Antisemitism is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
A shtetl or shtetel is a Yiddish term for the small towns with large Ashkenazi Jewish populations that existed in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. The term is used in the contexts of peculiarities of former East European Jewish societies as islands within the surrounding non-Jewish populace, and bears certain socio-economic and cultural connotations. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas that constituted the 19th-century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire as well as in Congress Poland, Austrian Galicia, Kingdom of Romania and Kingdom of Hungary, which correspond to the modern-day countries of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Slovakia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and southern Latvia.
The Pale of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917 in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden. Most Jews were still excluded from residency in a number of cities within the Pale as well. A few Jews were allowed to live outside the area, including those with university education, the ennobled, members of the most affluent of the merchant guilds and particular artisans, some military personnel and some services associated with them, including their families, and sometimes their servants. The archaic English term pale is derived from the Latin word palus, a stake, extended to mean the area enclosed by a fence or boundary.
Symon Vasylyovych Petliura was a Ukrainian politician and journalist. He became the Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Army and the President of the Ukrainian People's Republic during Ukraine's short-lived sovereignty in 1918–1921, leading Ukraine's struggle for independence following the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917.
Cantonists were underage sons of conscripts in the Russian Empire. From 1721 on they were educated in special "canton schools" for future military service. The canton schools and the cantonist system were eventually abolished in 1857, following public and international criticism and the Russian defeat in the Crimean War.
The Kievan Letter, or Kyivan letter is an early 10th-century letter thought to be written by representatives of the Jewish community in Kyiv. The letter, a Hebrew-language recommendation written on behalf of one member of their community, was part of an enormous collection brought to Cambridge by Solomon Schechter from the Cairo Geniza. It was discovered in 1962 during a survey of the Geniza documents by Norman Golb of the University of Chicago. The letter is dated by most scholars to around 930 CE. Some think that the letter dates from a time when Khazars were no longer a dominant force in the politics of the city. According to Marcel Erdal, the letter does not come from Kyiv but was sent to Kyiv.
Berdychiv is a historic city in the Zhytomyr Oblast (province) of northern Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Berdychiv Raion (district), the city itself is of direct oblast subordinance, and does not belong to the district. It is 44 km (27 mi) south of the oblast capital, Zhytomyr. Its population is approximately 73,999 .
Galician Jews or Galitzianers (Yiddish:גאַליציאַנערס) are members of the subgroup of Ashkenazi Jews originating in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, from contemporary western Ukraine and from south-eastern Poland. Galicia proper, which was inhabited by Ruthenians, Poles and Jews, became a royal province within Austria-Hungary after the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century. Galician Jews primarily spoke Yiddish.
Rachel Elior is an Israeli professor of Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Jerusalem, Israel. Her principal subjects of research has been Hasidism and the history of early Jewish mysticism.
Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership is a private educational center in Chicago, Illinois. Spertus offers learning opportunities that are "rooted in Jewish wisdom and culture and open to all" although it is not affiliated with any single branch of Judaism. Graduate programs and workshops "train leaders and engage individuals in exploration of Jewish life." Public programs include films, speakers, seminars, concerts, and exhibits — at the institute's main campus at 610 S. Michigan Avenue, as well as in the Chicago suburbs and online.
The Blank family in the Russian Empire was the family of the maternal grandfather of Vladimir Lenin.
A miasteczko (Polish: [mjaˈstɛtʂkɔ] or miestelis, was a historical type of urban settlement similar to a market town in the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the partitions of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the 18th-century, these settlements became widespread in the Austrian, German and Russian Empires. The vast majority of miasteczkos had significant or even predominant Jewish populations; these are known in English under the Yiddish term shtetl. Miasteczkos had a special administrative status other than that of town or city.
Two Hundred Years Together is a two-volume historical essay by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It was written as a comprehensive history of Jews in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and modern Russia between the years 1795 and 1995, especially with regard to government attitudes toward Jews.
The Holocaust in Russia is the Nazi crimes during the occupation of Russia by Nazi Germany.
Ivan Yulianovych Kulyk was a Ukrainian poet, writer, translator, diplomat and Communist Party activist. He also wrote under the names "R. Rolinato" and "Vasyl Rolenko".
Antony Barry Polonsky is Emeritus Professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis University. He is the author of many historical works on the Holocaust, and is an expert on Polish Jewish history.
At the end of the 20th century there were a total of 270,000 Jews in the Chicago area, with 30% in the city limits. In 1995 there were 154,000 Jews in the suburbs of Chicago. Of them, over 80% of the Jews in the suburbs of Chicago live in the northern and northwestern suburbs. In 1995, the largest Jewish community in the City of Chicago was in West Rogers Park. By 1995 the Jewish population within the City of Chicago had been declining, and it tended to be older and more well educated than the Chicago average. Jews in Chicago came from many national origins including those in Europe and Middle East, with Eastern Europe and Germany being the most common.
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe is a German–Polish historian based in Berlin, associated with the Friedrich Meinecke Institute of the Free University of Berlin. He specializes in the history of the Holocaust and East-Central Europe, fascism, nationalism, the history of antisemitism, the history of the Soviet Union, and the politics of memory.
Zenon Eugene Kohut is a Canadian historian specializing in early modern Ukrainian history. He retired as professor emeritus, University of Alberta. From 1992 to 2014 Kohut worked at the University of Alberta's Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies where he served as the first head of the Stasiuk Program for the Study of Contemporary Ukraine and acted as editor of the Journal of Ukrainian Studies (1990–92). He was acting director (1993) and director (1994–2012) of the Program.
After World War I and during the formation of Czechoslovakia, a wave of anti-Jewish rioting and violence was unleashed against Jews and their property, especially stores.
