title: Jewish culture

text: In the Middle Ages, European laws prevented Jews from owning land and gave them powerful incentive to go into other professions that non-Jewish Europeans were not willing to follow. During the medieval period, there was a very strong social stigma against lending money and charging interest among the Christian majority. In most of Europe until the late 18th century, and in some places to an even later date, Jews were prohibited by Roman Catholic governments (and others) from owning land. On the other hand, the Church, because of a number of Bible verses (e.g., Leviticus 25:36) forbidding usury, declared that charging any interest was against the divine law, and this prevented any mercantile use of capital by pious Christians. As the Canon law did not apply to Jews, they were not liable to the ecclesiastical punishments which were placed upon usurers by the popes. Christian rulers gradually saw the advantage of having a class of men like the Jews who could supply capital for their use without being liable to excommunication, and so the money trade of western Europe by this means fell into the hands of the Jews.


title: Jewish culture

text: However, in almost every instance where large amounts were acquired by Jews through banking transactions the property thus acquired fell either during their life or upon their death into the hands of the king. This happened to Aaron of Lincoln in England, Ezmel de Ablitas in Navarre, Heliot de Vesoul in Provence, Benveniste de Porta in Aragon, etc. It was often for this reason that kings supported the Jews, and even objected to them becoming Christians (because in that case they could not be forced to give up money won by usury). Thus, both in England and in France the kings demanded to be compensated for every Jew converted. This type of royal trickery was one factor in creating the stereotypical Jewish role of banker and/or merchant.


title: Jewish culture

text: As a modern system of capital began to develop, loans became necessary for commerce and industry. Jews were able to gain a foothold in the new field of finance by providing these services: as non-Catholics, they were not bound by the ecclesiastical prohibition against "usury"; and in terms of Judaism itself, Hillel had long ago re-interpreted the Torah's ban on charging interest, allowing interest when it's needed to make a living.


title: Jewish culture

text: The strong Jewish tradition of religious scholarship often left Jews well prepared for secular scholarship. In some times and places, this was countered by banning Jews from studying at universities, or admitting them only in limited numbers (see Jewish quota). Over the centuries, Jews have been poorly represented among land-holding classes, but far better represented in academia, professions, finance, commerce and many scientific fields. The strong representation of Jews in science and academia is evidenced by the fact that 193 persons known to be Jews or of Jewish ancestry have been awarded the Nobel Prize, accounting for 22% of all individual recipients worldwide between 1901 and 2014. Of whom, 26% in physics, 22% in chemistry and 27% in Physiology or Medicine. In the fields of mathematics and computer science, 31% of Turing Award recipients and 27% of Fields Medal in mathematics were or are Jewish.


title: Jewish culture

text: The early Jewish activity in science can be found in the Hebrew Bible where some of the books contain descriptions of the physical world. Biblical cosmology provides sporadic glimpses that may be stitched together to form a Biblical impression of the physical universe. There have been comparisons between the Bible, with passages such as from the Genesis creation narrative, and the astronomy of classical antiquity more generally. The Old Testament also contains various cleansing rituals. One suggested ritual, for example, deals with the proper procedure for cleansing a leper (). It is a fairly elaborate process, which is to be performed after a leper was already healed of leprosy (), involving extensive cleansing and personal hygiene, but also includes sacrificing a bird and lambs with the addition of using their blood to symbolize that the afflicted has been cleansed.


title: Jewish culture

text: The Torah proscribes Intercropping (Lev. 19:19, Deut 22:9), a practice often associated with sustainable agriculture and organic farming in modern agricultural science. The Mosaic code has provisions concerning the conservation of natural resources, such as trees () and birds ().


title: Jewish culture

text: During Medieval era astronomy was a primary field among Jewish scholars and was widely studied and practiced. Prominent astronomers included Abraham Zacuto who published in 1478 his Hebrew book "Ha-hibbur ha-gadol" where he wrote about the Solar System, charting the positions of the Sun, Moon and five planets. His work served Portugal's exploration journeys and was used by Vasco da Gama and also by Christopher Columbus. The lunar crater "Zagut" is named after Zacuto's name. The mathematician and astronomer Abraham bar Hiyya Ha-Nasi authored the first European book to include the full solution to the quadratic equation x2 – ax + b = 0, and influenced the work of Leonardo Fibonacci. Bar Hiyya proved by the method of indivisibles the following equation for any circle: S = LxR/2, where S is the surface area, L is the circumference length and R is radius.


title: Jewish culture

text: Garcia de Orta, Portuguese Renaissance Jewish physician, was a pioneer of Tropical medicine. He published his work Colóquios dos simples e drogas da India in 1563, which deals with a series of substances, many of them unknown or the subject of confusion and misinformation in Europe at this period. He was the first European to describe Asiatic tropical diseases, notably cholera; he performed an autopsy on a cholera victim, the first recorded autopsy in India. Bonet de Lattes known chiefly as the inventor of an astronomical ring-dial by means of which solar and stellar altitudes can be measured and the time determined with great precision by night as well as by day. Other related personalities are Abraham ibn Ezra, whose the Moon crater "Abenezra" named after, David Gans, Judah ibn Verga, Mashallah ibn Athari an astronomer, The crater "Messala" on the Moon is named after him.


title: Jewish culture

text: Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist and is considered one of the most prominent scientists in history, often regarded as the "father of modern physics". His revolutionary work on the relativity theory transformed theoretical physics and astronomy during the 20th century. When first published, relativity superseded a 200-year-old theory of mechanics created primarily by Isaac Newton. In the field of physics, relativity improved the science of elementary particles and their fundamental interactions, along with ushering in the nuclear age. With relativity, cosmology and astrophysics predicted extraordinary astronomical phenomena such as neutron stars, black holes, and gravitational waves.


title: Jewish culture

text: Einstein formulated the well-known Mass–energy equivalence, "E = mc2", and explained the photoelectric effect. His work also effected and influenced a large variety of fields of physics including the Big Bang theory (Einstein's General relativity influenced Georges Lemaître), Quantum mechanics and nuclear energy.


title: Jewish culture

text: The Manhattan Project was a research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs during World War II and many Jewish scientists had a significant role in the project. The theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer, often considered the "father of the atomic bomb", was chosen to direct the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1942. The physicist Leó Szilárd, that conceived the nuclear chain reaction; Edward Teller, ""the father of the hydrogen bomb"" and Stanislaw Ulam; Eugene Wigner contributed to theory of Atomic nucleus and Elementary particle; Hans Bethe whose work included Stellar nucleosynthesis and was head of the Theoretical Division at the secret Los Alamos laboratory; Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr, Victor Weisskopf and Joseph Rotblat.


title: Jewish culture

text: The mathematician and physicist Alexander Friedmann pioneered the theory that universe was expanding governed by a set of equations he developed now known as the Friedmann equations. Arno Allan Penzias, the physicist and radio astronomer co-discoverer of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped establish the Big Bang theory, the scientists Robert Herman and Ralph Alpher had also worked on that field. In quantum mechanics Jewish role was significant as well and many of most influential figures and pioneers of the theory were Jewish: Niels Bohr and his work on the atom structure, Max Born (Schrödinger equation), Wolfgang Pauli, Richard Feynman (Quantum chromodynamics), Fritz London work on London dispersion force and London equations, Walter Heitler and Julian Schwinger work on Quantum electrodynamics, Asher Peres a pioneer in Quantum information, David Bohm (Quantum potential).


title: Jewish culture

text: Sigmund Freud, known as the father of psychoanalysis, is one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century. In creating psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference, establishing its central role in the analytic process. Freud's redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory. His analysis of dreams as wish-fulfillments provided him with models for the clinical analysis of symptom formation and the mechanisms of repression as well as for elaboration of his theory of the unconscious as an agency disruptive of conscious states of mind. Freud postulated the existence of libido, an energy with which mental processes and structures are invested and which generates erotic attachments, and a death drive, the source of repetition, hate, aggression and neurotic guilt.


title: Jewish culture

text: John von Neumann, a mathematician and physicist, made major contributions to a number of fields, including foundations of mathematics, functional analysis, ergodic theory, geometry, topology, numerical analysis, quantum mechanics, hydrodynamics and game theory. In made also a major work with computing and the development of the computer, he suggested and described a computer architecture called Von Neumann architecture and worked on linear programming, self-replicating machines, stochastic computing), and statistics. Emmy Noether was an influential mathematician known for her groundbreaking contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. Described by many prominent scientists as the most important woman in the history of mathematics, she revolutionized the theories of rings, fields, and algebras. In physics, Noether's theorem explains the fundamental connection between symmetry and conservation laws.


title: Jewish culture

text: More remarkable contributors include Heinrich Hertz and Steven Weinberg in Electromagnetism; Carl Sagan, his contributions were central to the discovery of the high surface temperatures of Venus and known for his contributions to the scientific research of extraterrestrial life; Georg Cantor (creator of set theory); Felix Hausdorff (founder of topology); Edward Witten (M-theory); Vitaly Ginzburg and Lev Landau (Ginzburg–Landau theory); Yakir Aharonov (Aharonov–Bohm effect); Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen (EPR paradox);Moshe Carmeli (Gauge theory). Rudolf Lipschitz (Lipschitz continuity); Paul Cohen (Continuum hypothesis, Axiom of choice); Laurent Schwartz (theory of distribution); Grigory Margulis (Lie group); Richard M. Karp (Theory of computation); Adi Shamir (RSA, cryptography); Judea Pearl (Artificial intelligence, Bayesian network); Max Newman (Colossus computer); Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (Jacobi elliptic functions, Jacobian matrix and determinant, Jacobi symbol). Sidney Altman (Molecular biology, RNA); Melvin Calvin (Calvin Cycle); Otto Wallach (Alicyclic compound); Paul Berg (biochemistry of nucleic acids); Ada Yonath (Crystallography, structure of the ribosome); Dan Shechtman (Quasicrystal); Julius Axelrod and Bernard Katz (Neurotransmitter); Elie Metchnikoff (discovery of Macrophage); Selman Waksman (discovery of Streptomycin); Rosalind Franklin (DNA); Carl Djerassi (the pill); Stephen Jay Gould (Evolutionary biology); Baruch Samuel Blumberg (Hepatitis B virus); Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin (developers of the Polio vaccines); Paul Ehrlich (discovery of the Blood–brain barrier); In fields such as psychology and neurology: Otto Rank, Viktor Frankl, Stanley Milgram and Solomon Asch; linguistics: Noam Chomsky, Franz Boas, Roman Jakobson, Edward Sapir, Joseph Greenberg; and sociology: Theodor Adorno, Nathan Glazer, Erving Goffman, Georg Simmel.


title: Jewish culture

text: Beside Scientific discoveries and researches, Jews have created significant and influential innovations in a large variety of fields such as the listed samples:


title: Jewish culture

text: Siegfried Marcus- automobile pioneer, inventor of the first car; Emile Berliner- developer of the disc record phonograph; Mikhail Gurevich- co-inventor of the MIG aircraft; Theodore Maiman- inventor of the laser; Robert Adler- inventor of the wireless remote control for televisions; Edwin H. Land – inventor of Land Camera; Bob Kahn- inventor of TCP and IP; Bram Cohen- creator of Bittorent; Sergei Brin and Larry Page- creators of Google; Laszlo Biro – Ballpoint pen; Simcha Blass- Drip irrigation; Lee Felsenstein – designer of Osborne 1; Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans co-creators of PHP and founders of Zend Technologies; Ralph H. Baer, "The Father of Video Games".


title: Jewish culture

text: In some places where there have been relatively high concentrations of Jews, distinct secular Jewish subcultures have arisen. For example, ethnic Jews formed an enormous proportion of the literary and artistic life of Vienna, Austria at the end of the 19th century, or of New York City 50 years later (and Los Angeles in the mid-late 20th century). Many of these creative Jews were not particularly religious people. In general, Jewish artistic culture in various periods reflected the culture in which they lived.


title: Jewish culture

text: Literary and theatrical expressions of secular Jewish culture may be in specifically Jewish languages such as Hebrew, Yiddish, Judeo-Tat or Ladino, or it may be in the language of the surrounding cultures, such as English or German. Secular literature and theater in Yiddish largely began in the 19th century and was in decline by the middle of the 20th century. The revival of Hebrew beyond its use in the liturgy is largely an early 20th-century phenomenon, and is closely associated with Zionism. Apart from the use of Hebrew in Israel, whether a Jewish community will speak a Jewish or non-Jewish language as its main vehicle of discourse is generally dependent on how isolated or assimilated that community is. For example, the Jews in the shtetls of Poland and the Lower East Side of New York City during the early 20th century spoke Yiddish at most times, while assimilated Jews in 19th and early 20th-century Germany spoke German, and American-born Jews in the United States speak English.


title: Jewish culture

text: Jewish authors have both created a unique Jewish literature and contributed to the national literature of many of the countries in which they live. Though not strictly secular, the Yiddish works of authors like Sholem Aleichem (whose collected works amounted to 28 volumes) and Isaac Bashevis Singer (winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize), form their own canon, focusing on the Jewish experience in both Eastern Europe, and in America. In the United States, Jewish writers like Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and many others are considered among the greatest American authors, and incorporate a distinctly secular Jewish view into many of their works. The poetry of Allen Ginsberg often touches on Jewish themes (notably the early autobiographical works such as "Howl" and "Kaddish"). Other famous Jewish authors that made contributions to world literature include Heinrich Heine, German poet, Mordecai Richler, Canadian author, Isaac Babel, Russian author, Franz Kafka, of Prague, and Harry Mulisch, whose novel "The Discovery of Heaven" was revealed by a 2007 poll as the "Best Dutch Book Ever".


title: Jewish culture

text: In "Modern Judaism: An Oxford Guide", Yaakov Malkin, Professor of Aesthetics and Rhetoric at Tel Aviv University and the founder and academic director of Meitar College for Judaism as Culture in Jerusalem, writes:


title: Jewish culture

text: Secular Jewish culture embraces literary works that have stood the test of time as sources of aesthetic pleasure and ideas shared by Jews and non-Jews, works that live on beyond the immediate socio-cultural context within which they were created. They include the writings of such Jewish authors as Sholem Aleichem, Itzik Manger, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, S.Y. Agnon, Isaac Babel, Martin Buber, Isaiah Berlin, Haim Nahman Bialik, Yehuda Amichai, Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, and David Grossman. It boasts masterpieces that have had a considerable influence on all of western culture, Jewish culture included – works such as those of Heinrich Heine, Gustav Mahler, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Chagall, Jacob Epstein, Ben Shahn, Amedeo Modigliani, Franz Kafka, Max Reinhardt (Goldman), Ernst Lubitsch, and Woody Allen.


title: Jewish culture

text: Other notable contributors are Isaac Asimov author of the "Foundation series" and others such as "I, robot", "Nightfall" and "The Gods Themselves"; Joseph Heller ("Catch-22"); R.L. Stine ("Goosebumps" series); J. D. Salinger ("The Catcher in the Rye"); Michael Chabon ("The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay", "The Yiddish Policemen's Union"); Marcel Proust ("In Search of Lost Time"); Arthur Miller ("Death of a Salesman" and "The Crucible"); Will Eisner ("A Contract with God"); Shel Silverstein ("The Giving Tree"); Arthur Koestler ("Darkness at Noon", "The Thirteenth Tribe"); Saul Bellow ("Herzog"); The historical novel series "The Accursed Kings" by Maurice Druon is an inspiration for George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels.


title: Jewish culture

text: Another aspect of Jewish literature is the ethical, called Musar literature. Among recipient of Nobel Prize in Literature, 13% were or are Jewish.


title: Jewish culture

text: Hebrew poetry is expressed by various of poets in different eras of Jewish history. Biblical poetry is related to the poetry in biblical times as it expressed in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish sacred texts. In medieval times the Jewish poetry was mainly expressed by piyyutim and several poets such as Yehuda Halevi, Samuel ibn Naghrillah, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Moses ibn Ezra, Abraham ibn Ezra and Dunash ben Labrat. Modern Hebrew poetry is mostly related to the era of and after the revival of the Hebrew language, pioneered by Moshe Chaim Luzzatto in the Haskalah era and succeeded by poets such as Hayim Nahman Bialik, Nathan Alterman and Shaul Tchernichovsky.


title: Jewish culture

text: The Ukrainian Jew Abraham Goldfaden founded the first professional Yiddish-language theatre troupe in Iași, Romania in 1876. The next year, his troupe achieved enormous success in


title: Jewish culture

text: Bucharest. Within a decade, Goldfaden and others brought Yiddish theater to Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Germany, New York City, and other cities with significant Ashkenazic populations. Between 1890 and 1940, over a dozen Yiddish theatre groups existed in New York City alone, in the Yiddish Theater District, performing original plays, musicals, and Yiddish translations of theatrical works and opera. Perhaps the most famous of Yiddish-language plays is "The Dybbuk" (1919) by S. Ansky.


title: Jewish culture

text: Yiddish theater in New York in the early 20th century rivalled English-language theater in quantity and often surpassed it in quality. A 1925 "New York Times" article remarks, "…Yiddish theater… is now a stable American institution and no longer dependent on immigration from Eastern Europe. People who can neither speak nor write Yiddish attend Yiddish stage performances and pay Broadway prices on Second Avenue." This article also mentions other aspects of a New York Jewish cultural life "in full flower" at that time, among them the fact that the extensive New York Yiddish-language press of the time included seven daily newspapers.


title: Jewish culture

text: In fact, however, the next generation of American Jews spoke mainly English to the exclusion of Yiddish; they brought the artistic energy of Yiddish theater into the American theatrical mainstream, but usually in a less specifically Jewish form.


title: Jewish culture

text: Yiddish theater, most notably Moscow State Jewish Theater directed by Solomon Mikhoels, also played a prominent role in the arts scene of the Soviet Union until Stalin's 1948 reversal in government policy toward the Jews. (See Rootless cosmopolitan, Night of the Murdered Poets.)


title: Jewish culture

text: From their Emancipation to World War II, Jews were very active and sometimes even dominant in certain forms of European theatre, and after the Holocaust many Jews continued to that cultural form. For example, in pre-Nazi Germany, where Nietzsche asked "What good actor of today is not Jewish?", acting, directing and writing positions were often filled by Jews. Both MacDonald and Jewish Tribal Review would generally be counted as anti-Semitic sources, but reasonably careful in their factual claims. "In Imperial Berlin, Jewish artists could be found in the forefront of the performing arts, from high drama to more popular forms like cabaret and revue, and eventually film. Jewish audiences patronized innovative theater, regardless of whether they approved of what they saw." The British historian Paul Johnson, commenting on Jewish contributions to European culture at the Fin de siècle, writes that


title: Jewish culture

text: The area where Jewish influence was strongest was the theatre, especially in Berlin. Playwrights like Carl Sternheim, Arthur Schnitzler, Ernst Toller, Erwin Piscator, Walter Hasenclever, Ferenc Molnár and Carl Zuckmayer, and influential producers like Max Reinhardt, appeared at times to dominate the stage, which tended to be modishly left-wing, pro-republican, experimental and sexually daring. But it was certainly not revolutionary, and it was cosmopolitan rather than Jewish.


title: Jewish culture

text: Jews also made similar, if not as massive, contributions to theatre and drama in Austria, Britain, France, and Russia (in the national languages of those countries). Jews in Vienna, Paris and German cities found cabaret both a popular and effective means of expression, as German cabaret in the Weimar Republic "was mostly a Jewish art form". The involvement of Jews in Central European theatre was halted during the rise of the Nazis and the purging of Jews from cultural posts, though many emigrated to Western Europe or the United States and continued working there.


title: Jewish culture

text: In the early 20th century the traditions of New York's vibrant Yiddish Theatre District both rivaled and fed into Broadway. In the English-speaking theatre Jewish émigrés brought novel theatrical ideas from Europe, such as the theatrical realist movement and the philosophy of Konstantin Stanislavski, whose teachings would influence many Jewish-American acting teachers such as the Yiddish theatre-trained acting theorist Stella Adler. Jewish immigrants were instrumental in the creation and development of the genre of musical theatre and earlier forms of theatrical entertainment in America, and would innovate the new, distinctly American, art form, the Broadway musical.


title: Jewish culture

text: Brandeis University Professor Stephen J. Whitfield has commented that "More so than behind the screen, the talent behind the stage was for over half a century virtually the monopoly of one ethnic group. That is... [a] feature which locates Broadway at the center of Jewish culture". New York University Professor Laurence Maslon says that "There would be no American musical without Jews… Their influence is corollary to the influence of black musicians on jazz; there were as many Jews involved in the form". Other writers, such as Jerome Caryn, have noted that musical theatre and other forms of American entertainment are uniquely indebted to the contributions of Jewish-Americans, since "there might not have been a modern Broadway without the "Asiatic horde" of comedians, gossip columnists, songwriters, and singers that grew out of the ghetto, whether it was on the Lower East Side, Harlem (a Jewish ghetto before it was a black one), Newark, or Washington, D.C." Likewise, in the analysis of Aaron Kula, director of The Klezmer Company,


title: Jewish culture

text: …the Jewish experience has always been best expressed by music, and Broadway has always been an integral part of the Jewish-American experience… The difference is that one can expand the definition of "Jewish Broadway" to include an interdisciplinary roadway with a wide range of artistic activities packed onto one avenue—theatre, opera, symphony, ballet, publishing companies, choirs, synagogues and more. This vibrant landscape reflects the life, times and creative output of the Jewish-American artist.


title: Jewish culture

text: In the 19th and early 20th centuries the European operetta, a precursor the musical, often featured the work of Jewish composers such as Paul Abraham, Leo Ascher, Edmund Eysler, Leo Fall, Bruno Granichstaedten, Jacques Offenbach, Emmerich Kalman, Sigmund Romberg, Oscar Straus and Rudolf Friml; the latter four eventually moved to the United States and produced their works on the New York stage. One of the librettists for Bizet's "Carmen" (not an operetta proper but rather a work of the earlier Opéra comique form) was the Jewish Ludovic Halévy, niece of composer Fromental Halévy (Bizet himself was not Jewish but he married the elder Halevy's daughter, many have suspected that he was the descendant of Jewish converts to Christianity, and others have noticed Jewish-sounding intervals in his music). The Viennese librettist Victor Leon summarized the connection of Jewish composers and writers with the form of operetta: "The audience for operetta wants to laugh beneath tears—and that is exactly what Jews have been doing for the last two thousand years since the destruction of Jerusalem". Another factor in the evolution of musical theatre was vaudeville, and during the early 20th century the form was explored and expanded by Jewish comedians and actors such as Jack Benny, Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, The Marx Brothers, Anna Held, Al Jolson, Molly Picon, Sophie Tucker and Ed Wynn. During the period when Broadway was monopolized by revues and similar entertainments, Jewish producer Florenz Ziegfeld dominated the theatrical scene with his Follies.


title: Jewish culture

text: By 1910 Jews (the vast majority of them immigrants from Eastern Europe) already composed a quarter of the population of New York City, and almost immediately Jewish artists and intellectuals began to show their influence on the cultural life of that city, and through time, the country as a whole. Likewise, while the modern musical can best be described as a fusion of operetta, earlier American entertainment and African-American culture and music, as well as Jewish culture and music, the actual authors of the first "book musicals" were the Jewish Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, George and Ira Gershwin, George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. From that time until the 1980s a vast majority of successful musical theatre composers, lyricists, and book-writers were Jewish (a notable exception is the Protestant Cole Porter, who acknowledged that the reason he was so successful on Broadway was that he wrote what he called "Jewish music"). Rodgers and Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, Lerner and Loewe, Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Schwartz, Kander and Ebb and dozens of others during the "Golden Age" of musical theatre were Jewish. Since the Tony Award for Best Original Score was instituted in 1947, approximately 70% of nominated scores and 60% of winning scores were by Jewish composers. Of successful British and French musical writers both in the West End and Broadway, Claude-Michel Schönberg and Lionel Bart are Jewish, among others.


title: Jewish culture

text: One explanation of the affinity of Jewish composers and playwrights to the musical is that "traditional Jewish religious music was most often led by a single singer, a cantor while Christians emphasize choral singing."


title: Jewish culture

text: Many of these writers used the musical to explore issues relating to assimilation, the acceptance of the outsider in society, the racial situation in the United States, the overcoming of obstacles through perseverance, and other topics pertinent to Jewish Americans and Western Jews in general, often using subtle and disguised stories to get this point across. For example, Kern, Rodgers, Hammerstein, the Gershwins, Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg wrote musicals and operas aiming to normalize societal toleration of minorities and urging racial harmony; these works included "Show Boat", "Porgy and Bess", "Finian's Rainbow", "South Pacific" and "The King and I". Towards the end of Golden Age, writers also began to openly and overtly tackle Jewish subjects and issues, such as "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Rags"; Bart's "Blitz!" also tackles relations between Jews and Gentiles. Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry's "Parade" is a sensitive exploration of both anti-Semitism and historical American racism. The original concept that became "West Side Story" was set in the Lower East Side during Easter-Passover celebrations; the rival gangs were to be Jewish and Italian Catholic.


title: Jewish culture

text: The ranks of prominent Jewish producers, directors, designers and performers include Boris Aronson, David Belasco, Joel Grey, the Minskoff family, Zero Mostel, Joseph Papp, Mandy Patinkin, the Nederlander family, Harold Prince, Max Reinhardt, Jerome Robbins, the Shubert family and Julie Taymor. Jewish playwrights have also contributed to non-musical drama and theatre, both Broadway and regional. Edna Ferber, Moss Hart, Lillian Hellman, Arthur Miller and Neil Simon are only some of the prominent Jewish playwrights in American theatrical history. Approximately 34% of the plays and musicals that have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama were written and composed by Jewish Americans.


title: Jewish culture

text: The Association for Jewish Theater is a contemporary organization that includes both American and international theaters that focus on theater with Jewish content. It has also expanded to include Jewish playwrights.


title: Jewish culture

text: The earliest known Hebrew language drama was written around 1550 by a Jewish-Italian writer from Mantua. A few works were written by rabbis and Kabbalists in 17th-century Amsterdam, where Jews were relatively free from persecution and had both flourishing religious and secular Jewish cultures. All of these early Hebrew plays were about Biblical or mystical subjects, often in the form of Talmudic parables. During the post-Emancipation period in 19th-century Europe, many Jews translated great European plays such as those by Shakespeare, Molière and Schiller, giving the characters Jewish names and transplanting the plot and setting to within a Jewish context.


title: Jewish culture

text: Modern Hebrew theatre and drama, however, began with the development of Modern Hebrew in Europe (the first Hebrew theatrical "professional performance" was in Moscow in 1918) and was "closely linked with the Jewish national renaissance movement of the twentieth century. The historical awareness and the sense of primacy which accompanied the Hebrew theatre in its early years dictated the course of its artistic and aesthetic development". These traditions were soon transplanted to Israel. Playwrights such as Natan Alterman, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Leah Goldberg, Ephraim Kishon, Hanoch Levin, Aharon Megged, Moshe Shamir, Avraham Shlonsky, Yehoshua Sobol and A. B. Yehoshua have written Hebrew-language plays. Themes that are obviously common in these works are the Holocaust, the Arab–Israeli conflict, the meaning of Jewishness, and contemporary secular-religious tensions within Jewish Israel. The most well-known Hebrew theatre company and Israel's national theatre is the Habima (meaning "the stage" in Hebrew), which was formed in 1913 in Lithuania, and re-established in 1917 in Russia; another prominent Israeli theatre company is the Cameri Theatre, which is "Israel's first and leading repertory theatre".


title: Jewish culture

text: The first theatrical event by Mountain Jews took place in December 1903, when Asaf Agarunov, a teacher and a Zionist, staged a story by Naum Shoykovich, translated from Hebrew, "The Burn for Burn," and staged it in honor of schoolteacher Nagdimuna ben Simona's (Shimunov) wedding.


title: Jewish culture

text: In 1935, the first Soviet Union theatre opened in Derbent, which included three troupes – Russian, Mountain Jews and Turk. It was based on drama circles, which were led by Manashir and Khanum Shalumov. Initially, in the circle, men played the female roles. Later, women began to take part in the theatre. In 1939, the Judeo-Tat theatre was the winner of the festival of theatres in Dagestan.


title: Jewish culture

text: During World War II, most of the actors were drafted into the army. Many theatre actors died in the war. In 1943, the theatre resumed its work, and in 1948 it was closed. The official reason was its unprofitability.


title: Jewish culture

text: In the 1960s, the theatre resumed its activities and experienced its second heyday. The actress, Akhso Ilyaguevna Shalumova (1909-1985), "Honored Artist of the Dagestan ASSR" returned to the theatre. She played the role of "(Juhuri:Шими Дербенди)" - Shimi Derbendi's wife - "Shahnugor", based on the stories of writer Hizgil Avshalumov.


title: Jewish culture

text: In the 1970s, the People's Judeo-Tat theatre was organized. For many years, its director was Abram Avdalimov, "Honored Cultural Worker of the Dagestan ASSR," singer, actor and playwright. His successor was Roman Izyaev, who was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honour for his meritorious service.


title: Jewish culture

text: In the 1990s, the Judeo-Tat theatre experienced another crisis: it rarely held performances and did not have any premieres. Only in 2000, when it became a municipal theater, was it able to resume its activity. From 2000 to 2002, the theatre was headed by actor and musician Raziil Semenovich Ilyaguev (1945-2016), "Honored Worker of Culture of the Republic of Dagestan." For the next two years the theatre was headed by Alesya Isakova.


title: Jewish culture

text: In 2004, Lev Yakovlevich Manakhimov (1950-2021), "Honored Artist of the Republic of Dagestan," became the artistic director of the theatre. After the death of Manakhimov, Boris Yudaev became the head of the theatre.


title: Jewish culture

text: In the era when Yiddish theatre was still a major force in the world of theatre, over 100 films were made in Yiddish. Many are now lost. Prominent films included "Shulamith" (1931), the first Yiddish musical on film "His Wife's Lover" (1931), "A Daughter of Her People" (1932), the anti-Nazi film "The Wandering Jew" (1933), "The Yiddish King Lear" (1934), "Shir Hashirim" (1935), the biggest Yiddish film hit of all time "Yidl Mitn Fidl" (1936), "Where Is My Child?" (1937), "Green Fields" (1937), "Dybuk" (1937), "The Singing Blacksmith" (1938), "Tevya" (1939), "Mirele Efros" (1939), "Lang ist der Weg" (1948), and "God, Man and Devil" (1950).


title: Jewish culture

text: The roster of Jewish entrepreneurs in the English-language American film industry is legendary: Samuel Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, the Warner Brothers, David O. Selznick, Marcus Loew, and Adolph Zukor, Fox to name just a few, and continuing into recent times with such industry giants as super-agent Michael Ovitz, Michael Eisner, Lew Wasserman, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg, and David Geffen. However, few of these brought a specifically Jewish sensibility either to the art of film or, with the sometime exception of Spielberg, to their choice of subject matter. The historian Eric Hobsbawm described the situation as follows:


title: Jewish culture

text: A more specifically Jewish sensibility can be seen in the films of the Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks, or Woody Allen; other examples of specifically Jewish films from the Hollywood film industry are the Barbra Streisand vehicle "Yentl" (1983), or John Frankenheimer's "The Fixer" (1968). More recently, "Call Me By Your Name" (2017) can be given as an example of a movie with Jewish sensibility. Jewish film festivals are nowadays conducted in many major cities around the world as vehicles of introducing such films to wider audiences, including among others the Boston JFF, San Francisco JFF, Jerusalem JFF, etc.


title: Jewish culture

text: The first radio chains, the Radio Corporation of America and the Columbia Broadcasting System, were created by the Jewish-American David Sarnoff and William S. Paley, respectively. These Jewish innovators were also among the first producers of televisions, both black-and-white and color. Among the Jewish immigrant communities of America there was also a thriving Yiddish language radio, with its "golden age" from the 1930s to the 1950s.


title: Jewish culture

text: Although there is little specifically Jewish television in the United States (National Jewish Television, largely religious, broadcasts only three hours a week), Jews have been involved in American television from its earliest days. From Sid Caesar and Milton Berle to Joan Rivers, Gilda Radner, and Andy Kaufman to Billy Crystal to Jerry Seinfeld, Jewish stand-up comedians have been icons of American television. Other Jews that held a prominent role in early radio and television were Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, Jack Benny, Walter Winchell and David Susskind. More figures are Larry King, Michael Savage and Howard Stern. In the analysis of Paul Johnson, "The Broadway musical, radio and TV were all examples of a fundamental principle in Jewish diaspora history: Jews opening up a completely new field in business and culture, a "tabula rasa" on which to set their mark, before other interests had a chance to take possession, erect guild or professional fortifications and deny them entry."


title: Jewish culture

text: One of the first televised situation comedies, "The Goldbergs" was set in a specifically Jewish milieu in the Bronx. While the overt Jewish milieu of "The Goldbergs" was unusual for an American television series, there were a few other examples, such as "Brooklyn Bridge" (1991–1993) and Bridget Loves Bernie. Jews have also played an enormous role among the creators and writers of television comedies: Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Selma Diamond, Larry Gelbart, Carl Reiner, and Neil Simon all wrote for Sid Caesar; Reiner's son Rob Reiner worked with Norman Lear on "All in the Family" (which often engaged anti-semitism and other issues of prejudice); Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld created the hit sitcom "Seinfeld", Lorne Michaels, Al Franken, Rosie Shuster, and Alan Zweibel of "Saturday Night Live" breathed new life into the variety show in the 1970s.


title: Jewish culture

text: More recently, American Jews have been instrumental to "novelistic" television series such as "The Wire" and "The Sopranos". Variously acclaimed as one of the greatest television series of all time, "The Wire" was created by David Simon. Simon also served as executive producer, head writer, and show runner. Matthew Weiner produced the fifth and sixth seasons of "The Sopranos" and later created "Mad Men".


title: Jewish culture

text: More remarkable contributors are David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, creators of "Game of Thrones" TV series; Ron Leavitt co-creator of "Married... with Children"; Damon Lindelof and J. J. Abrams, co-creators of "Lost"; David Crane and Marta Kauffman, creators of "Friends"; Tim Kring creator of "Heroes"; Sydney Newman co-creator of "Doctor Who"; Darren Star, creator "Sex and the City" and "Melrose Place"; Aaron Spelling, co-creator of "Beverly Hills, 90210"; Chuck Lorre, co-creator of "The Big Bang Theory" and "Two and a Half Men"; Gideon Raff, creator of "Prisoners of War" which "Homeland" is based on; Aaron Ruben and Sheldon Leonard co-creators of "The Andy Griffith Show"; Don Hewitt creator of "60 Minutes"; Garry Shandling, co-creator of "The Larry Sanders Show"; Ed. Weinberger, co-creator of "The Cosby Show"; David Milch, creator of "Deadwood"; Steven Levitan, co-creator of "Modern Family"; Dick Wolf, creator of "Law & Order"; David Shore, creator "House"; Max Mutchnick and David Kohan creators of "Will & Grace"; Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis creators of "Once Upon a Time (TV Series)". There is also a significant role of Jews in acting by actors such as Sarah Jessica Parker, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Mila Kunis, Zac Efron, Hank Azaria, David Duchovny, Fred Savage, Zach Braff, Noah Wyle, Adam Brody, Katey Sagal, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan, Michelle Trachtenberg, David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow and Mayim Bialik.


title: Jewish culture

text: Jewish musical contributions also tend to reflect the cultures of the countries in which Jews live, the most notable examples being classical and popular music in the United States and Europe. Some music, however, is unique to particular Jewish communities, such as Israeli music, Israeli folk music, Klezmer, Sephardic and Ladino music, and Mizrahi music.


title: Jewish culture

text: Before Emancipation, virtually all Jewish music in Europe was sacred music, with the exception of the performances of klezmorim during weddings and other occasions. The result was a lack of a Jewish presence in European classical music until the 19th century, with a very few exceptions, normally enabled by specific aristocratic protection, such as Salamone Rossi and Claude Daquin (the work of the former is considered the beginning of "Jewish art music"). After Jews were admitted to mainstream society in England (gradually after their return in the 17th century), France, Austria-Hungary, the German Empire, and Russia (in that order), the Jewish contribution to the European music scene steadily increased, but in the form of mainstream European music, not specifically Jewish music. Notable examples of Jewish Romantic composers (by country) are Charles-Valentin Alkan, Paul Dukas and Fromental Halevy from France, Josef Dessauer, Karl Goldmark and Gustav Mahler from Bohemia (most Austrian Jews during this time were native not to what is today Austria but the outer provinces of the Empire), Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer from Germany, and Anton and Nikolai Rubinstein from Russia. Singers included John Braham and Giuditta Pasta. There were very many notable Jewish violin and pianist virtuosi, including Joseph Joachim, Ferdinand David, Carl Tausig, Henri Herz, Leopold Auer, Jascha Heifetz, and Ignaz Moscheles. During the 20th century the number of Jewish composers and notable instrumentalists increased, as did their geographical distribution. Sample Jewish 20th-century composers include Arnold Schoenberg and Alexander von Zemlinsky from Austria, Hanns Eisler and Kurt Weill from Germany, Viktor Ullmann and Jaromír Weinberger from Bohemia and later the Czech Republic (the former perished at the Auschwitz extermination camps), George Gershwin and Aaron Copland from the United States, Darius Milhaud and Alexandre Tansman from France, Alfred Schnittke and Lera Auerbach from Russia, Lalo Schifrin and Mario Davidovsky from Argentina and Paul Ben-Haim and Shulamit Ran from Israel. There are some genres and forms of classical music that Jewish composers have been associated with, including notably during the Romantic period French Grand Opera. The most prolific composers of this genre included Giacomo Meyerbeer, Fromental Halévy, and the later Jacques Offenbach; Halevy's "La Juive" was based on Scribe's libretto very loosely connected to the Jewish experience.


title: Jewish culture

text: While orchestral and operatic music works by Jewish composers would in general be considered secular, many Jewish (as well as non-Jewish) composers have incorporated Jewish themes and motives into their music. Sometimes this is done covertly, such as the klezmer band music that many critics and observers believe lies in the third movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 1, and this type of Jewish reference was most common during the 19th century when openly displaying one's Jewishness would most likely hamper a Jew's chances at assimilation. During the 20th century, however, many Jewish composers wrote music with direct Jewish references and themes, e.g. David Amram ("Symphony – "Songs of the Soul""), Leonard Bernstein ("Kaddish Symphony", "Chichester Psalms"), Ernest Bloch ("Schelomo"), Arnold Schoenberg, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco ("Violin Concerto no. 2") Kurt Weill ("The Eternal Road") and Hugo Weisgall ("Psalm of the Instant Dove").


title: Jewish culture

text: In the late twentieth century, prominent composers like Morton Feldman, Gyorgy Ligeti or Alfred Schnittke gave significant contributions to the history of contemporary music


title: Jewish culture

text: The great songwriters and lyricists of American traditional popular music and jazz standards were predominantly Jewish, including Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Frank Loesser, Richard Rodgers and Irving Berlin.


title: Jewish culture

text: Deriving from Biblical traditions, Jewish dance has long been used by Jews as a medium for the expression of joy and other communal emotions. Each Jewish diasporic community developed its own dance traditions for wedding celebrations and other distinguished events. For Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe, for example, dances, whose names corresponded to the different forms of klezmer music that were played, were an obvious staple of the wedding ceremony of the shtetl. Jewish dances both were influenced by surrounding Gentile traditions and Jewish sources preserved over time. "Nevertheless the Jews practiced a corporeal expressive language that was highly differentiated from that of the non-Jewish peoples of their neighborhood, mainly through motions of the hands and arms, with more intricate legwork by the younger men." In general, however, in most religiously traditional communities, members of the opposite sex dancing together or dancing at times other than at these events was frowned upon.


title: Jewish culture

text: Jewish humor is the long tradition of humor in Judaism dating back to the Torah and the Midrash, but generally refers to the more recent stream of verbal, frequently self-deprecating and often anecdotal humor originating in Europe. Jewish humor took root in the United States over the last hundred years, beginning with vaudeville, and continuing through radio, stand-up, film, and television. A significant number of American comedians have been or are Jewish.


title: Jewish culture

text: Compared to music or theater, there is less of a specifically Jewish tradition in the visual arts. The most likely and accepted reason is that, as has been previously shown with Jewish music and literature, before Emancipation Jewish culture was dominated by the religious tradition of aniconism. As most Rabbinical authorities believed that the Second Commandment prohibited much visual art that would qualify as "graven images", Jewish artists were relatively rare until they lived in assimilated European communities beginning in the late 18th century. Despite fears by early religious communities of art being used for idolatrous purposes, Jewish "sacred" art is recorded in the Tanakh and extends throughout Jewish Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The Tabernacle and the two Temples in Jerusalem form the first known examples of "Jewish art". During the first centuries of the Common Era, Jewish religious art also was created in regions surrounding the Mediterranean such as Syria and Greece, including frescoes on the walls of synagogues, of which the Dura Europas Synagogue was the only survivor, prior to its destruction by ISIL in 2017, as well as the Jewish catacombs in Rome.


title: Jewish culture

text: A Jewish tradition of illuminated manuscripts in at least Late Antiquity has left no survivors, but can be deduced from borrowings in Early Medieval Christian art. A number of luxury pieces of gold glass from the later Roman period have Jewish motifs. Several Hellenistic-style floor mosaics have also been excavated in synagogues from Late Antiquity in Israel and Palestine, especially of the signs of the Zodiac, which was apparently acceptable in a low-status position on the floor. Some, such as that at Naaran, show evidence of a reaction against images of living creatures around 600 CE. The decoration of sarcophagi and walls at the cave cemetery at Beit She'arim shows a mixture of Jewish and Hellenistic motifs. However, for a period of several centuries between about 700 and 1100 CE there are scarcely any survivals of identifiably Jewish art.


title: Jewish culture

text: Middle Age Rabbinical and Kabbalistic literature also contain textual and graphic art, most famously illuminated haggadahs such as the Sarajevo Haggadah, and other manuscripts like the Nuremberg Mahzor. Some of these were illustrated by Jewish artists and some by Christians; equally some Jewish artists and craftsmen in various media worked on Christian commissions. Outside of Europe, Yemenite Jewish silversmiths developed a distinctive style of finely wrought silver that is admired for its artistry. Johnson again summarizes this sudden change from a limited participation by Jews in visual art (as in many other arts) to a large movement by them into this branch of European cultural life:


title: Jewish culture

text: Again, the arrival of the Jewish artist was a strange phenomenon. It is true that, over the centuries, there had been many animals (though few humans) depicted in Jewish art: lions on Torah curtains, owls on Judaic coins, animals on the Capernaum capitals, birds on the rim of the fountain-basis in the 5th century Naro synagogue in Tunis; there were carved animals, too, on timber synagogues in eastern Europe – indeed the Jewish wood-carver was the prototype of the modern Jewish plastic artist. A book of Yiddish folk-ornament, printed at Vitebsk in 1920, was similar to Chagall's own bestiary. But the resistance of pious Jews to portraying the living human image was still strong at the beginning of the 20th century.


title: Jewish culture

text: There were few Jewish "secular" artists in Europe prior to the Emancipation that spread throughout Europe with the Napoleonic conquests. There were exceptions, and Salomon Adler was a prominent portrait painter in 18th-century Milan. The delay in participation in the visual arts parallels the lack of Jewish participation in European classical music until the nineteenth century, and which was progressively overcome with the rise of Modernism in the 20th century. There were many Jewish artists in the 19th century, but Jewish artistic activity boomed during the end of World War I. The Jewish artistic Renaissance has its roots in the 1901 Fifth Zionist Congress, which included an art exhibition featuring Jewish artists E.M. Lilien and Hermann Struck. The exhibition helped legitimize art as an expression of Jewish culture. According to Nadine Nieszawer, "Until 1905, Jews were always plunged into their books but from the first Russian Revolution, they became emancipated, committed themselves in politics and became artists. A real Jewish cultural rebirth". Individual Jews figured in the modern artistic movements of Europe— With the exception of those living in isolated Jewish communities, most Jews listed here as contributing to secular Jewish culture also participated in the cultures of the peoples they lived with and nations they lived in. In most cases, however, the work and lives of these people did not exist in two distinct cultural spheres but rather in one that incorporated elements of both.


title: Jewish culture

text: During the early 20th century Jews figured particularly prominently in the Montparnasse movement, and after World War II among the abstract expressionists: Alexander Bogen, Helen Frankenthaler, Adolph Gottlieb, Philip Guston, Al Held, Lee Krasner, Barnett Newman, Milton Resnick, Jack Tworkov, Mark Rothko, and Louis Schanker as well as among Contemporary artists, Modernists and Postmodernists. Many Russian Jews were prominent in the art of scenic design, particularly the aforementioned Chagall and Aronson, as well as the revolutionary Léon Bakst, who like the other two also painted. One Mexican Jewish artist was Pedro Friedeberg; historians disagree as to whether Frida Kahlo's father was Jewish or Lutheran. Gustav Klimt was not Jewish, but nearly all of his patrons and several of his models were. Among major artists Chagall may be the most specifically Jewish in his themes. But as art fades into graphic design, Jewish names and themes become more prominent: Leonard Baskin, Al Hirschfeld, Peter Max, Ben Shahn, Art Spiegelman and Saul Steinberg.


title: Jewish culture

text: Jews have also played a very important role in medias other than painting; in photography some notable figures are André Kertész, Robert Frank, Helmut Newton, Garry Winogrand, Cindy Sherman, Steve Lehman, and Adi Nes; in installation art and street art some notable figures are Sigalit Landau, Dede, and Michal Rovner.


title: Jewish culture

text: Graphic art, as expressed in the art of comics, has been a key field for Jewish artists as well. In the Golden and Silver ages of American comic books, the Jewish role was overwhelming and a large number of the medium's foremost creators have been Jewish.


title: Jewish culture

text: Max Gaines was a pioneering figure in the creation of the modern comic book when in 1935 he published the first one called "Famous Funnies". In 1939, he founded, with Jack Liebowitz and Harry Donenfeld, All-American Publications (the AA Group). The publication is known for the creation of several superheroes such as the original "Atom, Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman", and "Wonder Woman". Donenfeld and Liebowitz were also the owners of National Allied Publications which distributed "Detective Comics" and "Action Comics". That company was also a precursor of DC Comics.


title: Jewish culture

text: In 1939, the pulp magazine publisher Martin Goodman formed Timely Publications, a company to be known, since the 1960s, as Marvel Comics. At Marvel, Artists such as Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Larry Lieber and Joe Simon created a large variety of characters and cultural icons including "Spider-Man, Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Daredevil", and the teams "Fantastic Four, Avengers", "X-Men" (including many of its characters) and "S.H.I.E.L.D.". Stan Lee attributed the Jewish role in comics to the Jewish culture.


title: Jewish culture

text: At DC Comics Jewish role was significant as well; the character of "Superman", which was created by the Jewish artists Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, is partly based on the biblical figure of Samson. It was also suggested the Superman is partly influenced by Moses, and other Jewish elements.


title: Jewish culture

text: More at DC Comics are Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Martin Nodell, creators of "Green Lantern, Batman" and many related characters as "Robin, The Joker, Riddler, Scarecrow" and "Catwoman"; Gil Kane, co-creator of "Atom" and "Iron Fist".


title: Jewish culture

text: Many of those involved in the later ages of comics are also Jewish, such as Julius Schwartz, Joe Kubert, Jenette Kahn, Len Wein, Peter David, Neil Gaiman, Chris Claremont and Brian Michael Bendis. There is also a large number of Jewish characters among comics superheroes such as "Magneto, Quicksilver, Kitty Pryde, The Thing, Sasquatch, Sabra, Ragman, Legion", and "Moon Knight", of whom were and are influenced by events in Jewish history and elements of Jewish life.


title: Jewish culture

text: In 1944, Max Gaines founded "EC Comics". The company is known for specializing in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, military fiction and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, notably the "Tales from the Crypt" series, "The Haunt of Fear", "The Vault of Horror", "Crime SuspenStories" and "Shock SuspenStories". Jewish artists that are associated with the publisher include Al Feldstein, Dave Berg, and Jack Kamen.


title: Jewish culture

text: Will Eisner was an American cartoonist and was known as one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry. He is the creator of the "Spirit" comics series and the graphic novel "A Contract with God". The Eisner Award was named in his honor, and is given to recognize achievements each year in the comics medium.


title: Jewish culture

text: In 1952, William Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman founded "Mad", an American humor magazine. It was widely imitated and influential, affecting satirical media as well as the cultural landscape of the 20th century, with editor Al Feldstein increasing readership to more than two million during its 1970s circulation peak. Other known cartoonists are Lee Falk creator of "The Phantom" and "Mandrake the Magician"; The Hebrew comics of Michael Netzer creator of Uri-On and Uri Fink creator of Zbeng!; William Steig, creator of "Shrek!"; Daniel Clowes, creator of "Eightball"; Art Spiegelman creator of graphic novel "Maus" and "Raw" (with Françoise Mouly).


title: Jewish culture

text: In animation, Jewish animators role is expressed by many: Genndy Tartakovsky is the creator of several animation TV series such as "Dexter's Laboratory" and "Samurai Jack"; Matt Stone co-creator of "South Park"; David Hilberman who helped animate "Bambi" and "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"; Friz Freleng, "Looney Tunes";C. H. Greenblatt,"Chowder"; and "Harvey Beaks"; Ralph Bakshi, "Fritz the Cat, , Wizards, The Lord of the Rings, Heavy Traffic, Coonskin, Hey Good Lookin', Fire and Ice", and "Cool World"; Alex Hirsch, creator of "Gravity Falls"; Dave Fleischer and Lou Fleischer, founders of "Fleischer Studios"; Max Fleischer, animation of "Betty Boop", "Popeye" and "Superman"; Rebecca Sugar, creator of Steven Universe. Several companies producing animation were founded by Jews, such as "DreamWorks", which its products include "Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda" and "The Prince of Egypt"; "Warner Bros.", whose animation division is known for cartoons such as "Looney Tunes, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain" and "Freakazoid!" .


title: Jewish culture

text: Jewish cooking combines the food of many cultures in which Jews have settled, including Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, Spanish, German and Eastern European styles of cooking, all influenced by the need for food to be kosher. Thus, "Jewish" foods like bagels, hummus, stuffed cabbage, and blintzes all come from various other cultures. The amalgam of these foods, plus uniquely Jewish contributions like tzimmis, cholent, gefilte fish and matzah balls, make up Jewish cuisine.


title: Jewish culture

text: Philo-Semitism (also spelled "philosemitism") or "Judeophilia" is an interest in, respect for and an appreciation of Jewish people, their history, and their culture and the influence of Judaism, particularly on the part of a gentile. Within the Jewish community, philo-Semitism includes an interest in Jewish culture and a love of things that are considered Jewish.


title: Jewish culture

text: Very few Jews live in East Asian countries, but Jews are viewed in an especially positive light in some of them, partly owing to their shared wartime experiences during the Second World War. Examples include South Korea and China. In general, Jews are positively stereotyped as intelligent, business savvy and committed to family values and responsibility, while in the Western world, the first of the two aforementioned stereotypes more often have the negatively interpreted equivalents of guile and greed. In South Korean primary schools the Talmud is mandatory reading.


title: Killdeer

text: The killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) is a large plover found in the Americas. It was described and given its current scientific name in 1758 by Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of his "Systema Naturae". Three subspecies are described. The killdeer's common name comes from its often-heard call. Its are mostly brown with rufous fringes, the head has patches of white and black, and two black bands cross the breast. The belly and the rest of the breast are white. The nominate (or originally described) subspecies breeds from southeastern Alaska and southern Canada to Mexico. It is seen year-round in the southern half of its breeding range; the subspecies "C. v. ternominatus" is resident in the West Indies, and "C. v. peruvianus" inhabits Peru and surrounding South American countries throughout the year. North American breeders winter from their resident range south to Central America, the West Indies, and the northernmost portions of South America.


title: Killdeer

text: The nonbreeding habitat of the killdeer includes coastal wetlands, beach habitats, and coastal fields. Its breeding grounds are generally open fields with short vegetation (but locations such as rooftops are sometimes used); although it is a shorebird, it does not necessarily nest close to water. The nest itself is a scrape lined with vegetation and white material, such as pebbles or seashell fragments. This bird lays a clutch of four to six buff to beige eggs with dark markings. The breeding season (starting with egg-laying) occurs from mid-March to August, with later timing of egg-laying in the northern portion of the range. Both parents incubate the eggs for 22 to 28 days typically. The young stay in the nest until the day after being hatched, when they are led by their parents to a feeding territory (generally with dense vegetation where hiding spots are abundant), where the chicks feed themselves. The young then fledge about 31 days after hatching, and breeding first occurs after one year of age.


title: Killdeer

text: The killdeer primarily feeds on insects, although other invertebrates and seeds are eaten. It forages almost exclusively in fields, especially those with short vegetation and with cattle and standing water. It primarily forages during the day, but in the nonbreeding season, when the moon is full or close to full, it forages at night, likely because of increased insect abundance and reduced predation during the night. Predators of the killdeer include various birds and mammals. Its multiple responses to predation range from calling to the "ungulate display", which can be fatal for the performing individual. This bird is classified as least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, because of its large range and population. Its population is declining, but this trend is not severe enough for the killdeer to be considered a vulnerable species. It is protected by the American Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and the Canadian Migratory Birds Convention Act.


title: Killdeer

text: The killdeer was described in 1758 by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of his "Systema Naturae" as "Charadrius vociferus", its current scientific name. Linnaeus' description was based on a 1731 account of it by English naturalist Mark Catesby in his "The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands", where he called it the "chattering plover". The genus name "Charadrius" is Late Latin for a yellowish bird mentioned in the fourth-century Vulgate Bible. This word derives from the Ancient Greek "kharadrios", a bird found in ravines and river valleys ("kharadra", "ravine"). The specific name " vociferus " is Latin, coming from "vox", "cry", and " ferre", "to bear".


title: Killdeer

text: The killdeer is a large plover, with adults ranging in length from , having a wingspan between , and usually being between in weight. It has a short, thick, and dark bill, flesh-colored legs, and a red eye ring.


title: Killdeer

text: Its upperparts are mostly brown with rufous fringes, its cap, back, and wings being the former color. It has a white forehead and a white stripe behind the eye, and its lores and the upper borders to the white forehead are black. The killdeer also has a white collar with a black upper border. The rest of the face is brown. The breast and belly are white, with the exception of two black breast bands. It is the only plover in North America with two breast bands. The rump is red, and the tail is mostly brown. The latter also has a black subterminal band, a white terminal band, and barred white feathers on the outer portion of the tail. In flight, a white wing stripe at the base of the flight feathers is visible.


title: Killdeer

text: The female's mask and breast bands tend to be browner than those of the male. The adult of the subspecies "C. v. ternominatus" is smaller and paler and greyer than the nominate, and the subspecies "C. v. peruvianus" is smaller than the nominate and has more extensive rufous feather fringes. The juvenile is similar to the adult. The upperparts of the chicks are colored dusky and buff. Their underparts, forehead, neck, and chin are white, and they have a single band across their breast.


title: Killdeer

text: The killdeer is a vocal species, calling even at night. Its calls include nasal notes, like "deee", "tyeeee", and "kil-deee" (the basis of its common name). During display flights, it repeats a call of "kil-deer" or "kee-deeyu". When this plover is disturbed, it emits notes in a rapid sequence, such as "kee-di-di-di". Its is a long, fast trill.


title: Killdeer

text: The nominate subspecies of the killdeer breeds in the US (including southeastern Alaska), southern Canada, and Mexico, with less widespread grounds further south, to Panama. Some northern populations are migratory. This bird is resident in the southern half of its breeding range, found throughout the year in most of the contiguous United States. It also winters south to Central America, the West Indies, Colombia, Ecuador, and islands off Venezuela, leaving its breeding grounds after mid-July, with migration peaking from August to September. Migration to the breeding grounds starts in February and ends in mid-May.


title: Killdeer

text: The subspecies "C. v. ternominatus" is thought to be resident in the Bahamas, Greater Antilles, and Virgin Islands. "C. v. peruvianus" is seen year-round in western Ecuador, Peru, and extreme northwestern Chile.


title: Killdeer

text: The killdeer uses beach habitats and coastal wetlands and fields during the nonbreeding season. It forages almost exclusively in these fields, especially those with short vegetation and with cattle (which likely shorten the vegetation) and standing water. When breeding, the killdeer has a of about , although this is generally larger when nesting more than away from water. Although generally a low-land species, it is found up to the snowline in meadows and open lakeshores during its autumn migration.


title: Killdeer

text: The killdeer forms pairs on its breeding grounds right after arriving. Both sexes (although the male more often than the female) advertise in flight with loud "killdeer" calls. The male also advertises by calling from a high spot, scraping out a dummy nest, and with killdeer flights, where it flies with slow wingbeats across its territory. Ground chases occur when a killdeer has been approached multiple times by another killdeer; similarly, flight chases occur when an individual has been approached from the air. Both are forms of territorial defense.


title: Killdeer

text: The killdeer nests in open fields or other flat areas with short vegetation (usually below tall), such as agricultural fields and meadows. Nests are also sometimes located on rooftops. This plover frequently breeds close to where it bred the previous year. The male seems to usually renest in the same area regardless of whether or not he retains the same mate. This does not appear to be true of the female, which has been observed to not use the same territory if she does not have the same mate. The nest itself is merely a shallow depression or scrape in the ground, fringed by some stones and blades of grass. It is generally built with white nesting material instead of darker colors; the function of this is suspected to either help keep the nest cool or conceal it. In a study of piping plovers, the former function was supported, as nests were to cooler than the surrounding ground. The latter function also had some support, as the plovers generally chose pebbles closer in color to the eggs; nests that contrasted more with the ground suffered more predation. When nesting on rooftops, the killdeer may choose a flat roof, or build a nest of raised gravel, sometimes lined with white pebbles or pieces of seashells.


title: Killdeer

text: The eggs of the killdeer are typically laid from mid-March to early June in the southern portion of the range, and from mid-April to mid-July in the northern part. In both cases, the breeding season itself extends to about August. In Puerto Rico, and possibly in other Caribbean islands, breeding occurs year-round.


title: Killdeer

text: The killdeer lays a clutch of four to six eggs that are buff to beige in color, with brown markings and black speckles. The eggs are about in size, and laid at intervals of 24 to 48 hours. The energy expenditure of both sexes is at its highest during egg-laying; the female needs to produce eggs, and the male needs to defend his territory. Both of the sexes are closer to the nest site than usual during egg-laying and incubation, although the male is generally closer than the female during all stages of breeding. This latter fact is likely due to the male's increased investment in nest-site defense. Up to five replacement clutches can be laid, and occasionally two broods occur. Second broods are usually laid in nesting territory of the first brood. The eggs are incubated for 22 to 28 days by both the male and the female, with the former typically incubating at night. The time dedicated to incubation is related to temperature, with one study recording that killdeer incubated eggs 99% of the time when the temperature was about , 76% of the time around , and 87% of the time at about . When it is hot (above at least ), incubation cools the eggs, generally through shading by one of the parents.


title: Killdeer

text: About 53% of eggs are lost, mainly to predators. The young are precocial, starting to walk within the first days of their life. After they hatch, both parents lead them out of the nest, generally to a feeding territory with dense vegetation under which the chicks can hide when a predator is near. The chicks are raised, at least in single-brood pairs, by both parents, likely because of the high failure rate of nests and the need for both parents to be present to successfully raise the young. In these broods, the young are usually attended by one parent at a time (generally the female) until about two weeks of age, after which both parents are occasionally seen together with the chicks. Otherwise, the inattentive adult is at least about away from the chicks. Periods of attentiveness for each parent generally last from about one to one and a half hours. When the chicks are young, this is mainly spent standing; as the chicks get older, less time is dedicated to standing. When the young are below two weeks of age, the attending adult spends little time feeding; foraging time increases as the chicks grow. The inattentive adult defends the young most of the time when they are less than a week old, but this task steadily shifts onto the attentive adult, until about three weeks of age, when the attending parent does almost all of the defense. One parent at a time broods the chicks, and does so frequently until they are two days old. The young are brooded during day until about 15 days after hatching and during night for about 18 days after hatching. The only time when they are not in the presence of a parent is when the parents are mating or responding to a predator or aggressive conspecific.


title: Killdeer

text: When a pair has two broods, the second is usually attended by just the male (which is able to hatch the eggs on his own, unlike the female). In this case, the male does not spend most of the time standing; the amount of time he does stand, though, stays constant as the chicks age. Like attentive adults in two-parent broods, the sole parent increases the time spent foraging as the young age.


title: Killdeer

text: The young fledge about 31 days after hatching, and generally move to moister areas in valleys and on the banks of rivers. They may be cared for by their parents for up to 10 days after they fledge, and exceptionally for 81 days after hatching. About 52 to 63% of nests fail to produce any fledged young. Breeding starts after one year of age. The killdeer has a maximum lifespan of 10 years and 11 months.


title: Killdeer

text: The killdeer feeds primarily on insects (especially beetles and flies), in addition to millipedes, worms, snails, spiders, and some seeds. It opportunistically takes tree frogs and dead minnows. It forages almost exclusively in fields (no matter the tide), especially those with short vegetation and with cattle (which likely shorten the vegetation) and standing water. Standing water alone does not have a significant effect on field choice unless combined with cattle. Viable disseminules can be recovered from killdeer feces, indicating that this bird is important in transporting aquatic organisms.


title: Killdeer

text: The killdeer uses visual cues to forage. An example of this is "foot-trembling", where it stands on one foot, shaking the other in shallow water for about five seconds, pecking at any prey stirred up. When feeding in fields, it sometimes follows plows to take earthworms disturbed to the surface. The female forages significantly more than the male during most stages of breeding. The former feeds the most before and during egg-laying, the least when incubation starts (as little time to feed remains), with a return to high levels after. During the nonbreeding season, the killdeer forages during the night, depending on the lunar cycle. When the moon is full, it feeds more at night and roosts more during the day. Foraging at night has benefits for this bird, including increased insect abundance and reduced predation.


title: Killdeer

text: The killdeer is parasitized by acanthocephalans, cestodes, nematodes, and trematodes. It is preyed upon by herring gulls, common crows, raccoons, and striped skunks. The mentioned birds and other avian predators are the majority of predators in some areas during the breeding season. Predation is not limited to eggs and chicks: mustelids, for example, can kill incubating adults.


title: Killdeer

text: The parents use various methods to distract predators during the breeding season. One method is the "broken-wing display", also known as "injury feigning". Before displaying, it usually runs from its nest, making alarm calls and other disturbances. When the bird has the attention of the predator, the former turns its tail towards the latter, displaying the threatening orange color of the rump. It then crouches, droops its wings, and lowers its tail, which is more common for them. With an increasing intensity, the wings are held higher, the tail is fanned out, and the tail becomes more depressed. Another behavior that has received attention is the "ungulate display", where the adult raises its wings, exposes its rump, lowers its head, and charges at the intruder. This can be fatal to the displaying bird.


title: Killdeer

text: The intensity of the responses to predators varies throughout the breeding season. During egg-laying, the most common response to predators is to quietly leave the nest. As incubation starts and progresses, the intensity of predator responses increases, peaking after hatching. This is probably because it is worth more to protect the young then, as they are more likely to fledge. After hatching, reactions decrease in intensity, until a normal response is calling. This is because the young become more independent as they age.


title: Killdeer

text: The killdeer is considered a least-concern species by the IUCN due to its large range of about and population, estimated by the IUCN to be about one million birds, or about two million, according to the "Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive". Though the population is declining, it is not decreasing fast enough to be considered a vulnerable species. It is protected in the US by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, and in Canada by the Migratory Birds Convention Act.


title: Kate Kane

text: Batwoman (Katherine Rebecca Kane) is a superheroine appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Kane is a wealthy heiress who becomes inspired by the superhero Batman and chooses, like him, to put her wealth and resources toward a campaign to fight crime as a masked vigilante in her home of Gotham City as Batwoman.


title: Kate Kane

text: This current version of Batwoman, who shares the same name as her counterpart from the Silver Age of comics, debuted in 2006 in the seventh week of the publisher's year-long "52" weekly comic book. Introduced as Kate Kane, the modern Batwoman began operating in Gotham City in Batman's absence following the events of the company-wide crossover "Infinite Crisis" (2005). The modern Batwoman is written as being of Jewish descent and as a lesbian. During the New 52, it is established that Kate Kane is a cousin of Batman's alter-ego Bruce Wayne, being a niece of his mother Martha Wayne. Described as the highest-profile gay superhero to appear in stories published by DC, Batwoman's sexual orientation drew wide media attention following her reintroduction, as well as both praise and criticism from the general public.


title: Kate Kane

text: The modern character is depicted in comics works relatively independently of Batman but has gained a considerable profile in recent years, both within the DC Comics publishing schedule and the publisher's fictional universe. She since had several runs in her own eponymous "Batwoman" monthly comic book and has had stints in the lead role in "Detective Comics", the flagship Batman comic book for which DC Comics is named.


title: Kate Kane

text: The character made her live-action debut during the Arrowverse crossover event "Elseworlds" between the television series "The Flash", "Arrow", and "Supergirl", played by Ruby Rose, setting up the television series "Batwoman". Rose departed ahead of the series' second season; the part was recast to Wallis Day.


title: Kate Kane

text: The limited series "Infinite Crisis" (2005), written as a sequel to the 1985 maxi-series "Crisis on Infinite Earths", altered DC Comics continuity. Subsequently, all comic book titles published by DC Comics skip forward one year and a new maxi-series entitled "52" retroactively chronicles the 52 weeks which directly followed "Infinite Crisis". When DC editors called for a redesign of Batwoman, comic book artist Alex Ross drew inspiration from the modified Batgirl costume he designed for Barbara Gordon, seven years before Kate Kane's debut in the limited comic book series "52". Ross and comic book author Paul Dini initially planned to revive the former Batgirl Barbara Gordon using an updated version of the character's original costume, with red accents in place of the traditional yellow. However, since Gordon served as one of a very small number of disabled superheroes of DC Comics as Oracle, DC's editorial staff was against revitalizing her at the time. In an interview with Newsarama, Ross states, "They had me change the mask and hair to make it a bit more Batwoman, rather than Batgirl...I pointed out to them that the mask makes her look like the Huntress a little overall—but there weren't many options."


title: Kate Kane

text: Unlike the Silver Age Kathy Kane, who was romantically attracted to Batman, the new version of Kane is a lesbian, as well as Bruce Wayne's maternal cousin. Her sexual orientation was announced at the same time the character was revealed in the spring of 2006. Stories appeared on television news outlets such as CNN, general news magazines such as "USA Today", and gay culture magazines such as "Out". The modern Katherine "Kate" Kane made her first comic book appearance in issue #7 of the maxi-series "52", where Kane is revealed to have been romantically involved with Renee Montoya, a former Gotham City Police detective (who later takes up the mantle of the Question after the original hero dies). When questioned about the editorial decision to make Batwoman a gay character in an interview with "Wizard Entertainment", DC Comics Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Dan DiDio stated "It was from conversations we’ve had for expanding the DC Universe, for looking at levels of diversity. We wanted to have a cast that is much more reflective of today's society and even today's fanbase. One of the reasons we made her gay is that, again when you have the Batman Family—a series of characters that aren't super-powered and inhabit the same circle and the same city—you really want to have a point of difference. It was really important to me to make sure every character felt unique."


title: Kate Kane

text: Batwoman's sexual orientation initially gathered mixed reviews, ranging from praise to outrage. A reviewer at "Out" asserts "Batwoman will be the highest profile gay superhero to ever grace the pages of DC Comics." Although several LGBT organizations such as GLAAD have praised DC Comics for attempting to diversify their characters, some have observed that Batwoman is not the first gay or lesbian character to appear in comic books, nor is she the only lesbian to be associated with the Batman series.


title: Kate Kane

text: In the character's civilian identity as a socialite, Katherine Kane is acquainted with Bruce Wayne and is friends with a doctor named Mallory. She is presented with porcelain white skin, several tattoos, and a clothing style defined as "punk-psychobilly-goth" in her civilian persona. Her father is an Army colonel, and in "Detective Comics" #854, it is stated she is the cousin of Bette "Flamebird" Kane. The younger Kate also has a stepmother named Catherine Kane, making Catherine the aunt of Bette. At the 2008 New York Comic Con, it was announced that Batwoman would be among the characters appearing in a new Justice League comic book written by James Robinson. That year, Batwoman briefly took over as the lead character in "Detective Comics", starting with #854. with DC saying at the 2009 New York Comic Con that she would be DC Comics' highest-profile gay superhero.


title: Kate Kane

text: In 2010, DC announced that Batwoman would star in a series with art by J. H. Williams III, who would also co-write the series with writer W. Haden Blackman. Artist Amy Reeder Hadley would also contribute art, alternating story arcs with Williams. The series' introductory "zero issue" was released on November 24, 2010. The launch of "Batwoman" #1 was originally scheduled for February 2011, then delayed until spring; in early March it was announced that "Batwoman" #1 would be released sometime in Fall 2011, as part of the "New 52" rebooted DC Universe.


title: Kate Kane

text: In September 2013, co-authors J.H. Williams and W. Haden Blackman announced that they would leave "Batwoman" after the December issue because of conflicts with DC over storylines. They remarked that they were not allowed to expand Killer Croc's back story, keep their original ending to their current story arc, or show Kate and Maggie getting married. This announcement followed a February 2013 announcement that "Batwoman" #17 would feature the proposal between Kate and Maggie. DC Comics announced that Batwoman could not get married because "heroes shouldn't have happy personal lives".


title: Kate Kane

text: In December 2014, it was announced that the series would be canceled in March at issue forty, along with twelve other New 52 series.


title: Kate Kane

text: In 2016, it was announced that Batwoman would be one of the lead characters in the "DC Comics Rebirth" revamp of "Detective Comics", which returned to its original numbering with issue #934.


title: Kate Kane

text: In "52" #7, Kate Kane is introduced (although she is referred to as Kathy on several occasions). No "Origins" titles have been presented for Kate Kane; her fictional backstory is presented in "Detective Comics" through the use of exposition and flashbacks. In their early childhood, Katherine Rebecca "Kate" Kane and her sister Elizabeth "Beth" Kane were identical twins and were very close to each other. Their parents were career soldiers in the United States Army, and the twins were raised at least partially in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Their father, Jacob "Jake" Kane, was promoted to colonel sometime before their twelfth birthday and reassigned to a NATO position in Brussels, Belgium, and the family moved there.


title: Kate Kane

text: On the twins' twelfth birthday, Jacob could not come home to celebrate with them due to a security crisis, so Kate and Beth were taken by their mother, Gabrielle "Gabi" Kane, to the Grand-Place for chocolate and waffles, their favorite dish. On the way to the restaurant, a group of gunmen attacked the family and took them hostage, killing their bodyguard in the process. After learning of her family's kidnapping, Jacob Kane led a rescue mission to save his captured family, which ended with Kate's mother being executed and Beth apparently killed after being caught in the crossfire between the kidnappers and soldiers. Jacob and Kate move back to the States and settle in the Washington metropolitan area, where Jacob receives significant promotions and Kate completes middle school and high school, seemingly at private institutions.


title: Kate Kane

text: Kate attends the United States Military Academy, where she receives excellent grades, performs well in physical fitness and sports, earns prestigious awards, and achieves the rank of Brigade Executive Officer in her senior year; she also maintains a secret romantic relationship with her roommate, Sophie Moore. Shortly after her class's Ring Weekend ceremony, Kate is anonymously accused of homosexual conduct. The academy's Brigade Tactical Officer asks her to disavow the allegation on account of her outstanding record, mentioning that if she does, she will be demoted but still be able to graduate. Telling the BTO that she refuses to lie and violate the Honor Code of the academy, Kate admits to being lesbian and is forced to leave the school. When she confronts her father with the news, he supports her and affirms that she upheld her honor and integrity. Sometime later, Jacob marries Catherine Hamilton Kane.


title: Kate Kane

text: Kate then moves back to Gotham City where she attends college and descends into a wild social lifestyle, consisting of parties, heavy drinking, and one-night stands. During this time she also gets three tattoos: a black Special Forces arrowhead on her right bicep (a copy of a tattoo Gabi Kane had), a bluebird on her left shoulder, and a large red-and-black nautical star on her upper back. Kate is eventually pulled over for speeding by a young Renee Montoya, who was just a traffic cop at this point. The two date for several months but break up following a fight where Renee expresses concern about Kate's lack of direction in her life and Kate berates Renee for keeping her sexuality hidden from her colleagues and family. While attempting to call Renee and apologize for her behavior, Kate is attacked by a mugger who wants her wallet and cell phone. Using her military training, Kate easily defeats the criminal just as Batman arrives and helps her off the ground. She is then shown fixated by the Bat-Signal as Batman departs the scene.


title: Kate Kane

text: Inspired by her encounter with the caped crusader, Kate sobers up and begins fighting crime using military body armor and weaponry stolen from her father's military base and purchased off the black market; she operates for close to a year before her father finds out. After being confronted by Jacob, Kate accepts his offer of assistance and begins an intense two years of training across the globe with some of her father's friends from the special operations community. Upon returning to Gotham, Kate discovers that her father has created a Batsuit for her, along with an arsenal of experimental weaponry based on Batman's known gadgetry and a bunker hidden in the panic room in Kate's apartment.


title: Kate Kane

text: The first reference to the modern Batwoman is made by the Penguin in "Detective Comics" #824 who suggests Batman bring a date to the opening of his club, asking, "Why don't you bring that new Batwoman? I hear she's kind of hot." In "52" #7 (2006) the new Batwoman is introduced. Kane is revealed to have been intimately involved with former Gotham City police detective Renee Montoya and is heiress to one of the wealthiest families in Gotham, owning that which the Wayne family does not. In her third appearance in issue #11 of "52" entitled "Batwoman Begins", Kane assists Montoya and her partner the Question in a mystery revolving around a warehouse owned by Kane's family. When Montoya and the Question are attacked sometime later by Whisper A'Daire's shapeshifting minions, Kane intervenes as Batwoman and rescues them.


title: Kate Kane

text: In "52" #28 (2006), after Montoya learns that the "Book of Crime", a sacred text of Intergang, contains a prophecy foretelling the brutal murder of the "twice named daughter of Kane", she and the Question return to Gotham, joining forces with Batwoman in issue #30 in order to avert Intergang's plans. Batwoman later appears in a story written by Greg Rucka for the "DC Infinite Holiday Special" (2006). As Batwoman continues the case, she is joined by Nightwing, who has recently returned to Gotham and becomes infatuated with her. On Christmas Eve, he gives her an 'official' Batarang. She also celebrates Hanukkah with Renee, and the two kiss shortly before Christmas. This story introduced some of Kane's background, including the fact that she is Jewish. In issue #48 of "52" (2007), when Intergang realizes that the image of Batwoman in the Crime Bible and the cited "twice-named daughter of Cain" were one and the same, they ransack Kane's apartment, kidnapping her with the intention to sacrifice her. Montoya arrives too late to stop the ritual, finding Kate bound and gagged to an altar as prophet Bruno Mannheim plunges a knife through her heart. In the ensuing confrontation, the freed Batwoman pulls the knife out of her own chest to stab Mannheim, and then collapses in Renee's arms. She survives her wounds after Renee stops the bleeding in time, however, and as she recuperates in her penthouse, Renee, disguised in her new alter ego as the Question, shines the Bat-Signal into her apartment and asks, "Are you ready?"


title: Kate Kane

text: Batwoman subsequently appears in the fifty-two-issue weekly series "Countdown", intended to act as a prelude to DC's summer crossover event the following year. Batwoman appears in "Countdown" #39 (2007), after the Question confronts Trickster and Pied Piper, having trailed them from the Penguin's Iceberg Lounge nightclub. Batwoman also makes an appearance in the miniseries "Crime Bible: The Five Lessons of Blood" (2007) alongside the Question. Batwoman is seen again on the final page of Grant Morrison's "Final Crisis" #3 (2008), one month after the Anti-Life Equation was released, as a new Female Fury along with Wonder Woman, Catwoman, and Giganta. Her costume bears resemblance to the dead Fury Mad Harriet. She is also seen in "" #3 attacking the Question after having just been infected with the Anti-Life Equation.


title: Kate Kane

text: Following the events of Final Crisis and "Battle for the Cowl", in which Bruce Wayne has supposedly died and is replaced by Dick Grayson, Kate becomes the lead of "Detective Comics" from issues 854 to 863. In the first story, entitled "", Batwoman is seen investigating the arrival of a new leader of the Religion of Crime in Gotham. She briefly meets Batman (it is intentionally left ambiguous whether or not it is Dick Grayson or Bruce Wayne) to discuss her findings. Kate demonstrates greater knowledge of the Religion of Crime, and even corrects Batman by saying there are 13 and not 12 covens of the religion in Gotham. Batman concedes the case to her, and comments on the length of her hair (though panels on the same page reveal the long red wig hides her actual hair, styled short).


title: Kate Kane

text: Aspects of her personal life are also revealed, including her relationship with her colonel father. The strain of her late-night vigilante activity has also taken a toll on her romantic relationships. Her lateness and nighttime absences are interpreted by her girlfriend as an on-the-side liaison with another woman. She breaks the relationship off as she believes Kate is not ready to commit to an exclusive relationship. Kate alludes to a past traumatic incident which she claims still haunts her. As she vaguely describes the experience, her face is shown superimposed on the page over a restrained girl with a bag over her head. She later tracks down the new leader of the Religion of Crime: an elaborately costumed woman named Alice. Throughout the conflict that ensues, Batwoman observes that Alice only speaks in quotations from Lewis Carroll, believing herself to be Alice Liddell. Alice denies a connection to the Mad Hatter.


title: Kate Kane

text: While attending a fundraising gala for the Gotham City Police Department, Kate meets and flirts with detective Maggie Sawyer, and runs into her cousin Bette Kane (better known as the Teen Titans member Flamebird). Kate is unaware of her cousin's vigilante activities. While dancing with Maggie, Kate is approached by Kyle Abbot, a former employee of Bruno Mannheim who split from the Religion of Crime after the events of "52". Through a conversation with Abbot, Kate discovers that Alice has kidnapped her father and plans to destroy Gotham by spreading a deadly airborne chemical from a hijacked airplane, thus succeeding where Mannheim failed. Batwoman boards the plane and defeats Alice's subordinates, eventually stopping the plot and rescuing her father in the process. However, Alice is accidentally thrown from the plane, only to be caught by Batwoman. Alice then shocks her by saying that Batwoman has "our father's eyes", apparently revealing that she is Kate's sister Beth (who was believed to have been killed years ago). With Batwoman stunned by the revelation, Alice stabs her in the wrist with a knife. Batwoman is forced to release her grip, sending Alice to her apparent demise in the river below.


title: Kate Kane

text: In the aftermath of this discovery, Kate locks herself in her crime lab and tries to come to terms with what just happened, while the police struggle in vain to find any sign of Alice's corpse. These scenes are depicted among numerous flashback sequences that comprise most of the issue. Throughout them, a back story is provided from her childhood that depicts Kate, her twin sister Beth, and their mother being kidnapped. While Kate's father can rescue her, it appears as though both her sister and mother have been killed by the time he arrives.


title: Kate Kane

text: Batwoman appears in the miniseries "Cry for Justice", a set-up for a new ongoing "Justice League" title. When the Justice League of America splits up following Bruce Wayne's death and a disastrous confrontation with the Shadow Cabinet, Green Lantern Hal Jordan leads a group of superheroes to Gotham to track down the supervillain known as Prometheus. Kate is shown stalking the heroes from the rooftops after they encounter Clayface. Batwoman later contacts both Leagues at the JLA Watchtower, informing them she encountered and engaged supervillain Delores Winters, who mysteriously collapsed and died right as she was about to be taken into custody. The heroes request that Kate bring the body up to them, but she declines, telling them that she is much too busy due to a rash of criminal uprisings going on in Gotham. Firestorm is then sent to retrieve the corpse from Kate and bring it to the team, who discover that Dolores was forced into fighting using a mind-control device. In a text piece included in "" #6, writer James Robinson revealed that Batwoman was initially intended to be part of his new Justice League line-up, but this plan fell apart after "Cry For Justice" was shortened into a miniseries rather than an ongoing title. This explains why Batwoman is present on the cover of the first issue, and why she was initially said to be a member of the team when the book was first announced.


title: Kate Kane

text: Later, Kate appears as part of "Batman and Robin: Blackest Knight". Batwoman is kidnapped by cultists and taken to London for her to once again be sacrificed. She is sealed within a coffin and taken underground to the last remaining Lazarus Pit for the ritual to begin. She is saved by the timely intervention of Dick Grayson and British superheroes Knight and Squire. After learning that Grayson plans on placing Bruce Wayne's corpse into the Pit to revive him, Kate strongly protests, but he simply ignores her. True to Kate's warnings, Bruce (in reality an insane clone created by Darkseid) emerges from the Pit and attacks the heroes. As the battle takes place, the cultists who kidnapped Kate detonate explosives surrounding the Pit, causing a massive cave-in. Grayson discovers Kate, buried alive and paralyzed from the waist down. Using morphine from Grayson's utility belt, Kate deliberately commits suicide by overdose to be resurrected and healed by the nearby Pit. This plan is successful, and Kate returns to Gotham with the others. Furthermore, since Kate did technically die, the cultists consider their goal completed. Before leaving to return to her home, Grayson flirts with Kate by telling her that he has a thing for red-haired crime-fighters (a reference to his previous love interests, Barbara Gordon and Starfire), apparently unaware of Kate's sexuality.