Portal:Judaism

Tefillin (or phylacteries) are a set of small black leather boxes containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah, which are worn by observant Jewish men during weekday morning prayers. Although "tefillin" is technically the plural form (the singular being "tefillah"), it is loosely used as a singular as well.The hand-tefillin, or shel yad, is placed on the upper arm, and the strap wrapped around the arm, hand and fingers; while the head-tefillin, or shel rosh, is placed above the forehead. The Torah commands that they should be worn to serve as a "sign" and "remembrance" that God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt. The tefillin each contain four portions: Exodus 13:1–10, 13:11–16, and Deuteronomy 6:4–9, 11:13–21, all of which mention the commandment. In the hand-tefillin, these are all written on one scroll, but in the head-tefillin each has its own scroll and compartment. (Read more...)

Did you know...

• ... that an attempt to sell the aging Stanton Street Synagogue (pictured) on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to a Jesuit priest led to its resurgence as a Jewish house of worship?
• ... that it is theorized that Jews' Gate Cemetery in Gibraltar was founded on Windmill Hill due to the expulsion of Jews mandated under the Treaty of Utrecht?
• ... that when Rabbi Avraham Kalmanowitz cried, "even the State Department listened"?
• ... that "Miky", a bomb-sniffing police dog that only responds to commands in Hebrew, helped to revitalize the Jewish community in Helena, Montana, that built Temple Emanu-El?
• ... that the Jewish Military Museum was founded partly to counter the idea that British Jews have avoided serving in the armed forces?

Simon Wiesenthal (1908–2005) was a Jewish-Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter. He studied architecture and was living in Lviv at the outbreak of World War II. After being forced to work as a slave labourer in various Nazi concentration camps during the war, Wiesenthal dedicated most of his life to tracking down fugitive Nazi war criminals. In 1947 he co-founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Linz, Austria, where he and others gathered information for war crime trials and helped refugees find lost relatives. He opened the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna in 1961. He helped in locating Adolf Eichmann and preparing a dossier on Franz Stangl.

In April 1970, when Bruno Kreisky became the Austrian chancellor, Wiesenthal told the press that four cabinet appointees had been members of the Nazi Party. Kreisky called Wiesenthal a "Jewish Nazi" and likened his organisation to the Mafia. He later accused him of collaborating with the Nazis. In 1986, Wiesenthal was involved in the case of Kurt Waldheim, whose Nazi past was revealed in the lead-up to the 1986 Austrian presidential elections, although Wiesenthal had previously cleared him of any wrongdoing.

With a reputation as a storyteller, Wiesenthal wrote several memoirs that contain tales that are only loosely based on actual events. He died in Vienna on 20 September 2005, and was buried in Herzliya. The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles is named in his honor. (Read more...)

• Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth and member of the House of Lords, dies (7 November 2020)
• The Pittsburgher Rebbe, Mordechai Yissachar Ber Leifer dies of COVID-19
• A peace agreement is reached between Israel and the UAE (13 August 2020)
• Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz dies, editor of the Steinsaltz Talmud (7 August 2020)

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