... discontinued and Jews were no longer obligated to make pilgrimages. The Romans did not allow Jewish pilgrims into the city, however according to the written version of the Jewish oral law, known as Talmud, some Jews secretly made their way to the site of the Temple anyway. (About.com Judaism, 2014) When Jews were again allowed into Jerusalem in the fifth ... the here-and-now, but also of the untold numbers of people who through commitment and hardship streamed this wall. Rabbi Jacob Ettlinger writes "since the gate of heaven is near the Western Wall, it is understandable that all Israel...

• Word Count: 2466
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... personal assistant to various rabbis, among other things. At the numerous synagogues that Besht he worked, he was considered maniacal, due to zealous, incessant prayer, and ignorant, due to his near verbal stillness when at prayer. Later, he worked as a ditchdigger, where he was considered a good worker, but quite odd because of frequent "visions" and unprovoked, long-lasting excursions to a place ... the Kahal of Four Lands, for Hasidism was undermining its authority and caused much ire from Orthodox Rabbis. The structure of the Kahal was very complex. It tackled religion, education, l...

• Word Count: 2710
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... the back of the neck merely because of their religion. A story goes that a non-Jewish maid seeking information about the fate of her Jewish employers, just murdered by the SS near Meina, was told she would never see them again. Timidly, she objected that they were good people. An SS man responded, Not good people. Jews, who are the ruin of ... countrymen, and did not live apart generally from Christians. Still one other less tangible characteristic of the Italian Jews and non-Jews alike was an amiable inclination to ignore the law. It seems never to have occurred to most Italian Jews to...

• Word Count: 4666
• Approx Pages: 19
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... a sense of mortality exists, with his works often beginning and ending with death. The novel begins in the present and in the prologo, the narrator is visiting the Etruscan tombs near Rome and as he is thinking of this lost civilisation he is reminded of the Finzi-Contini. This archaeological reference also suggests the digging into the past through the reconstruction ... òl is symbolic of her need to keep something to herself, some new individualism so as to be different from everyone. It could also be an unconscious rebellion against the law against dialect and another form of the Fin...

• Word Count: 2562
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate