Midterm 2 Flashcards
Abraham Geiger
a German rabbi and scholar, considered the founding father of Reform Judaism. Emphasizing its constant development along history and universalist traits, Geiger sought to reformulate received forms and design what he regarded as a religion compliant with modern times
Martin Luther
was a German professor of theology, composer, priest, monk and a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation
Napoleon
a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the French Revolutionary Wars
Anan Ben David
widely considered to be a major founder of the Karaite movement of Judaism. His followers were called Ananites and, like modern Karaites, do not believe the Rabbinic Jewish oral law (such as the Mishnah) to be authoritative
Mordechai Kaplan
a rabbi, essayist and Jewish educator and the co-founder of Reconstructionist Judaism along with his son-in-law Ira Eisenstein
Saadiah Geon
was a prominent rabbi, Jewish philosopher, and exegete of the Geonic period who was active in the Abbasid Caliphate. The first important rabbinic figure to write extensively in Arabic, he is considered the founder of Judeo-Arabic literature
Baal Shem Tov
was a Jewish mystical rabbi. He is considered to be the founder of Hasidic Judaism
Moses Isserles
was an eminent Polish Ashkenazic rabbi, talmudist, and posek
Samson R. Hirsch
was a German rabbi best known as the intellectual founder of the Torah im Derech Eretz school of contemporary Orthodox Judaism
Baruch Spinoza
radical figure of modern jewish thought that was expelled from the sephardi community in Amsterdam in the 17th century.
Moses Maiomonides
was a medieval Sephardic Jewish philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ages. In his time, he was also a preeminent astronomer and physician. “Author of Guide of the Perplexed”
Shabbettai Tzvi
was a Sephardic ordained Rabbi, though of Romaniote origin and kabbalist, active throughout the Ottoman Empire, who claimed to be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. He was the founder of the Sabbatean movement
Golda Meir
was an Israeli teacher, kibbutznik, stateswoman and politician and the fourth elected Prime Minister of Israel
Moses Mendelsohn
a German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the Haskalah, the ‘Jewish enlightenment’ of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is indebted
Simon of Trent
was a boy from the city of Trent, Prince-Bishopric of Trent, whose disappearance and murder was blamed on the leaders of the city’s Jewish community, based on his dead body allegedly being found in the cellar of a Jewish family’s house
Issac Luria
was a foremost rabbi and Jewish mystic in the community of Safed in the Galilee region of Ottoman Syria. He is considered the father of contemporary Kabbalah,[4] his teachings being referred to as Lurianic Kabbalah
Moshe Ben Maimon
Moses Maimonides
Solomon Schechter
was a Moldavian-born American rabbi, academic scholar and educator, most famous for his roles as founder and President of the United Synagogue of America, President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and architect of American Conservative Judaism
Israel ben Eliezer
Baal Shem Tov
Moshe ben Nachman
was a leading medieval Jewish scholar, Sephardic rabbi, philosopher, physician, kabbalist, and biblical commentator. He was raised, studied, and lived for most of his life in Girona, Catalonia. He is also considered to be an important figure in the re-establishment of the Jewish community in Jerusalem following its decimation at the hands of the Crusaders in 1099
Theodore Herzl
was an Austro-Hungarian journalist, playwright, political activist, and writer who was one of the fathers of modern political Zionism. Herzl formed the World Zionist Organization and promoted Jewish migration to Palestine in an effort to form a Jewish state
Joseph Caro
was author of the last great codification of Jewish law, the Shulchan Aruch, which is still authoritative for all Jews pertaining to their respective communities
Muhammad
the prophet of Islam
William of Norwich
English boy whose death was, at the time, attributed to the Jewish community of Norwich. It is the first known medieval accusation against Jews of ritual murder
M. Mendel Schneerson
a Russian Empire-born American Orthodox Jewish rabbi, and the last Lubavitcher Rebbe. He is considered one of the most influential Jewish leaders of the 20th century
Zacharia Frankel
a Bohemian-German rabbi and a historian who studied the historical development of Judaism. The founder and the most eminent member of the school of historqical Judaism, which advocates freedom of research, while upholding the authority of traditional Jewish belief and practice. This school of thought was the intellectual progenitor of Conservative Judaism
Nachmanides
Moshe ben Nachman
Ashkenazim
are a Jewish diaspora population who coalesced as a distinct community in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium
Karaites
a Jewish religious movement characterized by the recognition of the Tanakh alone as its supreme authority in Halakha (Jewish religious law) and theology
Reconstructionism
a modern Jewish movement that views Judaism as a progressively evolving civilization and is based on the conceptions developed by Mordecai Kaplan (1881–1983). The movement originated as a semi-organized stream within Conservative Judaism and developed from the late 1920s to 1940s, before it seceded in 1955[1] and established a rabbinical college in 1967
Chabad Lubavitch
is an Orthodox Jewish, Hasidic movement. Chabad is today one of the world’s best known Hasidic movements and is well known for its outreach. It is the largest Hasidic group and Jewish religious organization in the world
Masorti
self-appellation of traditional, not strictly observant Jews in Israel, who mostly identify with Orthodox Judaism. Conservative Judaism, often named “Masorti” (“traditional”) outside North America
Reform
a form of Judaism, initiated in Germany by the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86), that has reformed or abandoned aspects of Orthodox Jewish worship and ritual in an attempt to adapt to modern changes in social, political, and cultural life
Conservative
a major Jewish denomination, which views Jewish Law, or Halakha, as both binding and subject to historical development. The movement considers its approach to Law as the authentic and most appropriate continuation of halakhic discourse, maintaining both fealty to received forms and flexibility in their interpretation
Mitnagdim
is a Hebrew word meaning “opponents”. The term “Misnagdim” commonly refers to opponents of Hasidism
Sephardim
a Jew descended from the Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula in the late 15th century, immediately prior to the issuance of the Alhambra Decree of 1492 by order of the Catholic Monarchs in Spain, and the decree of 1496 in Portugal by order of King Manuel I
Haredi
a broad spectrum of groups within Orthodox Judaism, all characterized by a distancing from post modern secular culture. Its members are often referred to as strictly Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox in English
Orthodox
the approach to religious Judaism which subscribes to a tradition of mass revelation and adheres to the interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Tannaim and Amoraim
