128 Fun Facts About Jewish

Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, falls on which day of the week?

Shabbat falls on Saturday. Because Jewish days run from sunset to sunset, it begins at sundown on Friday and ends after nightfall on Saturday.

How many nights does Hanukkah last?

Eight nights, starting on the 25th of Kislev: one more light is kindled each evening, so the display grows from a single flame to a full row.

Passover celebrates the Israelites' escape from slavery in which land?

Egypt is where the Israelites were enslaved under Pharaoh; the Exodus story is retold at the Seder from the Haggadah, and leavened food is banned throughout the festival.

Which unleavened flatbread is eaten during Passover?

Matzah is baked fast, before the dough has time to rise, recalling the Israelites who fled in too much haste to let their bread leaven.

Which is the holiest day of the Jewish year, marked by a full fast?

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is when tradition holds each person's fate for the coming year is sealed, which is why Jews spend its 25-hour fast in prayer and repentance.

Which instrument is blown on Rosh Hashanah?

The shofar, a ram's horn, is sounded in a set series of blasts on Rosh Hashanah, and on weekday mornings through the month before as a call to repent.

Apples dipped in honey are eaten on Rosh Hashanah to symbolise what?

A sweet new year is the wish, and it shapes the whole table: the festive loaf is dipped in honey too and is baked round instead of braided, a shape read as an unending cycle.

Purim celebrates Queen Esther saving the Jews from a plot by which Persian official?

Haman, chief minister to King Ahasuerus, plotted to kill the Jews of Persia; when the Megillah is read, the crowd drowns out Haman's name with groggers.

On Purim, the gifts of food sent to friends are known by what name?

Mishloach manot, literally 'sending of portions', are the food gifts exchanged on Purim; the Book of Esther instructs sending portions to one another and gifts to the poor.

During the autumn Feast of Tabernacles, families eat in a temporary hut called what?

The hut is a sukkah, a booth with a roof of cut branches that recalls the Israelites' desert shelters; the Feast of Tabernacles begins on the 15th of Tishrei.

Simchat Torah celebrates the completion of what yearly cycle?

Public scripture readings run on a yearly cycle that ends on Simchat Torah: the last verses of Deuteronomy are chanted and Genesis begun at once, amid dancing circuits with the scrolls.

Tu BiShvat is known as the new year for what?

Trees: Tu BiShvat began as the date for reckoning a fruit tree's age for tithes, and in modern Israel it is marked by planting saplings.

Shavuot marks the giving of the Torah at which mountain?

Mount Sinai is where tradition places the giving of the Torah; Shavuot means 'weeks', because it comes seven weeks after the second day of Passover.

The Torah consists of how many books?

Five books make up the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy; tradition credits them to Moses, hence the name Five Books of Moses.

According to rabbinic tradition, how many commandments are in the Torah?

613 is the count Rabbi Simlai gave: 365 prohibitions, one for each day of the solar year, and 248 positive commands, matched to the parts of the human body.

The Talmud is made up of the Mishnah and which commentary on it?

The Gemara is the rabbinic commentary on the Mishnah, compiled in the academies of Babylonia and the Land of Israel; the Babylonian version, completed around 500 CE, is the one usually cited.

A mezuzah is fixed to which part of a Jewish home?

A mezuzah is fixed to the doorposts of the home, on the right side as you enter; the parchment inside carries the Shema verses from Deuteronomy, which command writing them 'on the doorposts of your house'.

The small brimless cap worn by Jewish men is called a kippah or what?

Yarmulke is the Yiddish name for the kippah, and no biblical law demands one: covering the head began as a custom, a sign of reverence for God, that observant men now keep all day.

The Star of David is geometrically what kind of shape?

A hexagram is a six-pointed star made of two overlapping triangles; it decorated synagogues and churches alike for centuries before the Jews of Prague adopted it as their community's emblem.

At 13, a Jewish boy can first count toward which prayer quorum of ten?

Minyan means the ten adults needed before certain prayers can be said, so a boy's thirteenth birthday matters to the whole congregation: from that day he can complete the ten.

A Jewish couple stands under what during their wedding ceremony?

A chuppah is the wedding canopy: a cloth stretched over four poles and open on all sides to symbolise the couple's new home; sometimes a prayer shawl held up by friends serves as one.

The Jewish mourning period known as shiva lasts how long?

Seven days is what the name means: shiva is Hebrew for seven. Mourners stay at home on low seats for the week while friends and relatives come to them with comfort.

Which of these animals is forbidden under kosher dietary laws?

The pig is forbidden: the Torah's food laws in Leviticus permit only land animals that both chew the cud and have split hooves, and the pig has split hooves but does not chew the cud.

The braided bread eaten on Shabbat and holidays is called what?

Challah is the braided loaf blessed at Shabbat and festival meals, usually as two loaves that recall the double portion of manna the Israelites gathered in the desert before each day of rest.

The bagel originated in the Jewish communities of which country?

The bagel comes from the Jewish communities of Poland, where community regulations of 1610 are the earliest known mention of the beygl, given as a gift to women after childbirth; the ring is boiled before it is baked.

Hanukkah foods such as latkes and doughnuts recall what?

Latkes are fried in oil to recall the miracle of the Temple oil: after the Maccabees rededicated the Temple, one day's pure oil is said to have burned for the whole festival; sufganiyot are eaten for the same reason.

The four Hebrew letters on a dreidel are read as an acronym for what phrase?

'A great miracle happened there' is the popular reading of nun, gimel, he and shin; the letters began as playing instructions on an older gambling top (nothing, all, half, put in), and Israeli dreidels swap 'there' for 'here'.

Which is the first of the 22 Hebrew letters?

Aleph heads an alphabet that began with no vowels at all; the small dots called niqqud that mark vowel sounds were devised centuries later.

Who led the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language in the 19th century?

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda settled in Jerusalem in 1881 and raised his son to hear nothing but Hebrew, even keeping him from other children, so the boy grew up as the first native speaker of the modern language.

Yiddish, the historic language of Ashkenazi Jews, is based on which language?

Yiddish grew out of medieval German dialects, and most of its vocabulary is Germanic; it is written in Hebrew letters and mixes in Hebrew, Aramaic and Slavic words.

Sephardic Jews trace their roots to communities expelled in 1492 from which country?

Spain's rulers Ferdinand and Isabella gave Jews four months in 1492 to convert or leave; many of the exiles found refuge in the Ottoman Empire, where the sultan took them in.

Ashkenazi Jewish communities first consolidated in the 10th century in which region?

The Rhineland is where Ashkenazi Jewry took shape: towns such as Mainz and Worms were centres of rabbinic learning by the 10th century, before the communities spread east across Central and Eastern Europe.

The Western Wall in Jerusalem was originally a retaining wall of what?

The Temple Mount's western retaining wall outlasted the Temple itself, which Rome destroyed in 70 CE, and so became the closest place to the lost sanctuary where Jews could gather to pray.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in caves near which site?

Qumran's caves kept the scrolls until 1947, when Bedouin shepherds came upon the first seven in clay jars and sold them to antiquities dealers in Bethlehem with no idea of their worth.

Masada was the last rebel holdout in which conflict?

The First Jewish-Roman War began in 66 and saw the Second Temple destroyed in 70; Masada held out until about 73, and Josephus wrote that its defenders chose death over capture.

The Twelve Tribes of Israel descend from the twelve sons of which patriarch?

Jacob was later renamed Israel, which is where the tribes and the nation get their name.

Which two books of the Hebrew Bible never mention God explicitly?

Esther and Song of Songs are the two books with no explicit name of God: Esther tells of deliverance without mentioning Him, and the Song's love poetry names no deity; Esther is nonetheless read aloud every Purim.

Maimonides, the medieval scholar known as the Rambam, served as court physician under which ruler?

Saladin's court gained its physician through a loss: Maimonides made medicine his living only after the merchant brother who supported the family drowned at sea.

Theodor Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress in 1897 in which city?

Basel was the fallback: Herzl had planned the congress for Munich, but Jewish community leaders there objected, so in August 1897 it met in Switzerland instead and founded the Zionist Organization.

Whose mandate over Palestine ended as Israel declared independence in 1948?

Britain's mandate ran out at midnight on 14 May 1948; that afternoon Ben-Gurion read out the declaration in Tel Aviv, and the armies of neighbouring Arab states invaded the next day.

Golda Meir, Israel's prime minister from 1969 to 1974, grew up in which American city?

Born in Kiev, Golda Meir moved with her family to Milwaukee in 1906, attended its teacher-training college and taught there before emigrating to Palestine in 1921.

Degania, founded beside the Sea of Galilee, is known as the 'mother' of which communities?

Kibbutzim began with Degania, where a small band of young immigrants from Eastern Europe chose to farm the land in common, sharing work and income; hundreds of collectives later copied them.

Israel's parliament is called what?

The Knesset, Israel's 120-seat single-chamber parliament in Jerusalem, is elected by nationwide proportional representation and takes its name from the Knesset HaGedolah, the Great Assembly of the Second Temple era.

Anne Frank's family hid from the Nazis in a secret annex in which city?

Amsterdam was meant to be the family's refuge: the Franks left Frankfurt after the Nazis took power in 1933, then hid behind Otto Frank's business from July 1942 until their arrest in August 1944.

A leap year in the Jewish calendar adds what?

An extra month, a second Adar, is slotted in seven times every 19 years, because twelve lunar months come to only about 354 days and the festivals would otherwise drift out of season.

The Hebrew word 'chai', meaning life, has what numerical value, often used for gifts?

18 is the sum of the word's two letters, chet (8) and yod (10), so Jews often give gifts and donations in multiples of it as a way of wishing life.

Which Dodgers pitcher sat out Game 1 of the 1965 World Series because it fell on a Jewish holy day?

Sandy Koufax stayed away while Don Drysdale started the opener in his place and was hit hard; Koufax came back to pitch shutouts in Games 5 and 7 and was named the Series MVP.

Fiddler on the Roof follows Tevye, a milkman in which fictional village?

Anatevka is a fictional shtetl in Tsarist Russia, where Tevye's daughters break with tradition one after another by choosing their own husbands instead of leaving it to the matchmaker.

The Jewish folk song 'Hava Nagila' has a title meaning what?

'Let us rejoice' began without words: it was a Hasidic melody from Sadigura until Hebrew lyrics were fitted to it in Jerusalem around 1918, by the musicologist Abraham Zvi Idelsohn or, in a rival claim, one of his students.

Klezmer is the traditional instrumental music of which Jewish community?

Klezmer is the dance and wedding music of the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe, carried to America by immigrant musicians; its clarinet-led sound was revived there in the late 1970s.

Which prayer do mourners recite for eleven months after a parent dies?

Kaddish stops after eleven months, not twelve, so that no child implies a parent needed the full year of judgment that tradition reserves for the wicked; the prayer itself never mentions death.

The blue-jeans pioneer Levi Strauss was born to a Jewish family in which country?

Germany's Bavaria was his birthplace, and the famous trousers were not his idea: a Nevada tailor thought of riveting the pockets but could not afford the patent, so he asked Strauss to pay for it and share it.

'Mazel tov' literally means what?

'Mazel tov' literally means 'good fortune', mazel being Hebrew for a constellation or destiny; it is said after good news, as congratulations, and not beforehand as a wish for luck.

The word 'chutzpah', borrowed from Yiddish, originally meant what?

Insolence: in Yiddish and Hebrew, chutzpah was a plain fault, the brazen nerve of someone overstepping all bounds; only in English did it pick up an admiring sense of gutsy audacity.

Which classic Jewish comfort food is nicknamed 'Jewish penicillin'?

Chicken soup earned the nickname 'Jewish penicillin' as the household remedy for colds; kneidlach dumplings or lokshen noodles usually float in it, and it is a Friday-night staple.

The Borscht Belt, the summer-resort region famous for Jewish comedians, was in which mountains?

The Catskills filled with Jewish-run hotels and bungalow colonies because many other resorts turned Jewish guests away; the hotel stages then became a training ground for generations of American comedians.

Which comedian first performed 'The Chanukah Song', listing Jewish celebrities, on SNL in 1994?

Adam Sandler wrote it for Jewish children who feel left out at Christmas, and he has since recorded updated versions with new names.

Festivus, with its aluminium pole and 'airing of grievances', was made famous by which sitcom?

Festivus appeared in the 1997 Seinfeld episode 'The Strike', where Frank Costanza explains the holiday; writer Dan O'Keefe's father invented it, and the family had celebrated it since 1966.

The Yiddish insult 'schmuck' literally refers to what?

A penis is what shmok means in Yiddish, so a word English speakers toss off as a mild jibe at a fool still counts as a real obscenity among Yiddish speakers.

What does the Yiddish exclamation 'oy vey' literally mean?

'Oh, woe!': the two phrases are close cousins, since oy is a cry of dismay and vey comes from the same root as the English word 'woe', which is why the Yiddish sounds so much like its meaning.

Which Rat Pack entertainer converted to Judaism?

Sammy Davis Jr., recovering from the 1954 car crash that cost him an eye, heard Eddie Cantor at his hospital bedside describe how much Jewish and Black history had in common, and he later converted.

Which Jewish comedy legend wrote 'Springtime for Hitler' for The Producers?

Mel Brooks served as a US Army engineer in the war against Hitler, then turned him into a song-and-dance joke on screen; the 2001 Broadway version of The Producers won a record 12 Tony Awards.

Which psychoanalyst wrote that few peoples make fun of their own shortcomings as freely as Jews do in their jokes?

Sigmund Freud, in his 1905 book on jokes, set the stories Jews tell against themselves apart from outsiders' crude mockery: the insiders, he wrote, know their real faults as well as their merits.

The name of the baked noodle casserole 'kugel' comes from a word meaning what?

Ball or sphere is what kugel means: the first ones were round bread dumplings steamed in a pot set inside the Sabbath stew, and the baked noodle versions came later.

Latkes, the fried pancakes of Hanukkah, are traditionally made from what?

Latkes are grated potato pancakes, bound with egg and a little flour and fried until crisp; potatoes replaced the earlier cheese-based pancakes in Eastern Europe during the 19th century.

Gefilte fish, the classic Shabbat starter, is traditionally topped with a slice of what?

Gefilte fish is served with a slice of cooked carrot on top, the orange round a standard garnish beside chrain, the horseradish relish; the name means 'stuffed fish' because the mixture was once stuffed back into the skin.

Which rendered poultry fat did Jewish cooks in Eastern Europe fry with instead of butter?

Schmaltz was the kosher answer to a northern kitchen: butter may not be mixed with meat, and olive oil was scarce so far from the Mediterranean, so poultry fat did the frying.

Which comedian co-created the 1990s NBC 'show about nothing' and later starred in Curb Your Enthusiasm?

Larry David co-created the sitcom with its star in 1989 and ran it until he walked away after seven seasons, returning to write the 1998 finale.

What does "bat mitzvah" literally translate to?

Daughter of commandment names the girl, not the party: she comes of age automatically on her birthday, and the synagogue ceremony is a later custom that only marks the moment.

After the Torah portion, a bar or bat mitzvah often chants which passage from the Prophets?

The Haftarah is chanted after the Torah portion every Sabbath; despite the echo, the word has nothing to do with 'Torah' and comes from a Hebrew root meaning to conclude.

During the hora at a bar mitzvah party or Jewish wedding, friends hoist the guest of honour on what?

A chair carries the guest of honour above the circling dancers; the hora itself is a borrowed dance, named for the Romanian round dance it came from.

At what age do some Jews celebrate a second bar or bat mitzvah?

The logic is that the Bible sets a lifespan at 70, so an 83-year-old is 13 all over again.

What does a boy start putting on for weekday prayers in the months before his bar mitzvah?

Tefillin are the leather boxes holding Torah passages, bound to the arm and head on weekday mornings; a boy starts wearing them a few months early so that he knows the routine by the day he is obliged to.

Which ceremony did many early Reform congregations prefer to the bar mitzvah?

Early Reform congregations, first in Europe and then America, replaced bar mitzvah with confirmation, a group ceremony for boys and girls around age 16 held on Shavuot; bar mitzvah later returned to Reform practice alongside it.

Where does the term "bar mitzvah" first appear, in the sense of one who is subject to the law?

The Talmud uses the term simply for anyone subject to the law; as a label for a boy reaching a set age it cannot be traced earlier than the 14th century, the older word being gadol, 'adult'.

The Shulchan Aruch, a law code that lays out rulings ready for use, has a title meaning what?

Set Table is the title's meaning: Joseph Karo set out his rulings ready for use, and Moses Isserles later spread his own glosses over them under the name Mappah, the 'Tablecloth'.

Which small community still sacrifices Passover lambs on Mount Gerizim?

The Samaritans hold that Mount Gerizim, above Nablus, and not Jerusalem is the place God chose, so the whole community gathers on it each spring to slaughter its Passover lambs.

Which movement traces Jewish identity through the father rather than the mother?

Karaite Judaism, which rejects the rabbinic Oral Law, mostly reckons Jewish status through the father, as the Bible reckons tribal descent; rabbinic Judaism counts anyone born of a Jewish mother.

Which physicist turned down the largely ceremonial presidency of Israel when it was offered to him in 1952?

Albert Einstein wrote that he was deeply moved by the offer but saddened and ashamed that he could not accept it. It came after the death of Israel's first president.

Which cuisine do many American Jews eat on Christmas Day, a custom born on Manhattan's Lower East Side?

Chinese and Jewish immigrants lived side by side as New York's two largest non-Christian groups. By the 1930s a restaurant meal on 25 December had become a ritual.

Which escape artist, born Erik Weisz in Budapest, was the son of a rabbi who led a congregation in Wisconsin?

Harry Houdini borrowed his stage name from the French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, whose autobiography he read as a teenager. His father served a Reform congregation in Appleton.

The two blue stripes on Israel's national flag were modelled on which Jewish religious garment?

A prayer shawl, or tallit, is traditionally white with stripes near its edges. The Zionist movement adopted the design in 1897, half a century before the state it would represent existed.

In Jewish folklore, which creature did Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague supposedly shape from clay to protect his community?

A golem is an artificial being brought to life by mystical rituals; in some tales the Hebrew word for truth is inscribed on its forehead.

Lox, the classic bagel topping whose name comes from Yiddish, is a brined fillet of which fish?

Salmon belly was traditionally cured in salt with no smoking at all, which gives true lox a very salty taste. The milder smoked fish sold under the name today is closer to Nova.

At a Passover Seder, an extra cup of wine is poured and the front door opened for which biblical prophet?

Elijah is said to visit every Jewish home on Seder night as a herald of the Messiah. His cup began as a rabbinic compromise over whether the meal called for four cups of wine or five.

Which pungent root is most often grated to serve as maror, the bitter herb on a Passover Seder plate?

Horseradish is a latecomer to the ritual: it does not grow natively in Israel and was unavailable to Jews of the Mishnaic period. Romaine lettuce is the other common choice.

Which Yiddish word for money names the foil-wrapped chocolate coins given to children at Hanukkah?

Gelt was real money for centuries, handed out as a Hanukkah present, until 20th-century American chocolatiers began wrapping chocolate coins in gold and silver foil.

Which tradition of Jewish mysticism, whose central text is the Zohar, counted the pop star Madonna among its students?

Kabbalah led Madonna to wear a red string on her left wrist to ward off the evil eye and to study regularly with a personal rabbi.

Which jam-filled doughnuts did Israel's main labour union promote over latkes as the signature Hanukkah food?

Sufganiyot got the union's backing from the 1920s because replacing the homemade latke with a bakery doughnut meant more work for its members.

Which ceremony ends the Jewish Sabbath with a braided multi-wick candle, a cup of wine and sweet-smelling spices?

Havdalah means separation, the line it draws between the holy day and the new week. The spices are handed around so that everyone present can smell their fragrance.

Which Jewish holiday do Israelis celebrate with bonfires, while children head to the fields with toy bows and arrows?

Lag BaOmer is also a favourite date for weddings and haircuts, and many three-year-old boys in Hasidic families are given their very first haircut on the day.

Which yellow citrus fruit, called an etrog in Hebrew, is held with a palm frond during the Feast of Tabernacles?

Citron is one of the four species taken in hand during the holiday services, beside palm, myrtle and willow. Special care goes into selecting a fine specimen.

Which Greek-derived word names the broken piece hidden for children to find during a Passover Seder?

Afikoman comes from a Greek word for dessert, and it is the last morsel eaten at the meal. In some homes the children steal it and ransom it back to the adults.

In hotels and hospitals, a Shabbat elevator spares observant Jewish riders from pressing buttons by doing what?

Stopping at every floor lets passengers step in and out without operating an electrical switch, which religious law forbids on the day of rest. Some rabbis still object to the lifts.

Which slow-simmered Sabbath stew is brought to the boil before the day of rest begins and left cooking overnight?

Cholent gets round the religious ban on cooking once the holy day has started. Families once carried their pots to the town baker's oven, which stayed hot all night.

On a Hanukkah menorah, what is the name of the helper candle used to light all the others?

The shamash, whose name means helper or servant, must be set on a higher or lower level than the rest of the lights.

Under kosher dietary law, which two kinds of food may never be cooked or eaten together in one meal?

Meat and dairy are kept apart because the Torah three times forbids boiling a young goat in its mother's milk. Maimonides advised a wait of about six hours between the two.

Which Israeli self-defence system, whose name means 'contact combat', did boxer Imi Lichtenfeld develop for the army?

Krav Maga grew out of street fights in 1930s Bratislava, where Lichtenfeld used his boxing and wrestling skills to defend Jewish neighbourhoods against attackers.

In the Hebrew Bible, the shepherd David fells the Philistine giant Goliath using a stone and which simple weapon?

A sling, a staff and a handful of smooth stones from a brook were all David carried, having turned down King Saul's offer of armour.

In the Book of Exodus, which animals overrun the land in the second of the ten plagues?

Frogs emerged from the Nile and jumped around virtually everywhere, one plague after the river itself had turned to blood.

Which biblical king settled a dispute between two mothers by calling for a sword to cut the baby in half?

Solomon never meant the order to be carried out: the true mother gave up her claim to save the child, which told him who she was. The story is told in the Book of Kings.

Which reluctant prophet, sent to warn the city of Nineveh, was swallowed by a large fish?

Jonah is usually pictured inside a whale, but the Hebrew text says only 'large fish'. He spends three days and three nights in its belly after being thrown from a ship.

Which biblical strongman lost his power when his lover Delilah had his long hair cut as he slept?

Samson was a Nazirite, bound by a vow that his hair stay uncut, and his feats included killing a lion with his bare hands. In captivity the hair began to grow again.

Which gold-covered chest, hunted by Indiana Jones on screen, held the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments?

The Ark of the Covenant was built of acacia wood plated with gold and carried on poles by the Levites, well in advance of the marching Israelites.

Which elder brother of Moses spoke for him before Pharaoh and became the first high priest of the Israelites?

Aaron is also the brother who gave in to the people and made the golden calf while Moses was away. Hereditary priests, the kohanim, traditionally trace their male line to him.

In the Book of Genesis, which grandfather of Noah is said to have lived longer than anyone else in the Bible?

Methuselah is said to have reached 969 years. One theory holds that an ancient mistranslation turned lunar months into years, which would put him at a more believable 78.

Which name for the Hebrew Bible is an acronym of its three parts: the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings?

Tanakh joins the first Hebrew letters of Torah, Nevi'im and Ketuvim, a three-part division that is well attested in early rabbinic literature.

In the Book of Genesis, humanity's single language is scrambled after people try to build which structure up to heaven?

The Tower of Babel rose in the land of Shinar until God confounded the builders' speech and scattered them around the world, leaving their city unfinished.

Which band of Jewish rebels, whose name may come from the Aramaic for 'hammer', retook Judea from the Seleucid Empire?

The Maccabees won the victory that Hanukkah celebrates, and their leaders went on to found the Hasmonean dynasty, which ruled Judea for more than a century.

Which leader read out the proclamation of Israel's independence and then served as the first Israeli prime minister?

David Ben-Gurion, born David Grün, was the first to sign the document he had helped to write. He ended his days in a modest hut on a kibbutz in the Negev desert.

The Beta Israel, a Jewish community airlifted to Israel in secret operations in 1984 and 1991, comes from which country?

Ethiopia's Jews left in dramatic airlifts: in 1991 some 14,325 people were flown out in 36 hours, and one jumbo jet carried a record load of more than 1,000 passengers.

Which Jewish New Yorker wrote 'The New Colossus', the sonnet on a bronze plaque in the Statue of Liberty's pedestal?

Emma Lazarus donated the sonnet in 1883 to an auction raising money to build the pedestal. The plaque went up in 1903, sixteen years after her death.

Which Jewish captain in the French army was wrongly convicted of treason in 1894 and sent to Devil's Island?

Alfred Dreyfus spent five years in the penal colony before the novelist Émile Zola's open letter helped force the case back open. He was exonerated in 1906.

Which language, also called Judezmo, did Sephardic Jews spread through the Ottoman Empire after the expulsion of 1492?

Ladino was historically written mostly in Hebrew script, and the Latin alphabet gained ground only after the Ottoman Empire fell.

Which Israeli city, founded beside the ancient port of Jaffa, took its name from a Theodor Herzl novel?

Tel Aviv was the title of the Hebrew translation of Herzl's Altneuland, or Old New Land. The settlement began as a housing estate called Ahuzat Bayit.

Which survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald wrote the memoir Night and won the Nobel Peace Prize?

Elie Wiesel wrote 57 books, mostly in French and English. He was born in Sighet, a town in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania.

Which 1917 British statement, sent as a letter to Lord Rothschild, backed a Jewish national home in Palestine?

The Balfour Declaration was signed by the foreign secretary Arthur Balfour during the First World War, when Palestine was still an Ottoman region.

Which painter, born near Vitebsk, created the Jerusalem Windows and inspired the title of Fiddler on the Roof?

Marc Chagall painted fiddlers more than once, and his canvases also shaped the musical's original set design. He reportedly did not like the show.

The oldest synagogue building still standing in the United States, Touro Synagogue, is in Newport in which state?

Rhode Island's Touro Synagogue was built in 1763. George Washington visited Newport in 1790 and wrote to its congregation that the new government would give no support to bigotry or persecution.

In 1960 Mossad agents seized the Holocaust organiser Adolf Eichmann in which country, where he lived as Ricardo Klement?

Argentina became Eichmann's home after he escaped Allied custody at the end of the war. He was put on trial before a special tribunal in Jerusalem and executed in 1962.

Which Yiddish author, whose pen name is a greeting meaning 'peace be with you', created Tevye the Dairyman?

Sholem Aleichem was often called the Jewish Mark Twain, since both men wrote under pen names in a similar style. His stories reached Broadway as Fiddler on the Roof.

Which African country, named in a 1903 British plan for a Jewish homeland, saw Israel's Entebbe hostage rescue in 1976?

Uganda's Entebbe airport is where commandos freed 102 of 106 hostages, driving up in a Mercedes chosen to resemble the car of the dictator Idi Amin.

Which ancient sage summed up the whole Torah for a would-be convert who stood on one foot?

Hillel told the man not to do to others what was hateful to himself, adding that everything else was explanation to go away and learn.

Which mystic and healer, whose title means 'Master of the Good Name', is regarded as the founder of Hasidic Judaism?

The Baal Shem Tov is often shortened to the Besht, from the title's initials. Much of what is told about him comes from legends gathered in a book called Praise of the Besht.

What is the Hebrew title of the trained scribe who writes Torah scrolls and mezuzah parchments by hand?

A sofer must obey many rules on the exact form of each letter, or the text is not religiously valid. The same craftsman also writes out divorce documents.

Which practice, beloved of Jewish mystics, reads Hebrew words as numbers by giving each letter a numerical value?

Gematria, some historians think, lies behind the number 666 in the Book of Revelation, which matches the value of a Hebrew spelling of the emperor Nero's name.

'Sabra', the nickname for a native-born Israeli, tough outside but gentle inside, is the Hebrew name of which plant?

A prickly pear is a cactus with a thorny exterior and a soft interior, the image that made its name a label for Jews born in Israel.

Which Persian king, the only non-Jew the Hebrew Bible calls a messiah, freed the Jews from captivity in Babylon?

Cyrus issued the Edict of Restoration after his conquest of Babylon, letting the exiles go home to Judah. The Book of Isaiah describes him as anointed for the task.