80 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?

Hanukkah lasts eight nights, beginning on the 25th of Kislev; it recalls the Maccabees' rededication of the Second Temple in 164 BCE.

A Hanukkah menorah has how many branches?

A Hanukkah menorah, the hanukkiah, has nine branches: one light for each night of the festival plus the shamash, the attendant candle used to light the others.

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

Passover recalls the Exodus from Egypt, where the Israelites were enslaved under Pharaoh; the story is retold at the Seder from the Haggadah, and leavened food is banned all week.

Which unleavened flatbread is eaten during Passover?

Kosher-for-Passover matzah in the Ashkenazi tradition is made from nothing but flour and water.

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

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, falls on the 10th of Tishrei; it is kept with a roughly 25-hour fast and a full day of prayer that closes with the Ne'ilah service.

Which instrument, made from a ram's horn, is blown on Rosh Hashanah?

The shofar is a ram's horn sounded in a set series of blasts on Rosh Hashanah, and on weekday mornings throughout the preceding month of Elul as a call to repentance.

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

Dipping apple in honey voices the hope for a sweet new year, spoken in the accompanying blessing 'renew for us a good and sweet year'; the pairing is a custom first recorded among medieval European Jews.

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?

Simchat Torah ends the yearly cycle of public scripture readings: the final verses of Deuteronomy are chanted and Genesis begun at once, amid dancing circuits with the scrolls called hakafot.

Tu BiShvat is known as the new year for what?

It falls on the 15th of Shevat and is often marked today by planting trees in Israel.

Shavuot marks the giving of the Torah at which mountain?

Shavuot commemorates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai; it falls exactly seven weeks after Passover, at the close of the Counting of the Omer.

The Torah consists of how many books?

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, also called the Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses.

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

Rabbinic tradition counts 613 commandments in the Torah, a figure first stated in the Talmudic tractate Makkot; it breaks down into 248 positive commands and 365 prohibitions.

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 word for the kippah, the skullcap that fulfils the custom of covering the head, especially during prayer; observant men wear one all day.

The Star of David is geometrically what kind of shape?

The Star of David is a hexagram, a six-pointed star formed by two overlapping equilateral triangles; its Hebrew name, Magen David, means 'Shield of David'.

In Orthodox communities, at what age does a boy become bar mitzvah?

In Orthodox communities a boy becomes bar mitzvah at 13, when he is first counted in a minyan and called up to read from the Torah.

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?

The word itself means 'seven', and mourners are said to be 'sitting shiva'.

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 recalling the double portion of manna; it is not eaten on Passover, when leavened bread is forbidden.

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.

Latkes, the fried pancakes of Hanukkah, are cooked in oil to 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?

The letters nun, gimel, he and shin stand for 'Nes gadol haya sham', 'A great miracle happened there'; in Israel the last letter is swapped for pe, changing 'there' to 'here'.

How many letters are in the Hebrew alphabet?

The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters, all consonants, written right to left; vowels are shown by optional dots and dashes, a system called niqqud.

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

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda settled in Jerusalem in 1881, raised his son as the first native speaker of modern Hebrew and founded the Hebrew Language Committee in 1890, forerunner of the Academy of the Hebrew 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?

Portugal followed with its own expulsion order in 1496; the word Sepharad is Hebrew for Spain.

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

Ashkenazi Jewry took shape in the Rhineland, in the cathedral towns of Speyer, Worms and Mainz, around the 10th century, then spread east across Central and Eastern Europe over the following centuries.

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

The Western Wall is a surviving retaining wall of the Temple Mount, the platform Herod the Great expanded around 19 BCE; the whole wall runs about 488 metres, though only a short stretch is used for prayer.

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

The scrolls were found between 1946 and 1956 in caves near Qumran, on the north-western shore of the Dead Sea; they include the Great Isaiah Scroll, the oldest complete copy of a biblical book.

Masada was the last rebel holdout in which conflict against Rome?

Masada fell in 73 or 74 CE, the last act of the First Jewish-Roman War that began in 66 and saw the Second Temple destroyed in 70; Josephus wrote that 960 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?

Maimonides was court physician in Cairo under Saladin, treating the sultan's vizier al-Fadil and later Saladin's son al-Afdal; his fourteen-book Mishneh Torah, completed around 1180, became a central code of Jewish law.

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

The First Zionist Congress met in Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897, a year after Herzl's pamphlet Der Judenstaat; it founded the Zionist Organization and adopted the Basel Program.

Israel declared its independence in which year?

Israel declared independence on 14 May 1948, hours before the British Mandate expired; armies of neighbouring Arab states invaded the next day, opening the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

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.

What was the name of the first kibbutz, founded in 1910?

Degania, on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, was founded in 1910 by a small group of Second Aliyah pioneers who farmed the land of Ottoman Palestine collectively; it is known as the 'mother of the kibbutzim'.

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?

The Franks hid in the Secret Annex behind Otto Frank's business at Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam from July 1942 until their arrest in August 1944; the building opened as the Anne Frank House museum in 1960.

The Jewish calendar is lunisolar; roughly how many days do its 12 regular months add up to?

The regular lunar months of 29 or 30 days add up to about 354 days, short of the solar year, so a thirteenth month, Adar II, is added seven times every nineteen years to keep the holidays in season.

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

Giving money in multiples of 18 is a common custom at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Which Dodgers pitcher refused to pitch Game 1 of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur?

Sandy Koufax sat out the opener in Minnesota, where Don Drysdale started in his place; Koufax returned to pitch shutouts in Games 5 and 7 and was named Series MVP.

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

Tevye's village is Anatevka, a fictional shtetl in the Tsarist Pale of Settlement; the 1964 musical, with songs by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, is based on Sholem Aleichem's Tevye the Dairyman stories.

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

'Hava Nagila' means 'Let us rejoice'; Abraham Zvi Idelsohn set the words to a Hasidic melody from the Sadigura court in Bukovina around 1918, and it became a staple of Jewish weddings.

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.

The Mourner's Kaddish is recited for how many Hebrew months after the death of a parent?

Kaddish is said for a parent for 11 months, a month short of the full year of judgment tradition assigns the wicked, so as not to imply the parent needs it; the prayer praises God and never mentions death.

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

Levi Strauss was born in 1829 in Buttenheim, Bavaria, Germany; he emigrated to New York in 1847 and opened his San Francisco dry-goods business in 1853.

'Mazel tov' literally means what?

'Mazel tov' literally means 'good fortune' or 'good luck', mazel being Hebrew for a star or constellation; it is used to say congratulations at weddings, births and bar mitzvahs.

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

Chutzpah means insolence or cheek: brazen nerve that oversteps accepted bounds, from the Hebrew and Aramaic hutzpah; in English it has acquired an admiring sense of 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 Borscht Belt was the cluster of Jewish summer resorts in the Catskills of Sullivan and Ulster counties, New York, where hotels such as Grossinger's and the Concord launched comedians like Jerry Lewis and Joan Rivers.

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

Adam Sandler debuted 'The Chanukah Song' on SNL's Weekend Update in December 1994 and put it on his 1996 album What the Hell Happened to Me?; later versions added verses, and O. J. Simpson is famously 'not a Jew'.

Festivus, with its aluminium pole and 'airing of grievances', comes from 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?

Schmuck comes from Yiddish shmok, a vulgar word for a penis, which is why it counts as a genuine obscenity among Yiddish speakers; English speakers softened it into 'schmo'.

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

'Oy vey' literally means 'Oh, woe!': oy is a cry of dismay and vey is Yiddish for woe; the Hebrew equivalent is 'oy vavoy', and for extra despair it stretches to 'oy vey iz mir', 'oh woe is me'.

Which Rat Pack entertainer converted to Judaism?

Sammy Davis Jr., raised Catholic, embraced Judaism after the 1954 car crash that cost him an eye; he said he saw common ground between the histories of African Americans and Jews.

Which Jewish comedy legend, born Melvin Kaminsky, wrote 'Springtime for Hitler' for The Producers?

Mel Brooks, born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn in 1926, wrote and directed the 1967 film The Producers with its 'Springtime for Hitler' number; its 2001 Broadway version set the record for Tony Awards won by one show, completing his EGOT.

Which psychoanalyst argued Jewish humour is unique for mocking the in-group, not outsiders?

Sigmund Freud, in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), remarked that he knew of few other peoples who made such fun of their own character, though he noted the jokes also carry sly self-praise.

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

Kugel means a ball or sphere: the earliest kugels were round puddings steamed inside the Shabbat stew pot, and noodle versions came later, usually baked in a square pan.

Latkes are eaten at Hanukkah because they are fried in oil, but what are they made of?

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 love-it-or-hate-it 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.

Bagels were first mentioned in 1610 in community ordinances of which Polish city?

Kraków's Jewish community regulations of 1610 are the earliest known mention of the bagel; the city's bakers had made a similar boiled-then-baked ring, the obwarzanek, since at least 1394.

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 was the model for George Costanza; from 2000 he played a version of himself in HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm.

In Orthodox communities, at what age does a girl become bat mitzvah?

In Orthodox practice a girl becomes bat mitzvah at 12, a year earlier than a boy, reflecting the traditional view that girls mature sooner; Reform and Conservative communities generally mark both at the same age.

What does "bat mitzvah" literally translate to?

Bat mitzvah literally means 'daughter of commandment': bat is Hebrew for daughter and mitzvah a commandment, so in rabbinic usage the phrase means one who is subject to the law.

Which American rabbi held the first modern public bat mitzvah, for his daughter, in March 1922?

Earlier girls' rites had been recorded in 19th-century Italy and Iraq, but Kaplan's Society for the Advancement of Judaism ceremony set the modern pattern.

On which day is a bar or bat mitzvah ceremony usually held?

The ceremony is usually held on the first Shabbat after the birthday, reckoned by the Hebrew calendar, when the celebrant first counts as an adult at the Torah reading; the obligations themselves begin on the birthday.

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.

Which religious articles does a boy start putting on one to three 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 month or more before his bar mitzvah so he can fulfil the commandment properly once obligated.

Which ceremony did many early Reform congregations prefer instead of bar and bat 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 term appears in the Talmud simply meaning one obligated by the commandments; as a label for a boy reaching a specific age it cannot be traced earlier than the 14th century, the older term being gadol.

Rabbi Joseph Karo's Shulchan Aruch, a key code of Jewish law, has a title meaning what?

Shulchan Aruch means 'Set Table': Joseph Karo published the code in Venice in 1565 as a digest of halakha, and with Moses Isserles's Ashkenazi glosses it became the standard reference for Orthodox practice.

The Samaritan community is centred on which mountain in the West Bank?

The Samaritans hold Mount Gerizim, above Nablus, to be the true holy site chosen by God rather than Jerusalem, and sacrifice the Passover lamb on its summit every year; they follow only the written Torah.

Which movement holds that Jewish identity is passed only through the father?

Karaite Judaism, which rejects the rabbinic Oral Law, reckons Jewish status through the father, following the biblical pattern of tribal descent; rabbinic Judaism by contrast counts anyone born of a Jewish mother or converted under halakha.