HISTORICAL CONTEXT

1) Origin of Judaism
Well children, close your eyes, open your minds because we are going on a trip to tell this
story....
Judaism is the oldest monotheistic religion, and the history of Judaism cannot be separated
from the history of the Jewish people. Its foundation lies in the original covenant made
between Abraham and God, circa 1900 B.C., when Abraham was called to leave his home
in Ur and travel to Cannan (later known as Palestine and Israel), a land which God promised
to give to his descendants. Later, the covenant extends to the descendants of Abraham, in
his son Isaac and in his grandson Jacob, who are considered the patriarchs and the fathers
of faith.
The life of Abraham is generally dated to around 2000-1700. Dates in this range are the
most commonly given for when Judaism was founded.
___________________________________________________
The second and main covenant was made 450 years later when Moses brought the Jews
out of slavery in Egypt (the exodus) to the lands of Canaan. God gave the Jewish people
the 10 Commanders and other rules for living according to the Torah (which is the first of
the five books of the Bible), marking the beginning of Judaism as a structured.
The stories of Abraham, Moses and others who are fundamental to Judaism were created
and given their final form in the 6th century BC, after the destruction of the First Temple in
586 BC.
Some sources date back to the foundation of Judaism much later: the destruction of the
Second Temple in 70 AD. This is because the biblical religion based on the Temple was
characterized by sacrificial rituals, while the religion after the destruction of the Temple
(which continues today) is based more on synagogues, rabbis, the home and has
significantly different rituals.

2) Baruch Spinoza (17th century) (Amsterdam, 24 November 1632 - The Hague,

21 February 1677)
The 17th century marks the beginning of the modern world with its great colonial explorations
and empires. The world is undergoing fundamental changes. The king of England was
executed. The divine right of kings was successfully challenged. The beginnings of the
democratic system were taking root. Above all, a new world economy emerged, in which
Jews were extremely influential.
They began to be appreciated again for their commercial skills so much that the Dutch
encouraged the return of the Jews, while the English, during the Commonwealth, repealed
the 1290 law that made Jewish residence in the country illegal.
But among many other things, imagine that in this century there was a man named Baruch
Spinoza who was a very important philosopher of Jewish origin.
 3) Albert Einstein (20th century) (Ulm, German Empire, 14 March 1879-Princeton,
United States, 18 April 1955)
In the year 1900 many of its main cities had a considerable Jewish population. In Vienna
9% of the inhabitants were Jewish, in Berlin around 4%. Similar populations were found in
Amsterdam and Prague. In England and France there were large but smaller communities,
while in Eastern Europe there were many cities with massive Jewish populations, such as
Krakow, Chernivtsi, Turkey, Odessa, Kishinev, Budapest and others, with between 20% and
60%. Romania had numerous cities that were more than 30% Jewish. Further east,
Damascus was 5% Jewish and Aleppo almost 10%. Egypt had 30,000 Jews and many cities
in North Africa were over 5% Jewish.
Beyond all this there is another major trend in the history of the twentieth century that must
be recognized: The Jews were both the parents and the victims of the mass social
movements of the century such as nationalism, fascism, and Nazism, and yet some of them
sought to revolutionize their society through the creation of a Jewish state. This creation
gave one of the most important new countries of the 20th century, with one of the strongest
armies in the world.
And among many other things, you can not imagine that in this century was born and lived
a man who changed the history of science, his name was Albert Einstein, listen to me and
who knows, you can see right here

4) Anne Frank (20th century // Second World War) (Frankfurt am Main, 12 June
1929 - Bergen-Belsen, March 1945)
Well, guys, we've reached the hardest part of the story....
In the years between 1933 and 1939, the Nazi regime had brought social and radical,
economic and communal changes to the Jewish community. By early 1939, only about 16
percent of the Jews who supported the family had stable employment of any kind.
Thousands of Jews remained interned like us in concentration camps following the mass
arrests in the aftermath of the Night of Broken Glass in November 1938.
After the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939, the government imposed new restrictions
on Jews remaining in Germany. One of the first wartime ordinances imposed a strict curfew
on Jews and banned them from entering designated areas in many German cities. Once
general food rationing began, Jews received reduced rations; other decrees limited the time
periods in which Jews could buy food and other supplies and restricted access to certain
stores, with the result that Jewish households often faced shortages of the most basic
essentials. In December 1941, Hitler finally decided to exterminate the European Jews.