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Yehoshua Leib Diskin
Moshe Yehoshua Yehuda Leib Diskin (1818–1898), also known as the Maharil Diskin, was a leading rabbi, Talmudist, and Biblical commentator. He served as a rabbi in Łomża, Mezritch, Kovno, Shklov, Brisk, and, finally, Jerusalem, after moving to Eretz Yisrael in 1878. He opened what today is known as the Diskin Orphan Home in 1881. Biography Yehoshua Leib Diskin was born on December 8, 1818, in Grodno, then part of the Russian Empire. His father, Binyamin Diskin, was rabbi of that city, (also known as Grodno) then Volkovisk, and later Łomża. He married Hinda Rachel, daughter of Rabbi Broder, and lived with his father-in-law in Wolkowitz. He received ''semikhah'' (rabbinic ordination) at the age of 18, and inherited his father's rabbinate of Łomża at the age of 25. Diskin's second wife, Sarah, was known as the "Brisker Rebbetzin". She had a very strong mind, and came from a prestigious family descended from Yechezkel Landau (the "Nodah bi-Yehudah") and Joshua Zeitlin. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rabbi
A rabbi (; ) is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi—known as ''semikha''—following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of the rabbi developed in the Pharisees, Pharisaic (167 BCE–73 CE) and Talmudic (70–640 CE) eras, when learned teachers assembled to codify Judaism's written and oral laws. The title "rabbi" was first used in the first century CE. In more recent centuries, the duties of a rabbi became increasingly influenced by the duties of the Clergy, Protestant Christian minister, hence the title "pulpit rabbis." Further, in 19th-century Germany and the United States, rabbinic activities such as sermons, pastoral counseling, and representing the community to the outside all increased in importance. Within the various Jewish denominations, there are different requirements for rabbinic ordination and differences in opinion regarding who is recognized as a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Volkovisk
Vawkavysk or Volkovysk is a town in Grodno Region, in western Belarus. It serves as the administrative center of Vawkavysk District. It is located on the and rivers, roughly from the city of Grodno and from Minsk, the national capital. As of 2025, it has a population of 41,020. It is one of the oldest towns in the region. Vawkavysk was first unofficially mentioned in the Turov annals in 1005 and this year is widely accepted as the founding year for Vawkavysk. At that time it was a city-fortress on the border of the Baltic and the Slavic ethnic groups. Since the 12th century, Vawkavysk was the center of a small princedom. The Hypatian Chronicle mentions the city in 1252. Toponymy Vawkavysk was mentioned in a manuscript written by the priest D. Bułakowski at the end of the 16th or beginning of the 17th century. It was stored in the Sapieha family's library in Ruzhany Palace, where it was translated into Russian in 1881 and published in a Vilnius gazette. According to the le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jewish Quarter (Jerusalem)
The Jewish Quarter (; ) is one of the four traditional quarters of the Old City (Jerusalem), Old City of Jerusalem. The area lies in the southwestern sector of the walled city, and stretches from the Gates in Jerusalem's Old City Walls, Zion Gate in the south, along the Armenian Quarter on the west, up to the Street of the Chain in the north and extends to the Western Wall and the Temple Mount in the east. In the early 20th century the Jews, Jewish population of the quarter reached 19,000. During the 1948 Palestine war, 1948 war, the Jewish Quarter fought the Arab Legion as part of the battle for Jerusalem, and the Hurva Synagogue, Hurva synagogue was blown up by Arab legionnaires. In May 1948, the Jewish Quarter surrendered; some Jews were taken captive, and the rest were evacuated. A crowd then systematically pillaged and razed the quarter. After Israel captured East Jerusalem during the Six-Day War, 1967 Six-Day War, the quarter was earmarked for rehabilitation as a tourist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old City (Jerusalem)
The Old City of Jerusalem (; ) is a Walls of Jerusalem, walled area in Jerusalem. In a tradition that may have begun with an 1840–41 Royal Engineers maps of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, 1840s British map of the city, the Old City is divided into four uneven quarters: the Muslim Quarter (Jerusalem), Muslim Quarter, the Christian Quarter, the Armenian Quarter, and the Jewish Quarter (Jerusalem), Jewish Quarter. A fifth area, the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as Al-Aqsa or ''Haram al-Sharif'', is home to the Dome of the Rock, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and was once the site of Temple in Jerusalem, the Jewish Temple. The Old City's Walls of Jerusalem, current walls and city gates were built by the Ottoman Empire from 1535 to 1542 under Suleiman the Magnificent. The Old City is home to several sites of key importance and holiness to the three major Abrahamic religions: the Temple Mount and the Western Wall for Judaism, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christianity, and the Dome o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Yishuv
The Old Yishuv (, ''haYishuv haYashan'') were the Jewish communities of the Land of Israel during the Ottoman period, up to the onset of Zionist aliyah waves, and the consolidation of the new Yishuv by the end of World War I. Unlike the new Yishuv, characterized by secular and Zionist ideologies promoting labor and self-sufficiency, the Old Yishuv primarily consisted of religious Jews who relied on external donations ('' halukka'') for support. The Old Yishuv evolved following a significant decline in Jewish communities across the region during late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, and was composed of three clusters. Firstly, Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jewish communities settled in the region during the late Mamluk and early Ottoman periods, alongside Arabic-speaking ''Musta'arabi'' communities, who had already been living there since before the coming of Islam and had been culturally and linguistically Arabized. Secondly, Ashkenazi Jews emigrated from Europe in the 18th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maskilim
The ''Haskalah'' (; literally, "wisdom", "erudition" or "education"), often termed the Jewish Enlightenment, was an intellectual movement among the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, with a certain influence on those in Western Europe and the Muslim world. It arose as a defined ideological worldview during the 1770s, and its last stage ended around 1881, with the rise of Jewish nationalism. The movement advocated against Jewish reclusiveness, encouraged the adoption of prevalent attire over traditional dress, while also working to diminish the authority of traditional community institutions such as rabbinic courts and boards of elders. It pursued a set of projects of cultural and moral renewal, including a revival of Hebrew for use in secular life, which resulted in an increase in Hebrew found in print. Concurrently, it strove for an optimal integration in surrounding societies. Practitioners promoted the study of exogenous culture, style, and vernacular, and the adoption of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yeshiva
A yeshiva (; ; pl. , or ) is a traditional Jewish educational institution focused on the study of Rabbinic literature, primarily the Talmud and halacha (Jewish law), while Torah and Jewish philosophy are studied in parallel. The studying is usually done through daily '' shiurim'' (lectures or classes) as well as in study pairs called '' chavrusas'' ( Aramaic for 'friendship' or 'companionship'). '' Chavrusa''-style learning is one of the unique features of the yeshiva. In the United States and Israel, different levels of yeshiva education have different names. In the U.S., elementary-school students enroll in a '' cheder'', post- bar mitzvah-age students learn in a '' mesivta'', and undergraduate-level students learn in a '' beit midrash'' or '' yeshiva gedola'' (). In Israel, elementary-school students enroll in a Talmud Torah or '' cheder'', post-bar mitzvah-age students learn in a ''yeshiva ketana'' (), and high-school-age students learn in a ''yeshiva gedola''. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive with a respective county. The city is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the United States by both population and urban area. New York is a global center of finance and commerce, culture, technology, entertainment and media, academics, and scientific output, the arts and fashion, and, as home to the headquarters of the United Nations, international diplomacy. With an estimated population in 2024 of 8,478,072 distributed over , the city is the most densely populated major city in the United States. New York City has more than double the population of Los Angeles, the nation's second-most populous city. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chief Rabbi
Chief Rabbi () is a title given in several countries to the recognized religious leader of that country's Jewish community, or to a rabbinic leader appointed by the local secular authorities. Since 1911, through a capitulation by Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel, Israel has had two chief rabbis, one Ashkenazi and one Sephardi. Cities with large Jewish communities may also have their own chief rabbis; this is especially the case in Israel but has also been past practice in major Jewish centers in Europe prior to the Holocaust. North American cities rarely have chief rabbis. One exception however is Montreal, with two—one for the Ashkenazi community, the other for the Sephardi. Jewish law provides no scriptural or Talmudic support for the post of a "chief rabbi." The office, however, is said by many to find its precedent in the religio-political authority figures of Jewish antiquity (e.g., kings, high priests, patriarchs, exilarchs and ''geonim''). The position arose in Europe i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium CE. They traditionally speak Yiddish, a language that originated in the 9th century, and largely migrated towards northern and eastern Europe during the late Middle Ages due to persecution. Hebrew was primarily used as a literary and sacred language until its 20th-century revival as a common language in Israel. Ashkenazim adapted their traditions to Europe and underwent a transformation in their interpretation of Judaism. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, Jews who remained in or returned to historical German lands experienced a cultural reorientation. Under the influence of the Haskalah and the struggle for emancipation, as well as the intellectual and cultural ferment in urban centres, some gradually abandoned Yiddish in favor of German and developed new forms of Jewish relig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ottoman Palestine
The region of Palestine (region), Palestine is part of the wider region of the Levant, which represents the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia.Steiner & Killebrew, p9: "The general limits ..., as defined here, begin at the Plain of 'Amuq in the north and extend south until the Wâdī al-Arish, along the northern coast of Sinai. ... The western coastline and the eastern deserts set the boundaries for the Levant ... The Euphrates and the area around Jebel el-Bishrī mark the eastern boundary of the northern Levant, as does the Syrian Desert beyond the Anti-Lebanon range's eastern hinterland and Mount Hermon. This boundary continues south in the form of the highlands and eastern desert regions of Transjordan." The areas of the Levant traditionally serve as the "crossroads of Western Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean, and Northeast Africa", [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brest-Litovsk
Brest, formerly Brest-Litovsk and Brest-on-the-Bug, is a city in south-western Belarus at the border with Poland opposite the Polish town of Terespol, where the Bug and Mukhavets rivers meet, making it a border town. It serves as the administrative center of Brest Region and Brest District, though it is administratively separated from the district. it has a population of 346,061. Brest is one of the oldest cities in Belarus and a historical site for many cultures, as it hosted important historical events, such as the Union of Brest and Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Furthermore, the Brest Fortress was recognized by the Soviet Union as a Hero Fortress in honour of the defense of Brest Fortress in June 1941. In the High Middle Ages, the city often passed between Poland, the principalities of Kievan Rus', and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. From the Late Middle Ages, the city was part of Lithuania, which later became a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1569. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
