The story of Judah Monis starts 150 years before he was born, 5,000 miles away from where he died. In 1536 the King of Portugal, João III, ordered the establishment of the Portuguese Inquisition. Its aim was to find and punish Jewish converts to Catholicism who were—or were suspected of—secretly practicing their former religion, or otherwise not fully adhering to the strictures of orthodox Catholicism. The Portuguese Inquisition came around 50 years after the more famous Spanish Inquisition, …More

Portuguese researchers have catalogued hundreds of secret markings that Jews left on structures in Seia in the 16th century following their forced conversion to Christianity. A three-member team said it found 500 markings in Seia, a north Portugal municipality, including coded Hebrew letters and words carved into walls of homes where converted Jews used to live. Alberto Martinho, Jose Levy Domingos and Luiza Metzker Lyra, the research team, said they also found distinctive indentations in stone door frames where …More

The parents of a Hebrew teacher who was killed in an anti-Semitic attack in Yemen immigrated to Israel. Yisrael (Yaish) and Terneja Nahari, the parents of Moshe Nahari, made aliyah on Monday. The couple, in their 70's, were reunited in Israel with their four children and 20 grandchildren, including the nine children of Moshe Nahari, the son who was fatally shot in 2008 by an Islamist extremist. Five of Moshe Nahari's children made aliyah immediately following the murder. His wife, Louza, and the remaining four …More

Perhaps no other author has had as much influence on Israel as writer Shmuel Yosef Agnon, the Jewish State’s first Nobel Prize winner, who died 43 years ago this Sunday. Israel was only 18 years old when, in 1966, the diminutive Agnon, well into his 70s, won literature’s highest honor. For a country in its infancy, soon to become embroiled in the Six Day War, Agnon’s award was more than a personal victory. It was a triumph for the revived Hebrew language. The prize gave legitimacy to a young …More

On February 13, 1955, Israel acquired four of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls through a private sale. The exchange was just the first in a series of steps the Jewish state would take to bring these precious manuscripts, discovered between 1947 and 1956, to rest in Israel. The Dead Sea Scrolls refer to a collection of 800-plus articles, originating from the first centuries BC and AD. The items include documents written on canvas and papyrus, as well as coins and other artifacts, and are the earliest known surviving …More

When Ha-Yom was first published on February 12, 1886, it was the first ever-daily newspaper printed entirely in Hebrew. The St. Petersburg-based paper ran for just two years, but earned a special distinction in the world of Jewish journalism. Prior to its creation, Hebrew language publications were typically printed on a monthly or weekly basis. Indeed, the start of Ha-Yom inspired two popular Hebrew periodicals, Ha-Meliz and Ha-Tsefirah, to go daily, as well. Ha-Yom was the brainchild of Jehuda Lob Kantor, …More

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, made history when it organized a three-day international interdisciplinary conference on “Hebrew Language and Culture: Reception, Self Conception and Intercultural Relations” at the end of January, under the auspices of its Centre of Arabic & African Studies, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies. The conference was significant not only because it happened to be the first ever conference in South Asia to be focused on the Hebrew language, and …More

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was appropriately known as the father of the Hebrew language. Ben-Yehuda, an ardent Zionist, believed it was shared language that would help turn the Jewish people from a diaspora to a united nation. He spent decades in pursuit of refining this common language, working as a lexicographer and reviving the Hebrew language for the modern world. Born January 7, 1858, in what is now Belarus, Ben-Yehuda received a thorough Jewish education. He attended cheder and yeshiva, reading large portions of …More

The British government reportedly is planning to exclude Hebrew from a list of recognized foreign languages in the national education system. The Board of Deputies of British Jews warned last week that the exclusion of Hebrew could damage Jewish education in the country, the Jewish Chronicle reported. Education Minister Elizabeth Truss announced plans last month to make it compulsory, from September 2014, to teach a foreign language to children aged 7 to 11. Schools would be required to offer at least one of …More

An Israeli author has been awarded a prestigious French literary award, for a novel originally published in Hebrew. A.B. Yehoshua won the Medicis Prize for Translation, for his work, “The Retrospective.” The book was released last year and was translated into several languages, including French. It follows an aging filmmaker as he travels to Spain and reunites with a writer from his youth. "This prize is special because I am very attached to France," Yehoshua told AFP. "In addition it is given in the …More

The first Hebrew printing of the popular novel "Fifty Shades of Grey" sold out in a day. The 50,000 copies of the book by British author E.L. James, which went on sale Sunday, were sold out by Monday morning, the Israeli business daily Globes reported. The book, the first of a trilogy and initially published in English in June 2011, has sold 40 million copies in the United States and 10 million in Britain, according to Globes. "Fifty Shades of Grey" deals with a sadomasochistic relationship between a female …More

A Gaza sniper’s bullets shatter the back screen of a car, leaving broken glass on the car seat of a seven-month-old baby. [The Jerusalem Post] The “Birthright Bump” is responsible for young American Jews becoming more attached to Israel, but it isn’t responsible for increased support for the Israeli government. [Haaretz] Israeli parliament says the German circumcision ban infringes upon religious freedom and evokes memories of the Holocaust. [CBS News] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu …More