On March 31, 1492, the Catholic monarchs of Spain — Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand — issued the Alhambra Decree, which ordered the expulsion of all practicing Jews. More than half of Spain’s Jews converted to Catholicism — many even before the Alhambra Decree — under the threat of torture and even death, or to…
The Jews of Yemen constituted one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, dating back two millennia. That community…
Although the vast majority of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis were…
The ancient community of Jews in Iraq was deeply shaken by the Farhud, a murderous anti-Jewish pogrom in Baghdad, in June 1941. The State of Israel was founded just a few years later, a development that further endangered Iraq’s Jews. (Iraq was one of five Arab nations that invaded the nascent Jewish country immediately upon…
Up till 1948, Egypt was home to an ancient, large, and important Jewish community. With Israel’s War of Independence — following an invasion by Egypt and four other Arab countries — conditions for Egyptian Jews grew considerably worse. That was further exacerbated by the 1956 Sinai War, which involved military action by Israeli, British, and…
J. Daniel Khazzoom (b. 1933) was raised in Baghdad, Iraq. At age 8, he witnessed the infamous Farhud pogrom against the Jewish community of Baghdad, in which hundreds were murdered and thousands injured. Ten years later, Khazzoom left his family and fled to Israel, where he served in the IDF and earned a doctorate in…
A frequently heard view from many historians — Muslin historians in particular — has been that Jews living under Islamic rule fared far better than their coreligionists living under Christian rule. While that may have been true to an extent, the bar for comparison set by Christians was abysmally low. During the millennium of Muslim…
Many people know about the Palestinian nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic), when some 600,000 Palestinians became refugees in surrounding Arab countries while the State of Israel was being established. Far less known is a Jewish nakba, during which an even greater number of mizrahi (eastern) Jews fled Arab countries, mainly under duress. The majority of those…
WOW! FACTS
Inventor of the mobile phone, “Father of the Internet,” inventor of the video game cosole, inventor fo the laser, inventor of the gramophone, creator of the Barbie Doll, creator of the cruise ship, “Father of Immunology,” inventor fo the modern condom (!), a prime minister of the U.K., a three-time prime minister of France, a president of Switzerland and the primary financier of the American Revolution?
We knew you could guess… all of them are (or were) Jews!
To learn about these and many more AmazingJews, watch a compilation put together by JewOfTheWeek.net in 2015 and posted on YouTube. >>
Nobel Prizes
Although Jews are less than two-tenths of one percent of the world’s population, more than 20% of Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish. Source: Google
Polio Vaccine
Millions and millions of people worldwide have been spared the ravages of poliomyelitis — including paralysis and even death — thanks to research conducted by Jewish scientist Dr. Jonas Salk and his team. The Salk vaccine entered widespread use in the U.S. in 1955. Source: Wikipedia
Miss Liberty
The words “…give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…” on the Statue of Liberty were written by Emma Lazarus, a Jew. Source: BuzzFeed
Blue Jeans
Levi Strauss, an immigrant from Germany, invented his blue jeans in 1873. Source: BuzzFeed
Start-Up Nation
Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship in the world. It has the highest rate of entrepreneurship among women and people over 55 in the world. Source: BuzzFeed