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Home , High Priest of Israel

Mishnah an authoritative collection of exegetical material embodying the oral tradition of Jewish law and forming the first part of the . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpaDU4VcPa8 Talmud the body of Jewish civil and ceremonial law and legend comprising the Mishnah and the Gemara. There are two versions of the Talmud: the Babylonian Talmud (which dates from the 5th century AD but includes earlier material) and the earlier Palestinian or Jerusalem Talmud. a member of a Jewish sect or party at the time of that denied the resurrection of the dead, the existence of spirits, and the obligation of oral tradition, emphasizing acceptance of the written Law alone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=5dhVNg-GmNU a member of an ancient Jewish sect, distinguished by strict observance of the traditional and written law, and commonly held to have pretensions to superior sanctity Scribes a group of Jewish leaders who flourished from the time of the Exile until the destruction of the Jewish state by Titus (70 a.d.). Originally their name was used merely of clerks whose function was to copy royal and sacred manuscripts. Later, the title signified the official post of one who was learned in the Law of (Ezr 7.6, 11; Neh 8.1, 4). The people admired the scribes' erudition and their interpretations of precedents and tradition. At the time of Christ many of the scribes adhered to the teachings of the pharisees and shared their casuistry, legalism, and externalism. With the chief priests, sadducees, and Pharisees, the scribes composed the Jewish aristocracy of the time; and many were members of the . Teachers of experts in the the Law Herod’s family

Herod, also known as and Herod I, was a Roman client king of , referred to as the Herodian kingdom. The history of his legacy has polarized opinion, as he is known for his colossal building projects throughout Judea, including his expansion of the Second in Jerusalem (Herod's Temple), the construction of the port at Caesarea Maritima, the fortress at Masada, and Herodium. Vital details of his life are recorded in the works of the 1st century CE Roman–Jewish historian . Herod also appears in the Christian Gospel of Matthew as the ruler of Judea who orders the Massacre of the Innocents at the time of the birth of Jesus. Despite his successes, including singlehandedly forging a new aristocracy from practically nothing, he has still garnered criticism from various historians. His reign polarizes opinion amongst scholars and historians, some viewing his legacy as evidence of success, and some as a reminder of his tyrannical rule.

Upon Herod's death, the Romans divided his kingdom among three of his sons and his sister— Archelaus became of the tetrarchy of Judea, became tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea, Philip became tetrarch of territories north and east of the Jordan, and Salome I was given a toparchy including the cities of Jabneh, Ashdod, and Phasaelis. Idumea Esau, the brother of Jacob. Greek Idumaea, Idumea. an ancient region between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba, bordering ancient Palestine Pontus Pilate Latin in full Marcus Pontius Pilatus, (died after 36 CE),Roman prefect (governor) of Judaea (26–36 CE) under the emperor Tiberius who presided at the trial of Jesus and gave the order for his crucifixion.

According to the traditional account of his life, Pilate was a Roman equestrian (knight) of the Samnite clan of the Pontii (hence his name Pontius). He was appointed prefect of Judaea through the intervention of Sejanus, a favourite of the Roman emperor Tiberius. (That his title was prefect is confirmed by an inscription fromCaesarea in ancient Palestine.) Protected by Sejanus, Pilate incurred the enmity of Jews in Roman-occupied Palestine by insulting their religious sensibilities, as when he hung worship images of the emperor throughout Jerusalem and had coins bearing pagan religious symbols minted. After Sejanus’s fall (31 CE), Pilate was exposed to sharper criticism from certain Jews, who may have capitalized on his vulnerability to obtain a legal death sentence on Jesus (John 19:12). The reported Pilate to Vitellius,legate of Syria, after he attacked them on Mount Gerizim (36 CE). He was then ordered back to Rome to stand trial for cruelty and oppression, particularly on the charge that he had executed men without proper trial. According to Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History, Pilate killed himself on orders from the emperor Caligula. was the title of the chief religious official of from the early post-Exilic times until the destruction of the in Jerusalem in 70 CE. Previously, in the Israelite religion including the time of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, other terms were used to designate the leading priests; however, as long as a king was in place, the supreme ecclesiastical authority lay with him The official introduction of the term "high priest" went hand in hand with a greatly enhanced ritual and political significance bestowed upon the chief priest in the post- Exilic period, certainly from 411 BCE onward, after the religious transformations brought about by the and due to the lack of a Jewish king and kingdom.

The high priests belonged to the Jewish priestly families that trace their paternal line back to , the first in the and elder brother of Moses, through , a leading priest at the time of and . This tradition came to an end in the 2nd century BCE during the rule of the Hasmoneans, when the position was occupied by other priestly families unrelated to Zadok & According to Josephus, Caiaphas was appointed in AD 18 by the Roman prefect who preceded , . Caiaphas was the son-in-law of Annas (also called Ananus) the son of Seth. Annas was deposed, but had five sons who served as high priest after him.

Caiaphas - was the Jewish high priest who, according to the gospels, organized a plot to kill Jesus. He famously presided over the Sanhedrin trial of Jesus. The primary sources for Caiaphas' life are the New Testament and the writings of Josephus. Outside of his interactions with Jesus, little else is known about his tenure as high priest.

Annas - was appointed by the Roman legate as the first High Priest of the newly formed Roman province of Iudaea in 6 A.D; just after the Romans had deposed Archelaus, Ethnarch of Judaea, thereby putting Judaea directly under Roman rule. Annas officially served as High Priest for ten years (6–15 A.D.), when at the age of 36 he was deposed by the procurator Valerius Gratus. Yet while having been officially removed from office, he remained as one of the nation's most influential political and social individuals, aided greatly by the use of his five sons and his son-in-law Caiaphas as puppet High Priests. His death is unrecorded. His son Annas the Younger, also known as Ananus the son of Ananus, was assassinated in 66 A.D. for advocating peace with Rome. Annas appears in the Gospels and Passion plays as a high priest before whom Jesus is brought for judgment, prior to being brought before Pontius Pilate. Priest Most people in ancient Judea saw the world differently than we do. To them—and in particular, to the priests—the temple and the continuing worship that took place there ensured ’s presence in the temple and God’s blessing of the land with protection and good conditions for farming. It was the priests’ duty to carry out the temple service correctly to maintain this abundance and security. To achieve this purpose, priests had to fulfill strict purity regulations; otherwise, their worship might not “count” and the divine blessings might not come. Priests occupied an important and mostly well-regarded position in ancient Jewish society: they were trained not only in religious matters but also in Jewish law, literature, and tradition.

Criticism against the high priest and the leaders of the priesthood may have been fairly common, but that should not lead us to think that priests in general were not well regarded. The fact that priests identified as priests long after the second temple was destroyed (70 C.E.) shows that descendants of priests were proud to be priests even when a different group, the rabbis, had taken control of what was to become rabbinic Judaism.

Levites were similar to priests in that they were a patrilineal, hereditary order and they worked in the temple. Their purity was important, too, but the rules regulating them were not as strict. were not regarded as highly as priests for most of the Second Temple period (539 B.C.E.–70 C.E.); they are often described as a lower-level priesthood. They manned the temple gates, cleaned the temple, slaughtered some of the sacrificial animals, and performed the music during temple worship (1Chr 23-25).

In order to become a priest, one had to be the son of a priest and be pure in mind and body. (And according to the Pentateuch, priests were also said to be from the tribe of .) It is likely, based on both biblical and Mesopotamian texts on priesthood, that every time a priest came to the temple to carry out his service there, his purity would have been tested by a group of priests and Levites who would probably have physically examined him (for skin diseases or broken bones) and made sure that there were no allegations of misconduct. Mohammed (570 CE – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet, sent to present and confirm the monotheistic teachings preached previously by Adam, , Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. He is viewed as the final prophet of God in all the main branches of Islam, though some modern denominations diverge from this belief. Muhammad united Arabia into a single Muslim polity, with the Quran as well as his teachings and practices forming the basis of Islamic religious belief. He is referred to by many appellations, including Messenger of Allah, The Prophet Muhammad, Allah's Apostle, Last Prophet of Islam and others; there are also many variant spellings of Muhammad, such as Mohamet, Mahamad, Muhamad and many others. Born approximately 570 CE (Year of the Elephant) in the Arabian city of Mecca, Muhammad was orphaned at the age of six. He was raised under the care of his paternal grandfather Abd al- Muttalib, and upon his death, by his uncle Abu Talib. In later years he would periodically seclude himself in a mountain cave named Hira for several nights of prayer. When he was 40, Muhammad reported being visited by Gabriel in the cave, and receiving his first revelation from God. Three years later, in 610. Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that "God is One", that complete "submission" (islām) to God is the right way of life (dīn), and that he was a prophet and messenger of God, similar to the other prophets in Islam. The followers of Muhammad were initially few in number, and experienced hostility from Meccan polytheists. He sent some of his followers to Abyssinia in 615 to shield them from prosecution, before he and his followers migrated from Mecca to Medina (then known as Yathrib) in 622. This event, the Hijra, marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar, also known as the Hijri Calendar. In Medina, Muhammad united the tribes under the Constitution of Medina. In December 629, after eight years of intermittent fighting with Meccan tribes, Muhammad gathered an army of 10,000 Muslim converts and marched on the city of Mecca. The conquest went largely uncontested and Muhammad seized the city with little bloodshed. In 632, a few months after returning from the Farewell Pilgrimage, he fell ill and died. By the time of his death, most of the Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam. The revelations (each known as Ayah, lit."Sign [of God]") which Muhammad reported receiving until his death form the verses of the Quran, regarded by Muslims as the verbatim "Word of God" and around which the religion is based. Besides the Quran, Muhammad's teachings and practices (sunnah), found in the Hadith and sira (biography) literature, are also upheld and used as sources of Islamic law (see Sharia). Kibbutz "gathering, clustering"; regular plural kibbutzim is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism. In recent decades, some kibbutzim have been privatized and changes have been made in the communal lifestyle. A member of a kibbutz is called a kibbutznik, plural kibbutznikim or kibbutzniks.

In 2010, there were 270 kibbutzim in Israel. Their factories and farms account for 9% of Israel's industrial output, worth US$8 billion, and 40% of its agricultural output, worth over $1.7 billion. Some kibbutzim had also developed substantial high-tech and military industries. For example, in 2010, Kibbutz Sasa, containing some 200 members, generated $850 million in annual revenue from its military-plastics industry.

Currently the kibbutzim are organized in the secular Kibbutz Movement with some 230 kibbutzim, the Religious Kibbutz Movement with 16 kibbutzim and the much smaller religious Poalei Agudat Yisrael with two kibbutzim, all part of the wider communal settlement movement. Leprosy Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease (HD), is a long-term infection by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae or Mycobacterium lepromatosis. Initially, a person who is infected does not have symptoms and typically remains this way for 5 to 20 years. Infection can lead to damage of the nerves, respiratory tract, skin, and eyes. This nerve damage may result in a lack of ability to feel pain, which can lead to the loss of parts of a person's extremities from repeated injuries or infection due to unnoticed wounds. An infected person may also experience weakness and poor eyesight.

Leprosy is spread between people, although extensive contact is necessary. About 95% of people who contact M. Leprea do not develop the disease. Spread is thought to occur through a cough or contact with fluid from the nose of a person infected by leprosy. Leprosy is not spread during pregnancy to the unborn children or through sexual contact. Leprosy occurs more commonly among people living in poverty. Genetic factors and immune function play a role in how easily a person catches the disease. The two main types of disease – paucibacillary and multibacillary – differ in the number of bacteria present. A person with paucibacillary disease has five or fewer poorly pigmented numb skin patches while a person with multibacillary disease has more than five. The diagnosis is confirmed by finding acid-fast bacilli in a biopsy of the skin or by detecting the bacteria's DNA using polymerase chain reaction.

Leprosy is curable with multidrug therapy. Treatment of paucibacillary leprosy is with the medications dapsone, rifampicin, and clofazimine for six months. Treatment for multibacillary leprosy uses the same medications for 12 months. A number of other antibiotics may also be used. These treatments are provided free of charge by the World Health Organization. People with leprosy can live with their families and go to school and work. At the end of 2016, there were 173,000 leprosy cases globally, down from 5.2 million in the 1980s. The number of new cases in 2016 was 216,000. Most new cases occur in 14 countries, with India accounting for more than half. In the past 20 years, 16 million people worldwide have been cured of leprosy. About 200 cases per year are reported in the United States.

Leprosy has affected humanity for thousands of years. The disease takes its name from the Greek word λέπρᾱ (léprā), from λεπῐ́ς (lepís; "scale"), while the term "Hansen's disease" is named after the Norwegian physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen. Leprosy has historically been associated with social stigma, which continues to be a barrier to self-reporting and early treatment. Separating people affected by leprosy by placing them in leper colonies still occurs in some areas of India, China, and Africa. However, most colonies have closed, since leprosy is not very contagious. Some consider the word "leper" offensive, preferring the phrase "person affected with leprosy". Leprosy is classified as a neglected tropical disease. World Leprosy Day was started in 1954 to draw awareness to those affected by leprosy. Unclean Spirit In English translations of the Bible, unclean spirit is a common rendering of Greek pneuma akatharton (πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον; plural pneumata akatharta (πνεύματα ἀκάθαρτα)), which in .(רוח טומאה) its single occurrence in the Septuagint translates Hebrew ruaḥ tum'ah

The Greek term appears 21 times in the New Testament in the context of demonic possession. Demonic possession is where individuals are supposed to be possessed by malevolent preternatural beings, commonly referred to as demons or devils. Symptoms of demonic possession commonly claimed by believers include erased memories or personalities, convulsions (i.e. epileptic seizures or “fits”) and fainting as if one were dying. It is also worth noting that in most cases of supposed demonic possession, the individual displayed sporadic hand movements, as if playing a piano.

Demonic possession is not a recognized valid psychiatric or medical diagnosis. The DSM-5 indicates that personality states of dissociative identity disorder may be interpreted as possession in some cultures, and instances of spirit possession are often related to traumatic experiences-suggesting that possession experiences may be caused by mental distress. Some have expressed concern that belief in demonic possession can limit access to health care for the mentally ill. It is also translated into English as spirit of impurity or more loosely as "evil spirit." crucifixion Crucifixion is an ancient method of execution, where the victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden beam and left to hang, perhaps for several days, until eventual death from exhaustion and asphyxiation. Jewish Egyptian Jews constitute both one of the oldest and youngest Jewish communities in the community in world. The historic core of the Jewish community in Egypt consisted mainly of Arabic- Egypt speaking Rabbanites and Karaites. After their expulsion from Spain, more Sephardi and Karaite Jews began to emigrate to Egypt and their numbers increased significantly with the growth of trading prospects after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. As a result, Jews from all over the territories of the Ottoman Empire as well as Italy and started to settle in the main cities of Egypt, where they thrived. The Ashkenazi community, mainly confined to Cairo's Darb al-Barabira quarter, began to arrive in the aftermath of the waves of pogroms that hit Europe in the latter part of the 19th century.

In the 1952 the year when King Farouk was overthrown and life in Egypt changed dramatically. The Jews of Egypt had been departing in waves since 1948, the year of Israel’s creation, when they suddenly found themselves the object of the rage that so many Egyptians felt over the new Jewish state., Egypt began to expel its Jewish population (estimated at between 75,000 and 80,000 in 1948), also sequestering Jewish-owned property at this time. When Colonel Gamal Abdel-Nasser took over, he made it clear that Egypt was only for Arabs; Jews, even whose families had lived there for generations, didn’t qualify. Nasser’s government introduced new edicts that confiscated or nationalized private businesses. Jewish-owned companies were forced to take on Arab managers and employees. It became hard for Jews to find work, and financial uncertainty helped to fuel their departure, as much as darker fears of persecution.

In 2016, an article in an Egyptian periodical contained a quote from Magda Tania Haroun (the president of Cairo’s Jewish community) which seemed to imply that there were only 6 Jews remaining in the entire country, all of them women over age 65. However, a subsequent article in another periodical clarified that she was specifically referring to the Jews remaining in Cairo (where she is based) and that there are a further 12 Jews in the city of Alexandria, whose spiritual leader is Ben Youssef Gaon. With the death of Magda’s mother, Marcelle Haroun, at the age of 93, in July 2019, left only five Jews in Cairo. Jewish Calendar

Jewish feasts The festivals, whose precise dates are based on lunar months, were laid down in the Law of at the time of Moses (Exodus 23:14-17; Leviticus 23:1-44). There were three main annual Jewish religious Christ festivals – 1. Unleavened Bread (Passover / Firstfruits); 2. Weeks (Pentecost); and 3. Ingathering () (Fig 3 above).

1. The Festival of Unleavened Bread (Passover or Pessah) was held in the first month of the Jewish religious calendar. It was initiated to commemorate the Exodus (the ‘going out’) from Egypt in 1447BC when God led his chosen people out of slavery (Exodus 12:1-20). The Jews were to eat unleavened bread (bread made without yeast) to remember that the didn’t have time to let their bread rise before leaving Egypt.

The first day of the festival is often referred to as Passover or Pessah because the Israelites smeared blood on their doorposts so the Angel of Death would pass over and not harm their first-born. In commemoration of the Passover, each family killed and roasted a sacrificial lamb whose blood saved them from death. The festival was celebrated between mid-March and mid-April. The final day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread was called Firstfruits. On this day, the first sheaves of the barley harvest were presented to God.

Jesus attended the Passover festival in Jerusalem in the spring of 27AD (John 2:13- 25). The Last Supper, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus took place during the Passover festival in the spring of 30AD (Matthew 26:17-19).

2. The Feast of Weeks (Pentecost, Harvest or Shavuot) – the main harvest festival celebrating the end of the wheat harvest – was held seven weeks after the first barley harvest (Exodus 34:22). As it was fifty days after Passover, it became known as Pentecost (‘pentekonta’ means ‘fifty’ in Greek). It usually occurred in late May or early June. Jesus’s early disciples were filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost in 30AD.

3. The Festival of Ingathering (Shelters, Tabernacles or Sukkot) celebrated the gathering in of the grapes, figs and olives that had ripened during the dry summer months. It was the autumn harvest festival held in late September or October. Also known as the Festival of Tabernacles, Shelters or Booths, this feast also commemorated the time when the Israelites escaping from Egypt had no permanent homes and pitched their tents (tabernacles) or temporary shelters (called 'sukkah') wherever they found sufficient water or grazing for their livestock (Exodus 17:1).

It’s usually celebrated between mid-September and mid-October. Jewish families often lived in temporary shelters or ‘booths’ during the festival. Jesus went up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles in October 29AD (John 7:1-14).

Other Jewish Religious Festivals

Over time, other annual religious festivals were introduced:

4. Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah) – This festival, usually held in mid-September, celebrated the end of the agricultural year and the beginning of the New Year in the Jewish civil calendar (the beginning of the seventh month in the Jewish religious calendar) (Numbers 10:10). In an age with no written calendars, trumpets (originally the ‘shofar’ or ram’s horn) were sounded on the first day of each new lunar month (Psalm 81:3), and as a sign of the new agricultural season. There is no reference to the Feast of Trumpets in the New Testament.

5. The Day of Atonement () – This solemn festival, at the end of September, was a time for remembering past (wrongdoings) and for making amends. It was the only day of fasting decreed in the Bible. Traditionally, the High Priest ‘atoned’ for the sins of the people once a year. He took a goat (the ‘’) and symbolically heaped the sins of the people upon it before driving it out into the desert to take away their sins (Leviticus 16:5-10 & 20-22).

The Letter to the Hebrews contrasts this annual ceremony of atonement performed by the High Priest with the forgiveness of sins achieved by Jesus on the cross at Calvary (Hebrews 9:6-7 & 23-28).

6. Purim – this festival commemorated the actions of Queen Esther whose quick thinking and decisive action saved the Jewish exiles in Babylon and Persia from being massacred in 473 BC (Esther 3:1-6; 9:23-32). It takes place in February or March. There is no reference to this festival in the New Testament.

7. Lights (Dedication or ) – this festival was initiated to commemorate the re- dedication of the Second Temple by Judas Maccabaeus in 165BC after its defilement by King Antiochus Epiphanes. This re-dedication is recorded in the apocryphal First Book of the (1 Maccabees 4:52-59). During the re-dedication, a single flask of olive oil miraculously kept the lamps in the Temple alight for the whole eight- day ceremony. Hanukkah takes place in mid-December. Jesus attended the Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah) in Jerusalem in the winter of 29AD (John 10:22-24). Hebrew A Northwest Semitic language native to Israel, the modern version of which is spoken by language over nine million people worldwide. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, although the language was not referred to by the name "Hebrew" in the Tanakh itself. (In the Tanakh (Jewish Bible), the language was referred to as Yehudit "the language of Judah" or səpaṯ Kəna'an "the language of Canaan". Later Hellenistic writers such as Josephus and the Gospel of John used the term Hebraisti to refer to both Hebrew and .) The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE. Hebrew belongs to the West Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Hebrew is the only Canaanite language still spoken, and the only truly successful example of a revived dead language.

Hebrew had ceased to be an everyday spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining since the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt (a rebellion of the Jews of the Roman province of Judea, led by Simon bar Kokhba, against the Roman Empire. Fought circa 132–136 CE, it was the last of three major Jewish–Roman wars, so it is also known as The Third Jewish–Roman War or The Third Jewish Revolt.) Aramaic and, to a lesser extent, Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and immigrants. Hebrew survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce and poetry. With the rise of Zionism in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, becoming the main language of the Yishuv, and subsequently of the State of Israel. According to Ethnologue, in 1998, Hebrew was the language of five million people worldwide. After Israel, the United States has the second-largest Hebrew-speaking population, with about 220,000 fluent speakers, mostly from Israel.

Modern Hebrew is the official language of the State of Israel, while premodern Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world today. The Samaritan dialect is also the liturgical tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Arabic is their vernacular. As a foreign language, it is studied mostly by Jews and students of Judaism and Israel, and by archaeologists and linguists specializing in the Middle East and its civilizations, as well as by theologians in Christian seminaries.

The first five books of the , and most of the rest of the Hebrew Bible, is written in Biblical Hebrew, with much of its present form in the dialect that scholars believe flourished around the 6th century BCE, around the time of the Babylonian captivity. For this reason, the Holy" ,(לשון הקודש) Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Lashon Hakodesh Language", since ancient times. manger (Gr. phatne, rendered "stall" in Luke 13:15 ) It seems to have been a stall or crib for feeding cattle/livestock. Stables and mangers in our modern sense were in ancient times unknown in the East. The word here properly denotes the ledge or projection in the end of the room used as a stall on which the hay or other food of the animals of travelers was placed. 2nd Temple The Second Temple period in Jewish history lasted between 516 BCE and 70 CE, when the period Second Temple of Jerusalem existed (It replaced Solomon's Temple, which was destroyed by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE, when Jerusalem was conquered and part of the population of the was taken into exile to Babylon.). The sects of Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots and early were formed during this period. The Second Temple period ended with the First Jewish–Roman War and the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.

After the death of the last Nevi'im (Jewish prophets) of antiquity and still under Persian rule, the leadership of the Jewish people was in the hands of five successive generations of ("pairs of") leaders. They flourished first under the Persians (c. 539 – c. 332 BCE), then under the Greeks (c. 332–167 BCE), then under an independent Hasmonean Kingdom (140–37 BCE), and then under the Romans (63 BCE – 132 CE).

During this period, Second Temple Judaism can be seen as shaped by three major crises and their results, as various groups of Jews reacted to them differently. 1. The destruction of the Kingdom of Judah in 587/6 BCE, when the Judeans lost their independence, monarchy, holy city and First Temple and were partly exiled to Babylon. 2. The growing influence of Hellenism in Judaism, which culminated in the Maccabean Revolt of 167 BCE. 3. The Roman occupation of the region, beginning with Pompey and his sack of Jerusalem in 63 BCE. This included the appointment of Herod the Great as King of the Jews by the Roman Senate, and the establishment of the Herodian Kingdom of Judea comprising parts of what today are Israel, Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. 6 day war The Six-Day War also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War, or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between 5 and 10 June 1967 by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt (known at the time as the United Arab Republic), Jordan, and Syria.

Relations between Israel and its neighbors were not fully normalized after the 1948 Arab– Israeli War. In 1956 Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, with one of its objectives being the reopening of the Straits of Tiran that Egypt had blocked to Israeli shipping since 1950. Israel was eventually forced to withdraw but was guaranteed that the Straits of Tiran would remain open. A United Nations Emergency Force was deployed along the border, but there was no demilitarization agreement.

In the months prior to June 1967, tensions became dangerously heightened. Israel reiterated its post-1956 position that the closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping would be a cause for war (a casus belli). In May Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced that the straits would be closed to Israeli vessels and then mobilized its Egyptian forces along its border with Israel. On 5 June, Israel launched what it claimed were a series of preemptive airstrikes against Egyptian airfields. The question of which side caused the war is one of a number of controversies relating to the conflict.

The Egyptians were caught by surprise, and nearly the entire Egyptian air force was destroyed with few Israeli losses, giving the Israelis air supremacy. Simultaneously, the Israelis launched a ground offensive into the Gaza Strip and the Sinai, which again caught the Egyptians by surprise. After some initial resistance, Nasser ordered the evacuation of the Sinai. Israeli forces rushed westward in pursuit of the Egyptians, inflicted heavy losses, and conquered the Sinai.

Jordan had entered into a defense pact with Egypt a week before the war began; the agreement envisaged that in the event of war Jordan would not take an offensive role but would attempt to tie down Israeli forces to prevent them making territorial gains. About an hour after the Israeli air attack, the Egyptian commander of the Jordanian army was ordered by Cairo to begin attacks on Israel; in the initially confused situation, the Jordanians were told that Egypt had repelled the Israeli air strikes.

Egypt and Jordan agreed to a ceasefire on 8 June, and Syria agreed on 9 June; a ceasefire was signed with Israel on 11 June. In the aftermath of the war, Israel had crippled the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian militaries, having killed over 20,000 troops while only losing fewer than 1,000 of its own. The Israeli success was the result of a well-prepared and enacted strategy, the poor leadership of the Arab states, and their poor military leadership and strategy. Israel seized the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. Israel's international standing greatly improved in the following years. Its victory humiliated Egypt, Jordan and Syria, leading Nasser to resign in shame; he was later reinstated after protests in Egypt against his resignation. The speed and ease of Israel's victory would later lead to a dangerous overconfidence within the ranks of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), contributing to initial Arab successes in the subsequent 1973 Yom Kippur War, although ultimately Israeli forces were successful and defeated the Arab militaries. The displacement of civilian populations resulting from the war would have long-term consequences, as 300,000 Palestinians fled the West Bank and about 100,000 Syrians left the Golan Heights. Across the Arab world, Jewish minority communities fled or were expelled, with refugees going mainly to Israel or Europe. Independence The 1948 (or First) Arab–Israeli War was the second and final stage of the 1947–49 War Palestine war. It formally began following the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight on 14 May 1948; the Israeli Declaration of Independence had been issued earlier that day, and a military coalition of Arab states entered the territory of British Palestine in the morning of 15 May.

The first deaths of the 1947–49 Palestine war occurred on 30 November 1947 during an ambush of two buses carrying Jews. There had been tension and conflict between the Arabs and the Jews, and between each of them and the British forces since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1920 creation of the British Mandate of Palestine. British policies dissatisfied both Arabs and Jews. Arabs opposition developed into the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, while the Jewish resistance developed into the Jewish insurgency in Palestine (1944–1947). In 1947, these on-going tensions erupted into civil war following the 29 November 1947 adoption of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, which planned to divide Palestine into an Arab state, a Jewish state, and the Special International Regime encompassing the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

On 15 May 1948, the civil war transformed into a conflict between Israel and the Arab states following the Israeli Declaration of Independence the previous day. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and expeditionary forces from Iraq entered Palestine, even though Jordan had declared privately to Yishuv emissaries on 2 May that it would not attack the Jewish state. The invading forces took control of the Arab areas and immediately attacked Israeli forces and several Jewish settlements. The 10 months of fighting took place mostly on the territory of the British Mandate and in the Sinai Peninsula and southern Lebanon, interrupted by several truce periods.

As a result of the war, the State of Israel controlled the area that UN General Assembly Resolution 181 had recommended for the proposed Jewish state, as well as almost 60- percent of the area of Arab state proposed by the 1947 Partition Plan, including the Jaffa, Lydda, and Ramle area, Galilee, some parts of the Negev, a wide strip along the Tel Aviv– Jerusalem road, West Jerusalem, and some territories in the West Bank. Transjordan took control of the remainder of the former British mandate, which it annexed, and the Egyptian military took control of the Gaza Strip. At the Conference on 1 December 1948, 2,000 Palestinian delegates called for unification of Palestine and Transjordan as a step toward full Arab unity. The conflict triggered significant demographic change throughout the Middle East. Around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes in the area that became Israel, and they became Palestinian refugees in what they refer to as Al- Nakba ("the catastrophe"). In the three years following the war, about 700,000 Jews emigrated to Israel, many of whom had been expelled from their previous homelands in the Middle East. Yom Kippur The Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War, or October War, also known as the 1973 Arab–Israeli War War, was a war fought from October 6 to 25, 1973, by a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria against Israel. The war took place mostly in Sinai and the Golan—occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War—with some fighting in African Egypt and northern Israel. Egypt's initial war objective was to use its military to seize a foothold on the east bank of the Suez Canal and use this to negotiate the return of the rest of Sinai.

The war began when the Arab coalition launched a joint surprise attack on Israeli positions, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, which also occurred that year during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Egyptian and Syrian forces crossed ceasefire lines to enter the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights, respectively. Both the United States and the Soviet Union initiated massive resupply efforts to their respective allies during the war, and this led to a near-confrontation between the two nuclear superpowers.

The war began with a massive and successful Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal. Egyptian forces crossed the cease-fire lines, then advanced virtually unopposed into the Sinai Peninsula. After three days, Israel had mobilized most of its forces and halted the Egyptian offensive, resulting in a military stalemate. The Syrians coordinated their attack on the Golan Heights to coincide with the Egyptian offensive and initially made threatening gains into Israeli-held territory. Within three days, however, Israeli forces had pushed the Syrians back to the pre-war ceasefire lines. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) then launched a four-day counter-offensive deep into Syria. Within a week, Israeli artillery began to shell the outskirts of Damascus, and Egyptian President Sadat began to worry about the integrity of his major ally. He believed that capturing two strategic passes located deeper in the Sinai would make his position stronger during post-war negotiations; he therefore ordered the Egyptians to go back on the offensive, but their attack was quickly repulsed. The Israelis then counter-attacked at the seam between the two Egyptian armies, crossed the Suez Canal into Egypt, and began slowly advancing southward and westward towards the city of Suez in over a week of heavy fighting that resulted in heavy casualties on both sides.

On October 22, a United Nations–brokered ceasefire unraveled, with each side blaming the other for the breach. By October 24, the Israelis had improved their positions considerably and completed their encirclement of Egypt's Third Army and the city of Suez. This development led to tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, and a second ceasefire was imposed cooperatively on October 25 to end the war.

The war had far-reaching implications. The Arab world had experienced humiliation in the lopsided rout of the Egyptian–Syrian–Jordanian alliance in the Six-Day War but felt psychologically vindicated by early successes in this conflict. The war led Israel to recognize that, despite impressive operational and tactical achievements on the battlefield, there was no guarantee that they would always dominate the Arab states militarily, as they had consistently through the earlier 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Suez Crisis, and the Six-Day War. These changes paved the way for the subsequent peace process. The 1978 Camp David Accords that followed led to the return of the Sinai to Egypt and normalized relations— the first peaceful recognition of Israel by an Arab country. Egypt continued its drift away from the Soviet Union and eventually left the Soviet sphere of influence entirely. Tsiyyonut [͡tsijo̞ ˈnut] after Zion) is the nationalist movement for צִ ּיֹונּות :Zionism Zionism (Hebrew (originally) the re-establishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel (roughly corresponding to Canaan, the Holy Land, or the region of Palestine). Modern Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in Central and Eastern Europe as a national revival movement, both in reaction to newer waves of antisemitism and as a response to Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. Soon after this, most leaders of the movement associated the main goal with creating the desired state in Palestine, then an area controlled by the Ottoman Empire.

Until 1948, the primary goals of Zionism were the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, ingathering of the exiles, and liberation of Jews from the antisemitic discrimination and persecution that they experienced during their diaspora. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism continues primarily to advocate on behalf of Israel and to address threats to its continued existence and security.

A religious variety of Zionism supports Jews upholding their Jewish identity defined as adherence to religious Judaism, opposes the assimilation of Jews into other societies, and has advocated the return of Jews to Israel as a means for Jews to be a majority nation in their own state. A variety of Zionism, called cultural Zionism, founded and represented most prominently by Ahad Ha'am, fostered a secular vision of a Jewish "spiritual center" in Israel. Unlike Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, Ahad Ha'am strived for Israel to be "a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews".

Advocates of Zionism view it as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of a persecuted people residing as minorities in a variety of nations to their ancestral homeland. Critics of Zionism view it as a colonialist, racist and exceptionalist ideology that led advocates to violence during Mandatory Palestine, followed by the exodus of Palestinians, and the subsequent denial of their right to return to lands and property lost during the 1948 and 1967 wars.