote that many SJP chapters endorsed Hamas's attack on Israel, potentially violating laws against material support for terror groups. SJP denies these claims, asserting that independent protests for Palestinian rights do not constitute support for terrorism. In November 2024, SJP's co-president and former president at George Mason University were banned from campus and subjected to a police raid on their home. According to the local authorities, the police found weapons belonging to their family members, Hamas and Hezbollah flags, and "patches that call for death to Jews and America". More than 90 advocacy organizations signed a letter in protest of the campus bans and police search, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations said it was an attempt to suppress pro-Palestinian speech. The students' lawyer said that the patches were incorrectly translated and that the students had been racially profiled. As of December 2024, no charges had been filed. Response Pro-Israel organizations have said that SJP promotes antisemitism. The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has described the network as "celebrating terrorism". The pro-Israel AMCHA Initiative has published a report on what it considers the association between SJP groups, the BDS movement, and campus antisemitism, including a 2015 report that said "the presence of an anti-Zionist student group such as Students for Justice in Palestine" is one of the two "best statistical predictors of overall antisemitic activity on a campus." A 2016 follow-up report said that antisemitism was "eight times more likely to occur on campuses with at least one active anti-Zionist student group such as SJP." A 2016 report by researchers at the Steinhardt Social Research Institute concurred with the AMCHA Initiative's report. According to Mark Rotenberg, vice president for university initiatives and general counsel for Hillel, "SJP is a primary source of aggressive and hostile anti-Israel and antisemitic activity that targets university campuses". In 2023, Haaretz said, "based on dozens of conversations with Jewish students on U.S. campuses since October 7", that "a sizable majority seem to feel that by legitimizing and even glorifying the atrocities perpetuated by Hamas, and by showing no empathy for fellow Jewish students grieving for the victims, SJP has crossed the line from anti-Zionist to antisemitic". The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs published a book, Students for Justice in Palestine Unmasked, which included many instances of the group reportedly supporting antisemitism and violence and connections between the group and U.S.-designated terror groups. On February 7, 2013, Brooklyn College's (BC) SJP chapter organized an open forum on the BDS movement and boycotts of Israel, co-sponsored by the college's political science department. The speakers were Judith Butler, an American philosopher who supports the BDS movement, and Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian who is one of its founders.[better source needed] The forum attracted widespread media attention, including criticism from the Anti-Defamation League; Alan Dershowitz, who called it an "anti-Israel hatefest"; and New York politicians, who said they would stop funding the college if the event was held. The forum took place, with around 200 people in the audience and 150 anti-BDS protesters gathered outside. During Butler's speech, four Jewish BC students—Yvonne Juris, Melanie Goldberg, Ari Ziegler, and one unnamed student—were asked to leave. They had brought with them anti-BDS literature and flyers that they intended to hand out. According to Goldberg, the organizers confronted them, demanded they hand over the papers, and asked a security guard to remove them from the event. Subsequently, the organizers were accused of antisemitism for evicting the Jewish students, and of stifling free speech. Four months later, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) filed a legal complaint against the college, alleging anti-Jewish discrimination. As a result, BC conducted a two-month investigation and the student organizers of the event sought legal help from the Center for Constitutional Rights. The investigation's 40-page report found that the eviction was not discriminatory but based on a "political viewpoint". BC eventually settled with ZOA and President Karen Gould apologized for how the school had handled the event. In February 2014, SJP at Northeastern University posted fake eviction notices throughout student housing, designed to look like the Israeli demolition notices distributed to Palestinians. The campus Hillel called the notices "a campaign of intimidation and fear". In response, the university suspended SJP from campus for a year and distributed a letter to students saying targeting and intimidation would not be condoned. SJP accused the university of suppressing criticism of Israel and collected a petition of 6,000 signatures in support of its reinstatement. The university reached an agreement with SJP in April that lifted the suspension in exchange for a semester of probation, during which SJP was required to elect new leadership. In mid-November 2023, George Washington University suspended SJP's activity on its campus after SJP activists projected slogans including "Glory to our martyrs" and "Free Palestine from the river to the sea" on the building of the Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library. In November, Columbia University also suspended its chapter of SJP, saying that the club, along with Jewish Voice for Peace, had breached university policies by holding unauthorized protests. Within days of the Columbia suspension, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition, involving over 80 student groups, reactivated (it had been dormant since 2020) and continued activism in support of a ceasefire, university divestment, and breaking ties with Israeli institutions. In the wake of the 2024 Columbia University pro-Palestinian campus occupation, UPenn revoked the status of its SJP chapter and Harvard suspended its Palestine Solidarity Committee. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign revoked its SJP chapter's RSO status after seven people were arrested in connection with an SJP protest. The group may reapply for RSO status in 2027. Notes |
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Contents United States Capitol The United States Capitol, often called the Capitol or the Capitol Building, is the seat of the United States Congress, the legislative branch of the federal government. It is located on Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Although no longer at the geographic center of the national capital, the U.S. Capitol forms the origin point for the street-numbering system of the district as well as its four quadrants. Like the principal buildings of the executive and judicial branches, the Capitol is built in a neoclassical style and has a white exterior. Central sections of the present building were completed in 1800, when the 6th U.S. Congress convened there on November 17, 1800, moving the national capital from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.. The building was partly destroyed in the 1814 Burning of Washington by the British, then was fully restored within five years. The building was enlarged during the 19th century, by extending the wings for the chambers for the bicameral legislature as more states were admitted to the union, with the House of Representatives housed in the south wing and the Senate housed in the north wing. The massive dome was completed around 1866 just after the American Civil War. The east front portico was extended in 1958. The building's Visitors Center was opened in the early 21st century. Both its east and west elevations are formally referred to as fronts, although only the east front was intended for the reception of visitors and dignitaries, while the west front is now used for presidential inauguration ceremonies. The building and grounds are overseen by the architect of the Capitol, who also oversees the surrounding Capitol Complex. History Prior to establishing the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., the United States Congress and its predecessors met at Independence Hall and Congress Hall in Philadelphia; Federal Hall in New York City, and five additional locations: York, Pennsylvania; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland; Nassau Hall in Princeton, New Jersey; and Trenton, New Jersey. In September 1774, the First Continental Congress brought together delegates from the colonies in Philadelphia, followed by the Second Continental Congress, which met from May 1775 to March 1781. After adopting the Articles of Confederation in York, Pennsylvania, the Congress of the Confederation was formed and convened in Philadelphia from March 1781 until June 1783, when a mob of angry soldiers converged upon Independence Hall, demanding payment for their service during the American Revolutionary War. Congress requested that John Dickinson, the Governor of Pennsylvania, call up the militia to defend Congress from attacks by the protesters. In what became known as the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, Dickinson sympathized with the protesters and refused to remove them from Philadelphia. As a result, Congress was forced to flee to Princeton, New Jersey, on June 21, 1783, and met in Annapolis, Maryland, and Trenton, New Jersey, before ending up in New York City. The U.S. Congress was established upon ratification of the U.S. Constitution and formally began on March 4, 1789. New York City remained home to Congress until July 1790, when the Residence Act was passed to pave the way for a permanent capital. The decision of where to locate the capital was contentious, but Alexander Hamilton helped broker a compromise in which the federal government would take on war debt incurred during the American Revolutionary War, in exchange for support from northern states for locating the capital along the Potomac River. As part of the legislation, Philadelphia was chosen as a temporary capital for ten years (until December 1800), until the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., would be ready. Pierre L'Enfant was charged with creating the city plan for the new capital city and the major public buildings. The Congress House would be built on Jenkins Hill, now known as Capitol Hill, which L'Enfant described as a "pedestal awaiting a monument." L'Enfant connected Congress House with the President's House via Pennsylvania Avenue with a width set at 160 feet, identical to the narrowest points of the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Westwards was a 400-foot-wide (120 m) garden-lined "grand avenue" containing a public walk (later known as the National Mall) that would travel for about one mile (1.6 km) along the east–west line. The term "Capitol" (from Latin Capitolium) originally denoted the Capitoline Hill in Rome and the Temple of Jupiter that stood on its summit. The Roman Capitol was sometimes misconceived of as a meeting place for senators, and this led the term to be applied to legislative buildings; the first such building was the Williamsburg Capitol in Virginia. Thomas Jefferson had sat here as a member of the House of Burgesses, and it was he who applied the name "Capitol" to what on L'Enfant's plan had been called the "Congress House". "Capitol" has since become a general term for government buildings, especially in the United States. It is often confused with "capital"; the former, however, denotes a building or complex of buildings, while the latter denotes a city. L'Enfant secured the lease of quarries at Wigginton Island and along Aquia Creek in Virginia for use in the foundations and outer walls of the Capitol in November 1791. Surveying was under way soon after the Jefferson conference plan for the Capitol was accepted. On September 18, 1793, President Washington, along with eight other Freemasons dressed in masonic regalia, laid the cornerstone, which was made by silversmith Caleb Bentley. In early 1792, after Pierre L'Enfant was dismissed from the federal city project, Jefferson proposed a design competition to solicit designs for the Capitol and the "President's House", and set a four-month deadline. The prize for the competition was $500 and a lot in the Federal City. At least ten individuals submitted designs for the Capitol; however the drawings were regarded as crude and amateurish, reflecting the level of architectural skill present in the United States at the time. The most promising of the submissions was by Stephen Hallet, a trained French architect who was a draftsman to Pierre L'Enfant on the city plan. However, Hallet's designs were overly fancy, with too much French influence, and were deemed too costly. However, the design did incorporate the concept for a "great circular room and dome" which had originated with L'Enfant. John Trumbull was given a tour of "Jenkins Hill" by L'Enfant himself and confirmed this in his autobiography years later. On January 31, 1793, a late entry by amateur architect William Thornton was submitted, and was met with praise for its "Grandeur, Simplicity, and Beauty" by Washington, along with praise from Jefferson. Thornton was inspired by the east front of the Louvre, as well as the Paris Pantheon for the center portion of the design. Thornton's design was officially approved in a letter dated April 5, 1793, from Washington, and Thornton served as the first architect of the Capitol (and later first superintendent of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office). In an effort to console Hallet, the commissioners appointed him to review Thornton's plans, develop cost estimates, and serve as superintendent of construction. Hallet proceeded to pick apart and make drastic changes to Thornton's design, which he saw as costly to build and problematic. In July 1793, Jefferson convened a five-member commission, bringing Hallet and Thornton together, along with James Hoban (winning architect of the "President's Palace") to address problems with and revise Thornton's plan. Hallet suggested changes to the floor plan, which could be fitted within the exterior design by Thornton. The revised plan was accepted, except that Secretary Jefferson and President Washington insisted on an open recess in the center of the East front, which was part of Thornton's original plan. The original design by Thornton was later significantly altered by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, and later Charles Bulfinch. The current cast-iron dome, the House's new southern extension, and the Senate's new northern wing were designed by Thomas Ustick Walter and August Schoenborn in the 1850s, and were completed under the supervision of Edward Clark. Construction proceeded with Hallet working under supervision of James Hoban, who was also busy working on construction of the "President's House" (also later known as the "Executive Mansion"). Despite the wishes of Jefferson and the President, Hallet went ahead anyway and modified Thornton's design for the East Front and created a square central court that projected from the center, with flanking wings which would house the legislative bodies. Hallet was dismissed by Secretary Jefferson on November 15, 1794. George Hadfield was hired on October 15, 1795, as Superintendent of Construction, but resigned three years later in May 1798, because of his dissatisfaction with Thornton's plan and quality of work done thus far. The Senate (north) wing was completed in 1800. The Senate and House shared quarters in the north wing until a temporary wooden pavilion was erected on the future site of the House wing which served for a few years for the Representatives to meet in, until the House of Representatives (south) wing was finally completed in 1811, with a covered wooden temporary walkway connecting the two wings with the Congressional chambers where the future center section with rotunda and dome would eventually be. However, the House of Representatives moved early into their House wing in 1807. Though the Senate wing building was incomplete, the Capitol held its first session of the U.S. Congress with both chambers in session on November 17, 1800. The National Legislature was moved to Washington prematurely, at the urging of President John Adams, in hopes of securing enough Southern votes in the Electoral College to be re-elected for a second term as president. In March 1803, James Madison appointed Benjamin Henry Latrobe to the position of "Surveyor of Public Buildings", with the principal responsibility of completing construction of the Capitol's south and north wings. Work on the north wing began in November 1806. Although occupied for only six years, it had suffered from falling plaster, rotting floors and a leaking roof. Instead of repairing it, Latrobe demolished, redesigned and rebuilt the interiors within the existing brick and sandstone walls. Notably, Latrobe designed the Supreme Court and Senate chambers. The former was a particular architectural achievement; the size and structure of its vaulted, semi-circular ceiling was then unprecedented in the United States. For several decades, beginning when the federal government moved to Washington in the fall of 1800, the Capitol building was used for Sunday religious services as well as for governmental functions. The first services were conducted in the "hall" of the House in the north wing of the building. In 1801 the House moved to temporary quarters in the south wing, called the "Oven", which it vacated in 1804, returning to the north wing for three years. Then, from 1807 to 1857, they were held in the then-House Chamber (now called Statuary Hall). When held in the House chamber, the Speaker's podium was used as the preacher's pulpit. According to the U.S. Library of Congress exhibit Religion and the Founding of the American Republic: It is no exaggeration to say that on Sundays in Washington during the administrations of Thomas Jefferson (1801–1809) and of James Madison (1809–1817) the state became the church. Within a year of his inauguration, Jefferson began attending church services in the chamber of the House of Representatives. Madison followed Jefferson's example, although unlike Jefferson, who rode on horseback to church in the Capitol, Madison came in a coach and four. Worship services in the House – a practice that continued until after the Civil War – were acceptable to Jefferson because they were nondiscriminatory and voluntary. Preachers of every Protestant denomination appeared. (Catholic priests began officiating in 1826.) As early as January 1806 a female evangelist, Dorothy Ripley, delivered a camp meeting-style exhortation in the House to Jefferson, Vice President Aaron Burr, and a "crowded audience". Not long after the completion of both wings, the Capitol was partially burned by the British on August 24, 1814, during the War of 1812. After the fires, Latrobe was rehired as Architect of the Capitol to oversee restoration works. George Bomford and Joseph Gardner Swift, both military engineers, were called upon to help rebuild the Capitol. Reconstruction began in 1815 and included redesigned chambers for both Senate and House wings (now sides), which were completed by 1819. During the reconstruction, Congress met in the Old Brick Capitol, a temporary structure financed by local investors. Construction continued through to 1826, with the addition of the center section with front steps and columned portico and an interior Rotunda rising above the first low dome of the Capitol. Latrobe is principally connected with the original construction and many innovative interior features; his successor Bulfinch also played a major role, such as design of the first low dome covered in copper. By 1850, it became clear that the Capitol could not accommodate the growing number of legislators arriving from newly admitted states. A new design competition was held, and President Millard Fillmore appointed Philadelphia architect Thomas U. Walter to carry out the expansion. Two new wings were added: a new chamber for the House of Representatives on the south side, and a new chamber for the Senate on the north. When the Capitol was expanded in the 1850s, some of the construction labor was carried out by slaves "who cut the logs, laid the stones and baked the bricks". The original plan was to use workers brought in from Europe. However, there was a poor response to recruitment efforts; African Americans, some free and some enslaved, along with Scottish stonemasons, comprised most of the workforce. The 1850 expansion more than doubled the length of the United States Capitol; it dwarfed the original, timber-framed, copper-sheeted, low dome of 1818, designed by Charles Bulfinch which was no longer in proportion with the increased size of the building. In 1855, the decision was made to tear it down and replace it with the "wedding-cake style" cast-iron dome that stands today. Also designed by Thomas U. Walter, the new dome would stand three times the height of the original dome and 100 feet (30 m) in diameter, yet had to be supported on the existing masonry piers. Like Mansart's dome at Les Invalides in Paris (which he had visited in 1838), Walter's dome is double, with a large oculus in the inner dome, through which is seen The Apotheosis of Washington painted on a shell suspended from the supporting ribs, which also support the visible exterior structure and the tholos that supports the Statue of Freedom, a colossal statue that was raised to the top of the dome in 1863. The statue invokes the goddesses Minerva or Athena. The cast iron for the dome weighs 8,909,200 pounds (4,041,100 kg). The dome's cast iron frame was supplied and constructed by the iron foundry Janes, Fowler, Kirtland & Co. The thirty-six Corinthian columns that surround the base of the dome were provided by the Baltimore ironworks of Poole & Hunt. When the Capitol's new dome was finally completed, its massive visual weight, in turn, overpowered the proportions of the columns of the East Portico, built in 1828. In 1904, the East Front of the Capitol building was rebuilt, following a design of the architects Carrère and Hastings, who designed the Russell Senate and Cannon House office buildings earlier that year. In 1958, the next major expansion to the Capitol started, with a 33.5-foot (10.2 m) extension of the East Portico.[citation needed] In 1960, two years into the project, the dome underwent a restoration. A marble duplicate of the sandstone East Front was built 33.5 feet (10.2 m) from the old Front. In 1962, a connecting extension repurposed what had been an outside wall as an inside wall. In the process, the original sandstone Corinthian columns were removed and replaced with marble. It was not until 1984 that landscape designer Russell Page created a suitable setting for them in a large meadow at the U.S. National Arboretum in northeast Washington as the National Capitol Columns, where they were combined with a reflecting pool into an ensemble that reminds some visitors of the ruins of Persepolis, in Persia. Besides the columns, two hundred tons of the original stone were removed in several hundred blocks, which were first stored on site at the Capitol, and then stored in an unused yard at the Capitol Power Plant until 1975. The same year, the power plant was renovated and expanded in accordance with legislation passed in 1970, and the stones fell to the Commission on the Extension of the United States Capitol. As this body was long defunct, responsibility for the material passed to the House and Senate office building commissions. These commissions then arranged for the National Park Service to store the debris at the back of a NPS maintenance yard in Rock Creek Park. With the permission of the speaker of the House, the United States Capitol Historical Society has periodically mined the blocks for sandstone since 1975. The stone removed is used to make commemorative bookends and paperweights, which are still sold to support the Capitol Historical Society. By 1982, more than $20,000 (nearly $60,000 adjusted) had been raised through such sales. Unpursued uses for the stones proposed by the Capitol Historical Society have included their sale as cornerstones in new housing developments. On December 19, 1960, the Capitol was declared a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service. The building was ranked No. 6 in a 2007 survey conducted for the American Institute of Architects' "America's Favorite Architecture" list. The Capitol draws heavily from other notable buildings, especially churches and landmarks in Europe, including the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican and St. Paul's Cathedral in London. On the roofs of the Senate and House Chambers are flagpoles that fly the U.S. flag when either is in session. On September 18, 1993, to commemorate the Capitol's bicentennial, the Masonic ritual cornerstone laying with George Washington was reenacted. U.S. senator Strom Thurmond was one of the Freemason politicians who took part in the ceremony.[citation needed] On June 20, 2000, ground was broken for the Capitol Visitor Center, which opened on December 2, 2008. From 2001 through 2008, the East Front of the Capitol (site of most presidential inaugurations until Ronald Reagan began a new tradition in 1981) was the site of construction for this massive underground complex, designed to facilitate a more orderly entrance for visitors to the Capitol. Prior to the center being built, visitors to the Capitol had to line up in the basement of the Cannon House Office Building or the Russell Senate Office Building. The new underground facility provides a grand entrance hall, a visitors theater, room for exhibits, and dining and restroom facilities, in addition to space for building necessities such as a service tunnel. A large-scale Capitol dome restoration project, the first extensive such work since 1959–1960, began in 2014, with completion scheduled before the 2017 presidential inauguration. As of 2012, $20 million in work around the skirt of the dome had been completed, but other deterioration, including at least 1,300 cracks in the brittle iron that have led to rusting and seepage inside, needed to be addressed. Before the August 2012 recess, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to spend $61 million to repair the exterior of the dome. The House wanted to spend less on government operations, but in late 2013, it was announced that renovations would take place over two years, starting in spring 2014. In 2014, extensive scaffolding was erected, enclosing and obscuring the dome. All exterior scaffolding was removed by mid-September 2016. With the increased use of technologies such as the Internet, a bid tendering process was approved in 2002 for a contract to install the multidirectional radio communication network for Wi-Fi and mobile-phone within the Capitol Building and annexes, followed by the new Capitol Visitor Center. The winning bidder was an Israeli company called Foxcom which has since changed its name and been acquired by Corning Incorporated. Interior The Capitol building is marked by its central dome above a rotunda in the central section of the structure (which also includes the older original smaller center flanked by the two original (designed 1793, occupied 1800) smaller two wings (inner north and inner south) containing the two original smaller meeting chambers for the Senate and the House of Representatives (between 1800 and late 1850s) and then flanked by two further extended (newer) wings, one also for each chamber of the larger, more populous Congress: the new north wing is the Senate chamber and the new south wing is the House of Representatives chamber. Above these newer chambers are galleries where visitors can watch the Senate and House of Representatives. It is an example of neoclassical architecture. Tunnels and internal subways connect the Capitol building with the Congressional office buildings in the Capitol Complex. All rooms in the Capitol are designated as either S (for Senate) or H (for House), depending on whether they are in the Senate or House wing of the Capitol. Since 1856, the Capitol has featured some the most prominent art in the United States, including Italian American artist Constantino Brumidi, whose murals are located in the hallways of the first floor of the Senate side of the Capitol. The murals, known as the Brumidi Corridors, reflect great moments and people in United States history. Among the original works are those depicting Benjamin Franklin, John Fitch, Robert Fulton, and events such as the Cession of Louisiana. Also decorating the walls are animals, insects and natural flora indigenous to the United States. Brumidi's design left many spaces open so future events in United States history could be added. Among those added are the Spirit of St. Louis, the Moon landing, and the Space Shuttle Challenger crew. Brumidi also worked within the Rotunda. He painted The Apotheosis of Washington beneath the top of the dome, and also the Frieze of American History. The Apotheosis of Washington was completed in 11 months and painted by Brumidi while suspended nearly 180 feet (55 m) in the air. It is said to be the first attempt by the United States to deify a founding father. Washington is depicted surrounded by 13 maidens in an inner ring with many Greek and Roman gods and goddesses below him in a second ring. The frieze is located around the inside of the base of the dome and is a chronological, pictorial history of the United States from the landing of Christopher Columbus to the Wright Brothers's flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The frieze was started in 1878 and was not completed until 1953. The frieze was therefore painted by four different artists: Brumidi, Filippo Costaggini, Charles Ayer Whipple, and Allyn Cox. The final scenes depicted in the fresco had not yet occurred when Brumidi began his Frieze of the United States History. Within the Rotunda there are eight large paintings about the development of the United States as a nation. On the east side are four paintings depicting major events in the discovery of America. On the west are four paintings depicting the founding of the United States. The east side paintings include The Baptism of Pocahontas by John Gadsby Chapman, The Embarkation of the Pilgrims by Robert Walter Weir, The Discovery of the Mississippi by William Henry Powell, and The Landing of Columbus by John Vanderlyn. The paintings on the west side are by John Trumbull: Declaration of Independence, Surrender of General Burgoyne, Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, and General George Washington Resigning His Commission. Trumbull was a contemporary of the United States' founding fathers and a participant in the American Revolutionary War; he painted a self-portrait into Surrender of Lord Cornwallis. First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln, an 1864 painting by Francis Bicknell Carpenter, hangs over the west staircase in the Senate wing. The Capitol also houses the National Statuary Hall Collection, comprising two statues donated by each of the fifty states to honor persons notable in their histories. One of the most notable statues in the National Statuary Hall is a bronze statue of King Kamehameha donated by the state of Hawaii upon its accession to the union in 1959. The statue's extraordinary weight of 15,000 pounds (6,800 kg) raised concerns that it might come crashing through the floor, so it was moved to Emancipation Hall of the new Capitol Visitor Center. The 100th, and last statue for the collection, that of Po'pay from the state of New Mexico, was added on September 22, 2005. It was the first statue moved into the Emancipation Hall. On the ground floor is an area known as the Crypt. It was intended to be the burial place of George Washington, with a ringed balustrade at the center of the Rotunda above looking down to his tomb. However, under the stipulations of his last will, Washington was buried at Mount Vernon. The Crypt houses exhibits on the history of the Capitol. A compass star inlaid in the floor marks the point at which Washington, D.C. is divided into its four quadrants and is the basis for how addresses in Washington, D.C., are designated (NE, NW, SE, or SW). Gutzon Borglum's massive Abraham Lincoln Bust is housed in the crypt. The sculptor had a fascination with large-scale art and themes of heroic nationalism, and carved the piece from a six-ton block of marble. Borglum carved the bust in 1908; it was donated to the Congress by Eugene Meyer Jr. and accepted by the Joint Committee on the Library the same year. The pedestal was specially designed by the sculptor and installed in 1911. The bust and pedestal were on display in the Rotunda until 1979 when, after a rearrangement of all the sculptures in the Rotunda, they were placed in the Crypt. Borglum was a patriot and believed the "monuments we have built are not our own"; he looked to create art that was "American, drawn from American sources, memorializing American achievement", according to a 1908 interview article.[citation needed] Borglum's depiction of Lincoln was so accurate that Robert Todd Lincoln, the president's son, praised the bust as "the most extraordinarily good portrait of my father I have ever seen". Supposedly, according to legend, the marble head remains unfinished (missing the left ear) to symbolize Lincoln's unfinished life. A statue of John C. Calhoun is located at one end of the room near the Old Supreme Court Chamber. On the right leg of the statue, a mark from a bullet fired during the 1998 shooting incident is clearly visible. The bullet also left a mark on the cape, located on the back right side of the statue. Thirteen presidents have lain in state in the Rotunda for public viewing, most recently Jimmy Carter. The tomb meant for Washington stored the catafalque which is used to support coffins lying in state or honor in the Capitol. The catafalque now on display in the Exhibition Hall of the Capitol Visitor Center was used for President Lincoln. The Hall of Columns is located on the House side of the Capitol, home to twenty-eight fluted columns and statues from the National Statuary Hall Collection. In the basement of the Capitol building in a utility room are two marble bathtubs, which are all that remain of the once elaborate Senate baths. These baths were a spa-like facility designed for members of Congress and their guests before many buildings in the city had modern plumbing. The facilities included several bathtubs, a barbershop, and a massage parlor. A steep metal staircase, totaling 365 steps, leads from the basement to an outdoor walkway on top of the Capitol's dome. The number of steps represents each day of the year. Also in the basement, the weekly Jummah prayer is held on Fridays by Muslim staffers. Contrary to a popular myth, building height laws have never referred to the height of the Capitol building, which rises to 289 feet (88 m). The Capitol is only the fourth-tallest structure in Washington. The House of Representatives Chamber has 448 permanent seats. Unlike senators, representatives do not have assigned seats. The chamber is large enough to accommodate members of all three branches of the federal government and invited guests for joint sessions of Congress such as the State of the Union speech and other events. The Chamber is adorned with relief portraits of famous lawmakers and lawgivers throughout Western and Near Eastern history. The United States national motto "In God We Trust" is written over the tribune below the clock and above the United States flag. Of the twenty-three relief portraits, only Moses is sculpted from a full front view and is located across from the dais where the Speaker of the House ceremonially sits. In order, clockwise around the chamber: There is a quote by statesman Daniel Webster etched in the marble of the chamber, as stated: "Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered." The current Senate Chamber opened in 1859 and is adorned with white marble busts of the former Presidents of the Senate (Vice presidents). The National Statuary Hall is a chamber in the United States Capitol devoted to sculptures of prominent Americans. The hall, also known as the Old Hall of the House, is a large, two-story, semicircular room with a second story gallery along the curved perimeter. It is located immediately south of the Rotunda. It was the meeting place of the U.S. House of Representatives for nearly 50 years (1807–1857). After a few years of disuse, in 1864, it was repurposed as a statuary hall. The Old Senate Chamber is a room in the United States Capitol that was the legislative chamber of the United States Senate from 1810 to 1859, and served as the Supreme Court chamber from 1860 until 1935. This room was originally the lower half of the Old Senate Chamber from 1800 to 1806. After division of the chamber in two levels, this room was used from 1806 until 1860 as the Supreme Court Chamber. In 1860, the Supreme Court began using the newly vacated Old Senate Chamber. In 1935, the Supreme Court vacated the Capitol Building and began meeting in the newly constructed United States Supreme Court Building across the street. Exterior The Capitol Grounds cover approximately 274 acres (1.11 km2), with the grounds proper consisting mostly of lawns, walkways, streets, drives, and planting areas. Several monumental sculptures used to be located on the east facade and lawn of the Capitol including The Rescue and George Washington. The current grounds were designed by noted American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who planned the expansion and landscaping performed from 1874 to 1892. In 1875, as one of his first recommendations, Olmsted proposed the construction of the marble terraces on the north, west, and south sides of the building creating an enveloping base. This addressed issues with the placement of the original structure; it had been built too far westwards on the crest of the hill and gave the appearance as if the building might slide into the marshy terrain below. Olmsted also designed the Summerhouse, an open-air brick building that sits just north of the Capitol. Three arches open into the hexagonal structure, which encloses a fountain and twenty-two brick chairs. A fourth wall holds a small window which looks onto an artificial grotto. Built between 1879 and 1881, the Summerhouse was intended to answer complaints that visitors to the Capitol had no place to sit and no place to obtain water for their horses and themselves. Modern drinking fountains have since replaced Olmsted's fountain for the latter purpose. Olmsted intended to build a second, matching Summerhouse on the southern side of the Capitol, but congressional objections led to the project's cancellation. Up to four U.S. flags can be seen flying over the Capitol. Two flagpoles are located at the base of the dome on the East and West sides. These flagpoles have flown the flag day and night since World War I. The other two flagpoles are above the North (Senate) and South (House of Representatives) wings of the building, and fly only when the chamber below is in session. The flag above the House of Representatives is raised and lowered by House pages. The flag above the United States Senate is raised and lowered by Senate Doorkeepers. To raise the flag, Doorkeepers access the roof of the Capitol from the Senate Sergeant at Arms's office. Several auxiliary flagpoles, to the west of the dome and not visible from the ground, are used to meet congressional requests for flags flown over the Capitol.[citation needed] Constituents pay for U.S. flags flown over the Capitol to commemorate a variety of events such as the death of a veteran family member. Major events The Capitol and the grounds of Capitol Hill have played host to major events, including presidential inaugurations, which are held every four years. During an inauguration, the front of the Capitol is outfitted with a platform and a grand staircase. Annual events at the Capitol include Independence Day celebrations, and the National Memorial Day Concert. The general public has paid respect to a number of individuals lying in state at the Capitol, including numerous former presidents, senators, and other officials. Other Americans lying in honor include Officers Jacob Chestnut and John Gibson, the two officers killed in the 1998 shooting incident. Chestnut was the first African American ever to lie in honor in the Capitol. The public also paid respect to Rosa Parks, an icon of the civil rights movement, at the Capitol in 2005. She was the first woman and second African American to lie in honor in the Capitol. In February 2018, the evangelical Rev. Billy Graham became the fourth private citizen to lie in honor in the Rotunda. On September 24, 2015, Pope Francis gave a joint address to Congress, the first Pope to do so. Security The U.S. Capitol is believed to have been the intended target of United Airlines Flight 93, one of the four planes that were hijacked in the September 11 attacks. The plane crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after passengers tried to regain control of the plane from the hijackers. Since the September 11 attacks, the roads and grounds around the Capitol have undergone dramatic changes. The United States Capitol Police have also installed checkpoints to inspect vehicles at specific locations around Capitol Hill, and have closed a section of one street indefinitely. The level of screening employed varies. On the main east–west thoroughfares of Constitution and Independence Avenues, barricades are implanted in the roads that can be raised in the event of an emergency. Trucks larger than pickups are interdicted by the Capitol Police and are instructed to use other routes. On the checkpoints at the shorter cross streets, the barriers are typically kept in a permanent "emergency" position, and only vehicles with special permits are allowed to pass. All Capitol visitors are screened by a magnetometer, and all items that visitors may bring inside the building are screened by an x-ray device. In both chambers, gas masks are located underneath the chairs in each chamber for members to use in case of emergency. Structures ranging from scores of Jersey barriers to hundreds of ornamental bollards have been erected to obstruct the path of any vehicles that might stray from the designated roadways. After the January 6 United States Capitol attack, security increased again. Additional security fences were installed around the perimeter, and National Guard troops were deployed to bolster security. Capitol Visitor Center The United States Capitol Visitor Center (CVC), located below the East Front of the Capitol and its plaza, between the Capitol building and 1st Street East, opened on December 2, 2008. The CVC provides a single security checkpoint for all visitors, including those with disabilities, and an expansion space[clarification needed] for the US Congress. The complex contains 580,000 square feet (54,000 m2) of space below ground on three floors, and offers visitors a food court, restrooms, and educational exhibits, including an 11-foot scale model of the Capitol dome. It also features over 100,000 skylights affording views of the actual dome. Long in the planning stages, construction began in the fall of 2001, following the killing of two Capitol police officers in 1998. The estimated final cost of constructing the CVC was $621 million. Gallery See also Citations References Further reading External links |
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Contents Post Office Protocol In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. Today, POP version 3 (POP3) is the most commonly used version. Together with IMAP, it is one of the most common protocols for email retrieval. Purpose The Post Office Protocol provides access via an Internet Protocol (IP) network for a user client application to a mailbox (maildrop) maintained on a mail server. The protocol supports list, retrieve and delete operations for messages. POP3 clients connect, retrieve all messages, store them on the client computer, and finally delete them from the server. This design of POP and its procedures was driven by the need of users having only temporary Internet connections, such as dial-up access, allowing these users to retrieve e-mail when connected, and subsequently to view and manipulate the retrieved messages when offline. POP3 clients also have an option to leave mail on the server after retrieval, and in this mode of operation, clients will only download new messages which are identified by using the UIDL command (unique-id list). By contrast, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) was designed to normally leave all messages on the server to permit management with multiple client applications, and to support both connected (online) and disconnected (offline) modes of operation. A POP3 server listens on TCP well-known port number 110 for service requests. Encrypted communication for POP3 is either requested after protocol initiation, using the STLS command, if supported, or by POP3S, which connects to the server using Transport Layer Security (TLS) or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) on well-known TCP port number 995. Messages available to the client are determined when a POP3 session opens the maildrop, and are identified by message-number local to that session or, optionally, by a unique identifier assigned to the message by the POP server. This unique identifier is permanent and unique to the maildrop and allows a client to access the same message in different POP sessions. Mail is retrieved and marked for deletion by the message-number. When the client exits the session, mail marked for deletion is removed from the maildrop. History The first version of the Post Office Protocol, POP1, was specified in RFC 918 (1984) by Joyce K. Reynolds. POP2 was specified in RFC 937 (1985). POP3 is the version in most common use. It originated with RFC 1081 (1988) but the most recent specification is RFC 1939, updated with an extension mechanism (RFC 2449) and an authentication mechanism in RFC 1734. This led to a number of POP implementations such as Pine, POPmail, and other early mail clients. While the original POP3 specification supported only an unencrypted USER/PASS login mechanism or Berkeley .rhosts access control, today POP3 supports several authentication methods to provide varying levels of protection against illegitimate access to a user's e-mail. Most are provided by the POP3 extension mechanisms. POP3 clients support SASL authentication methods via the AUTH extension. MIT Project Athena also produced a Kerberized version. RFC 1460 introduced APOP into the core protocol. APOP is a challenge–response protocol which uses the MD5 hash function in an attempt to avoid replay attacks and disclosure of the shared secret. Clients implementing APOP include Mozilla Thunderbird, Opera Mail, Eudora, KMail, Novell Evolution, RimArts' Becky!, Windows Live Mail, PowerMail, Apple Mail, and Mutt. RFC 1460 was obsoleted by RFC 1725, which was in turn obsoleted by RFC 1939. POP4 exists only as an informal proposal adding basic folder management, multipart message support, as well as message flag management to compete with IMAP; however, its development has not progressed since 2003. There are now two known POP4 server implementations. As of October 2013, the POP4.org domain and website are now hosted by simbey.com, which also runs the other POP4 server implementation. Extensions and specifications An extension mechanism was proposed in RFC 2449 to accommodate general extensions as well as announce in an organized manner support for optional commands, such as TOP and UIDL. The RFC did not intend to encourage extensions, and reaffirmed that the role of POP3 is to provide simple support for mainly download-and-delete requirements of mailbox handling. The extensions are termed capabilities and are listed by the CAPA command. With the exception of APOP, the optional commands were included in the initial set of capabilities. Following the lead of ESMTP (RFC 5321), capabilities beginning with an X signify local capabilities. The STARTTLS extension allows the use of Transport Layer Security (TLS) or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to be negotiated using the STLS command, on the standard POP3 port, rather than an alternate. Some clients and servers instead use the alternate-port method, which uses TCP port 995 (POP3S). Demon Internet introduced extensions to POP3 that allow multiple accounts per domain, and has become known as Standard Dial-up POP3 Service (SDPS). To access each account, the username includes the hostname, as john@hostname or john+hostname. Google Apps uses the same method. In computing, local e-mail clients can use the Kerberized Post Office Protocol (KPOP), an application-layer Internet standard protocol, to retrieve e-mail from a remote server over a TCP/IP connection. The KPOP protocol is based on the POP3 protocol – differing in that it adds Kerberos security and that it runs by default over TCP port number 1109 instead of 110. One mail server software implementation is found in the Cyrus IMAP server. Session example The following POP3 session dialog is an example in RFC 1939: POP3 servers without the optional APOP command expect the client to log in with the USER and PASS commands: Comparison with IMAP The Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an alternative and more recent mailbox access protocol. The highlights of differences are: Related requests for comments (RFCs) See also References Further reading External links |
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Contents Jews Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים, ISO 259-2: Yehudim, Israeli pronunciation: [jehuˈdim]), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly interrelated, as Judaism is an ethnic religion, though many ethnic Jews do not practice it. Religious Jews regard converts to Judaism as members of the Jewish nation, pursuant to the long-standing conversion process. The Israelites emerged from the pre-existing Canaanite peoples to establish Israel and Judah in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Originally, Jews referred to the inhabitants of the kingdom of Judah and were distinguished from the gentiles and the Samaritans. According to the Hebrew Bible, these inhabitants predominately originate from the tribe of Judah, who were descendants of Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The tribe of Benjamin were another significant demographic in Judah and were considered Jews too. By the late 6th century BCE, Judaism had evolved from the Israelite religion, dubbed Yahwism (for Yahweh) by modern scholars, having a theology that religious Jews believe to be the expression of the Mosaic covenant between God and the Jewish people. After the Babylonian exile, Jews referred to followers of Judaism, descendants of the Israelites, citizens of Judea, or allies of the Judean state. Jewish migration within the Mediterranean region during the Hellenistic period, followed by population transfers, caused by events like the Jewish–Roman wars, gave rise to the Jewish diaspora, consisting of diverse Jewish communities that maintained their sense of Jewish history, identity, and culture. In the following millennia, Jewish diaspora communities coalesced into three major ethnic subdivisions according to where their ancestors settled: the Ashkenazim (Central and Eastern Europe), the Sephardim (Iberian Peninsula), and the Mizrahim (Middle East and North Africa). While these three major divisions account for most of the world's Jews, there are other smaller Jewish groups outside of the three. Prior to World War II, the global Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million, representing around 0.7% of the world's population at that time. During World War II, approximately six million Jews throughout Europe were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany in a genocide known as the Holocaust. Since then, the population has slowly risen again, and as of 2021[update], was estimated to be at 15.2 million by the demographer Sergio Della Pergola or less than 0.2% of the total world population in 2012.[b] Today, over 85% of Jews live in Israel or the United States. Israel, whose population is 73.9% Jewish, is the only country where Jews comprise more than 2.5% of the population. Jews have significantly influenced and contributed to the development and growth of human progress in many fields, both historically and in modern times, including in science and technology, philosophy, ethics, literature, governance, business, art, music, comedy, theatre, cinema, architecture, food, medicine, and religion. Jews founded Christianity and had an indirect but profound influence on Islam. In these ways and others, Jews have played a significant role in the development of Western culture. Name and etymology The term "Jew" is derived from the Hebrew word יְהוּדִי Yehudi, with the plural יְהוּדִים Yehudim. Endonyms in other Jewish languages include the Ladino ג׳ודיו Djudio (plural ג׳ודיוס, Djudios) and the Yiddish ייִד Yid (plural ייִדן Yidn). Though Genesis 29:35 and 49:8 connect "Judah" with the verb yada, meaning "praise", scholars generally agree that "Judah" most likely derives from the name of a Levantine geographic region dominated by gorges and ravines. The gradual ethnonymic shift from "Israelites" to "Jews", regardless of their descent from Judah, although not contained in the Torah, is made explicit in the Book of Esther (4th century BCE) of the Tanakh. Some modern scholars disagree with the conflation, based on the works of Josephus, Philo and Apostle Paul. The English word "Jew" is a derivation of Middle English Gyw, Iewe. The latter was loaned from the Old French giu, which itself evolved from the earlier juieu, which in turn derived from judieu/iudieu which through elision had dropped the letter "d" from the Medieval Latin Iudaeus, which, like the New Testament Greek term Ioudaios, meant both "Jew" and "Judean" / "of Judea". The Greek term was a loan from Aramaic *yahūdāy, corresponding to Hebrew יְהוּדִי Yehudi. Some scholars prefer translating Ioudaios as "Judean" in the Bible since it is more precise, denotes the community's origins and prevents readers from engaging in antisemitic eisegesis. Others disagree, believing that it erases the Jewish identity of Biblical characters such as Jesus. Daniel R. Schwartz distinguishes "Judean" and "Jew". Here, "Judean" refers to the inhabitants of Judea, which encompassed southern Palestine. Meanwhile, "Jew" refers to the descendants of Israelites that adhere to Judaism. Converts are included in the definition. But Shaye J.D. Cohen argues that "Judean" is inclusive of believers of the Judean God and allies of the Judean state. Another scholar, Jodi Magness, wrote the term Ioudaioi refers to a "people of Judahite/Judean ancestry who worshipped the God of Israel as their national deity and (at least nominally) lived according to his laws." The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., يَهُودِيّ yahūdī (sg.), al-yahūd (pl.), in Arabic, "Jude" in German, "judeu" in Portuguese, "Juif" (m.)/"Juive" (f.) in French, "jøde" in Danish and Norwegian, "judío/a" in Spanish, "jood" in Dutch, "żyd" in Polish etc., but derivations of the word "Hebrew" are also in use to describe a Jew, e.g., in Italian (Ebreo), in Persian ("Ebri/Ebrani" (Persian: عبری/عبرانی)) and Russian (Еврей, Yevrey). The German word "Jude" is pronounced [ˈjuːdə], the corresponding adjective "jüdisch" [ˈjyːdɪʃ] (Jewish) is the origin of the word "Yiddish". According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition (2000), It is widely recognized that the attributive use of the noun Jew, in phrases such as Jew lawyer or Jew ethics, is both vulgar and highly offensive. In such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a practice that carries risks of its own. In a sentence such as There are now several Jews on the council, which is unobjectionable, the substitution of a circumlocution like Jewish people or persons of Jewish background may in itself cause offense for seeming to imply that Jew has a negative connotation when used as a noun. Identity Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation, an ethnicity, a religion, and a culture, making the definition of who is a Jew vary slightly depending on whether a religious or national approach to identity is used.[better source needed] Generally, in modern secular usage, Jews include three groups: people who were born to a Jewish family regardless of whether or not they follow the religion, those who have some Jewish ancestral background or lineage (sometimes including those who do not have strictly matrilineal descent), and people without any Jewish ancestral background or lineage who have formally converted to Judaism and therefore are followers of the religion. In the context of biblical and classical literature, Jews could refer to inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah, or the broader Judean region, allies of the Judean state, or anyone that followed Judaism. Historical definitions of Jewish identity have traditionally been based on halakhic definitions of matrilineal descent, and halakhic conversions. These definitions of who is a Jew date back to the codification of the Oral Torah into the Babylonian Talmud, around 200 CE. Interpretations by Jewish sages of sections of the Tanakh – such as Deuteronomy 7:1–5, which forbade intermarriage between their Israelite ancestors and seven non-Israelite nations: "for that [i.e. giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,] would turn away your children from following me, to serve other gods"[failed verification] – are used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and gentiles. Leviticus 24:10 says that the son in a marriage between a Hebrew woman and an Egyptian man is "of the community of Israel." This is complemented by Ezra 10:2–3, where Israelites returning from Babylon vow to put aside their gentile wives and their children. A popular theory is that the rape of Jewish women in captivity brought about the law of Jewish identity being inherited through the maternal line, although scholars challenge this theory citing the Talmudic establishment of the law from the pre-exile period. Another argument is that the rabbis changed the law of patrilineal descent to matrilineal descent due to the widespread rape of Jewish women by Roman soldiers. Since the anti-religious Haskalah movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries, halakhic interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged. According to historian Shaye J. D. Cohen, the status of the offspring of mixed marriages was determined patrilineally in the Bible. He brings two likely explanations for the change in Mishnaic times: first, the Mishnah may have been applying the same logic to mixed marriages as it had applied to other mixtures (Kil'ayim). Thus, a mixed marriage is forbidden as is the union of a horse and a donkey, and in both unions the offspring are judged matrilineally. Second, the Tannaim may have been influenced by Roman law, which dictated that when a parent could not contract a legal marriage, offspring would follow the mother. Rabbi Rivon Krygier follows a similar reasoning, arguing that Jewish descent had formerly passed through the patrilineal descent and the law of matrilineal descent had its roots in the Roman legal system. Origins The prehistory and ethnogenesis of the Jews are closely intertwined with archaeology, biology, historical textual records, mythology, and religious literature. The ethnic origin of the Jews lie in the Israelites, a confederation of Iron Age Semitic-speaking tribes that inhabited a part of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods. Modern Jews are named after and also descended from the southern Israelite Kingdom of Judah. Gary A. Rendsburg links the early Canaanite nomadic pastoralists confederation to the Shasu known to the Egyptians around the 15th century BCE. According to the Hebrew Bible narrative, Jewish history begins with the Biblical patriarchs such as Abraham, his son Isaac, Isaac's son Jacob, and the Biblical matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel, who lived in Canaan. The twelve sons of Jacob subsequently gave birth to the Twelve Tribes. Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacob's son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. Jacob's descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus, led by Moses. Afterwards, the Israelites conquered Canaan under Moses' successor Joshua, and went through the period of the Biblical judges after the death of Joshua. Through the mediation of Samuel, the Israelites were subject to a king, Saul, who was succeeded by David and then Solomon, after whom the United Monarchy ended and was split into a separate Kingdom of Israel and a Kingdom of Judah. The Kingdom of Judah is described as comprising the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and partially, Levi. They later assimilated remnants of other tribes who migrated there from the northern Kingdom of Israel. In the extra-biblical record, the Israelites become visible as a people between 1200 and 1000 BCE. There is well accepted archeological evidence referring to "Israel" in the Merneptah Stele, which dates to about 1200 BCE, and in the Mesha stele from 840 BCE. It is debated whether a period like that of the Biblical judges occurred and if there ever was a United Monarchy. There is further disagreement about the earliest existence of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their extent and power. Historians agree that a Kingdom of Israel existed by c. 900 BCE,: 169–95 there is a consensus that a Kingdom of Judah existed by c. 700 BCE at least, and recent excavations in Khirbet Qeiyafa have provided strong evidence for dating the Kingdom of Judah to the 10th century BCE. In 587 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II, King of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, besieged Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple and deported parts of the Judahite population. Scholars disagree regarding the extent to which the Bible should be accepted as a historical source for early Israelite history. Rendsburg states that there are two approximately equal groups of scholars who debate the historicity of the biblical narrative, the minimalists who largely reject it, and the maximalists who largely accept it, with the minimalists being the more vocal of the two. Some of the leading minimalists reframe the biblical account as constituting the Israelites' inspiring national myth narrative, suggesting that according to the modern archaeological and historical account, the Israelites and their culture did not overtake the region by force, but instead branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion of Yahwism centered on Yahweh, one of the gods of the Canaanite pantheon. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of cultic practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group, setting them apart from other Canaanites. According to Dever, modern archaeologists have largely discarded the search for evidence of the biblical narrative surrounding the patriarchs and the exodus. According to the maximalist position, the modern archaeological record independently points to a narrative which largely agrees with the biblical account. This narrative provides a testimony of the Israelites as a nomadic people known to the Egyptians as belonging to the Shasu. Over time these nomads left the desert and settled on the central mountain range of the land of Canaan, in simple semi-nomadic settlements in which pig bones are notably absent. This population gradually shifted from a tribal lifestyle to a monarchy. While the archaeological record of the ninth century BCE provides evidence for two monarchies, one in the south under a dynasty founded by a figure named David with its capital in Jerusalem, and one in the north under a dynasty founded by a figure named Omri with its capital in Samaria. It also points to an early monarchic period in which these regions shared material culture and religion, suggesting a common origin. Archaeological finds also provide evidence for the later cooperation of these two kingdoms in their coalition against Aram, and for their destructions by the Assyrians and later by the Babylonians. Genetic studies on Jews show that most Jews worldwide bear a common genetic heritage which originates in the Middle East, and that they share certain genetic traits with other Gentile peoples of the Fertile Crescent. The genetic composition of different Jewish groups shows that Jews share a common gene pool dating back four millennia, as a marker of their common ancestral origin. Despite their long-term separation, Jewish communities maintained their unique commonalities, propensities, and sensibilities in culture, tradition, and language. History The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele, which dates to around 1200 BCE. The majority of scholars agree that this text refers to the Israelites, a group that inhabited the central highlands of Canaan, where archaeological evidence shows that hundreds of small settlements were constructed between the 12th and 10th centuries BCE. The Israelites differentiated themselves from neighboring peoples through various distinct characteristics including religious practices, prohibition on intermarriage, and an emphasis on genealogy and family history. In the 10th century BCE, two neighboring Israelite kingdoms—the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah—emerged. Since their inception, they shared ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious characteristics despite a complicated relationship. Israel, with its capital mostly in Samaria, was larger and wealthier, and soon developed into a regional power. In contrast, Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem, was less prosperous and covered a smaller, mostly mountainous territory. However, while in Israel the royal succession was often decided by a military coup d'état, resulting in several dynasty changes, political stability in Judah was much greater, as it was ruled by the House of David for the whole four centuries of its existence. Scholars also describe Biblical Jews as a 'proto-nation', in the modern nationalist sense, comparable to classical Greeks, the Gauls and the British Celts. Around 720 BCE, Kingdom of Israel was destroyed when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which came to dominate the ancient Near East. Under the Assyrian resettlement policy, a significant portion of the northern Israelite population was exiled to Mesopotamia and replaced by immigrants from the same region. During the same period, and throughout the 7th century BCE, the Kingdom of Judah, now under Assyrian vassalage, experienced a period of prosperity and witnessed a significant population growth. This prosperity continued until the Neo-Assyrian king Sennacherib devastated the region of Judah in response to a rebellion in the area, ultimately halting at Jerusalem. Later in the same century, the Assyrians were defeated by the rising Neo-Babylonian Empire, and Judah became its vassal. In 587 BCE, following a revolt in Judah, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, putting an end to the kingdom. The majority of Jerusalem's residents, including the kingdom's elite, were exiled to Babylon. According to the Book of Ezra, the Persian Cyrus the Great ended the Babylonian exile in 538 BCE, the year after he captured Babylon. The exile ended with the return under Zerubbabel the Prince (so called because he was a descendant of the royal line of David) and Joshua the Priest (a descendant of the line of the former High Priests of the Temple) and their construction of the Second Temple circa 521–516 BCE. As part of the Persian Empire, the former Kingdom of Judah became the province of Judah (Yehud Medinata), with a smaller territory and a reduced population. Judea was under control of the Achaemenids until the fall of their empire in c. 333 BCE to Alexander the Great. After several centuries under foreign imperial rule, the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire resulted in an independent Hasmonean kingdom, under which the Jews once again enjoyed political independence for a period spanning from 110 to 63 BCE. Under Hasmonean rule the boundaries of their kingdom were expanded to include not only the land of the historical kingdom of Judah, but also the Galilee and Transjordan. In the beginning of this process the Idumeans, who had infiltrated southern Judea after the destruction of the First Temple, were converted en masse. In 63 BCE, Judea was conquered by the Romans. From 37 BCE to 6 CE, the Romans allowed the Jews to maintain some degree of independence by installing the Herodian dynasty as vassal kings. However, Judea eventually came directly under Roman control and was incorporated into the Roman Empire as the province of Judaea. The Jewish–Roman wars, a series of failed uprisings against Roman rule during the first and second centuries CE, had profound and devastating consequences for the Jewish population of Judaea. The First Jewish–Roman War (66–73/74 CE) culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple, after which the significantly diminished Jewish population was stripped of political autonomy. A few generations later, the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE) erupted in response to Roman plans to rebuild Jerusalem as a Roman colony, and, possibly, to restrictions on circumcision. Its violent suppression by the Romans led to the near-total depopulation of Judea, and the demographic and cultural center of Jewish life shifted to Galilee. Jews were subsequently banned from residing in Jerusalem and the surrounding area, and the province of Judaea was renamed Syria Palaestina. These developments effectively ended Jewish efforts to restore political sovereignty in the region for nearly two millennia. Similar upheavals impacted the Jewish communities in the empire's eastern provinces during the Diaspora Revolt (115–117 CE), leading to the near-total destruction of Jewish diaspora communities in Libya, Cyprus and Egypt, including the highly influential community in Alexandria. The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE brought profound changes to Judaism. With the Temple's central place in Jewish worship gone, religious practices shifted towards prayer, Torah study (including Oral Torah), and communal gatherings in synagogues. Judaism also lost much of its sectarian nature.: 69 Two of the three main sects that flourished during the late Second Temple period, namely the Sadducees and Essenes, eventually disappeared, while Pharisaic beliefs became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis of Rabbinic Judaism, which emerged as the prevailing form of Judaism since late antiquity. The Jewish diaspora existed well before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and had been ongoing for centuries, with the dispersal driven by both forced expulsions and voluntary migrations. In Mesopotamia, a testimony to the beginnings of the Jewish community can be found in Joachin's ration tablets, listing provisions allotted to the exiled Judean king and his family by Nebuchadnezzar II, and further evidence are the Al-Yahudu tablets, dated to the 6th–5th centuries BCE and related to the exiles from Judea arriving after the destruction of the First Temple, though there is ample evidence for the presence of Jews in Babylonia even from 626 BCE. In Egypt, the documents from Elephantine reveal the trials of a community founded by a Persian Jewish garrison at two fortresses on the frontier during the 5th–4th centuries BCE, and according to Josephus the Jewish community in Alexandria existed since the founding of the city in the 4th century BCE by Alexander the Great. By 200 BCE, there were well established Jewish communities both in Egypt and Mesopotamia ("Babylonia" in Jewish sources) and in the two centuries that followed, Jewish populations were also present in Asia Minor, Greece, Macedonia, Cyrene, and, beginning in the middle of the first century BCE, in the city of Rome. Later, in the first centuries CE, as a result of the Jewish-Roman Wars, a large number of Jews were taken as captives, sold into slavery, or compelled to flee from the regions affected by the wars, contributing to the formation and expansion of Jewish communities across the Roman Empire as well as in Arabia and Mesopotamia. After the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Jewish population in Judaea—now significantly reduced— made efforts to recover from the revolt's devastating effects, but never fully regained its former strength. Between the second and fourth centuries CE, the region of Galilee emerged as the primary center of Jewish life in Syria Palaestina, experiencing both demographic growth and cultural development. It was during this period that two central rabbinic texts, the Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud, were composed. The Romans recognized the patriarchs—rabbinic sages such as Judah ha-Nasi—as representatives of the Jewish people, granting them a certain degree of autonomy. However, as the Roman Empire gave way to the Christianized Byzantine Empire under Constantine, Jews began to face persecution by both the Church and imperial authorities, Jews came to be persecuted by the church and the authorities, and many immigrated to communities in the diaspora. By the fourth century CE, Jews are believed to have lost their demographic majority in Syria Palaestina. The long-established Jewish community of Mesopotamia, which had been living under Parthian and later Sasanian rule, beyond the confines of the Roman Empire, became an important center of Jewish study as Judea's Jewish population declined. Estimates often place the Babylonian Jewish community of the 3rd to 7th centuries at around one million, making it the largest Jewish diaspora community of that period. Under the political leadership of the exilarch, who was regarded as a royal heir of the House of David, this community had an autonomous status and served as a place of refuge for the Jews of Syria Palaestina. A number of significant Talmudic academies, such as the Nehardea, Pumbedita, and Sura academies, were established in Mesopotamia, and many important Amoraim were active there. The Babylonian Talmud, a centerpiece of Jewish religious law, was compiled in Babylonia in the 3rd to 6th centuries. Jewish diaspora communities are generally described to have coalesced into three major ethnic subdivisions according to where their ancestors settled: the Ashkenazim (initially in the Rhineland and France), the Sephardim (initially in the Iberian Peninsula), and the Mizrahim (Middle East and North Africa). Romaniote Jews, Tunisian Jews, Yemenite Jews, Egyptian Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Bukharan Jews, Mountain Jews, and other groups also predated the arrival of the Sephardic diaspora. During the same period, Jewish communities in the Middle East thrived under Islamic rule, especially in cities like Baghdad, Cairo, and Damascus. In Babylonia, from the 7th to 11th centuries the Pumbedita and Sura academies led the Arab and to an extent the entire Jewish world. The deans and students of said academies defined the Geonic period in Jewish history. Following this period were the Rishonim who lived from the 11th to 15th centuries. Like their European counterparts, Jews in the Middle East and North Africa also faced periods of persecution and discriminatory policies, with the Almohad Caliphate in North Africa and Iberia issuing forced conversion decrees, causing Jews such as Maimonides to seek safety in other regions. Despite experiencing repeated waves of persecution, Ashkenazi Jews in Western Europe worked in a variety of fields, making an impact on their communities' economy and societies. In Francia, for example, figures like Isaac Judaeus and Armentarius occupied prominent social and economic positions. Francia also witnessed the development of a sophisticated tradition of biblical commentary, as exemplified by Rashi and the tosafists. In 1144, the first documented blood libel occurred in Norwich, England, marking an escalation in the pattern of discrimination and violence that Jews had already been subjected to throughout medieval Europe. During the 12th and 13th centuries, Jews faced frequent antisemitic legislation - including laws prescribing distinctive dress - alongside segregation, repeated blood libels, pogroms, and massacres such as the Rhineland Massacres (1066). The Jews of the Holy Roman Empire were designated Servi camerae regis (“servants of the imperial chamber”) by Frederick II, a status that afforded limited protection while simultaneously entangling them in the political struggles between the emperor and the German principalities and cities. Persecution intensified during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when Jews were accused of poisoning wells and many communities were destroyed. These pressures, combined with major expulsions such as that from England in 1290, gradually pushed Ashkenazi Jewish populations eastward into Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. One of the largest Jewish communities of the Middle Ages was in the Iberian Peninsula, which for a time contained the largest Jewish population in Europe. Iberian Jewry endured discrimination under the Visigoths but saw its fortunes improve under Umayyad rule and later the Taifa kingdoms. During this period, the Jews of Muslim Spain entered a "Golden Age" marked by achievements in Hebrew poetry and literature, religious scholarship, grammar, medicine and science, with leading figures including Hasdai ibn Shaprut, Judah Halevi, Moses ibn Ezra and Solomon ibn Gabirol. Jews also rose to high office, most notably Samuel ibn Naghrillah, a scholar and poet who served as grand vizier and military commander of Granada. The Golden Age ended with the rise of the radical Almoravid and Almohad dynasties, whose persecutions drove many Jews from Iberia (including Maimonides), together with the advancing Reconquista. In 1391, widespread pogroms swept across Spain, leaving thousands dead and forcing mass conversions. The Spanish Inquisition was later established to pursue, torture and execute conversos who continued to practice Judaism in secret, while public disputations were staged to discredit Judaism. In 1492, after the Reconquista, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon decreed the expulsion of all Jews who refused conversion, sending an estimated 200,000 into exile in Portugal, Italy, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. In 1497, Portugal's Jews, about 30,000, were formally ordered expelled but instead were forcibly converted to retain their economic role. In 1498, some 3,500 Jews were expelled from Navarre. Many converts outwardly adopted Christianity while secretly preserving Jewish practices, becoming crypto-Jews (also known as marranos or anusim), who remained targets of the various Inquisitions for centuries. Following the expulsions from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s, Jewish exiles dispersed across the Mediterranean, Europe, and North Africa. Many settled in the Ottoman Empire—which, replacing the Iberian Peninsula, became home to the world's largest Jewish population—where new communities developed in Anatolia, the Balkans, and the Land of Israel. Cities such as Istanbul and Thessaloniki grew into major Jewish centers, while in 16th-century Safed a flourishing spiritual life took shape. There, Solomon Alkabetz, Moses Cordovero, and Isaac Luria developed influential new schools of Kabbalah, giving powerful impetus to Jewish mysticism, and Joseph Karo composed the Shulchan Aruch, which became a cornerstone of Jewish law. In the 17th century, Portuguese conversos who returned to Judaism and engaged in trade and banking helped establish Amsterdam as a prosperous Jewish center, while also forming communities in cities such as Antwerp and London. This period also witnessed waves of messianic fervor, most notably the rise of the Sabbatean movement in the 1660s, led by Sabbatai Zvi of İzmir, which reverberated throughout the Jewish world. In Eastern Europe, Poland–Lithuania became the principal center of Ashkenazi Jewry, eventually becoming home to the largest Jewish population in the world. Jewish life flourished there from in the early modern era, supported by relative stability, economic opportunity, and strong communal institutions. The mid-17th century brought devastation with the Cossack uprisings in Ukraine, which reversed migration flows and sent refugees westward, yet Poland–Lithuania remained the demographic and cultural heartland of Ashkenazic Jewry. Following the partitions of Poland, most of its Jews came under Russian rule and were confined to the "Pale of Settlement." The 18th century also witnessed new religious and intellectual currents. Hasidism, founded by Baal Shem Tov, emphasized mysticism and piety, while its opponents, the Misnagdim ("opponents") led by the Vilna Gaon, defended rabbinic scholarship and tradition. In Western Europe, during the 1760s and 1770s, the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) emerged in German-speaking lands, where figures such as Moses Mendelssohn promoted secular learning, vernacular literacy, and integration into European society. Elsewhere, Jews began to be re-admitted to Western Europe, including England, where Menasseh ben Israel petitioned Oliver Cromwell for their return. In the Americas, Jews of Sephardic descent first arrived as conversos in Spanish and Portuguese colonies, where many faced trial by Inquisition tribunals for "judaizing." A more durable presence began in Dutch Brazil, where Jews openly practiced their religion and established the first synagogues in the New World, before the Portuguese reconquest forced their dispersal to Amsterdam, the Caribbean, and North America. Sephardic communities took root in Curaçao, Suriname, Jamaica, and Barbados, later joined by Ashkenazi migrants. In North America, Jews were present from the mid-17th century, with New Amsterdam hosting the first organized congregation in 1654. By the time of the American Revolution, small communities in New York, Newport, Philadelphia, Savannah, and Charleston played an active role in the struggle for independence. In the late 19th century, Jews in Western Europe gradually achieved legal emancipation, though social acceptance remained limited by persistent antisemitism and rising nationalism. In Eastern Europe, particularly within the Russian Empire's Pale of Settlement, Jews faced mounting legal restrictions and recurring pogroms. From this environment emerged Zionism, a national revival movement originating in Central and Eastern Europe that sought to re-establish a Jewish polity in the Land of Israel as a means of returning the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland and ending centuries of exile and persecution. This led to waves of Jewish migration to Ottoman-controlled Palestine. Theodor Herzl, who is considered the father of political Zionism, offered his vision of a future Jewish state in his 1896 book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State); a year later, he presided over the First Zionist Congress. The antisemitism that inflicted Jewish communities in Europe also triggered a mass exodus of 2.8 million Jews to the United States between 1881 and 1924. Despite this, some Jews of Europe and the United States were able to make great achievements in various fields of science and culture. Among the most influential from this period are Albert Einstein in physics, Sigmund Freud in psychology, Franz Kafka in literature, and Irving Berlin in music. Many Nobel Prize winners at this time were Jewish, as is still the case. When Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933, the situation for Jews deteriorated rapidly as a direct result of Nazi policies. Many Jews fled from Europe to Mandatory Palestine, the United States, and the Soviet Union as a result of racial anti-Semitic laws, economic difficulties, and the fear of an impending war. World War II started in 1939, and by 1941, Hitler occupied almost all of Europe. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Final Solution—an extensive, organized effort with an unprecedented scope intended to annihilate the Jewish people—began, and resulted in the persecution and murder of Jews in Europe and North Africa. In Poland, three million were murdered in gas chambers in all concentration camps combined, with one million at the Auschwitz camp complex alone. The Holocaust is the name given to this genocide, in which six million Jews in total were systematically murdered. Before and during the Holocaust, enormous numbers of Jews immigrated to Mandatory Palestine. In 1944, the Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine began with the aim of gaining full independence from the United Kingdom. On 14 May 1948, upon the termination of the mandate, David Ben-Gurion declared the creation of the State of Israel, a Jewish and democratic state. Immediately afterwards, all neighboring Arab states invaded, and were resisted by the newly formed Israel Defense Forces. In 1949, the war ended and Israel started building its state and absorbing waves of Aliyah, granting citizenship to Jews all over the world via the Law of Return passed in 1950. However, both the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and wider Arab–Israeli conflict continue to this day. Culture The Jewish people and the religion of Judaism are strongly interrelated. Converts to Judaism have a status within the Jewish people equal to those born into it. However, converts who go on to practice no Judaism are likely to be viewed with skepticism. Mainstream Judaism does not proselytize, and conversion is considered a difficult task. A significant portion of conversions are undertaken by children of mixed marriages, or would-be or current spouses of Jews. The Hebrew Bible, a religious interpretation of the traditions and early history of the Jews, established the first of the Abrahamic religions, which are now practiced by 54 percent of the world. Judaism guides its adherents in both practice and belief, and has been called not only a religion, but also a "way of life," which has made drawing a clear distinction between Judaism, Jewish culture, and Jewish identity rather difficult. Throughout history, in eras and places as diverse as the ancient Hellenic world, in Europe before and after The Age of Enlightenment (see Haskalah), in Islamic Spain and Portugal, in North Africa and the Middle East, India, China, or the contemporary United States and Israel, cultural phenomena have developed that are in some sense characteristically Jewish without being at all specifically religious. Some factors in this come from within Judaism, others from the interaction of Jews or specific communities of Jews with their surroundings, and still others from the inner social and cultural dynamics of the community, as opposed to from the religion itself. This phenomenon has led to considerably different Jewish cultures unique to their own communities. Hebrew is the liturgical language of Judaism (termed lashon ha-kodesh, "the holy tongue"), the language in which most of the Hebrew scriptures (Tanakh) were composed, and the daily speech of the Jewish people for centuries. By the 5th century BCE, Aramaic, a closely related tongue, joined Hebrew as the spoken language in Judea. By the 3rd century BCE, some Jews of the diaspora were speaking Greek. Others, such as in the Jewish communities of Asoristan, known to Jews as Babylonia, were speaking Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages of the Babylonian Talmud. Dialects of these same languages were also used by the Jews of Syria Palaestina at that time.[citation needed] For centuries, Jews worldwide have spoken the local or dominant languages of the regions they migrated to, often developing distinctive dialectal forms or branches that became independent languages. Yiddish is the Judaeo-German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Central Europe. Ladino is the Judaeo-Spanish language developed by Sephardic Jews who migrated to the Iberian Peninsula. Due to many factors, including the impact of the Holocaust on European Jewry, the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, and widespread emigration from other Jewish communities around the world, ancient and distinct Jewish languages of several communities, including Judaeo-Georgian, Judaeo-Arabic, Judaeo-Berber, Krymchak, Judaeo-Malayalam and many others, have largely fallen out of use. For over sixteen centuries Hebrew was used almost exclusively as a liturgical language, and as the language in which most books had been written on Judaism, with a few speaking only Hebrew on the Sabbath. Hebrew was revived as a spoken language by Eliezer ben Yehuda, who arrived in Palestine in 1881. It had not been used as a mother tongue since Tannaic times. Modern Hebrew is designated as the "State language" of Israel. Despite efforts to revive Hebrew as the national language of the Jewish people, knowledge of the language is not commonly possessed by Jews worldwide and English has emerged as the lingua franca of the Jewish diaspora. Although many Jews once had sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to study the classic literature, and Jewish languages like Yiddish and Ladino were commonly used as recently as the early 20th century, most Jews lack such knowledge today and English has by and large superseded most Jewish vernaculars. The three most commonly spoken languages among Jews today are Hebrew, English, and Russian. Some Romance languages, particularly French and Spanish, are also widely used. Yiddish has been spoken by more Jews in history than any other language, but it is far less used today following the Holocaust and the adoption of Modern Hebrew by the Zionist movement and the State of Israel. In some places, the mother language of the Jewish community differs from that of the general population or the dominant group. For example, in Quebec, the Ashkenazic majority has adopted English, while the Sephardic minority uses French as its primary language. Similarly, South African Jews adopted English rather than Afrikaans. Due to both Czarist and Soviet policies, Russian has superseded Yiddish as the language of Russian Jews, but these policies have also affected neighboring communities. Today, Russian is the first language for many Jewish communities in a number of Post-Soviet states, such as Ukraine and Uzbekistan,[better source needed] as well as for Ashkenazic Jews in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Tajikistan. Although communities in North Africa today are small and dwindling, Jews there had shifted from a multilingual group to a monolingual one (or nearly so), speaking French in Algeria, Morocco, and the city of Tunis, while most North Africans continue to use Arabic or Berber as their mother tongue.[citation needed] There is no single governing body for the Jewish community, nor a single authority with responsibility for religious doctrine. Instead, a variety of secular and religious institutions at the local, national, and international levels lead various parts of the Jewish community on a variety of issues. Today, many countries have a Chief Rabbi who serves as a representative of that country's Jewry. Although many Hasidic Jews follow a certain hereditary Hasidic dynasty, there is no one commonly accepted leader of all Hasidic Jews. Many Jews believe that the Messiah will act a unifying leader for Jews and the entire world. A number of modern scholars of nationalism support the existence of Jewish national identity in antiquity. One of them is David Goodblatt, who generally believes in the existence of nationalism before the modern period. In his view, the Bible, the parabiblical literature and the Jewish national history provide the base for a Jewish collective identity. Although many of the ancient Jews were illiterate (as were their neighbors), their national narrative was reinforced through public readings. The Hebrew language also constructed and preserved national identity. Although it was not widely spoken after the 5th century BCE, Goodblatt states: the mere presence of the language in spoken or written form could invoke the concept of a Jewish national identity. Even if one knew no Hebrew or was illiterate, one could recognize that a group of signs was in Hebrew script. ... It was the language of the Israelite ancestors, the national literature, and the national religion. As such it was inseparable from the national identity. Indeed its mere presence in visual or aural medium could invoke that identity. Anthony D. Smith, an historical sociologist considered one of the founders of the field of nationalism studies, wrote that the Jews of the late Second Temple period provide "a closer approximation to the ideal type of the nation [...] than perhaps anywhere else in the ancient world." He adds that this observation "must make us wary of pronouncing too readily against the possibility of the nation, and even a form of religious nationalism, before the onset of modernity." Agreeing with Smith, Goodblatt suggests omitting the qualifier "religious" from Smith's definition of ancient Jewish nationalism, noting that, according to Smith, a religious component in national memories and culture is common even in the modern era. This view is echoed by political scientist Tom Garvin, who writes that "something strangely like modern nationalism is documented for many peoples in medieval times and in classical times as well," citing the ancient Jews as one of several "obvious examples", alongside the classical Greeks and the Gaulish and British Celts. Fergus Millar suggests that the sources of Jewish national identity and their early nationalist movements in the first and second centuries CE included several key elements: the Bible as both a national history and legal source, the Hebrew language as a national language, a system of law, and social institutions such as schools, synagogues, and Sabbath worship. Adrian Hastings argued that Jews are the "true proto-nation", that through the model of ancient Israel found in the Hebrew Bible, provided the world with the original concept of nationhood which later influenced Christian nations. However, following Jerusalem's destruction in the first century CE, Jews ceased to be a political entity and did not resemble a traditional nation-state for almost two millennia. Despite this, they maintained their national identity through collective memory, religion and sacred texts, even without land or political power, and remained a nation rather than just an ethnic group, eventually leading to the rise of Zionism and the establishment of Israel. Steven Weitzman suggests that Jewish nationalist sentiment in antiquity was encouraged because under foreign rule (Persians, Greeks, Romans) Jews were able to claim that they were an ancient nation. This claim was based on the preservation and reverence of their scriptures, the Hebrew language, the Temple and priesthood, and other traditions of their ancestors. Doron Mendels further observes that the Hasmonean kingdom, one of the few examples of indigenous statehood at its time, significantly reinforced Jewish national consciousness. The memory of this period of independence contributed to the persistent efforts to revive Jewish sovereignty in Judea, leading to the major revolts against Roman rule in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. Demographics Within the world's Jewish population there are distinct ethnic divisions, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, and subsequent independent evolutions. An array of Jewish communities was established by Jewish settlers in various places around the Old World, often at great distances from one another, resulting in effective and often long-term isolation. During the millennia of the Jewish diaspora the communities would develop under the influence of their local environments: political, cultural, natural, and populational. Today, manifestations of these differences among the Jews can be observed in Jewish cultural expressions of each community, including Jewish linguistic diversity, culinary preferences, liturgical practices, religious interpretations, as well as degrees and sources of genetic admixture. Jews are often identified as belonging to one of two major groups: the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim. Ashkenazim are so named in reference to their geographical origins (their ancestors' culture coalesced in the Rhineland, an area historically referred to by Jews as Ashkenaz). Similarly, Sephardim (Sefarad meaning "Spain" in Hebrew) are named in reference their origins in Iberia. The diverse groups of Jews of the Middle East and North Africa are often collectively referred to as Sephardim together with Sephardim proper for liturgical reasons having to do with their prayer rites. A common term for many of these non-Spanish Jews who are sometimes still broadly grouped as Sephardim is Mizrahim (lit. 'easterners' in Hebrew). Nevertheless, Mizrahis and Sepharadim are usually ethnically distinct. Smaller groups include, but are not restricted to, Indian Jews such as the Bene Israel, Bnei Menashe, Cochin Jews, and Bene Ephraim; the Romaniotes of Greece; the Italian Jews ("Italkim" or "Bené Roma"); the Teimanim from Yemen; various African Jews, including most numerously the Beta Israel of Ethiopia; and Chinese Jews, most notably the Kaifeng Jews, as well as various other distinct but now almost extinct communities. The divisions between all these groups are approximate and their boundaries are not always clear. The Mizrahim for example, are a heterogeneous collection of North African, Central Asian, Caucasian, and Middle Eastern Jewish communities that are no closer related to each other than they are to any of the earlier mentioned Jewish groups. In modern usage, however, the Mizrahim are sometimes termed Sephardi due to similar styles of liturgy, despite independent development from Sephardim proper. Thus, among Mizrahim there are Egyptian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Lebanese Jews, Kurdish Jews, Moroccan Jews, Libyan Jews, Syrian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, Iranian Jews, Afghan Jews, and various others. The Teimanim from Yemen are sometimes included, although their style of liturgy is unique and they differ in respect to the admixture found among them to that found in Mizrahim. In addition, there is a differentiation made between Sephardi migrants who established themselves in the Middle East and North Africa after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s and the pre-existing Jewish communities in those regions. Ashkenazi Jews represent the bulk of modern Jewry, with at least 70 percent of Jews worldwide (and up to 90 percent prior to World War II and the Holocaust). As a result of their emigration from Europe, Ashkenazim also represent the overwhelming majority of Jews in the New World continents, in countries such as the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and Brazil. In France, the immigration of Jews from Algeria (Sephardim) has led them to outnumber the Ashkenazim. Only in Israel is the Jewish population representative of all groups, a melting pot independent of each group's proportion within the overall world Jewish population. Y DNA studies tend to imply a small number of founders in an old population whose members parted and followed different migration paths. In most Jewish populations, these male line ancestors appear to have been mainly Middle Eastern. For example, Ashkenazi Jews share more common paternal lineages with other Jewish and Middle Eastern groups than with non-Jewish populations in areas where Jews lived in Eastern Europe, Germany, and the French Rhine Valley. This is consistent with Jewish traditions in placing most Jewish paternal origins in the region of the Middle East. Conversely, the maternal lineages of Jewish populations, studied by looking at mitochondrial DNA, are generally more heterogeneous. Scholars such as Harry Ostrer and Raphael Falk believe this indicates that many Jewish males found new mates from European and other communities in the places where they migrated in the diaspora after fleeing ancient Israel. In contrast, Behar has found evidence that about 40 percent of Ashkenazi Jews originate maternally from just four female founders, who were of Middle Eastern origin. The populations of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish communities "showed no evidence for a narrow founder effect." Subsequent studies carried out by Feder et al. confirmed the large portion of non-local maternal origin among Ashkenazi Jews. Reflecting on their findings related to the maternal origin of Ashkenazi Jews, the authors conclude "Clearly, the differences between Jews and non-Jews are far larger than those observed among the Jewish communities. Hence, differences between the Jewish communities can be overlooked when non-Jews are included in the comparisons." However, a 2025 genetic study on the Ashkenazi Jewish founder population supports the presence of a substantial Near Eastern component in the maternal lineages. Analyses of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) indicate that the core founder lineages, estimated at around 54, likely originated from the Near East, with these founder signatures appearing in multiple copies across the population. While later admixture introduced additional mtDNA lineages, these absorbed lineages are distinguishable from the original founders. The findings are consistent with genome-wide Identity-by-Descent and Lineage Extinction analyses, reinforcing the Near Eastern origin of the Ashkenazi maternal founders. A study showed that 7% of Ashkenazi Jews have the haplogroup G2c, which is mainly found in Pashtuns and on lower scales all major Jewish groups, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Studies of autosomal DNA, which look at the entire DNA mixture, have become increasingly important as the technology develops. They show that Jewish populations have tended to form relatively closely related groups in independent communities, with most in a community sharing significant ancestry in common. For Jewish populations of the diaspora, the genetic composition of Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi Jewish populations show a predominant amount of shared Middle Eastern ancestry. According to Behar, the most parsimonious explanation for this shared Middle Eastern ancestry is that it is "consistent with the historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant" and "the dispersion of the people of ancient Israel throughout the Old World". North African, Italian and others of Iberian origin show variable frequencies of admixture with non-Jewish historical host populations among the maternal lines. In the case of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews (in particular Moroccan Jews), who are closely related, the source of non-Jewish admixture is mainly Southern European, while Mizrahi Jews show evidence of admixture with other Middle Eastern populations. Behar et al. have remarked on a close relationship between Ashkenazi Jews and modern Italians. A 2001 study found that Jews were more closely related to groups of the Fertile Crescent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to their Arab neighbors, whose genetic signature was found in geographic patterns reflective of Islamic conquests. The studies also show that Sephardic Bnei Anusim (descendants of the "anusim" who were forced to convert to Catholicism), which comprise up to 19.8 percent of the population of today's Iberia (Spain and Portugal) and at least 10 percent of the population of Ibero-America (Hispanic America and Brazil), have Sephardic Jewish ancestry within the last few centuries. The Bene Israel and Cochin Jews of India, Beta Israel of Ethiopia, and a portion of the Lemba people of Southern Africa, despite more closely resembling the local populations of their native countries, have also been thought to have some more remote ancient Jewish ancestry. Views on the Lemba have changed and genetic Y-DNA analyses in the 2000s have established a partially Middle-Eastern origin for a portion of the male Lemba population but have been unable to narrow this down further. Although historically, Jews have been found all over the world, in the decades since World War II and the establishment of Israel, they have increasingly concentrated in a small number of countries. In 2021, Israel and the United States together accounted for over 85 percent of the global Jewish population, with approximately 45.3% and 39.6% of the world's Jews, respectively. More than half (51.2%) of world Jewry resides in just ten metropolitan areas. As of 2021, these ten areas were Tel Aviv, New York, Jerusalem, Haifa, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Paris, Washington, and Chicago. The Tel Aviv metro area has the highest percent of Jews among the total population (94.8%), followed by Jerusalem (72.3%), Haifa (73.1%), and Beersheba (60.4%), the balance mostly being Israeli Arabs. Outside Israel, the highest percent of Jews in a metropolitan area was in New York (10.8%), followed by Miami (8.7%), Philadelphia (6.8%), San Francisco (5.1%), Washington (4.7%), Los Angeles (4.7%), Toronto (4.5%), and Baltimore (4.1%). As of 2010, there were nearly 14 million Jews around the world, roughly 0.2% of the world's population at the time. According to the 2007 estimates of The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, the world's Jewish population is 13.2 million. This statistic incorporates both practicing Jews affiliated with synagogues and the Jewish community, and approximately 4.5 million unaffiliated and secular Jews.[citation needed] According to Sergio Della Pergola, a demographer of the Jewish population, in 2021 there were about 6.8 million Jews in Israel, 6 million in the United States, and 2.3 million in the rest of the world. Israel, the Jewish nation-state, is the only country in which Jews make up a majority of the citizens. Israel was established as an independent democratic and Jewish state on 14 May 1948. Of the 120 members in its parliament, the Knesset, as of 2016[update], 14 members of the Knesset are Arab citizens of Israel (not including the Druze), most representing Arab political parties. One of Israel's Supreme Court judges is also an Arab citizen of Israel. Between 1948 and 1958, the Jewish population rose from 800,000 to two million. Currently, Jews account for 75.4 percent of the Israeli population, or 6 million people. The early years of the State of Israel were marked by the mass immigration of Holocaust survivors in the aftermath of the Holocaust and Jews fleeing Arab lands. Israel also has a large population of Ethiopian Jews, many of whom were airlifted to Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Between 1974 and 1979 nearly 227,258 immigrants arrived in Israel, about half being from the Soviet Union. This period also saw an increase in immigration to Israel from Western Europe, Latin America, and North America. A trickle of immigrants from other communities has also arrived, including Indian Jews and others, as well as some descendants of Ashkenazi Holocaust survivors who had settled in countries such as the United States, Argentina, Australia, Chile, and South Africa. Some Jews have emigrated from Israel elsewhere, because of economic problems or disillusionment with political conditions and the continuing Arab–Israeli conflict. Jewish Israeli emigrants are known as yordim. The waves of immigration to the United States and elsewhere at the turn of the 19th century, the founding of Zionism and later events, including pogroms in Imperial Russia (mostly within the Pale of Settlement in present-day Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and eastern Poland), the massacre of European Jewry during the Holocaust, and the founding of the state of Israel, with the subsequent Jewish exodus from Arab lands, all resulted in substantial shifts in the population centers of world Jewry by the end of the 20th century. More than half of the Jews live in the Diaspora (see Population table). Currently, the largest Jewish community outside Israel, and either the largest or second-largest Jewish community in the world, is located in the United States, with 6 million to 7.5 million Jews by various estimates. Elsewhere in the Americas, there are also large Jewish populations in Canada (315,000), Argentina (180,000–300,000), and Brazil (196,000–600,000), and smaller populations in Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Chile, Colombia and several other countries (see History of the Jews in Latin America). According to a 2010 Pew Research Center study, about 470,000 people of Jewish heritage live in Latin America and the Caribbean. Demographers disagree on whether the United States has a larger Jewish population than Israel, with many maintaining that Israel surpassed the United States in Jewish population during the 2000s, while others maintain that the United States still has the largest Jewish population in the world. Currently, a major national Jewish population survey is planned to ascertain whether or not Israel has overtaken the United States in Jewish population. Western Europe's largest Jewish community, and the third-largest Jewish community in the world, can be found in France, home to between 483,000 and 500,000 Jews, the majority of whom are immigrants or refugees from North African countries such as Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia (or their descendants). The United Kingdom has a Jewish community of 292,000. In Eastern Europe, the exact figures are difficult to establish. The number of Jews in Russia varies widely according to whether a source uses census data (which requires a person to choose a single nationality among choices that include "Russian" and "Jewish") or eligibility for immigration to Israel (which requires that a person have one or more Jewish grandparents). According to the latter criteria, the heads of the Russian Jewish community assert that up to 1.5 million Russians are eligible for aliyah. In Germany, the 102,000 Jews registered with the Jewish community are a slowly declining population, despite the immigration of tens of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thousands of Israelis also live in Germany, either permanently or temporarily, for economic reasons. Prior to 1948, approximately 800,000 Jews were living in lands which now make up the Arab world (excluding Israel). Of these, just under two-thirds lived in the French-controlled Maghreb region, 15 to 20 percent in the Kingdom of Iraq, approximately 10 percent in the Kingdom of Egypt and approximately 7 percent in the Kingdom of Yemen. A further 200,000 lived in Pahlavi Iran and the Republic of Turkey. Today, around 26,000 Jews live in Muslim-majority countries, mainly in Turkey (14,200) and Iran (9,100), while Morocco (2,000), Tunisia (1,000), and the United Arab Emirates (500) host the largest communities in the Arab world. A small-scale exodus had begun in many countries in the early decades of the 20th century, although the only substantial aliyah came from Yemen and Syria. The exodus from Arab and Muslim countries took place primarily from 1948. The first large-scale exoduses took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily in Iraq, Yemen and Libya, with up to 90 percent of these communities leaving within a few years. The peak of the exodus from Egypt occurred in 1956. The exodus in the Maghreb countries peaked in the 1960s. Lebanon was the only Arab country to see a temporary increase in its Jewish population during this period, due to an influx of refugees from other Arab countries, although by the mid-1970s the Jewish community of Lebanon had also dwindled. In the aftermath of the exodus wave from Arab states, an additional migration of Iranian Jews peaked in the 1980s when around 80 percent of Iranian Jews left the country.[citation needed] Outside Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and the rest of Asia, there are significant Jewish populations in Australia (112,500) and South Africa (70,000). There is also a 6,800-strong community in New Zealand. Since at least the time of the Ancient Greeks, a proportion of Jews have assimilated into the wider non-Jewish society around them, by either choice or force, ceasing to practice Judaism and losing their Jewish identity. Assimilation took place in all areas, and during all time periods, with some Jewish communities, for example the Kaifeng Jews of China, disappearing entirely. The advent of the Jewish Enlightenment of the 18th century (see Haskalah) and the subsequent emancipation of the Jewish populations of Europe and America in the 19th century, accelerated the situation, encouraging Jews to increasingly participate in, and become part of, secular society. The result has been a growing trend of assimilation, as Jews marry non-Jewish spouses and stop participating in the Jewish community. Rates of interreligious marriage vary widely: In the United States, it is just under 50 percent; in the United Kingdom, around 53 percent; in France, around 30 percent; and in Australia and Mexico, as low as 10 percent. In the United States, only about a third of children from intermarriages affiliate with Jewish religious practice. The result is that most countries in the Diaspora have steady or slightly declining religiously Jewish populations as Jews continue to assimilate into the countries in which they live.[citation needed] The Jewish people and Judaism have experienced various persecutions throughout their history. During Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, the Roman Empire (in its later phases known as the Byzantine Empire) repeatedly repressed the Jewish population, first by ejecting them from their homelands during the pagan Roman era and later by officially establishing them as second-class citizens during the Christian Roman era. According to James Carroll, "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million." Later in medieval Western Europe, further persecutions of Jews by Christians occurred, notably during the Crusades—when Jews all over Germany were massacred—and in a series of expulsions from the Kingdom of England, Germany, and France. Then there occurred the largest expulsion of all, when Spain and Portugal, after the Reconquista (the Catholic Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula), expelled both unbaptized Sephardic Jews and the ruling Muslim Moors. In the Papal States, which existed until 1870, Jews were required to live only in specified neighborhoods called ghettos. Islam and Judaism have a complex relationship. Traditionally Jews and Christians living in Muslim lands, known as dhimmis, were allowed to practice their religions and administer their internal affairs, but they were subject to certain conditions. They had to pay the jizya (a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-Muslim males) to the Islamic state. Dhimmis had an inferior status under Islamic rule. They had several social and legal disabilities such as prohibitions against bearing arms or giving testimony in courts in cases involving Muslims. Many of the disabilities were highly symbolic. The one described by Bernard Lewis as "most degrading" was the requirement of distinctive clothing, not found in the Quran or hadith but invented in early medieval Baghdad; its enforcement was highly erratic. On the other hand, Jews rarely faced martyrdom or exile, or forced compulsion to change their religion, and they were mostly free in their choice of residence and profession. Notable exceptions include the massacre of Jews and forcible conversion of some Jews by the rulers of the Almohad dynasty in Al-Andalus in the 12th century, as well as in Islamic Persia, and the forced confinement of Moroccan Jews to walled quarters known as mellahs beginning from the 15th century and especially in the early 19th century. In modern times, it has become commonplace for standard antisemitic themes to be conflated with anti-Zionist publications and pronouncements of Islamic movements such as Hezbollah and Hamas, in the pronouncements of various agencies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and even in the newspapers and other publications of Turkish Refah Partisi."[better source needed] Throughout history, many rulers, empires and nations have oppressed their Jewish populations or sought to eliminate them entirely. Methods employed ranged from expulsion to outright genocide; within nations, often the threat of these extreme methods was sufficient to silence dissent. The history of antisemitism includes the First Crusade which resulted in the massacre of Jews; the Spanish Inquisition (led by Tomás de Torquemada) and the Portuguese Inquisition, with their persecution and autos-da-fé against the New Christians and Marrano Jews; the Bohdan Chmielnicki Cossack massacres in Ukraine; the Pogroms backed by the Russian Tsars; as well as expulsions from Spain, Portugal, England, France, Germany, and other countries in which the Jews had settled. According to a 2008 study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, 19.8 percent of the modern Iberian population has Sephardic Jewish ancestry, indicating that the number of conversos may have been much higher than originally thought. The persecution reached a peak in Nazi Germany's Final Solution, which led to the Holocaust and the slaughter of approximately 6 million Jews. Of the world's 16 million Jews in 1939, almost 40% were murdered in the Holocaust. The Holocaust—the state-led systematic persecution and genocide of European Jews (and certain communities of North African Jews in European controlled North Africa) and other minority groups of Europe during World War II by Germany and its collaborators—remains the most notable modern-day persecution of Jews. The persecution and genocide were accomplished in stages. Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labour until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in Eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings. Jews and Roma were crammed into ghettos before being transported hundreds of kilometres by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were murdered in gas chambers. Virtually every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal nation." Throughout Jewish history, Jews have repeatedly been directly or indirectly expelled from both their original homeland, the Land of Israel, and many of the areas in which they have settled. This experience as refugees has shaped Jewish identity and religious practice in many ways, and is thus a major element of Jewish history. In summary, the pogroms in Eastern Europe, the rise of modern antisemitism, the Holocaust, as well as the rise of Arab nationalism, all served to fuel the movements and migrations of huge segments of Jewry from land to land and continent to continent until they arrived back in large numbers at their original historical homeland in Israel. In the Bible, the patriarch Abraham is described as a migrant to the land of Canaan from Ur of the Chaldees. His descendants, the Children of Israel, undertook the Exodus (meaning "departure" or "exit" in Greek) from ancient Egypt, as described in the Book of Exodus. The first movement documented in the historical record occurred with the resettlement policy of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which mandated the deportation of conquered peoples, and it is estimated some 4,500,000 among its captive populations suffered this dislocation over three centuries of Assyrian rule. With regard to Israel, Tiglath-Pileser III claims he deported 80% of the population of Lower Galilee, some 13,520 people. Some 27,000 Israelites, 20 to 25% of the population of the Kingdom of Israel, were described as being deported by Sargon II, and were replaced by other deported populations and sent into permanent exile by Assyria, initially to the Upper Mesopotamian provinces of the Assyrian Empire. Between 10,000 and 80,000 people from the Kingdom of Judah were similarly exiled by Babylonia, but these people were then returned to Judea by Cyrus the Great of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Many Jews were exiled again by the Roman Empire. The 2,000 year dispersion of the Jewish diaspora beginning under the Roman Empire, as Jews were spread throughout the Roman world and, driven from land to land, settled wherever they could live freely enough to practice their religion. Over the course of the diaspora the center of Jewish life moved from Babylonia to the Iberian Peninsula to Poland to the United States and, as a result of Zionism, back to Israel. There were also many expulsions of Jews during the Middle Ages and Enlightenment in Europe, including: 1290, 16,000 Jews were expelled from England, (see the Statute of Jewry); in 1396, 100,000 from France; in 1421, thousands were expelled from Austria. Many of these Jews settled in East-Central Europe, especially Poland. Following the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, the Spanish population of around 200,000 Sephardic Jews were expelled by the Spanish crown and Catholic church, followed by expulsions in 1493 in Sicily (37,000 Jews) and Portugal in 1496. The expelled Jews fled mainly to the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, and North Africa, others migrating to Southern Europe and the Middle East. During the 19th century, France's policies of equal citizenship regardless of religion led to the immigration of Jews (especially from Eastern and Central Europe). This contributed to the arrival of millions of Jews in the New World. Over two million Eastern European Jews arrived in the United States from 1880 to 1925. In the latest phase of migrations, the Islamic Revolution of Iran caused many Iranian Jews to flee Iran. Most found refuge in the US (particularly Los Angeles, California, and Long Island, New York) and Israel. Smaller communities of Persian Jews exist in Canada and Western Europe. Similarly, when the Soviet Union collapsed, many of the Jews in the affected territory (who had been refuseniks) were suddenly allowed to leave. This produced a wave of migration to Israel in the early 1990s. Israel is the only country with a Jewish population that is consistently growing through natural population growth, although the Jewish populations of other countries, in Europe and North America, have recently increased through immigration. In the Diaspora, in almost every country the Jewish population in general is either declining or steady, but Orthodox and Haredi Jewish communities, whose members often shun birth control for religious reasons, have experienced rapid population growth. Orthodox and Conservative Judaism discourage proselytism to non-Jews, but many Jewish groups have tried to reach out to the assimilated Jewish communities of the Diaspora in order for them to reconnect to their Jewish roots. Additionally, while in principle Reform Judaism favours seeking new members for the faith, this position has not translated into active proselytism, instead taking the form of an effort to reach out to non-Jewish spouses of intermarried couples. There is also a trend of Orthodox movements reaching out to secular Jews in order to give them a stronger Jewish identity so there is less chance of intermarriage. As a result of the efforts by these and other Jewish groups over the past 25 years, there has been a trend (known as the Baal teshuva movement) for secular Jews to become more religiously observant, though the demographic implications of the trend are unknown. Additionally, there is also a growing rate of conversion to Jews by Choice of gentiles who make the decision to head in the direction of becoming Jews. Contributions Jewish individuals have played a significant role in the development and growth of Western culture, advancing many fields of thought, science and technology, both historically and in modern times, including through discrete trends in Jewish philosophy, Jewish ethics and Jewish literature, as well as specific trends in Jewish culture, including in Jewish art, Jewish music, Jewish humor, Jewish theatre, Jewish cuisine and Jewish medicine. Jews have established various Jewish political movements, religious movements, and, through the authorship of the Hebrew Bible and parts of the New Testament, provided the foundation for Christianity and Islam. More than 20 percent of the awarded Nobel Prize have gone to individuals of Jewish descent. Philanthropic giving is a widespread core function among Jewish organizations. Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit] | [TOKENS: 8493] |
Contents Rabbit Rabbits, or bunnies, are small mammals in the family Leporidae (which also includes the hares), which is in the order Lagomorpha (which also includes pikas). They are familiar throughout the world as a small herbivore, a prey animal, a domesticated form of livestock, and a pet, having a widespread effect on ecologies and cultures. The most widespread rabbit genera are Oryctolagus and Sylvilagus. The former, Oryctolagus, includes the European rabbit, Oryctolagus cuniculus, which is the ancestor of the hundreds of breeds of domestic rabbit and has been introduced on every continent except Antarctica. The latter, Sylvilagus, includes over 13 wild rabbit species, among them the cottontails and tapetis. Wild rabbits not included in Oryctolagus and Sylvilagus include several species of limited distribution, including the pygmy rabbit, volcano rabbit, and Sumatran striped rabbit. Rabbits are a paraphyletic grouping, and do not constitute a clade, as hares (belonging to the genus Lepus) are nested within the Leporidae clade and are not described as rabbits. Although once considered rodents, lagomorphs diverged earlier and have a number of traits rodents lack, including two extra incisors. Similarities between rabbits and rodents were once attributed to convergent evolution, but studies in molecular biology have found a common ancestor between lagomorphs and rodents and place them in the clade Glires. Rabbit physiology is suited to escaping predators and surviving in various habitats, living either alone or in groups in nests or burrows. As prey animals, rabbits are constantly aware of their surroundings, having a wide field of vision and ears with high surface area to detect potential predators. The ears of a rabbit are essential for thermoregulation and contain a high density of blood vessels. The bone structure of a rabbit's hind legs, which is longer than that of the fore legs, allows for quick hopping, which is beneficial for escaping predators and can provide powerful kicks if captured. Rabbits are typically nocturnal and often sleep with their eyes open. They reproduce quickly, having short pregnancies, large litters of four to twelve kits, and no particular mating season; however, the mortality rate of rabbit embryos is high, and there exist several widespread diseases that affect rabbits, such as rabbit hemorrhagic disease and myxomatosis. In some regions, especially Australia, rabbits have caused ecological problems and are regarded as a pest. Humans have used rabbits as livestock since at least the first century BC in ancient Rome, raising them for their meat, fur and wool. The various breeds of the European rabbit have been developed to suit each of these products; the practice of raising and breeding rabbits as livestock is known as cuniculture. Rabbits are seen in human culture globally, appearing as a symbol of fertility, cunning, and innocence in major religions, historical and contemporary art. Terminology and etymology The word rabbit derives from the Middle English rabet ("young of the coney"), a borrowing from the Walloon robète, which was a diminutive of the French or Middle Dutch robbe ("rabbit"), a term of unknown origin. The term coney is a term for an adult rabbit used until the 18th century; rabbit once referred only to the young animals. More recently, the term kit or kitten has been used to refer to a young rabbit. The endearing word bunny is attested by the 1680s as a diminutive of bun, a term used in Scotland to refer to rabbits and squirrels. Coney is derived from cuniculus, a Latin term referring to rabbits which has been in use from at least the first century BC in Hispania. The word cuniculus may originate from a diminutive form of the word for "dog" in the Celtic languages. A group of rabbits is known as a colony, nest, or warren, though the latter term more commonly refers to where the rabbits live. A group of baby rabbits produced from a single mating is referred to as a litter and a group of domestic rabbits living together is sometimes called a herd. A male rabbit is called a buck, as are male goats and deer, derived from the Old English bucca or bucc, meaning "he-goat" or "male deer", respectively. A female is called a doe, derived from the Old English dā, related to dēon ("to suck"). Taxonomy and evolution Rabbits and hares were formerly classified in the order Rodentia (rodents) until 1912, when they were moved into the order Lagomorpha (which also includes pikas). Since 1945, there has been support for the clade Glires that includes both rodents and lagomorphs, though the two groups have always been closely associated in taxonomy; fossil, DNA, and retrotransposon studies in the 2000s have solidified support for the clade. Studies in paleontology and molecular biology suggest that rodents and lagomorphs diverged at the start of the Tertiary. Nesolagus (striped rabbits) Poelagus (Bunyoro rabbit) Pronolagus (red rock hares) Romerolagus (volcano rabbit) Sylvilagus (cottontails) Brachylagus (pygmy rabbit) Caprolagus (hispid hare) Oryctolagus (European rabbit) Bunolagus (riverine rabbit) Pentalagus (Amami rabbit) Lepus (hares) The extant species of family Leporidae, of which there are more than 70, are contained within 11 genera, one of which is Lepus, the hares. There are 32 extant species within Lepus. The cladogram is from Matthee et al., 2004, based on nuclear and mitochondrial gene analysis. The term rabbit is typically used for all Leporidae species, excluding the genus Lepus. Members of that genus are known as hares or jackrabbits. Lepus species are precocial, born relatively mature and mobile with hair and good vision out in the open air, while rabbit species are altricial, born hairless and blind in burrows and buried nests. Hares are also generally larger than rabbits, and have longer pregnancies. Hares and some rabbits live relatively solitary lives above the ground in open grassy areas, interacting mainly during breeding season. Some rabbit species group together to reduce their chance of being preyed upon, and the European rabbit will form large social groups in burrows, which are grouped together to form warrens. Burrowing by hares varies by location, and is more prominent in younger members of the genus; many rabbit species that do not dig their own burrows will use the burrows of other animals. Rabbits and hares have historically not occupied the same locations, and only became sympatric relatively recently; historic accounts describe antagonistic relationships between rabbits and hares, specifically between the European hare and European or cottontail rabbits, but scientific literature since 1956 has found no evidence of aggression or undue competition between rabbits and hares. When they appear in the same habitat, rabbits and hares can co-exist on similar diets. Hares will notably force other hare species out of an area to control resources, but are not territorial. When faced with predators, hares will escape by outrunning them, whereas rabbits, being smaller and less able to reach the high speeds of longer-legged hares, will try to seek cover. Descendants of the European rabbit are commonly bred as livestock and kept as pets, whereas no hares have been domesticated, though populations have been introduced to non-native habitats for use as a food source. The breed known as the Belgian hare is actually a domestic rabbit which has been selectively bred to resemble a hare, most likely from Flemish Giant stock originally. Common names of hare and rabbit species may also be confused; "jackrabbits" refer to hares, and the hispid hare is a rabbit. Rabbits, specifically the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) species, have long been domesticated. The European rabbit has been widely kept as livestock, starting in ancient Rome from at least the first century BC. Selective breeding, which began in the Middle Ages, has generated a wide variety of rabbit breeds, of which many (since the early 19th century) are also kept as pets. Some strains of European rabbit have been bred specifically as research subjects, such as the New Zealand white. As livestock, European rabbits are bred for their meat and fur. The earliest breeds were important sources of meat, and so were bred to be larger than wild rabbits at younger ages, but domestic rabbits in modern times range in size from dwarf to giant. Rabbit fur, produced as a byproduct of meat production but occasionally selected for as in the case of the Rex rabbit, can be found in a broad range of coat colors and patterns, some of which are produced via dyeing. Some breeds are raised for their wool, such as the Angora rabbit breeds; their fur is sheared, combed or plucked, and the fibers are spun into yarn. Biology The earliest ancestor of rabbits and hares lived 55 million years ago in what is now Mongolia. Because the rabbit's epiglottis is engaged over the soft palate except when swallowing, the rabbit is an obligate nasal breather. As lagomorphs, rabbits have two sets of incisor teeth, one behind the other, a manner in which they differ from rodents, which only have one set of incisors. Another difference is that for rabbits, all of their teeth continue to grow, whereas for most rodents, only their incisors continue to grow. Carl Linnaeus originally grouped rabbits and rodents under the class Glires; later, they were separated as the scientific consensus is that many of their similarities were a result of convergent evolution. DNA analysis and the discovery of a common ancestor have supported the view that they share a common lineage, so rabbits and rodents are now often grouped together in the clade or superorder Glires. Since speed and agility are a rabbit's main defenses against predators, rabbits have large hind leg bones and well-developed musculature. Though plantigrade at rest, rabbits are on their toes while running, assuming a more digitigrade posture. Rabbits use their strong claws for digging and (along with their teeth) for defense. Each front foot has four toes plus a dewclaw. Each hind foot has four toes (but no dewclaw). Most wild rabbits (especially compared to hares) have relatively full, egg-shaped bodies. The soft coat of the wild rabbit is agouti in coloration (or, rarely, melanistic), which aids in camouflage. The tail of the rabbit (with the exception of the cottontail species) is dark on top and white below. Cottontails have white on the top of their tails. As a result of the position of the eyes in its skull and the size of the cornea, the rabbit has a panoramic field of vision that encompasses nearly 360 degrees. However, there is a blind spot at the bridge of the nose, and because of this, rabbits cannot see what is below their mouth and rely on their lips and whiskers to determine what they are eating. Blinking occurs 2 to 4 times an hour. The anatomy of rabbits' hind limbs is structurally similar to that of other land mammals and contributes to their specialized form of locomotion. The bones of the hind limbs consist of long bones (the femur, tibia, fibula, and phalanges) as well as short bones (the tarsals). These bones are created through endochondral ossification during fetal development. Like most land mammals, the round head of the femur articulates with the acetabulum of the os coxae, the hip bone. The femur articulates with the tibia, but not the fibula, which is fused to the tibia. The tibia and fibula articulate with the tarsals of the pes, commonly called the foot. The hind limbs of the rabbit are longer than the front limbs. This allows them to produce their hopping form of locomotion. Longer hind limbs are more capable of producing faster speeds. Hares, which have longer legs than cottontail rabbits, are able to move considerably faster. The hind feet have four long toes that allow for digitigrade movement, which are webbed to prevent them from spreading when hopping. Rabbits do not have paw pads on their feet like most other animals that use digitigrade locomotion. Instead, they have coarse, compressed hair that offers protection. Rabbits have muscled hind legs that allow for maximum force, maneuverability, and acceleration that is divided into three main parts: foot, thigh, and leg. The hind limbs of a rabbit are an exaggerated feature. They are much longer and can provide more force than the forelimbs, which are structured like brakes to take the brunt of the landing after a leap. The force put out by the hind limbs is contributed by both the structural anatomy of the fusion of the tibia and fibula, and by the muscular features. Bone formation and removal, from a cellular standpoint, is directly correlated to hind limb muscles. Action pressure from muscles creates force that is then distributed through the skeletal structures. Rabbits that generate less force, putting less stress on bones are more prone to osteoporosis due to bone rarefaction. In rabbits, the more fibers in a muscle, the more resistant to fatigue. For example, hares have a greater resistance to fatigue than cottontails. The muscles of rabbit's hind limbs can be classified into four main categories: hamstrings, quadriceps, dorsiflexors, or plantar flexors. The quadriceps muscles are in charge of force production when jumping. Complementing these muscles are the hamstrings, which aid in short bursts of action. These muscles play off of one another in the same way as the plantar flexors and dorsiflexors, contributing to the generation and actions associated with force. Within the order of lagomorphs, the ears are used to detect and avoid predators. In the family Leporidae, the ears are typically longer than they are wide, and are in general relatively long compared to other mammals. According to Allen's rule, endothermic animals adapted to colder climates have shorter, thicker limbs and appendages than those of similar animals adapted to warm climates. The rule was originally derived by comparing the ear lengths of Lepus species across the various climates of North America. Subsequent studies show that this rule remains true in the Leporidae for the ears specifically, in that the surface area of rabbits' and hares' ears are enlarged in warm climates; the ears are an important structure to aid thermoregulation as well as in detecting predators due to the way the outer, middle, and inner ear muscles coordinate with one another. The ear muscles also aid in maintaining balance and movement when fleeing predators. The auricle, also known as the pinna, is a rabbit's outer ear. The rabbit's pinnae represent a fair part of the body surface area. It is theorized that the ears aid in dispersion of heat at temperatures above 30 °C (86 °F), with rabbits in warmer climates having longer pinnae due to this. Another theory is that the ears function as shock absorbers that could aid and stabilize rabbits' vision when fleeing predators, but this has typically only been seen in hares. The rest of the outer ear has bent canals that lead to the eardrum or tympanic membrane. The middle ear, separated by the outer eardrum in the back of the rabbit's skull, contains three bones: the hammer, anvil, and stirrup, collectively called ossicles, which act to decrease sound before it hits the inner ear; in general, the ossicles act as a barrier to the inner ear for sound energy. Inner ear fluid, called endolymph, receives the sound energy. After receiving the energy. The inner ear comprises two parts: the cochlea that uses sound waves from the ossicles, and the vestibular apparatus that manages the rabbit's position in regard to movement. Within the cochlea a basilar membrane contains sensory hair structures that send nerve signals to the brain, allowing it to recognize different sound frequencies. Within the vestibular apparatus three semicircular canals help detect angular motion. The pinnae, which contain a vascular network and arteriovenous shunts, aid in thermoregulation. In a rabbit, the optimal body temperature is around 38.5–40.0 °C (101.3–104.0 °F). If their body temperature exceeds or does not meet this optimal temperature, the rabbit must make efforts to return to homeostasis. Homeostasis of body temperature is maintained by changing the amount of blood flow that passes through the highly vascularized ears, as rabbits have few to no sweat glands. Rabbits may also regulate their temperature by resting in depressions in the ground, known as forms. The rabbit's nasal cavity lies dorsal to the oral cavity, and the two compartments are separated by the hard and soft palate. The nasal cavity itself is separated into a left and right side by a cartilage barrier, and it is covered in fine hairs that trap dust before it can enter the respiratory tract. As the rabbit breathes, air flows in through the nostrils along the alar folds. From there, the air moves into the nasal cavity, also known as the nasopharynx, down through the trachea, through the larynx, and into the lungs. The larynx functions as the rabbit's voice box, which enables it to produce a wide variety of sounds. The trachea is a long tube embedded with cartilaginous rings that prevent the tube from collapsing as air moves in and out of the lungs. The trachea then splits into a left and right bronchus, which meet the lungs at a structure called the hilum. From there, the bronchi split into progressively more narrow and numerous branches. The bronchi branch into bronchioles, into respiratory bronchioles, and ultimately terminate at the alveolar ducts. The branching that is typically found in rabbit lungs is a clear example of monopodial branching, in which smaller branches divide out laterally from a larger central branch. The structure of the rabbit's nasal and oral cavities necessitates breathing through the nose. This is due to the fact that the epiglottis is fixed to the backmost portion of the soft palate. Within the oral cavity, a layer of tissue sits over the opening of the glottis, which blocks airflow from the oral cavity to the trachea. The epiglottis functions to prevent the rabbit from aspirating on its food. Further, the presence of a soft and hard palate allow the rabbit to breathe through its nose while it feeds. Rabbits' lungs are divided into four lobes: the cranial, middle, caudal, and accessory lobes. The right lung is made up of all four lobes, while the left lung only has two: the cranial and caudal lobes. To provide space for the heart, the left cranial lobe of the lungs is significantly smaller than that of the right. The diaphragm is a muscular structure that lies caudal to the lungs and contracts to facilitate respiration. Rabbits are strict herbivores and are suited to a diet high in fiber, mostly in the form of cellulose. They will typically graze grass upon waking up and emerging from a burrow, and will move on to consume vegetation and other plants throughout the waking period; rabbits have been known to eat a wide variety of plants, including tree leaves and fruits, though consumption of fruit and lower fiber foods is common for pet rabbits where natural vegetation is scarce. Easily digestible food is processed in the gastrointestinal tract and expelled as regular feces. To get nutrients out of hard to digest fiber, rabbits ferment fiber in the cecum (part of the gastrointestinal tract) and then expel the contents as cecotropes, which are reingested (cecotrophy or refection). The cecotropes are then absorbed in the small intestine to use the nutrients. Soft cecotropes are usually consumed during periods of rest in underground burrows. Rabbits cannot vomit; and therefore if buildup occurs within the intestines (due often to a diet with insufficient fibre), intestinal blockage can occur. The adult male reproductive system forms the same as most mammals with the seminiferous tubular compartment containing the Sertoli cells and an adluminal compartment that contains the Leydig cells. The Leydig cells produce testosterone, which maintains libido and creates secondary sex characteristics such as the genital tubercle and penis. The Sertoli cells triggers the production of Anti-Müllerian duct hormone, which absorbs the Müllerian duct. In an adult male rabbit, the sheath of the penis is cylinder-like and can be extruded as early as two months of age. The scrotal sacs lay lateral to the penis and contain epididymal fat pads which protect the testes. Between 10 and 14 weeks, the testes descend and are able to retract into the pelvic cavity to thermoregulate. Furthermore, the secondary sex characteristics, such as the testes, are complex and secrete many compounds. These compounds include fructose, citric acid, minerals, and a uniquely high amount of catalase, all of which affect the characteristics of rabbit semen; for instance, citric acid is positively correlated with agglutination, and high amounts of catalase protect against premature capacitation. The adult female reproductive tract is bipartite, which prevents an embryo from translocating between uteri. The female urethra and vagina open into a urogenital sinus with a single urogenital opening. The two uterine horns communicate to two cervixes and forms one vaginal canal. Along with being bipartite, the female rabbit does not go through an estrus cycle, which causes mating induced ovulation. The average female rabbit becomes sexually mature at three to eight months of age and can conceive at any time of the year for the duration of her life. Egg and sperm production can begin to decline after three years, with some species such as those in genus Oryctolagus completely stopping reproduction at 6 years of age. During mating, the male rabbit will insert his penis into the female from behind, make rapid pelvic thrusts until ejaculation, and throw himself backward off the female. Copulation lasts only 20–40 seconds. The rabbit gestation period is short and ranges from 27 to 30 days. A longer gestation period will generally yield a smaller litter while shorter gestation periods will give birth to a larger litter. The size of a single litter can range from 1 to 12 kits, depending on species. After birth, the only role of males is to protect the young from other rabbits, and the mother will leave the young in the nest most of the day, returning to nurse them once every 24 hours. The female can become pregnant again as early as the next day. After mating, the doe will begin to dig a burrow or prepare a nest before giving birth. Between three days and a few hours before giving birth another series of hormonal changes will cause her to prepare the nest structure. The doe will first gather grass for a structure, and an elevation in prolactin shortly before birth will cause her fur to shed that the doe will then use to line the nest, providing insulation for the newborn kits. The mortality rates of embryos are high in rabbits and can be due to infection, trauma, poor nutrition and environmental stress. A high fertility rate is necessary to counter this. More than half of rabbit pregnancies are aborted, causing embryos to be resorbed into the mother's body; vitamin deficiencies are a major cause of abortions in domestic rabbits. Rabbits may appear to be crepuscular, but many species are naturally inclined towards nocturnal activity. In 2011, the average sleep time of a rabbit in captivity was calculated at 8.4 hours per day; previous studies have estimated sleep periods as long as 11.4 hours on average, undergoing both slow-wave and rapid eye movement sleep. Newborn rabbits will sleep for 22 hours a day before leaving the nest. As with other prey animals, rabbits often sleep with their eyes open, so that sudden movements will awaken the rabbit to respond to potential danger. In addition to being at risk of disease from common pathogens such as Bordetella bronchiseptica and Escherichia coli, rabbits can contract the virulent, species-specific viruses myxomatosis, and a form of calicivirus which causes rabbit hemorrhagic disease. Myxomatosis is more hazardous to pet rabbits, as wild rabbits often have some immunity. Among the parasites that infect rabbits are tapeworms (such as Taenia serialis), external parasites (including fleas and mites), coccidia species, Encephalitozoon cuniculi, and Toxoplasma gondii. Domesticated rabbits with a diet lacking in high-fiber sources, such as hay and grass, are susceptible to potentially lethal gastrointestinal stasis. Rabbits and hares are almost never found to be infected with rabies and have not been known to transmit rabies to humans. Rabbit hemorrhagic disease (RHD) is a highly infectious rabbit-specific disease caused by strains of rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV), including type 2 (RHDV2). The disease was first described in domestic Angora rabbits imported from Germany to Jiangsu, China in 1984, and quickly spread to Korea, Italy, and the rest of Europe. The disease spread to the Americas from 1988, first appearing in rabbits imported to Mexico, but subsequent outbreaks were infrequent, as RHDV only affected the European rabbit species. RHDV2, a strain of RHD-causing virus that affects both domestic and wild lagomorphs, such as hares, was detected for the first time in France in 2010. RHDV2 has since spread to the rest of Europe, Canada, Australia, and the United States. Ecology Rabbits are prey animals. In Mediterranean Europe, for example, rabbits are the main prey of red foxes, badgers, and Iberian lynxes. To avoid predation and to navigate underground, rabbits have heightened senses (compared to humans) and are constantly aware of their surroundings. If confronted by a potential threat, a rabbit may freeze and observe, then warn others in the warren with powerful thumps on the ground from a hind foot. Rabbits have a remarkably wide field of vision, and a good deal of it is devoted to overhead scanning. A rabbit eye has no fovea, but a "visual streak", a horizontal line in the middle of the retina where both rod and cone cell densities are the highest. This allows them to scan the horizon with little head turning. Rabbits survive predation by burrowing (in some species), and hopping away to dense cover. Their strong teeth allow them to bite to escape a struggle. The longest-lived rabbit on record, a domesticated European rabbit living in Tasmania, died at age 18. The lifespan of wild rabbits is much shorter; the average longevity of an eastern cottontail, for instance, is about one to five years. The various species of rabbit have been recorded as living from four to 13 years in captivity. Rabbit habitats include forests, steppes, plateaus, deserts, and swamps. Some species, such as the volcano rabbit (Romerolagus diazi) have especially limited distribution due to their habitat needs. Rabbits live in groups, or colonies, varying in behavior depending on species and often using the burrows of other animals or creating nests in holes. The European rabbit notably lives in extensive burrow networks called warrens. Rabbits are native to North America, southwestern Europe, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, some islands of Japan, and parts of Africa and South America. They are not naturally found in most of Eurasia, where a number of species of hares are present. A 2003 study on domestic rabbits in China found that "(so-called) Chinese rabbits were introduced from Europe", and that "genetic diversity in Chinese rabbits was very low". Rabbits first entered South America relatively recently, as part of the Great American Interchange. Much of the continent was considered to have just one species of rabbit, the tapeti,[b] and most of South America's Southern Cone has had no rabbits until the introduction of the European rabbit, which has been introduced to many places around the world, in the late 19th century. Rabbits have been launched into space orbit. Both sexes of rabbits often rub their chins on objects with their scent gland located under the chin. This is the rabbit's way of marking their territory or possessions for other rabbits to recognize by depositing scent gland secretions. Rabbits who have bonded will respect each other's smell, which indicates a territorial border. Rabbits also have scent glands that produce a strong-smelling waxy substance near their anuses. Territorial marking by scent glands has been documented among both domestic and wild rabbit species. Rabbits, particularly the European rabbit, have been a source of environmental problems when introduced into the wild by humans. As a result of their appetites, and the rate at which they breed, feral rabbit depredation can be problematic for agriculture. Gassing (fumigation of warrens), barriers (fences), shooting, snaring, and ferreting have been used to control rabbit populations, but the most effective measures are diseases such as myxomatosis and calicivirus. In Europe, where domestic rabbits are farmed on a large scale, they can be protected against myxomatosis and calicivirus via vaccination. Rabbits in Australia and New Zealand are considered to be such a pest that landowners are legally obliged to control them. Rabbits are known to be able to catch fire and spread wildfires, particularly in Chile, where the European rabbit is an invasive species, but the efficiency and relevance of this mechanism has been doubted by forest experts who contend that a rabbit on fire could move some meters. Knowledge on fire-spreading rabbits is based on anecdotes as there is no known scientific investigation on the subject. As food and clothing Humans have hunted rabbits for food since at least the onset of the Last Glacial Maximum, and wild rabbits and hares are still hunted for their meat as game. Hunting is accomplished with the aid of trained falcons, ferrets, or dogs (a common hunting breed being beagles), as well as with snares, rifles and other guns. A caught rabbit may be dispatched with a sharp blow to the back of its head, a practice from which the term rabbit punch is derived. Wild leporids comprise a small portion of global rabbit-meat consumption. Domesticated descendants of the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) that are bred and kept as livestock (a practice called cuniculture) account for the estimated 2 million tons of rabbit meat produced annually. Approximately 1.2 billion rabbits are slaughtered each year for meat worldwide. In 1994, the countries with the highest consumption per capita of rabbit meat were Malta with 8.89 kg (19.6 lb), Italy with 5.71 kg (12.6 lb), and Cyprus with 4.37 kg (9.6 lb). The largest producers of rabbit meat were China, Russia, Italy (specifically Veneto), France, and Spain. Rabbit meat was once a common commodity in Sydney, with European rabbits having been introduced intentionally to Australia for hunting purposes, but declined after the myxomatosis virus was intentionally introduced to control the exploding population of feral rabbits in the area. In the United Kingdom, fresh rabbits are sold in butcher shops and markets, and some supermarkets sell frozen rabbit meat. It is sold in farmers markets there, including the Borough Market in London. Rabbit meat is a feature of Moroccan cuisine, where it is cooked in a tajine with "raisins and grilled almonds added a few minutes before serving". In China, rabbit meat is particularly popular in Sichuan cuisine, with its stewed rabbit, spicy diced rabbit, BBQ-style rabbit, and even spicy rabbit heads, which have been compared to spicy duck neck. In the United States, rabbits sold as food are typically the domestic New Zealand, Belgian, and Chinese rabbits, or Scottish hares. An infectious disease associated with rabbits-as-food is tularemia (also known as rabbit fever), which may be contracted from an infected rabbit. The disease can cause symptoms of fever, skin ulcers and enlarged lymph nodes, and can occasionally lead to pneumonia or throat infection. Secondary vectors of tularemia include tick and fly bites, which may be present in the fur of a caught rabbit. Inhaling the bacteria during the skinning process increases the risk of getting tularemia; preventative measures against this include the use of gloves and face masks. Prior to the development of antibiotics, such as doxycycline and gentamicin, the death rate associated with tularemia infections was 60%, which has since decreased to less than 4%. In addition to their meat, domestic rabbits are used for their wool and fur for clothing, as well as their nitrogen-rich manure and their high-protein milk. Production industries have developed domesticated rabbit breeds (such as the Angora rabbit) for the purpose of meeting these needs. In 1986, the number of rabbit skins produced annually in France was as high as 70 million, compared to 25 million mink pelts produced at the same time. However, rabbit fur is on the whole a byproduct of rabbit meat production, whereas minks are bred primarily for fur production. In culture Rabbits are often posited by scholars as symbols of fertility, sexuality and spring, though they have been variously interpreted throughout history. Up until the end of the 18th century, it was widely believed that rabbits and hares were hermaphrodites, contributing to a possible view of rabbits as "sexually aberrant". The Easter Bunny is a figure from German folklore that then spread to America and later other parts of the world and is similar to Santa Claus, albeit both with softened roles compared to earlier incarnations of the figures. The rabbits' role as a prey animal with few defenses evokes vulnerability and innocence in folklore and modern children's stories, and rabbits appear as sympathetic characters, able to connect easily with youth, though this particular symbolic depiction only became popular in the 1930s following the massive popularization of the pet rabbit decades before. Additionally, they have not been limited to sympathetic depictions since then, as in literature such as Watership Down and the works of Ariel Dorfman. With its reputation as a prolific breeder, the rabbit juxtaposes sexuality with innocence, as in the Playboy Bunny. The rabbit has also been used as a symbol of playfulness and endurance, as represented by the Energizer Bunny and the Duracell Bunny. The rabbit often appears in folklore as the trickster archetype, as he uses his cunning to outwit his enemies. In Central Africa, the common hare (Kalulu) is described as a trickster figure, and in Aztec mythology, a pantheon of four hundred rabbit gods known as Centzon Totochtin, led by Ometochtli or Two Rabbit, represented fertility, parties, and drunkenness. Rabbits in the Americas varied in mythological symbolism: in Aztec mythology, they were also associated with the moon, and in Anishinaabe traditional beliefs, held by the Ojibwe and some other Native American peoples, Nanabozho, or Great Rabbit, is an important deity related to the creation of the world. More broadly, a rabbit's foot may be carried as an amulet, believed to bring protection and good luck. This belief is found in many parts of the world, with the earliest use being recorded in Europe c. 600 BC. Rabbits also appear in Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese and Korean mythology, though rabbits are a relatively new introduction to some of these regions. In Chinese folklore, rabbits accompany Chang'e on the Moon, and the moon rabbit is a prominent symbol in the Mid-Autumn Festival. In the Chinese New Year, the zodiacal rabbit or hare is one of the twelve celestial animals in the Chinese zodiac. At the time of the zodiacal cycles becoming associated with animals in the Han dynasty, only hares were native to China, with the currently extant breeds of rabbit in China being of European origin. The Vietnamese zodiac includes a zodiacal cat in place of the rabbit. The most common explanation is that the ancient Vietnamese word for "rabbit" (mao) sounds like the Chinese word for "cat" (卯, mao). In Japanese tradition, rabbits live on the Moon where they make mochi. This comes from interpreting the pattern of dark patches on the moon as a rabbit standing on tiptoes on the left pounding on an usu, a Japanese mortar; in some images, this rabbit is said to be creating a potion of immortality. In Korean mythology, as in Japanese, rabbits live on the moon making rice cakes ("tteok" in Korean). Rabbits have also appeared in religious symbolism. Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism have associations with an ancient circular motif called the three rabbits (or "three hares"). Its meaning ranges from "peace and tranquility" to the Holy Trinity. The tripartite symbol also appears in heraldry. In Jewish folklore, rabbits are associated with cowardice, a usage still current in contemporary Israeli spoken Hebrew. The original Hebrew word (shfanim, שפנים) refers to the hyrax, but early translations to English interpreted the word to mean "rabbit", as no hyraxes were known to northern Europe. In Greek and Roman mythology, rabbits were associated with the hunting goddesses Artemis and Diana. Ancient Greek hunters were instructed to not hunt newborn rabbits, and to leave them "for the goddess". The constellation Lepus is named for the rabbit, and was given its name by Ptolemy c. 150 CE. The rabbit as trickster is a part of American popular culture, as Br'er Rabbit (from African-American folktales and, later, Disney animation) and Bugs Bunny (the cartoon character from Warner Bros.), for example. Anthropomorphized rabbits have appeared in film and literature, in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (the White Rabbit and the March Hare characters), in Watership Down (including the film and television adaptations), in Rabbit Hill (by Robert Lawson), and in the Peter Rabbit stories (by Beatrix Potter). In the 1920s, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was a popular cartoon character. On the Isle of Portland in Dorset, UK, the rabbit is said to be unlucky, and speaking the creature's name can cause upset among older island residents. This is thought to date back to early times in the local quarrying industry, where, to save space, extracted stones that were not fit for sale were set aside in what became tall, unstable walls. The local rabbits' tendency to burrow there would weaken the walls, and their collapse would result in injuries or even death. In the local culture to this day, the rabbit (when he has to be referred to) may instead be called a "long ears" or "underground mutton" so as not to risk bringing a downfall upon oneself. In other parts of Britain and in North America, "Rabbit rabbit rabbit" is one variant of an apotropaic or talismanic superstition that involves saying or repeating the word "rabbit" (or "rabbits" or "white rabbits" or some combination thereof) out loud upon waking on the first day of each month, because doing so is believed to ensure good fortune for the duration of that month. The "rabbit test" is a term first used in 1949 for the Friedman test, an early diagnostic tool for detecting a pregnancy in humans. It is a common misconception (or perhaps an urban legend) that the test-rabbit would die if the woman was pregnant. This led to the phrase "the rabbit died" becoming a euphemism for a positive pregnancy test. Many modern children's stories and cartoons portray rabbits as particularly fond of eating carrots, largely due to the popularity of Bugs Bunny, whose carrot-eating habit was modeled after Peter Warne, the character played by Clark Gable in the 1934 romantic comedy It Happened One Night. This is misleading, as wild rabbits do not naturally prefer carrots over other plants. The misconception has led to some owners of domestic rabbits feeding them carrot-heavy diets. Carrots are high in sugar, and excessive consumption can be unhealthy. See also References External links |
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Contents Barney (franchise) Barney is an American children's media franchise created by Sheryl Leach, Kathryn O'Rourke Parker and Dennis DeShazer, and currently owned by Mattel. It centers around the titular character Barney, a purple anthropomorphic Tyrannosaurus rex who conveys educational messages through songs and small dance routines with a friendly, huggable and optimistic attitude. The franchise consists of three series: Barney & the Backyard Gang (1988—1991), a direct-to-video series consisting of only eight episodes; Barney & Friends (1992—2010), a television series that ran on PBS Kids; and Barney's World (2024–present), a fully computer-animated series airing on Cartoon Network's Cartoonito, and which is currently streaming on Max. A film adaptation, Barney's Great Adventure, was released theatrically in 1998, and a second film is in production at Mattel Studios and A24, with Daniel Kaluuya serving as director. The franchise is currently distributed by 9 Story Media Group, under license from Mattel Television. While popular with its intended audience, Barney drew severely negative reaction from the older set, who mocked the title character in popular culture through song parodies and comedy routines such as being beaten up by NBA star Charles Barkley on a Saturday Night Live episode. The anti-Barney phenomenon is the basis of the 2022 Peacock documentary I Love You, You Hate Me. Barney has also received immense praise from parents for being a wholesome yet engaging franchise for children that delves into common, kid-friendly topics. Barney & the Backyard Gang Barney & the Backyard Gang is an American direct-to-video series produced by The Lyons Group and released in periodic installments from August 29, 1988, to August 1, 1991. The series led to the launch of the children's television show, Barney & Friends, which aired on PBS Kids from April 6, 1992, to November 2, 2010. The first three episodes from 1988 and 1989 include Sandy Duncan as Michael and Amy's mother. (At the time, Duncan was starring on the NBC sitcom The Hogan Family.) Music for the Barney & the Backyard Gang videos was created by Stephen Bates Baltes and Phillip Parker (as with the television series), and Lory Lazarus wrote the first original song produced for Barney, "Friends Are Forever", sung by Duncan. In the first five videos, "I Love You" was sung at the beginning. Although "I Love You" was sung at the end of Barney Goes to School and Barney in Concert, and later frequently sung at the end of all episodes of Barney & Friends, it was not featured at the end of Rock with Barney. The series was a regional success, but only a moderate success throughout the rest of the country.[citation needed] Then one day, in 1991, Larry Rifkin, then head of Connecticut Public Television, rented a Barney video for his daughter Leora. He liked the concept and talked to Leach about possibly putting Barney on television through the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Rock with Barney was the last video in the series before the television show debuted a year later. Also, only four of the kids from the videos (Michael, Derek, Tina, and Luci) were carried over to the television show. Television series Barney & Friends ran on PBS Kids from April 6, 1992, to November 2, 2010 along with reruns until 2016. Episodes from seasons 1–9 (as well as seasons 12–13) last for 30 minutes, while episodes from seasons 10–11 (as well as season 14) are split into 15-minute segments. Like the Barney & the Backyard Gang episodes Barney Goes to School and Barney in Concert, "I Love You" was sung at the end of all episodes of Barney & Friends, with the exception of the primary segments of Seasons 10–11 and 14, which end with the characters singing "A Friend Like You" instead and Barney remaining alive. Reruns aired on Sprout from 2005–2015, and from December 17, 2018, to January 25, 2020, on Sprout's successor network, Universal Kids. On February 13, 2023, Mattel announced that Barney would return as a computer-animated series, being co-produced by Mattel and the Canada-based animation studio Nelvana, with the deal also including the possibility of animated films and YouTube content to feature the character. The new series would aim for a 2024 delivery window. This was seen as part of a larger trend of Mattel successfully reviving franchises such as Monster High and Masters of the Universe, along with an overall development that included films based on its toys such as Hot Wheels, Magic 8 Ball, and Major Matt Mason. On May 9, 2023, the title of the series was revealed as Barney's World and that Warner Bros. Discovery had acquired US television and streaming rights to the series. On October 14, 2024, the series would start streaming on Max and StackTV, and would air on Treehouse TV. The series will premiere on the Cartoon Network via Cartoonito on October 18, 2024. On the same day, Warner Bros. Discovery announced they had also acquired pay-TV rights in EMEA, APAC and Latin American territories. As with the United States, the show will air on Cartoonito channels or blocks while in Latin America the series will air on Discovery Kids. Select territories would also get episodes on YouTube as well as OSNtv Kidzone. Barney's World would premiere on Cartoonito UK on October 14, 2024. Films The first feature-length film, Barney's Great Adventure, follows Barney, along with three young children named Cody, Abby, and Marcella (played by Kyla Pratt), as they discover a magical egg in a barn. After learning that the egg is a dream maker, Barney and the gang must return the egg to the barn before it hatches. The film was written by Stephen White, directed by Steve Gomer, and produced by Sheryl Leach and Lyrick Studios. It was released by PolyGram Filmed Entertainment on March 27, 1998, at Radio City Music Hall in New York, USA, and worldwide on April 3, 1998, in North America at the height of Barney's popularity. The film was shot in Quebec, CA. The film received negative reviews from critics and was a box-office bomb, grossing $12 million against a budget of $15 million. This was the third and last film to be produced by Lyrick Studios before it was acquired by and folded into HIT Entertainment on June 6, 2001. It is also the only theatrical Barney film (several years until production for the second film), as all other Barney films were direct-to-video productions. On October 18, 2019, Mattel Studios announced that a second Barney film was to be produced. On July 2, 2023, it was announced that the Barney film from Academy Award winner Daniel Kaluuya, through his production company 59%, would be aimed at adults and discuss the presumed disenchantment within the Millennial generation. An executive from Mattel said the adaptation would be "surrealistic" and similar to Adaptation and Being John Malkovich. On February 25, 2025, it was announced that Ayo Edebiri was in talks to star in and write the film for A24. Cast and characters Video game Barney's Hide & Seek Game is a video game that was released for the Sega Genesis on June 1, 1993, by Sega in North America and in 1993 by Tec Toy in South America. It was based on the children's television series Barney & Friends, and it is the first and only video game in the Barney franchise. Educational concepts taught in the game include counting, matching, and problem solving. There is a self-play feature that guides the player to the objective without input from the player. The voice of Barney was recorded by his original voice actor Bob West, who also did it on the television show. There are more than one hundred words and two hundred phrases spoken by Barney. In this game, the objective is to move Barney around four themed levels and locate four children along with Baby Bop and five presents that are hiding throughout the level. Should the player find all the children along with Baby Bop and presents in different levels, they would be rewarded with a "special surprise". During the surprise, the purple balloon pop and confetti and streamers fall from above onto excited children, as well as Barney and Baby Bop. Players cannot lose in the game, even if they did not retrieve all the objects and find all the missing children in the level. Theme park attraction A Day in the Park with Barney was a live children's show at Universal Studios Florida based on the children's television show, Barney & Friends, that opened in 1995 on the former site of The Bates Motel Set used in Psycho IV: The Beginning. It also featured “Barney’s Backyard,” a playground area where children could meet Barney during a post-show meet and greet at the Barney Theater. It was one of the few places where Barney's original voice actor Bob West was heard and one of Universal Studios' attempts to appeal to the younger generation. On March 16, 2020, due to the ongoing worldwide outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and its spread to Florida, A Day in the Park with Barney had temporarily closed alongside the rest of the Universal Orlando Resort. It reopened during the resort's reopening in June 2020, but was closed again on August 9, 2020, which was temporary at the time. On February 3, 2021, Universal Orlando announced that the show was permanently closed, effective that day with attendance declining over the years. The entire Barney courtyard was removed of its theming and the indoor theater and stage was repurposed to DreamWorks Destination, an indoor meet-and-greet with characters from DreamWorks Animation franchises, such as Po from Kung Fu Panda, Princess Poppy from Trolls, King Julien from Madagascar, among others from each franchise. A new Barney attraction is rumored to be opening at Mattel Adventure Park in Arizona and Kansas. Documentaries A documentary television special titled Barney Celebrates Children, which explores the positive influence of the titular character on children worldwide, debuted on PBS on December 4, 1994, and hosted by Maria Shriver. A two-part documentary miniseries titled I Love You, You Hate Me, which centers on the anti-Barney phenomenon, was released on Peacock on October 12, 2022. It features interviews with various cast and crew of Barney & Friends and Barney & The Backyard Gang, alongside fans and critics of the Barney franchise, offering first-hand accounts of the Barney phenomenon. A trailer was released on September 28, 2022. Episodes References |
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Contents Thirty-seventh government of Israel The thirty-seventh government of Israel is the current cabinet of Israel, formed on 29 December 2022, following the Knesset election the previous month. The coalition government currently consists of five parties — Likud, Shas, Otzma Yehudit, Religious Zionist Party and New Hope — and is led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who took office as the prime minister of Israel for the sixth time. The government is widely regarded as the most right-wing government in the country's history, and includes far-right politicians. Several of the government's policy proposals have led to controversies, both within Israel and abroad, with the government's attempts at reforming the judiciary leading to a wave of demonstrations across the country. Following the outbreak of the Gaza war, opposition leader Yair Lapid initiated discussions with Netanyahu on the formation of an emergency government. On 11 October 2023, National Unity MKs Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisenkot, Gideon Sa'ar, Hili Tropper, and Yifat Shasha-Biton joined the Security Cabinet of Israel to form an emergency national unity government. Their accession to the Security Cabinet and to the government (as ministers without portfolio) was approved by the Knesset the following day. Gantz, Netanyahu, and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant became part of the newly formed Israeli war cabinet, with Eisenkot and Ron Dermer serving as observers. National Unity left the government in June 2024. New Hope rejoined the government in September. Otzma Yehudit announced on 19 January 2025 that it had withdrawn from the government, which took effect on 21 January, following the cabinet's acceptance of the three-phase Gaza war ceasefire proposal, though it rejoined two months later. United Torah Judaism left the government in July 2025 over dissatisfaction with the government's draft conscription law. Shas left the government several days later, though it remains part of the coalition. Background The right-wing bloc of parties, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, known in Israel as the national camp, won 64 of the 120 seats in the elections for the Knesset, while the coalition led by the incumbent prime minister Yair Lapid won 51 seats. The new majority has been variously described as the most right-wing government in Israeli history, as well as Israel's most religious government. Shortly after the elections, Lapid conceded to Netanyahu, and congratulated him, wishing him luck "for the sake of the Israeli people". On 15 November, the swearing-in ceremony for the newly elected members of the 25th Knesset was held during the opening session. The vote to appoint a new Speaker of the Knesset, which is usually conducted at the opening session, as well as the swearing in of cabinet members were postponed since ongoing coalition negotiations had not yet resulted in agreement on these positions. Government formation Yair Lapid Yesh Atid Benjamin Netanyahu Likud On 3 November 2022, Netanyahu told his aide Yariv Levin to begin informal coalition talks with allied parties, after 97% of the vote was counted. The leader of the Shas party Aryeh Deri met with Yitzhak Goldknopf, the leader of United Torah Judaism and its Agudat Yisrael faction, on 4 November. The two parties agreed to cooperate as members of the next government. The Degel HaTorah faction of United Torah Judaism stated on 5 November that it will maintain its ideological stance about not seeking any ministerial posts, as per the instruction of its spiritual leader Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, but will seek other senior posts like Knesset committee chairmen and deputy ministers. Netanyahu himself started holding talks on 6 November. He first met with Moshe Gafni, the leader of Degel HaTorah, and then with Goldknopf. Meanwhile, the Religious Zionist Party leader Bezalel Smotrich and the leader of its Otzma Yehudit faction Itamar Ben-Gvir pledged that they would not enter the coalition without the other faction. Gafni later met with Smotrich for coalition talks. Smotrich then met with Netanyahu. On 7 November, Netanyahu met with Ben-Gvir who demanded the Ministry of Public Security with expanded powers for himself and the Ministry of Education or Transport and Road Safety for Yitzhak Wasserlauf. A major demand among all of Netanyahu's allies was that the Knesset be allowed to ignore the rulings of the Supreme Court. Netanyahu met with the Noam faction leader and its sole MK Avi Maoz on 8 November after he threatened to boycott the coalition. He demanded complete control of the Western Wall by the Haredi rabbinate and removal of what he considered as anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish content in schoolbooks. President Isaac Herzog began consultations with heads of all the political parties on 9 November after the election results were certified. During the consultations, he expressed his reservations about Ben-Gvir becoming a member in the next government. Shas met with Likud for coalition talks on 10 November. By 11 November, Netanyahu had secured recommendations from 64 MKs, which constituted a majority. He was given the mandate to form the thirty-seventh government of Israel by President Herzog on 13 November. Otzma Yehudit and Noam officially split from Religious Zionism on 20 November as per a pre-election agreement. On 25 November, Otzma Yehudit and Likud signed a coalition agreement, under which Ben-Gvir will assume the newly created position of National Security Minister, whose powers would be more expansive than that of the Minister of Public Security, including overseeing the Israel Police and the Israel Border Police in the West Bank, as well as giving powers to authorities to shoot thieves stealing from military bases. Yitzhak Wasserlauf was given the Ministry for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee with expanded powers to regulate new West Bank settlements, while separating it from the "Periphery" portfolio, which will be given to Shas. The deal also includes giving the Ministry of Heritage to Amihai Eliyahu, separating it from the "Jerusalem Affairs" portfolio, the chairmanship of the Knesset's Public Security Committee to Zvika Fogel and that of the Special Committee for the Israeli Citizens' Fund to Limor Son Har-Melech, the post of Deputy Economic Minister to Almog Cohen, establishment of a national guard, and expansion of mobilization of reservists in the Border Police. Netanyahu and Maoz signed a coalition agreement on 27 November, under which the latter would become a deputy minister, would head an agency on Jewish identity in the Prime Minister's Office, and would also head Nativ, which processes the aliyah from the former Soviet Union. The agency for Jewish identity would have authority over educational content taught outside the regular curriculum in schools, in addition to the department of the Ministry of Education overseeing external teaching and partnerships, which would bring nonofficial organisations permitted to teach and lecture at schools under its purview. Likud signed a coalition agreement with the Religious Zionist Party on 1 December. Under the deal, Smotrich would serve as the Minister of Finance in rotation with Aryeh Deri, and the party will receive the post of a minister within the Ministry of Defense with control over the departments administering settlement and open lands under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, in addition to another post of a deputy minister. The deal also includes giving the post of Minister of Aliyah and Integration to Ofir Sofer, the newly created National Missions Ministry to Orit Strook, and the chairmanship of the Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee to Simcha Rothman. Likud and United Torah Judaism signed a coalition agreement on 6 December, to allow request for an extension to the deadline. Under it, the party would receive the Ministry of Construction and Housing, the chairmanship of the Knesset Finance Committee which will be given to Moshe Gafni, the Ministry of Jerusalem and Tradition (which would replace the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage), in addition to several posts of deputy ministers and chairmanships of Knesset committees. Likud also signed a deal with Shas by 8 December, securing interim coalition agreements with all of their allies. Under the deal, Deri will first serve as the Minister of Interior and Health, before rotating posts with Smotrich after two years. The party will also receive the Ministry of Religious Services and Welfare Ministries, as well as posts of deputy ministers in the Ministry of Education and Interior. The vote to replace then-incumbent Knesset speaker Mickey Levy was scheduled for 13 December, after Likud and its allies secured the necessary number of signatures for it. Yariv Levin of Likud was elected as an interim speaker by 64 votes, while his opponents Merav Ben-Ari of Yesh Atid and Ayman Odeh of Hadash received 45 and five votes respectively. Netanyahu asked Herzog for a 14-day extension after the agreement with Shas to finalise the roles his allied parties would play. Herzog on 9 December extended the deadline to 21 December. On that date, Netanyahu informed Herzog that he had succeeded in forming a coalition, with the new government expected to be sworn in by 2 January 2023. The government was sworn in on 29 December 2022. Timeline Israeli law stated that people convicted of crimes cannot serve in the government. An amendment to that law was made in late 2022, known colloquially as the Deri Law, to allow those who had been convicted without prison time to serve. This allowed Deri to be appointed to the cabinet. Shas leader Aryeh Deri was appointed to be Minister of Health, Minister of the Interior, and Vice Prime Minister in December 2022. He was fired in January 2023, following a Supreme Court decision that his appointment was unreasonable, since he had been convicted of fraud, and had promised not to seek government roles through a plea deal. In March 2023, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called on the government to delay legislation related to the judicial reform. Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that he had been dismissed from his position, leading to the continuation of mass protests across the country (which had started in January in Tel Aviv). Gallant continued to serve as a minister as he had not received formal notice of dismissal, and two weeks later it was announced that Netanyahu had reversed his decision. Public Safety Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma Yehudit leader) and Minister of Justice Yariv Levin (Likud) both threatened to resign if the judicial reform was delayed.[better source needed] After the outbreak of the Gaza war, five members of the National Unity party joined the government as ministers without portfolio, with leader Benny Gantz being made a member of the new Israeli war cabinet (along with Netanyahu and Gallant). As the war progressed, minister of national security Itamar Ben-Gvir threatened to leave the government if the war was ended. A month later in mid December, he again threatened to leave if the war did not maintain "full strength". Gideon Sa'ar stated on 16 March that his New Hope party would resign from the government and join the opposition if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not appoint him to the Israeli war cabinet. Netanyahu did not do so, resulting in Sa'ar's New Hope party leaving the government nine days later, reducing the size of the coalition from 76 MKs to 72. Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, of the National Religious Party–Religious Zionism party, have indicated that they will withdraw their parties from the government if the January 2025 Gaza war ceasefire is adopted, which would bring down the government. Ben-Gvir announced on 5 June that the members of his party would be allowed to vote as they wish, though his party resumed support on 9 June. On 18 May, Gantz set an 8 June deadline for withdrawal from the coalition, which was delayed by a day following the 2024 Nuseirat rescue operation. Gantz and his party left the government on 9 June, giving the government 64 seats in the Knesset. Sa'ar and his New Hope party rejoined the Netanyahu government on 30 September, increasing the number of seats held by the government to 68. The High Court of Justice ruled on 28 March 2024 that yeshiva funds would no longer be available for students who are "eligible for enlistment", effectively allowing ultra-Orthodox Jews to be drafted into the IDF. Attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara indicated on 31 March that the conscription process must begin on 1 April. The court ruled on 25 June that the IDF must begin to draft yeshiva students. Likud announced on 7 July that it would not put forward any legislation after Shas and United Torah Judaism said that they would boycott the plenary session over the lack of legislation dealing with the Haredi draft. The Ultra-Orthodox boycott continued for a second day, with UTJ briefly ending its boycott on 9 July to unsuccessfully vote in favor of a bill which would have weakened the Law of Return. Yuli Edelstein, who was replaced by Boaz Bismuth on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in early August, published a draft version of the conscription law shortly before his ouster. Bismuth cancelled the work on the draft law in September 2025, which Edelstein called "a shame." Bismuth released the official version of the draft law in late November 2025. It weakened penalties for draft evaders, with Edelstein saying it was "the exact opposite" of the bill which he attempted to pass. Members of Otzma Yehudit resigned from the government on 19 January 2025 over the January 2025 Gaza war ceasefire, which took effect on 21 January. The members rejoined in March, following the "resumption" of the war in Gaza. Avi Maoz of the Noam party left the government in March 2025. On 4 June 2025, senior rabbis for United Torah Judaism Dov Lando and Moshe Hillel Hirsch instructed the party's MKs to pass a bill which would dissolve the Knesset. Yesh Atid, Yisrael Beytenu and The Democrats announced that they will "submit a bill" for dissolution on 11 June, with Yesh Atid tabling the bill on 4 June. There were also reports that Shas would vote in favor of Knesset dissolution amidst division within the governing coalition on Haredi conscription. This jeopardized the coalition's majority and would have triggered new elections if the bill passed. The following day, Agudat Yisrael, one of the United Torah Judaism factions, confirmed that it would submit a bill to dissolve the Knesset. Asher Medina, a Shas spokesman, indicated on 9 June that the party would vote in favor of a preliminary bill to dissolve the Knesset. The rabbis of Degel HaTorah instructed the parties' MKs on 12 June 2025 to oppose the dissolution of the Knesset, which was followed by Yuli Edelstein and the Shas and Degel HaTorah parties announcing that a deal had been reached, with "rabbinical leaders" telling their parties to delay the dissolution vote by a week. Shas and Degel HaTorah voted against the dissolution bill, which led to the bill failing its preliminary reading in a vote of 61 against and 53 in favor. MKs Ya'akov Tessler and Moshe Roth of Agudat Yisrael voted in favor of dissolution. Another dissolution bill will be unable to be brought forward for six months. If the bill had passed its preliminary reading, in addition to three more readings, an election would have been held in approximately three months; The Jerusalem Post posited it would have been held in October. Degel HaTorah announced on 14 July 2025 that it would leave the government because members of the party were dissatisfied after viewing the proposed draft bill by Yuli Edelstein regarding Haredi exemptions from the Israeli draft. Several hours later, Agudat Yisrael announced that it would also leave the government. Deputy Transportation Minister Uri Maklev, Moshe Gafni, the head of the Knesset Finance Committee, Ya'akov Asher, the head of the Knesset Interior and Environment Protection Committee and Jerusalem Affairs minister Meir Porush all submitted their resignations, with their resignations taking effect in 48 hours. Sports Minister Ya'akov Tessler and "Special Committee for Public Petitions Chair" Yitzhak Pindrus also submitted resignations. Yisrael Eichler submitted his resignation as the "head of the Knesset Labor and Welfare Committee" the same day. The resignations will leave Netanyahu's government with a 60-seat majority in the Knesset, as Avi Maoz, of the Noam party, left the government in March 2025. Despite Edelstein's ouster in August, a spokesman for UTJ head Yitzhak Goldknopf remarked that it would not change the faction's withdrawal from the government. The religious council for Shas, called the Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah, instructed the party on 16 July to leave the government, but stay in the coalition. The following day, various cabinet ministers submitted their resignations, including "Interior Minister Moshe Arbel, Social Affairs Minister Ya'akov Margi and Religious Services Minister Michael Malchieli." Malchieli reportedly has postponed his resignation so he could attend a 20 July meeting of the panel investigating whether attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara should be dismissed. Deputy Minister of Agriculture Moshe Abutbul, Minister of Health Uriel Buso and Haim Biton, a minister in the Education Ministry, also submitted their resignation letters, while Arbel retracted his resignation letter. The last cabinet member from the party to submit it was Labor Minister Yoav Ben-Tzur. The ministers who resigned will return to the Knesset, replacing MKs Moshe Roth, Yitzhak Pindrus and Eliyahu Baruchi. Members of government Listed below are the current ministers in the government: Principles and priorities According to the agreements signed between Likud and each of its coalition partners, and the incoming government's published guideline principles, its stated priorities are to combat the cost of living, further centralize Orthodox control over the state religious services, pass judicial reforms which include legislation to reduce judicial controls on executive and legislative power, expand settlements in the West Bank, and consider an annexation of the West Bank. Before the vote of confidence in his new government in the Knesset, Netanyahu presented three top priorities for the new government: internal security and governance, halting the nuclear program of Iran, and the development of infrastructure, with a focus on further connecting the center of the country with its periphery. Policies The government's flagship program, centered around reforms in the judicial branch, drew widespread criticism. Critics said it would have negative effects on the separation of powers, the office of the Attorney General, the economy, public health, women and minorities, workers' rights, scientific research, the overall strength of Israel's democracy and its foreign relations. After weeks of public protests on Israel's streets, joined by a growing number of military reservists, Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant spoke against the reform on 25 March, calling for a halt of the legislative process "for the sake of Israel's security". The next day, Netanyahu announced that he would be removed from his post, sparking another wave of protest across Israel and ultimately leading to Netanyahu agreeing to pause the legislation. On 10 April, Netanyahu announced that Gallant would keep his post. On 27 March 2023, after the public protests and general strikes, Netanyahu announced a pause in the reform process to allow for dialogue with opposition parties. However, negotiations aimed at reaching a compromise collapsed in June, and the government resumed its plans to unilaterally pass parts of the legislation. On 24 July 2023, the Knesset passed a bill that curbs the power of the Supreme Court to declare government decisions unreasonable; on 1 January 2024, the Supreme Court struck the bill down. The Knesset passed a "watered-down" version of the judicial reform package in late March 2025 which "changes the composition" of the judicial selection committee. In December 2022 Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir sought to amend the law that regulates the operations of the Israel Police, such that the ministry will have more direct control of its forces and policies, including its investigative priorities. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara objected to the draft proposal, raising concerns that the law would enable the politicization of police work, and the draft was amended to partially address those concerns. Nevertheless, in March 2023 Deputy Attorney General Gil Limon stated that the Attorney General's fears had been realized, referring to several instances of ministerial involvement in the day-to-day work of the otherwise independent police force – statements that were repeated by the Attorney General herself two days later. Separately, Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai instructed Deputy Commissioners to avoid direct communication with the minister, later stating that "the Israel Police will remain apolitical, and act only according to law". Following appeals by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, the High Court of Justice instructed Ben-Gvir "to refrain from giving operational directions to the police... [especially] as regards to protests and demonstrations against the government." As talks of halting the judicial reform gained wind during March 2023, Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir threatened to resign if the legislation implementing the changes was suspended. To appease Ben-Gvir, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that the government would promote the creation of a new National Guard, to be headed by Ben-Gvir. On 29 March, thousands of Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem against this decision. On 1 April, the New York Times quoted Gadeer Nicola, head of the Arab department at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, as saying "If this thing passes, it will be an imminent danger to the rights of Arab citizens in this country. This will create two separate systems of applying the law. The regular police which will operate against Jewish citizens — and a militarized militia to deal only with Arab citizens." The same day, while speaking on Israel's Channel 13 about those whom he'd like to see enlist in the National Guard, Ben-Gvir specifically mentioned La Familia, the far-right fan club of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team. On 2 April, Israel's cabinet approved the establishment of a law enforcement body that would operate independently of the police, under Ben-Gvir's authority. According to the decision, the Minister was to establish a committee chaired by the Director General of the Ministry of National Security, with representatives of the ministries of defense, justice and finance, as well as the police and the IDF, to outline the operations of the new organization. The committee's recommendations will be submitted to the government for consideration. Addressing a conference on 4 April, Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai said that he is not opposed to the establishment of a security body which would answer to the police, but "a separate body? Absolutely not." The police chief said he had warned Ben-Gvir that the establishment of a security body separate from the police is "unnecessary, with extremely high costs that may harm citizens' personal security." During a press conference on 10 April, Prime Minister Netanyahu said, in what has been seen by some news outlets as a concession to the protesters, that "This will not be anyone's militia, it will be a security body, orderly, professional, that will be subordinate to one of the [existing] security bodies." The committee established by the government recommended the government to order the establishment of the National Guard immediately while allocating budgets. The National Guard, under whose command will be a superintendent of the police, will not be subordinate to Ben-Gvir. It will be subordinate to the police commissioner and will be part of Israel Border Police. The Ministry of Defense and Finance opposed the conclusions. The Israeli National Security Council called for further discussion on this. The coalition's efforts to expand the purview of Rabbinical courts; force some organizations, such as hospitals, to enforce certain religious practices; amend the Law Prohibiting Discrimination to allow gender segregation and discrimination on the grounds of religious belief; expand funding for religious causes; and put into law the exemption of yeshiva and kolel students from conscription have drawn criticism. According to the Haaretz op-ed of 7 March 2023, "the current coalition is interested... in modifying the public space so it suits the religious lifestyle. The legal coup is meant to castrate anyone who can prevent it, most of all the HCJ." Several banks and institutional investors, including the Israel Discount Bank and AIG have committed to avoid investing in, or providing credit to any organization that will discriminate against others on ground of religion, race, gender or sexual orientation. A series of technology companies and investment firms including Wiz, Intel Israel, Salesforce and Microsoft Israel Research and Development, have criticized the proposed changes to the Law Prohibiting Discrimination, with Wiz stating that it will require its suppliers to commit to preventing discrimination. Over sixty prominent law firms pledged that they will neither represent, nor do business with discriminating individuals and organizations. Insight Partners, a major private equity fund operating in Israel, released a statement warning against intolerance and any attempt to harm personal liberties. Orit Lahav, chief executive of the women's rights organization Mavoi Satum ("Dead End"), said that "the Rabbinical courts are the most discriminatory institution in the State of Israel... Limiting the HCJ[d] while expanding the jurisdiction of the Rabbinical courts would... cause significant harm to women." Anat Thon Ashkenazy, Director of the Center for Democratic Values and Institutions at the Israel Democracy Institute, said that "almost every part of the reform could harm women... the meaning of an override clause is that even if the court says that the law on gender segregation is illegitimate, is harmful, the Knesset could say 'Okay, we say otherwise'". She added that "there is a very broad institutional framework here, after which there will come legislation that harms women's right and we will have no way of protecting or stopping it." During July 2023, 20 professional medical associations signed a letter of position warning against the ramifications to public health that would result from the exclusion of women from the public sphere. They cited, among others, a rise in prevalence of risk factors for cardiovascular disease, pregnancy-related ailments, psychological distress, and the risk of suicide. On 30 July the Knesset passed an amendment to penal law adding sexual offenses to those offenses whose penalty can be doubled if done on grounds of "nationalistic terrorism, racism or hostility towards a certain community". According to MK Limor Son Har-Melech, the bill is meant to penalize any individual who "[intends to] harm a woman sexually based on her Jewishness". The law was criticized by MK Gilad Kariv as "populist, nationalistic, and dangerous towards the Arab citizens of Israel", and by MK Ahmad Tibi as a "race law", and was objected to by legal advisors at the Ministry of Justice and the Knesset Committee on National Security. Activist Orit Kamir wrote that "the amendment... is neither feminist, equal, nor progressive, but the opposite: it subordinates women's sexuality to the nationalistic, racist patriarchy. It hijacks the Law for Prevention of Sexual Harassment to serve a world view that tags women as sexual objects that personify the nation's honor." Yael Sherer, director of the Lobby to Combat Sexual Violence, criticized the law as being informed by dated ideas about sexual assault, and proposed that MKs "dedicate a session... to give victims of sexual assault an opportunity to come out of the darkness... instead of [submitting] declarative bills that change nothing and are not meant but for grabbing headlines". In Israel, during 2022, 24 women "were murdered because they were women," which was an increase of 50% compared to 2021. A law permitting courts to order men subject to a restraining order following domestic violence offenses to wear electronic tags was drafted during the previous Knesset and had passed its first reading unanimously. On 22 March 2023, the Knesset voted to reject the bill. It had been urged to do so by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who said that the bill was unfair to men. Earlier in the week, Ben-Gvir had blocked the measure from advancing in the ministerial legislative committee. The MKs voting against the bill included Prime Minister Netanyahu. The Association of Families of Murder Victims said that by rejecting the law, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir "brings joy to violent men and abandons the women threatened with murder… unsupervised restraining orders endanger women's lives even more. They give women the illusion of being protected, and then they are murdered." MK Pnina Tamano-Shata, chairwoman of the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality, said that "the coalition proved today that it despises women's lives." The NGO Amutat Bat Melech [he], which assists Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox women who suffer from domestic violence, said that: "Rejecting the electronic bracelet bill is disconnected from the terrible reality of seven femicides since the beginning of the year. This is an effective tool of the first degree that could have saved lives and reduced the threat to women suffering from domestic violence. This is a matter of life and death, whose whole purpose is to provide a solution to defend women." The agreement signed by the coalition parties includes the setting up of a committee to draft changes to the Law of Return. Israeli religious parties have long demanded that the "grandchild clause" of the Law of Return be cancelled. This clause grants citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent, as long as they do not practice another religion. If the grandchild clause were to be removed from the Law of Return then around 3 million people who are currently eligible for aliyah would no longer be eligible. The heads of the Jewish Agency, the Jewish Federations of North America, the World Zionist Organization and Keren Hayesod sent a joint letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu, expressing their "deep concern" about any changes to the Law of Return, adding that "Any change in the delicate and sensitive status quo on issues such as the Law of Return or conversion could threaten to unravel the ties between us and keep us away from each other." The Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Zionist Federation of Australia issued a joint statement saying "We… view with deep concern… proposals in relation to religious pluralism and the law of return that risk damaging Israel's… relationship with Diaspora Jewry." On 19 March 2023, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich spoke in Paris at a memorial service for a Likud activist. The lectern at which Smotrich spoke was covered with a flag depicting the 'Greater Land of Israel,' encompassing the whole of Mandatory Palestine, as well as Trans-Jordan. During his speech, Smotrich said that "there's no such thing as Palestinians because there's no such thing as a Palestinian people." He added that the Palestinian people are a fictitious nation invented only to fight the Zionist movement, asking "Is there a Palestinian history or culture? There isn't any." The event received widespread media coverage. On 21 March, a spokesman for the US State Department sharply criticized Smotrich's comments. "The comments, which were delivered at a podium adorned with an inaccurate and provocative map, are offensive, they are deeply concerning, and, candidly, they're dangerous. The Palestinians have a rich history and culture, and the United States greatly values our partnership with the Palestinian people," he said. The Jordanian Foreign Ministry also voiced disapproval: "The Israeli Minister of Finance's use, during his participation in an event held yesterday in Paris, of a map of Israel that includes the borders of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the occupied Palestinian territories represents a reckless inflammatory act, and a violation of international norms and the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty." Additionally, a map encompassing Mandatory Palestine and Trans-Jordan with a Jordanian flag on it was placed on a central lectern in the Jordanian Parliament. Jordan's parliament voted to expel the Israeli ambassador. Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a clarification relating to the matter, stating that "Israel is committed to the 1994 peace agreement with Jordan. There has been no change in the position of the State of Israel, which recognizes the territorial integrity of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan". Ahead of a Europe Day event due to take place on 9 May 2023, far-right wing National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was assigned as a representative of the government and a speaker at the event by the government secretariat, which deals with placing ministers at receptions on the occasion of the national days of the foreign embassies. The European Union requested that Ben-Gvir not attend, but the government did not make changes to the plan. On 8 May, the European delegation to Israel cancelled the reception, stating that: "The EU Delegation to Israel is looking forward to celebrating Europe Day on May 9, as it does every year. Regrettably, this year we have decided to cancel the diplomatic reception, as we do not want to offer a platform to someone whose views contradict the values the European Union stands for. However, the Europe Day cultural event for the Israeli public will be maintained to celebrate with our friends and partners in Israel the strong and constructive bilateral relationship". Israel's Opposition Leader Yair Lapid stated: "Sending Itamar Ben-Gvir to a gathering of EU ambassadors is a serious professional mistake. The government is embarrassing a large group of friendly countries, jeopardizing future votes in international institutions, and damaging our foreign relations. Last year, after a decade of efforts, we succeeded in signing an economic-political agreement with the European Union that will contribute to the Israeli economy and our foreign relations. Why risk it, and for what? Ben-Gvir is not a legitimate person in the international community (and not really in Israel either), and sometimes you have to be both wise and just and simply send someone else". On 23 February 2023, Defense Minister Gallant signed an agreement assigning governmental powers in the West Bank to a body to be headed by Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who will effectively become the governor of the West Bank, controlling almost all areas of life in the area, including planning, building and infrastructure. Israeli governments have hitherto been careful to keep the occupation as a military government. The temporary holding of power by an occupying military force, pending a negotiated settlement, is a principle of international law – an expression of the prohibition against obtaining sovereignty through conquest that was introduced in the wake of World War II. An editorial in Haaretz noted that the assignment of governmental powers in the West Bank to a civilian governor, alongside the plan to expand the dual justice system so that Israeli law will apply fully to settlers in the West Bank, constitutes de jure annexation of the West Bank. On 26 February 2023, following the 2023 Huwara shooting in which two Israelis were killed by an unidentified attacker, hundreds of Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian town of Huwara and three nearby villages, setting alight hundreds of Palestinian homes (some with people in them), businesses, a school, and numerous vehicles, killing one Palestinian man and injuring 100 others. Bezalel Smotrich subsequently called on Twitter for Huwara to be "wiped out" by the Israeli government. Zvika Fogel MK, of the ultra-nationalist Otzma Yehudit, which forms part of the governing coalition, said that he "looks very favorably upon" the results of the rampage. Members of the coalition proposed an amendment to the Disengagement Law, which would allow Israelis to resettle settlements vacated during the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza and the northern West Bank. The evacuated settlements were considered illegal under international law, according to most countries. The proposal was approved for voting by the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on 9 March 2023, while the committee was still waiting for briefing materials from the NSS, IDF, MFA and Shin Bet, and was passed on 21 March. The US has requested clarification from Israeli ambassador Michael Herzog. A US State Department spokesman stated that "The U.S. strongly urges Israel to refrain from allowing the return of settlers to the area covered by the legislation, consistent with both former Prime Minister Sharon and the current Israeli Government's commitment to the United States," noting that the actions represent a clear violation of undertakings given by the Sharon government to the Bush administration in 2005 and Netanyahu's far-right coalition to the Biden administration the previous week. Minister of Communication Shlomo Karhi had initially intended to cut the funding of the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (also known by its blanket branding Kan) by 400 million shekels – roughly half of its total budget – closing several departments, and privatizing content creation. In response, the Director-General of the European Broadcasting Union, Noel Curran, sent two urgent letters to Netanyahu, expressing his concerns and calling on the Israeli government to "safeguard the independence of our Member KAN and ensure it is allowed to operate in a sustainable way, with funding that is both stable, adequate, fair, and transparent." On 25 January 2023, nine journalist organizations representing some of Kan's competitors issued a statement of concern, acknowledging the "important contribution of public broadcasting in creating a worthy, unbiased and non-prejudicial journalistic platform", and noting that "the existence of the [broadcasting] corporation as a substantial public broadcast organization strengthens media as a whole, adding to the competition in the market rather than weakening it." They also expressed their concern that the "real reason" for the proposal was actually "an attempt to silence voices from which... [the Minister] doesn't always draw satisfaction". The same day, hundreds of journalists, actors and filmmakers protested in Tel Aviv. The proposal was eventually put on hold. On 22 February 2023 it was reported that Prime Minister Netanyahu was attempting to appoint his close associate Yossi Shelley as the deputy to the National Statistician — a highly sensitive position in charge of providing accurate data for decision makers. The appointment of Shelley, who did not possess the required qualifications for the role, was withdrawn following publication. In its daily editorial, Haaretz tied this attempt with the judicial reform: "once they take control of the judiciary, law enforcement and public media, they wish to control the state's data base, the dry numerical data it uses to plan its future". Netanyahu also proposed Avi Simhon for the role, and eventually froze all appointments at the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. Also on 22 February 2023, it was revealed that Yoav Kish, the Minister of Education, was promoting a draft government decision change to the National Library of Israel board of directors which would grant him more power over the institution. In response, the Hebrew University — which owned the library until 2008 – announced that if the draft is accepted, it will withdraw its collections from the library. The university's collections, which according to the university constitute some 80% of the library's collection, include the Agnon archive, the original manuscript of Hatikvah, and the Rothschild Haggadah, the oldest known Haggadah. A group of 300 authors and poets signed an open letter against the move, further noting their objection against "political takeover" of public broadcasting, as well as "any legislation that will castrate the judiciary and damage the democratic foundations of the state of Israel". Several days later, it was reported that a series of donors decided to withhold their donations to the library, totaling some 80 million shekels. On 3 March a petition against the move by 1,500 academics, including Israel Prize laureates, was sent to Kish. The proposal has been seen by some as retribution against Shai Nitzan, the former State Attorney and the library's current rector. On 5 March it was reported that the Legal Advisor to the Ministry of Finance, Asi Messing, was withholding the proposal. According to Messing, the proposal – which was being promoted as part of the Economic Arrangements Law – "was not reviewed... by the qualified personnel in the Ministry of Finance, does not align with any of the common goals of the economic plan, was not agreed to by myself and was not approved by the Attorney General." As of February 2023, the government has been debating several proposals that will significantly weaken the Ministry of Environmental Protection, including reducing the environmental regulation of planning and development and electricity production. One of the main proposals, the transferal of a 3 billion shekel fund meant to finance waste management plants from the Ministry of Environmental Protection to the Ministry of the Interior, was eventually withdrawn. The Minister of Environmental Protection, Idit Silman, has been criticized for using for meeting with climate change denialists, for wasteful and personally-motivated travel on the ministry's expense, for politicizing the role, and for engaging in political activity on the ministry's time. The government has been noted for an unusually high number of dismissals and resignations of senior career civil servants, and for the frequent attempts to replace them with candidates with known political associations, who are often less competent. According to sources, Netanyahu and people in his vicinity are seeking out civil servants who were appointed by the previous government, intent on replacing them with people loyal to him. Governmental nominees for various positions have been criticized for lack of expertise. In addition to the nominee to the position of Deputy National Statistician (see above), the Director General of the Ministry of Finance, Shlomi Heisler; the Director General of the Ministry of Justice, Itamar Donenfeld; and the Director General of Ministry of Transport, Moshe Ben Zaken, have all been criticized for incompetence, lack of familiarity with their Ministries' subject matter, lack of interest in the job, or lack of experience in managing large organizations. It has been reported that in some ministries, senior officials were enacting slowdowns as a means for dealing with the new ministers and director generals. On 28 July the director general of the Ministry of Education resigned, citing as reason the societal "rift". Asaf Zalel, a retired Air Force Brigadier General, was appointed in January. When asked about attempts to appoint his personal friend and attorney to the board of directors of a state-owned company, Minister David Amsalem replied: "that is my job, due to my authority to appoint directors. I put forward people that I know and hold in esteem". Under Minister of Transport Miri Regev, the ministry has either dismissed or lost the heads of the National Public Transport Authority, Israel Airports Authority, National Road Safety Authority, Israel Railways, and several officials in Netivei Israel. The current chair of Netivei Israel is Likud member and Regev associate Yigal Amadi, and the legal counsel is Einav Abuhzira, daughter of a former Likud branch chair. Abuhzira was appointed instead of Elad Berdugo, nephew of Netanyahu surrogate Yaakov Bardugo, after he was disqualified for the role by the Israel Government Companies Authority. In July 2023 the Ministry of Communications, Shlomo Karhi, and the minister in charge of the Israel Government Companies Authority, Dudi Amsalem, deposed the chair of the Israel Postal Company, Michael Vaknin. The chair, who was hired to lead the company's financial recovery after years of operational loss and towards privatization, has gained the support of officials at the Authority and at the Ministry of Finance; nevertheless, the ministers claimed that his performance is inadequate, and nominated in his place Yiftah Ron-Tal, who has known ties to Netanyahu and Smotrich. They also nominated four new directors, two of which have known political associations, and a third who was a witness in Netanyahu's trial. The coalition is allowed to spend a portion of the state's budget on a discretionary basis, meant to coax member parties to reach an agreement on the budget. As of May 2023, the government was pushing an allocation of over 13 billion shekels over two years - almost seven times the amount allocated by the previous government. Most of the funds will be allocated for uses associated with the religious, orthodox and settler communities. The head of the Budget Department at the Ministry of Finance, Yoav Gardos, objected to the allocations, claiming they would exacerbate unemployment in the Orthodox community, which is projected to cost the economy a total of 6.7 trillion shekels in lost produce by 2065. At the onset of the Gaza war and the declaration of a state of national emergency, Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich instructed government agencies to continue with the planned distribution of discretionary funds. Corruption During March 2023, the government was promoting an amendment to the Law on Public Service (Gifts) that would allow Netanyahu to receive donations to fund his legal defense. The amendment follows a decision by the High Court of Justice (HCJ) that forced Netanyahu to refund US$270,000 given to him and his wife by his late cousin, Nathan Mileikowsky, for their legal defense. This is in contrast to past statements by Minister of Justice Yariv Levin, who spoke against the possible conflict of interests that can result from such transactions. The bill was opposed by the Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who stressed that it could "create a real opportunity for governmental corruption", and was eventually withdrawn at the end of March. As of March 2023, the coalition was promoting a bill that would prevent judicial review of ministerial appointments. The bill is intended to prevent the HCJ from reviewing the appointment of the twice-convicted chairman of Shas, Aryeh Deri (convicted of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust), to a ministerial position, after his previous appointment was annulled on grounds of unreasonableness. The bill follows on the heels of another amendment, that relaxed the ban on the appointment of convicted criminals, so that Deri - who was handed a suspended sentence after his second conviction - could be appointed. The bill is opposed by the Attorney General, as well as by the Knesset Legal Adviser, Sagit Afik. Israeli law allows for declaring a Prime Minister (as well as several other high-ranking public officials) to be temporarily or permanently incapacitated, but does not specify the conditions which can lead to a declaration of incapacitation. In the case of the Prime Minister, the authority to do so is given to the Attorney General. In March 2023, the coalition advanced a bill that passes this authority from the Attorney General to the government with the approval of the Knesset committee, and clarified that incapacitation can only result from medical or mental conditions. On 3 January 2024, the Supreme Court ruled by a majority of 6 out of 11 that the validity of the law will be postponed to the next Knesset because the bill in its immediate application is a personal law and is intended to serve a distinct personal purpose. Later, the court rejected a petition regarding the definition of Netanyahu as an incapacitated prime minister due to his ongoing trial and conflict of interests. Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:EditPage/Template:Israeli_Cabinet] | [TOKENS: 1446] |
Editing Template:Israeli Cabinet Copy and paste: – — ° ′ ″ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − × ÷ ← → · § Sign your posts on talk pages: ~~~~ Cite your sources: <ref></ref> {{}} {{{}}} | [] [[]] [[Category:]] #REDIRECT [[]] <s></s> <sup></sup> <sub></sub> <code></code> <pre></pre> <blockquote></blockquote> <ref></ref> <ref name="" /> {{Reflist}} <references /> <includeonly></includeonly> <noinclude></noinclude> {{DEFAULTSORT:}} <nowiki></nowiki> <!-- --> <span class="plainlinks"></span> Symbols: ~ | ¡ ¿ † ‡ ↔ ↑ ↓ • ¶ # ∞ ‹› «» ¤ ₳ ฿ ₵ ¢ ₡ ₢ $ ₫ ₯ € ₠ ₣ ƒ ₴ ₭ ₤ ℳ ₥ ₦ ₧ ₰ £ ៛ ₨ ₪ ৳ ₮ ₩ ¥ ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ 𝄫 ♭ ♮ ♯ 𝄪 © ¼ ½ ¾ Latin: A a Á á À à  â Ä ä Ǎ ǎ Ă ă Ā ā à ã Å å Ą ą Æ æ Ǣ ǣ B b C c Ć ć Ċ ċ Ĉ ĉ Č č Ç ç D d Ď ď Đ đ Ḍ ḍ Ð ð E e É é È è Ė ė Ê ê Ë ë Ě ě Ĕ ĕ Ē ē Ẽ ẽ Ę ę Ẹ ẹ Ɛ ɛ Ǝ ǝ Ə ə F f G g Ġ ġ Ĝ ĝ Ğ ğ Ģ ģ H h Ĥ ĥ Ħ ħ Ḥ ḥ I i İ ı Í í Ì ì Î î Ï ï Ǐ ǐ Ĭ ĭ Ī ī Ĩ ĩ Į į Ị ị J j Ĵ ĵ K k Ķ ķ L l Ĺ ĺ Ŀ ŀ Ľ ľ Ļ ļ Ł ł Ḷ ḷ Ḹ ḹ M m Ṃ ṃ N n Ń ń Ň ň Ñ ñ Ņ ņ Ṇ ṇ Ŋ ŋ O o Ó ó Ò ò Ô ô Ö ö Ǒ ǒ Ŏ ŏ Ō ō Õ õ Ǫ ǫ Ọ ọ Ő ő Ø ø Œ œ Ɔ ɔ P p Q q R r Ŕ ŕ Ř ř Ŗ ŗ Ṛ ṛ Ṝ ṝ S s Ś ś Ŝ ŝ Š š Ş ş Ș ș Ṣ ṣ ß T t Ť ť Ţ ţ Ț ț Ṭ ṭ Þ þ U u Ú ú Ù ù Û û Ü ü Ǔ ǔ Ŭ ŭ Ū ū Ũ ũ Ů ů Ų ų Ụ ụ Ű ű Ǘ ǘ Ǜ ǜ Ǚ ǚ Ǖ ǖ V v W w Ŵ ŵ X x Y y Ý ý Ŷ ŷ Ÿ ÿ Ỹ ỹ Ȳ ȳ Z z Ź ź Ż ż Ž ž ß Ð ð Þ þ Ŋ ŋ Ə ə Greek: Ά ά Έ έ Ή ή Ί ί Ό ό Ύ ύ Ώ ώ Α α Β β Γ γ Δ δ Ε ε Ζ ζ Η η Θ θ Ι ι Κ κ Λ λ Μ μ Ν ν Ξ ξ Ο ο Π π Ρ ρ Σ σ ς Τ τ Υ υ Φ φ Χ χ Ψ ψ Ω ω {{Polytonic|}} Cyrillic: А а Б б В в Г г Ґ ґ Ѓ ѓ Д д Ђ ђ Е е Ё ё Є є Ж ж З з Ѕ ѕ И и І і Ї ї Й й Ј ј К к Ќ ќ Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с Т т Ћ ћ У у Ў ў Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я ́ IPA: t̪ d̪ ʈ ɖ ɟ ɡ ɢ ʡ ʔ ɸ β θ ð ʃ ʒ ɕ ʑ ʂ ʐ ç ʝ ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ ɦ ɱ ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ ʋ ɹ ɻ ɰ ʙ ⱱ ʀ ɾ ɽ ɫ ɬ ɮ ɺ ɭ ʎ ʟ ɥ ʍ ɧ ʼ ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ ɨ ʉ ɯ ɪ ʏ ʊ ø ɘ ɵ ɤ ə ɚ ɛ œ ɜ ɝ ɞ ʌ ɔ æ ɐ ɶ ɑ ɒ ʰ ʱ ʷ ʲ ˠ ˤ ⁿ ˡ ˈ ˌ ː ˑ ̪ {{IPA|}} Wikidata entities used in this page Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page (help): |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaurus] | [TOKENS: 3474] |
Contents Centaurus Centaurus (/sɛnˈtɔːrəs, -ˈtɑːr-/ sen-TOR-əss, -TAR-) is a bright constellation in the southern sky. One of the largest constellations, Centaurus was included among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations. In Greek mythology, Centaurus represents a centaur; a creature that is half human, half horse (another constellation named after a centaur is one from the zodiac: Sagittarius). Notable stars include Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to the Solar System, its neighbour in the sky Beta Centauri, and HR 5171, one of the largest stars yet discovered. The constellation also contains Omega Centauri, the brightest globular cluster as visible from Earth and the largest identified in the Milky Way, possibly a remnant of a dwarf galaxy. Notable features Centaurus is a large constellation with many bright stars, two stars brighter than magnitude 1, and a number of the best-known deep-sky objects, although the Milky Way does not lie within its borders. Centaurus contains several very bright stars. Its alpha and beta stars are used as "southern pointer stars" to help observers find the constellation Crux. Centaurus has 281 stars above magnitude 6.5, meaning that they are visible to the unaided eye, the most of any constellation. Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to the Sun, has a high proper motion; it will be a mere half-degree from Beta Centauri in approximately 4000 years. Alpha Centauri is a triple star system composed of a binary system orbited by Proxima Centauri, currently the nearest star to the Sun. Traditionally called Rigil Kentaurus (from Arabic رجل قنطورس, meaning "foot of the centaur") or Toliman (from Arabic الظليمين meaning "two male ostriches"), the system has an overall magnitude of −0.28 and is 4.4 light-years from Earth. The primary and secondary are both yellow-hued stars; the first is of magnitude −0.01 and the second: 1.35. Proxima, the tertiary star, is a red dwarf of magnitude 11.0; it appears almost 2 degrees away from the close pairing of Alpha and has a period of approximately one million years. Also a flare star, Proxima has minutes-long outbursts where it brightens by over a magnitude. The Alpha couple revolve in 80-year periodicity and will next appear closest as seen from Earth's telescopes in 2037 and 2038, together as they appear to the naked eye they present the third-brightest "star" in the night sky. One other first magnitude star Beta Centauri is in the constellation in a position beyond Proxima and toward the narrow axis of Crux, thus with Alpha forming a far-south limb of the constellation. Also called Hadar and Agena, it is a double star; the primary is a blue-hued giant star of magnitude 0.6, 525 light-years from Earth. The secondary is of magnitude 4.0 and has a modest separation, appearing only under intense magnification due to its distance. The northerly star Theta Centauri, officially named Menkent, is an orange giant star of magnitude 2.06. It is the only bright star of Centaurus that is easily visible from mid-northern latitudes. The next bright object is Gamma Centauri, a binary star which appears to the naked eye at magnitude 2.2. The primary and secondary are both blue-white hued stars of magnitude 2.9; their period is 84 years. Centaurus also has many dimmer double stars and binary stars. 3 Centauri is a double star with a blue-white hued primary of magnitude 4.5 and a secondary of magnitude 6.0. The primary is 344 light-years away. Centaurus is home to many variable stars. R Centauri is a Mira variable star with a minimum magnitude of 11.8 and a maximum magnitude of 5.3; it is about 1,250 light-years from Earth and has a period of 18 months. V810 Centauri is a semiregular variable. BPM 37093 is a white dwarf star whose carbon atoms are thought to have formed a crystalline structure. Since diamond also consists of carbon arranged in a crystalline lattice (though of a different configuration), scientists have nicknamed this star "Lucy" after the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." PDS 70, (V1032 Centauri) a low mass T Tauri star is found in the constellation Centaurus. In July 2018 astronomers captured the first conclusive image of a protoplanetary disk containing a nascent exoplanet, named PDS 70b. ω Centauri (NGC 5139), despite being listed as the constellation's "omega" star, is in fact a naked-eye globular cluster, 17,000 light-years away with a diameter of 150 light-years. It is the largest and brightest globular cluster in the Milky Way; at ten times the size of the next-largest cluster, it has a magnitude of 3.7. It is also the most luminous globular cluster in the Milky Way, at over one million solar luminosities. Omega Centauri is classified as a Shapley class VIII cluster, which means that its center is loosely concentrated. It is also one of only two globular clusters to be given a stellar designation; in its case a Bayer letter. The other is 47 Tucanae (Xi Tucanae), which has a Flamsteed number. Omega Centauri contains several million stars, most of which are yellow dwarf stars, but also possesses red giants and blue-white stars; the stars have an average age of 12 billion years. This has prompted suspicion that Omega Centauri was the core of a dwarf galaxy that had been absorbed by the Milky Way. Omega Centauri was determined to be nonstellar in 1677 by the English astronomer Edmond Halley, though it was visible as a star to the ancients. Its status as a globular cluster was determined by James Dunlop in 1827. To the unaided eye, Omega Centauri appears fuzzy and is obviously non-circular; it is approximately half a degree in diameter, the same size as the full Moon. Centaurus is also home to open clusters. NGC 3766 is an open cluster 6,300 light-years from Earth that is visible to the unaided eye. It contains approximately 100 stars, the brightest of which are 7th magnitude. NGC 5460 is another naked-eye open cluster, 2,300 light-years from Earth, that has an overall magnitude of 6 and contains approximately 40 stars. There is one bright planetary nebula in Centaurus, NGC 3918, also known as the Blue Planetary. It has an overall magnitude of 8.0 and a central star of magnitude 11.0; it is 2600 light-years from Earth. The Blue Planetary was discovered by John Herschel and named for its color's similarity to Uranus, though the nebula is apparently three times larger than the planet. Centaurus is rich in galaxies as well. NGC 4622 is a face-on spiral galaxy located 200 million light-years from Earth (redshift 0.0146). Its spiral arms wind in both directions, which makes it nearly impossible for astronomers to determine the rotation of the galaxy. Astronomers theorize that a collision with a smaller companion galaxy near the core of the main galaxy could have led to the unusual spiral structure. NGC 5253, a peculiar irregular galaxy, is located near the border with Hydra and M83, with which it likely had a close gravitational interaction 1–2 billion years ago. This may have sparked the galaxy's high rate of star formation, which continues today and contributes to its high surface brightness. NGC 5253 includes a large nebula and at least 12 large star clusters. In the eyepiece, it is a small galaxy of magnitude 10 with dimensions of 5 arcminutes by 2 arcminutes and a bright nucleus. NGC 4945 is a spiral galaxy seen edge-on from Earth, 13 million light-years away. It is visible with any amateur telescope, as well as binoculars under good conditions; it has been described as "shaped like a candle flame", being long and thin (16' by 3'). In the eyepiece of a large telescope, its southeastern dust lane becomes visible. Another galaxy is NGC 5102, found by star-hopping from Iota Centauri. In the eyepiece, it appears as an elliptical object 9 arcminutes by 2.5 arcminutes tilted on a southwest–northeast axis. One of the closest active galaxies to Earth is the Centaurus A galaxy, NGC 5128, at 11 million light-years away (redshift 0.00183). It has a supermassive black hole at its core, which expels massive jets of matter that emit radio waves due to synchrotron radiation. Astronomers posit that its dust lanes, not common in elliptical galaxies, are due to a previous merger with another galaxy, probably a spiral galaxy. NGC 5128 appears in the optical spectrum as a fairly large elliptical galaxy with a prominent dust lane. Its overall magnitude is 7.0 and it has been seen under perfect conditions with the naked eye, making it one of the most distant objects visible to the unaided observer. In equatorial and southern latitudes, it is easily found by star hopping from Omega Centauri. In small telescopes, the dust lane is not visible; it begins to appear with about 4 inches of aperture under good conditions. In large amateur instruments, above about 12 inches in aperture, the dust lane's west-northwest to east-southeast direction is easily discerned. Another dim dust lane on the east side of the 12-arcminute-by-15-arcminute galaxy is also visible. ESO 270-17, also called the Fourcade-Figueroa Object, is a low-surface brightness object believed to be the remnants of a galaxy; it does not have a core and is very difficult to observe with an amateur telescope. It measures 7 arcminutes by 1 arcminute. It likely originated as a spiral galaxy and underwent a catastrophic gravitational interaction with Centaurus A around 500 million years ago, stopping its rotation and destroying its structure. NGC 4650A is a polar-ring galaxy 136 million light-years from Earth (redshift 0.01). It has a central core made of older stars that resembles an elliptical galaxy, and an outer ring of young stars that orbits around the core. The plane of the outer ring is distorted, which suggests that NGC 4650A is the result of a galaxy collision about a billion years ago. This galaxy has also been cited in studies of dark matter, because the stars in the outer ring orbit too quickly for their collective mass. This suggests that the galaxy is surrounded by a dark matter halo, which provides the necessary mass. One of the closest galaxy clusters to Earth is the Centaurus Cluster at c. 160 million light-years away, having redshift 0.0114. It has a cooler, denser central region of gas and a hotter, more diffuse outer region. The intracluster medium in the Centaurus Cluster has a high concentration of metals (elements heavier than helium) due to a large number of supernovae. This cluster also possesses a plume of gas whose origin is unknown. History While Centaurus now has a high southern latitude, at the dawn of civilization it was an equatorial constellation. Precession has been slowly shifting it southward for millennia, and it is now close to its maximal southern declination. In a little over 7000 years it will be at maximum visibility for those in the northern hemisphere, visible at times in the year up to quite a high northern latitude. The figure of Centaurus can be traced back to a Babylonian constellation known as the Bison-man (MUL.GUD.ALIM). This being was depicted in two major forms: firstly, as a 4-legged bison with a human head, and secondly, as a being with a man's head and torso attached to the rear legs and tail of a bull or bison. It has been closely associated with the Sun god Utu-Shamash from very early times. By the late 3rd millennium the Bison-man had been replaced by a new constellation, the Wild Boar. The Greeks depicted the constellation as a centaur and gave it its current name. It was mentioned by Eudoxus in the 4th century BC and Aratus in the 3rd century BC. In the 2nd century AD, Claudius Ptolemy catalogued 37 stars in Centaurus, including Alpha Centauri. Large as it is now, in earlier times it was even larger, as the constellation Lupus was treated as an asterism within Centaurus, portrayed in illustrations as an unspecified animal either in the centaur's grasp or impaled on its spear. The Southern Cross, which is now regarded as a separate constellation, was treated by the ancients as a mere asterism formed of the stars composing the centaur's legs. Additionally, what is now the minor constellation Circinus was treated as undefined stars under the centaur's front hooves. According to the Roman poet Ovid (Fasti v.379), the constellation honors the centaur Chiron, who was tutor to many of the earlier Greek heroes including Heracles (Hercules), Theseus, and Jason, the leader of the Argonauts. It is not to be confused with the more warlike centaur represented by the zodiacal constellation Sagittarius. The legend associated with Chiron says that he was accidentally poisoned with an arrow shot by Hercules, and was subsequently placed in the heavens. Equivalents In Chinese astronomy, the stars of Centaurus are found in three areas: the Azure Dragon of the East (東方青龍, Dōng Fāng Qīng Lóng), the Vermillion Bird of the South (南方朱雀, Nán Fāng Zhū Què), and the Southern Asterisms (近南極星區, Jìnnánjíxīngōu). Not all of the stars of Centaurus can be seen from China, and the unseen stars were classified among the Southern Asterisms by Xu Guangqi, based on his study of western star charts. However, most of the brightest stars of Centaurus, including α Centauri, θ Centauri (or Menkent), ε Centauri and η Centauri, can be seen in the Chinese sky. Some Polynesian peoples considered the stars of Centaurus to be a constellation as well. On Pukapuka, Centaurus had two names: Na Mata-o-te-tokolua and Na Lua-mata-o-Wua-ma-Velo. In Tonga, the constellation was called by four names: O-nga-tangata, Tautanga-ufi, Mamangi-Halahu, and Mau-kuo-mau. Alpha and Beta Centauri were not named specifically by the people of Pukapuka or Tonga, but they were named by the people of Hawaii and the Tuamotus. In Hawaii, the name for Alpha Centauri was either Melemele or Ka Maile-hope and the name for Beta Centauri was either Polapola or Ka Maile-mua. In the Tuamotu islands, Alpha was called Na Kuhi and Beta was called Tere. The Pointer (α Centauri and β Centauri) is one of the asterisms used by Bugis sailors for navigation, called bintoéng balué, meaning "the widowed-before-marriage". It is also called bintoéng sallatang meaning "southern star". Namesakes Two United States Navy ships, USS Centaurus (AKA-17) and USS Centaurus (AK-264), were named after Centaurus, the constellation. See also References External links |
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Contents Jews Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים, ISO 259-2: Yehudim, Israeli pronunciation: [jehuˈdim]), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly interrelated, as Judaism is an ethnic religion, though many ethnic Jews do not practice it. Religious Jews regard converts to Judaism as members of the Jewish nation, pursuant to the long-standing conversion process. The Israelites emerged from the pre-existing Canaanite peoples to establish Israel and Judah in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Originally, Jews referred to the inhabitants of the kingdom of Judah and were distinguished from the gentiles and the Samaritans. According to the Hebrew Bible, these inhabitants predominately originate from the tribe of Judah, who were descendants of Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The tribe of Benjamin were another significant demographic in Judah and were considered Jews too. By the late 6th century BCE, Judaism had evolved from the Israelite religion, dubbed Yahwism (for Yahweh) by modern scholars, having a theology that religious Jews believe to be the expression of the Mosaic covenant between God and the Jewish people. After the Babylonian exile, Jews referred to followers of Judaism, descendants of the Israelites, citizens of Judea, or allies of the Judean state. Jewish migration within the Mediterranean region during the Hellenistic period, followed by population transfers, caused by events like the Jewish–Roman wars, gave rise to the Jewish diaspora, consisting of diverse Jewish communities that maintained their sense of Jewish history, identity, and culture. In the following millennia, Jewish diaspora communities coalesced into three major ethnic subdivisions according to where their ancestors settled: the Ashkenazim (Central and Eastern Europe), the Sephardim (Iberian Peninsula), and the Mizrahim (Middle East and North Africa). While these three major divisions account for most of the world's Jews, there are other smaller Jewish groups outside of the three. Prior to World War II, the global Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million, representing around 0.7% of the world's population at that time. During World War II, approximately six million Jews throughout Europe were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany in a genocide known as the Holocaust. Since then, the population has slowly risen again, and as of 2021[update], was estimated to be at 15.2 million by the demographer Sergio Della Pergola or less than 0.2% of the total world population in 2012.[b] Today, over 85% of Jews live in Israel or the United States. Israel, whose population is 73.9% Jewish, is the only country where Jews comprise more than 2.5% of the population. Jews have significantly influenced and contributed to the development and growth of human progress in many fields, both historically and in modern times, including in science and technology, philosophy, ethics, literature, governance, business, art, music, comedy, theatre, cinema, architecture, food, medicine, and religion. Jews founded Christianity and had an indirect but profound influence on Islam. In these ways and others, Jews have played a significant role in the development of Western culture. Name and etymology The term "Jew" is derived from the Hebrew word יְהוּדִי Yehudi, with the plural יְהוּדִים Yehudim. Endonyms in other Jewish languages include the Ladino ג׳ודיו Djudio (plural ג׳ודיוס, Djudios) and the Yiddish ייִד Yid (plural ייִדן Yidn). Though Genesis 29:35 and 49:8 connect "Judah" with the verb yada, meaning "praise", scholars generally agree that "Judah" most likely derives from the name of a Levantine geographic region dominated by gorges and ravines. The gradual ethnonymic shift from "Israelites" to "Jews", regardless of their descent from Judah, although not contained in the Torah, is made explicit in the Book of Esther (4th century BCE) of the Tanakh. Some modern scholars disagree with the conflation, based on the works of Josephus, Philo and Apostle Paul. The English word "Jew" is a derivation of Middle English Gyw, Iewe. The latter was loaned from the Old French giu, which itself evolved from the earlier juieu, which in turn derived from judieu/iudieu which through elision had dropped the letter "d" from the Medieval Latin Iudaeus, which, like the New Testament Greek term Ioudaios, meant both "Jew" and "Judean" / "of Judea". The Greek term was a loan from Aramaic *yahūdāy, corresponding to Hebrew יְהוּדִי Yehudi. Some scholars prefer translating Ioudaios as "Judean" in the Bible since it is more precise, denotes the community's origins and prevents readers from engaging in antisemitic eisegesis. Others disagree, believing that it erases the Jewish identity of Biblical characters such as Jesus. Daniel R. Schwartz distinguishes "Judean" and "Jew". Here, "Judean" refers to the inhabitants of Judea, which encompassed southern Palestine. Meanwhile, "Jew" refers to the descendants of Israelites that adhere to Judaism. Converts are included in the definition. But Shaye J.D. Cohen argues that "Judean" is inclusive of believers of the Judean God and allies of the Judean state. Another scholar, Jodi Magness, wrote the term Ioudaioi refers to a "people of Judahite/Judean ancestry who worshipped the God of Israel as their national deity and (at least nominally) lived according to his laws." The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., يَهُودِيّ yahūdī (sg.), al-yahūd (pl.), in Arabic, "Jude" in German, "judeu" in Portuguese, "Juif" (m.)/"Juive" (f.) in French, "jøde" in Danish and Norwegian, "judío/a" in Spanish, "jood" in Dutch, "żyd" in Polish etc., but derivations of the word "Hebrew" are also in use to describe a Jew, e.g., in Italian (Ebreo), in Persian ("Ebri/Ebrani" (Persian: عبری/عبرانی)) and Russian (Еврей, Yevrey). The German word "Jude" is pronounced [ˈjuːdə], the corresponding adjective "jüdisch" [ˈjyːdɪʃ] (Jewish) is the origin of the word "Yiddish". According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition (2000), It is widely recognized that the attributive use of the noun Jew, in phrases such as Jew lawyer or Jew ethics, is both vulgar and highly offensive. In such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a practice that carries risks of its own. In a sentence such as There are now several Jews on the council, which is unobjectionable, the substitution of a circumlocution like Jewish people or persons of Jewish background may in itself cause offense for seeming to imply that Jew has a negative connotation when used as a noun. Identity Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation, an ethnicity, a religion, and a culture, making the definition of who is a Jew vary slightly depending on whether a religious or national approach to identity is used.[better source needed] Generally, in modern secular usage, Jews include three groups: people who were born to a Jewish family regardless of whether or not they follow the religion, those who have some Jewish ancestral background or lineage (sometimes including those who do not have strictly matrilineal descent), and people without any Jewish ancestral background or lineage who have formally converted to Judaism and therefore are followers of the religion. In the context of biblical and classical literature, Jews could refer to inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah, or the broader Judean region, allies of the Judean state, or anyone that followed Judaism. Historical definitions of Jewish identity have traditionally been based on halakhic definitions of matrilineal descent, and halakhic conversions. These definitions of who is a Jew date back to the codification of the Oral Torah into the Babylonian Talmud, around 200 CE. Interpretations by Jewish sages of sections of the Tanakh – such as Deuteronomy 7:1–5, which forbade intermarriage between their Israelite ancestors and seven non-Israelite nations: "for that [i.e. giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,] would turn away your children from following me, to serve other gods"[failed verification] – are used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and gentiles. Leviticus 24:10 says that the son in a marriage between a Hebrew woman and an Egyptian man is "of the community of Israel." This is complemented by Ezra 10:2–3, where Israelites returning from Babylon vow to put aside their gentile wives and their children. A popular theory is that the rape of Jewish women in captivity brought about the law of Jewish identity being inherited through the maternal line, although scholars challenge this theory citing the Talmudic establishment of the law from the pre-exile period. Another argument is that the rabbis changed the law of patrilineal descent to matrilineal descent due to the widespread rape of Jewish women by Roman soldiers. Since the anti-religious Haskalah movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries, halakhic interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged. According to historian Shaye J. D. Cohen, the status of the offspring of mixed marriages was determined patrilineally in the Bible. He brings two likely explanations for the change in Mishnaic times: first, the Mishnah may have been applying the same logic to mixed marriages as it had applied to other mixtures (Kil'ayim). Thus, a mixed marriage is forbidden as is the union of a horse and a donkey, and in both unions the offspring are judged matrilineally. Second, the Tannaim may have been influenced by Roman law, which dictated that when a parent could not contract a legal marriage, offspring would follow the mother. Rabbi Rivon Krygier follows a similar reasoning, arguing that Jewish descent had formerly passed through the patrilineal descent and the law of matrilineal descent had its roots in the Roman legal system. Origins The prehistory and ethnogenesis of the Jews are closely intertwined with archaeology, biology, historical textual records, mythology, and religious literature. The ethnic origin of the Jews lie in the Israelites, a confederation of Iron Age Semitic-speaking tribes that inhabited a part of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods. Modern Jews are named after and also descended from the southern Israelite Kingdom of Judah. Gary A. Rendsburg links the early Canaanite nomadic pastoralists confederation to the Shasu known to the Egyptians around the 15th century BCE. According to the Hebrew Bible narrative, Jewish history begins with the Biblical patriarchs such as Abraham, his son Isaac, Isaac's son Jacob, and the Biblical matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel, who lived in Canaan. The twelve sons of Jacob subsequently gave birth to the Twelve Tribes. Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacob's son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. Jacob's descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus, led by Moses. Afterwards, the Israelites conquered Canaan under Moses' successor Joshua, and went through the period of the Biblical judges after the death of Joshua. Through the mediation of Samuel, the Israelites were subject to a king, Saul, who was succeeded by David and then Solomon, after whom the United Monarchy ended and was split into a separate Kingdom of Israel and a Kingdom of Judah. The Kingdom of Judah is described as comprising the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and partially, Levi. They later assimilated remnants of other tribes who migrated there from the northern Kingdom of Israel. In the extra-biblical record, the Israelites become visible as a people between 1200 and 1000 BCE. There is well accepted archeological evidence referring to "Israel" in the Merneptah Stele, which dates to about 1200 BCE, and in the Mesha stele from 840 BCE. It is debated whether a period like that of the Biblical judges occurred and if there ever was a United Monarchy. There is further disagreement about the earliest existence of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their extent and power. Historians agree that a Kingdom of Israel existed by c. 900 BCE,: 169–95 there is a consensus that a Kingdom of Judah existed by c. 700 BCE at least, and recent excavations in Khirbet Qeiyafa have provided strong evidence for dating the Kingdom of Judah to the 10th century BCE. In 587 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II, King of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, besieged Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple and deported parts of the Judahite population. Scholars disagree regarding the extent to which the Bible should be accepted as a historical source for early Israelite history. Rendsburg states that there are two approximately equal groups of scholars who debate the historicity of the biblical narrative, the minimalists who largely reject it, and the maximalists who largely accept it, with the minimalists being the more vocal of the two. Some of the leading minimalists reframe the biblical account as constituting the Israelites' inspiring national myth narrative, suggesting that according to the modern archaeological and historical account, the Israelites and their culture did not overtake the region by force, but instead branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion of Yahwism centered on Yahweh, one of the gods of the Canaanite pantheon. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of cultic practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group, setting them apart from other Canaanites. According to Dever, modern archaeologists have largely discarded the search for evidence of the biblical narrative surrounding the patriarchs and the exodus. According to the maximalist position, the modern archaeological record independently points to a narrative which largely agrees with the biblical account. This narrative provides a testimony of the Israelites as a nomadic people known to the Egyptians as belonging to the Shasu. Over time these nomads left the desert and settled on the central mountain range of the land of Canaan, in simple semi-nomadic settlements in which pig bones are notably absent. This population gradually shifted from a tribal lifestyle to a monarchy. While the archaeological record of the ninth century BCE provides evidence for two monarchies, one in the south under a dynasty founded by a figure named David with its capital in Jerusalem, and one in the north under a dynasty founded by a figure named Omri with its capital in Samaria. It also points to an early monarchic period in which these regions shared material culture and religion, suggesting a common origin. Archaeological finds also provide evidence for the later cooperation of these two kingdoms in their coalition against Aram, and for their destructions by the Assyrians and later by the Babylonians. Genetic studies on Jews show that most Jews worldwide bear a common genetic heritage which originates in the Middle East, and that they share certain genetic traits with other Gentile peoples of the Fertile Crescent. The genetic composition of different Jewish groups shows that Jews share a common gene pool dating back four millennia, as a marker of their common ancestral origin. Despite their long-term separation, Jewish communities maintained their unique commonalities, propensities, and sensibilities in culture, tradition, and language. History The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele, which dates to around 1200 BCE. The majority of scholars agree that this text refers to the Israelites, a group that inhabited the central highlands of Canaan, where archaeological evidence shows that hundreds of small settlements were constructed between the 12th and 10th centuries BCE. The Israelites differentiated themselves from neighboring peoples through various distinct characteristics including religious practices, prohibition on intermarriage, and an emphasis on genealogy and family history. In the 10th century BCE, two neighboring Israelite kingdoms—the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah—emerged. Since their inception, they shared ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious characteristics despite a complicated relationship. Israel, with its capital mostly in Samaria, was larger and wealthier, and soon developed into a regional power. In contrast, Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem, was less prosperous and covered a smaller, mostly mountainous territory. However, while in Israel the royal succession was often decided by a military coup d'état, resulting in several dynasty changes, political stability in Judah was much greater, as it was ruled by the House of David for the whole four centuries of its existence. Scholars also describe Biblical Jews as a 'proto-nation', in the modern nationalist sense, comparable to classical Greeks, the Gauls and the British Celts. Around 720 BCE, Kingdom of Israel was destroyed when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which came to dominate the ancient Near East. Under the Assyrian resettlement policy, a significant portion of the northern Israelite population was exiled to Mesopotamia and replaced by immigrants from the same region. During the same period, and throughout the 7th century BCE, the Kingdom of Judah, now under Assyrian vassalage, experienced a period of prosperity and witnessed a significant population growth. This prosperity continued until the Neo-Assyrian king Sennacherib devastated the region of Judah in response to a rebellion in the area, ultimately halting at Jerusalem. Later in the same century, the Assyrians were defeated by the rising Neo-Babylonian Empire, and Judah became its vassal. In 587 BCE, following a revolt in Judah, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, putting an end to the kingdom. The majority of Jerusalem's residents, including the kingdom's elite, were exiled to Babylon. According to the Book of Ezra, the Persian Cyrus the Great ended the Babylonian exile in 538 BCE, the year after he captured Babylon. The exile ended with the return under Zerubbabel the Prince (so called because he was a descendant of the royal line of David) and Joshua the Priest (a descendant of the line of the former High Priests of the Temple) and their construction of the Second Temple circa 521–516 BCE. As part of the Persian Empire, the former Kingdom of Judah became the province of Judah (Yehud Medinata), with a smaller territory and a reduced population. Judea was under control of the Achaemenids until the fall of their empire in c. 333 BCE to Alexander the Great. After several centuries under foreign imperial rule, the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire resulted in an independent Hasmonean kingdom, under which the Jews once again enjoyed political independence for a period spanning from 110 to 63 BCE. Under Hasmonean rule the boundaries of their kingdom were expanded to include not only the land of the historical kingdom of Judah, but also the Galilee and Transjordan. In the beginning of this process the Idumeans, who had infiltrated southern Judea after the destruction of the First Temple, were converted en masse. In 63 BCE, Judea was conquered by the Romans. From 37 BCE to 6 CE, the Romans allowed the Jews to maintain some degree of independence by installing the Herodian dynasty as vassal kings. However, Judea eventually came directly under Roman control and was incorporated into the Roman Empire as the province of Judaea. The Jewish–Roman wars, a series of failed uprisings against Roman rule during the first and second centuries CE, had profound and devastating consequences for the Jewish population of Judaea. The First Jewish–Roman War (66–73/74 CE) culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple, after which the significantly diminished Jewish population was stripped of political autonomy. A few generations later, the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE) erupted in response to Roman plans to rebuild Jerusalem as a Roman colony, and, possibly, to restrictions on circumcision. Its violent suppression by the Romans led to the near-total depopulation of Judea, and the demographic and cultural center of Jewish life shifted to Galilee. Jews were subsequently banned from residing in Jerusalem and the surrounding area, and the province of Judaea was renamed Syria Palaestina. These developments effectively ended Jewish efforts to restore political sovereignty in the region for nearly two millennia. Similar upheavals impacted the Jewish communities in the empire's eastern provinces during the Diaspora Revolt (115–117 CE), leading to the near-total destruction of Jewish diaspora communities in Libya, Cyprus and Egypt, including the highly influential community in Alexandria. The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE brought profound changes to Judaism. With the Temple's central place in Jewish worship gone, religious practices shifted towards prayer, Torah study (including Oral Torah), and communal gatherings in synagogues. Judaism also lost much of its sectarian nature.: 69 Two of the three main sects that flourished during the late Second Temple period, namely the Sadducees and Essenes, eventually disappeared, while Pharisaic beliefs became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis of Rabbinic Judaism, which emerged as the prevailing form of Judaism since late antiquity. The Jewish diaspora existed well before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and had been ongoing for centuries, with the dispersal driven by both forced expulsions and voluntary migrations. In Mesopotamia, a testimony to the beginnings of the Jewish community can be found in Joachin's ration tablets, listing provisions allotted to the exiled Judean king and his family by Nebuchadnezzar II, and further evidence are the Al-Yahudu tablets, dated to the 6th–5th centuries BCE and related to the exiles from Judea arriving after the destruction of the First Temple, though there is ample evidence for the presence of Jews in Babylonia even from 626 BCE. In Egypt, the documents from Elephantine reveal the trials of a community founded by a Persian Jewish garrison at two fortresses on the frontier during the 5th–4th centuries BCE, and according to Josephus the Jewish community in Alexandria existed since the founding of the city in the 4th century BCE by Alexander the Great. By 200 BCE, there were well established Jewish communities both in Egypt and Mesopotamia ("Babylonia" in Jewish sources) and in the two centuries that followed, Jewish populations were also present in Asia Minor, Greece, Macedonia, Cyrene, and, beginning in the middle of the first century BCE, in the city of Rome. Later, in the first centuries CE, as a result of the Jewish-Roman Wars, a large number of Jews were taken as captives, sold into slavery, or compelled to flee from the regions affected by the wars, contributing to the formation and expansion of Jewish communities across the Roman Empire as well as in Arabia and Mesopotamia. After the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Jewish population in Judaea—now significantly reduced— made efforts to recover from the revolt's devastating effects, but never fully regained its former strength. Between the second and fourth centuries CE, the region of Galilee emerged as the primary center of Jewish life in Syria Palaestina, experiencing both demographic growth and cultural development. It was during this period that two central rabbinic texts, the Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud, were composed. The Romans recognized the patriarchs—rabbinic sages such as Judah ha-Nasi—as representatives of the Jewish people, granting them a certain degree of autonomy. However, as the Roman Empire gave way to the Christianized Byzantine Empire under Constantine, Jews began to face persecution by both the Church and imperial authorities, Jews came to be persecuted by the church and the authorities, and many immigrated to communities in the diaspora. By the fourth century CE, Jews are believed to have lost their demographic majority in Syria Palaestina. The long-established Jewish community of Mesopotamia, which had been living under Parthian and later Sasanian rule, beyond the confines of the Roman Empire, became an important center of Jewish study as Judea's Jewish population declined. Estimates often place the Babylonian Jewish community of the 3rd to 7th centuries at around one million, making it the largest Jewish diaspora community of that period. Under the political leadership of the exilarch, who was regarded as a royal heir of the House of David, this community had an autonomous status and served as a place of refuge for the Jews of Syria Palaestina. A number of significant Talmudic academies, such as the Nehardea, Pumbedita, and Sura academies, were established in Mesopotamia, and many important Amoraim were active there. The Babylonian Talmud, a centerpiece of Jewish religious law, was compiled in Babylonia in the 3rd to 6th centuries. Jewish diaspora communities are generally described to have coalesced into three major ethnic subdivisions according to where their ancestors settled: the Ashkenazim (initially in the Rhineland and France), the Sephardim (initially in the Iberian Peninsula), and the Mizrahim (Middle East and North Africa). Romaniote Jews, Tunisian Jews, Yemenite Jews, Egyptian Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Bukharan Jews, Mountain Jews, and other groups also predated the arrival of the Sephardic diaspora. During the same period, Jewish communities in the Middle East thrived under Islamic rule, especially in cities like Baghdad, Cairo, and Damascus. In Babylonia, from the 7th to 11th centuries the Pumbedita and Sura academies led the Arab and to an extent the entire Jewish world. The deans and students of said academies defined the Geonic period in Jewish history. Following this period were the Rishonim who lived from the 11th to 15th centuries. Like their European counterparts, Jews in the Middle East and North Africa also faced periods of persecution and discriminatory policies, with the Almohad Caliphate in North Africa and Iberia issuing forced conversion decrees, causing Jews such as Maimonides to seek safety in other regions. Despite experiencing repeated waves of persecution, Ashkenazi Jews in Western Europe worked in a variety of fields, making an impact on their communities' economy and societies. In Francia, for example, figures like Isaac Judaeus and Armentarius occupied prominent social and economic positions. Francia also witnessed the development of a sophisticated tradition of biblical commentary, as exemplified by Rashi and the tosafists. In 1144, the first documented blood libel occurred in Norwich, England, marking an escalation in the pattern of discrimination and violence that Jews had already been subjected to throughout medieval Europe. During the 12th and 13th centuries, Jews faced frequent antisemitic legislation - including laws prescribing distinctive dress - alongside segregation, repeated blood libels, pogroms, and massacres such as the Rhineland Massacres (1066). The Jews of the Holy Roman Empire were designated Servi camerae regis (“servants of the imperial chamber”) by Frederick II, a status that afforded limited protection while simultaneously entangling them in the political struggles between the emperor and the German principalities and cities. Persecution intensified during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when Jews were accused of poisoning wells and many communities were destroyed. These pressures, combined with major expulsions such as that from England in 1290, gradually pushed Ashkenazi Jewish populations eastward into Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. One of the largest Jewish communities of the Middle Ages was in the Iberian Peninsula, which for a time contained the largest Jewish population in Europe. Iberian Jewry endured discrimination under the Visigoths but saw its fortunes improve under Umayyad rule and later the Taifa kingdoms. During this period, the Jews of Muslim Spain entered a "Golden Age" marked by achievements in Hebrew poetry and literature, religious scholarship, grammar, medicine and science, with leading figures including Hasdai ibn Shaprut, Judah Halevi, Moses ibn Ezra and Solomon ibn Gabirol. Jews also rose to high office, most notably Samuel ibn Naghrillah, a scholar and poet who served as grand vizier and military commander of Granada. The Golden Age ended with the rise of the radical Almoravid and Almohad dynasties, whose persecutions drove many Jews from Iberia (including Maimonides), together with the advancing Reconquista. In 1391, widespread pogroms swept across Spain, leaving thousands dead and forcing mass conversions. The Spanish Inquisition was later established to pursue, torture and execute conversos who continued to practice Judaism in secret, while public disputations were staged to discredit Judaism. In 1492, after the Reconquista, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon decreed the expulsion of all Jews who refused conversion, sending an estimated 200,000 into exile in Portugal, Italy, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. In 1497, Portugal's Jews, about 30,000, were formally ordered expelled but instead were forcibly converted to retain their economic role. In 1498, some 3,500 Jews were expelled from Navarre. Many converts outwardly adopted Christianity while secretly preserving Jewish practices, becoming crypto-Jews (also known as marranos or anusim), who remained targets of the various Inquisitions for centuries. Following the expulsions from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s, Jewish exiles dispersed across the Mediterranean, Europe, and North Africa. Many settled in the Ottoman Empire—which, replacing the Iberian Peninsula, became home to the world's largest Jewish population—where new communities developed in Anatolia, the Balkans, and the Land of Israel. Cities such as Istanbul and Thessaloniki grew into major Jewish centers, while in 16th-century Safed a flourishing spiritual life took shape. There, Solomon Alkabetz, Moses Cordovero, and Isaac Luria developed influential new schools of Kabbalah, giving powerful impetus to Jewish mysticism, and Joseph Karo composed the Shulchan Aruch, which became a cornerstone of Jewish law. In the 17th century, Portuguese conversos who returned to Judaism and engaged in trade and banking helped establish Amsterdam as a prosperous Jewish center, while also forming communities in cities such as Antwerp and London. This period also witnessed waves of messianic fervor, most notably the rise of the Sabbatean movement in the 1660s, led by Sabbatai Zvi of İzmir, which reverberated throughout the Jewish world. In Eastern Europe, Poland–Lithuania became the principal center of Ashkenazi Jewry, eventually becoming home to the largest Jewish population in the world. Jewish life flourished there from in the early modern era, supported by relative stability, economic opportunity, and strong communal institutions. The mid-17th century brought devastation with the Cossack uprisings in Ukraine, which reversed migration flows and sent refugees westward, yet Poland–Lithuania remained the demographic and cultural heartland of Ashkenazic Jewry. Following the partitions of Poland, most of its Jews came under Russian rule and were confined to the "Pale of Settlement." The 18th century also witnessed new religious and intellectual currents. Hasidism, founded by Baal Shem Tov, emphasized mysticism and piety, while its opponents, the Misnagdim ("opponents") led by the Vilna Gaon, defended rabbinic scholarship and tradition. In Western Europe, during the 1760s and 1770s, the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) emerged in German-speaking lands, where figures such as Moses Mendelssohn promoted secular learning, vernacular literacy, and integration into European society. Elsewhere, Jews began to be re-admitted to Western Europe, including England, where Menasseh ben Israel petitioned Oliver Cromwell for their return. In the Americas, Jews of Sephardic descent first arrived as conversos in Spanish and Portuguese colonies, where many faced trial by Inquisition tribunals for "judaizing." A more durable presence began in Dutch Brazil, where Jews openly practiced their religion and established the first synagogues in the New World, before the Portuguese reconquest forced their dispersal to Amsterdam, the Caribbean, and North America. Sephardic communities took root in Curaçao, Suriname, Jamaica, and Barbados, later joined by Ashkenazi migrants. In North America, Jews were present from the mid-17th century, with New Amsterdam hosting the first organized congregation in 1654. By the time of the American Revolution, small communities in New York, Newport, Philadelphia, Savannah, and Charleston played an active role in the struggle for independence. In the late 19th century, Jews in Western Europe gradually achieved legal emancipation, though social acceptance remained limited by persistent antisemitism and rising nationalism. In Eastern Europe, particularly within the Russian Empire's Pale of Settlement, Jews faced mounting legal restrictions and recurring pogroms. From this environment emerged Zionism, a national revival movement originating in Central and Eastern Europe that sought to re-establish a Jewish polity in the Land of Israel as a means of returning the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland and ending centuries of exile and persecution. This led to waves of Jewish migration to Ottoman-controlled Palestine. Theodor Herzl, who is considered the father of political Zionism, offered his vision of a future Jewish state in his 1896 book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State); a year later, he presided over the First Zionist Congress. The antisemitism that inflicted Jewish communities in Europe also triggered a mass exodus of 2.8 million Jews to the United States between 1881 and 1924. Despite this, some Jews of Europe and the United States were able to make great achievements in various fields of science and culture. Among the most influential from this period are Albert Einstein in physics, Sigmund Freud in psychology, Franz Kafka in literature, and Irving Berlin in music. Many Nobel Prize winners at this time were Jewish, as is still the case. When Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933, the situation for Jews deteriorated rapidly as a direct result of Nazi policies. Many Jews fled from Europe to Mandatory Palestine, the United States, and the Soviet Union as a result of racial anti-Semitic laws, economic difficulties, and the fear of an impending war. World War II started in 1939, and by 1941, Hitler occupied almost all of Europe. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Final Solution—an extensive, organized effort with an unprecedented scope intended to annihilate the Jewish people—began, and resulted in the persecution and murder of Jews in Europe and North Africa. In Poland, three million were murdered in gas chambers in all concentration camps combined, with one million at the Auschwitz camp complex alone. The Holocaust is the name given to this genocide, in which six million Jews in total were systematically murdered. Before and during the Holocaust, enormous numbers of Jews immigrated to Mandatory Palestine. In 1944, the Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine began with the aim of gaining full independence from the United Kingdom. On 14 May 1948, upon the termination of the mandate, David Ben-Gurion declared the creation of the State of Israel, a Jewish and democratic state. Immediately afterwards, all neighboring Arab states invaded, and were resisted by the newly formed Israel Defense Forces. In 1949, the war ended and Israel started building its state and absorbing waves of Aliyah, granting citizenship to Jews all over the world via the Law of Return passed in 1950. However, both the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and wider Arab–Israeli conflict continue to this day. Culture The Jewish people and the religion of Judaism are strongly interrelated. Converts to Judaism have a status within the Jewish people equal to those born into it. However, converts who go on to practice no Judaism are likely to be viewed with skepticism. Mainstream Judaism does not proselytize, and conversion is considered a difficult task. A significant portion of conversions are undertaken by children of mixed marriages, or would-be or current spouses of Jews. The Hebrew Bible, a religious interpretation of the traditions and early history of the Jews, established the first of the Abrahamic religions, which are now practiced by 54 percent of the world. Judaism guides its adherents in both practice and belief, and has been called not only a religion, but also a "way of life," which has made drawing a clear distinction between Judaism, Jewish culture, and Jewish identity rather difficult. Throughout history, in eras and places as diverse as the ancient Hellenic world, in Europe before and after The Age of Enlightenment (see Haskalah), in Islamic Spain and Portugal, in North Africa and the Middle East, India, China, or the contemporary United States and Israel, cultural phenomena have developed that are in some sense characteristically Jewish without being at all specifically religious. Some factors in this come from within Judaism, others from the interaction of Jews or specific communities of Jews with their surroundings, and still others from the inner social and cultural dynamics of the community, as opposed to from the religion itself. This phenomenon has led to considerably different Jewish cultures unique to their own communities. Hebrew is the liturgical language of Judaism (termed lashon ha-kodesh, "the holy tongue"), the language in which most of the Hebrew scriptures (Tanakh) were composed, and the daily speech of the Jewish people for centuries. By the 5th century BCE, Aramaic, a closely related tongue, joined Hebrew as the spoken language in Judea. By the 3rd century BCE, some Jews of the diaspora were speaking Greek. Others, such as in the Jewish communities of Asoristan, known to Jews as Babylonia, were speaking Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages of the Babylonian Talmud. Dialects of these same languages were also used by the Jews of Syria Palaestina at that time.[citation needed] For centuries, Jews worldwide have spoken the local or dominant languages of the regions they migrated to, often developing distinctive dialectal forms or branches that became independent languages. Yiddish is the Judaeo-German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Central Europe. Ladino is the Judaeo-Spanish language developed by Sephardic Jews who migrated to the Iberian Peninsula. Due to many factors, including the impact of the Holocaust on European Jewry, the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, and widespread emigration from other Jewish communities around the world, ancient and distinct Jewish languages of several communities, including Judaeo-Georgian, Judaeo-Arabic, Judaeo-Berber, Krymchak, Judaeo-Malayalam and many others, have largely fallen out of use. For over sixteen centuries Hebrew was used almost exclusively as a liturgical language, and as the language in which most books had been written on Judaism, with a few speaking only Hebrew on the Sabbath. Hebrew was revived as a spoken language by Eliezer ben Yehuda, who arrived in Palestine in 1881. It had not been used as a mother tongue since Tannaic times. Modern Hebrew is designated as the "State language" of Israel. Despite efforts to revive Hebrew as the national language of the Jewish people, knowledge of the language is not commonly possessed by Jews worldwide and English has emerged as the lingua franca of the Jewish diaspora. Although many Jews once had sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to study the classic literature, and Jewish languages like Yiddish and Ladino were commonly used as recently as the early 20th century, most Jews lack such knowledge today and English has by and large superseded most Jewish vernaculars. The three most commonly spoken languages among Jews today are Hebrew, English, and Russian. Some Romance languages, particularly French and Spanish, are also widely used. Yiddish has been spoken by more Jews in history than any other language, but it is far less used today following the Holocaust and the adoption of Modern Hebrew by the Zionist movement and the State of Israel. In some places, the mother language of the Jewish community differs from that of the general population or the dominant group. For example, in Quebec, the Ashkenazic majority has adopted English, while the Sephardic minority uses French as its primary language. Similarly, South African Jews adopted English rather than Afrikaans. Due to both Czarist and Soviet policies, Russian has superseded Yiddish as the language of Russian Jews, but these policies have also affected neighboring communities. Today, Russian is the first language for many Jewish communities in a number of Post-Soviet states, such as Ukraine and Uzbekistan,[better source needed] as well as for Ashkenazic Jews in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Tajikistan. Although communities in North Africa today are small and dwindling, Jews there had shifted from a multilingual group to a monolingual one (or nearly so), speaking French in Algeria, Morocco, and the city of Tunis, while most North Africans continue to use Arabic or Berber as their mother tongue.[citation needed] There is no single governing body for the Jewish community, nor a single authority with responsibility for religious doctrine. Instead, a variety of secular and religious institutions at the local, national, and international levels lead various parts of the Jewish community on a variety of issues. Today, many countries have a Chief Rabbi who serves as a representative of that country's Jewry. Although many Hasidic Jews follow a certain hereditary Hasidic dynasty, there is no one commonly accepted leader of all Hasidic Jews. Many Jews believe that the Messiah will act a unifying leader for Jews and the entire world. A number of modern scholars of nationalism support the existence of Jewish national identity in antiquity. One of them is David Goodblatt, who generally believes in the existence of nationalism before the modern period. In his view, the Bible, the parabiblical literature and the Jewish national history provide the base for a Jewish collective identity. Although many of the ancient Jews were illiterate (as were their neighbors), their national narrative was reinforced through public readings. The Hebrew language also constructed and preserved national identity. Although it was not widely spoken after the 5th century BCE, Goodblatt states: the mere presence of the language in spoken or written form could invoke the concept of a Jewish national identity. Even if one knew no Hebrew or was illiterate, one could recognize that a group of signs was in Hebrew script. ... It was the language of the Israelite ancestors, the national literature, and the national religion. As such it was inseparable from the national identity. Indeed its mere presence in visual or aural medium could invoke that identity. Anthony D. Smith, an historical sociologist considered one of the founders of the field of nationalism studies, wrote that the Jews of the late Second Temple period provide "a closer approximation to the ideal type of the nation [...] than perhaps anywhere else in the ancient world." He adds that this observation "must make us wary of pronouncing too readily against the possibility of the nation, and even a form of religious nationalism, before the onset of modernity." Agreeing with Smith, Goodblatt suggests omitting the qualifier "religious" from Smith's definition of ancient Jewish nationalism, noting that, according to Smith, a religious component in national memories and culture is common even in the modern era. This view is echoed by political scientist Tom Garvin, who writes that "something strangely like modern nationalism is documented for many peoples in medieval times and in classical times as well," citing the ancient Jews as one of several "obvious examples", alongside the classical Greeks and the Gaulish and British Celts. Fergus Millar suggests that the sources of Jewish national identity and their early nationalist movements in the first and second centuries CE included several key elements: the Bible as both a national history and legal source, the Hebrew language as a national language, a system of law, and social institutions such as schools, synagogues, and Sabbath worship. Adrian Hastings argued that Jews are the "true proto-nation", that through the model of ancient Israel found in the Hebrew Bible, provided the world with the original concept of nationhood which later influenced Christian nations. However, following Jerusalem's destruction in the first century CE, Jews ceased to be a political entity and did not resemble a traditional nation-state for almost two millennia. Despite this, they maintained their national identity through collective memory, religion and sacred texts, even without land or political power, and remained a nation rather than just an ethnic group, eventually leading to the rise of Zionism and the establishment of Israel. Steven Weitzman suggests that Jewish nationalist sentiment in antiquity was encouraged because under foreign rule (Persians, Greeks, Romans) Jews were able to claim that they were an ancient nation. This claim was based on the preservation and reverence of their scriptures, the Hebrew language, the Temple and priesthood, and other traditions of their ancestors. Doron Mendels further observes that the Hasmonean kingdom, one of the few examples of indigenous statehood at its time, significantly reinforced Jewish national consciousness. The memory of this period of independence contributed to the persistent efforts to revive Jewish sovereignty in Judea, leading to the major revolts against Roman rule in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. Demographics Within the world's Jewish population there are distinct ethnic divisions, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, and subsequent independent evolutions. An array of Jewish communities was established by Jewish settlers in various places around the Old World, often at great distances from one another, resulting in effective and often long-term isolation. During the millennia of the Jewish diaspora the communities would develop under the influence of their local environments: political, cultural, natural, and populational. Today, manifestations of these differences among the Jews can be observed in Jewish cultural expressions of each community, including Jewish linguistic diversity, culinary preferences, liturgical practices, religious interpretations, as well as degrees and sources of genetic admixture. Jews are often identified as belonging to one of two major groups: the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim. Ashkenazim are so named in reference to their geographical origins (their ancestors' culture coalesced in the Rhineland, an area historically referred to by Jews as Ashkenaz). Similarly, Sephardim (Sefarad meaning "Spain" in Hebrew) are named in reference their origins in Iberia. The diverse groups of Jews of the Middle East and North Africa are often collectively referred to as Sephardim together with Sephardim proper for liturgical reasons having to do with their prayer rites. A common term for many of these non-Spanish Jews who are sometimes still broadly grouped as Sephardim is Mizrahim (lit. 'easterners' in Hebrew). Nevertheless, Mizrahis and Sepharadim are usually ethnically distinct. Smaller groups include, but are not restricted to, Indian Jews such as the Bene Israel, Bnei Menashe, Cochin Jews, and Bene Ephraim; the Romaniotes of Greece; the Italian Jews ("Italkim" or "Bené Roma"); the Teimanim from Yemen; various African Jews, including most numerously the Beta Israel of Ethiopia; and Chinese Jews, most notably the Kaifeng Jews, as well as various other distinct but now almost extinct communities. The divisions between all these groups are approximate and their boundaries are not always clear. The Mizrahim for example, are a heterogeneous collection of North African, Central Asian, Caucasian, and Middle Eastern Jewish communities that are no closer related to each other than they are to any of the earlier mentioned Jewish groups. In modern usage, however, the Mizrahim are sometimes termed Sephardi due to similar styles of liturgy, despite independent development from Sephardim proper. Thus, among Mizrahim there are Egyptian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Lebanese Jews, Kurdish Jews, Moroccan Jews, Libyan Jews, Syrian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, Iranian Jews, Afghan Jews, and various others. The Teimanim from Yemen are sometimes included, although their style of liturgy is unique and they differ in respect to the admixture found among them to that found in Mizrahim. In addition, there is a differentiation made between Sephardi migrants who established themselves in the Middle East and North Africa after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s and the pre-existing Jewish communities in those regions. Ashkenazi Jews represent the bulk of modern Jewry, with at least 70 percent of Jews worldwide (and up to 90 percent prior to World War II and the Holocaust). As a result of their emigration from Europe, Ashkenazim also represent the overwhelming majority of Jews in the New World continents, in countries such as the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and Brazil. In France, the immigration of Jews from Algeria (Sephardim) has led them to outnumber the Ashkenazim. Only in Israel is the Jewish population representative of all groups, a melting pot independent of each group's proportion within the overall world Jewish population. Y DNA studies tend to imply a small number of founders in an old population whose members parted and followed different migration paths. In most Jewish populations, these male line ancestors appear to have been mainly Middle Eastern. For example, Ashkenazi Jews share more common paternal lineages with other Jewish and Middle Eastern groups than with non-Jewish populations in areas where Jews lived in Eastern Europe, Germany, and the French Rhine Valley. This is consistent with Jewish traditions in placing most Jewish paternal origins in the region of the Middle East. Conversely, the maternal lineages of Jewish populations, studied by looking at mitochondrial DNA, are generally more heterogeneous. Scholars such as Harry Ostrer and Raphael Falk believe this indicates that many Jewish males found new mates from European and other communities in the places where they migrated in the diaspora after fleeing ancient Israel. In contrast, Behar has found evidence that about 40 percent of Ashkenazi Jews originate maternally from just four female founders, who were of Middle Eastern origin. The populations of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish communities "showed no evidence for a narrow founder effect." Subsequent studies carried out by Feder et al. confirmed the large portion of non-local maternal origin among Ashkenazi Jews. Reflecting on their findings related to the maternal origin of Ashkenazi Jews, the authors conclude "Clearly, the differences between Jews and non-Jews are far larger than those observed among the Jewish communities. Hence, differences between the Jewish communities can be overlooked when non-Jews are included in the comparisons." However, a 2025 genetic study on the Ashkenazi Jewish founder population supports the presence of a substantial Near Eastern component in the maternal lineages. Analyses of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) indicate that the core founder lineages, estimated at around 54, likely originated from the Near East, with these founder signatures appearing in multiple copies across the population. While later admixture introduced additional mtDNA lineages, these absorbed lineages are distinguishable from the original founders. The findings are consistent with genome-wide Identity-by-Descent and Lineage Extinction analyses, reinforcing the Near Eastern origin of the Ashkenazi maternal founders. A study showed that 7% of Ashkenazi Jews have the haplogroup G2c, which is mainly found in Pashtuns and on lower scales all major Jewish groups, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Studies of autosomal DNA, which look at the entire DNA mixture, have become increasingly important as the technology develops. They show that Jewish populations have tended to form relatively closely related groups in independent communities, with most in a community sharing significant ancestry in common. For Jewish populations of the diaspora, the genetic composition of Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi Jewish populations show a predominant amount of shared Middle Eastern ancestry. According to Behar, the most parsimonious explanation for this shared Middle Eastern ancestry is that it is "consistent with the historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant" and "the dispersion of the people of ancient Israel throughout the Old World". North African, Italian and others of Iberian origin show variable frequencies of admixture with non-Jewish historical host populations among the maternal lines. In the case of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews (in particular Moroccan Jews), who are closely related, the source of non-Jewish admixture is mainly Southern European, while Mizrahi Jews show evidence of admixture with other Middle Eastern populations. Behar et al. have remarked on a close relationship between Ashkenazi Jews and modern Italians. A 2001 study found that Jews were more closely related to groups of the Fertile Crescent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to their Arab neighbors, whose genetic signature was found in geographic patterns reflective of Islamic conquests. The studies also show that Sephardic Bnei Anusim (descendants of the "anusim" who were forced to convert to Catholicism), which comprise up to 19.8 percent of the population of today's Iberia (Spain and Portugal) and at least 10 percent of the population of Ibero-America (Hispanic America and Brazil), have Sephardic Jewish ancestry within the last few centuries. The Bene Israel and Cochin Jews of India, Beta Israel of Ethiopia, and a portion of the Lemba people of Southern Africa, despite more closely resembling the local populations of their native countries, have also been thought to have some more remote ancient Jewish ancestry. Views on the Lemba have changed and genetic Y-DNA analyses in the 2000s have established a partially Middle-Eastern origin for a portion of the male Lemba population but have been unable to narrow this down further. Although historically, Jews have been found all over the world, in the decades since World War II and the establishment of Israel, they have increasingly concentrated in a small number of countries. In 2021, Israel and the United States together accounted for over 85 percent of the global Jewish population, with approximately 45.3% and 39.6% of the world's Jews, respectively. More than half (51.2%) of world Jewry resides in just ten metropolitan areas. As of 2021, these ten areas were Tel Aviv, New York, Jerusalem, Haifa, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Paris, Washington, and Chicago. The Tel Aviv metro area has the highest percent of Jews among the total population (94.8%), followed by Jerusalem (72.3%), Haifa (73.1%), and Beersheba (60.4%), the balance mostly being Israeli Arabs. Outside Israel, the highest percent of Jews in a metropolitan area was in New York (10.8%), followed by Miami (8.7%), Philadelphia (6.8%), San Francisco (5.1%), Washington (4.7%), Los Angeles (4.7%), Toronto (4.5%), and Baltimore (4.1%). As of 2010, there were nearly 14 million Jews around the world, roughly 0.2% of the world's population at the time. According to the 2007 estimates of The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, the world's Jewish population is 13.2 million. This statistic incorporates both practicing Jews affiliated with synagogues and the Jewish community, and approximately 4.5 million unaffiliated and secular Jews.[citation needed] According to Sergio Della Pergola, a demographer of the Jewish population, in 2021 there were about 6.8 million Jews in Israel, 6 million in the United States, and 2.3 million in the rest of the world. Israel, the Jewish nation-state, is the only country in which Jews make up a majority of the citizens. Israel was established as an independent democratic and Jewish state on 14 May 1948. Of the 120 members in its parliament, the Knesset, as of 2016[update], 14 members of the Knesset are Arab citizens of Israel (not including the Druze), most representing Arab political parties. One of Israel's Supreme Court judges is also an Arab citizen of Israel. Between 1948 and 1958, the Jewish population rose from 800,000 to two million. Currently, Jews account for 75.4 percent of the Israeli population, or 6 million people. The early years of the State of Israel were marked by the mass immigration of Holocaust survivors in the aftermath of the Holocaust and Jews fleeing Arab lands. Israel also has a large population of Ethiopian Jews, many of whom were airlifted to Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Between 1974 and 1979 nearly 227,258 immigrants arrived in Israel, about half being from the Soviet Union. This period also saw an increase in immigration to Israel from Western Europe, Latin America, and North America. A trickle of immigrants from other communities has also arrived, including Indian Jews and others, as well as some descendants of Ashkenazi Holocaust survivors who had settled in countries such as the United States, Argentina, Australia, Chile, and South Africa. Some Jews have emigrated from Israel elsewhere, because of economic problems or disillusionment with political conditions and the continuing Arab–Israeli conflict. Jewish Israeli emigrants are known as yordim. The waves of immigration to the United States and elsewhere at the turn of the 19th century, the founding of Zionism and later events, including pogroms in Imperial Russia (mostly within the Pale of Settlement in present-day Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and eastern Poland), the massacre of European Jewry during the Holocaust, and the founding of the state of Israel, with the subsequent Jewish exodus from Arab lands, all resulted in substantial shifts in the population centers of world Jewry by the end of the 20th century. More than half of the Jews live in the Diaspora (see Population table). Currently, the largest Jewish community outside Israel, and either the largest or second-largest Jewish community in the world, is located in the United States, with 6 million to 7.5 million Jews by various estimates. Elsewhere in the Americas, there are also large Jewish populations in Canada (315,000), Argentina (180,000–300,000), and Brazil (196,000–600,000), and smaller populations in Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Chile, Colombia and several other countries (see History of the Jews in Latin America). According to a 2010 Pew Research Center study, about 470,000 people of Jewish heritage live in Latin America and the Caribbean. Demographers disagree on whether the United States has a larger Jewish population than Israel, with many maintaining that Israel surpassed the United States in Jewish population during the 2000s, while others maintain that the United States still has the largest Jewish population in the world. Currently, a major national Jewish population survey is planned to ascertain whether or not Israel has overtaken the United States in Jewish population. Western Europe's largest Jewish community, and the third-largest Jewish community in the world, can be found in France, home to between 483,000 and 500,000 Jews, the majority of whom are immigrants or refugees from North African countries such as Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia (or their descendants). The United Kingdom has a Jewish community of 292,000. In Eastern Europe, the exact figures are difficult to establish. The number of Jews in Russia varies widely according to whether a source uses census data (which requires a person to choose a single nationality among choices that include "Russian" and "Jewish") or eligibility for immigration to Israel (which requires that a person have one or more Jewish grandparents). According to the latter criteria, the heads of the Russian Jewish community assert that up to 1.5 million Russians are eligible for aliyah. In Germany, the 102,000 Jews registered with the Jewish community are a slowly declining population, despite the immigration of tens of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thousands of Israelis also live in Germany, either permanently or temporarily, for economic reasons. Prior to 1948, approximately 800,000 Jews were living in lands which now make up the Arab world (excluding Israel). Of these, just under two-thirds lived in the French-controlled Maghreb region, 15 to 20 percent in the Kingdom of Iraq, approximately 10 percent in the Kingdom of Egypt and approximately 7 percent in the Kingdom of Yemen. A further 200,000 lived in Pahlavi Iran and the Republic of Turkey. Today, around 26,000 Jews live in Muslim-majority countries, mainly in Turkey (14,200) and Iran (9,100), while Morocco (2,000), Tunisia (1,000), and the United Arab Emirates (500) host the largest communities in the Arab world. A small-scale exodus had begun in many countries in the early decades of the 20th century, although the only substantial aliyah came from Yemen and Syria. The exodus from Arab and Muslim countries took place primarily from 1948. The first large-scale exoduses took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily in Iraq, Yemen and Libya, with up to 90 percent of these communities leaving within a few years. The peak of the exodus from Egypt occurred in 1956. The exodus in the Maghreb countries peaked in the 1960s. Lebanon was the only Arab country to see a temporary increase in its Jewish population during this period, due to an influx of refugees from other Arab countries, although by the mid-1970s the Jewish community of Lebanon had also dwindled. In the aftermath of the exodus wave from Arab states, an additional migration of Iranian Jews peaked in the 1980s when around 80 percent of Iranian Jews left the country.[citation needed] Outside Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and the rest of Asia, there are significant Jewish populations in Australia (112,500) and South Africa (70,000). There is also a 6,800-strong community in New Zealand. Since at least the time of the Ancient Greeks, a proportion of Jews have assimilated into the wider non-Jewish society around them, by either choice or force, ceasing to practice Judaism and losing their Jewish identity. Assimilation took place in all areas, and during all time periods, with some Jewish communities, for example the Kaifeng Jews of China, disappearing entirely. The advent of the Jewish Enlightenment of the 18th century (see Haskalah) and the subsequent emancipation of the Jewish populations of Europe and America in the 19th century, accelerated the situation, encouraging Jews to increasingly participate in, and become part of, secular society. The result has been a growing trend of assimilation, as Jews marry non-Jewish spouses and stop participating in the Jewish community. Rates of interreligious marriage vary widely: In the United States, it is just under 50 percent; in the United Kingdom, around 53 percent; in France, around 30 percent; and in Australia and Mexico, as low as 10 percent. In the United States, only about a third of children from intermarriages affiliate with Jewish religious practice. The result is that most countries in the Diaspora have steady or slightly declining religiously Jewish populations as Jews continue to assimilate into the countries in which they live.[citation needed] The Jewish people and Judaism have experienced various persecutions throughout their history. During Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, the Roman Empire (in its later phases known as the Byzantine Empire) repeatedly repressed the Jewish population, first by ejecting them from their homelands during the pagan Roman era and later by officially establishing them as second-class citizens during the Christian Roman era. According to James Carroll, "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million." Later in medieval Western Europe, further persecutions of Jews by Christians occurred, notably during the Crusades—when Jews all over Germany were massacred—and in a series of expulsions from the Kingdom of England, Germany, and France. Then there occurred the largest expulsion of all, when Spain and Portugal, after the Reconquista (the Catholic Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula), expelled both unbaptized Sephardic Jews and the ruling Muslim Moors. In the Papal States, which existed until 1870, Jews were required to live only in specified neighborhoods called ghettos. Islam and Judaism have a complex relationship. Traditionally Jews and Christians living in Muslim lands, known as dhimmis, were allowed to practice their religions and administer their internal affairs, but they were subject to certain conditions. They had to pay the jizya (a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-Muslim males) to the Islamic state. Dhimmis had an inferior status under Islamic rule. They had several social and legal disabilities such as prohibitions against bearing arms or giving testimony in courts in cases involving Muslims. Many of the disabilities were highly symbolic. The one described by Bernard Lewis as "most degrading" was the requirement of distinctive clothing, not found in the Quran or hadith but invented in early medieval Baghdad; its enforcement was highly erratic. On the other hand, Jews rarely faced martyrdom or exile, or forced compulsion to change their religion, and they were mostly free in their choice of residence and profession. Notable exceptions include the massacre of Jews and forcible conversion of some Jews by the rulers of the Almohad dynasty in Al-Andalus in the 12th century, as well as in Islamic Persia, and the forced confinement of Moroccan Jews to walled quarters known as mellahs beginning from the 15th century and especially in the early 19th century. In modern times, it has become commonplace for standard antisemitic themes to be conflated with anti-Zionist publications and pronouncements of Islamic movements such as Hezbollah and Hamas, in the pronouncements of various agencies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and even in the newspapers and other publications of Turkish Refah Partisi."[better source needed] Throughout history, many rulers, empires and nations have oppressed their Jewish populations or sought to eliminate them entirely. Methods employed ranged from expulsion to outright genocide; within nations, often the threat of these extreme methods was sufficient to silence dissent. The history of antisemitism includes the First Crusade which resulted in the massacre of Jews; the Spanish Inquisition (led by Tomás de Torquemada) and the Portuguese Inquisition, with their persecution and autos-da-fé against the New Christians and Marrano Jews; the Bohdan Chmielnicki Cossack massacres in Ukraine; the Pogroms backed by the Russian Tsars; as well as expulsions from Spain, Portugal, England, France, Germany, and other countries in which the Jews had settled. According to a 2008 study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, 19.8 percent of the modern Iberian population has Sephardic Jewish ancestry, indicating that the number of conversos may have been much higher than originally thought. The persecution reached a peak in Nazi Germany's Final Solution, which led to the Holocaust and the slaughter of approximately 6 million Jews. Of the world's 16 million Jews in 1939, almost 40% were murdered in the Holocaust. The Holocaust—the state-led systematic persecution and genocide of European Jews (and certain communities of North African Jews in European controlled North Africa) and other minority groups of Europe during World War II by Germany and its collaborators—remains the most notable modern-day persecution of Jews. The persecution and genocide were accomplished in stages. Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labour until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in Eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings. Jews and Roma were crammed into ghettos before being transported hundreds of kilometres by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were murdered in gas chambers. Virtually every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal nation." Throughout Jewish history, Jews have repeatedly been directly or indirectly expelled from both their original homeland, the Land of Israel, and many of the areas in which they have settled. This experience as refugees has shaped Jewish identity and religious practice in many ways, and is thus a major element of Jewish history. In summary, the pogroms in Eastern Europe, the rise of modern antisemitism, the Holocaust, as well as the rise of Arab nationalism, all served to fuel the movements and migrations of huge segments of Jewry from land to land and continent to continent until they arrived back in large numbers at their original historical homeland in Israel. In the Bible, the patriarch Abraham is described as a migrant to the land of Canaan from Ur of the Chaldees. His descendants, the Children of Israel, undertook the Exodus (meaning "departure" or "exit" in Greek) from ancient Egypt, as described in the Book of Exodus. The first movement documented in the historical record occurred with the resettlement policy of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which mandated the deportation of conquered peoples, and it is estimated some 4,500,000 among its captive populations suffered this dislocation over three centuries of Assyrian rule. With regard to Israel, Tiglath-Pileser III claims he deported 80% of the population of Lower Galilee, some 13,520 people. Some 27,000 Israelites, 20 to 25% of the population of the Kingdom of Israel, were described as being deported by Sargon II, and were replaced by other deported populations and sent into permanent exile by Assyria, initially to the Upper Mesopotamian provinces of the Assyrian Empire. Between 10,000 and 80,000 people from the Kingdom of Judah were similarly exiled by Babylonia, but these people were then returned to Judea by Cyrus the Great of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Many Jews were exiled again by the Roman Empire. The 2,000 year dispersion of the Jewish diaspora beginning under the Roman Empire, as Jews were spread throughout the Roman world and, driven from land to land, settled wherever they could live freely enough to practice their religion. Over the course of the diaspora the center of Jewish life moved from Babylonia to the Iberian Peninsula to Poland to the United States and, as a result of Zionism, back to Israel. There were also many expulsions of Jews during the Middle Ages and Enlightenment in Europe, including: 1290, 16,000 Jews were expelled from England, (see the Statute of Jewry); in 1396, 100,000 from France; in 1421, thousands were expelled from Austria. Many of these Jews settled in East-Central Europe, especially Poland. Following the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, the Spanish population of around 200,000 Sephardic Jews were expelled by the Spanish crown and Catholic church, followed by expulsions in 1493 in Sicily (37,000 Jews) and Portugal in 1496. The expelled Jews fled mainly to the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, and North Africa, others migrating to Southern Europe and the Middle East. During the 19th century, France's policies of equal citizenship regardless of religion led to the immigration of Jews (especially from Eastern and Central Europe). This contributed to the arrival of millions of Jews in the New World. Over two million Eastern European Jews arrived in the United States from 1880 to 1925. In the latest phase of migrations, the Islamic Revolution of Iran caused many Iranian Jews to flee Iran. Most found refuge in the US (particularly Los Angeles, California, and Long Island, New York) and Israel. Smaller communities of Persian Jews exist in Canada and Western Europe. Similarly, when the Soviet Union collapsed, many of the Jews in the affected territory (who had been refuseniks) were suddenly allowed to leave. This produced a wave of migration to Israel in the early 1990s. Israel is the only country with a Jewish population that is consistently growing through natural population growth, although the Jewish populations of other countries, in Europe and North America, have recently increased through immigration. In the Diaspora, in almost every country the Jewish population in general is either declining or steady, but Orthodox and Haredi Jewish communities, whose members often shun birth control for religious reasons, have experienced rapid population growth. Orthodox and Conservative Judaism discourage proselytism to non-Jews, but many Jewish groups have tried to reach out to the assimilated Jewish communities of the Diaspora in order for them to reconnect to their Jewish roots. Additionally, while in principle Reform Judaism favours seeking new members for the faith, this position has not translated into active proselytism, instead taking the form of an effort to reach out to non-Jewish spouses of intermarried couples. There is also a trend of Orthodox movements reaching out to secular Jews in order to give them a stronger Jewish identity so there is less chance of intermarriage. As a result of the efforts by these and other Jewish groups over the past 25 years, there has been a trend (known as the Baal teshuva movement) for secular Jews to become more religiously observant, though the demographic implications of the trend are unknown. Additionally, there is also a growing rate of conversion to Jews by Choice of gentiles who make the decision to head in the direction of becoming Jews. Contributions Jewish individuals have played a significant role in the development and growth of Western culture, advancing many fields of thought, science and technology, both historically and in modern times, including through discrete trends in Jewish philosophy, Jewish ethics and Jewish literature, as well as specific trends in Jewish culture, including in Jewish art, Jewish music, Jewish humor, Jewish theatre, Jewish cuisine and Jewish medicine. Jews have established various Jewish political movements, religious movements, and, through the authorship of the Hebrew Bible and parts of the New Testament, provided the foundation for Christianity and Islam. More than 20 percent of the awarded Nobel Prize have gone to individuals of Jewish descent. Philanthropic giving is a widespread core function among Jewish organizations. Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL#cite_ref-rfc1738_11-0] | [TOKENS: 957] |
Contents URL A uniform resource locator (URL), colloquially known as web address, is a reference to a resource on the World Wide Web. A URL specifies the location of a resource on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), although many people use the two terms interchangeably.[a] A URL is most commonly used to reference a web page (HTTP/HTTPS) but is also used for file transfer (FTP), email (mailto), database access (JDBC), and many other applications. Most web browsers display the URL of a web page above the page in an address bar. As an example of a web page URL, https://www.example.com/index.html indicates protocol https, hostname www.example.com, and file name index.html. History The Uniform Resource Locator was defined in RFC 1738 in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, and the URI working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), as an outcome of collaboration started at the IETF Living Documents birds of a feather session in 1992. The format combines the pre-existing system of domain names (created in 1985) with file path syntax, where slashes are used to separate directory and filenames. Conventions already existed where server names could be prefixed to complete file paths, preceded by a double slash (//). Berners-Lee later expressed regret at the use of dots to separate the parts of the domain name within URIs, wishing he had used slashes throughout, and also said that, given the colon following the first component of a URI, the two slashes before the domain name were unnecessary. Early WorldWideWeb collaborators, including Berners-Lee, originally proposed the use of UDIs: Universal Document Identifiers. An early (1993) draft of the HTML Specification referred to "Universal" Resource Locators. This was dropped some time between June 1994 and October 1994. In his book Weaving the Web, Berners-Lee emphasizes his preference for the original inclusion of "universal" in the expansion rather than the word "uniform", to which it was later changed, and he gives a brief account of the contention that led to the change. Syntax Every HTTP URL conforms to the syntax of a generic URI. The URI generic syntax consists of five components organized hierarchically in order of decreasing significance from left to right:: §3 A component is undefined if it has an associated delimiter and the delimiter does not appear in the URI; the scheme and path components are always defined.: §5.2.1 A component is empty if it has no characters; the scheme component is always non-empty.: §3 The authority component consists of subcomponents: This is represented in a syntax diagram as: The URI comprises: A web browser will usually dereference a URL by performing an HTTP request to the specified host, by default on port number 80. URLs using the https scheme require that requests and responses be made over a secure connection to the website. Internationalized URL Internet users are distributed throughout the world using a wide variety of languages and alphabets, and expect to be able to create URLs in their own local alphabets. An Internationalized Resource Identifier (IRI) is a form of URL that includes Unicode characters. All modern browsers support IRIs. The parts of the URL requiring special treatment for different alphabets are the domain name and path. The domain name in the IRI is known as an Internationalized Domain Name (IDN). Web and Internet software automatically convert the domain name into punycode usable by the Domain Name System; for example, the Chinese URL http://例子.卷筒纸 becomes http://xn--fsqu00a.xn--3lr804guic/. The xn-- indicates that the character was not originally ASCII. The URL path name can also be specified by the user in the local writing system. If not already encoded, it is converted to UTF-8, and any characters not part of the basic URL character set are escaped as hexadecimal using percent-encoding; for example, the Japanese URL http://example.com/引き割り.html becomes http://example.com/%E5%BC%95%E3%81%8D%E5%89%B2%E3%82%8A.html. The target computer decodes the address and displays the page. Protocol-relative URLs Protocol-relative links (PRL), also known as protocol-relative URLs (PRURL), are URLs that have no protocol specified. For example, //example.com will use the protocol of the current page, typically HTTP or HTTPS. See also Notes Citations References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedicated_video_game_console] | [TOKENS: 1417] |
Contents Dedicated console A dedicated console is a video game console that is limited to one or more built-in video game or games, and is not equipped for additional games that are distributed via ROM cartridges, discs, downloads or other digital media. Dedicated consoles were popular in the first generation of video game consoles until they were gradually replaced by second-generation video game consoles that use ROM cartridges. History Most of the earliest home video game systems were dedicated consoles, most popularly Pong and its many imitators. Unlike almost all later consoles, these systems were typically not computers (in which a CPU is running a piece of software), but contained a hardwired game logic. In the late 1970s, ROM cartridge-based systems, beginning with the Fairchild Channel F, had risen to prominence during the second generation of video game consoles due to the success of the Atari 2600, though stand-alone systems such as Coleco's Mini-Arcade series continued to have a smaller presence in the home video game console market until the video game crash of 1983. Since the Nintendo Entertainment System, ROM cartridge-based consoles had dominated the home market until CD-based consoles such as the PlayStation gained prominence in the mid and late 1990s. Types of dedicated consoles All home video game consoles from the first generation of video game consoles are dedicated to one or a few games, and they can usually be selected with a game switch on the console. Less common, the games can be selected with a cartridge. On these cartridges isn't a program; there are just a few wires that connect electrically a few parts of the intern console hardware that a game appears on the screen. Examples for this technique are the Magnavox Odyssey, the Coleco Telstar Arcade and the Philips Tele-Game ES 2201. Developing from earlier non-video electronic game cabinets such as pinball machines, arcade-style video games (whether coin-operated or individually owned) are usually dedicated to a single game or a small selection of built-in games and do not allow for external input in the form of ROM cartridges. Although modern arcade games such as Dance Dance Revolution X and Half-Life 2: Survivor do allow external input in the form of memory cards or USB sticks, this functionality usually only allows for saving progress or for providing modified level-data, and does not allow the dedicated machine to access new games. The game or games in a dedicated arcade console are usually housed in a stand-up cabinet that holds a video screen, a control deck or attachments for more complex control devices, and a computer or console hidden within that runs the games. First released in the mid-1970s by games such as Mattel Electronics' Mattel Auto Race and Mattel Electronic Football, dedicated handheld video games are considered the precursors of modern handheld game consoles. Devoted to one game or a collection or built-in games, dedicated handhelds tend to employ simple VFD or LCD screens although older models often utilized even more primitive arrays of small light bulbs or LED lights to produce calculator-like alphanumerical screens. Dedicated handheld systems typically comprise a screen, a number of control buttons, and a compact body that houses the game engine. Nintendo's Game and Watch series increased the popularity of dedicated handheld games during 1980s. Dedicated consoles have appeared for fishing games, where the unit's body itself becomes a specialized controller in the form of a rod and reel. Other dedicated consoles have been released with light guns, for hunting, shooting, and even archery games. Rising to popularity in the early 1980s, game watches are electronic wristwatches that allow the wearer to access an included video game that uses the display in the watch's face as its screen. Game watch buttons which originally may have been used for setting hour and minute gain secondary functions in relation to the needs of the game. A dedicated console differs from a handheld TV game (or a "plug and play game") in that the latter integrates the video game console with the game controller. Most modern dedicated home game systems are popularly referred to as "plug and play" because they are based on modern technology which enables the hardware and software of the entire game to be within a single controller, with no separate console at all. Some of these are clones of old games, and are produced in China or Southeast Asia (i.e. Power Player Super Joy III), while others contain licensed games and are distributed in mainstream stores in the West. Of the latter, Jakks Pacific's line of TV Games is among the most famous, which includes re-releases of many vintage games, from arcade classics to Atari 2600 games, as well as games based on currently-popular characters, such as SpongeBob SquarePants. Konami has also released a line of their classic arcade games, including Frogger, on "plug and play" dedicated systems. The Pelican VG Pocket was an attempt to make a TV game with a backlit color LCD. Dedicated consoles and handheld electronic games with LCD screens that only have one game are rather distinct devices, but the release of the Pelican VG Pocket has blurred the categorization between the two. Retrogaming revival Beginning with the 2001 release by Toymax (and later Jakk's Pacific) of the Activision TV Games, there has been a revival of interest in dedicated consoles by nostalgia-driven retrogamers. The subsequent 2002 release of the Atari 10-in-1 system prompted speculation of an Atari revival. In 2002, the Brazilian Sega distributor Tectoy re-released the Master System with numerous games built in. These are not, strictly-speaking, dedicated consoles, however, as they also support cartridge-based games. As of 2006, no new official cartridges were available for sale. Tectoy also released a portable Mega Drive with the firecore firmware, with LCD screen and several games built in, but it has no cartridge port and instead has a SD card slot. In 2004, a miniaturized version of the Atari 7800 home consoles was released with 20 built-in games and no cartridge support called Atari Flashback. The dedicated console is actually based on a clone of the NES hardware, but running Atari software. A newer version, Atari Flashback 2, is based on actual Atari hardware, and includes some new built-in games developed by modern hobbyist Atari 2600 programmers, as well as old favorite games. While the new console has no cartridge slot, it is designed so that one can be added, and multiple online tutorials exist detailing this process. In the late 2010s, Nintendo, Konami, Sony, Sega, and SNK released dedicated consoles with built-in games that had been released earlier for their historic video game consoles. Examples of these dedicated consoles include the NES Classic Edition, Super NES Classic Edition, PlayStation Classic, Neo Geo Mini, TurboGrafx-16 Mini, and the Sega Genesis Mini, which usually are miniaturized replicas of their historic consoles. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degel_HaTorah] | [TOKENS: 726] |
Contents Degel HaTorah Degel HaTorah (Hebrew: דגל התורה, lit. 'Banner of the Torah') is an Ashkenazi Haredi political party in Israel. For much of its existence, it has been allied with Agudat Yisrael, under the name United Torah Judaism. History Degel HaTorah was founded in 1988, as a splinter from Agudat Israel. Its establishment by Rabbi Elazar Shach was due to ongoing policy disputes with the Hasidic rabbis within Agudat Yisrael. In the 1988 elections, the party won two seats, taken by Avraham Ravitz and Moshe Gafni, and joined Yitzhak Shamir's coalition government. For the 1992 elections, the party allied itself with Agudat Yisrael, under the name United Torah Judaism. Although the party split shortly before the 1996 elections, they re-united for the elections. This was repeated for the 1999, 2006, and 2009 elections. As of 2022, the party has three MKs (of the seven representing United Torah Judaism): Moshe Gafni, Uri Maklev, and Ya'akov Asher. Ideology Defunct Degel HaTorah represents the "Lithuanian wing" of the non-Hasidic Haredim (known as "Mitnagdim"), as opposed to the Hasidic-dominated Agudat Yisrael party. Sometimes, the parties compete against each other; at other times, they join forces within a political alliance called United Torah Judaism (UTJ) (Yahadut HaTorah in Hebrew). In Jerusalem, it was based on a long-standing argument against a 1989 agreement between Degel HaTorah's then-spiritual leader Rabbi Elazar Shach, the venerated Rosh yeshiva of the famed Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, and the spiritual leader of Agudat Yisrael, the Pnei Menachem of Gur, Rabbi Pinchas Menachem Alter. The deal, based on the demographics of the time, stated that when UTJ would join forces, Aguda would receive 60% of the seats, and Degel 40%. This agreement was first contested in May 2016, when Degel's Knesset leader Moshe Gafni demanded that then-Deputy Education Minister Meir Porush resign from the Knesset, in order to give Degel 3 out of the 6 seats held by UTJ. Porush was able to keep his ministerial position under the 2015 so-called Norwegian Law. In 2018, Degel reached a 50-50 agreement with Aguda, with an Aguda representative as the Chairman of the party.[citation needed] Degel HaTorah's rabbinical arbiter ("posek") was, until his death in 2012, centenarian Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv of Jerusalem. Rabbi Eliashiv served as one of two Chairmen of Degel HaTorah's Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah ("Council of Torah Sages"). After Rabbi Eliyashiv's death, Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman led the party; after him, by Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky and Rabbi Gershon Edelstein. Election results See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cepheus_(constellation)] | [TOKENS: 1411] |
Contents Cepheus (constellation) Cepheus is a constellation in the deep northern sky, named after Cepheus, a king of Aethiopia in Greek mythology. It is one of the 48 constellations listed by the second century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 constellations in the modern times. The constellation's brightest star is Alderamin (Alpha Cephei), with an apparent magnitude of 2.5. Delta Cephei is the prototype of an important class of star known as a Cepheid variable. RW Cephei, an orange hypergiant, together with the red supergiants Mu Cephei, MY Cephei, VV Cephei, V381 Cephei, and V354 Cephei are among the largest stars known. In addition, Cepheus also has the hyperluminous quasar S5 0014+81, which hosts an ultramassive black hole in its core, reported at 40 billion solar masses, about 10,000 times more massive than the central black hole of the Milky Way, making this among the most massive black holes currently known. History and mythology Cepheus was the King of Aethiopia. He was married to Cassiopeia and was the father of Andromeda, both of whom are immortalized as modern day constellations along with Cepheus. Features Alderamin, also known as Alpha Cephei, is the brightest star in the constellation, with an apparent magnitude of 2.51. Gamma Cephei, also known as Errai, is the second-brightest star in the constellation, with an apparent magnitude of 3.21. It is a binary star, made up by an orange giant or subgiant and a red dwarf. The primary component hosts one exoplanet, Gamma Cephei Ab (Tadmor). Delta Cephei is a yellow-hued supergiant star 980 light-years from Earth and the prototype of the class of the Cepheid variables. It was discovered to be variable by John Goodricke in 1784. It varies between 3.5m and 4.4m over a period of 5 days and 9 hours. The Cepheids are a class of pulsating variable stars; Delta Cephei has a minimum size of 40 solar diameters and a maximum size of 46 solar diameters. It is also a double star; the primary star also has a wide-set blue-hued companion of magnitude 6.3. There are four red supergiants in the constellation that are visible to the naked eye. Mu Cephei is also known as the Garnet Star due to its deep red colour. It is a semiregular variable star with a minimum magnitude of 5.1 and a maximum magnitude of 3.4. Its period is approximately 2 years. The star's radius has been estimated to be from 972 solar radii (4.52 AU) to 1,420 solar radii (6.6 AU). If it were placed at the center of the Solar System, it would likely extend past the orbit of Jupiter. The second, VV Cephei A, is a semiregular variable star, located approximately 5,000 light-years from Earth. It has a minimum magnitude of 5.4 and a maximum magnitude of 4.8, and is paired with a blue main sequence star called VV Cephei B. The red supergiant primary is around 1,050 times larger than the Sun. VV Cephei is also an unusually long-period eclipsing binary, but the eclipses, which occur every 20.3 years, are too faint to be observed with the unaided eye. The third, Zeta Cephei, is not as large as Mu Cephei and VV Cephei A with a diameter less than 200 times that of the Sun; however, its surface would lie between the orbits of Venus and Earth if placed at the center of the Solar System. Zeta Cephei has an apparent magnitude of 3.35, being the fourth-brightest star in the constellation. The last and faintest is V381 Cephei Aa with a maximum magnitude of 5.5. It is part of a triple star system similar to VV Cephei, and has a diameter 980 times that of the Sun. All four stars have initial masses more than eight times that of the Sun and are accepted core-collapse supernova candidates. Nu Cephei is a blue supergiant similar to Deneb with an initial mass of over 20 solar masses. It belongs to the Cepheus OB2 stellar association along with Mu Cephei and VV Cephei, which have similar initial masses. There are several prominent double stars and binary stars in Cepheus. Omicron Cephei is a binary star with a period of 800 years. The system, 211 light-years from Earth, consists of an orange-hued giant primary of magnitude 4.9 and a secondary of magnitude 7.1. Xi Cephei is another binary star, 102 light-years from Earth, with a period of 4,000 years. It has a blue-white primary of magnitude 4.4 and a yellow secondary of magnitude 6.5. Krüger 60 is an 11th-magnitude binary star consisting of two red dwarfs. The star system is one of the nearest, being only 13 light-years away from Earth. It was once proposed as a possible home system for 2I/Borisov, the first accepted interstellar comet, but this was later rejected. The constellation Cepheus is rich in star-forming regions and emission nebulae of various kinds. Most of the structures visible in the wide-field view on the right (the image height is 22°) lie in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way, roughly 2,800 to 3,600 light-years away. The following is an overview of some prominent deep-sky objects: Visualizations Cepheus is most commonly depicted as holding his arms aloft, praying for the deities to spare the life of Andromeda. He also is depicted as a more regal monarch sitting on his throne. Equivalents In Chinese astronomy, the stars of the constellation Cepheus are found in two areas: the Purple Forbidden enclosure (紫微垣, Zǐ Wēi Yuán) and the Black Tortoise of the North (北方玄武, Běi Fāng Xuán Wǔ). Namesakes See also References External links |
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