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To Be A Jew: A Guide To Jewish Observances and Customs for Modern Times



Pickthall: O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.




To Be A Jew: A Guide To Jewish O



Yusuf Ali: O ye who believe! take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people unjust.


Shakir: O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.


Muhammad Sarwar: Believers, do not consider the Jews and Christians as your intimate friends for they are only friends with each other. Whoever does so will be considered as one of them. God does not guide the unjust people.


Mohsin Khan: O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians as Auliya' (friends, protectors, helpers, etc.), they are but Auliya' to one another. And if any amongst you takes them as Auliya', then surely he is one of them. Verily, Allah guides not those people who are the Zalimun (polytheists and wrongdoers and unjust).


This is a guide to records held at The National Archives that document the arrival, settlement, status and activities of Jewish people and communities in Britain and its former colonies over the last 900 years.


Use the advanced search of our catalogue to restrict your search results to records of a specific government department (and its predecessors) or multiple departments and record series. Departments and series are identified by letter and number codes and useful departments and series are highlighted throughout this guide.


However, some record types are better described in the catalogue than others. To pin down individual records from the medieval and early modern periods often requires consultation of additional finding aids, in conjunction with the catalogue. Among the key finding aids are the calendars of State Papers, available from the library at our building in Kew and online via institutional subscriptions at universities and specialist libraries, including our own. More advice on these appears in sections 3 and 4 of this guide.


There is advice throughout this guide on how you can try searching for records of Jewish communities and how to use the records to pinpoint the locations of these communities. There are also some search methods that can work more broadly across time periods and this is particularly true for the last two centuries. For 19th- and 20th-century communities try the following approaches:


Many of the medieval sources noted in our guide to medieval and early modern family history are relevant for tracing Jewish people and communities before 1290. The texts of royal letters and orders to sheriffs or commissioners concerning prominent Jews, their families and property appear in the Chancery patent rolls and close rolls. For insights in to how to use these records see our guide to royal grants in letters patent and charters.


Given its broad remit, the Home Office inevitably created records relating to Jewish people, communities and affairs. Use our guide to Home Office correspondence for detailed advice on how to search for information on specific subjects and locate individual items of correspondence.


You can also try keyword searches in the following Home Office series by clicking on the series references below, though only some parts of these series are keyword searchable (consult the Home Office guide above for more information):


Our guides to State Papers Foreign 1509-1782: government papers on foreign affairs and Foreign Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office records from 1782 suggest research approaches and outline the means of searching the records.


Given this climate, ADL published this guide in March 2020. With Antisemitism Uncovered: A Guide to Old Myths in a New Era, we explain the history of antisemitism and the myths at its core. We ordered the discussion of each myth with descriptions of its historic origin and contemporary examples. With this modular structure, we built a bridge from past to present to crystalize and demonstrate why this hatred still haunts us. By offering this context and debunking these myths, this guide can educate people from all walks of life about what is and is not antisemitism, enabling all of us to stop its spread and call it out whenever and wherever it may arise. In March 2022, we launched a video series to further raise awareness around each of the seven tropes featured in this guide. You can find them in each chapter. We encourage you to share them and join us in fighting hate for good.


The verse of the Holy Quran is also used to malign Islam and its teachings. I think the biggest misconception among people is that this verse refers to Christians and Jews of all times. The truth is that in addition to commandments meant for all time, the Quran also contains specific orders to Prophet Muhammad and his followers regarding the situations they were dealing with at the time that the verses were revealed. So keeping history and context in mind is extremely important when reading the Quran. [5:52] O ye who believe! take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. And whoso among you takes them for friends is indeed one of them. Verily, Allah guides not the unjust people.There is a fallacy that the Quran commands Muslims to not befriend Jews and Christians based on Chapter 5 verse 52. If we look at the context of the verse, we see that it refers to the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad(sa) when Jews and Christians were at war with Muslims. If you consider enemies at war with each other, it makes perfect sense to discourage friendships between them because of that situation. Even so, the subsequent verses 58 and 59 clarify the reasons for discouraging friendships with Jews and Christians of that time, who used to make fun of Muslims for adhering to their faith. (5:58) O ye who believe! take not those for friends who make a jest and sport of your religion from among those who were given the Book before you, and the disbelievers. And fear Allah if you are believers


Religious leaders continued to guide Jewish society after the Jews returned from the exile for one reason: they couldn't have a king instead they had a rabbi. Rabbis serve the Jewish community. Some rabbis program and guide activities designed to reach Jews who are unaffiliated with Judaism or lapsed in their observances.


If you have visited a Jewish household, you may have encountered traditional Jewish food that is special to that family, but new to you, especially during a Jewish holiday. Or, you might be looking for accessible ways to bring Judaism to your family or partner. This is a basic guide to some of the Jewish foods you might see, and to terminology.


Maimonides had encyclopedic knowledge of Jewish law and one of his main projects was to try to organize the massive, complex body of interpretation, argument, and elaboration in a systematic, orderly manner. By doing this, he intended to obviate the need for further codification and interpretation. He sought to provide a normatively authoritative presentation of Jewish law. His aim was to articulate what he took to be the correct interpretation of the law without also including the argumentation that yielded his interpretation. The aim was to make the law accessible, to make it easier to find and follow what the law required. The work that resulted, the Mishneh Torah, was a formidable achievement. While it did not bring interpretation and codification of Jewish law to closure, it has remained throughout the centuries a vitally important guide to Jewish law for large numbers of Orthodox Jews. In that respect, it has more than just historical importance. 2ff7e9595c


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