The Crémieux Decree was passed in Algeria in October 1870 granting French citizenship to Algerian Jews but not to Muslims, effectively dividing indigenous Algerians with a potent political wedge. The Decree transformed the structure of the Algerian Jewish community, which had prior been autonomous and self-governed by Jewish religious law. As French citizens, Algerian Jews were subject to secular French laws, which prompted some dissent among the Jewish community. French colonists and colonial leaders in Algeria did not themselves accept the Jews as fellow citizens, and expressed a...

A Jewish festival commemorating the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai.

Syria has had well-established Jewish communities since at least the Roman period. These have included a community of Arab Jews, referred to as Musta’arabi or Mizrahi, from the Roman period, Sephardic Jews who settled in Syria following their forced migration from Spain in 1492, and Jewish merchants from Europe. The largest centers of Jewish life were in Aleppo, Damascus, and in the largely Kurdish town of Qamishli. The Aleppo Codex, the oldest manuscript of the Bible completed in in the year 920, was housed in Aleppo from the 15^th century until 1947. A portion of the...

Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935) was a Jewish French military officer from the region of Alsace imprisoned in 1895 for sharing French military secrets with Germany, then a rival nation with whom France had suffered through the Franco-Prussian War. Though evidence emerged in coming years to show that someone else had committed the crime, the military suppressed this evidence and a scandal erupted that brought out the full ugliness of French anti-Semitism in the late 19^th century. The “Dreyfus Affair” split French society between pro- and anti-“Dreyfusards,” and ultimately resulted in...

There are estimated to be around 20,000 Jews in Turkey today, concentrated in Istanbul and Izmir. Judaism was present in the Ottoman Empire at its earliest foundations in the 14th century, particularly among the Greek-speaking Romaniots, who were descended from Jews living under the Byzantine Empire in Greece and Anatolia that had been unable to freely practice Judaism and so welcomed the Ottomans, and Jewish communities existed throughout the Levant, taken by the Ottomans in 1516. European Jews arrived during the 14th century, drawn by Ottoman policies that permitted Jewish and...

Roughly 3,000 Nigerian Igbos practice Rabbinic Judaism, and there are around twenty Nigerian synagogues. Long referred to as the “Jews of Nigeria” (though for their flexibility and business acumen), many in the wider Igbo tribe identify themselves as descendants of a Lost Tribe of Israel, one of ten tribes that constituted the Kingdom of Israel that scattered following the Kingdom’s destruction at the hands of Assyrians in 721 BCE.

Though there are no local rabbis, the Jewish Igbo are mentored by an American, Rabbi Howard Gorin. Jewish Igbo elders...

A term referencing one who is not Jewish. 

A Hebrew word meaning “called by God”. There are several prophets in the Hebrew Bible who are interpreted by most Jews, Christians, and Muslims as speaking the word of God to the people. Examples include Abraham, Moses, and David.

Burma was once home to a thriving Jewish diaspora community, which at one point numbered over two thousand, and which was part of a much larger regional community stretching from India to China. The integration of Burma into the British Empire meant that it was governed by a common international law, the Pax Britannica, which facilitated regulated trade between members of the tightly knit and widespread Jewish community linked by family, language, and faith.

The Musmeah Yeshua, Rangoon’s synagogue built in 1893, was the center of Jewish life in Myanmar until the mid-century....

“Repose” in Hebrew. In Judaism, the Sabbath is the last day of the week (beginning Friday at sundown until Saturday at sundown) and traditionally observed as a day to refrain from work while focusing on prayer, study, and family. For Christians, the Sabbath marks the first day of the week (Sunday) and is also traditionally observed as a time for prayer and spiritual renewal. 

France has the largest Jewish population in Western Europe, at between 500,000 and 600,000 members. France also has a large population of Sephardic or Arab Jews, a result of a massive influx of Algerian Jews—who had been granted full French citizenship during the French colonization of Algeria—and substantial communities of other North Africans from Morocco and Egypt.

The Jewish community has been a small but important part of French society since prior to the French Revolution. Jews, seeking...

After the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, the Jews of the Kingdom of Judea went into exile. In 538 BCE during the reign of Cyrus the Great, the Jews returned to Jerusalem and were able to build the Second Temple on the site of the original one that had been destroyed. Secular accounts place the completion of the Second Temple in approximately 516 BCE but some Jewish sources date the completion much later in 350 BCE. Herod the Great rebuilt the Temple in 20-18 BCE. The Jews led a revolt and occupied Jerusalem in 66 CE initiating the first Roman-...

A Jewish festival commemorating the exodus from Egypt and the end of Jewish enslavement by the Egyptians. In the Exodus account in the Hebrew Bible (Exodus 12), the Angel of Death “passed over” the Hebrews in the last of the great plagues.  

Historically, the term derives from the last Israelite tribe of Judah and is applied to descendants of that tribe following the Babylonian exile in 587 BCE. More inclusively, a Jew is a descendent of the Biblical figures Abraham and Sarah and one who identifies as Jewish. Jesus was born and lived his entire life as a Jew. Some of his followers eventually established a distinct religious identity as Christians several years after his death. 

Contributed by Ben Marcus, Harvard Divinity School

Jews have lived in Egypt since the Hellenistic period and over that long history have seen various periods of growth and decline determined in large part by bouts of tolerance and persecution. In the era following the conquest of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE; between the Arab conquest in 640 CE and the rise of the Mamluk rulers in 1301; following their expulsion from Spain and subsequent resettlement in Egypt in 1492 and the Napoleonic conquest in 1798; and then again from the start of British rule in the...