title: Talmud

text: During the 15th and 16th centuries, a new intensive form of Talmud study arose. Complicated logical arguments were used to explain minor points of contradiction within the Talmud. The term "pilpul" was applied to this type of study. Usage of "pilpul" in this sense (that of "sharp analysis") harks back to the Talmudic era and refers to the intellectual sharpness this method demanded.


title: Talmud

text: Pilpul practitioners posited that the Talmud could contain no redundancy or contradiction whatsoever. New categories and distinctions ("hillukim") were therefore created, resolving seeming contradictions within the Talmud by novel logical means.


title: Talmud

text: In the Ashkenazi world the founders of "pilpul" are generally considered to be Jacob Pollak (1460–1541) and Shalom Shachna. This kind of study reached its height in the 16th and 17th centuries when expertise in pilpulistic analysis was considered an art form and became a goal in and of itself within the yeshivot of Poland and Lithuania. But the popular new method of Talmud study was not without critics; already in the 15th century, the ethical tract "Orhot Zaddikim" ("Paths of the Righteous" in Hebrew) criticized pilpul for an overemphasis on intellectual acuity. Many 16th- and 17th-century rabbis were also critical of pilpul. Among them are Judah Loew ben Bezalel (the "Maharal" of Prague), Isaiah Horowitz, and Yair Bacharach.


title: Talmud

text: By the 18th century, pilpul study waned. Other styles of learning such as that of the school of Elijah b. Solomon, the Vilna Gaon, became popular. The term "pilpul" was increasingly applied derogatorily to novellae deemed casuistic and hairsplitting. Authors referred to their own commentaries as "al derekh ha-peshat" (by the simple method) to contrast them with pilpul.


title: Talmud

text: Among Sephardi and Italian Jews from the 15th century on, some authorities sought to apply the methods of Aristotelian logic, as reformulated by Averroes. This method was first recorded, though without explicit reference to Aristotle, by Isaac Campanton (d. Spain, 1463) in his "Darkhei ha-Talmud" ("The Ways of the Talmud"), and is also found in the works of Moses Chaim Luzzatto.


title: Talmud

text: According to the present-day Sephardi scholar José Faur, traditional Sephardic Talmud study could take place on any of three levels.


title: Talmud

text: Today most Sephardic yeshivot follow Lithuanian approaches such as the Brisker method: the traditional Sephardic methods are perpetuated informally by some individuals." 'Iyyun Tunisa'i" is taught at the Kisse Rahamim yeshivah in Bnei Brak.


title: Talmud

text: In the late 19th century another trend in Talmud study arose. Rabbi Hayyim Soloveitchik (1853–1918) of Brisk (Brest-Litovsk) developed and refined this style of study. Brisker method involves a reductionistic analysis of rabbinic arguments within the Talmud or among the Rishonim, explaining the differing opinions by placing them within a categorical structure. The Brisker method is highly analytical and is often criticized as being a modern-day version of pilpul. Nevertheless, the influence of the Brisker method is great. Most modern-day Yeshivot study the Talmud using the Brisker method in some form. One feature of this method is the use of Maimonides' "Mishneh Torah" as a guide to Talmudic interpretation, as distinct from its use as a source of practical "halakha".


title: Talmud

text: As a result of Jewish emancipation, Judaism underwent enormous upheaval and transformation during the 19th century. Modern methods of textual and historical analysis were applied to the Talmud.


title: Talmud

text: The text of the Talmud has been subject to some level of critical scrutiny throughout its history. Rabbinic tradition holds that the people cited in both Talmuds did not have a hand in its writings; rather, their teachings were edited into a rough form around 450 CE (Talmud Yerushalmi) and 550 CE (Talmud Bavli.) The text of the Bavli especially was not firmly fixed at that time.


title: Talmud

text: Gaonic responsa literature addresses this issue. Teshuvot Geonim Kadmonim, section 78, deals with mistaken biblical readings in the Talmud. This Gaonic responsum states:


title: Talmud

text: In the early medieval era, Rashi already concluded that some statements in the extant text of the Talmud were insertions from later editors. On Shevuot 3b Rashi writes "A mistaken student wrote this in the margin of the Talmud, and copyists [subsequently] put it into the Gemara."


title: Talmud

text: The emendations of Yoel Sirkis and the Vilna Gaon are included in all standard editions of the Talmud, in the form of marginal glosses entitled "Hagahot ha-Bach" and "Hagahot ha-Gra" respectively; further emendations by Solomon Luria are set out in commentary form at the back of each tractate. The Vilna Gaon's emendations were often based on his quest for internal consistency in the text rather than on manuscript evidence; nevertheless many of the Gaon's emendations were later verified by textual critics, such as Solomon Schechter, who had Cairo Genizah texts with which to compare our standard editions.


title: Talmud

text: In the 19th century, Raphael Nathan Nota Rabinovicz published a multi-volume work entitled "Dikdukei Soferim", showing textual variants from the Munich and other early manuscripts of the Talmud, and further variants are recorded in the Complete Israeli Talmud and "Gemara Shelemah" editions (see Critical editions, above).


title: Talmud

text: Today many more manuscripts have become available, in particular from the Cairo Geniza. The Academy of the Hebrew Language has prepared a text on CD-ROM for lexicographical purposes, containing the text of each tractate according to the manuscript it considers most reliable, and images of some of the older manuscripts may be found on the website of the National Library of Israel (formerly the Jewish National and University Library). The NLI, the Lieberman Institute (associated with the Jewish Theological Seminary of America), the Institute for the Complete Israeli Talmud (part of Yad Harav Herzog) and the Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society all maintain searchable websites on which the viewer can request variant manuscript readings of a given passage.


title: Talmud

text: Further variant readings can often be gleaned from citations in secondary literature such as commentaries, in particular, those of Alfasi, Rabbenu Ḥananel and Aghmati, and sometimes the later Spanish commentators such as Nachmanides and Solomon ben Adret.


title: Talmud

text: Historical study of the Talmud can be used to investigate a variety of concerns. One can ask questions such as: Do a given section's sources date from its editor's lifetime? To what extent does a section have earlier or later sources? Are Talmudic disputes distinguishable along theological or communal lines? In what ways do different sections derive from different schools of thought within early Judaism? Can these early sources be identified, and if so, how? Investigation of questions such as these are known as "higher textual criticism". (The term "criticism" is a technical term denoting academic study.)


title: Talmud

text: Religious scholars still debate the precise method by which the text of the Talmuds reached their final form. Many believe that the text was continuously smoothed over by the "savoraim".


title: Talmud

text: In the 1870s and 1880s, rabbi Raphael Natan Nata Rabbinovitz engaged in the historical study of Talmud Bavli in his "Diqduqei Soferim". Since then many Orthodox rabbis have approved of his work, including Rabbis Shlomo Kluger, Joseph Saul Nathansohn, Jacob Ettlinger, Isaac Elhanan Spektor and Shimon Sofer.


title: Talmud

text: During the early 19th century, leaders of the newly evolving Reform movement, such as Abraham Geiger and Samuel Holdheim, subjected the Talmud to severe scrutiny as part of an effort to break with traditional rabbinic Judaism. They insisted that the Talmud was entirely a work of evolution and development. This view was rejected as both academically incorrect, and religiously incorrect, by those who would become known as the Orthodox movement. Some Orthodox leaders such as Moses Sofer (the "Chatam Sofer") became exquisitely sensitive to any change and rejected modern critical methods of Talmud study.


title: Talmud

text: Some rabbis advocated a view of Talmudic study that they held to be in-between the Reformers and the Orthodox; these were the adherents of positive-historical Judaism, notably Nachman Krochmal and Zecharias Frankel. They described the Oral Torah as the result of a historical and exegetical process, emerging over time, through the application of authorized exegetical techniques, and more importantly, the subjective dispositions and personalities and current historical conditions, by learned sages. This was later developed more fully in the five-volume work "Dor Dor ve-Dorshav" by Isaac Hirsch Weiss. (See Jay Harris "Guiding the Perplexed in the Modern Age" Ch. 5) Eventually, their work came to be one of the formative parts of Conservative Judaism.


title: Talmud

text: Another aspect of this movement is reflected in Graetz's "History of the Jews". Graetz attempts to deduce the personality of the Pharisees based on the laws or aggadot that they cite, and show that their personalities influenced the laws they expounded.


title: Talmud

text: The leader of Orthodox Jewry in Germany Samson Raphael Hirsch, while not rejecting the methods of scholarship in principle, hotly contested the findings of the Historical-Critical method. In a series of articles in his magazine "Jeschurun" (reprinted in Collected Writings Vol. 5) Hirsch reiterated the traditional view and pointed out what he saw as numerous errors in the works of Graetz, Frankel and Geiger.


title: Talmud

text: On the other hand, many of the 19th century's strongest critics of Reform, including strictly orthodox rabbis such as Zvi Hirsch Chajes, used this new scientific method. The Orthodox rabbinical seminary of Azriel Hildesheimer was founded on the idea of creating a "harmony between Judaism and science". Other Orthodox pioneers of scientific Talmud study were David Zvi Hoffmann and Joseph Hirsch Dünner.


title: Talmud

text: The Iraqi rabbi Yaakov Chaim Sofer notes that the text of the Gemara has had changes and additions, and contains statements not of the same origin as the original. See his "Yehi Yosef" (Jerusalem, 1991) p. 132 "This passage does not bear the signature of the editor of the Talmud!"


title: Talmud

text: Orthodox scholar Daniel Sperber writes in "Legitimacy, of Necessity, of Scientific Disciplines" that many Orthodox sources have engaged in the historical (also called "scientific") study of the Talmud. As such, the divide today between Orthodoxy and Reform is not about whether the Talmud may be subjected to historical study, but rather about the theological and halakhic implications of such study.


title: Talmud

text: The first complete edition of the Babylonian Talmud was printed in Venice by Daniel Bomberg 1520–23 with the support of Pope Leo X. In addition to the "Mishnah" and "Gemara", Bomberg's edition contained the commentaries of Rashi and Tosafot. Almost all printings since Bomberg have followed the same pagination. Bomberg's edition was considered relatively free of censorship.


title: Talmud

text: Ambrosius Frobenius collaborated with the scholar Israel Ben Daniel Sifroni from Italy. His most extensive work was a Talmud edition published, with great difficulty, in 1578–81.


title: Talmud

text: Following Ambrosius Frobenius's publication of most of the Talmud in installments in Basel, Immanuel Benveniste published the whole Talmud in installments in Amsterdam 1644–1648, Although according to Raphael Rabbinovicz the Benveniste Talmud may have been based on the Lublin Talmud and included many of the censors' errors. "It is noteworthy due to the inclusion of "Avodah Zarah", omitted due to Church censorship from several previous editions, and when printed, often lacking a title page.


title: Talmud

text: The edition of the Talmud published by the Szapira brothers in Slavita was published in 1817, and it is particularly prized by many rebbes of Hasidic Judaism. In 1835, after a religious community copyright was nearly over, and following an acrimonious dispute with the Szapira family, a new edition of the Talmud was printed by Menachem Romm of Vilna.


title: Talmud

text: Known as the "Vilna Edition Shas", this edition (and later ones printed by his widow and sons, the Romm publishing house) has been used in the production of more recent editions of Talmud Bavli.


title: Talmud

text: A page number in the Vilna Talmud refers to a double-sided page, known as a "daf", or folio in English; each daf has two "amudim" labeled and , sides A and B (recto and verso). The convention of referencing by "daf" is relatively recent and dates from the early Talmud printings of the 17th century, though the actual pagination goes back to the Bomberg edition. Earlier rabbinic literature generally refers to the tractate or chapters within a tractate (e.g. Berachot Chapter 1, ). It sometimes also refers to the specific Mishnah in that chapter, where "Mishnah" is replaced with "Halakha", here meaning route, to "direct" the reader to the entry in the Gemara corresponding to that Mishna (e.g. Berachot Chapter 1 Halakha 1, , would refer to the first Mishnah of the first chapter in Tractate Berachot, and its corresponding entry in the Gemara). However, this form is nowadays more commonly (though not exclusively) used when referring to the Jerusalem Talmud. Nowadays, reference is usually made in format ["Tractate daf a/b"] (e.g. Berachot 23b, ). Increasingly, the symbols "." and ":" are used to indicate Recto and Verso, respectively (thus, e.g. Berachot 23:, ). These references always refer to the pagination of the Vilna Talmud.


title: Talmud

text: The text of the Vilna editions is considered by scholars not to be uniformly reliable, and there have been a number of attempts to collate textual variants.


title: Talmud

text: There have been critical editions of particular tractates (e.g. Henry Malter's edition of "Ta'anit"), but there is no modern critical edition of the whole Talmud. Modern editions such as those of the Oz ve-Hadar Institute correct misprints and restore passages that in earlier editions were modified or excised by censorship but do not attempt a comprehensive account of textual variants. One edition, by rabbi Yosef Amar, represents the Yemenite tradition, and takes the form of a photostatic reproduction of a Vilna-based print to which Yemenite vocalization and textual variants have been added by hand, together with printed introductory material. Collations of the Yemenite manuscripts of some tractates have been published by Columbia University.


title: Talmud

text: A number of editions have been aimed at bringing the Talmud to a wider audience. Aside from the Steinsaltz and Artscroll/Schottenstein sets there are:


title: Talmud

text: Lazarus Goldschmidt published an edition from the "uncensored text" of the Babylonian Talmud with a German translation in 9 volumes (commenced Leipzig, 1897–1909, edition completed, following emigration to England in 1933, by 1936).


title: Talmud

text: Twelve volumes of the Babylonian Talmud were published by Mir Yeshiva refugees during the years 1942 thru 1946 while they were in Shanghai. The major tractates, one per volume, were: "Shabbat, Eruvin, Pesachim, Gittin, Kiddushin, Nazir, Sotah, Bava Kama, Sanhedrin, Makot, Shevuot, Avodah Zara" (with some volumes having, in addition, "Minor Tractates").


title: Talmud

text: A Survivors' Talmud was published, encouraged by President Truman's "responsibility toward these victims of persecution" statement. The U.S. Army (despite "the acute shortage of paper in Germany") agreed to print "fifty copies of the Talmud, packaged into 16-volume sets" during 1947–1950. The plan was extended: 3,000 copies, in 19-volume sets.


title: Talmud

text: The Talmud represents the written record of an oral tradition. It provides an understanding of how laws are derived, and it became the basis for many rabbinic legal codes and customs, most importantly for the Mishneh Torah and for the Shulchan Aruch. Orthodox and, to a lesser extent, Conservative Judaism accept the Talmud as authoritative, while Samaritan, Karaite, Reconstructionist, and Reform Judaism do not.


title: Talmud

text: The Jewish sect of the Sadducees (Hebrew: צְדוּקִים) flourished during the Second Temple period. Principal distinctions between them and the Pharisees (later known as Rabbinic Judaism) involved their rejection of an "Oral Torah" and their denying a resurrection after death.


title: Talmud

text: Another movement that rejected the Oral Torah as authoritative was Karaism, which arose within two centuries after the completion of the Talmud. Karaism developed as a reaction against the Talmudic Judaism of Babylonia. The central concept of Karaism is the rejection of the Oral Torah, as embodied in the Talmud, in favor of a strict adherence only to the Written Torah. This opposes the fundamental Rabbinic concept that the Oral Torah was given to Moses on Mount Sinai together with the Written Torah. Some later Karaites took a more moderate stance, allowing that some element of tradition (called "sevel ha-yerushah", the burden of inheritance) is admissible in interpreting the Torah and that some authentic traditions are contained in the Mishnah and the Talmud, though these can never supersede the plain meaning of the Written Torah.


title: Talmud

text: The rise of Reform Judaism during the 19th century saw more questioning of the authority of the Talmud. Reform Jews saw the Talmud as a product of late antiquity, having relevance merely as a historical document. For example, the "Declaration of Principles" issued by the Association of Friends of Reform Frankfurt in August 1843 states among other things that:


title: Talmud

text: Some took a critical-historical view of the written Torah as well, while others appeared to adopt a neo-Karaite "back to the Bible" approach, though often with greater emphasis on the prophetic than on the legal books.


title: Talmud

text: Within Humanistic Judaism, Talmud is studied as a historical text, in order to discover how it can demonstrate practical relevance to living today.


title: Talmud

text: Orthodox Judaism continues to stress the importance of Talmud study as a central component of Yeshiva curriculum, in particular for those training to become rabbis. This is so even though "Halakha" is generally studied from the medieval and early modern codes and not directly from the Talmud. Talmudic study amongst the laity is widespread in Orthodox Judaism, with daily or weekly Talmud study particularly common in Haredi Judaism and with Talmud study a central part of the curriculum in Orthodox Yeshivas and day schools. The regular study of Talmud among laymen has been popularized by the "Daf Yomi", a daily course of Talmud study initiated by rabbi Meir Shapiro in 1923; its 13th cycle of study began in August 2012 and ended with the 13th Siyum HaShas on January 1, 2020. The Rohr Jewish Learning Institute has popularized the "MyShiur – Explorations in Talmud" to show how the Talmud is relevant to a wide range of people.


title: Talmud

text: Conservative Judaism similarly emphasizes the study of Talmud within its religious and rabbinic education. Generally, however, Conservative Jews study the Talmud as a historical source-text for Halakha. The Conservative approach to legal decision-making emphasizes placing classic texts and prior decisions in a historical and cultural context and examining the historical development of Halakha. This approach has resulted in greater practical flexibility than that of the Orthodox. Talmud study forms part of the curriculum of Conservative parochial education at many Conservative day-schools, and an increase in Conservative day-school enrollments has resulted in an increase in Talmud study as part of Conservative Jewish education among a minority of Conservative Jews. See also: "The Conservative Jewish view of the Halakha".


title: Talmud

text: Reform Judaism does not emphasize the study of Talmud to the same degree in their Hebrew schools, but they do teach it in their rabbinical seminaries; the world view of liberal Judaism rejects the idea of binding Jewish law and uses the Talmud as a source of inspiration and moral instruction. Ownership and reading of the Talmud is not widespread among Reform and Reconstructionist Jews, who usually place more emphasis on the study of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh.


title: Talmud

text: Rabbis and Talmudists studying and debating Talmud abound in the art of Austrian painter Carl Schleicher (1825–1903); active in Vienna, especially c. 1859–1871.


title: Talmud

text: The study of Talmud is not restricted to those of the Jewish religion and has attracted interest in other cultures. Christian scholars have long expressed an interest in the study of Talmud, which has helped illuminate their own scriptures. Talmud contains biblical exegesis and commentary on Tanakh that will often clarify elliptical and esoteric passages. The Talmud contains possible references to Jesus and his disciples, while the Christian canon makes mention of Talmudic figures and contains teachings that can be paralleled within the Talmud and Midrash. The Talmud provides cultural and historical context to the Gospel and the writings of the Apostles.


title: Talmud

text: South Koreans reportedly hope to emulate Jews' high academic standards by studying Jewish literature. Almost every household has a translated copy of a book they call "Talmud", which parents read to their children, and the book is part of the primary-school curriculum. The "Talmud" in this case is usually one of several possible volumes, the earliest translated into Korean from the Japanese. The original Japanese books were created through the collaboration of Japanese writer Hideaki Kase and Marvin Tokayer, an Orthodox American rabbi serving in Japan in the 1960s and 70s. The first collaborative book was "5,000 Years of Jewish Wisdom: Secrets of the Talmud Scriptures", created over a three-day period in 1968 and published in 1971. The book contains actual stories from the Talmud, proverbs, ethics, Jewish legal material, biographies of Talmudic rabbis, and personal stories about Tokayer and his family. Tokayer and Kase published a number of other books on Jewish themes together in Japanese.


title: Talmud

text: The first South Korean publication of "5,000 Years of Jewish Wisdom" was in 1974, by Tae Zang publishing house. Many different editions followed in both Korea and China, often by black-market publishers. Between 2007 and 2009, Reverend Yong-soo Hyun of the Shema Yisrael Educational Institute published a 6-volume edition of the Korean Talmud, bringing together material from a variety of Tokayer's earlier books. He worked with Tokayer to correct errors and Tokayer is listed as the author. Tutoring centers based on this and other works called "Talmud" for both adults and children are popular in Korea and "Talmud" books (all based on Tokayer's works and not the original Talmud) are widely read and known.


title: Talmud

text: Historian Michael Levi Rodkinson, in his book "The History of the Talmud", wrote that detractors of the Talmud, both during and subsequent to its formation, "have varied in their character, objects and actions" and the book documents a number of critics and persecutors, including Nicholas Donin, Johannes Pfefferkorn, Johann Andreas Eisenmenger, the Frankists, and August Rohling. Many attacks come from antisemitic sources such as Justinas Pranaitis, Elizabeth Dilling, or David Duke. Criticisms also arise from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish sources, as well as from atheists and skeptics. Accusations against the Talmud include alleged:


title: Talmud

text: Defenders of the Talmud point out that many of these criticisms, particularly those in antisemitic sources, are based on quotations that are taken out of context, and thus misrepresent the meaning of the Talmud's text and its basic character as a detailed record of discussions that preserved statements by a variety of sages, and from which statements and opinions that were rejected were never edited out.


title: Talmud

text: Sometimes the misrepresentation is deliberate, and other times simply due to an inability to grasp the subtle and sometimes confusing and multi-faceted narratives in the Talmud. Some quotations provided by critics deliberately omit passages in order to generate quotes that appear to be offensive or insulting.


title: Talmud

text: At the very time that the Babylonian "savoraim" put the finishing touches to the redaction of the Talmud, the emperor Justinian issued his edict against "deuterosis" (doubling, repetition) of the Hebrew Bible. It is disputed whether, in this context, "deuterosis" means "Mishnah" or "Targum": in patristic literature, the word is used in both senses.


title: Talmud

text: Full-scale attacks on the Talmud took place in the 13th century in France, where Talmudic study was then flourishing. In the 1230s Nicholas Donin, a Jewish convert to Christianity, pressed 35 charges against the Talmud to Pope Gregory IX by translating a series of blasphemous passages about Jesus, Mary or Christianity. There is a quoted Talmudic passage, for example, where Jesus of Nazareth is sent to Hell to be boiled in excrement for eternity. Donin also selected an injunction of the Talmud that permits Jews to kill non-Jews. This led to the Disputation of Paris, which took place in 1240 at the court of Louis IX of France, where four rabbis, including Yechiel of Paris and Moses ben Jacob of Coucy, defended the Talmud against the accusations of Nicholas Donin. The translation of the Talmud from Aramaic to non-Jewish languages stripped Jewish discourse from its covering, something that was resented by Jews as a profound violation. The Disputation of Paris led to the condemnation and the first burning of copies of the Talmud in Paris in 1242. The burning of copies of the Talmud continued.


title: Talmud

text: The Talmud was likewise the subject of the Disputation of Barcelona in 1263 between Nahmanides (Rabbi Moses ben Nahman) and Christian convert, Pablo Christiani. This same Pablo Christiani made an attack on the Talmud that resulted in a papal bull against the Talmud and in the first censorship, which was undertaken at Barcelona by a commission of Dominicans, who ordered the cancellation of passages deemed objectionable from a Christian perspective (1264).


title: Talmud

text: At the Disputation of Tortosa in 1413, Geronimo de Santa Fé brought forward a number of accusations, including the fateful assertion that the condemnations of "pagans", "heathens", and "apostates" found in the Talmud were, in reality, veiled references to Christians. These assertions were denied by the Jewish community and its scholars, who contended that Judaic thought made a sharp distinction between those classified as heathen or pagan, being polytheistic, and those who acknowledge one true God (such as the Christians) even while worshipping the true monotheistic God incorrectly. Thus, Jews viewed Christians as misguided and in error, but not among the "heathens" or "pagans" discussed in the Talmud.


title: Talmud

text: Both Pablo Christiani and Geronimo de Santa Fé, in addition to criticizing the Talmud, also regarded it as a source of authentic traditions, some of which could be used as arguments in favor of Christianity. Examples of such traditions were statements that the Messiah was born around the time of the destruction of the Temple and that the Messiah sat at the right hand of God.


title: Talmud

text: In 1415, Antipope Benedict XIII, who had convened the Tortosa disputation, issued a papal bull (which was destined, however, to remain inoperative) forbidding the Jews to read the Talmud, and ordering the destruction of all copies of it. Far more important were the charges made in the early part of the 16th century by the convert Johannes Pfefferkorn, the agent of the Dominicans. The result of these accusations was a struggle in which the emperor and the pope acted as judges, the advocate of the Jews being Johann Reuchlin, who was opposed by the obscurantists; and this controversy, which was carried on for the most part by means of pamphlets, became in the eyes of some a precursor of the Reformation.


title: Talmud

text: An unexpected result of this affair was the complete printed edition of the Babylonian Talmud issued in 1520 by Daniel Bomberg at Venice, under the protection of a papal privilege. Three years later, in 1523, Bomberg published the first edition of the Jerusalem Talmud. After thirty years the Vatican, which had first permitted the Talmud to appear in print, undertook a campaign of destruction against it. On the New Year, Rosh Hashanah (September 9, 1553) the copies of the Talmud confiscated in compliance with a decree of the Inquisition were burned at Rome, in Campo dei Fiori (auto de fé). Other burnings took place in other Italian cities, such as the one instigated by Joshua dei Cantori at Cremona in 1559. Censorship of the Talmud and other Hebrew works was introduced by a papal bull issued in 1554; five years later the Talmud was included in the first Index Expurgatorius; and Pope Pius IV commanded, in 1565, that the Talmud be deprived of its very name. The convention of referring to the work as "Shas" ("shishah sidre Mishnah") instead of "Talmud" dates from this time.


title: Talmud

text: The first edition of the expurgated Talmud, on which most subsequent editions were based, appeared at Basel (1578–1581) with the omission of the entire treatise of 'Abodah Zarah and of passages considered inimical to Christianity, together with modifications of certain phrases. A fresh attack on the Talmud was decreed by Pope Gregory XIII (1575–85), and in 1593 Clement VIII renewed the old interdiction against reading or owning it. The increasing study of the Talmud in Poland led to the issue of a complete edition (Kraków, 1602–05), with a restoration of the original text; an edition containing, so far as known, only two treatises had previously been published at Lublin (1559–76). After an attack on the Talmud took place in Poland (in what is now Ukrainian territory) in 1757, when Bishop Dembowski, at the instigation of the Frankists, convened a public disputation at Kamieniec Podolski, and ordered all copies of the work found in his bishopric to be confiscated and burned. A "1735 edition of Moed Katan, printed in Frankfurt am Oder" is among those that survived from that era. "Situated on the Oder River, Three separate editions of the Talmud were printed there between 1697 and 1739."


title: Talmud

text: The external history of the Talmud includes also the literary attacks made upon it by some Christian theologians after the Reformation since these onslaughts on Judaism were directed primarily against that work, the leading example being Eisenmenger's "Entdecktes Judenthum" (Judaism Unmasked) (1700). In contrast, the Talmud was a subject of rather more sympathetic study by many Christian theologians, jurists and Orientalists from the Renaissance on, including Johann Reuchlin, John Selden, Petrus Cunaeus, John Lightfoot and Johannes Buxtorf father and son.


title: Talmud

text: The Vilna edition of the Talmud was subject to Russian government censorship, or self-censorship to meet government expectations, though this was less severe than some previous attempts: the title "Talmud" was retained and the tractate Avodah Zarah was included. Most modern editions are either copies of or closely based on the Vilna edition, and therefore still omit most of the disputed passages. Although they were not available for many generations, the removed sections of the Talmud, Rashi, Tosafot and Maharsha were preserved through rare printings of lists of "errata", known as "Chesronos Hashas" ("Omissions of the Talmud"). Many of these censored portions were recovered from uncensored manuscripts in the Vatican Library. Some modern editions of the Talmud contain some or all of this material, either at the back of the book, in the margin, or in its original location in the text.


title: Talmud

text: In 1830, during a debate in the French Chamber of Peers regarding state recognition of the Jewish faith, Admiral Verhuell declared himself unable to forgive the Jews whom he had met during his travels throughout the world either for their refusal to recognize Jesus as the Messiah or for their possession of the Talmud. In the same year the Abbé Chiarini published a voluminous work entitled "Théorie du Judaïsme", in which he announced a translation of the Talmud, advocating for the first time a version that would make the work generally accessible, and thus serve for attacks on Judaism: only two out of the projected six volumes of this translation appeared. In a like spirit 19th-century anti-Semitic agitators often urged that a translation be made; and this demand was even brought before legislative bodies, as in Vienna. The Talmud and the "Talmud Jew" thus became objects of anti-Semitic attacks, for example in August Rohling's "Der Talmudjude" (1871), although, on the other hand, they were defended by many Christian students of the Talmud, notably Hermann Strack.


title: Talmud

text: Further attacks from anti-Semitic sources include Justinas Pranaitis' "The Talmud Unmasked: The Secret Rabbinical Teachings Concerning Christians" (1892) and Elizabeth Dilling's "The Plot Against Christianity" (1964). The criticisms of the Talmud in many modern pamphlets and websites are often recognizable as verbatim quotations from one or other of these.


title: Talmud

text: Historians Will and Ariel Durant noted a lack of consistency between the many authors of the Talmud, with some tractates in the wrong order, or subjects dropped and resumed without reason. According to the Durants, the Talmud "is not the product of deliberation, it is the deliberation itself."


title: Talmud

text: The Internet is another source of criticism of the Talmud. The Anti-Defamation League's report on this topic states that antisemitic critics of the Talmud frequently use erroneous translations or selective quotations in order to distort the meaning of the Talmud's text, and sometimes fabricate passages. In addition, the attackers rarely provide the full context of the quotations and fail to provide contextual information about the culture that the Talmud was composed in, nearly 2,000 years ago.


title: Talmud

text: One such example concerns the line: "If a Jew be called upon to explain any part of the rabbinic books, he ought to give only a false explanation. One who transgresses this commandment will be put to death." This is alleged to be a quote from a book titled "Libbre David" (alternatively "Livore David"). No such book exists in the Talmud or elsewhere. The title is assumed to be a corruption of "Dibre David", a work published in 1671. Reference to the quote is found in an early Holocaust denial book, "The Six Million Reconsidered" by William Grimstad.


title: Talmud

text: Gil Student, Book Editor of the Orthodox Union's Jewish Action magazine, states that many attacks on the Talmud are merely recycling discredited material that originated in the 13th-century disputations, particularly from Raymond Marti and Nicholas Donin, and that the criticisms are based on quotations taken out of context and are sometimes entirely fabricated.


title: Puberty

text: Puberty is the process of physical changes through which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of sexual reproduction. It is initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads: the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy. In response to the signals, the gonads produce hormones that stimulate libido and the growth, function, and transformation of the brain, bones, muscle, blood, skin, hair, breasts, and sex organs. Physical growth—height and weight—accelerates in the first half of puberty and is completed when an adult body has been developed. Before puberty, the external sex organs, known as primary sexual characteristics, are sex characteristics that distinguish boys and girls. Puberty leads to sexual dimorphism through the development of the secondary sex characteristics, which further distinguish the sexes.


title: Puberty

text: On average, girls begin puberty at ages 10–11 and complete puberty at ages 15–17; boys generally begin puberty at ages 11–12 and complete puberty at ages 16–17. The major landmark of puberty for females is menarche, the onset of menstruation, which occurs on average between ages 12 and 13. For males, first ejaculation, spermarche, occurs on average at age 13. In the 21st century, the average age at which children, especially girls, reach specific markers of puberty is lower compared to the 19th century, when it was 15 for girls and 17 for boys (with age at first periods for girls and voices break for boys being used as examples). This can be due to any number of factors, including improved nutrition resulting in rapid body growth, increased weight and fat deposition, or exposure to endocrine disruptors such as xenoestrogens, which can at times be due to food consumption or other environmental factors. However, more modern archeological research suggests that the rate of puberty as it occurs now is the intended way. Growth spurts began at around 10–12, but markers of later stages of puberty such as menarche had delays that correlated with severe environmental conditions such as poverty, poor nutrition, air and pollution. Puberty that starts earlier than usual is known as precocious puberty, and puberty which starts later than usual is known as delayed puberty.


title: Puberty

text: Notable among the morphologic changes in size, shape, composition, and functioning of the pubertal body, is the development of secondary sex characteristics, the "filling in" of the child's body; from girl to woman, from boy to man. Derived from the Latin "" (age of maturity), the word "puberty" describes the physical changes to sexual maturation, not the psychosocial and cultural maturation denoted by the term "adolescent development" in Western culture, wherein adolescence is the period of mental transition from childhood to adulthood, which overlaps much of the body's period of puberty.


title: Puberty

text: Two of the most significant differences between puberty in girls and puberty in boys are the age at which it begins, and the major sex steroids involved, the androgens and the estrogens.


title: Puberty

text: Although there is a wide range of normal ages, girls typically begin puberty around ages 10–11 and end puberty around 15–17; boys begin around ages 11–12 and end around 16–17. Girls attain reproductive maturity about four years after the first physical changes of puberty appear. In contrast, boys accelerate more slowly but continue to grow for about six years after the first visible pubertal changes. Any increase in height beyond the post-pubertal age is uncommon.


title: Puberty

text: For boys, the androgen testosterone is the principal sex hormone; while testosterone is produced, all boys' changes are characterized as virilization. A substantial product of testosterone metabolism in males is the estrogen estradiol. The conversion of testosterone to estradiol depends on the amount of body fat and estradiol levels in boys are typically much lower than in girls. The male "growth spurt" also begins later, accelerates more slowly, and lasts longer before the epiphyses fuse. Although boys are on average shorter than girls before puberty begins, adult men are on average about taller than women. Most of this sex difference in adult heights is attributable to a later onset of the growth spurt and a slower progression to completion, a direct result of the later rise and lower adult male levels of estradiol.


title: Puberty

text: The hormonal maturation of females is considerably more complicated than in males. The main steroid hormones, testosterone, estradiol, and progesterone as well as prolactin play important physiological functions in puberty. The production of gonadal steroids in girls starts with production of testosterone, which is typically quickly converted to estradiol inside the ovaries. However the rate of conversion from testosterone to estradiol (driven by FSH/LH balance) during early puberty is highly individual, resulting in very diverse development patterns of secondary sexual characteristics. Production of progesterone in the ovaries begins with the development of ovulatory cycles in girls (during the lutheal phase of the cycle), before puberty low levels of progesterone are produced in the adrenal glands of both boys and girls. Estradiol levels rise earlier and reach higher levels in women than in men. While estradiol promotes growth of the breasts and uterus, it is also the principal hormone driving the pubertal growth spurt and epiphyseal maturation and closure.


title: Puberty

text: Puberty is preceded by adrenarche, marking an increase of adrenal androgen production between ages 6–10. Adrenarche is sometimes accompanied by the early appearance of axillary and pubic hair. The first androgenic hair resulting from adrenarche can be also transient and disappear before the onset of true puberty.


title: Puberty

text: The onset of puberty is associated with high GnRH pulsing, which precedes the rise in sex hormones, LH and FSH. Exogenous GnRH pulses cause the onset of puberty. Brain tumors which increase GnRH output may also lead to premature puberty.


title: Puberty

text: The cause of the GnRH rise is unknown. Leptin might be the cause of the GnRH rise. Leptin has receptors in the hypothalamus which synthesizes GnRH. Individuals who are deficient in leptin fail to initiate puberty. The levels of leptin increase with the onset of puberty, and then decline to adult levels when puberty is completed. The rise in GnRH might also be caused by genetics. A study discovered that a mutation in genes encoding both neurokinin B as well as the neurokinin B receptor can alter the timing of puberty. The researchers hypothesized that neurokinin B might play a role in regulating the secretion of kisspeptin, a compound responsible for triggering direct release of GnRH as well as indirect release of LH and FSH.


title: Puberty

text: Several studies about puberty have examined the effects of an early or a late onset of puberty in males and females. In general, girls who enter puberty late experience positive outcomes in adolescence and adulthood, while girls who enter puberty early experience negative outcomes. Boys who have earlier pubertal timing generally have more positive outcomes in adulthood but more negative outcomes in adolescence, while the reverse is true for later pubertal timing.


title: Puberty

text: Outcomes have generally indicated that early onset of puberty in girls can be psychologically damaging. The main reason for this detrimental effect is the issue of body image. As they physically develop, gaining weight in several areas of the body, early-maturing girls usually look larger than girls who have not yet entered puberty. A result of the social pressure to be thin, the early-maturing girls develop a negative view of their body image. In addition, people may tease the girls about their visible breasts, forcing the early-maturing girl to hide her breasts by dressing differently. Embarrassment about a more developed body may also result in the refusal to undress for gym. These experiences lead to lower self-esteem, more depression and poorer body image in these early-maturing girls.


title: Puberty

text: Furthermore, as physical and emotional differences set them apart from people in their same age group, early-maturing girls develop relationships with older people. For instance, some early-maturing girls have older boyfriends, "attracted to the girls' womanly physique and girlish innocence." While having an older boyfriend might improve popularity among peers, it also increases the risk of alcohol and drug use, increased sexual relations (often unprotected), eating disorders and bullying.


title: Puberty

text: Generally, later onset of puberty in girls produces positive outcomes. They exhibit positive behaviors in adolescence that continue to adulthood.


title: Puberty

text: In the past, early onset of puberty in boys has been associated with positive outcomes, such as leadership in high school and success in adulthood. However, recent studies have revealed that the risks and problems of early maturation in males might outweigh the benefits.


title: Puberty

text: Early-maturing boys develop "more aggressive, law-breaking, and alcohol abusing" behaviors, which result in anger towards parents and trouble in school and with the police. Early puberty also correlates with increased sexual activity and a higher instance of teenage pregnancy, both of which can lead to depression and other psychosocial issues. However, early puberty might also result in positive outcomes, such as popularity among peers, higher self-esteem and confidence, as a result of physical developments, such as taller height, developed muscles, muscular male breast and better athletic ability.


title: Puberty

text: On the other hand, late-maturing boys develop lower self-esteem and confidence and generally have lower popularity among peers, due to their less-developed physiques. Also, they experience problems with anxiety and depression and are more likely to be afraid of sex than other boys.


title: Puberty

text: In boys, puberty begins with the enlargement of the testicles and scrotum. The penis also increases in size, and a boy develops pubic hair. A boy's testicles also begin making sperm. The release of semen, which contains sperm and other fluids, is called ejaculation. During puberty, a boy's erect penis becomes capable of ejaculating semen and impregnating a female. A boy's first ejaculation is an important milestone in his development. On average, a boy's first ejaculation occurs at age 13. Ejaculation sometimes occurs during sleep; this phenomenon is known as a nocturnal emission.


title: Puberty

text: In boys, testicular enlargement is the first physical manifestation of puberty (and is termed gonadarche). Testes in prepubertal boys change little in size from about 1 year of age to the onset of puberty, averaging about 2–3 cm in length and about 1.5–2 cm in width. The size of the testicles is among the parameters of the Tanner scale for male genitals, from stage I which represents a volume of less than 1.5 ml, to stage V which represents a testicular volume of greater than 20 ml. Testicular size reaches maximal adult size about 6 years after the onset of puberty. While 18–20 cm is an average adult size, there is wide variation in testicular size in the normal population. After the boy's testicles have enlarged and developed for about one year, the length and then the breadth of the shaft of the penis will increase and the glans penis and corpora cavernosa will also start to enlarge to adult proportions.


title: Puberty

text: By the end of puberty, adult men have heavier bones and nearly twice as much skeletal muscle. Some of the bone growth (e.g. shoulder width and jaw) is disproportionately greater, resulting in noticeably different male and female skeletal shapes. The average adult male has about 150% of the lean body mass of an average female, and about 50% of the body fat.


title: Puberty

text: This muscle develops mainly during the later stages of puberty, and muscle growth can continue even after boys are biologically adult. The peak of the so-called "strength spurt", the rate of muscle growth, is attained about one year after a male experiences his peak growth rate.


title: Puberty

text: Often, the fat pads of the male breast tissue and the male nipples will develop during puberty; sometimes, especially in one breast, this becomes more apparent and is termed gynecomastia. It is usually not a permanent phenomenon.


title: Puberty

text: Erections during sleep or when waking up are medically known as nocturnal penile tumescence and colloquially referred to as "morning wood". The penis can regularly get erect during sleep and men or boys often wake up with an erection. Once a boy reaches his teenage years, erections occur much more frequently due to puberty. Erections can occur spontaneously at any time of day, and if clothed may cause a bulge or "hump". This can be disguised or hidden by wearing close-fitting underwear, a long shirt and baggier clothes. Erections are common for male prepubescent children and infants, and can even occur before birth. Spontaneous erections are also known as involuntary or unwanted erections and are normal. Such erections can be embarrassing if they happen in public, such as a classroom or living room.


title: Puberty

text: During puberty, if not before, the tip and opening of a boy's foreskin becomes wider, progressively allowing for retraction down the shaft of the penis and behind the glans, which ultimately should be possible without pain or difficulty. The membrane that bonds the inner surface of the foreskin with the glans disintegrates and releases the foreskin to separate from the glans. The foreskin then gradually becomes retractable.


title: Puberty

text: Research by Øster (1968) found that with the onset and continuation of puberty, the proportion of boys able to pull back their foreskins increased. At ages 12–13, Øster found that only 60% of boys were able to retract their foreskins; this increased to 85% by ages 14–15, and 95% by 16–17. He also found that 1% of those unable to fully retract experienced phimosis at ages 14–17, the remainder were partially able to. The findings were supported by further research by Kayaba "et al" (1996) on a sample of over 600 boys, and Ishikawa and Kawakita (2004) found that by age 15, 77% of their sample of boys could retract their foreskins. Beaugé (1997) reports that boys may assist the development of retractile foreskin by manual stretching.


title: Puberty

text: Once a boy is able to retract his foreskin, penile hygiene should become an important feature of his routine body care. Although the American Academy of Pediatrics states there is "little evidence to affirm the association between circumcision status and optimal penile hygiene", various studies suggest that boys be educated about the role of hygiene, including retracting the foreskin while urinating and rinsing under it and around the glans at each bathing opportunity. Regular washing under the foreskin was found by Krueger and Osborn (1986) to reduce the risk of numerous penile disorders, however Birley et al. (1993) report excessive washing with soap should be avoided because it dries the oils out of the tissues and can cause non-specific dermatitis.


title: Puberty

text: Pubic hair often appears on a boy shortly after the genitalia begin to grow. The pubic hairs are usually first visible at the dorsal (abdominal) base of the penis. The first few hairs are described as stage 2. Stage 3 is usually reached within another 6–12 months, when the hairs are too many to count. By stage 4, the pubic hairs densely fill the "pubic triangle". Stage 5 refers to the spread of pubic hair to the thighs and upward towards the navel as part of the developing abdominal hair.


title: Puberty

text: In the months and years following the appearance of pubic hair, other areas of skin that respond to androgens may develop androgenic hair. The usual sequence is: underarm (axillary) hair, perianal hair, upper lip hair, sideburn (preauricular) hair, periareolar hair, and the beard area. As with most human biological processes, this specific order may vary among some individuals. Arm, leg, chest, abdominal, and back hair become heavier more gradually. There is a large range in amount of body hair among adult men, and significant differences in timing and quantity of hair growth among different racial groups. Facial hair is often present in late adolescence, but may not appear until significantly later. Facial hair will continue to get coarser, darker and thicker for another 2–4 years after puberty. Some men do not develop full facial hair for up to 10 years after the completion of puberty. Chest hair may appear during puberty or years after, though not all men develop it.


title: Puberty

text: Under the influence of androgens, the larynx (or voice box) grows in both sexes. This growth is far more prominent in boys, causing the male voice to drop and deepen, sometimes abruptly but rarely "overnight", about one octave, because the longer and thicker vocal folds have a lower fundamental frequency. Before puberty, the larynx of boys and girls is about equally small. Occasionally, voice change is accompanied by unsteadiness of vocalization in the early stages of untrained voices. Most of the voice change happens during stage 3–4 of male puberty around the time of peak growth. Adult pitch is attained at an average age of 15 years, although the voice may not fully settle until early twenties. It usually precedes the development of significant facial hair by several months to years.


title: Puberty

text: The first physical sign of puberty in girls is usually a firm, tender lump under the center of the areola of one or both breasts, occurring on average at about 10.5 years of age. This is referred to as thelarche. By the widely used Tanner staging of puberty, this is stage 2 of breast development (stage 1 is a flat, prepubertal breast). Within 6–12 months, the swelling has clearly begun in both sides, softened, and can be felt and seen extending beyond the edges of the areolae. This is stage 3 of breast development. By another 12 months (stage 4), the breasts are approaching mature size and shape, with areolae and nipples forming a secondary mound. In most young women, this mound disappears into the contour of the mature breast (stage 5), although there is so much variation in sizes and shapes of adult breasts that stages 4 and 5 are not always separately identifiable.


title: Puberty

text: Pubic hair is often the second noticeable change in puberty, usually within a few months of thelarche. It is referred to as pubarche. The pubic hairs are usually visible first along the labia. The first few hairs are described as Tanner stage 2. Stage 3 is usually reached within another 6–12 months, when the hairs are too numerous to count and appear on the pubic mound as well. By stage 4, the pubic hairs densely fill the "pubic triangle". Stage 5 refers to spread of pubic hair to the thighs and sometimes as abdominal hair upward towards the navel. In about 15% of girls, the earliest pubic hair appears before breast development begins.


title: Puberty

text: Perineal skin keratinizes due to effect of estrogen increasing its resistance to infection. The mucosal surface of the vagina also changes in response to increasing levels of estrogen, becoming thicker and duller pink in color (in contrast to the brighter red of the prepubertal vaginal mucosa). Mucosa changes into a multilayered structure with superficial layer of squamous cells. Estrogen increase glycogen content in vaginal epithelium, which in future plays important part in maintaining vaginal pH. Whitish secretions (physiologic leukorrhea) are a normal effect of estrogen as well. In the two years following thelarche, the uterus, ovaries, and the follicles in the ovaries increase in size. The ovaries usually contain small follicular cysts visible by ultrasound. Before puberty, uterine body to cervix ratio is 1:1; which increases to 2:1 or 3:1 after completion of pubertal period.


title: Puberty

text: The first menstrual bleeding is referred to as menarche, and typically occurs about two years after thelarche. The average age of menarche is 12.5 in the United States. Most American girls experience their first period at 11, 12 or 13, but some experience it earlier than their 11th birthday and others after their 14th birthday. In fact, anytime between 8 and 16 is normal. In Canada, the average age of menarche is 12.72, and in the United Kingdom it is 12.9. The time between menstrual periods (menses) is not always regular in the first two years after menarche. Ovulation is necessary for fertility, but may or may not accompany the earliest menses. In postmenarchal girls, about 80% of the cycles were anovulatory in the first year after menarche, 50% in the third year and 10% in the sixth year. Initiation of ovulation after menarche is not inevitable. A high proportion of girls with continued irregularity in the menstrual cycle several years from menarche will continue to have prolonged irregularity and anovulation, and are at higher risk for reduced fertility.


title: Puberty

text: During this period, also in response to rising levels of estrogen, the lower half of the pelvis and thus hips widen (providing a larger birth canal). Fat tissue increases to a greater percentage of the body composition than in males, especially in the typical female distribution of breasts, hips, buttocks, thighs, upper arms, and pubis. Progressive differences in fat distribution as well as sex differences in local skeletal growth contribute to the typical female body shape by the end of puberty. On average, at 10 years, girls have 6% more body fat than boys.


title: Puberty

text: Rising levels of androgens can change the fatty acid composition of perspiration, resulting in a more "adult" body odor. This often precedes thelarche and pubarche by one or more years. Another androgen effect is increased secretion of oil (sebum) from the skin. This change increases the susceptibility to acne, a skin condition that is characteristic of puberty. Acne varies greatly in its severity.


title: Puberty

text: In girls, estradiol (the primary female sex hormone) causes thickening of lips and oral mucosa as well as further development of the vulva. In the vulva and vagina, estradiol causes thickening (stratification) of the skin and the growth of both the myoepithelial layer and the smooth muscle of the vagina. Typically estradiol will also cause pronounced growth of the labia minora and to a lesser degree of the labia majora.


title: Puberty

text: Estradiol is also responsible for the increased production of pheomelanin, resulting in the characteristic red color of the lips, labia minora and sometimes labia majora. Estradiol together with other ovarian steroids also cause the darker coloration of the areola.


title: Puberty

text: Testosterone will cause an enlargement of the clitoris and possibly has important effects on the growth and maturation of the vestibular bulbs, corpus cavernosum of the clitoris and urethral sponge.


title: Puberty

text: Changes of the vulva initiated by estradiol as well as its direct effects also appear to influence the functioning of the lower urinary tract.


title: Puberty

text: In a general sense, the conclusion of puberty is reproductive maturity. Criteria for defining the conclusion may differ for different purposes: attainment of the ability to reproduce, achievement of maximal adult height, maximal gonadal size, or adult sex hormone levels. Maximal adult height is achieved at an average age of 15 years for an average girl and 18 years for an average boy. Potential fertility (sometimes termed "nubility") usually precedes completion of growth by 1–2 years in girls and 3–4 years in boys. Stage 5 typically represents maximal gonadal growth and adult hormone levels.


title: Puberty

text: The definition of the onset of puberty may depend on perspective (e.g., hormonal versus physical) and purpose (establishing population normal standards, clinical care of early or late pubescent individuals, etc.). A common definition for the onset of puberty is physical changes to a person's body. These physical changes are the first visible signs of neural, hormonal, and gonadal function changes.


title: Puberty

text: The age at which puberty begins varies between individuals; usually, puberty begins between 10 and 13 years of age. The age at which puberty begins is affected by both genetic factors and by environmental factors such as nutritional state and social circumstances. An example of social circumstances is the Vandenbergh effect; a juvenile female who has significant interaction with adult males will enter puberty earlier than juvenile females who are not socially overexposed to adult males.


title: Puberty

text: The average age at which puberty begins may be affected by race as well. For example, the average age of menarche in various populations surveyed has ranged from 12 to 18 years. The earliest average onset of puberty is for African-American girls and the latest average onset for high altitude subsistence populations in Asia. However, much of the higher age averages reflect nutritional limitations more than genetic differences and can change within a few generations with a substantial change in diet. The median age of menarche for a population may be an index of the proportion of undernourished girls in the population, and the width of the spread may reflect unevenness of wealth and food distribution in a population.


title: Puberty

text: Researchers have identified an earlier age of the onset of puberty. However, they have based their conclusions on a comparison of data from 1999 with data from 1969. In the earlier example, the sample population was based on a small sample of white girls (200, from Britain). The later study identified as puberty as occurring in 48% of African-American girls by age nine, and 12% of white girls by that age.


title: Puberty

text: One possible cause of a delay in the onset of puberty past the age 14 in girls and 15 in boys is Kallmann syndrome, a form of hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (HH). Kallmann syndrome is also associated with a lack of sense of smell (anosmia). Kallmann syndrome and other forms of HH affect both men and women. It is caused by a failure in HPG axis at puberty which results in low or zero gonadotropin (LH and FSH) levels with the subsequent result of a failure to commence or complete puberty, secondary hypogonadism and infertility.


title: Puberty

text: The average age at which the onset of puberty occurs has dropped significantly since the 1840s. In every decade from 1840 to 1950 there was a drop of four months in the average age of menarche among Western European females. In Norway, girls born in 1840 had their menarche at an average age of 17 years. In France, the average in 1840 was 15.3 years. In England, the average in 1840 was 16.5 years. In Japan, the decline happened later and was then more rapid: from 1945 to 1975 in Japan there was a drop of 11 months per decade.


title: Puberty

text: A 2006 study in Denmark found that puberty, as evidenced by breast development, started at an average age of 9 years and 10 months, a year earlier than when a similar study was done in 1991. Scientists believe the phenomenon could be linked to obesity or exposure to chemicals in the food chain, and is putting girls at greater long-term risk of breast cancer.


title: Puberty

text: Various studies have found direct genetic effects to account for at least 46% of the variation of timing of puberty in well-nourished populations. The genetic association of timing is strongest between mothers and daughters. The specific genes affecting timing are not yet known. Among the candidates is an androgen receptor gene.


title: Puberty

text: Researchers have hypothesized that early puberty onset may be caused by certain hair care products containing estrogen or placenta, and by certain chemicals, namely phthalates, which are used in many cosmetics, toys, and plastic food containers.


title: Puberty

text: If genetic factors account for half of the variation of pubertal timing, environment factors are clearly important as well. One of the first observed environmental effects is that puberty occurs later in children raised at higher altitudes. The most important of the environmental influences is clearly nutrition, but a number of others have been identified, all which affect timing of female puberty and menarche more clearly than male puberty.


title: Puberty

text: There is theoretical concern, and animal evidence, that environmental hormones and chemicals may affect aspects of prenatal or postnatal sexual development in humans. Large amounts of incompletely metabolized estrogens and progestogens from pharmaceutical products are excreted into the sewage systems of large cities, and are sometimes detectable in the environment. Sex steroids are sometimes used in cattle farming but have been banned in chicken meat production for 40 years. Although agricultural laws regulate use to minimize accidental human consumption, the rules are largely self-enforced in the United States. Significant exposure of a child to hormones or other substances that activate estrogen or androgen receptors could produce some or all of the changes of puberty.


title: Puberty

text: Harder to detect as an influence on puberty are the more diffusely distributed environmental chemicals like PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl), which can bind and trigger estrogen receptors.


title: Puberty

text: More obvious degrees of partial puberty from direct exposure of young children to small but significant amounts of pharmaceutical sex steroids from exposure at home may be detected during medical evaluation for precocious puberty, but mild effects and the other potential exposures outlined above would not.


title: Puberty

text: Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical used to make plastics, and is frequently used to make baby bottles, water bottles, sports equipment, medical devices, and as a coating in food and beverage cans. Scientists are concerned about BPA's behavioral effects on fetuses, infants, and children at current exposure levels because it can affect the prostate gland, mammary gland, and lead to early puberty in girls. BPA mimics and interferes with the action of estrogen—an important reproduction and development regulator. It leaches out of plastic into liquids and foods, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found measurable amounts of BPA in the bodies of more than 90 percent of the U.S. population studied. The highest estimated daily intakes of BPA occur in infants and children. Many plastic baby bottles contain BPA, and BPA is more likely to leach out of plastic when its temperature is increased, as when one warms a baby bottle or warms up food in the microwave.


title: Puberty

text: Nutritional factors are the strongest and most obvious environmental factors affecting timing of puberty. Girls are especially sensitive to nutritional regulation because they must contribute all of the nutritional support to a growing fetus. Surplus calories (beyond growth and activity requirements) are reflected in the amount of body fat, which signals to the brain the availability of resources for initiation of puberty and fertility.


title: Puberty

text: Much evidence suggests that for most of the last few centuries, nutritional differences accounted for majority of variation of pubertal timing in different populations, and even among social classes in the same population. Recent worldwide increased consumption of animal protein, other changes in nutrition, and increases in childhood obesity have resulted in falling ages of puberty, mainly in those populations with the higher previous ages. In many populations the amount of variation attributable to nutrition is shrinking.


title: Puberty

text: Although available dietary energy (simple calories) is the most important dietary influence on timing of puberty, quality of the diet plays a role as well. Lower protein intakes and higher dietary fiber intakes, as occur with typical vegetarian diets, are associated with later onset and slower progression of female puberty.


title: Puberty

text: Scientific researchers have linked early obesity with an earlier onset of puberty in girls. They have cited obesity as a cause of breast development before nine years and menarche before twelve years. Early puberty in girls can be a harbinger of later health problems.


title: Puberty

text: The average level of daily physical activity has also been shown to affect timing of puberty, especially in females. A high level of exercise, whether for athletic or body image purposes, or for daily subsistence, reduces energy calories available for reproduction and slows puberty. The exercise effect is often amplified by a lower body fat mass and cholesterol.


title: Puberty

text: Chronic diseases can delay puberty in both boys and girls. Those that involve chronic inflammation or interfere with nutrition have the strongest effect. In the western world, inflammatory bowel disease and tuberculosis have been notorious for such an effect in the last century, while in areas of the underdeveloped world, chronic parasite infections are widespread.


title: Puberty

text: Mental illnesses occur in puberty. The brain undergoes significant development by hormones which can contribute to mood disorders such as major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, dysthymia and schizophrenia. Girls aged between 15 and 19 make up 40% of anorexia nervosa cases.


title: Puberty

text: Some of the least understood environmental influences on timing of puberty are social and psychological. In comparison with the effects of genetics, nutrition, and general health, social influences are small, shifting timing by a few months rather than years. Mechanisms of these social effects are unknown, though a variety of physiological processes, including pheromones, have been suggested based on animal research.


title: Puberty

text: The most important part of a child's psychosocial environment is the family, and most of the social influence research has investigated features of family structure and function in relation to earlier or later female puberty. Most of the studies have reported that menarche may occur a few months earlier in girls in high-stress households, whose fathers are absent during their early childhood, who have a stepfather in the home, who are subjected to prolonged sexual abuse in childhood, or who are adopted from a developing country at a young age. Conversely, menarche may be slightly later when a girl grows up in a large family with a biological father present.


title: Puberty

text: More extreme degrees of environmental stress, such as wartime refugee status with threat to physical survival, have been found to be associated with delay of maturation, an effect that may be compounded by dietary inadequacy.


title: Puberty

text: Most of these reported social effects are small and our understanding is incomplete. Most of these "effects" are statistical associations revealed by epidemiologic surveys. Statistical associations are not necessarily causal, and a variety of covariables and alternative explanations can be imagined. Effects of such small size can never be confirmed or refuted for any individual child. Furthermore, interpretations of the data are politically controversial because of the ease with which this type of research can be used for political advocacy. Accusations of bias based on political agenda sometimes accompany scientific criticism.


title: Puberty

text: Another limitation of the social research is that nearly all of it has concerned girls, partly because female puberty requires greater physiologic resources and partly because it involves a unique event (menarche) that makes survey research into female puberty much simpler than male. More detail is provided in the menarche article.


title: Puberty

text: The sequence of events of pubertal development can occasionally vary. For example, in about 15% of boys and girls, pubarche (the first pubic hairs) can precede, respectively, gonadarche and thelarche by a few months. Rarely, menarche can occur before other signs of puberty in a few girls. These variations deserve medical evaluation because they can occasionally signal a disease.


title: Puberty

text: The endocrine reproductive system consists of the hypothalamus, the pituitary, the gonads, and the adrenal glands, with input and regulation from many other body systems. True puberty is often termed "central puberty" because it begins as a process of the central nervous system. A simple description of hormonal puberty is as follows:


title: Puberty

text: The arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus is the driver of the reproductive system. It has neurons which generate and release pulses of GnRH into the portal venous system of the pituitary gland. The arcuate nucleus is affected and controlled by neuronal input from other areas of the brain and hormonal input from the gonads, adipose tissue and a variety of other systems.


title: Puberty

text: The pituitary gland responds to the pulsed GnRH signals by releasing LH and FSH into the blood of the general circulation, also in a pulsatile pattern.


title: Puberty

text: The gonads (testes and ovaries) respond to rising levels of LH and FSH by producing the steroid sex hormones, testosterone and estrogen.


title: Puberty

text: The adrenal glands are a second source for steroid hormones. Adrenal maturation, termed adrenarche, typically precedes gonadarche in mid-childhood.


title: Puberty

text: The endocrine reproductive system becomes functional by the end of the first trimester of fetal life. The testes and ovaries become briefly inactive around the time of birth but resume hormonal activity until several months after birth, when incompletely understood mechanisms in the brain begin to suppress the activity of the arcuate nucleus. This has been referred to as maturation of the prepubertal "gonadostat", which becomes sensitive to negative feedback by sex steroids. The period of hormonal activity until several months after birth, followed by suppression of activity, may correspond to the period of infant sexuality, followed by a latency stage, which Sigmund Freud described.


title: Puberty

text: Gonadotropin and sex steroid levels fall to low levels (nearly undetectable by current clinical assays) for approximately another 8 to 10 years of childhood. Evidence is accumulating that the reproductive system is not totally inactive during the childhood years. Subtle increases in gonadotropin pulses occur, and ovarian follicles surrounding germ cells (future eggs) double in number.


title: Puberty

text: Normal puberty is initiated in the hypothalamus, with de-inhibition of the pulse generator in the arcuate nucleus. This inhibition of the arcuate nucleus is an ongoing active suppression by other areas of the brain. The signal and mechanism releasing the arcuate nucleus from inhibition have been the subject of investigation for decades and remain incompletely understood. Leptin levels rise throughout childhood and play a part in allowing the arcuate nucleus to resume operation. If the childhood inhibition of the arcuate nucleus is interrupted prematurely by injury to the brain, it may resume pulsatile gonadotropin release and puberty will begin at an early age.


title: Puberty

text: Neurons of the arcuate nucleus secrete gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) into the blood of the pituitary portal system. An American physiologist, Ernst Knobil, found that the GnRH signals from the hypothalamus induce pulsed secretion of LH (and to a lesser degree, FSH) at roughly 1–2 hour intervals. The LH pulses are the consequence of pulsatile GnRH secretion by the arcuate nucleus that, in turn, is the result of an oscillator or signal generator in the central nervous system ("GnRH pulse generator"). In the years preceding physical puberty, Robert M. Boyar discovered that the gonadotropin pulses occur only during sleep, but as puberty progresses they can be detected during the day. By the end of puberty, there is little day-night difference in the amplitude and frequency of gonadotropin pulses.


title: Puberty

text: Some investigators have attributed the onset of puberty to a resonance of oscillators in the brain. By this mechanism, the gonadotropin pulses that occur primarily at night just before puberty represent beats.


title: Puberty

text: An array of "autoamplification processes" increases the production of all of the pubertal hormones of the hypothalamus, pituitary, and gonads.


title: Puberty

text: Regulation of adrenarche and its relationship to maturation of the hypothalamic-gonadal axis is not fully understood, and some evidence suggests it is a parallel but largely independent process coincident with or even preceding central puberty. Rising levels of adrenal androgens (termed adrenarche) can usually be detected between 6 and 11 years of age, even before the increasing gonadotropin pulses of hypothalamic puberty. Adrenal androgens contribute to the development of pubic hair (pubarche), adult body odor, and other androgenic changes in both sexes. The primary clinical significance of the distinction between adrenarche and gonadarche is that pubic hair and body odor changes by themselves do not prove that central puberty is underway for an individual child.


title: Puberty

text: Early stages of male hypothalamic maturation seem to be very similar to the early stages of female puberty, though occurring about 1–2 years later.


title: Puberty

text: LH stimulates the Leydig cells of the testes to make testosterone and blood levels begin to rise. For much of puberty, nighttime levels of testosterone are higher than daytime. Regularity of frequency and amplitude of gonadotropin pulses seems to be less necessary for progression of male than female puberty.


title: Puberty

text: However, a significant portion of testosterone in adolescent boys is converted to estradiol. Estradiol mediates the growth spurt, bone maturation, and epiphyseal closure in boys just as in girls. Estradiol also induces at least modest development of breast tissue (gynecomastia) in a large proportion of boys. Boys who develop mild gynecomastia, a swellings under nipples, during puberty are told the effects are temporary in some male teenagers due to high levels of estradiol.


title: Puberty

text: Another hormonal change in males takes place during the teenage years for most young men. At this point in a male's life the testosterone levels slowly rise, and most of the effects are mediated through the androgen receptors by way of conversion dihydrotestosterone in target organs (especially that of the bowels).


title: Puberty

text: As the amplitude of LH pulses increases, the theca cells of the ovaries begin to produce testosterone and smaller amounts of progesterone. Much of the testosterone moves into nearby cells called granulosa cells. Smaller increases of FSH induce an increase in the aromatase activity of these granulosa cells, which converts most of the testosterone to estradiol for secretion into the circulation. The remaining testosterone, together with adrenal androgens is responsible for the typical androgenic changes of female puberty: pubic hair, other androgenic hair as outlined above, body odor, acne. The bioactivity of testosterone is to a large degree limited by SHBG which in turn is mainly controlled by estradiol and prolactin levels (estradiol stimulates, prolactin decreases SHBG synthesis).


title: Puberty

text: Rising levels of estradiol produce the characteristic estrogenic body changes of female puberty: growth spurt, acceleration of bone maturation and closure, breast growth, increased fat composition, growth of the uterus, increased thickness of the endometrium and the vaginal mucosa, and widening of the lower pelvis.


title: Puberty

text: As the estradiol levels gradually rise and the other autoamplification processes occur, a point of maturation is reached when the feedback sensitivity of the hypothalamic "gonadostat" becomes positive. This attainment of positive feedback is the hallmark of female sexual maturity, as it allows the mid cycle LH surge necessary for ovulation.


title: Puberty

text: Growth hormone levels rise steadily throughout puberty. IGF1 levels rise and then decline as puberty ends. Growth finishes and adult height is attained as the estradiol levels complete closure of the epiphyses.


title: Rockefeller family

text: The Rockefeller family () is an American industrial, political, and banking family that owns one of the world's largest fortunes. The fortune was made in the American petroleum industry during the late 19th and early 20th centuries by brothers John D. Rockefeller and William A. Rockefeller Jr., primarily through Standard Oil (the predecessor of ExxonMobil and Chevron Corporation). The family had a long association with, and control of, Chase Manhattan Bank. By 1977, the Rockefellers were considered one of the most powerful families in American history. The Rockefeller family originated in Rhineland in Germany and family members moved to the Americas in the early 18th century, while through Eliza Davison, with family roots in Middlesex County, New Jersey, John D. Rockefeller and William A. Rockefeller Jr. and their descendants are also of Scotch-Irish ancestry.


title: Rockefeller family

text: The Rockefeller family originated in the Rhineland region in Germany and can be traced to the town Neuwied in the early 17th century. The American family branch is descended from Johann Peter Rockefeller, who migrated from the Rhineland to Philadelphia in the Province of Pennsylvania around 1723. In the US, he became a plantation owner and landholder in Somerville, and Amwell, New Jersey.


title: Rockefeller family

text: One of the first members of the Rockefeller family in New York was businessman William A. Rockefeller Sr., who was born to a Protestant family in Granger, New York. He had six children with his first wife Eliza Davison, a daughter of a Scots-Irish farmer, the most prominent of which were oil tycoons John D. Rockefeller and William A. Rockefeller Jr., the co-founders of Standard Oil. John D. Rockefeller (known as "Senior", as opposed to his son John D. Rockefeller Jr., known as "Junior") was a devout Northern Baptist, and he supported many church-based institutions. While the Rockefeller family are mostly Baptists, some of the Rockefellers were Episcopalians.


title: Rockefeller family

text: The combined wealth of the family—their total assets and investments plus the individual wealth of its members—has never been known with any precision. The records of the family archives relating to both the family and individual members' net worth are closed to researchers.


title: Rockefeller family

text: From the outset, the family's wealth has been under the complete control of the male members of the dynasty, through the family office. Despite strong-willed wives who had influence over their husbands' decisions—such as the pivotal female figure Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr.—in all cases they received allowances only and were never given even partial responsibility for the family fortune.


title: Rockefeller family

text: Much of the wealth has been locked up in the notable family trust of 1934 (which holds the bulk of the fortune and matures on the death of the fourth generation) and the trust of 1952, both administered by Chase Bank, the corporate successor to Chase Manhattan Bank. These trusts have consisted of shares in the successor companies to Standard Oil and other diversified investments, as well as the family's considerable real estate holdings. They are administered by a trust committee that oversees the fortune.


title: Rockefeller family

text: Management of this fortune today also rests with professional money managers who oversee the principal holding company, "Rockefeller Financial Services", which controls all the family's investments, now that Rockefeller Center is no longer owned by the family. The present chairman is David Rockefeller Jr.


title: Rockefeller family

text: The family was heavily involved in numerous real estate construction projects in the U.S. during the 20th century. Chief among them:


title: Rockefeller family

text: Over the generations, the family members have resided in some notable historic homes. A total of 81 Rockefeller residences are on the National Register of Historic Places. Not including all homes owned by the five brothers, some of the more prominent of these residences are:


title: Rockefeller family

text: Prominent banker and philanthropist David Rockefeller Sr. was the family patriarch until his death in 2017. In 1960, when his brother Nelson Rockefeller was governor of New York, David Sr. successfully pressed for a repeal of a New York state law that restricted Chase Manhattan Bank from operating outside the city. David Sr. was twice offered the post of Treasury secretary by President Richard M. Nixon, but declined on both occasions. In 1979, he used his high-level contacts to bring Mohammad Reza Shah of Iran, who had been overthrown in the Iranian Revolution and was in poor health, for medical treatment in the United States. In 1998, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton for his work on International Executive Service Corps.


title: Rockefeller family

text: A trademark of the dynasty over its 140-plus years has been the remarkable unity it has maintained, despite major divisions that developed in the late 1970s, and unlike other wealthy families such as the Du Ponts and the Mellons. A primary reason has been the lifelong efforts of "Junior" to not only cleanse the name from the opprobrium stemming from the ruthless practices of Standard Oil but his tireless efforts to forge family unity even as he allowed his five sons to operate independently. This was partly achieved by regular brothers and family meetings, but it was also because of the high value placed on family unity by first Nelson and John III, and later especially with David.


title: Rockefeller family

text: Regarding achievements, in 1972, on the 100th anniversary of the founding of Andrew Carnegie's philanthropy, the Carnegie Corporation, which has had a long association with the family and its institutions, released a public statement on the influence of the family on not just philanthropy but encompassing a much wider field. Summing up a predominant view among the international philanthropic world, albeit one poorly grasped by the public, one sentence of this statement read: ""The contributions of the Rockefeller family are staggering in their extraordinary range and in the scope of their contribution to humankind.""


title: Rockefeller family

text: John D. Rockefeller gave away US$540 million over his lifetime (in dollar terms of that time), and became the greatest lay benefactor of medicine in history. His son, Junior, also gave away over $537 million over his lifetime, bringing the total philanthropy of just two generations of the family to over $1 billion from 1860 to 1960. Added to this, "The New York Times" declared in a report in November 2006 that David Rockefeller's total charitable benefactions amount to about $900 million over his lifetime.


title: Rockefeller family

text: The combined personal and social connections of the various family members are vast, both in the United States and throughout the world, including the most powerful politicians, royalty, public figures, and chief businessmen. Notable figures through Standard Oil alone have included Henry Flagler and Henry H. Rogers. Contemporary figures include Henry Kissinger, Richard Parsons (Chairman and CEO of Time Warner), C. Fred Bergsten, Peter G. Peterson (Senior Chairman of the Blackstone Group), and Paul Volcker.


title: Rockefeller family

text: In 1991, the family was presented with the Honor Award from the National Building Museum for four generations worth of preserving and creating some of the U.S.'s most important buildings and places. David accepted the award on the family's behalf. The ceremony coincided with an exhibition on the family's contributions to the built environment, including John Sr.'s preservation efforts for the Hudson River Palisades, the restoration of Williamsburg, Virginia, construction of Rockefeller Center, and Governor Nelson's efforts to construct low- and middle-income housing in New York state.


title: Rockefeller family

text: The Rockefeller name is imprinted in numerous places throughout the United States, most notably in New York City, but also in Cleveland, where the family originates:


title: Rockefeller family

text: John Jr., through his son Nelson, purchased and then donated the land upon which sits the United Nations headquarters, in New York, in 1946. Earlier, in the 1920s, he had also donated a substantial amount towards the restoration and rehabilitation of major buildings in France after World War I, such as the Rheims Cathedral, the Fontainebleau Palace and the Palace of Versailles, for which he was later (1936) awarded France's highest decoration, the Grand Croix of the Legion d'Honneur (subsequently also awarded decades later to his son, David Rockefeller).


title: Rockefeller family

text: He also funded the notable excavations at Luxor in Egypt, as well as establishing a Classical Studies School in Athens. In addition, he provided the funding for the construction of the Palestine Archaeological Museum in East Jerusalem - the Rockefeller Museum.


title: Rockefeller family

text: Beginning with John D. Rockefeller Sr., the family has been a major force in land conservation. Over the generations, it has created more than 20 national parks and open spaces, including the Cloisters, Acadia National Park, Forest Hill Park, the Nature Conservancy, the Rockefeller Forest in California's Humboldt Redwoods State Park (the largest stand of old-growth redwoods), and Grand Teton National Park, among many others. John Jr., and his son Laurance (and his son Laurance Jr. aka Larry) were particularly prominent in this area.


title: Rockefeller family

text: The family was honoured for its conservation efforts in November 2005, by the National Audubon Society, one of the United States' largest and oldest conservation organizations, at which over 30 family members attended. At the event, the society's president, John Flicker, notably stated: "Cumulatively, no other family in America has made the contribution to conservation that the Rockefeller family has made".


title: Rockefeller family

text: In 2016 fifth-generation descendants of John Sr. criticized ExxonMobil, one of the successors to his company Standard Oil, for their record on climate change. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Rockefeller Family Fund both backed reports suggesting that ExxonMobil knew more about the threat of global warming than it had disclosed. David Kaiser, grandson of David Rockefeller Sr. and president of the Rockefeller Family Fund, said that the "...company seems to be morally bankrupt." Valerie Rockefeller Wayne, daughter of former Senator Jay Rockefeller, said, "Because the source of the family wealth is fossil fuels, we feel an enormous moral responsibility for our children, for everyone -- to move forward." The Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced it was divesting from fossil fuels in September 2014, the Rockefeller Family Fund announced plans to divest in March 2016, and the Rockefeller Foundation pledged to dump their fossil fuel holdings in December 2020. With a $5 billion endowment, the Rockefeller Foundation was "the largest US foundation to embrace the rapidly growing divestment movement." CNN writer Matt Egan noted, "This divestment is especially symbolic because the Rockefeller Foundation was founded by oil money." In May 2021 Rockefeller descendants Rebecca Rockefeller Lambert and Peter Gill Case announced a ten-year funding initiative, the Equation Campaign, to fight new fossil fuel development.


title: Rockefeller family

text: The Rockefeller family archives are held at the Rockefeller Archive Center in Pocantico Hills, North Tarrytown, NY. At present, the archives of John D. Rockefeller Sr. William Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Abby Rockefeller Mauzé, John D. Rockefeller III, Blanchette Rockefeller, and Nelson Rockefeller are processed and open by appointment to readers in the Archive Center's reading room. Processed portions of the papers of Laurance Rockefeller are also open. In addition, the Archive Center has a microfilm copy of the Winthrop Rockefeller papers, the originals of which are held at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. The papers of the family office, known as the Office of the Messrs. Rockefeller, are also open for research, although those portions that relate to living family members are closed.


title: Rockefeller family

text: An article in "The New York Times" in 1937 stated that William Rockefeller had, at that time, 28 great-grandchildren.


title: Come from Away

text: Come from Away is a Canadian musical, with book, music and lyrics by Irene Sankoff and David Hein. It is based on the events in the Newfoundland town of Gander during the week following the September 11 attacks, when 38 planes, carrying approximately 7,000 passengers, were ordered to land unexpectedly at Gander International Airport. The characters in the musical are based on (and in most cases share the names of) actual Gander residents and stranded travelers they housed and fed. The musical has been received by audiences and critics as a cathartic reminder of the capacity for human kindness in even the darkest of times and the triumph of humanity over hate.


title: Come from Away

text: After being workshopped in 2012 and first produced at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, in 2013, it went on to have record-breaking runs at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California, and the Seattle Repertory Theatre in 2015, at the Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., and the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto in 2016. It opened on Broadway at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on March 12, 2017, and became a critical and box office success, routinely playing to standing-room-only audiences even during previews. In October 2018 it became the longest-running Canadian musical in Broadway history, surpassing "The Drowsy Chaperone"'s previous record of 674 performances, and has since joined the list of Broadway shows with 1,000 or more performances. A live recording of the production was released on September 10, 2021, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the attacks. On June 8, 2022, it was announced that the Broadway production would close on October 2 after having played 25 previews and 1,670 regular performances.


title: Come from Away

text: The musical premiered at The Abbey Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, in December 2018 and then transferred to the Phoenix Theatre in the West End in February 2019. On July 1, 2022, it was announced that the London production would close on January 7, 2023.


title: Come from Away

text: At the 71st Tony Awards in 2017, the musical was nominated for seven awards, including Best Musical, Best Original Score, Best Book of a Musical and Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Jenn Colella, winning for Best Direction of a Musical for Christopher Ashley.


title: Come from Away

text: The show was conceived by Michael Rubinoff, a Toronto lawyer, theatre producer, and Associate Dean of Visual and Performing Arts at Sheridan College in Oakville. After approaching various writing teams about the project, Rubinoff attracted Irene Sankoff and David Hein, whose work he knew from their 2009 musical "My Mother's Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding", which was a hit at the Toronto Fringe Festival and later picked up by Mirvish Productions.


title: Come from Away

text: In 2011, Sankoff and Hein visited Gander on the tenth anniversary of the attacks to interview locals and returning passengers. The couple translated some stories directly to the musical while others were merged for story purposes. Rubinoff used their initial script to produce a 45-minute workshop version for the Canadian Music Theatre Project, part of the Sheridan College Music Theatre Performance Program, in 2012. The workshop was sufficiently successful that Rubinoff invited Sankoff and Hein to finish writing it for a full production at Sheridan in 2013, as part of the college's regular theatrical season. The full production, directed by Brian Hill, was an artistic success, but Rubinoff was unable to attract a Canadian producer for further development.


title: Come from Away

text: In the meantime, Goodspeed Musicals of East Haddam, Connecticut, included the show in its workshop program. The National Alliance for Musical Theatre in New York selected it as a showcase presentation in fall 2013, where a performance, also directed by Brian Hill, led to the show being optioned by Junkyard Dog Productions, the production company behind "Memphis" and "First Date".


title: Come from Away

text: On the morning of September 11, 2001, the townsfolk of Gander (including Claude the mayor, Oz the police constable, Beulah the teacher, Bonnie the SPCA worker and others) describe life in Newfoundland and how they learn of the terrorist attacks taking place in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania ("Welcome to the Rock").


title: Come from Away

text: The attacks result in US airspace being closed, forcing 38 international aircraft to be diverted and land unexpectedly at the Gander airport, doubling the population of the small Newfoundland town, which is unequipped for the influx of stranded travelers ("38 Planes"). The Gander townspeople spring to action and prepare to house, feed, clothe, and comfort the nearly 7,000 passengers (along with 19 animals in cargo) ("Blankets and Bedding"). Meanwhile, the pilots, flight attendants and passengers are initially not permitted to leave the planes, forcing them to deal with confusing and conflicting information about what has happened and why they were suddenly grounded ("28 Hours / Wherever We Are").


title: Come from Away

text: Once allowed off the planes and transferred to various emergency shelters in and around Gander ("Darkness and Trees"), the passengers and crew watch replays of the attacks on the news and learn the true reason why they were grounded ("Lead Us Out of the Night"). The frightened and lonely passengers desperately try to contact their families and pray for their loved ones, while the townsfolk work through the night to help them in any and every way they can ("Phoning Home / Costume Party"). The travelers are initially taken aback by their hosts' uncommon hospitality, but they slowly let their guards down and begin to bond with the quirky townsfolk and each other. The "islanders" in Gander and the surrounding towns open up their homes to the "plane people", regardless of their guests' race, nationality or sexual orientation. Two women, Beulah (from Gander) and Hannah (from New York), bond over the fact that both of their sons are firefighters, but Hannah's son is missing ("I Am Here"). Hannah asks Beulah to take her to a Catholic church, and a number of characters make their way to other houses of worship around town ("Prayer").