50 Fun Facts About Jewish History

Which Persian king conquered Babylon and let the exiled Jews go home to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple?

Cyrus the Great is the only non-Jew the Hebrew Bible calls a messiah, an anointed one, for ending the Babylonian exile.

Which clifftop fortress above the Dead Sea did a Roman legion capture by building a massive siege ramp?

Masada fell in 73 or 74 CE, and an ancient account says nearly 1,000 defenders chose mass suicide over capture, a claim historians dispute.

Which physicist was offered the largely ceremonial presidency of Israel in 1952 and turned it down?

Albert Einstein wrote that he was deeply moved by the offer, but saddened and ashamed that he could not accept it.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were first found by Bedouin shepherds in caves beside which ancient desert site?

Qumran's first cave held seven scrolls in jars; their Bedouin finders hung them from a tent pole while they decided what to do with them.

Which ancient monument in Rome shows soldiers carrying off the golden menorah from the Jerusalem Temple?

The Arch of Titus carving later served as the model for the menorah on the emblem of the State of Israel.

Which Jewish French army captain was wrongly convicted of treason in 1894 and sent to Devil's Island?

Alfred Dreyfus spent five years in the penal colony before Émile Zola's open letter in a Paris newspaper helped force the case to be reopened.

The word ghetto comes from the quarter where which Italian city confined its Jews from 1516?

Venice created the quarter by order of its doge, and one leading theory traces the word to a local term for the foundry that once stood nearby.

Which teenage diarist hid from the Nazis for two years in an annex concealed behind a bookcase?

Anne Frank's diary first appeared in Dutch under a title meaning the back house, and has since been translated into more than 70 languages.

Who drove the revival of spoken Hebrew, raising his son as its first native speaker in modern times?

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda also compiled a landmark Hebrew dictionary and edited HaZvi, one of the first Hebrew newspapers in Palestine.

Which Jewish American poet wrote The New Colossus, the sonnet on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty's pedestal?

Emma Lazarus wrote the poem in 1883 for an auction raising money to build the pedestal, and the bronze plaque was only added in 1903.

Which Polish-born leader proclaimed the State of Israel in Tel Aviv in 1948 and became its first prime minister?

David Ben-Gurion later moved to a modest hut at Sde Boker in the Negev desert, where he lived until his death.

Which Kyiv-born schoolteacher raised in Milwaukee became Israel's first female prime minister in 1969?

Golda Meir slipped into Amman days before independence in 1948, disguised as an Arab woman, for a secret meeting with King Abdullah of Transjordan.

Which Hungarian-born journalist wrote Der Judenstaat and convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897?

Theodor Herzl died at 44 and was buried in Vienna; in 1949 his remains were reburied in Israel on a hill that bears his name.

Which 1917 British statement backed a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, then under Ottoman rule?

The Balfour Declaration was a single letter from the British foreign secretary, yet it became a core part of the British Mandate for Palestine.

Which 1492 order by Ferdinand and Isabella told Spain's unconverted Jews to leave the country?

The Alhambra Decree was not formally revoked until 1968, and in 2015 Spain offered citizenship to descendants of the Jews it had expelled.

Which rabbi and philosopher, born in Córdoba and settled in Egypt, served as personal physician to Saladin?

Maimonides also wrote the fourteen-volume Mishneh Torah, an enduring code of Jewish law, and is said to be buried in Tiberias.

Which 11th-century rabbi from Troyes wrote the commentary printed in every edition of the Talmud since the 1520s?

Rashi's daughters married his students, and most Ashkenazi rabbinical dynasties can trace their lineage back to two of them.

Which rebel leader, hailed as the messiah by Rabbi Akiva, led the last great Jewish revolt against Rome in 132?

Simon bar Kokhba kept an independent Jewish state going for about three years; letters found in a desert cave in the 20th century revealed his original name, bar Kosevah.

Which band of Jewish rebels recaptured the Jerusalem Temple from the Seleucid Greeks, a victory celebrated at Hanukkah?

The Maccabees may owe their name to an Aramaic word for hammer, a tribute to the ferocity in battle of their leader Judah.

Which biblical king is credited with building the First Temple in Jerusalem?

Solomon's sanctuary is thought to have stood for about four centuries, yet no positively identified remains of it have ever been found.

Which king destroyed Jerusalem and its First Temple in the 580s BCE, deporting much of Judah's population to Babylon?

Nebuchadnezzar II's own records are silent on it: no known cuneiform document covers the destruction of the Temple.

Which Roman client king of Judea rebuilt the Second Temple and built the harbour at Caesarea Maritima?

Herod the Great enlarged the Temple's base, and the Western Wall where Jews pray was part of the retaining wall of that platform.

Which Jewish commander surrendered to the Romans at Yodfat in 67 and later wrote the history titled The Jewish War?

Flavius Josephus was kept as a slave by the general Vespasian, who freed him on becoming emperor and whose family name he then took.

Which ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible was begun by Jews in Ptolemaic Egypt in the 3rd century BCE?

The Septuagint takes its name from the Latin for seventy, after the seventy-two scholars who, in legend, translated the first five books for Ptolemy II.

Which trove of 400,000 Jewish manuscript fragments lay for centuries in the storeroom of Egypt's Ben Ezra Synagogue?

The Cairo Geniza sat in a room with no door or window, reached only by climbing a ladder to an opening high in the synagogue wall.

Which 17th-century rabbi from Smyrna was hailed by many Jews as the messiah, then converted to Islam?

Sabbatai Zevi was brought before the Ottoman sultan's court and, to save his life, chose conversion, wearing a turban from then on.

Which Jewish revival movement, founded in 18th-century Ukraine by the Baal Shem Tov, prizes joy in worship?

Hasidism spread rapidly across Eastern Europe, and those who opposed it earned a name of their own, the Misnagdim.

Which 18th-century Berlin thinker, hailed as the German Socrates, became the leading figure of the Jewish Enlightenment?

Moses Mendelssohn's descendants include the composers Fanny and Felix, and the founders of a banking house that carried the family name.

Which Dutch philosopher, expelled by his Portuguese-Jewish congregation in 1656, made his living grinding lenses?

Baruch Spinoza was cast out for good after challenging rabbinic authority, and he kept clear of every religious affiliation afterwards.

What name was given to the western zone of the Russian Empire where Jews were allowed to live permanently?

The Pale of Settlement was created under Catherine the Great, at first to speed the colonisation of new Black Sea lands, and lasted until 1917.

Which Russian word entered English for the mob attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire, such as Kishinev in 1903?

Pogrom comes from a Russian verb meaning to destroy or wreak havoc, and was first recorded in English in 1882.

Which 1938 night of Nazi attacks on Jewish shops and synagogues followed the shooting of a German diplomat in Paris?

Kristallnacht takes its name from the broken glass that littered the streets; rioters wrecked over 1,400 synagogues and prayer rooms.

In which occupied European capital did Jewish ghetto fighters hold off the SS for almost a month in spring 1943?

Warsaw saw the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II, which the SS crushed only by destroying the district block by block.

Which Swedish diplomat issued protective passports to Jews in Budapest in 1944, then vanished into Soviet custody?

Raoul Wallenberg also sheltered Jews in buildings he declared Swedish territory, until Soviet agents detained him on suspicion of spying.

Which German industrialist is credited with saving 1,200 Jews by employing them in his enamelware factories?

Oskar Schindler is buried on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, the only former member of the Nazi Party to be honoured in that way.

Which Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem honours non-Jewish rescuers in its Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations?

Yad Vashem takes its name, meaning a memorial and a name, from a verse in the Book of Isaiah, and was established by the Knesset in 1953.

Which Nazi official was abducted from Argentina by the Mossad in 1960 and put on trial in Jerusalem?

Adolf Eichmann had escaped an American detention camp after the war and reached South America in 1950 on false papers.

At which African airport did Israeli commandos free the hostages from a hijacked Air France flight in July 1976?

Entebbe is where the hijackers diverted the Tel Aviv to Paris flight, with the backing of Uganda's dictator Idi Amin.

From which African country did Israel airlift more than 14,000 Jews in just 36 hours in 1991?

Ethiopia's airlift set a world record: one El Al jumbo carried at least 1,088 people, including two babies born on the flight.

Which 1967 conflict left Israel holding the Sinai, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and East Jerusalem?

The Six-Day War opened with a surprise strike in which all but 12 of Israel's nearly 200 operational jets attacked Egypt's airfields.

Which Boston attorney, nicknamed the people's lawyer, became the first Jewish justice of the US Supreme Court in 1916?

Louis Brandeis was confirmed by 47 votes to 22 after a bitterly contested nomination by President Woodrow Wilson.

In 1654, 23 Jewish refugees from Recife in Brazil landed in which Dutch colonial town on the Hudson River?

New Amsterdam's governor Peter Stuyvesant tried to turn them away, but he was overruled by the directors of the Dutch West India Company.

Which Bavarian-born San Francisco merchant joined tailor Jacob Davis to patent riveted work pants in 1873?

Levi Strauss sold wholesale dry goods; the rivets were the idea of Davis, a customer in Reno who asked him for help applying for the patent.

Which Victorian prime minister was born into a Jewish family and baptised an Anglican at the age of twelve?

Benjamin Disraeli was baptised after his father quarrelled with London's Bevis Marks Synagogue and renounced Judaism.

Which banking dynasty was built by Mayer Amschel's five sons in London, Paris, Vienna, Naples and Germany?

Rothschild was at first the name of a house, built in 1567, from which the family took its surname long before it had a bank.

Which language of Ashkenazi Jews fuses High German with Hebrew elements and is written in the Hebrew alphabet?

Yiddish arose in the Holy Roman Empire during the Middle Ages and served for centuries as the everyday speech of Ashkenazi communities.

Which US president recognised the State of Israel just eleven minutes after its independence was declared in 1948?

Harry S. Truman was swayed in part by Eddie Jacobson, an old friend and his former partner in a failed Kansas City haberdashery.

Which Chinese city, a Song dynasty capital, had a Jewish community that built its own synagogue in 1163?

Kaifeng's Jews slowly merged with their neighbours through intermarriage, and by the 19th century little was left but family memories of a Jewish past.

Which Turkic people of the Eurasian steppe had a ruling elite that converted to Judaism in the 8th century?

The Khazars are reported to have adopted the Hebrew script afterwards, though how far the new faith spread beyond the court remains uncertain.

What is the Hebrew name for Israel's collective farming communities, the first of which, Degania, dates from 1910?

Some kibbutz founders were inspired by the ideals of ancient Sparta, especially in education and communal living.