A hazzan or chazzan is a Jewish musician or precentor trained in the vocal arts who helps lead the congregation in songful prayer. In English, this prayer leader is often referred to as cantor, a term also used in Christianity.
She’ol, in the Hebrew Bible, is a place of darkness to which all the dead go, both the righteous and the unrighteous, regardless of the moral choices made in life, a place of stillness and darkness cut off from life and separated from God. The inhabitants of Sheol are the "shades" (rephaim), entities without personality or strength. Under some circumstances they are thought to be able to be contacted by the living, as the Witch of Endor contacts the shade of Samuel for Saul, but such practices are forbidden.
"Let there be light" is an English translation of the Hebrew יְהִי אוֹר found in Genesis 1:3 of the Torah, the first part of the Hebrew Bible. In Old Testament translations of the phrase, translations include the Greek phrase γενηθήτω φῶς and the Latin phrase fiat lux.
Lishana Deni is a modern Jewish Aramaic language, often called Neo-Aramaic or Judeo-Aramaic. It was originally spoken in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey in the lands west of the Great Zab river (Athura). Following the exodus of Jews from the Muslim lands, most speakers now live in Israel, principally Jerusalem and surrounding villages.
David Noel Freedman, son of the writer David Freedman, was a biblical scholar, author, editor, archaeologist, and, after his conversion from Judaism, a Presbyterian minister. He was one of the first Americans to work on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Died from Heart ailment.
The World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ) is the international umbrella organization for the various branches of Reform, Liberal and Progressive Judaism, as well as the separate Reconstructionist Judaism. The WUPJ is based in 40 countries with 1,275 affiliated synagogues, of which 1,170 are Reform, Progressive or Liberal and 105 Reconstructionist. It claims to represent a total of some 1.8 million people, both registered constituents and non-member identifiers. The WUPJ states that it aims to create common ground between its constituents and to promote Progressive Judaism in places where individuals and groups are seeking authentic, yet modern ways of expressing themselves as Jews. It seeks to preserve Jewish integrity wherever Jews live, to encourage integration without assimilation, to deal with modernity while preserving the Jewish experience and to strive for equal rights and social justice.
Isidore Singer was an editor of The Jewish Encyclopedia and founder of the American League for the Rights of Man.
Gotthard Deutsch, also spelled Gottard Deutsch, was a scholar of Jewish history.
Abraham Cronbach was an American Rabbi and teacher, known as a pacifist. He served as a rabbi for congregations in Indiana and Ohio. Cronbach was one of the founders of the Peace Heroes Memorial Society.
Henry Malter was an American rabbi and scholar.
The pentecontad calendar is an agricultural calendar system thought to be of Amorite origin in which the year is broken down into seven periods of fifty days, with an annual supplement of fifteen or sixteen days. Identified and reconstructed by Julius and Hildegaard Lewy in the 1940s, the calendar's use dates back to at least the 3rd millennium BCE in western Mesopotamia and surrounding areas. Used well into the modern age, forms of it have been found in Nestorianism and among the Fellahin of modern Palestine.
The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, founded in 1947, is committed to preserving a documentary heritage of the religious, organizational, economic, cultural, personal, social and family life of American Jewry. It has become the largest free-standing research center dedicated solely to the study of the American Jewish experience.
The Blackpool Reform Jewish Congregation is a Reform Judaism congregation in Blackpool, Lancashire, England.
Tamara Cohn Eskenazi is The Effie Wise Ochs Professor of Biblical Literature and History at the Reform Jewish seminary Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. She was the first woman hired by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion as a full-time tenure track faculty member for their rabbinical school in 1990, and became the first female tenured full professor in their rabbinical school in 1995. She was also the chief editor of The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, which won the 2008 Jewish Book of the Year Award from the Jewish Book Council. In 2011 Eskenazi and the late Tikva Frymer-Kensky won the 2011 National Jewish Book Award in Women’s Studies for The JPS Bible Commentary: Ruth. On May 19, 2013, Eskenazi was ordained as a rabbi by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
Edward A. Goldman is a Talmudic scholar. He is Professor Emeritus Israel and Ida Bettan Chair in Midrash and Homiletics at the Hebrew Union College. He is the editor of the Hebrew Union College Annual.
Jack Pearl Lewis was an American Bible scholar affiliated with the Churches of Christ. He earned a Ph.D. in New Testament from Harvard University in 1953 and a Ph.D. in Old Testament from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1962. For 50 years, Lewis taught Bible and biblical languages first at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, and then at Harding School of Theology in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was named professor emeritus upon his retirement. He authored over 223 articles in scholarly and church publications and published more than twenty-five books. He died in Memphis, Tennessee on July 24, 2018 at the age of 99.
Kappa Nu (ΚΝ) was an American College Fraternity that was active from 1911 to 1961 when it merged with Phi Epsilon Pi.
Hildegard Lewy was an Assyriologist and academic. Having originally trained as a physicist, upon her marriage to Julius Lewy she moved into Assyriology; she specialised in Cuneiform texts and Babylonian mathematics. She translated, commented on, and published a number of texts from Nuzi and Mari. She also contributed two chapters to The Cambridge Ancient History. She was a professor of Assyriology at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
