Bagrut History key terms

Jewish Enlightenment movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries that encouraged secular learning, European languages, and integration while rethinking traditional religious authority.

The legal process granting Jews full civil and political rights in European states, beginning with France in 1791 and spreading unevenly across the 19th century.

Organized mob violence against Jews, often tolerated or incited by authorities, as in the Russian Empire from 1881 and in Kishinev in 1903.

National movement holding that Jews are a nation entitled to self-determination in their historic homeland, aiming to establish and sustain a Jewish state in Palestine.

Early pre-Herzlian movement of Russian Jewish groups in the 1880s that promoted immigration to Palestine and settlement on the land.

Wave of Jewish immigration to Ottoman Palestine from roughly 1882 to 1903, founding agricultural colonies such as Rishon LeZion and Petah Tikva.

Immigration wave of about 1904 to 1914, mainly from Russia, which shaped Labor Zionism, the kibbutz idea, and Hebrew-speaking pioneers.

Platform adopted at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 calling for Jewish settlement in Palestine secured under public law.

British statement of November 1917 favoring a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine while protecting existing non-Jewish civil and religious rights.

The Jewish community in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, including its institutions, settlements, and political parties.

General Federation of Labor founded in 1920, which organized Jewish workers and ran major economic, health, and educational enterprises in the Yishuv.

British policy restricting Jewish immigration and land purchase in Palestine, interpreted by Zionist leaders as a betrayal and a barrier to rescuing European Jews.

Illegal, often clandestine immigration of Jews to Palestine during the British Mandate, especially after 1939, organized by Zionist movements.

Hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as individuals or as a group, ranging from religious prejudice to modern racial and political ideologies.

1935 German laws that stripped Jews of citizenship rights and banned marriage or sexual relations between Jews and persons of German blood.

Forced concentration of Jews into segregated, walled districts in occupied Eastern Europe, used to control, exploit, and weaken them before deportation.

Nazi code term for the planned systematic murder of all Jews in Europe, implemented from 1941 through extermination camps and mass shootings.

January 1942 meeting near Berlin where senior Nazi officials coordinated the bureaucratic organization of the deportation and murder of European Jews.

Facility built mainly in occupied Poland, such as Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz-Birkenau, designed primarily for mass killing by gas.

Mobile German killing units that followed the army into the Soviet Union and murdered Jews and others by mass shooting from 1941.

Jewish council imposed by the Germans in ghettos and communities, forced to carry out occupation orders, including selection for deportation.

Title granted by Yad Vashem to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, such as Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg.

Varied Jewish responses to Nazi persecution, including armed uprisings like the Warsaw Ghetto revolt, partisan fighting, and spiritual and cultural defiance.

Postwar camps in Allied-occupied Europe housing Holocaust survivors and refugees, many of whom sought emigration to Palestine or other countries.

Claims that the Nazi genocide of Jews did not occur or was greatly exaggerated, contradicted by documents, testimony, and physical evidence.

General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 1947 proposing separate Jewish and Arab states with an international zone in Jerusalem.

Proclamation read in Tel Aviv on 14 May 1948 announcing the establishment of the State of Israel and defining it as a Jewish and democratic state.

1948–1949 war in which Israel fought Arab states and Palestinian forces after its founding, ending in armistice lines rather than formal peace.

1950 Israeli law granting Jews the right to immigrate to Israel and acquire citizenship, later extended to certain relatives.

Zionist ideal and policy of encouraging Jewish immigration from the diaspora, including mass arrivals from Arab lands and later Ethiopia and the Soviet Union.

Temporary transit camps set up in the 1950s to absorb mass immigration, often with poor conditions that fueled social protest.

Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin, whose mass immigration after 1948 reshaped Israeli society and raised questions of equality.

June 1967 war in which Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights, creating the occupied territories debate.

1967 resolution calling for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories in exchange for recognition and secure borders, the basis of land-for-peace diplomacy.

1978 agreements between Israel and Egypt, brokered by the United States, leading to the 1979 peace treaty and Israeli withdrawal from Sinai.

Construction of Israeli communities in territories captured in 1967, a deeply contested policy affecting diplomacy, law, and Palestinian-Israeli relations.

Political principle holding that a people sharing identity and culture should form a sovereign state and that the nation is the main source of legitimacy.

State whose institutions claim to represent and unite a particular nation, often through shared language, education, and symbols.

Right of peoples to choose their own political status and government, invoked by both Zionist and anti-colonial movements in the 20th century.

League of Nations arrangement after World War I placing former Ottoman and German territories under European administration, including British Mandate Palestine.

Form of rule seeking total control over public and private life through ideology, single-party rule, propaganda, terror, and surveillance, as in Nazi Germany and the USSR.

Authoritarian nationalist ideology of the early 20th century exalting the nation and leader above the individual and rejecting liberal democracy and class conflict.

Deliberate use of biased or selective information to shape beliefs and mobilize support, central to both democratic and authoritarian regimes.

Post-1945 process in which Asian and African colonies gained independence, reshaping the global order and influencing UN politics on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Document, artifact, or testimony produced at the time of an event, used as direct evidence but still requiring analysis of authorship and purpose.

Systematic distortion in a source arising from the author's perspective, interests, or audience, which must be identified rather than simply dismissed.

Historical method of comparing multiple independent sources to test a claim's reliability before accepting it as evidence.

Error of projecting later concepts, values, or conditions onto an earlier period, which distorts interpretation of historical actors and decisions.

Interpreting a source or event within the political, social, and cultural circumstances of its time rather than judging it solely by present standards.