Israel (ˈɪzri.əl,_-reɪ-; יִשְׂרָאֵל Yīsrāʾēl jisʁaˈʔel; إِسْرَائِيل ʾIsrāʾīl), officially the State of Israel (מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl mediˈnat jisʁaˈʔel; دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل Dawlat Isrāʾīl), is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Lebanon to the north, by Syria to the northeast, by Jordan to the east, by the Red Sea to the south, by Egypt to the southwest, by the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and by the Palestinian territories - the West Bank along the east and the Gaza Strip along the southwest.
Jaffa, in Hebrew Yafo (יָפוֹ, ) and in Arabic Yafa (يَافَا) and also called Japho or Joppa, is an ancient Levantine port city founded by the Canaanites that is now part of southern Tel Aviv, Israel. Sitting atop a naturally elevated outcrop on the Mediterranean coastline, it was a strategic location that exchanged hands repeatedly in ancient Near East history, and was also contested during the Crusades, when it presided over the County of Jaffa and Ascalon.
The First Aliyah (Hebrew: העלייה הראשונה, HaAliyah HaRishona), also known as the agriculture Aliyah, was a major wave of Jewish immigration (aliyah) to Ottoman Syria between 1881 and 1903. Jews who migrated in this wave came mostly from Eastern Europe and from Yemen. An estimated 25,000 Jews immigrated. Many of the European Jewish immigrants during the late 19th-early 20th century period gave up after a few months and went back to their country of origin, often suffering from hunger and disease.
The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during the First World War announcing its support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. The declaration was contained in a letter dated 2 November 1917 from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.
Haganah (הַהֲגָנָה, lit. The Defence) was the main Zionist paramilitary organization of the Jewish population ("Yishuv") in Mandatory Palestine between 1920 and its disestablishment in 1948, when it became the core of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Formed out of previous existing militias, its original purpose was to defend Jewish settlements from Arab attacks, such as the riots of 1920, 1921, 1929 and during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.
Yishuv (ישוב, literally "settlement"), Ha-Yishuv (הישוב "the Yishuv"), or Ha-Yishuv Ha-Ivri (הישוב העברי "the Hebrew Yishuv") denote the body of Jewish residents in the Land of Israel (corresponding to the southern part of Ottoman Syria until 1918, OETA South 1917–1920, and Mandatory Palestine 1920–1948) prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The term came into use in the 1880s, when there were about 25,000 Jews living across the Land of Israel, and continued to be used until 1948, by which time there were some 630,000 Jews there.
A kibbutz (קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism. In recent decades, some kibbutzim have been privatized and changes have been made in the communal lifestyle.
Aliyah (USˌæliˈɑː, UKˌɑː-; עֲלִיָּה ʿălīyyā, ascent) is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to, historically, the geographical Land of Israel, which is in the modern era chiefly represented by the State of Israel. Traditionally described as "the act of going up" (towards the Jewish holy city of Jerusalem), moving to the Land of Israel or "making aliyah" is one of the most basic tenets of Zionism. The opposite action—emigration by Jews from the Land of Israel—is referred to in the Hebrew language as yerida (descent).
The Jewish Agency for Israel (הסוכנות היהודית לארץ ישראל), formerly known as the Jewish Agency for Palestine, is the largest Jewish non-profit organization in the world. It was established in 1929 as the operative branch of the World Zionist Organization (WZO). As an organization, it encourages immigration of Jews in diaspora to the Land of Israel, and oversees their integration with the State of Israel. Since 1948, the Jewish Agency claims to have brought 3 million immigrants to Israel, where it offers them transitional housing in "absorption centers" throughout the country.
Hebrew (; ʿÎbrit; ) is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family. It was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a spoken language by their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans, before dying out after 200 CE. However, it was largely preserved as a liturgical language, featuring prominently in Judaism (since the Second Temple period) and Samaritanism. Having ceased to be a dead language in the 19th century, today's Hebrew serves as the only successful large-scale example of linguistic revival.
