• the Judaic legal fiction of Prozbul protects both the poor and wealthy from the effects of the Sabbatical Year?
• the Jewish mother of former German Federal Minister of Justice Gerhard Jahn died at Auschwitz?
• the 5th century Yemeni King Tub'a Abu Kariba As'ad is widely believed to have been a convert to Judaism?
• pianist and composer Moshe Cotel chose to become a rabbi after meeting a Holocaust survivor who was so inspired by his retelling of the story of Alfred Dreyfus that she had returned to Judaism?
• the Baal teshuva movement refers to the phenomenon that began during the mid-20th century, whereby large numbers of previously highly-assimilated Jews chose to move in the direction of practicing Judaism?
• the Montefiore Synagogue in Ramsgate, built in 1833 for Sir Moses Montefiore using a design by David Mocatta, was the first synagogue built in England by a Jewish architect?
• the Will & Grace episode "Marry Me a Little, Marry Me a Little More" was the first time that a prime-time sitcom showed a Jewish protagonist marrying inside the faith?
• the Sanhedrin, which is part of the Mishnah, a major Jewish religious text, focuses on criminal law, and that commentaries on the Sanhedrin by rabbis, as recorded in the Talmud, are noteworthy as precursors to the development of common law principles?
• the Perek Shirah, an ancient Jewish text, contains 84 songs of various elements of creation, ranging from the heavens to dogs, based upon Biblical and Talmudic verses?
• in the 1990s, Congregation Beth Israel was the largest Jewish congregation in Greater Vancouver?
• in Islam, Tahrif is the charge that Jewish and Christian holy books have been subject to change, alteration or forgery?
• Jacob's Well (pictured) in Nablus is a site associated with Jacob in Jewish, Samaritan, Christian and Muslim tradition?
• Justice Henry Barron, the first Jew appointed to the Supreme Court of Ireland, also granted Ireland's first divorce in the same year?
• Arthur Segal was prevented from exhibiting his art in Germany because of his Jewish background?
• Alfred Gottschalk performed the 1972 rabbinic ordination of Sally Priesand, the second woman to be formally ordained in the history of Judaism?
• Maryam Jameelah, a New York-born convert from Judaism to Islam, became a prominent female advocate for conservative Islam?
• Ohaveth Sholum Congregation, Seattle's first Jewish congregation, fell four days short of having the first synagogue in Washington?
• according to Ernst Lohmeyer, "the Christian faith is only Christian as long as it retains in its heart the Jewish faith"?
• according to Jewish customs, a yahrzeit candle is lit in memory of the dead on the anniversary of the death on the Hebrew calendar?
• Percival Goodman, described as "the most prolific architect in Jewish history" by The Forward, was also an urban planning theorist who criticized Robert Moses' ideas for parkways in New York City?
• Abu Isa founded the first Jewish sect since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem?

Facts on topics related to Judaism

Samaritan

• Jacob's Well (pictured) in Nablus is a site associated with Jacob in Jewish, Samaritan, Christian and Muslim tradition?

Jews

• Polish resistance member Zofia Baniecka and her mother hid over fifty Jews in their Warsaw apartment during the Holocaust between 1941 and 1944?
• Rabbi Avrohom Blumenkrantz's The Laws of Pesach—considered an authoritative text on the observance of Passover by many North American Jews—started as a privately distributed newsletter?
• Richard Brinsley Sheridan's comedy The School for Scandal (1781 performance pictured) has been widely admired, but also criticized for hints of anti-Semitism, particularly regarding its references to Jewish moneylenders?
• Edward Kossoy represented about sixty thousand Jews, Roma and Poles in cases for reparations from Germany for Nazi terror?
• Judeopolonia was a proposed buffer state between the Russian and German Empires with a projected population of 30 million Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Baltic Germans?
• Vera Beaudin Saeedpour, an American Jew, opened the first U.S. museum dedicated to the Kurdish people?
• although U.S. President Barack Obama is Christian, high-ranked al-Qaida member Ayman al-Zawahiri has falsely claimed that Obama secretly "pray[s] the prayers of the Jews"?
• soon after the creation of the Łomża Ghetto, Nazi Germans killed all the Jews suspected of collaborating with the previous occupying power, the Soviet Union?
• the 1910–1911 Zionist newspaper Hamevasser called on Jews to join the Ottoman army, in an effort to improve Jewish-Turkish relations?
• the Romanian fascist politician Ion Sân-Giorgiu at first considered Antisemitism to be "an act of poverty of a failed intellectual", but soon changed his position calling Jews a "national cancer"?

Kabbalah

• Princess Antonia of Württemberg (pictured) was an accomplished Hebrew scholar, and devotee of Kabbalah?
• it is customary in Jewish homes to decorate the wall in the direction of prayer — mizrah — with artistic wall plaques (pictured) inscribed with the word mizrah, scriptural passages, kabbalistic writings, or pictures of holy places?
• using concepts described in Sefer ha-Temunah (pictured) the 13th-century Kabbalist Isaac ben Samuel calculated the age of the Universe, a number relatively close to the one estimated by NASA?

Antisemitism

• Romanian writer Alexandru Odobescu viewed antisemites preventing linguist Lazăr Şăineanu from obtaining naturalization as "cannibals" devouring "a civilized man"?
• Edvard Welle-Strand, father of the anti-Nazi resistance fighter Erling Welle-Strand, was an anti-Semitic writer especially active in the 1910s and 1920s?
• the Romanian fascist politician Ion Sân-Giorgiu at first considered Antisemitism to be "an act of poverty of a failed intellectual", but soon changed his position calling Jews a "national cancer"?
• the Romanian magazine Sămănătorul promoted pastoral imagery, antisemitic messages, and its own branch of Symbolist poetry?

Jewish holiday

• the title of The West Wing episode "On the Day Before" refers to the Jewish holiday Erev Yom Kippur?

Hasidic Judaism

• B&H Photo Video in New York City employs so many Satmar Hasidim, there is daily bus service to the store from Kiryas Joel, a Satmar enclave in Orange County, New York?

Jewish philosophy

• the earliest commentary on a part of Maimonides' transforming work of Jewish philosophy, The Guide for the Perplexed, was written by Muhammad ibn Muhammad Tabrizi, a Persian Muslim?

Reform Judaism

• Temple Sinai, a Reform synagogue in Oakland, California, grew out of Oakland's Hebrew Benevolent Society in 1875?
• Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise's 1857 Minhag America, an effort at a prayer book for American Reform Jews, was supplanted by the Union Prayer Book in the 1890s, which in turn was replaced by Gates of Prayer in the 1975 and then Mishkan T'filah in 2007?
• Rabbi Wolfe Kelman prepared the way for the rabbinic ordination of women in Conservative Judaism and his daughter Naamah Kelman was the first woman in Israel ordained by the Reform Judaism movement?
• the Washington Hebrew Congregation is a Reform Jewish congregation in the District of Columbia that has operated continuously since its formation on April 25, 1852, by twenty-one members?

Jewish

• British Pre-Raphaelite painter Solomon Joseph Solomon (artist of the picture) was one of the few Jewish painters of his time to become a member of the Royal Academy?
• Cincinnati, Ohio, architect Rudolph Tietig designed a Jewish country club and two synagogues, including Temple K.K. Bene Israel for one of the oldest congregations west of the Allegheny Mountains?
• Estonian-Jewish chemist Moses Wolf Goldberg earned the Habilitation degree in 1935 despite increasing xenophobia at ETH Zurich?
• Rabbi Judith Hauptman has written extensively on the treatment of women in her scholarly articles on the Jewish Talmud?
• Gideon Brecher (1797 - 1873) was a Jewish Austrian physician and writer who wrote what is most likely the first scholarly article on circumcision, Die Beschneidung der Israeliten, etc., in 1845?
• Isaac Albalag was a Jewish philosopher whose liberal interpretations of the Biblical account of the Creation, in accordance with the Aristotelian theory of the eternity of the world, stamped him in the eyes of many as a heretic?
• James A. Kowalski, dean of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York, had a Roman Catholic father and a Jewish mother, but they joined the Episcopal Church when they started a family?
• John Duncan, a Scottish Presbyterian theologian and missionary, was affectionately known as "Rabbi", due to his knowledge of Hebrew and his passion for the Jewish people?
• Oriental metal is a kind of death metal music that originated in Israel which has traditional Jewish and "Oriental" influences?
• Sylvan Friedman, a member of both houses of the Louisiana State Legislature from 1944 to 1972, was part of a small but influential Jewish community in Natchitoches Parish?

Orthodox Judaism

• Breed Street Shul, now vacant in a Hispanic part of Los Angeles, was the largest Orthodox synagogue in the western United States from 1915 to 1951?
• Congregation Beth Jacob Ohev Sholom, the oldest Orthodox Jewish congregation on Long Island, once fired its rabbi after he was alleged to have been caught eating ham in a saloon?
• Jason Bedrick, a New Hampshire state representative, is that state's first Orthodox Jewish elected official?
• Israeli scholar Charles Liebman pioneered contemporary scholarship on American Orthodox Judaism and argued that "religious extremism is the norm" in Israel?
• the neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee surrounding the former site of the Baron Hirsch Synagogue, the largest Orthodox Jewish congregation in the United States, has become a historic district?

Jew

• Austrian Jewish author Elfriede Gerstl as a child had to hide in a wardrobe to avoid deportation to a concentration camp?
• German-born Jewish Egyptologist Käte Bosse-Griffiths published a novel in the Welsh language?
• Italian mathematician Guido Castelnuovo secretly taught geometry to Jewish students during World War II?
• Jewish mandarin Zhao Yingcheng helped rebuild Kaifeng's synagogue after its destruction in 1646?
• Mikveh Israel, the first modern Jewish agricultural settlement in the Land of Israel, was founded in 1870 by Charles Netter?
• Russian-born Joe Magidsohn was the first Jew to win a varsity "M" at the University of Michigan and the first athlete known to have refused to compete on the High Holy Days?
• television director Michael Lange's Jewish heritage landed him a non-speaking role as a rabbi in the episode "The Chrismukkah Bar-Mitzvahkkah" of The O.C., a show for which he had previously directed?
• Aaron Lopez, who was denied citizenship in Colonial Rhode Island because he was Jewish, later became Newport's wealthiest resident?
• Abd el-Aziz el-Zoubi was the first non-Jewish member of an Israeli government?
• Anna Borkowska, the mother superior of a Polish convent of Dominican Sisters in World War II, was the first to smuggle in grenades for the Vilnius Jewish ghetto insurgents?

Conservative Judaism

• Rabbi David Wolpe proposed that the name of Conservative Judaism be changed to Covenantal Judaism to better encompass the view that rabbinic law is both binding and evolving?
• Congregation Beth Israel, a Conservative synagogue in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, was designed by Percival Goodman to mirror the barns of nearby Pennsylvania Dutch farmers?
• Rabbi Wolfe Kelman prepared the way for the rabbinic ordination of women in Conservative Judaism and his daughter Naamah Kelman was the first woman in Israel ordained by the Reform Judaism movement?