Rebbe is the title of the spiritual leader of the Hasidim, the pietist Jewish movement which began in 18th century Poland and continues today, with its honoring of holy teachers and its emphasis on prayer and devotion.

Isaac Mayer Wise (1819-1900) was the principal leader in the formation of America’s Reform Judaism in the 1870s. He participated in founding the Reform seminary, Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati (1875) and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (1873).

The bimah is the raised area at the front of an Ashkenazi synagogue where the desk for reading the Torah is located.

(also: Shoah) Holocaust (from Greek, entire burnt offering) refers in modern times to the Nazi German campaign to exterminate the Jewish people during the 1930s and 1940s with death camps and gas chambers. Six million Jews died in this Holocaust. In Hebrew, the Holocaust is referred to as “Shoah.”

Pogrom, from the Russian word for “devastation,” refers to the attacks, riots and rampages against Jewish communities, especially in Eastern Europe and Russia.

A tevah is the platform from which the Torah is read in Sephardic synagogues. It is equivalent to a “bimah” in the Ashkenazi tradition.

The ark, or Aron ha-Kodesh (the Holy Ark) in Hebrew, is the holy chest or cabinet where the Torah scrolls are kept in a synagogue on the wall facing Jerusalem.

Sukkot is a Jewish harvest festival, also known as the festival of “booths.” The booth or sukkah is a temporary dwelling in which the faithful take their meals during the festival. The booths recall the temporary shelters in which the people of Israel lived, sustained by the mercy of God, during their years in the wilderness after the exodus from Egypt.

Adam is Hebrew for “human, man.” It is the name given to the first person created by God and as such has an important symbolic role in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions.

Hallel means “praise” and refers to the joyful recitation of psalms of praise and thanksgiving during Jewish festival services, especially Psalms 113-118.

The Mishnah, meaning “teaching” is the written compilation of the oral Torah, also believed to have been revealed at Sinai. It includes laws and observances having to do with agriculture, holy seasons, women, family, civil law, temple rituals, and laws of purity. The Mishnah was compiled in the 2nd century CE by Rabbi Judah HaNasi (literally “Judah the Prince”) and became the basis of the monumental code of law, the Talmud.

Simhat Torah, “rejoicing in the law,” is the holiday celebrating the Torah, as the Jewish year’s cycle of readings ends and the community begins the Torah reading once again. A part of Sukkot, and hence, the High Holiday cycle, it is widely observed by dancing with the Torah scrolls and making circuits of the synagogue carrying the scrolls and rejoicing.

A ghetto is a part of a city or town where Jews lived, segregated from others. The name comes from the foundry area in Venice where Jews were forced to live in 1526 and came to be used for all such areas of segregation, often forcible segregation.

Matzah is the unleavened bread that must be eaten during the eight days of Passover, recalling the bread made in haste as the people of Israel fled from slavery in Egypt.

Elijah was a 9th century BCE Hebrew prophet and visionary. According to tradition, he did not die but was taken to heaven in a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2). Elijah’s periodic return to eart. has become part of the rabbinical and mystical Jewish tradition. In the b’rit milah (circumcision) a special chair is designated for Elijah, and at the Passover seder a cup of wine is poured and the door left ajar for him.