Judaism is a monotheistic religion that emerged with the Israelites in the Eastern Mediterranean (Southern Levant) within the context of the Mesopotamian river valley civilizations. The Israelites were but one nomadic tribe from the area, so named because they considered themselves to be the descendants of Jacob, who changed his name to Israel.

Shabbat = the Sabbath, serves as the ultimate reminder of the Jewish cycle of time. Based on the idea that on the seventh day of Creation God rested, Shabbat is a marker of sacred time. Religious Jews refrain from all types of work on the Sabbath, and spend the day with their families and communities, praying, listening as a portion of the Torah is chanted (readings are determined by a fixed schedule), and eating luxurious meals.

Tanakh (24 books) = acronym for the first Hebrew letter of each of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions:

• Torah ("Teaching", also known as the Five Books of Moses),

• Nevi'im ("Prophets")

• and Ketuvim ("Writings")

*compiled in 90 CE in Palestine with Roman permission. (beginning of Rabbinic Judaism)

The Jewish Diaspora = The term diaspora (in Ancient Greek, διασπορά – "a scattering or sowing of seeds") refers to any people or ethnic group forced to leave its traditional homeland, and the spreading out of those people that results from it. It is especially used to with reference to the Jewish people, who have lived most of their historical existence as a diasporan people.

• The Jewish diaspora began with the Babylonian Exile. Although some of the captives that were forced to live in Babylon returned to Judea after they were released by the Persian King Cyrus the Great, others settled elsewhere. They were dispersed in lands around the Mediterranean Sea. Major centers of Jewish diasporan culture emerged in such places as Alexandria, Asia Minor, and Babylonia.

• A second major expulsion and diaspora of the Jewish people from Judea took place between 66 CE and 136 CE. In 66 CE, the Roman Empire had been in control of Judea for some time, but had mostly respected the rights of the Jewish people to practice their religion. Due to Roman administrators who were disrespectful towards their religion, and disagreements over taxes, the Judeans rebelled against the Romans. In response, the Roman military destroyed most of Jerusalem including the Second Temple to the Jewish God. For the next 66 years tensions between the Judeans and Romans intensified with riots and wars and calmed. At the end of this period, much of the Jewish population had either chosen to leave Judea or were forced out.

Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon) (1135-1204) = Born in Cordoba (Almoravid empire), he worked as a rabbi, physician, and philosopher in Morocco and Egypt. Maimonides strove to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy and science with the teachings of the Torah. He formulated his "13 principles of faith" (compiled the principles from various Talmudic sources), which summarized what he viewed as the required beliefs of Judaism.

Ashkenazim Jews = Jews who can trace their ancestry back to Central and Eastern European areas

Sephardic Jews = technically trace their origins back to the Iberian Peninsula, but Jews from the historically Muslim lands of the Middle East and North Africa (referred to as Mizrahi and Maghrebi, respectively), have been conflated with contemporary Sephardim since they share many of the same customs.

CCoT in AP World History: Modern

There are numerous examples of the persecution of Jewish communities throughout the AP World History: Modern curriculum. Below are a few examples.

1.) Crusades

• In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, crusading mobs massacred Jews throughout Europe. Crusaders blamed Jews for crucifying Jesus, an accusation that was extended in order to claim that Jews were committing the ritual murder of Christian children, known as the blood libel.

2.) The Spanish Inquisition

• Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Jews in Spain were subject to violent forms of anti-Judaism. They were forced to convert to Christianity and resulted in the death or expulsions of the many Jewish residents of the Iberian Peninsula.

• Effect: Venice received Sephardic Jews, but forced them to live in a desiginated part of the city known as a ghetto.

3.) Religious Toleration within dar-al Islam

• In areas dominated by Muslims, Jews in the Middle Ages were tolerated (with some exceptions) as a “dhimmi”—a people of the book.

• Unlike in the Christian world, Jewish people were not the only non-Muslim inhabitants (there were also Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.). Jews were integrated into the economy, and they were allowed to practice their religion freely. Jews conducted business with non-Jews in the Middle Ages and the similarities in art, music, and food traditions speak to Jewish and non-Jewish interaction.

• But their communal lives remained mostly separate—Jewish dietary laws, or kashrut, meant that Jews had their own butchers, bakers, and even wine producers. The weekly Sabbath meant that Jewish merchants and peasants would refrain from work, while Christian or Muslim commerce might continue.

4.) pogroms = a Russian word that means to violently destroy, used to describe the riots in Eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries that resulted in the rape and murder of Jews and the theft and destruction of their property. A wave of antisemitism affected Jews within Europe and throughout the world in European colonies. From Russia to Damascus, and Danzig to Algiers, Jews were attacked as infiltrators and blamed for a wide range of social and economic problems.

• In Russia, violent pogroms and economic instability pushed over two million people to emigrate in the 1880s. The vast majority fled to North America, and a small fraction of pioneers traveled to Palestine, the site of ancient Judaism’s origins.

5.) Zionism = Some Jewish leaders, responding to the growing nationalism and antisemitism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, followed Theodor Herzl who advocated for a type of secular Jewish nationalism, a return to the biblical homeland of the Jewish people.

• It is important to note that Zionism was but one form of Jewish nationalism that took hold in the nineteenth century. Some Jews fought for territorial and political autonomy on different parts of the globe, others fought for cultural autonomy in the nations where they lived.

6.) Holocaust = the Nuremburg Laws forced Jews to identify themselves with a badge, and criminalized sexual intimacy between Jews and gentiles. Laws were passed across Europe and the Mediterranean that excluded Jews from certain professions and the right to attend school. Citizenship was revoked and many people were forced from their homes into overcrowded wards. Inspired by the medieval ghetto, the Nazis went further—killing Jews by restricting food and medicine, packing thousands into spaces fit for far fewer, and, eventually, forbidding Jews to leave at all. Working in collaboration with governments across Europe, Nazi officials enacted a “Final Solution” to the “Jewish Question” in early 1942. Jews were forcibly gathered and shipped to local concentration camps and to death camps in Poland and the USSR. Six million Jews died in the Holocaust.