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Abraham Goldfaden
(1840–1908)Ukrainian dramatist and composer, considered the father of the modern Yiddish stage. Goldfaden mounted full-fledged operettas, some of which—The Witch (1879), The Two Kuni-Lemls (1880), ...
Africa
This entry summarizes some of the main features of indigenous sub-Saharan African theatre and performance, concentrating on pre-colonial forms. For the syncretic forms which emerged after colonial ...
African-American theatre
After the War of 1812, William Henry Brown offered alfresco amusements for blacks in a tea garden behind his house in New York. By 1821, whites formed much of the ...
Ahad Ha-Am
‘One of the People’, penname of Asher Ginsberg (1856–1927), Hebrew essayist and Zionist thinker. For Ginsberg, Zionism was important not only because it sought to provide a physical homeland for the ...
ʿAliyah
(Heb., ‘ascent’).1 Emigrating from the diaspora to the land of Israel to become a permanent resident.2 The calling up of a member of the congregation in a synagogue ...
Amiri Baraka
(1934– )African American playwright, poet, and activist born in Newark, New Jersey, as Everett LeRoi Jones. Throughout his career he has used his writing as an extended polemic against American ...
Armenian Church
An independent Christian Church established in Armenia since c.300 and influenced by Roman and Byzantine as well as Syrian traditions. A small Armenian Catholic Church also exists (see Uniate).
Ashkenazim
Jews whose ancestors lived in the Middle Ages in Germany and the surrounding countries, as distinct from those with a Spanish or oriental ancestry, the Sephardim. The name Ashkenaz in the Bible ...
August Wilson
(b. Pittsburgh, Pa., 27 April 1945)Poet turned playwright who leaped to fame with Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984), the first in his heavily symbolic cycle of plays depicting the ...
Babylonian captivity
Period (586–538 bce) during which many Israelites were held in exile in Babylon. The phrase was applied by Petrarch to the Church during the period when the papacy was at Avignon (1309–77): see ...
Bdud-joms Rin-po-che
(1904–87).Head of the Nyingma order of Tibetan Buddhism. When 3 years old, he was recognized as the reappearance of the ‘treasure-finder’, Bdud-joms gling-pa (1835–1903). As a refugee in 1959 ...
Bet Din
(Heb., ‘house of judgement’).Jewish court of law. Traditionally the establishment of the bet din as an institution is ascribed to Ezra. In Israel, the bet din is the rabbinic ...
Boris Tomashefsky
(c.1866–1939)Ukrainian-American Yiddish actor. Tomashefsky arrived in New York in 1881, in possession of a melodious voice and good looks, and in 1882 participated in the first Yiddish performance in ...
Campesino, El Teatro
A Chicano theatre troupe founded by Luís Valdez and a group of striking farmworkers in Delano, California, in 1965. Under Valdez's guidance, the Teatro members, who had never acted before ...
Caribbean theatre, anglophone
The areas of the Caribbean once controlled or colonized by the English, including Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Guyana, St Lucia, the Bahamas, Antigua, Grenada, and St Vincent, have vital ...
carnival
A period of public revelry at a regular time each year, as during the week before Lent in Roman Catholic countries, involving processions, music, dancing, and the use of masquerade. Recorded from the ...
Créolité
Literary and cultural theory elaborated in the 1980s by a small group of Francophone authors from the Caribbean, particularly Martinique and Guadeloupe, the most prominent of whom are Patrick ...
David Henry Hwang
(b. 1957), playwright.America's preeminent Asian‐American playwright was born in Los Angeles, the son of Chinese immigrants, and attended Stanford and Yale before settling in New York, where his ...
Diaspora Quick reference
A Concise Companion to the Jewish Religion
The communities of Jews dispersed in countries outside Palestine; Heb. Golah or Galut (‘Exile’). Originally, the term denoted the
Diaspora Reference library
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
(Gk., ‘dispersion’; Heb., galut, ‘exile’, is the nearest equivalent).
Jewish communities outside the land of Israel. Today, increased
