Concise meanings, with context where a word has changed across periods or carries political weight.
At its broadest, the belief that the Jewish people have a right to national self-determination in their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel. Modern political Zionism gave this older connection organised political form in the late nineteenth century.
Read moreA person who supports Jewish national self-determination in the historic Jewish homeland. The term does not identify a political party or one view on borders, settlements, Palestinians, religion, security or Israeli government policy.
Hebrew for “ascent”; immigration by Jews to the Land of Israel.
The dispersion of a people beyond an ancestral homeland. Jewish diaspora communities developed across many regions over centuries.
Prejudice, hostility or discrimination directed against Jews as Jews. It has appeared in religious, social, political and racial forms.
Read moreA violent organised or semi-organised attack on a minority community, especially the anti-Jewish attacks historically associated with eastern Europe.
Read moreThe nineteenth-century process through which Jews gained civil and political rights in parts of Europe.
The systematic murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators.
Read moreThe Hebrew name for the Land of Israel, a historical, religious and cultural term whose boundaries have varied by context.
A geographic name used in different forms and with changing boundaries across ancient, Roman, Islamic, Ottoman, British and modern contexts.
The territory administered by Britain under a League of Nations mandate from the early 1920s until 1948.
The Jewish community in the Land of Israel before the establishment of the State of Israel.
Long-established Jewish communities in the land before the major Zionist immigration waves beginning in the 1880s.
Read moreJewish communities and institutions associated with modern immigration and Zionist settlement from the late nineteenth century.
An Israeli citizen who identifies as Arab, Palestinian, Druze, Bedouin, or through overlapping identities. The term includes diverse religious and political communities.
Read moreThe proposed division of Mandatory Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, most notably recommended by the United Nations in 1947.
A 1917 British statement supporting a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine while referring to the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities.
The 1922 League of Nations instrument defining Britain’s responsibilities in administering Palestine.
An organisation that represented the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine and supported immigration and institution-building.
The empire that governed the region from 1517 until the First World War.
A historical name for a region centred on Jerusalem, and later the name of a Roman province.
The Roman provincial name used after the Bar Kokhba revolt when Judaea was reorganised within a larger province.
A broad geographic term for the eastern Mediterranean, including modern Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Jordan and parts of Syria.
A broad modern term for Jews whose family histories are associated especially with the Middle East and North Africa.
Originally Jews connected to the Iberian Peninsula and their descendants; also used for communities sharing Sephardi religious traditions.
Jews whose historical communities developed primarily in Central and Eastern Europe.
A biblical and modern Hebrew expression for the return of dispersed Jewish communities to the Land of Israel.
Read moreThe transformation of Hebrew from a language preserved and renewed through religion, literature and study into a widely spoken modern language.
Read moreA Soviet Jew refused permission to emigrate, often losing work and facing harassment or imprisonment for seeking to leave or for teaching Hebrew.
Read moreThe historic Jewish community of Ethiopia, most of whose members now live in Israel.
Read moreThe 2020 normalisation agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, later joined by Morocco and Sudan.
Read moreThe July 1976 Israeli rescue of hostages held at Entebbe airport in Uganda; also called Operation Thunderbolt or Operation Yonatan.
Read moreWatering crops through controlled drops at the root; modern drip irrigation was developed and commercialised in Israel.
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