title: Blockchain

text: Early concern over the high energy consumption was a factor in later blockchains such as [[Cardano (blockchain platform)|Cardano]] (2017), [[Solana (blockchain platform)|Solana]] (2020) and [[Polkadot (cryptocurrency)|Polkadot]] (2020) adopting the less energy-intensive [[proof of stake|proof-of-stake]] model. Researchers have estimated that Bitcoin consumes 100,000 times as much energy as proof-of-stake networks.


title: Blockchain

text: In 2021, a study by [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge University]] determined that Bitcoin (at 121 terawatt-hours per year) used more electricity than Argentina (at 121TWh) and the Netherlands (109TWh). According to Digiconomist, one bitcoin transaction required 708 kilowatt-hours of electrical energy, the amount an average U.S. household consumed in 24 days.


title: Blockchain

text: In February 2021, U.S. Treasury secretary [[Janet Yellen]] called Bitcoin "an extremely inefficient way to conduct transactions", saying "the amount of energy consumed in processing those transactions is staggering". In March 2021, [[Bill Gates]] stated that "Bitcoin uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to mankind", adding "It's not a great climate thing."


title: Blockchain

text: Nicholas Weaver, of the [[International Computer Science Institute]] at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], examined blockchain's online security, and the energy efficiency of proof-of-work public blockchains, and in both cases found it grossly inadequate. The 31TWh-45TWh of electricity used for bitcoin in 2018 produced 17-23 million tonnes of . By 2022, the University of Cambridge and Digiconomist estimated that the two largest proof-of-work blockchains, Bitcoin and Ethereum, together used twice as much electricity in one year as the whole of Sweden, leading to the release of up to 120 million tonnes of each year.


title: Blockchain

text: Some cryptocurrency developers are considering moving from the [[proof of work|proof-of-work]] model to the [[proof of stake|proof-of-stake]] model.


title: Blockchain

text: In October 2014, the MIT Bitcoin Club, with funding from MIT alumni, provided undergraduate students at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] access to $100 of bitcoin. The adoption rates, as studied by [[Christian Catalini|Catalini]] and [[Catherine Tucker|Tucker]] (2016), revealed that when people who typically adopt technologies early are given delayed access, they tend to reject the technology. Many universities have founded departments focusing on crypto and blockchain, including [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]], in 2017. In the same year, [[university of Edinburgh|Edinburgh]] became "one of the first big European universities to launch a blockchain course", according to the "Financial Times".


title: Blockchain

text: Motivations for adopting blockchain technology (an aspect of [[Diffusion of innovations|innovation adoptation]]) have been investigated by researchers. For example, Janssen, et al. provided a framework for analysis, and Koens & Poll pointed out that adoption could be heavily driven by non-technical factors. Based on behavioral models, Li has discussed the differences between adoption at the individual level and organizational levels.


title: Blockchain

text: Scholars in business and management have started studying the role of blockchains to support collaboration. It has been argued that blockchains can foster both cooperation (i.e., prevention of opportunistic behavior) and coordination (i.e., communication and information sharing). Thanks to reliability, transparency, traceability of records, and information immutability, blockchains facilitate collaboration in a way that differs both from the traditional use of contracts and from relational norms. Contrary to contracts, blockchains do not directly rely on the legal system to enforce agreements. In addition, contrary to the use of relational norms, blockchains do not require a trust or direct connections between collaborators.


title: Blockchain

text: The need for internal audits to provide effective oversight of organizational efficiency will require a change in the way that information is accessed in new formats. Blockchain adoption requires a framework to identify the risk of exposure associated with transactions using blockchain. The [[Institute of Internal Auditors]] has identified the need for internal auditors to address this transformational technology. New methods are required to develop audit plans that identify threats and risks. The Internal Audit Foundation study, "Blockchain and Internal Audit," assesses these factors. The [[American Institute of Certified Public Accountants]] has outlined new roles for auditors as a result of blockchain.


title: Blockchain

text: In September 2015, the first peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology research, "Ledger", was announced. The inaugural issue was published in December 2016. The journal covers aspects of [[mathematics]], [[computer science]], [[engineering]], [[law]], [[economics]] and [[philosophy]] that relate to cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.


title: Blockchain

text: The journal encourages authors to [[Digital signature|digitally sign]] a [[Hash function|file hash]] of submitted papers, which are then [[Trusted timestamping|timestamped]] into the bitcoin blockchain. Authors are also asked to include a personal bitcoin address on the first page of their papers for non-repudiation purposes.


title: Gautam Adani

text: Gautam Shantilal Adani (born 24 June 1962) is an Indian billionaire industrialist who is the chairman and founder of Adani Group, a multinational conglomerate involved in port development and operations in India. He is also the president of Adani Foundation. As of December 2022, with a net worth of US$138.1 billion according to "Forbes" and $133 billion according to Bloomberg, Adani is the richest person in Asia and the third richest person in the world.


title: Gautam Adani

text: Adani was born on 24 June 1962 in a Jain family to Shantilal Adani (father) and Shantaben Adani (mother) in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. He has 7 siblings. His parents had migrated from the town of Tharad in the northern part of Gujarat. His father was a small textile merchant. He was educated at Sheth Chimanlal Nagindas Vidyalaya school in Ahmedabad. He enrolled for a bachelor's degree in commerce at Gujarat University, but dropped out after the second year. Adani was keen on business, but not his father's textile business.


title: Gautam Adani

text: In 1981, his elder brother Mahasukhbhai Adani bought a plastics unit in Ahmedabad and invited him to manage the operations. This venture turned out to be Adani's gateway to global trading through polyvinyl chloride (PVC) imports.


title: Gautam Adani

text: In 1985, he started importing primary polymers for small-scale industries In 1988, Adani established Adani Exports, now known as Adani Enterprises, the holding company of the Adani Group. Originally, the company dealt in agricultural and power commodities.


title: Gautam Adani

text: In 1991, the economic liberalization policies turned out to be favorable for his company and he started expanding the businesses into trading of metals, textiles, and agro products.


title: Gautam Adani

text: In 1994, the Government of Gujarat announced managerial outsourcing of the Mundra Port and in 1995, Adani got the contract.


title: Gautam Adani

text: In 1995, he set up the first jetty. Originally operated by Mundra Port & Special Economic Zone, the operations were transferred to Adani Ports & SEZ (APSEZ). Today, the company is the largest private multi-port operator. Mundra Port is the largest private sector port in India, with the capacity of handling close to 210 million tons of cargo per annum.


title: Gautam Adani

text: In 1996, the power business arm of the Adani Group, Adani Power, was founded by Adani. Adani Power holds thermal power plants with a capacity of 4620MW, the largest private thermal power producer of the country.


title: Gautam Adani

text: In 2006, Adani entered the power generation business. From 2009 to 2012, he acquired Abbot Point Port in Australia and Carmichael coal mine in Queensland.


title: Gautam Adani

text: In May 2020, Adani won the world's largest solar bid by the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) worth US$6 billion. The 8000MW photovoltaic power plant project will be taken up by Adani Green; Adani Solar will establish 2000MW of additional solar cell and module manufacturing capacity.


title: Gautam Adani

text: In September 2020, Adani acquired a 74% stake in Mumbai International Airport, India's second busiest after Delhi.


title: Gautam Adani

text: In November 2021, while speaking at the Bloomberg India Economic Forum, Adani said the group is investing USD$70 billion in a new green energy business. In July 2022, he offered new details on how this investment will be utilized to build three giant factories – solar, electrolyzer (to make green hydrogen), wind turbine plants.


title: Gautam Adani

text: In February 2022, he became Asia's richest person, surpassing Mukesh Ambani. In August 2022, he was named the 3rd richest person in the world by Fortune.


title: Gautam Adani

text: In May 2022, Adani family acquired Ambuja Cements and its subsidiary ACC from Holcim Group for $10.5 billion, through an overseas special-purpose entity.


title: Gautam Adani

text: In August 2022, AMG Media Networks Limited (AMNL), a unit of Adani Group, declared that it planned to buy RRPR Holding, owner of 29.18% of national news broadcaster NDTV, and made an open offer to buy a further 26%. In a statement, NDTV said that Adani acquired his stake via a third party without informing the company’s founders, former journalist Radhika Roy and her economist husband Prannoy Roy, and that the deal was done “without discussion, consent or notice.” This bid also raised concern regarding editorial independence in India, since Adani is considered to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.


title: Gautam Adani

text: Adani has been discribed as being close to former chief Minister of Gujarat and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. This has lead to allegations of cronyism as his firms have won many Indian energy and infrastructure government contracts. With an Indian government auditor accusing Modi in 2012 of giving low cost fuel from a Gujarat state-run gas company to Adani and other businesspeople. Adani and Modi have both denied allegations of cronyism.


title: Gautam Adani

text: Gautam Adani is married to Priti Adani. The couple have two sons, Karan Adani and Jeet Adani. on January 1, 1998 Adani and an associate Shantilal Patel were allegedly abducted and held hostage for ransom, but were released without collecting the money. Two former gangsters Fazl-ur-Rehman and Bhogilal Darji, who were accused of the kidnapping were later acquitted in an Indian court in 2018 after Adani and Patel did not show up for depositions despite multiple summons by the court.


title: Gautam Adani

text: Adani is the owner of the Adani Foundation, funded through the Adani Group. It was founded in 1996. Other than Gujarat, the organisation operates in the states of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha.


title: Gautam Adani

text: In March 2020, he contributed to the PM Cares Fund through his group's philanthropy arm, to fight the Coronavirus outbreak. A contribution of was made to the Gujarat CM Relief Fund and to the Maharashtra CM Relief Fund.


title: Gautam Adani

text: Adani led diversified conglomerate Adani Group imported four ISO cryogenic tanks filled with 80 metric tonnes of liquid medical oxygen from Dammam in Saudi Arabia to Mundra in Gujarat. The group also secured 5,000 medical-grade oxygen cylinders from Linde Saudi Arabia. In a Twitter post, Adani shared that each day his group is supplying 1,500 cylinders with medical oxygen to wherever they are needed in the Kutch district of Gujarat.


title: Gautam Adani

text: In June 2022, Adani has committed to donate Rs 60,000 crore ($7.7 billion) to social causes. Adani's corpus will be administered by the Adani Foundation, making it one of the biggest transfers to a philanthropic trust in India.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Bernard Lawrence Madoff ( ; April 29, 1938April 14, 2021) was an American fraudster and financier who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history, worth about $64.8 billion. He was at one time chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange. He advanced the proliferation of electronic trading platforms and the concept of payment for order flow, which has been described as a "legal kickback."


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff founded a penny stock brokerage in 1960, which eventually grew into Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. He served as the company's chairman until his arrest on December 11, 2008. That year, the firm was the 6th-largest market maker in S&P 500 stocks.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: At the firm, he employed his brother Peter Madoff as senior managing director and chief compliance officer, Peter's daughter Shana Madoff as the firm's rules and compliance officer and attorney, and his now deceased sons Mark Madoff and Andrew Madoff. Peter was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2012, and Mark hanged himself in 2010, exactly two years after his father's arrest. Andrew died of lymphoma on September 3, 2014.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: On December 10, 2008, Madoff's sons Mark and Andrew told authorities that their father had confessed to them that the asset management unit of his firm was a massive Ponzi scheme, and quoted him as saying that it was "one big lie". The following day, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Madoff and charged him with one count of securities fraud. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had previously conducted multiple investigations into his business practices but had not uncovered the massive fraud. On March 12, 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal felonies and admitted to turning his wealth management business into a massive Ponzi scheme.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: The Madoff investment scandal defrauded thousands of investors of billions of dollars. Madoff said that he began the Ponzi scheme in the early 1990s, but an ex-trader admitted in court to faking records for Madoff since the early 1970s. Those charged with recovering the missing money believe that the investment operation may never have been legitimate. The amount missing from client accounts was almost $65 billion, including fabricated gains. The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) trustee estimated actual losses to investors of $18 billion, of which $14.418 billion has been recovered and returned, while the search for additional funds continues. On June 29, 2009, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison, the maximum sentence allowed. On April 14, 2021, he died at the Federal Medical Center, Butner, in North Carolina, from chronic kidney disease.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff was born on April 29, 1938, in Queens, New York City, to Sylvia (Muntner) and Ralph Madoff, who was a plumber and stockbroker. His family was Jewish. Madoff's grandparents were emigrants from Poland, Romania, and Austria. He was the second of three children; his siblings are Sondra Weiner and Peter Madoff. Madoff graduated from Far Rockaway High School in 1956.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff attended the University of Alabama for one year, where he became a brother of the Tau Chapter of the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity, then transferred to and graduated from Hofstra University in 1960 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science. Madoff briefly attended Brooklyn Law School, but left after his first year to found Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC and work for himself.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: In 1960, Madoff founded Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC as a penny stock broker-dealer with $5,000 () that he earned from working as a lifeguard and irrigation sprinkler installer and a loan of $50,000 from his father-in-law, accountant Saul Alpern, who referred a circle of friends and their families. Carl J. Shapiro was one such early customer, investing $100,000. Initially, the firm made markets (quoted bid and ask prices) via the National Quotation Bureau's Pink Sheets. In order to compete with firms that were members of the New York Stock Exchange trading on the stock exchange's floor, his firm began using innovative computer information technology to disseminate its quotes. After a trial run, the technology that the firm helped to develop became the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market (NASDAQ). After 41 years as a sole proprietorship, the Madoff firm incorporated in 2001 as a limited liability company with Madoff as the sole shareholder.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: The firm functioned as a third market trading provider, bypassing exchange specialist firms by directly executing orders over the counter from retail brokers. At one point, Madoff Securities was the largest market maker at the NASDAQ, and in 2008 was the sixth-largest market maker in S&P 500 stocks. The firm also had an investment management and advisory division, which it did not publicize, that was the focus of the fraud investigation.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff was "the first prominent practitioner" of payment for order flow, in which a dealer pays a broker for the right to execute a customer's order. This has been called a "legal kickback". Some academics have questioned the ethics of these payments. Madoff argued that these payments did not alter the price that the customer received. He viewed the payments as a normal business practice:


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff was active in the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), a self-regulatory securities-industry organization. He served as chairman of its board of directors, and was a member of its board of governors.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: From 1991 to 2008, Bernie and Ruth Madoff contributed about $240,000 to federal candidates, parties, and committees, including $25,000 a year from 2005 through 2008 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The committee returned $100,000 of the Madoffs' contributions to Irving Picard, the bankruptcy trustee who oversees all claims, and Senator Charles E. Schumer returned almost $30,000 received from Madoff and his relatives to the trustee. Senator Christopher J. Dodd donated $1,500 to the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, a Madoff victim.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Members of the Madoff family have served as leaders of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the primary securities industry organization. Bernard Madoff served on the board of directors of the Securities Industry Association, a precursor of SIFMA, and was chairman of its trading committee. He was a founding board member of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) subsidiary in London, the International Securities Clearing Corporation.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff's brother Peter served two terms as a member of SIFMA's board of directors. He and Andrew received awards from SIFMA in 2008 for "extraordinary leadership and service". He resigned from the board of directors of SIFMA in December 2008, as news of the Ponzi scheme broke. From 2000 to 2008, the Madoff brothers donated $56,000 directly to SIFMA, and paid additional money as sponsors of industry meetings. Bernard Madoff's niece Shana Madoff was a member of the executive committee of SIFMA's Compliance & Legal Division, but resigned shortly after the arrest.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff's name first came up in a fraud investigation in 1992, when two people complained to the SEC about investments they made with Avellino & Bienes, the successor to his father-in-law's accounting practice. For years, Alpern and two of his colleagues, Frank Avellino and Michael Bienes, had raised money for Madoff, a practice that continued after Avellino and Bienes took over the firm in the 1970s. Avellino returned the money to investors and the SEC closed the case. In 2004, Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, a lawyer in the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE), informed her supervisor branch chief Mark Donohue that her review of Madoff found numerous inconsistencies, and recommended further questioning. However, she was told by Donohue and his boss Eric Swanson to stop work on the Madoff investigation, send them her work results, and instead investigate the mutual fund industry. Swanson, assistant director of the SEC's OCIE, had met Shana Madoff in 2003 while investigating her uncle Bernie Madoff and his firm. The investigation was concluded in 2005. In 2006, Swanson left the SEC and became engaged to Shana Madoff, and in 2007 the two married. A spokesman for Swanson said he "did not participate in any inquiry of Bernard Madoff Securities or its affiliates while involved in a relationship" with Shana Madoff.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: While awaiting sentencing, Madoff met with the SEC's inspector general, H. David Kotz, who conducted an investigation into how regulators had failed to detect the fraud despite numerous red flags. Madoff said he could have been caught in 2003, but that bumbling investigators had acted like "Lt. Columbo" and never asked the right questions: Madoff said in the June 17, 2009, interview that SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro was a "dear friend", and SEC Commissioner Elisse Walter was a "terrific lady" whom he knew "pretty well".


title: Bernie Madoff

text: After Madoff's arrest, the SEC was criticized for its lack of financial expertise and lack of due diligence, despite having received complaints from Harry Markopolos and others for almost a decade. The SEC's inspector general, Kotz, found that since 1992, there had been six investigations of Madoff by the SEC, which were botched either through incompetent staff work or by neglecting allegations of financial experts and whistle-blowers. At least some of the SEC investigators doubted whether Madoff was even trading.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Due to concerns of improper conduct by Inspector General Kotz in the Madoff investigation, Inspector General David C. Williams of the United States Postal Service was brought in to conduct an independent outside review.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: The Williams Report questioned Kotz's work on the Madoff investigation, because Kotz was a "very good friend" with Markopolos. Investigators were not able to determine when Kotz and Markopolos became friends. A violation of the ethics rule would have taken place if the friendship were concurrent with Kotz's investigation of Madoff.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: In 1999, financial analyst Harry Markopolos had informed the SEC that he believed it was legally and mathematically impossible to achieve the gains Madoff claimed to deliver. According to Markopolos, it took him four minutes to conclude that Madoff's numbers did not add up, and another minute to suspect they were fraudulent.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: After four hours of failed attempts to replicate Madoff's numbers, Markopolos believed he had mathematically proven Madoff was a fraud. He was ignored by the SEC's Boston office in 2000 and 2001, as well as by Meaghan Cheung at the SEC's New York office in 2005 and 2007 when he presented further evidence. He has since co-authored a book with Gaytri D. Kachroo, the leader of his legal team, titled . The book details the frustrating efforts he and his legal team made over a ten-year period to alert the government, the industry, and the press about Madoff's fraud.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Although Madoff's wealth management business ultimately grew into a multibillion-dollar operation, none of the major derivatives firms traded with him because they did not believe his numbers were real. None of the major Wall Street firms invested with him, and several high-ranking executives at those firms suspected his operations and claims were not legitimate. Others contended it was inconceivable that the growing volume of Madoff's accounts could be competently and legitimately serviced by his documented accounting/auditing firm, a three-person firm with only one active accountant.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: The Central Bank of Ireland failed to spot Madoff's gigantic fraud when he started using Irish funds and had to supply large amounts of information, which would have been enough to enable Irish regulators to uncover the fraud much earlier than late 2008 when he was finally arrested in New York.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: The Federal Bureau of Investigation report and federal prosecutors' complaint says that during the first week of December 2008, Madoff confided to a senior employee, identified by Bloomberg News as one of his sons, that he said he was struggling to meet $7 billion in redemptions. For years, Madoff had simply deposited investors' money in his business account at JPMorgan Chase and withdrew money from that account when they requested redemptions. He had scraped together just enough money to make a redemption payment on November 19. However, despite cash infusions from several longtime investors, by the week after Thanksgiving it was apparent that there was not enough money to even begin to meet the remaining requests. His Chase account had over $5.5 billion in mid-2008, but by late November was down to $234 million, not even a fraction of the outstanding redemptions. With banks having all stopped lending, Madoff knew he could not even begin to borrow the money he needed. On December 3, he told longtime assistant Frank DiPascali, who had overseen the fraudulent advisory business, that he was finished. On December 9, he told his brother Peter about the fraud.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: According to the sons, Madoff told Mark Madoff on the following day, December 9, that he planned to pay out $173 million in bonuses two months early. Madoff said that "he had recently made profits through business operations, and that now was a good time to distribute it." Mark told Andrew Madoff, and the next morning they went to their father's office and asked him how he could pay bonuses to his staff if he was having trouble paying clients. They then traveled to Madoff's apartment, where with Ruth Madoff nearby, Madoff told them he was "finished," that he had "absolutely nothing" left, and that his investment fund was "just one big lie" and "basically, a giant Ponzi scheme."


title: Bernie Madoff

text: According to their attorney, Madoff's sons then reported their father to federal authorities. Madoff had intended to wind up his operations over the remainder of the week before having his sons turn him in; he directed DiPascali to use the remaining money in his business account to cash out the accounts of several family members and favored friends. However, as soon as they left their father's apartment, Mark and Andrew immediately contacted a lawyer, who in turn got them in touch with federal prosecutors and the SEC. On December 11, 2008, Madoff was arrested and charged with securities fraud.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff posted $10 million bail in December 2008 and remained under 24-hour monitoring and house arrest in his Upper East Side penthouse apartment until March 12, 2009, when Judge Denny Chin revoked his bail and remanded him to the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Chin ruled that Madoff was a flight risk because of his age, his wealth, and the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison. Prosecutors filed two asset forfeiture pleadings which include lists of valuable real and personal property as well as financial interests and entities owned or controlled by Madoff.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff's lawyer, Ira Sorkin, filed an appeal, which prosecutors opposed. On March 20, 2009, an appellate court denied Madoff's request to be released from jail and returned to home confinement until his sentencing on June 29, 2009. On June 22, 2009, Sorkin hand-delivered a customary pre-sentencing letter to the judge requesting a sentence of 12 years, because of tables from the Social Security Administration that his life span was predicted to be 13 years.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: On June 26, 2009, Chin ordered forfeiture of $170 million in Madoff's assets. Prosecutors asked Chin to sentence Madoff to 150 years in prison. Bankruptcy Trustee Irving Picard indicated that "Mr. Madoff has not provided meaningful cooperation or assistance."


title: Bernie Madoff

text: In settlement with federal prosecutors, Madoff's wife Ruth agreed to forfeit her claim to $85 million in assets, leaving her with $2.5 million in cash. The order allowed the SEC and Court appointed trustee Irving Picard to pursue Ruth Madoff's funds. Massachusetts regulators also accused her of withdrawing $15 million from company-related accounts shortly before he confessed.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: In February 2009, Madoff reached an agreement with the SEC. It was later revealed that as part of the agreement, Madoff accepted a lifetime ban from the securities industry.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Picard sued Madoff's sons, Mark and Andrew, his brother Peter, and Peter's daughter, Shana, for negligence and breach of fiduciary duty, for $198 million. The defendants had received over $80 million in compensation since 2001.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: According to an SEC indictment, office workers Annette Bongiorno and Joann Crupi created false trading reports based on the returns that Madoff ordered for each customer. For example, when Madoff determined a customer's return, one of the back office workers would enter a false trade report with a previous date and then enter a false closing trade in the amount required to produce the required profit, according to the indictment. Prosecutors allege that Bongiorno used a computer program specially designed to backdate trades and manipulate account statements. They quote her as writing to a manager in the early 1990s, "I need the ability to give any settlement date I want." In some cases, returns were allegedly determined before the account was even opened.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: On a daily basis, DiPascali and his team on the 17th floor of the Lipstick Building, where the scam was based (Madoff's brokerage was based on the 19th floor, while the main entrance and conference room were on the 18th floor), watched the closing price of the S&P 100. They then picked the best-performing stocks and used them to create bogus "baskets" of stocks as the basis for false trading records, which Madoff claimed were generated from his supposed "split-strike conversion" strategy, in which he bought blue-chip stocks and took options contracts on them. They frequently made their "trades" at a stock's monthly high or low, resulting in the high "returns" that they touted to customers. On occasion, they slipped up and dated trades as taking place on weekends and federal holidays, though this was never caught.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Over the years, Madoff admonished his investors to keep quiet about their relationship with him. This was because he was well aware of the finite limits that existed for a legitimate split-strike conversion. He knew that if the amount he "managed" became known, investors would question whether he could trade on the scale he claimed without the market reacting to his activity, or whether there were enough options to hedge his stock purchases.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: As early as 2001, Harry Markopolos discovered that in order for Madoff's strategy to be legitimate, he would have had to buy more options on the Chicago Board Options Exchange than actually existed. Additionally, at least one hedge-fund manager, Suzanne Murphy, revealed that she balked at investing with Madoff because she did not believe there was enough volume to support his purported trading activity.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff admitted during his March 2009 guilty plea that the essence of his scheme was to deposit client money into a bank account, rather than invest it and generate steady returns as clients had believed. When clients wanted their money, "I used the money in the Chase Manhattan bank account that belonged to them or other clients to pay the requested funds," he told the court.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff maintained that he began his fraud in the early 1990s, though prosecutors believed it was underway as early as the 1980s. DiPascali, for instance, told prosecutors that he knew at some point in the late 1980s or early 1990s that the investment advisory business was a sham. An investigator charged with reconstructing Madoff's scheme believes that the fraud was well under way as early as 1964. Reportedly, Madoff told an acquaintance soon after his arrest that the fraud began "almost immediately" after his firm opened its doors. Bongiorno, who spent over 40 years with Madoff–longer than anyone except Ruth and Peter–told investigators that she was doing "the same things she was doing in 2008" when she first joined the firm.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff targeted wealthy American Jewish communities, using his in-group status to obtain investments from Jewish individuals and institutions. Affected Jewish charitable organizations considered victims of this affinity fraud include Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, the Elie Wiesel Foundation and Steven Spielberg's Wunderkinder Foundation. Jewish federations and hospitals lost millions of dollars, forcing some organizations to close. The Lappin Foundation, for instance, was forced to close temporarily because it had invested its funds with Madoff.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: David Sheehan, chief counsel to trustee Picard, stated on September 27, 2009, that about $36 billion was invested into the scam, returning $18 billion to investors, with $18 billion missing. About half of Madoff's investors were "net winners," earning more than their investment. The withdrawal amounts in the final six years were subject to "clawback" (return of money) lawsuits.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: In a May 4, 2011, statement, trustee Picard said that the total amount owed to customers (with some adjustments) was $57 billion, of which $17.3 billion was actually invested by customers. $7.6 billion has been recovered, but pending lawsuits, only $2.6 billion was available to repay victims.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: The Internal Revenue Service ruled that investors' capital losses in this and other fraudulent investment schemes would be treated as business losses, thereby allowing the victims to claim a tax deduction for such losses.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: The size of the fraud was stated as $65 billion early in the investigation. Former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt estimated the actual net fraud to be between $10 and $17 billion. One difference between the estimates results from different methods of calculation. One method calculates losses as the total amount that victims thought they were owed, but will never receive. The smaller estimates are arrived at by subtracting the total cash received from the scheme from the total cash paid into the scheme, after excluding from the calculation persons accused of collaborating with the scheme, persons who invested through "feeder funds," and anyone who received more cash from the scheme than they paid in. Erin Arvedlund, who publicly questioned Madoff's reported investment performance in 2001, stated that the actual amount of the fraud might never be known, but was likely between $12 and $20 billion.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Jeffry Picower, rather than Madoff, appears to have been the largest beneficiary of Madoff's Ponzi scheme, and his estate settled the claims against it for $7.2 billion.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Entities and individuals affiliated with Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz received $300 million in respect of investments in the scheme. Wilpon and Katz "categorically reject[ed]" the charge that they "ignored warning signs" about Madoff's fraud.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: On November 9, 2017, the U.S. government announced that it would begin paying out $772.5 million from the Madoff Victim Fund to more than 24,000 victims of the Ponzi scheme.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: The Madoff Recovery Initiative reported $14.418 billion in total recoveries and settlement agreements.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: On March 12, 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal felonies, including securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, making false statements, perjury, theft from an employee benefit plan, and making false filings with the SEC. The plea was the response to a criminal complaint filed two days earlier, which stated that over the past 20 years, Madoff had defrauded his clients of almost $65 billion in the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Madoff insisted he was solely responsible for the fraud. He pleaded guilty to all charges without a plea bargain; it has been speculated that he did this instead of cooperating with the authorities in order to avoid naming any associates and co-conspirators in the scheme.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: In November 2009, David G. Friehling, Madoff's accounting front man and auditor, pleaded guilty to securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, making false filings to the SEC, and obstructing the Internal Revenue Service. He admitted to merely rubber-stamping Madoff's filings rather than auditing them. Friehling extensively cooperated with federal prosecutors and testified at the trials of five former Madoff employees, all of whom were convicted and sentenced to between 2 and a half and 10 years in prison. Although he could have been sentenced to more than 100 years in prison, because of his cooperation, Friehling was sentenced in May 2015 to one year of home detention and one year of supervised release. His involvement made the Madoff scheme by far the largest accounting fraud in history, dwarfing the $11 billion accounting fraud masterminded by Bernard Ebbers in the WorldCom scandal.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff's right-hand man and financial chief, Frank DiPascali, pleaded guilty to 10 federal charges in 2009 and (like Friehling) testified for the government at the trial of five former colleagues, all of whom were convicted. DiPascali faced a sentence of up to 125 years, but he died of lung cancer in May 2015, before he could be sentenced.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: In his plea allocution, Madoff stated he began his Ponzi scheme in 1991. He admitted he had never made any legitimate investments with his clients' money during this time. Instead, he said, he simply deposited the money into his personal business account at Chase Manhattan Bank. When his customers asked for withdrawals, he paid them out of the Chase account—a classic "robbing Peter to pay Paul" scenario. Chase and its successor, JPMorgan Chase, may have earned as much as $483 million from his bank account. He was committed to satisfying his clients' expectations of high returns, despite an economic recession. He admitted to false trading activities masked by foreign transfers and false SEC filings. He stated that he always intended to resume legitimate trading activity, but it proved "difficult, and ultimately impossible" to reconcile his client accounts. In the end, he said, he realized that his scam would eventually be exposed.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: On June 29, 2009, Judge Chin sentenced him to the maximum sentence of 150 years in federal prison. His lawyers initially asked the judge to impose a sentence of 7 years, and later requested that the sentence be 12 years, because of Madoff's advanced age of 71 and his limited life expectancy.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff apologized to his victims, saying, Judge Chin had not received any mitigating factor letters from friends or family testifying to Madoff's good deeds. "The absence of such support was telling," he said.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Judge Chin also said that Madoff had not been forthcoming about his crimes. "I have a sense Mr. Madoff has not done all that he could do or told all that he knows," said Chin, calling the fraud "extraordinarily evil", "unprecedented", and "staggering", and that the sentence would deter others from committing similar frauds. Judge Chin also agreed with prosecutors' contention that the fraud began at some point in the 1980s. He also noted that Madoff's crimes were "off the charts", since federal sentencing guidelines for fraud only go up to $400 million in losses.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Ruth did not attend court but issued a statement, saying: "I am breaking my silence now because my reluctance to speak has been interpreted as indifference or lack of sympathy for the victims of my husband Bernie's crime, which was exactly the opposite of the truth. I am embarrassed and ashamed. Like everyone else, I feel betrayed and confused. The man who committed this horrible fraud was not the man whom I have known for all these years."


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff's attorney asked the judge to recommend that the Federal Bureau of Prisons place Madoff in the Federal Correctional Institution, Otisville, which was located from Manhattan. The judge, however, only recommended that Madoff be sent to a facility in the Northeast United States. He was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution Butner Medium near Butner, North Carolina, about northwest of Raleigh; he was Bureau of Prisons Register #61727-054. Jeff Gammage of "The Philadelphia Inquirer" said, in regards to his prison assignment, "Madoff's heavy sentence likely determined his fate."


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff's projected release date was January 31, 2137. The release date, described as "academic" in Madoff's case because he would have to live to the age of 198, reflects a reduction for good behavior. On October 13, 2009, it was reported that Madoff experienced his first prison yard fight with another inmate, also a senior citizen. When he began his sentence, Madoff's stress levels were so severe that he broke out in hives and other skin maladies soon after.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: On December 18, 2009, Madoff was moved to Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and was treated for several facial injuries. A former inmate later claimed that the injuries were received during an alleged altercation with another inmate.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Other news reports described Madoff's injuries as more serious and including "facial fractures, broken ribs, and a collapsed lung". The Federal Bureau of Prisons said Madoff signed an affidavit on December 24, 2009, which indicated that he had not been assaulted and that he had been admitted to the hospital for hypertension.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: In his letter to his daughter-in-law, Madoff said that he was being treated in prison like a "Mafia don".


title: Bernie Madoff

text: After an inmate slapped Madoff because he had changed the channel on the TV, it was reported that Madoff befriended Carmine Persico, boss of the Colombo crime family since 1973, one of New York's five American Mafia families. It was believed Persico had intimidated the inmate who slapped Madoff in the face.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: On July 29, 2019, Madoff asked Donald Trump for a reduced sentence or pardon, to which the White House and Donald Trump made no comment.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: In February 2020, his lawyer filed for compassionate release from prison on the claim that he had chronic kidney failure, a terminal illness leaving him less than 18 months to live, and that the COVID-19 pandemic further threatened his life. He was hospitalized for this condition in December 2019. The request was denied due to the severity of Madoff's crimes.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff died of natural causes at the age of 82 in Federal Medical Center, Butner, a federal prison for inmates with special health needs near Butner, North Carolina, on April 14, 2021. A death certificate obtained by "TMZ" listed the cause of death as hypertension, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and chronic kidney disease. According to the document, he was cremated in Durham, North Carolina.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff met Ruth Alpern while attending Far Rockaway High School. The two eventually began dating. Ruth graduated from high school in 1958, and earned her bachelor's degree at Queens College. On November 28, 1959, Madoff married Alpern. She was employed at the stock market in Manhattan before working in Madoff's firm, and she founded the Madoff Charitable Foundation. Bernard and Ruth Madoff had two sons: Mark (March 11, 1964 – December 11, 2010), a 1986 graduate of the University of Michigan, and Andrew (April 8, 1966 – September 3, 2014), a 1988 graduate of University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School. Both sons later worked in the trading section alongside paternal cousin Charles Weiner.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Several family members worked for Madoff. His younger brother, Peter, an attorney, was senior managing director and chief compliance officer, and Peter's daughter, Shana Madoff, also an attorney, was the firm's compliance attorney. On the morning of December 11, 2010 – exactly two years after Bernard's arrest – his son Mark was found dead in his New York City apartment. The city medical examiner ruled the cause of death as suicide by hanging.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Over the years, Madoff's sons had borrowed money from their parents, to purchase homes and other property. Mark Madoff owed his parents $22 million, and Andrew Madoff owed them $9.5 million. There were two loans in 2008 from Bernard Madoff to Andrew: $4.3 million on October 6, and $250,000 on September 21. Andrew owned a Manhattan apartment and a home in Greenwich, Connecticut, as did his brother Mark, prior to his death.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Both sons used outside investment firms to run their own private philanthropic foundations. In March 2003, Andrew Madoff was diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma and eventually returned to work. He was named chairman of the Lymphoma Research Foundation in January 2008, but resigned shortly after his father's arrest.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Peter Madoff (and Andrew Madoff, before his death) remained the targets of a tax fraud investigation by federal prosecutors, according to "The Wall Street Journal". David Friehling, Bernard Madoff's tax accountant, who pleaded guilty in a related case, was reportedly assisting in the investigation. According to a civil lawsuit filed in October 2009, trustee Irving Picard alleges that Peter Madoff deposited $32,146 into his Madoff accounts and withdrew over $16 million; Andrew deposited almost $1 million into his accounts and withdrew $17 million; Mark deposited $745,482 and withdrew $18.1 million.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Bernard Madoff lived in Roslyn, New York, in a ranch house through the 1970s. In 1980, he purchased an ocean-front residence in Montauk, New York, for $250,000. His primary residence was on Manhattan's Upper East Side, and he was listed as chairman of the building's co-op board. He also owned a home in France and an 8,700-square-foot house in Palm Beach, Florida, where he was a member of the Palm Beach Country Club, where he searched for targets of his fraud. Madoff owned a sportfishing yacht named "Bull". All three of his homes were auctioned by the U.S. Marshals Service in September 2009.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Sheryl Weinstein, former chief financial officer of Hadassah, disclosed in a memoir that she and Madoff had had an affair more than 20 years earlier. As of 1997, when Weinstein left, Hadassah had invested a total of $40 million with Bernie Madoff. By the end of 2008, Hadassah had withdrawn more than $130 million from its Madoff accounts and contends its accounts were valued at $90 million at the time of Madoff's arrest. At the victim impact sentencing hearing, Weinstein testified, calling him a "beast".


title: Bernie Madoff

text: According to a March 13, 2009, filing by Madoff, he and his wife were worth up to $126 million, plus an estimated $700 million for the value of his business interest in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: During a 2011 interview on CBS, Ruth Madoff claimed she and her husband had attempted suicide after his fraud was exposed, both taking "a bunch of pills" in a suicide pact on Christmas Eve 2008. In November 2011, former Madoff employee David Kugel pleaded guilty to charges that arose out of the scheme. He admitted having helped Madoff create a phony paper trail, the false account statements that were supplied to clients.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Bernard Madoff had a heart attack in December 2013, and reportedly had end-stage renal disease (ESRD). According to CBS New York and other news sources, Madoff claimed in an email to CNBC in January 2014 that he had kidney cancer, but this was unconfirmed. In a court filing from his lawyer in February 2020, it was revealed Madoff had chronic kidney failure.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: On February 17, 2022, Madoff's sister, Sondra Weiner, and her husband, Marvin, were both found dead with gun wounds in their Boynton Beach, Florida home. The deaths of Sondra, 87, and Marvin, 90, were labeled by police as a potential murder-suicide.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff was a prominent philanthropist, who served on boards of nonprofit institutions, many of which entrusted his firm with their endowments. The collapse and freeze of his personal assets and those of his firm affected businesses, charities, and foundations around the world, including the Chais Family Foundation, the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, the Picower Foundation, and the JEHT Foundation which were forced to close. Madoff donated approximately $6 million to lymphoma research after his son Andrew was diagnosed with the disease.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: He and his wife gave over $230,000 to political causes since 1991, with the bulk going to the Democratic Party.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff served as the chairman of the board of directors of the Sy Syms School of Business at Yeshiva University, and as treasurer of its board of trustees. He resigned his position at Yeshiva University after his arrest. Madoff also served on the board of New York City Center, a member of New York City's Cultural Institutions Group (CIG). He served on the executive council of the Wall Street division of the UJA Foundation of New York which declined to invest funds with him because of the conflict of interest.


title: Bernie Madoff

text: Madoff undertook charity work for the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation and made philanthropic gifts through the Madoff Family Foundation, a $19 million private foundation, which he managed along with his wife. They also donated money to hospitals and theaters. The foundation also contributed to many educational, cultural, and health charities, including those later forced to close because of Madoff's fraud. After Madoff's arrest, the assets of the Madoff Family Foundation were frozen by a federal court.


title: Barry (TV series)

text: Barry is an American dark comedy crime drama television series created by Alec Berg and Bill Hader that premiered on HBO on March 25, 2018. Hader stars as Barry Berkman, a hitman from Cleveland who travels to Los Angeles to kill someone but finds himself joining an acting class taught by Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler), where he meets aspiring actress Sally Reed (Sarah Goldberg) and begins to question his path in life as he deals with his criminal associates such as Monroe Fuches (Stephen Root) and NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan). The second season premiered on March 31, 2019. In April 2019, HBO renewed the series for a third season, which premiered on April 24, 2022. In May 2022, the series was renewed for an eight-episode fourth season.


title: Barry (TV series)

text: "Barry" has received critical acclaim, with most praise going to its directing, writing, originality, humor, characters, and performances (particularly Hader's). The series has received various accolades, including 44 Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Hader won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series twice, while Winkler won Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his performance in the first season. For the second season, Winkler, Root, and Carrigan all received Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor, while Goldberg received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Hader, Winkler, and Carrigan each received another nomination for the third season. All three seasons of "Barry" have been nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series.


title: Barry (TV series)

text: "Barry" follows Barry Berkman, a U.S. Marine and Afghanistan veteran from Cleveland, who works as a hitman. Lonely and dissatisfied with life, he travels to Los Angeles to kill a target and finds a new sense of purpose when he joins a class full of aspiring actors. Despite his efforts to leave behind his criminal history and become an actor himself, he struggles to escape his dark past.


title: Barry (TV series)

text: On January 11, 2016, it was reported that HBO had given the production a pilot order, to be directed by Bill Hader who would also co-write and executive produce alongside Alec Berg. On June 2, 2016, it was reported that HBO had given the production a series order. On April 12, 2018, HBO renewed the series for a second season, which premiered on March 31, 2019. On April 10, 2019, HBO renewed the series for a third season which premiered on April 24, 2022. On May 19, 2022, HBO renewed the series for an eight-episode fourth season with Hader directing all eight episodes.


title: Barry (TV series)

text: Alongside the report of the pilot order, it was confirmed that Hader would star in the pilot. In February 2016, it was reported that Sarah Goldberg, Glenn Fleshler, Anthony Carrigan, Henry Winkler, and Stephen Root had been cast in lead roles in the series' pilot. For the third season, Sarah Burns was promoted to series regular after having a recurring role in the second season.


title: Barry (TV series)

text: Principal photography for the first season began in 2017 in Los Angeles. The second season filmed from September 2018 to December 2018.


title: Barry (TV series)

text: Production on the third season was shut down on March 18, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, before a single episode had been shot. The cast had already gathered for table reads for the first two episodes when they were informed. In January 2021, Hader revealed that scripts for seasons 3 and 4 had been written. Filming for the third season began in August 2021. Production on the fourth season began in June 2022 in Los Angeles.


title: Barry (TV series)

text: On December 4, 2017, HBO released the first teaser trailer for the series. On January 9, 2018, HBO released the first official trailer for the series.


title: Barry (TV series)

text: On March 21, 2018, the series held its official premiere at NeueHouse Hollywood in Los Angeles, California.


title: Barry (TV series)

text: On April 28, 2018, episodes one through three were screened during the Series Mania Festival at the Le Majestic cinema in Lille, France. It appeared alongside seven other television programs in the festival's "Best of USA" series of shows.


title: Barry (TV series)

text: All three seasons of "Barry" have received critical acclaim. On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the overall series holds a 99% rating. Meanwhile, on Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the overall series received a score of 88 out of 100.


title: Barry (TV series)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the season holds a 98% rating with an average rating of 8.1/10, based on 82 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "PTSD and comedy make strangely endearing bedfellows in "Barry", which proves more poignant than its sketch show premise." Metacritic assigned the season a score of 84 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Barry (TV series)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the season holds a 100% rating with an average rating of 8.8/10, based on 41 reviews. The website's consensus reads, ""Barry" follows up a pitch-perfect debut with a second season that balances darkness with comedy while steering clear of antihero overindulgence." On Metacritic, the season has a score 87 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Barry (TV series)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the season holds a 100% rating with an average rating of 9.15/10, based on 91 reviews. The website's critics consensus states, "Bill Hader and company can take a well-deserved bow—"Barry" makes its belated return to the screen without missing a step, retaining its edge as one of television’s funniest and most unsettling offerings." On Metacritic, the season has a score 94 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Judaism

text: Judaism ( "Yahăḏūṯ") is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Modern Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, by the late 6th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions. Judaism is considered by religious Jews to be the expression of the covenant that God established with the Israelites, their ancestors. It encompasses a wide body of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization.


title: Judaism

text: The Torah, as it is commonly understood by Jews, is part of the larger text known as the "Tanakh". The "Tanakh" is also known to secular scholars of religion as the Hebrew Bible, and to Christians as the "Old Testament". The Torah's supplemental oral tradition is represented by later texts such as the Midrash and the Talmud. The Hebrew word "torah" can mean "teaching", "law", or "instruction", although "Torah" can also be used as a general term that refers to any Jewish text that expands or elaborates on the original Five Books of Moses. Representing the core of the Jewish spiritual and religious tradition, the Torah is a term and a set of teachings that are explicitly self-positioned as encompassing at least seventy, and potentially infinite, facets and interpretations. Judaism's texts, traditions, and values strongly influenced later Abrahamic religions, including Christianity and Islam. Hebraism, like Hellenism, played a seminal role in the formation of Western civilization through its impact as a core background element of Early Christianity.


title: Judaism

text: Within Judaism, there are a variety of religious movements, most of which emerged from Rabbinic Judaism, which holds that God revealed his laws and commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of both the Written and Oral Torah. Historically, all or part of this assertion was challenged by various groups such as the Sadducees and Hellenistic Judaism during the Second Temple period; the Karaites during the early and later medieval period; and among segments of the modern non-Orthodox denominations. Some modern branches of Judaism such as Humanistic Judaism may be considered secular or nontheistic. Today, the largest Jewish religious movements are Orthodox Judaism (Haredi Judaism and Modern Orthodox Judaism), Conservative Judaism, and Reform Judaism. Major sources of difference between these groups are their approaches to "halakha" (Jewish law), the authority of the rabbinic tradition, and the significance of the State of Israel. Orthodox Judaism maintains that the Torah and "halakha" are divine in origin, eternal and unalterable, and that they should be strictly followed. Conservative and Reform Judaism are more liberal, with Conservative Judaism generally promoting a more traditionalist interpretation of Judaism's requirements than Reform Judaism. A typical Reform position is that "halakha" should be viewed as a set of general guidelines rather than as a set of restrictions and obligations whose observance is required of all Jews. Historically, special courts enforced "halakha"; today, these courts still exist but the practice of Judaism is mostly voluntary. Authority on theological and legal matters is not vested in any one person or organization, but in the sacred texts and the rabbis and scholars who interpret them.


title: Judaism

text: Jews are an ethnoreligious group including those born Jewish (or "ethnic Jews"), in addition to converts to Judaism. In 2019, the world Jewish population was estimated at 14.7 million, or roughly 0.19% of the total world population. About 46.9% of all Jews reside in Israel and another 38.8% reside in the United States and Canada, with most of the remainder living in Europe, and other minority groups spread throughout Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Australia.


title: Judaism

text: The term "Judaism" derives from "Iudaismus", a Latinized form of the Ancient Greek "Ioudaismos" (Ἰουδαϊσμός) (from the verb , "to side with or imitate the [Judeans]"). Its ultimate source was the Hebrew יהודה, "Yehudah", "Judah", which is also the source of the Hebrew term for Judaism: יַהֲדוּת, "Yahadut". The term "Ἰουδαϊσμός" first appears in the Hellenistic Greek book of 2 Maccabees in the 2nd century BCE. In the context of the age and period it meant "seeking or forming part of a cultural entity" and it resembled its antonym "hellenismos", a word that signified a people's submission to Hellenic (Greek) cultural norms. The conflict between "iudaismos" and "hellenismos" lay behind the Maccabean revolt and hence the invention of the term "iudaismos".


title: Judaism

text: According to the "Oxford English Dictionary" the earliest citation in English where the term was used to mean "the profession or practice of the Jewish religion; the religious system or polity of the Jews" is Robert Fabyan's "The newe cronycles of Englande and of Fraunce" (1516). "Judaism" as a direct translation of the Latin "Iudaismus" first occurred in a 1611 English translation of the apocrypha (Deuterocanon in Catholic and Eastern Orthodoxy), 2 Macc. ii. 21: "Those that behaved themselves manfully to their honour for Iudaisme."


title: Judaism

text: At its core, the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is an account of the Israelites' relationship with God from their earliest history until the building of the Second Temple (c. 535 BCE). Abraham is hailed as the first Hebrew and the father of the Jewish people. As a reward for his act of faith in one God, he was promised that Isaac, his second son, would inherit the Land of Israel (then called Canaan). Later, the descendants of Isaac's son Jacob were enslaved in Egypt, and God commanded Moses to lead the Exodus from Egypt. At Mount Sinai, they received the Torah—the five books of Moses. These books, together with Nevi'im and Ketuvim are known as "Torah Shebikhtav" as opposed to the Oral Torah, which refers to the Mishnah and the Talmud. Eventually, God led them to the land of Israel where the tabernacle was planted in the city of Shiloh for over 300 years to rally the nation against attacking enemies. As time went on, the spiritual level of the nation declined to the point that God allowed the Philistines to capture the tabernacle. The people of Israel then told Samuel the prophet that they needed to be governed by a permanent king, and Samuel appointed Saul to be their King. When the people pressured Saul into going against a command conveyed to him by Samuel, God told Samuel to appoint David in his stead.


title: Judaism

text: Once King David was established, he told the prophet Nathan that he would like to build a permanent temple, and as a reward for his actions, God promised David that he would allow his son, Solomon, to build the First Temple and the throne would never depart from his children.


title: Judaism

text: Rabbinic tradition holds that the details and interpretation of the law, which are called the "Oral Torah" or "oral law", were originally an unwritten tradition based upon what God told Moses on Mount Sinai. However, as the persecutions of the Jews increased and the details were in danger of being forgotten, these oral laws were recorded by Rabbi Judah HaNasi (Judah the Prince) in the Mishnah, redacted "circa" 200 CE. The Talmud was a compilation of both the Mishnah and the Gemara, rabbinic commentaries redacted over the next three centuries. The Gemara originated in two major centers of Jewish scholarship, Palestine and Babylonia. Correspondingly, two bodies of analysis developed, and two works of Talmud were created. The older compilation is called the Jerusalem Talmud. It was compiled sometime during the 4th century in Palestine. The Babylonian Talmud was compiled from discussions in the houses of study by the scholars Ravina I, Ravina II, and Rav Ashi by 500 CE, although it continued to be edited later.


title: Judaism

text: According to critical scholars, the Torah consists of inconsistent texts edited together in a way that calls attention to divergent accounts. Several of these scholars, such as Professor Martin Rose and John Bright, suggest that during the First Temple period the people of Israel believed that each nation had its own god, but that their god was superior to other gods. Some suggest that strict monotheism developed during the Babylonian Exile, perhaps in reaction to Zoroastrian dualism. In this view, it was only by the Hellenic period that most Jews came to believe that their god was the only god and that the notion of a clearly bounded Jewish nation identical with the Jewish religion formed. John Day argues that the origins of biblical Yahweh, El, Asherah, and Ba'al, may be rooted in earlier Canaanite religion, which was centered on a pantheon of gods much like the Greek pantheon.


title: Judaism

text: According to the Hebrew Bible, the United Monarchy was established under Saul and continued under King David and Solomon with its capital in Jerusalem. After Solomon's reign, the nation split into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel (in the north) and the Kingdom of Judah (in the south). The Kingdom of Israel was destroyed around 720 BCE, when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire; many people were taken captive from the capital Samaria to Media and the Khabur River valley. The Kingdom of Judah continued as an independent state until it was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE. The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, which was at the center of ancient Jewish worship. The Judeans were exiled to Babylon, in what is regarded as the first Jewish diaspora. Later, many of them returned to their homeland after the subsequent conquest of Babylon by the Persian Achaemenid Empire seventy years later, an event known as the Return to Zion. A Second Temple was constructed and old religious practices were resumed.


title: Judaism

text: During the early years of the Second Temple, the highest religious authority was a council known as the Great Assembly, led by Ezra the Scribe. Among other accomplishments of the Great Assembly, the last books of the Bible were written at this time and the canon sealed. Hellenistic Judaism spread to Ptolemaic Egypt from the 3rd century BCE.


title: Judaism

text: During the Great Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE), the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple. Later, Roman emperor Hadrian built a pagan idol on the Temple Mount and prohibited circumcision; these acts of ethnocide provoked the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136 CE), after which the Romans banned the study of the Torah and the celebration of Jewish holidays, and forcibly removed virtually all Jews from Judea. In 200 CE, however, Jews were granted Roman citizenship and Judaism was recognized as a "religio licita" ("legitimate religion") until the rise of Gnosticism and Early Christianity in the fourth century.


title: Judaism

text: Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Jews, Jewish worship stopped being centrally organized around the Temple, prayer took the place of sacrifice, and worship was rebuilt around the community (represented by a minimum of ten adult men) and the establishment of the authority of rabbis who acted as teachers and leaders of individual communities.


title: Judaism

text: Unlike other ancient Near Eastern gods, the Hebrew God is portrayed as unitary and solitary; consequently, the Hebrew God's principal relationships are not with other gods, but with the world, and more specifically, with the people he created. Judaism thus begins with ethical monotheism: the belief that God is one and is concerned with the actions of mankind. According to the Hebrew Bible, God promised Abraham to make of his offspring a great nation. Many generations later, he commanded the nation of Israel to love and worship only one God; that is, the Jewish nation is to reciprocate God's concern for the world. He also commanded the Jewish people to love one another; that is, Jews are to imitate God's love for people. These commandments are but two of a large corpus of commandments and laws that constitute this covenant, which is the substance of Judaism.


title: Judaism

text: Thus, although there is an esoteric tradition in Judaism (Kabbalah), Rabbinic scholar Max Kadushin has characterized normative Judaism as "normal mysticism", because it involves everyday personal experiences of God through ways or modes that are common to all Jews. This is played out through the observance of the "halakha" (Jewish law) and given verbal expression in the Birkat Ha-Mizvot, the short blessings that are spoken every time a positive commandment is to be fulfilled.


title: Judaism

text: Whereas Jewish philosophers often debate whether God is immanent or transcendent, and whether people have free will or their lives are determined, "halakha" is a system through which any Jew acts to bring God into the world.


title: Judaism

text: Ethical monotheism is central in all sacred or normative texts of Judaism. However, monotheism has not always been followed in practice. The Jewish Bible records and repeatedly condemns the widespread worship of other gods in ancient Israel. In the Greco-Roman era, many different interpretations of monotheism existed in Judaism, including the interpretations that gave rise to Christianity.


title: Judaism

text: Moreover, some have argued that Judaism is a non-creedal religion that does not require one to believe in God. For some, observance of "halakha" is more important than belief in God "per se". In modern times, some liberal Jewish movements do not accept the existence of a personified deity active in history. The debate about whether one can speak of authentic or normative Judaism is not only a debate among religious Jews but also among historians.


title: Judaism

text: In the strict sense, in Judaism, unlike Christianity and Islam, there are no fixed universally binding articles of faith, due to their incorporation into the liturgy. Scholars throughout Jewish history have proposed numerous formulations of Judaism's core tenets, all of which have met with criticism. The most popular formulation is Maimonides' thirteen principles of faith, developed in the 12th century. According to Maimonides, any Jew who rejects even one of these principles would be considered an apostate and a heretic. Jewish scholars have held points of view diverging in various ways from Maimonides' principles. Thus, within Reform Judaism only the first five principles are endorsed.


title: Judaism

text: In Maimonides' time, his list of tenets was criticized by Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo. Albo and the Raavad argued that Maimonides' principles contained too many items that, while true, were not fundamentals of the faith


title: Judaism

text: Along these lines, the ancient historian Josephus emphasized practices and observances rather than religious beliefs, associating apostasy with a failure to observe "halakha" and maintaining that the requirements for conversion to Judaism included circumcision and adherence to traditional customs. Maimonides' principles were largely ignored over the next few centuries. Later, two poetic restatements of these principles (""Ani Ma'amin"" and ""Yigdal"") became integrated into many Jewish liturgies, leading to their eventual near-universal acceptance.


title: Judaism

text: In modern times, Judaism lacks a centralized authority that would dictate an exact religious dogma. Because of this, many different variations on the basic beliefs are considered within the scope of Judaism. Even so, all Jewish religious movements are, to a greater or lesser extent, based on the principles of the Hebrew Bible and various commentaries such as the Talmud and Midrash. Judaism also universally recognizes the Biblical Covenant between God and the Patriarch Abraham as well as the additional aspects of the Covenant revealed to Moses, who is considered Judaism's greatest prophet. In the Mishnah, a core text of Rabbinic Judaism, acceptance of the Divine origins of this covenant is considered an essential aspect of Judaism and those who reject the Covenant forfeit their share in the World to Come.


title: Judaism

text: Establishing the core tenets of Judaism in the modern era is even more difficult, given the number and diversity of the contemporary Jewish denominations. Even if to restrict the problem to the most influential intellectual trends of the nineteenth and twentieth century, the matter remains complicated. Thus for instance, Joseph Soloveitchik's (associated with the Modern Orthodox movement) answer to modernity is constituted upon the identification of Judaism with following the "halakha" whereas its ultimate goal is to bring the holiness down to the world. Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructionist Judaism, abandons the idea of religion for the sake of identifying Judaism with civilization and by means of the latter term and secular translation of the core ideas, he tries to embrace as many Jewish denominations as possible. In turn, Solomon Schechter's Conservative Judaism was identical with the tradition understood as the interpretation of Torah, in itself being the history of the constant updates and adjustment of the Law performed by means of the creative interpretation. Finally, David Philipson draws the outlines of the Reform movement in Judaism by opposing it to the strict and traditional rabbinical approach and thus comes to the conclusions similar to that of the Conservative movement.


title: Judaism

text: The basis of "halakha" and tradition is the Torah (also known as the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses). According to rabbinic tradition, there are 613 commandments in the Torah. Some of these laws are directed only to men or to women, some only to the ancient priestly groups, the Kohanim and Leviyim (members of the tribe of Levi), some only to farmers within the Land of Israel. Many laws were only applicable when the Temple in Jerusalem existed, and only 369 of these commandments are still applicable today.


title: Judaism

text: While there have been Jewish groups whose beliefs were based on the written text of the Torah alone (e.g., the Sadducees, and the Karaites), most Jews believe in the oral law. These oral traditions were transmitted by the Pharisee school of thought of ancient Judaism and were later recorded in written form and expanded upon by the rabbis.


title: Judaism

text: According to Rabbinical Jewish tradition, God gave both the Written Law (the Torah) and the Oral Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai. The Oral law is the oral tradition as relayed by God to Moses and from him, transmitted and taught to the sages (rabbinic leaders) of each subsequent generation.


title: Judaism

text: For centuries, the Torah appeared only as a written text transmitted in parallel with the oral tradition. Fearing that the oral teachings might be forgotten, Rabbi Judah haNasi undertook the mission of consolidating the various opinions into one body of law which became known as the "Mishnah".


title: Judaism

text: The Mishnah consists of 63 tractates codifying "halakha", which are the basis of the Talmud. According to Abraham ben David, the "Mishnah" was compiled by Rabbi Judah haNasi after the destruction of Jerusalem, in anno mundi 3949, which corresponds to 189 CE.


title: Judaism

text: Over the next four centuries, the Mishnah underwent discussion and debate in both of the world's major Jewish communities (in Israel and Babylonia). The commentaries from each of these communities were eventually compiled into the two Talmuds, the Jerusalem Talmud ("Talmud Yerushalmi") and the Babylonian Talmud ("Talmud Bavli"). These have been further expounded by commentaries of various Torah scholars during the ages.


title: Judaism

text: In the text of the Torah, many words are left undefined and many procedures are mentioned without explanation or instructions. Such phenomena are sometimes offered to validate the viewpoint that the Written Law has always been transmitted with a parallel oral tradition, illustrating the assumption that the reader is already familiar with the details from other, i.e., oral, sources.


title: Judaism

text: "Halakha", the rabbinic Jewish way of life, then, is based on a combined reading of the Torah, and the oral tradition—the Mishnah, the halakhic Midrash, the Talmud and its commentaries. The "halakha" has developed slowly, through a precedent-based system. The literature of questions to rabbis, and their considered answers, is referred to as responsa (in Hebrew, "Sheelot U-Teshuvot".) Over time, as practices develop, codes of "halakha" are written that are based on the responsa; the most important code, the Shulchan Aruch, largely determines Orthodox religious practice today.


title: Judaism

text: Jewish philosophy refers to the conjunction between serious study of philosophy and Jewish theology. Major Jewish philosophers include Philo of Alexandria, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Saadia Gaon, Judah Halevi, Maimonides, and Gersonides. Major changes occurred in response to the Enlightenment (late 18th to early 19th century) leading to the post-Enlightenment Jewish philosophers. Modern Jewish philosophy consists of both Orthodox and non-Orthodox oriented philosophy. Notable among Orthodox Jewish philosophers are Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and Yitzchok Hutner. Well-known non-Orthodox Jewish philosophers include Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Mordecai Kaplan, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Will Herberg, and Emmanuel Lévinas.


title: Judaism

text: Orthodox and many other Jews do not believe that the revealed Torah consists solely of its written contents, but of its interpretations as well. The study of Torah (in its widest sense, to include both poetry, narrative, and law, and both the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud) is in Judaism itself a sacred act of central importance. For the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud, and for their successors today, the study of Torah was therefore not merely a means to learn the contents of God's revelation, but an end in itself. According to the Talmud,


title: Judaism

text: In Judaism, "the study of Torah can be a means of experiencing God". Reflecting on the contribution of the Amoraim and Tanaim to contemporary Judaism, Professor Jacob Neusner observed:


title: Judaism

text: To study the Written Torah and the Oral Torah in light of each other is thus also to study "how" to study the word of God.


title: Judaism

text: In the study of Torah, the sages formulated and followed various logical and hermeneutical principles. According to David Stern, all Rabbinic hermeneutics rest on two basic axioms:


title: Judaism

text: Observant Jews thus view the Torah as dynamic, because it contains within it a host of interpretations.


title: Judaism

text: According to Rabbinic tradition, all valid interpretations of the written Torah were revealed to Moses at Sinai in oral form, and handed down from teacher to pupil (The oral revelation is in effect coextensive with the Talmud itself). When different rabbis forwarded conflicting interpretations, they sometimes appealed to hermeneutic principles to legitimize their arguments; some rabbis claim that these principles were themselves revealed by God to Moses at Sinai.


title: Judaism

text: Thus, Hillel called attention to seven commonly used hermeneutical principles in the interpretation of laws (baraita at the beginning of Sifra); R. Ishmael, thirteen (baraita at the beginning of Sifra; this collection is largely an amplification of that of Hillel). Eliezer b. Jose ha-Gelili listed 32, largely used for the exegesis of narrative elements of Torah. All the hermeneutic rules scattered through the Talmudim and Midrashim have been collected by Malbim in "Ayyelet ha-Shachar", the introduction to his commentary on the Sifra. Nevertheless, R. Ishmael's 13 principles are perhaps the ones most widely known; they constitute an important, and one of Judaism's earliest, contributions to logic, hermeneutics, and jurisprudence. Judah Hadassi incorporated Ishmael's principles into Karaite Judaism in the 12th century. Today R. Ishmael's 13 principles are incorporated into the Jewish prayer book to be read by observant Jews on a daily basis.


title: Judaism

text: According to Daniel Boyarin, the underlying distinction between religion and ethnicity is foreign to Judaism itself, and is one form of the dualism between spirit and flesh that has its origin in Platonic philosophy and that permeated Hellenistic Judaism. Consequently, in his view, Judaism does not fit easily into conventional Western categories, such as religion, ethnicity, or culture. Boyarin suggests that this in part reflects the fact that much of Judaism's more than 3,000-year history predates the rise of Western culture and occurred outside the West (that is, Europe, particularly medieval and modern Europe). During this time, Jews experienced slavery, anarchic and theocratic self-government, conquest, occupation, and exile. In the Jewish diaspora, they were in contact with, and influenced by, ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenic cultures, as well as modern movements such as the Enlightenment (see Haskalah) and the rise of nationalism, which would bear fruit in the form of a Jewish state in their ancient homeland, the Land of Israel. They also saw an elite population convert to Judaism (the Khazars), only to disappear as the centers of power in the lands once occupied by that elite fell to the people of Rus and then the Mongols. Thus, Boyarin has argued that "Jewishness disrupts the very categories of identity, because it is not national, not genealogical, not religious, but all of these, in dialectical tension."


title: Judaism

text: In contrast to this point of view, practices such as Humanistic Judaism reject the religious aspects of Judaism, while retaining certain cultural traditions.


title: Judaism

text: According to Rabbinic Judaism, a Jew is anyone who was either born of a Jewish mother or who converted to Judaism in accordance with "halakha". Reconstructionist Judaism and the larger denominations of worldwide Progressive Judaism (also known as Liberal or Reform Judaism) accept the child as Jewish if one of the parents is Jewish, if the parents raise the child with a Jewish identity, but not the smaller regional branches. All mainstream forms of Judaism today are open to sincere converts, although conversion has traditionally been discouraged since the time of the Talmud. The conversion process is evaluated by an authority, and the convert is examined on his or her sincerity and knowledge. Converts are called "ben Abraham" or "bat Abraham", (son or daughter of Abraham). Conversions have on occasion been overturned. In 2008, Israel's highest religious court invalidated the conversion of 40,000 Jews, mostly from Russian immigrant families, even though they had been approved by an Orthodox rabbi.


title: Judaism

text: Rabbinical Judaism maintains that a Jew, whether by birth or conversion, is a Jew forever. Thus a Jew who claims to be an atheist or converts to another religion is still considered by traditional Judaism to be Jewish. According to some sources, the Reform movement has maintained that a Jew who has converted to another religion is no longer a Jew, and the Israeli Government has also taken that stance after Supreme Court cases and statutes. However, the Reform movement has indicated that this is not so cut and dried, and different situations call for consideration and differing actions. For example, Jews who have converted under duress may be permitted to return to Judaism "without any action on their part but their desire to rejoin the Jewish community" and "A proselyte who has become an apostate remains, nevertheless, a Jew".


title: Judaism

text: Karaite Judaism believes that Jewish identity can only be transmitted by patrilineal descent. Although a minority of modern Karaites believe that Jewish identity requires that both parents be Jewish, and not only the father. They argue that only patrilineal descent can transmit Jewish identity on the grounds that all descent in the Torah went according to the male line.


title: Judaism

text: The question of what determines Jewish identity in the State of Israel was given new impetus when, in the 1950s, David Ben-Gurion requested opinions on "mihu Yehudi" ("Who is a Jew") from Jewish religious authorities and intellectuals worldwide in order to settle citizenship questions. This is still not settled, and occasionally resurfaces in Israeli politics.


title: Judaism

text: Historical definitions of Jewish identity have traditionally been based on "halakhic" definitions of matrilineal descent, and "halakhic" conversions. Historical definitions of who is a Jew date back to the codification of the Oral Torah into the Babylonian Talmud, around 200 CE. Interpretations of sections of the Tanakh, such as Deuteronomy 7:1–5, by Jewish sages, are used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and Canaanites because "[the non-Jewish husband] will cause your child to turn away from Me and they will worship the gods (i.e., idols) of others." Leviticus 24 says that the son in a marriage between a Hebrew woman and an Egyptian man is "of the community of Israel." This is complemented by Ezra 10, where Israelites returning from Babylon vow to put aside their gentile wives and their children. A popular theory is that the rape of Jewish women in captivity brought about the law of Jewish identity being inherited through the maternal line, although scholars challenge this theory citing the Talmudic establishment of the law from the pre-exile period. Since the anti-religious "Haskalah" movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries, "halakhic" interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged.


title: Judaism

text: The total number of Jews worldwide is difficult to assess because the definition of "who is a Jew" is problematic; not all Jews identify themselves as Jewish, and some who identify as Jewish are not considered so by other Jews. According to the "Jewish Year Book" (1901), the global Jewish population in 1900 was around 11 million. The latest available data is from the World Jewish Population Survey of 2002 and the Jewish Year Calendar (2005). In 2002, according to the Jewish Population Survey, there were 13.3 million Jews around the world. The Jewish Year Calendar cites 14.6 million. It is 0.25% of world population. Jewish population growth is currently near zero percent, with 0.3% growth from 2000 to 2001.


title: Judaism

text: Rabbinic Judaism (or in some Christian traditions, Rabbinism) (Hebrew: "Yahadut Rabanit" – יהדות רבנית) has been the mainstream form of Judaism since the 6th century CE, after the codification of the Talmud. It is characterised by the belief that the Written Torah (Written Law) cannot be correctly interpreted without reference to the Oral Torah and the voluminous literature specifying what behavior is sanctioned by the Law.


title: Judaism

text: The Jewish Enlightenment of the late 18th century resulted in the division of Ashkenazi (Western) Jewry into religious movements or denominations, especially in North America and Anglophone countries. The main denominations today outside Israel (where the situation is rather different) are Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform. The notion "traditional Judaism" includes the Orthodox with Conservative or solely the Orthodox Jews.


title: Judaism

text: Orthodoxy is often divided into Haredi Judaism and Modern Orthodox Judaism. Haredi is less accommodating to modernity and has less interest in non-Jewish disciplines, and it may be distinguished from Modern Orthodox Judaism in practice by its styles of dress and more stringent practices. Subsets of Haredi Judaism include Hasidic Judaism, which is rooted in the Kabbalah and distinguished by reliance on a Rebbe or religious teacher; their opponents Misnagdim (Lithuanian); and Sephardic Haredi Judaism, which emerged among Sephardic and Mizrahi (Asian and North African) Jews in Israel. "Centrist" Orthodoxy (Joseph B. Soloveitchik) is sometimes also distinguished.


title: Judaism

text: While traditions and customs vary between discrete communities, it can be said that Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish communities do not generally adhere to the "movement" framework popular in and among Ashkenazi Jewry. Historically, Sephardi and Mizrahi communities have eschewed denominations in favour of a "big tent" approach. This is particularly the case in contemporary Israel, which is home to the largest communities of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in the world. (However, individual Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews may be members of or attend synagogues that do adhere to one Ashkenazi-inflected movement or another.)


title: Judaism

text: Sephardi and Mizrahi observance of Judaism tends toward the conservative, and prayer rites are reflective of this, with the text of each rite being largely unchanged since their respective inception. Observant Sephardim may follow the teachings of a particular rabbi or school of thought; for example, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel.


title: Judaism

text: Most Jewish Israelis classify themselves as "secular" ("hiloni"), "traditional" ("masorti"), "religious" ("dati") or "Haredi". The term "secular" is more popular as a self-description among Israeli families of western (European) origin, whose Jewish identity may be a very powerful force in their lives, but who see it as largely independent of traditional religious belief and practice. This portion of the population largely ignores organized religious life, be it of the official Israeli rabbinate (Orthodox) or of the liberal movements common to diaspora Judaism (Reform, Conservative).


title: Judaism

text: The term "traditional" ("masorti") is most common as a self-description among Israeli families of "eastern" origin (i.e., the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa). This term, as commonly used, has nothing to do with the Conservative Judaism, which also names itself "Masorti" outside North America. There is a great deal of ambiguity in the ways "secular" and "traditional" are used in Israel: they often overlap, and they cover an extremely wide range in terms of worldview and practical religious observance. The term "Orthodox" is not popular in Israeli discourse, although the percentage of Jews who come under that category is far greater than in the Jewish diaspora. What would be called "Orthodox" in the diaspora includes what is commonly called "dati" (religious) or "haredi" (ultra-Orthodox) in Israel. The former term includes what is called "Religious Zionism" or the "National Religious" community, as well as what has become known over the past decade or so as "haredi-leumi" (nationalist "haredi"), or "Hardal", which combines a largely "haredi" lifestyle with nationalist ideology. (Some people, in Yiddish, also refer to observant Orthodox Jews as "frum", as opposed to "frei" (more liberal Jews)).


title: Judaism

text: "Haredi" applies to a populace that can be roughly divided into three separate groups along both ethnic and ideological lines: (1) "Lithuanian" (non-hasidic) "haredim" of Ashkenazic origin; (2) Hasidic "haredim" of Ashkenazic origin; and (3) Sephardic "haredim".


title: Judaism

text: Karaite Judaism defines itself as the remnants of the non-Rabbinic Jewish sects of the Second Temple period, such as the Sadducees. The Karaites ("Scripturalists") accept only the Hebrew Bible and what they view as the Peshat ("simple" meaning); they do not accept non-biblical writings as authoritative. Some European Karaites do not see themselves as part of the Jewish community at all, although most do.


title: Judaism

text: The Samaritans, a very small community located entirely around Mount Gerizim in the Nablus/Shechem region of the West Bank and in Holon, near Tel Aviv in Israel, regard themselves as the descendants of the Israelites of the Iron Age kingdom of Israel. Their religious practices are based on the literal text of the written Torah (Five Books of Moses), which they view as the only authoritative scripture (with a special regard also for the Samaritan Book of Joshua).


title: Judaism

text: Haymanot (meaning "religion" in Ge'ez and Amharic) refers the Judaism practiced by Ethiopian Jews. This version of Judaism differs substantially from Rabbinic, Karaite, and Samaritan Judaisms, Ethiopian Jews having diverged from their coreligionists earlier. Sacred scriptures (the Orit) are written in Ge'ez, not Hebrew, and dietary laws are based strictly on the text of the Orit, without explication from ancillary commentaries. Holidays also differ, with some Rabbinic holidays not observed in Ethiopian Jewish communities, and some additional holidays, like Sigd.


title: Judaism

text: Noahidism is a Jewish religious movement based on the Seven Laws of Noah and their traditional interpretations within Rabbinic Judaism. According to the "halakha", non-Jews (gentiles) are not obligated to convert to Judaism, but they are required to observe the Seven Laws of Noah to be assured of a place in the World to Come (Olam Ha-Ba), the final reward of the righteous. The divinely ordained penalty for violating any of the Laws of Noah is discussed in the Talmud, but in practical terms it is subject to the working legal system which is established by the society at large. Those who subscribe to the observance of the Noahic Covenant are referred to as "B'nei Noach" (Hebrew: בני נח, "Children of Noah") or "Noahides" (). Supporting organizations have been established around the world over the past decades by both Noahides and Orthodox Jews.


title: Judaism

text: Historically, the Hebrew term "B'nei Noach" has applied to all non-Jews as descendants of Noah. However, nowadays it's primarily used to refer specifically to those non-Jews who observe the Seven Laws of Noah.


title: Judaism

text: Jewish ethics may be guided by "halakhic" traditions, by other moral principles, or by central Jewish virtues. Jewish ethical practice is typically understood to be marked by values such as justice, truth, peace, loving-kindness (chesed), compassion, humility, and self-respect. Specific Jewish ethical practices include practices of charity (tzedakah) and refraining from negative speech (lashon hara). Proper ethical practices regarding sexuality and many other issues are subjects of dispute among Jews.


title: Judaism

text: Traditionally, Jews recite prayers three times daily, Shacharit, Mincha, and Ma'ariv with a fourth prayer, Mussaf added on Shabbat and holidays. At the heart of each service is the "Amidah" or "Shemoneh Esrei". Another key prayer in many services is the declaration of faith, the "Shema Yisrael" (or "Shema"). The "Shema" is the recitation of a verse from the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:4): "Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad"—"Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God! The Lord is One!"


title: Judaism

text: Most of the prayers in a traditional Jewish service can be recited in solitary prayer, although communal prayer is preferred. Communal prayer requires a quorum of ten adult Jews, called a "minyan". In nearly all Orthodox and a few Conservative circles, only male Jews are counted toward a "minyan"; most Conservative Jews and members of other Jewish denominations count female Jews as well.


title: Judaism

text: In addition to prayer services, observant traditional Jews recite prayers and benedictions throughout the day when performing various acts. Prayers are recited upon waking up in the morning, before eating or drinking different foods, after eating a meal, and so on.


title: Judaism

text: The approach to prayer varies among the Jewish denominations. Differences can include the texts of prayers, the frequency of prayer, the number of prayers recited at various religious events, the use of musical instruments and choral music, and whether prayers are recited in the traditional liturgical languages or the vernacular. In general, Orthodox and Conservative congregations adhere most closely to tradition, and Reform and Reconstructionist synagogues are more likely to incorporate translations and contemporary writings in their services. Also, in most Conservative synagogues, and all Reform and Reconstructionist congregations, women participate in prayer services on an equal basis with men, including roles traditionally filled only by men, such as reading from the Torah. In addition, many Reform temples use musical accompaniment such as organs and mixed choirs.


title: Judaism

text: A "kippah" (Hebrew: כִּפָּה, plural "kippot"; Yiddish: יאַרמלקע, "yarmulke") is a slightly rounded brimless skullcap worn by many Jews while praying, eating, reciting blessings, or studying Jewish religious texts, and at all times by some Jewish men. In Orthodox communities, only men wear kippot; in non-Orthodox communities, some women also wear kippot. "Kippot" range in size from a small round beanie that covers only the back of the head to a large, snug cap that covers the whole crown.


title: Judaism

text: "Tzitzit" (Hebrew: צִיציִת) (Ashkenazi pronunciation: "tzitzis") are special knotted "fringes" or "tassels" found on the four corners of the "tallit" (Hebrew: טַלִּית) (Ashkenazi pronunciation: "tallis"), or prayer shawl. The "tallit" is worn by Jewish men and some Jewish women during the prayer service. Customs vary regarding when a Jew begins wearing a tallit. In the Sephardi community, boys wear a tallit from bar mitzvah age. In some Ashkenazi communities, it is customary to wear one only after marriage. A "tallit katan" (small tallit) is a fringed garment worn under the clothing throughout the day. In some Orthodox circles, the fringes are allowed to hang freely outside the clothing.