In simple terms, antisemitism is hatred of Jews. Like all racisms it picks on a characteristic (here, being Jewish) that is an unchangeable part of a person,
and fills this characteristic with nasty ideas. Antisemitism is something that is brought to the Jewish people from the outside and to which Jews are asked to react.
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One of the most difficult things that child refugees face was their dislocation from home and family. Children like Dorrith and Henry had to make the journey
from their homes in Europe to their new life in Britain in groups led by young adult volunteers. Children as young as two years old travelled without their
parents and were collected in Harwich and London by people they didn’t know and who spoke a language they didn’t understand.
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The Gorbals is an area on the south side of Glasgow, the first official part of the city south of the River Clyde. Coal mining was an early Gorbals industry,
and in the 1790s it became a fashionable spot for those wanting to move out of the old city centre, with elegant suburban houses built along its broad streets.
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The late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw the mass migration of many people from Eastern Europe towards ‘the West’. Included among them were close to
2 million Jews who moved from the Pale of Settlement towards North America, western Europe, the United Kingdom, and other parts of the English-speaking
(Anglophone) world.
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Records of Jews in Scotland date back at least to the 17th century. Julius Conradus Otto, a Christian convert who later reverted to Judaism, became the first chair
of Hebrew and Oriental Languages at Edinburgh University in 1642. Herman Lyon’s 1795 mausoleum on Calton Hill is thought to be the first Jewish gravesite in Edinburgh.
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Religious iconography has not played the kind of role in Judaism in the way that it has in Christianity, and until recent centuries much Jewish artistic creativity
was directed towards the decoration of ritual objects and manuscripts, often to high levels of detail and craftsmanship.
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Not all Jews find it meaningful to engage with Jewish religious beliefs and practices. For many Jews their interest in maintaining a connection with their Jewish
identity is expressed by an engagement with other Jewish cultural expressions, such as Jewish history, literature, music and politics.
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Kosher food is governed by the laws of kashrut, which have their basis in the Torah and have been interpreted over the centuries by religious authorities so that
they can be followed by Jews throughout the world. These laws determine which foods may be eaten, how they should be prepared, and what they can be eaten with.
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Eastern European Jews are known as Ashkenazi Jews. Jews began to settle in Poland, Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe from around the 15th century. Many moved
there from countries further West, looking for better opportunities and sometimes escaping persecution.
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For the majority of Jewish history, Jews have not had a land of their own. This means that Jewish languages have often been shared across many countries, connecting
diasporic groups through sacred texts, in poetry and song, and more recently with books, newspapers and broadcasting.
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After the Nazi party came into government in 1933 life for Jews in Germany changed. In 1934 and 1935 laws were introduced which excluded Jews from participating in
social and professional life.
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A person is a Jew if they have Jewish parents. A Jew may choose to express their Jewishness by following the religion of Judaism. However, a person’s ‘Jewish status’
does not depend on them holding particular beliefs or following particular practices.
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After the state organised terror on 9-10 November 1938 (also known as ‘Kristallnacht’, the night of broken glass), the British government gave in to pressure from
British citizens to allow children to take refuge in the United Kingdom as long as families and refugee organisations paid for their maintenance (food, clothes,
education, housing and so on).
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Music is sometimes described as the one language shared by all humans. Even though many cultures have no single word for ‘music’, every group of people around the
world takes part in activities that we could call ‘music-making’.
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Music is a central part of Jewish worship. Many prayers are sung together by the whole congregation in synagogue, and some Jewish families sing prayers and songs around
the table at a Friday night Sabbath meal.
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World War II had consequences for Germany’s antisemitic policies. The Nazis were motivated by a fascist ideology which divided people up into nations and placed nations
into a hierarchy.
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Throughout the world, synagogues have often been owned by their local Jewish community. Communities themselves raise funds to build a synagogue, and wealthier members
often donate items such as Torah scrolls. Synagogue congregations organise khevrot (societies) in order to provide services to their community such as ritual bathing
and burial – both of which have specific processes according to traditional Jewish law (halakhah).
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