title: Vowel

text: The writing systems used for some languages, such as the Hebrew alphabet and the Arabic alphabet, do not ordinarily mark all the vowels, since they are frequently unnecessary in identifying a word. Technically, these are called abjads rather than alphabets. Although it is possible to construct English sentences that can be understood without written vowels ("cn y rd ths?"), single words in English lacking written vowels can be indistinguishable; consider "dd", which could be any of "dad, dada, dado, dead, deed, did, died, diode, dodo, dud, dude, odd, add", and "aided". (Note that abjads generally express some word-internal vowels and all word-initial and word-final vowels, whereby the ambiguity will be much reduced.) The Masoretes devised a vowel notation system for Hebrew Jewish scripture that is still widely used, as well as the trope symbols used for its cantillation; both are part of oral tradition and still the basis for many bible translations—Jewish and Christian.


title: Vowel

text: The differences in pronunciation of vowel letters between English and its related languages can be accounted for by the Great Vowel Shift. After printing was introduced to England, and therefore after spelling was more or less standardized, a series of dramatic changes in the pronunciation of the vowel phonemes did occur, and continued into recent centuries, but were not reflected in the spelling system. This has led to numerous inconsistencies in the spelling of English vowel sounds and the pronunciation of English vowel letters (and to the mispronunciation of foreign words and names by speakers of English).


title: Vowel

text: The importance of vowels in distinguishing one word from another varies from language to language. Nearly all languages have at least three phonemic vowels, usually as in Classical Arabic and Inuktitut, though Adyghe and many Sepik languages have a vertical vowel system of . Very few languages have fewer, though some Arrernte, Circassian, and Ndu languages have been argued to have just two, and , with being epenthetic.


title: Vowel

text: It is not straightforward to say which language has the most vowels, since that depends on how they are counted. For example, long vowels, nasal vowels, and various phonations may or may not be counted separately; indeed, it may sometimes be unclear if phonation belongs to the vowels or the consonants of a language. If such things are ignored and only vowels with dedicated IPA letters ('vowel qualities') are considered, then very few languages have more than ten. The Germanic languages have some of the largest inventories: Standard Danish has 11 to 13 short vowels (), while the Amstetten dialect of Bavarian has been reported to have thirteen long vowels: . The situation can be quite disparate within a same family language: Spanish and French are two closely related Romance languages but Spanish has only five pure vowel qualities, , while classical French has eleven: and four nasal vowels . The Mon–Khmer languages of Southeast Asia also have some large inventories, such as the eleven vowels of Vietnamese: . Wu dialects have the largest inventories of Chinese; the Jinhui dialect of Wu has also been reported to have eleven vowels: ten basic vowels, , plus restricted ; this does not count the seven nasal vowels.


title: Vowel

text: One of the most common vowels is ; it is nearly universal for a language to have at least one open vowel, though most dialects of English have an and a —and often an , all open vowels—but no central . Some Tagalog and Cebuano speakers have rather than , and Dhangu Yolngu is described as having , without any peripheral vowels. is also extremely common, though Tehuelche has just the vowels with no close vowels. The third vowel of the Arabic-type three-vowel system, , is considerably less common. A large fraction of the languages of North America happen to have a four-vowel system without : ; Nahuatl and Navajo are examples.


title: Vowel

text: In most languages, vowels serve mainly to distinguish separate lexemes, rather than different inflectional forms of the same lexeme as they commonly do in the Semitic languages. For example, while English "man" becomes "men" in the plural, "moon" is a completely different word.


title: Vowel

text: In rhotic dialects of English, as in Canada and the United States, there are many words such as "bird, learn, girl, church, worst, wyrm, myrrh" that some phoneticians analyze as having no vowels, only a syllabic consonant . However, others analyze these words instead as having a rhotic vowel, . The difference may be partially one of dialect.


title: Vowel

text: There are a few such words that are disyllabic, like ", curtain," and "turtle:" , and (or , , and ), and even a few that are trisyllabic, at least in some accents, such as "purpler" , "hurdler" , "gurgler" , and "certainer" .


title: Vowel

text: The word "and" frequently contracts to a simple nasal "’n," as in "lock 'n key" . Words such as "will, have," and "is" regularly contract to "’ll" , "’ve" , and "'s" . However, none of them are pronounced alone without vowels, so they are not phonological words. Onomatopoeic words that can be pronounced alone, and that have no vowels or ars, include "hmm, pst!, shh!, tsk!," and "zzz". As in other languages, onomatopoeiae stand outside the normal phonotactics of English.


title: Vowel

text: There are other languages that form lexical words without vowel sounds. In Serbo-Croatian, for example, the consonants and (the difference is not written) can act as a syllable nucleus and carry rising or falling tone; examples include the tongue-twister and geographic names such as . In Czech and Slovak, either or can stand in for vowels: "wolf", "neck". A particularly long word without vowels is , meaning "quarter-handful", with two syllables (one for each R), or , a verb form meaning "you flipped (sth) down" (eg a marble). Whole sentences (usually tongue-twisters) can be made from such words, such as , meaning "stick a finger through your neck" (), and . (Here has two syllables based on L; and note that the preposition consists of a single consonant. Only prepositions do this in Czech, and they normally link phonetically to the following word, so not really behave as vowelless words.) In Russian, there are also prepositions that consist of a single consonant letter, like , , and . However, these forms are actually contractions of , , and respectively, and these forms are still used in modern Russian before words with certain consonant clusters for ease of pronunciation.


title: Vowel

text: In Kazakh and certain other Turkic languages, words without vowel sounds may occur due to reduction of weak vowels. A common example is the Kazakh word for one: , pronounced . Among careful speakers, however, the original vowel may be preserved, and the vowels are always preserved in the orthography.


title: Vowel

text: In Southern varieties of Chinese, such as Cantonese and Minnan, some monosyllabic words are made of exclusively nasals, such as Cantonese "no" and "five". Minnan also has words consisting of a consonant followed by a syllabic nasal, such as "pn̄g" "cooked rice".


title: Vowel

text: So far, all of these syllabic consonants, at least in the lexical words, have been sonorants, such as , , , and , which have a voiced quality similar to vowels. (They can carry tone, for example.) However, there are languages with lexical words that not only contain no vowels, but contain no sonorants at all, like (non-lexical) "shh!" in English. These include some Berber languages and some languages of the American Pacific Northwest, such as Nuxalk. An example from the latter is "seal fat" (pronounced , as spelled), and a longer one is "clhp'xwlhtlhplhhskwts'" (pronounced ) "he had had in his possession a bunchberry plant". (Follow the Nuxalk link for other examples.) Berber examples include "you took it off" and "you gave it". Some words may contain one or two consonants only: "be", "feed on". (In Mandarin Chinese, words and syllables such as and are sometimes described as being syllabic fricatives and affricates phonemically, and , but these do have a voiced segment that carries the tone.) In the Japonic language Miyako, there are words with no voiced sounds, such as 'dust', 'breast/milk', 'day', 'a comb', 'to make', 'to build', 'month', 'to cut', 'to pull'.


title: Vowel

text: It is not uncommon for short grammatical words to consist of only vowels, such as "a" and "I" in English. Lexical words are somewhat rarer in English and are generally restricted to a single syllable: "eye, awe, owe", and in non-rhotic accents "air, ore, err". Vowel-only words of more than one syllable are generally foreign loans, such as "ai" (two syllables: ) for the maned sloth, or proper names, such as "Iowa" (in some accents: ).


title: Vowel

text: However, vowel sequences in hiatus are more freely allowed in some other languages, most famously perhaps in Bantu and Polynesian languages, but also in Japanese and Finnic languages. In such languages there tends to be a larger variety of vowel-only words. In Swahili (Bantu), for example, there is "aua" 'to survey' and "eua" 'to purify' (both three syllables); in Japanese, "aoi" 青い 'blue/green' and "oioi" 追々 'gradually' (three and four morae); and in Finnish, 'intention' and 'open!' (both two syllables), although some dialects pronounce them as and . In Urdu, āye/aaie or āyn 'come' is used. Hawaiian, and the Polynesian languages generally, have unusually large numbers of such words, such as (a small green fish), which is three syllables: . Most long words involve reduplication, which is quite productive in Polynesian: 'grooves', 'breath', 'tough' (all four syllables), 'crying' (five syllables, from 'to weep'), or 'false mullet' (sp. fish, three or five syllables).


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: The date of birth of Jesus is not stated in the gospels or in any historical sources but most biblical scholars assume a year of birth between 6 and 4 BC. The historical evidence is too incomplete to allow a definitive dating, but the year is estimated through three different approaches:


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: The common Christian traditional dating of the birthdate of Jesus was 25 December, a date first asserted officially by Pope Julius I in 350 AD, although this claim is dubious or otherwise unfounded. The day or season has been estimated by various methods, including the description of shepherds watching over their sheep.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: The nativity accounts in the New Testament gospels of Matthew and Luke do not mention a date or time of year for the birth of Jesus. Karl Rahner states that the authors of the gospels generally focused on theological elements rather than historical chronologies.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: Both Luke and Matthew associate Jesus' birth with the time of Herod the Great. states that "Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king". He also implies that Jesus could have been as much as two years old at the time of the visit of the Magi, because Herod ordered the murder of all boys up to the age of two years, "in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi". In addition, if the phrase "about 30" in is interpreted to mean 32 years old, this could fit a date of birth just within the reign of Herod, who died in 4 BC.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: Another approach to estimating the year of birth is based on an attempt to work backwards from the point when Jesus began preaching, using the statement in that he was "about 30 years of age" at that time. Jesus began to preach after being baptized by John the Baptist, and based on Luke's gospel John only began baptizing people in "the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar" (), which scholars estimate would place the year at about AD 28–29. By working backwards from this, it would appear that Jesus was probably born no later than 1 BC. Another theory is that Herod's death was as late as after the January eclipse of 1 BC or even AD 1 after the eclipse that occurred in December 1 BC.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: This date is independently confirmed by John's reference in to the Temple being in its 46th year of construction when Jesus began his ministry during Passover, which corresponds to around 27–29 AD according to scholarly estimates.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: Most scholars regard the Star of Bethlehem account to be a pious fiction, of literary and theological value, rather than historical. Nonetheless, attempts have been made to interpret it as an astronomical event, which might then help date Jesus' birth through the use of ancient astronomical records, or modern astronomical calculations. The first such attempt was made by Johannes Kepler who interpreted the account to describe a Great Conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: University of Cambridge Professor Colin Humphreys has argued in the "Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society" that a comet in the early 5 BC was likely the "Star of Bethlehem", putting Jesus' birth in or near April, 5 BC.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: Other astronomical events have been considered, including a close planetary conjunction between Venus and Jupiter in 2 BC.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: The "Anno Domini" dating system was devised in 525 by Dionysius Exiguus to enumerate the years in his


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: Easter table. His system was to replace the Diocletian era that had been used in older Easter tables, as he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians. The last year of the old table, Diocletian Anno Martyrium 247, was immediately followed by the first year of his table, Anno Domini 532. When Dionysius devised his table, Julian calendar years were identified by naming the consuls who held office that year— Dionysius himself stated that the "present year" was "the consulship of Probus Junior", which was 525 years "since the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ". Thus, Dionysius implied that Jesus' incarnation occurred 525 years earlier, without stating the specific year during which his birth or conception occurred. "However, nowhere in his exposition of his table does Dionysius relate his epoch to any other dating system, whether consulate, Olympiad, year of the world, or regnal year of Augustus; much less does he explain or justify the underlying date."


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: Bonnie J. Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens briefly present arguments for 2 BC, 1 BC, or AD 1 as the year Dionysius intended for the Nativity or incarnation. Among the sources of confusion are:


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: It is not known how Dionysius established the year of Jesus's birth. Two major theories are that Dionysius based his calculation on the Gospel of Luke, which states that Jesus was "about thirty years old" shortly after "the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar", and hence subtracted thirty years from that date, or that Dionysius counted back 532 years from the first year of his new table.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: It has also been speculated by Georges Declercq that Dionysius' desire to replace Diocletian years with a calendar based on the incarnation of Christ was intended to prevent people from believing the imminent end of the world. At the time, it was believed by some that the resurrection of the dead and end of the world would occur 500 years after the birth of Jesus. The old "Anno Mundi" calendar theoretically commenced with the creation of the world based on information in the Old Testament. It was believed that, based on the "Anno Mundi" calendar, Jesus was born in the year 5500 (5500 years after the world was created) with the year 6000 of the "Anno Mundi" calendar marking the end of the world. "Anno Mundi" 6000 (approximately AD 500) was thus equated with the end of the world but this date had already passed in the time of Dionysius.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: The ""Historia Brittonum"" attributed to Nennius written in the 9th century makes extensive use of the Anno Passionis (AP) dating system which was in common use as well as the newer AD dating system. The AP dating system took its start from 'The Year of The Passion'. It is generally accepted by experts there is a 27-year difference between AP and AD reference.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: Yeshu in Jewish scholarly sources is speculated by researchers as a reference to Jesus as in Hebrew the word "Yeshu" is used to refer Jesus and also there are similarities between Talmud Yeshu and Christian Jesus. However this fact is disputed, as Yeshu also can mean "may his name and memory be blotted out", probably used as a Damnatio memoriae to censor certain names. Talmud claims that Yeshu lived around the reign of Alexander Jannaeus who lived from 100 BC to 76 BC and since "Sanhedrin 107b" and "Sotah 47a" depicts Yeshu taking refuge in Egypt during 88-76 BC persecution of Pharisees, it can be assumed the Talmudic Yeshu was born before 88 BC and after 100 BC. "Chagigah 2:2" also depicts Yeshu in same position however claims that Yeshu became an apostate during the refuge in Egypt.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: This Talmudic Jewish claim that Yeshu was born before 88 BC and after 100 BC during life of Alexander Jannaeus of Hasmonean dynasty (conflicting with the account that he lived during era of Pontius Pilate, which is sourced from traditional Christian, Josephus and Tacitus) is also repeated in Jewish 11th century medieval tract Toledot Yeshu which implies that this belief was alive among at least a number of Jews during these times. Baring-Gould (page 71) notes that, although the Wagenseil version named the Queen as Helene, she is also expressly described as the widow of Alexander Jannaeus, who died BC 76, and whose widow was named Salome Alexandra and she died in BC 67. Yeshu in Toledot Yeshu is Jesus himself and there is no possibility that he is another person named Yeshu because the tract is formed as a respone to the claims of gospels. It was widely circulated in Europe and the Middle East in the medieval period as a Jewish response to Christian account. Yemenite edition of this tract, which is named "", repeats the same claim about the date when Yeshu lived.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: Despite the modern celebration of Christmas in December, neither the Gospel of Luke nor Gospel of Matthew mention a season for Jesus' birth. Scholarly arguments have been made regarding whether shepherds would have been grazing their flock during the winter, with some scholars challenging a winter birth for Jesus and some defending the idea by citing the mildness of winters in Judea and rabbinic rules regarding sheep near Bethlehem before February.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: Alexander Murray of "History Today" argues that the celebration of Christmas as the birth day of Jesus is based on a date of a pagan feast rather than historical analysis. Saturnalia, the Roman feast for Saturn, was associated with the winter solstice. But Saturnalia was held on 17 December of the Julian calendar and later expanded with festivities only up through 23 December. The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn and in the Roman Forum, as well as a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms. The Roman festival of Natalis Solis Invicti has also been suggested, since it was celebrated on 25 December and was associated with some prominent emperors. It is likely that such a Christian feast was chosen for Christ's marked contrast and triumph over paganism; indeed, new converts who attempted to introduce pagan elements into the Christian celebrations were sharply rebuked.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: Alternatively, 25 December may have been selected owing to its proximity to the winter solstice because of its symbolic theological significance. After the solstice, the days begin to lengthen with longer hours of sunlight, which Christians see as representing the Light of Christ entering the world. This symbolism applies equally to the celebration of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist on 24 June, near the summer solstice, based on John's remark about Jesus "He must increase; I must decrease." .


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: In the 1st and 2nd centuries, the Lord's Day (Sunday) was the earliest Christian celebration and included a number of theological themes. In the 2nd century, the Resurrection of Jesus became a separate feast (now called Easter) and in the same century Epiphany began to be celebrated in the Eastern Churches on 6 January. The festival of the Nativity which later turned into Christmas was a 4th-century feast in the Western Church notably in Rome and North Africa, although it is uncertain exactly where and when it was first celebrated.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: The earliest source stating 25 December as the date of birth of Jesus is likely a book by Hippolytus of Rome, written in the early 3rd century. He based his view on the assumption that the conception of Jesus took place at the Spring equinox which Hippolytus placed on 25 March, and then added nine months to calculate the date of birth. That date was then used for the Christmas celebration. 25 March would also roughly be the date of his crucifixion, which ancient Christians would have seen as confirming the date of his birth, since many people of that era held the belief that the great prophets were conceived into the afterlife on the same date they were conceived into the world. Ignacio L. Götz suggests that Jesus could have been born "in the late spring of the year because pregnancies began in the fall after the harvests were in and there was enough money for a wedding feast." John Chrysostom argued for a 25 December date in the late 4th century, basing his argument on the assumption that the offering of incense mentioned in refers to the offering of incense by a high priest on Yom Kippur (early October), and, as above, counting fifteen months forward. However, this was very likely a retrospective justification of a choice already made rather than a genuine attempt to derive the correct birth date. John Chrysostom also writes in his homily on the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ (Εἰς τὸ γενέθλιον τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἡµῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ) that the date of 25 December was well known from the beginning among Westerners.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: Lastly, 25 December might be a reference to the date of the Feast of Dedication, which occurs on 25 Kislev of the Jewish calendar. This would require that early Christians simply translated Kislev directly to December.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: Research done by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints generally places the birth of Jesus at some point in early to mid April, whereas September or late March have been suggested by theologian, biblical scholar and author Ian Paul.


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: In the Shia hadith compilation Tuhaf al-Uqul the sixth imam, Jafar As Sadiq says the following when approached about the birth of Christ during Christmas,


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: "They have lied. Rather, it was in the middle of June. The day and night become even in the middle of March".


title: Date of birth of Jesus

text: This statement of his does not literally mean it was on June 15th but it is in reference to a day near the Spring Equinox.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: The Birth of Venus ( ) is a painting by the Italian artist Sandro Botticelli, probably executed in the mid 1480s. It depicts the goddess Venus arriving at the shore after her birth, when she had emerged from the sea fully-grown (called Venus Anadyomene and often depicted in art). The painting is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: Although the two are not a pair, the painting is inevitably discussed with Botticelli's other very large mythological painting, the "Primavera", also in the Uffizi. They are among the most famous paintings in the world, and icons of the Italian Renaissance; of the two, the "Birth" is better known than the "Primavera". As depictions of subjects from classical mythology on a very large scale they were virtually unprecedented in Western art since classical antiquity, as was the size and prominence of a nude female figure in the "Birth". It used to be thought that they were both commissioned by the same member of the Medici family, but this is now uncertain.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: They have been endlessly analysed by art historians, with the main themes being: the emulation of ancient painters and the context of wedding celebrations (generally agreed), the influence of Renaissance Neo-Platonism (somewhat controversial), and the identity of the commissioners (not agreed). Most art historians agree, however, that the "Birth" does not require complex analysis to decode its meaning, in the way that the "Primavera" probably does. While there are subtleties in the painting, its main meaning is a straightforward, if individual, treatment of a traditional scene from Greek mythology, and its appeal is sensory and very accessible, hence its enormous popularity.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: In the centre the newly born goddess Venus stands nude in a giant scallop shell. The size of the shell is purely imaginary, and is also found in classical depictions of the subject. At the left the wind god Zephyr blows at her, with the wind shown by lines radiating from his mouth. He is in the air, and carries a young female, who is also blowing, but less forcefully. Both have wings. Vasari was probably correct in identifying her as "Aura", personification of a lighter breeze. Their joint efforts are blowing Venus towards the shore, and blowing the hair and clothes of the other figures to the right.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: At the right a female figure who may be floating slightly above the ground holds out a rich cloak or dress to cover Venus when she reaches the shore, as she is about to do. She is one of the three Horae or Hours, Greek minor goddesses of the seasons and of other divisions of time, and attendants of Venus. The floral decoration of her dress suggests she is the Hora of Spring.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: Alternative identifications for the two secondary female figures involve those also found in the "Primavera"; the nymph held by Zephyr may be Chloris, a flower nymph he married in some versions of her story, and the figure on land may be Flora. Flora is generally the Roman equivalent of the Greek Chloris; in the "Primavera" Chloris is transformed into the figure of Flora next to her, following Ovid's "Fasti", but it is hard to see that such a transformation is envisaged here. However, the roses blown along with the two flying figures would be appropriate for Chloris.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: The subject is not strictly the "Birth of Venus", a title given to the painting only in the nineteenth century (though given as the subject by Vasari), but the next scene in her story, where she arrives on land, blown by the wind. The land probably represents either Cythera or Cyprus, both Mediterranean islands regarded by the Greeks as territories of Venus.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: The painting is large, but slightly smaller than the "Primavera", and where that is a panel painting, this is on the cheaper support of canvas. Canvas was increasing in popularity, perhaps especially for secular paintings for country villas, which were decorated more simply, cheaply and cheerfully than those for city "palazzi", being designed for pleasure more than ostentatious entertainment.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: The painting is on two pieces of canvas, sewn together before starting, with a gesso ground tinted blue. There are differences to Botticelli's usual technique, working on panel supports, such as the lack of a green first layer under the flesh areas. There are a number of "pentimenti" revealed by modern scientific testing. The Hora originally had "low classical sandals", and the collar on the mantle she holds out is an afterthought. The hair of Venus and the flying couple was changed. There is heavy use of gold as a pigment for highlights, on hair, wings, textiles, the shell and the landscape. This was all apparently applied after the painting was framed. It was finished with a "cool gray varnish", probably using egg yolk.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: As in the "Primavera", the green pigment – used for the wings of Zephyr, Zephyr's companion, and the leaves of the orange trees on the land – has darkened considerably with exposure to light over time, somewhat distorting the intended balance of colours. Parts of some leaves at the top right corner, normally covered by the frame, have been less affected. The blues of the sea and sky have also lost their brightness.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: Although the pose of Venus is classical in some respects, and borrows the position of the hands from the Venus Pudica type in Greco-Roman sculptures (see section below), the overall treatment of the figure, standing off-centre with a curved body of long flowing lines, is in many respects from Gothic art. Kenneth Clark wrote: "Her differences from antique form are not physiological, but rhythmic and structural. Her whole body follows the curve of a Gothic ivory. It is entirely without that quality so much prized in classical art, known as aplomb; that is to say, the weight of the body is not distributed evenly either side of a central plumb line. ... She is not standing but floating. ... Her shoulders, for example, instead of forming a sort of architrave to her torso, as in the antique nude, run down into her arms in the same unbroken stream of movement as her floating hair."


title: The Birth of Venus

text: Venus' body is anatomically improbable, with elongated neck and torso. Her pose is impossible: although she stands in a classical "contrapposto" stance, her weight is shifted too far over the left leg for the pose to be held. The proportions and poses of the winds to the left do not quite make sense, and none of the figures cast shadows. The painting depicts the world of the imagination rather than being very concerned with realistic depiction.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: Ignoring the size and positioning of the wings and limbs of the flying pair on the left, which bother some other critics, Kenneth Clark calls them:


title: The Birth of Venus

text: ...perhaps the most beautiful example of ecstatic movement in the whole of painting. ... the suspension of our reason is achieved by the intricate rhythms of the drapery which sweep and flow irresistibly around the nude figures. Their bodies, by an endless intricacy of embrace, sustain the current of movement, which finally flickers down their legs and is dispersed like an electric charge.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: Botticelli's art was never fully committed to naturalism; in comparison to his contemporary Domenico Ghirlandaio, Botticelli seldom gave weight and volume to his figures and rarely used a deep perspectival space. Botticelli never painted landscape backgrounds with great detail or realism, but this is especially the case here. The laurel trees and the grass below them are green with gold highlights, most of the waves regular patterns, and the landscape seems out of scale with the figures. The clumps of bulrushes in the left foreground are out of place here, as they come from a freshwater species.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: It has long been suggested that Botticelli was commissioned to paint the work by the Medici family of Florence, perhaps by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici (1463–1503) a major patron of Botticelli, under the influence of his cousin Lorenzo de' Medici, "il Magnifico". This was first suggested by Herbert Horne in his monograph of 1908, the first major modern work on Botticelli, and long followed by most writers, but more recently has been widely doubted, though it is still accepted by some. Various interpretations of the painting rely on this origin for its meaning. Although relations were perhaps always rather tense between the "Magnifico" and his young cousins and wards, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and his brother Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, it may have been politic to commission a work that glorified the older Lorenzo, as some interpretations have it. There may be a deliberate ambiguity as to which Lorenzo was intended to be evoked. In later years hostility between the two branches of the family became overt.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: Horne believed that the painting was commissioned soon after the purchase in 1477 of the Villa di Castello, a country house outside Florence, by Lorenzo and Giovanni, to decorate their new house, which they were rebuilding. This was the year after their father died at the age of 46, leaving the young boys wards of their cousin Lorenzo il Magnifico, of the senior branch of the Medici family and "de facto" ruler of Florence. There is no record of the original commission, and the painting is first mentioned by Vasari, who saw it, together with the "Primavera", at Castello, some time before the first edition of his "Lives" in 1550, probably by 1530–40. In 1550 Vasari was himself painting in the villa, but he very possibly visited it before that. But in 1975 it emerged that, unlike the "Primavera", the "Birth" is not in the inventory, apparently complete, made in 1499 of the works of art belonging to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco's branch of the family. Ronald Lightbown concludes that it only came to be owned by the Medici after that. The inventory was only published in 1975, and made many previous assumptions invalid.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: Horne dated the work at some point after the purchase of the villa in 1477 and before Botticelli's departure for Rome to join the painting of the Sistine Chapel in 1481. Recent scholars prefer a date of around 1484–86 on grounds of the work's place in the development of Botticelli's style. The "Primavera" is now usually dated earlier, after Botticelli's return from Rome in 1482 and perhaps around the time of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco's wedding in July 1482, but by some still before Botticelli's departure.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: Whenever the two paintings were united at Castello, they have remained together ever since. They stayed in Castello until 1815, when they were transferred to the Uffizi. For some years until 1919 they were kept in the Galleria dell'Accademia, another government museum in Florence.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: Although there are ancient and modern texts that are relevant, no single text provides the precise imagery of the painting, which has led scholars to propose many sources and interpretations. Many art historians who specialize in the Italian Renaissance have found Neoplatonic interpretations, of which two different versions have been articulated by Edgar Wind and Ernst Gombrich, to be the key to understanding the painting. Botticelli represented the Neoplatonic idea of divine love in the form of a nude Venus.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: For Plato – and so for the members of the Florentine Platonic Academy – Venus had two aspects: she was an earthly goddess who


title: The Birth of Venus

text: aroused humans to physical love or she was a heavenly goddess who inspired intellectual love in them. Plato further argued that contemplation of physical beauty allowed the mind to better understand spiritual beauty. So, looking at Venus, the most beautiful of goddesses, might at first raise a physical response in viewers which then lifted their minds towards the godly. A Neoplatonic reading of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" suggests that 15th-century viewers would have looked at the painting and felt their minds lifted to the realm of divine love.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: The composition, with a central nude figure, and one to the side with an arm raised above the head of the first, and winged beings in attendance, would have reminded its Renaissance viewers of the traditional iconography of the Baptism of Christ, marking the start of his ministry on earth. In a similar way, the scene shows here marks the start of Venus's ministry of love, whether in a simple sense, or the expanded meaning of Renaissance Neoplatonism.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: More recently, questions have arisen about Neoplatonism as the dominant intellectual system of late 15th-century Florence, and scholars have indicated that there might be other ways to interpret Botticelli's mythological paintings. In particular, both "Primavera" and "Birth of Venus" have been seen as wedding paintings that suggest appropriate behaviors for brides and grooms.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: The laurel trees at right and laurel wreath worn by the Hora are punning references to the name "Lorenzo", though it is uncertain whether Lorenzo il Magnifico, the effective ruler of Florence, or his young cousin Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco is meant. In the same way the flowers in the air around Zephyr and on the textiles worn and carried by the Hora evoke the name of Florence.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: The closest precedent for the scene is generally agreed to be in one of the early ancient Greek Homeric Hymns, published in Florence in 1488 by the Greek refugee Demetrios Chalkokondyles:


title: The Birth of Venus

text: This poem was probably already known to Botticelli's Florentine contemporary, and Lorenzo di Medici's court poet, Angelo Poliziano. The iconography of "The Birth of Venus" is similar to a description of a relief of the event in Poliziano's poem the "Stanze per la giostra", commemorating a Medici joust in 1475, which may also have influenced Botticelli, although there are many differences. For example, Poliziano talks of multiple Horae and zephyrs. Older writers, following Horne, posited that "his patron Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco asked him to paint a subject illustrating the lines", and that remains a possibility, though one difficult to maintain so confidently today. Another poem by Politian speaks of Zephyr causing flowers to bloom, and spreading their scent over the land, which probably explains the roses he blows along with him in the painting.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: Having a large standing female nude as the central focus was unprecedented in post-classical Western painting, and certainly drew on the classical sculptures which were coming to light in this period, especially in Rome, where Botticelli had spent 1481–82 working on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. The pose of Botticelli's "Venus" follows the Venus Pudica ("Venus of Modesty") type from classical antiquity, where the hands are held to cover the breasts and groin; in classical art this is not associated with the new-born "Venus Anadyomene". What became a famous example of this type is the "Venus de' Medici", a marble sculpture that was in a Medici collection in Rome by 1559, which Botticelli may have had opportunity to study (the date it was found is unclear).


title: The Birth of Venus

text: The painter and the humanist scholars who probably advised him would have recalled that Pliny the Elder had mentioned a lost masterpiece of the celebrated ancient Greek painter, Apelles, representing "Venus Anadyomene" ("Venus Rising from the Sea"). According to Pliny, Alexander the Great offered his mistress, Campaspe, as the model for the nude Venus and later, realizing that Apelles had fallen in love with the girl, gave her to the artist in a gesture of extreme magnanimity. Pliny went on to note that Apelles' painting of Pankaspe as Venus was later "dedicated by Augustus in the shrine of his father Caesar." Pliny also stated that "the lower part of the painting was damaged, and it was impossible to find anyone who could restore it. ... This picture decayed from age and rottenness, and Nero ... substituted for it another painting by the hand of Dorotheus".


title: The Birth of Venus

text: Pliny also noted a second painting by Apelles of Venus "superior even to his earlier one," that had been begun by the artist but left unfinished. The Roman images in various media showing the new-born Venus in a giant shell may well be crude derivative versions of these paintings. Botticelli could not have seen the frescos unearthed later in Pompeii, but may well have seen small versions of the motif in terracotta or engraved gems. The "House of Venus" in Pompeii has a life-size fresco of Venus lying in the shell, also seen in other works; in most other images she stands with her hands on her hair, wringing the water from it, with or without a shell.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: The two-dimensionality of this painting may be a deliberate attempt to evoke the style of ancient Greek vase painting or frescos on the walls of Etruscan tombs, the only types of ancient painting known to Botticelli.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: Another interpretation of the "Birth of Venus" is provided by art historian and author, Charles R. Mack. This interpretation takes much that is generally agreed, but Mack goes on to explain the painting as an allegory extolling the virtues of Lorenzo de' Medici. This has not been adopted by Renaissance art historians in general, and it remains problematic, since it depends on the painting being commissioned by the Medici, yet the work is not documented in Medici hands until well into the following century.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: Mack sees the scene as inspired by both the Homeric Hymn and the ancient paintings. But something more than a rediscovered Homeric hymn was likely in the mind of the Medici family member who commissioned this painting from Botticelli. Once again, Botticelli, in his version of the Birth of Venus, might be seen as completing the task begun by his ancient predecessor Apelles, even surpassing him. Giving added support to this interpretation of Botticelli as a born-again Apelles is the fact that that very claim was voiced in 1488 by Ugolino Verino in a poem entitled "On Giving Praise to the History of Florence."


title: The Birth of Venus

text: While Botticelli might well have been celebrated as a revivified Apelles, his "Birth of Venus" also testified to the special nature of Florence's chief citizen, Lorenzo de' Medici. Although it now seems that the painting was executed for another member of the Medici family, it likely was intended to celebrate and flatter its head, Lorenzo de' Medici. Tradition associates the image of Venus in Botticelli's painting with the famous beauty Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci, of whom popular legend claims both Lorenzo and his younger brother, Giuliano, were great admirers. Simonetta was possibly born in the Ligurian seaside town of Portovenere ('the port of Venus'). Thus, in Botticelli's interpretation, Pankaspe (the ancient living prototype of Simonetta), the mistress of Alexander the Great (the Laurentian predecessor), becomes the lovely model for the lost "Venus" executed by the famous Greek painter Apelles (reborn through the recreative talents of Botticelli), which ended up in Rome, installed by Emperor Augustus in the temple dedicated to Florence's supposed founder Julius Caesar.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: In the case of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus", the suggested references to Lorenzo, supported by other internal indicators such as the stand of laurel bushes at the right, would have been just the sort of thing erudite Florentine humanists would have appreciated. Accordingly, by overt implication, Lorenzo becomes the new Alexander the Great with an implied link to both Augustus, the first Roman emperor, and even to Florence's legendary founder, Caesar himself. Lorenzo, furthermore, is not only magnificent but, as was Alexander in Pliny's story, also magnanimous, as well. Ultimately, these readings of the "Birth of Venus" flatter not only the Medici and Botticelli but all of Florence, home to the worthy successors to some of the greatest figures of antiquity, both in governance and in the arts.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: These essentially pagan readings of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" should not exclude a more purely Christian one, which may be derived from the Neoplatonic reading of the painting indicated above. Viewed from a religious standpoint, the nudity of Venus suggests that of Eve before the Fall as well as the pure love of Paradise. Once landed, the goddess of love will don the earthly garb of mortal sin, an act that will lead to the New Eve – the Madonna whose purity is represented by the nude Venus. Once draped in earthly garments she becomes a personification of the Christian Church which offers a spiritual transport back to the pure love of eternal salvation. In this case the scallop shell upon which this image of Venus/Eve/Madonna/Church stands may be seen in its traditionally symbolic pilgrimage context. Furthermore, the broad expanse of sea serves as a reminder of the Virgin Mary's title "stella maris", alluding both to the Madonna's name (Maria/maris) and to the heavenly body (Venus/stella). The sea brings forth Venus just as the Virgin gives birth to the ultimate symbol of love, Christ.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: Rather than choosing one of the many interpretations offered for Botticelli's depiction of the "Birth (Arrival?) of Venus" it might be better to view it from a variety of perspectives. This layered approach—mythological, political, religious—was intended.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: Botticelli, or more likely his workshop, repeated the figure of Venus in another painting of about 1490. This life-sized work depicts a similar figure and pose, partially clad in a light blouse, and contrasted against a plain dark background. It is in the Galleria Sabauda in Turin. There is another such workshop "Venus" in Berlin, and very likely others were destroyed in the "Bonfire of the Vanities". Examples seem to have been exported to France and Germany, probably influencing Lucas Cranach the Elder among others.


title: The Birth of Venus

text: More than a decade later, Botticelli adapted the figure of Venus for a nude personification of "Truth" in his "Calumny of Apelles". Here one hand is raised, pointing to heaven for justification, and the figure's gaze also looks upwards; the whole effect is very different.


title: Banana republic

text: In political science, the term banana republic describes a politically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the export of natural resources. In 1904, the American author O. Henry coined the term to describe Honduras and neighboring countries under economic exploitation by U.S. corporations, such as the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita Brands International). Typically, a banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling class plutocracy, composed of the business, political, and military elites. The ruling class controls the primary sector of the economy by way of the exploitation of labor; thus, the term "banana republic" is a pejorative descriptor for a servile oligarchy that abets and supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation.


title: Banana republic

text: A banana republic is a country with an economy of state capitalism, whereby the country is operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class. Such exploitation is enabled by collusion between the state and favored economic monopolies, in which the profit, derived from the private exploitation of public lands, is private property, while the debts incurred thereby are the financial responsibility of the public treasury. Such an imbalanced economy remains limited by the uneven economic development of town and country and usually reduces the national currency into devalued banknotes (paper money), rendering the country ineligible for international development credit.


title: Banana republic

text: In the 19th century, the American writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter, 1862–1910) coined the term "banana republic" to describe the fictional Republic of Anchuria in the book "Cabbages and Kings" (1904), a collection of thematically related short stories inspired by his experiences in Honduras, whose economy was heavily dependent on the export of bananas. He lived there for six months until January 1897, hiding in a hotel while he was wanted in the U.S. for embezzlement from a bank.


title: Banana republic

text: In the early 20th century, the United Fruit Company, a multinational American corporation, was instrumental in the creation of the banana republic phenomenon. Together with other American corporations, such as the Cuyamel Fruit Company, and leveraging the power of the United States government, the corporations created the political, economic, and social circumstances, that led to a coup of the locally elected democratic government that established banana republics in Central American countries such as Honduras and Guatemala.


title: Banana republic

text: The history of the banana republic began with the introduction of the banana fruit to the U.S. in 1870, by Lorenzo Dow Baker, captain of the schooner "Telegraph", who bought bananas in Jamaica and sold them in Boston at a 1,000% profit. The banana proved popular with Americans, as a nutritious tropical fruit that was less expensive than locally grown fruit in the U.S., such as apples; in 1913, 25 cents () bought a dozen bananas, but only two apples. In 1873, to produce food for their railroad workers, the American railroad tycoons Henry Meiggs and his nephew, Minor C. Keith, established banana plantations along the railroads they built in Costa Rica; recognizing the profitability of exporting bananas, they began exporting the fruit to the Southeastern U.S.


title: Banana republic

text: In the mid-1870s, to manage the new industrial-agriculture business enterprise in the countries of Central America, Keith founded the Tropical Trading and Transport Company: one-half of what would later become the United Fruit Company (UFC), later Chiquita Brands International, created in 1899 by merger with the Boston Fruit Company, and owned by Andrew Preston. By the 1930s, the international political and economic tensions created by the United Fruit Company enabled the corporation to control 80–90% of the banana business in the U.S.


title: Banana republic

text: By the late 19th century, three American multinational corporations (the United Fruit Company, the Standard Fruit Company, and the Cuyamel Fruit Company) dominated the cultivation, harvesting, and exportation of bananas, and controlled the road, rail, and port infrastructure of Honduras. In the northern coastal areas near the Caribbean Sea, the Honduran government ceded to the banana companies of a laid railroad, despite there being neither passenger nor freight railroad service to Tegucigalpa, the capital city. Among the Honduran people, the United Fruit Company was known as "El Pulpo" ("The Octopus" in English), because its influence pervaded Honduran society, controlled their country's transport infrastructure, and manipulated Honduran national politics with anti-labor violence.


title: Banana republic

text: In 1924, despite the UFC monopoly, the Vaccaro Brothers established the Standard Fruit Company (later the Dole Food Company) to export Honduran bananas to the U.S. port of New Orleans. The fruit-exporting corporations kept U.S. prices low by legalistic manipulation of Latin American national land use laws to cheaply buy large tracts of prime agricultural land for corporate banana plantations in the republics of the Caribbean Basin, the Central American isthmus, and tropical South America; the American fruit companies then employed the dispossessed Latin American natives as low-wage employees.


title: Banana republic

text: By the 1930s, the United Fruit Company owned of land in Central America and the Caribbean and was the single largest landowner in Guatemala. Such holdings gave it great power over the governments of small countries, one of the factors confirming the suitability of the phrase "banana republic".


title: Banana republic

text: In the early 20th century, the American businessman Sam Zemurray (founder of the Cuyamel Fruit Company) was instrumental to establishing the "banana republic" stereotype, when he entered the banana-export business by buying overripe bananas from the United Fruit Company to sell in New Orleans. In 1910, Zemurray bought in the Caribbean coast of Honduras for use by the Cuyamel Fruit Company. In 1911, Zemurray conspired with Manuel Bonilla, an ex-president of Honduras (1904–1907), and the American mercenary Gen. Lee Christmas, to overthrow the civil government of Honduras and install a military government friendly to foreign businesses.


title: Banana republic

text: To that end, the mercenary army of the Cuyamel Fruit Company, led by Gen. Christmas, effected a "coup d'état" against President Miguel R. Dávila (1907–1911) and installed General Manuel Bonilla (1912–1913). The U.S. ignored the deposition of the elected government of Honduras by a private army, justified by the U.S. State Department's misrepresenting President Dávila as too politically liberal and a poor businessman whose management had indebted Honduras to Great Britain, a geopolitically unacceptable circumstance in light of the Monroe Doctrine. The "coup d'état" was consequence of the Dávila government's having slighted the Cuyamel Fruit Company by colluding with the rival United Fruit Company to award them a monopoly contract for the Honduran banana, in exchange for the UFC's brokering of U.S. government loans to Honduras.


title: Banana republic

text: The political instability consequent to the "coup d'état" stalled the Honduran economy, and the unpayable external debt (c. US$4 billion) of the Republic of Honduras was excluded from access to international investment capital. That financial deficit perpetuated Honduran economic stagnation and perpetuated the image of Honduras as a banana republic. Such a historical, inherited foreign debt functionally undermined the Honduran government, which allowed foreign corporations to manage the country and become sole employers of the Honduran people, because the American fruit companies controlled the economic infrastructure (road, rail, and port, telegraph and telephone) they had built in Honduras.


title: Banana republic

text: The U.S. dollar went on to become the legal-tender currency of Honduras; the mercenary Gen. Lee Christmas became commander of the Honduran army, and later was appointed U.S. Consul to the Republic of Honduras. Nonetheless, 23 years later, after much corporate intrigue among the American businessmen, by means of a hostile takeover of agricultural business interests, Sam Zemurray assumed control of the rival United Fruit Company, in 1933.


title: Banana republic

text: Guatemala suffered the regional socio-economic legacy of a 'banana republic': inequitably distributed agricultural land and natural wealth, uneven economic development, and an economy dependent upon a few export crops—usually bananas, coffee, and sugar cane. The inequitable land distribution was an important cause of national poverty, and the concomitant sociopolitical discontent and insurrection. Almost 90% of the country's farms are too small to yield adequate subsistence harvests to the farmers, while 2% of the country's farms occupy 65% of the arable land, the property of the local oligarchy.


title: Banana republic

text: During the 1950s, the United Fruit Company sought to convince the governments of U.S. Presidents Harry Truman (1945–1953) and Dwight Eisenhower (1953–1961) that the popular, elected government of President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán of Guatemala was secretly pro-Soviet for having expropriated unused "fruit company lands" to landless peasants. In the Cold War (1945–1991) context of the proactive anti-communist politics exemplified by U. S. Senator Joseph McCarthy in the years 1947–1957, geo-political concerns about the security of the Western Hemisphere facilitated President Eisenhower's ordering and authorizing Operation Success, the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état by means of which the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency deposed the democratically elected government (1950–1954) of President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán and installed the pro-business government of Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas (1954–1957), which lasted for three years until his assassination by a presidential guard.


title: Banana republic

text: A mixed history of elected presidents and puppet-master military juntas were the governments of Guatemala in the course of the 36-year Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996). However, in 1986, at the 26-year mark, the Guatemalan people promulgated a new political constitution, and elected Vinicio Cerezo (1986–1991) president; then Jorge Serrano Elías (1991–1993).


title: Banana republic

text: Dole Food Company and Chiquita Brands International have shifted their focus of maintaining the environments on their plantations and making agriculture more efficient by breeding and growing more resilient versions of foods, such as Cavendish bananas. Both companies have been working to employ better farming practices, especially regarding the use of pesticides, as both companies have received heavy criticism for the amount and effects of the pesticides they have used on their products. Although the pesticides do not generally represent a safety concern for consumers abroad, they can be harmful to residents and the ecosystem in which they are used. Many banana farmers from Central America and South America were exposed to the pesticide Dibromochloropropane (DBCP) from the 1960s to 1980s, which can lead to birth defects, elevated risk of cancer, central nervous system damage, and most commonly, infertility.


title: Banana republic

text: Both Dole Food Company and Chiquita Brands International say that in the 21st century their laborers and farmers are being treated much better than they were during the height of the banana republics. It is clear that workers do have better conditions than they did during the 20th century; but these large corporations still suppress labor union movements through intimidation and harassment. Working conditions on banana plantations are dangerous, with very low wages and long hours in difficult conditions. The workers are not cared for and are often replaced as they have very little policy about job security in the case of sickness or injury. The plantation workers are also exposed to toxic pesticides on a daily basis, causing harm. Unionists who pressure these large corporations for better working conditions are commonly targeted and forced to leave their positions. The workers also receive no benefits, and as the plantations are in countries with lax safety regulations, there are minimal health policies.


title: Banana republic

text: Honduras and Guatemala have significant challenges with government corruption as a result of the dictators backed by the United States government, Effraín Ríos Montt (1982–1983) for Guatemala, and Roberto Suazo Córdova (1982–1986) for Honduras. The political instability caused by the dictators falling and being replaced with democratically elected presidents left the government with very little power, leading to corruption of the government and the rise of drug cartels. Today, the governments of Guatemala and Honduras still have very little power, as drug cartels control much of the land and are allied with corrupt officials and law enforcement officers. These drug cartels serve as the main transporters of cocaine and other drugs from Latin America to the United States. This has also caused extreme levels of violence, with Honduras having one of the highest homicide rates in the world: 38 per 100,000 people according to UNODC. Guatemala and Honduras also continue to have very low economic diversity, with their primary exports being clothing items and food items. 53% of all exports continue to be sent to the United States.


title: Banana republic

text: In the book "Canto General" (General Song, 1950), the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904–73) denounced foreign corporate political dominance of Latin American countries with the four-stanza poem "La United Fruit Co."; the second-stanza reading in part:


title: Banana republic

text: The novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (1967), by Gabriel García Márquez, depicts the imperialist capitalism of foreign fruit companies as voracious socio-economic exploitation of natural resources of the fictional South American town of Macondo and its people. Domestically, the corrupt national government of Macondo abets the business policies and labor practices of the foreign corporations, which brutally oppress the workers.


title: Banana republic

text: The Kingdom of Hawaii, now the US state of Hawaii, was once an independent country under political pressure from American sugar plantation owners, who in 1887 forced King Kalākaua to write a new constitution that benefited American businessmen at the expense of the working class. This constitution is known as the "Bayonet Constitution" due to its threat of force. In the case of Hawaii, the US was also interested in the strategic military significance of the islands, leasing Pearl Harbor and later acquiring Hawaii as a Territory.


title: Banana republic

text: In July 2018, a "Guardian" article on the resignations from the Cabinet of Boris Johnson and David Davis referred to a tweet from a Spanish correspondent, which described Britain as "officially a banana republic" when sunny weather and footballing success were combined with other attributes usually considered to be characteristic of a banana republic. The country has often been referred to as a "banana monarchy", a phrase which combines the concept of a banana republic with the United Kingdom's constitutional monarchy.


title: Banana republic

text: Countries that obtained independence from colonial powers in the 20th century have at times thereafter tended to share traits of banana republics due to influence of large private corporations in their politics; for example, Maldives (resort companies) and the Philippines (tobacco industry, U.S. government and corporations).


title: Banana republic

text: On 14 May 1986, then Australian Treasurer Paul Keating stated that Australia might become a banana republic. This has received a lot of commentary and criticism and is seen as part of a turning point in Australia's political and economic history.


title: Kh-47M2 Kinzhal

text: The Kh-47M2 Kinzhal (in Russian: Х-47М2 Кинжал, "dagger", NATO reporting name Killjoy) is a Russian nuclear-capable hypersonic aero-ballistic air-to-surface missile. It has a claimed range of more than , Mach 12 speed (2.5 mi/s), and an ability to perform evasive maneuvers at every stage of its flight. It can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads and can be launched from Tu-22M3 bombers or MiG-31K interceptors. It has been deployed at airbases in Russia's Southern Military District and Western Military District.


title: Kh-47M2 Kinzhal

text: The Kinzhal entered service in December 2017 and was one of the six new Russian strategic weapons unveiled by Russian President Vladimir Putin on 1 March 2018.


title: Kh-47M2 Kinzhal

text: The missile is designed to hit NATO warships posing a threat to strategic missile systems in European Russia and to destroy NATO missile defence systems, ballistic missile defense ships and land objects close to the Russian borders. It is allegedly designed to overcome any known or planned NATO air or missile defense systems including the MIM-104 Patriot, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense and Aegis Combat System. Rather than using the more recent hypersonic glide and scramjet missile designs, it uses the more classical ballistic missile technology at greater speeds.


title: Kh-47M2 Kinzhal

text: The overall design of the missile is shared with the 9K720 Iskander, with the guidance section modified for Kinzhal. It can reportedly hit both static and mobile targets such as aircraft carriers.


title: Kh-47M2 Kinzhal

text: Because it flies at hypersonic speeds within the atmosphere, the air pressure in front of it forms a plasma cloud as it moves, absorbing radio waves (Plasma stealth).


title: Kh-47M2 Kinzhal

text: The high speed of the Kinzhal gives it better target-penetration characteristics than lighter, slower cruise-missiles. With advanced maneuvering capabilities, high precision and hypersonic speed, some sources give it the name "carrier killer" due to its alleged ability to disable and possibly even sink a 100,000 ton supercarrier with a single strike. With a mass of and a speed of Mach 12 (including 500 kg warhead and the other parts of the missile), the Kinzhal has more than 16.9 gigajoules of kinetic energy, or the equivalent of  kg of TNT.


title: Kh-47M2 Kinzhal

text: Russian media claims the missile's range is when carried by the MiG-31K and when carried by the Tu-22M3.


title: Kh-47M2 Kinzhal

text: Some Western press media and specialists consulted have expressed reservations about the capabilities of the device.


title: Kh-47M2 Kinzhal

text: In May 2018, ten MiG-31Ks capable of using Kinzhal missiles were on experimental combat duty and ready to be deployed. By December 2018, aircraft armed with Kinzhal missiles had conducted 89 sorties over the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.


title: Kh-47M2 Kinzhal

text: By February 2019, crews of the MiG-31K Kinzhal missile carriers had performed more than 380 training sorties with the missile, of which at least 70 have used air-to-air refueling. The weapon made its public debut during the Aviadarts international contest in August 2019.


title: Kh-47M2 Kinzhal

text: According to TASS, the first launch of Kinzhal in the Arctic took place mid-November, 2019. The launch was reportedly carried out by a MiG-31K from Olenya air base. The missile hit a ground target at "Pemboy" proving ground, reaching a speed of Mach 10. In June 2021, a Kinzhal missile was launched by a MiG-31K from Khmeimim Air Base on a ground target in Syria. A separate aviation regiment was formed in 2021 which is armed with MiG-31K aircraft with the Kinzhal hypersonic missile.


title: Kh-47M2 Kinzhal

text: Rumours in early February 2022 suggested that several MiG-31 interceptors armed with Kinzhal missiles were dispatched from Soltsy Air Base, Novgorod Oblast, to Chernyakhovsk Naval Air Base in Russia's western Kaliningrad exclave. Russia's Aerospace Force launched Kinzhal missiles on 19 February 2022.


title: Kh-47M2 Kinzhal

text: During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military said that it used Kinzhal missiles to destroy an alleged underground weapons depot of the Ukrainian armed forces in Deliatyn on 18 March 2022 and a fuel depot in Konstantinovka the next day. U.S President Joe Biden said of its use "As you all know, it's a consequential weapon but with the same warhead on it as any other launched missile. It doesn't make that much difference except it's almost impossible to stop it."


title: Kh-47M2 Kinzhal

text: It was reportedly used again on 11 April. On 9 May, according to reports, Russian Tu-22 aircraft launched three Kinzhal-type missiles at targets in the port city of Odesa.


title: Kh-47M2 Kinzhal

text: Three MiG-31K fighter aircraft with Kinzhal hypersonic missiles have redeployed to the Chkalovsk airfield in the Kaliningrad Region 18 August 2022.


title: Kh-47M2 Kinzhal

text: According to unconfirmed reports, a Russian MiG-31 thought to be carrying a Kinzhal missile crashed on take-off from an air base in Belbek, Crimea on 1 October 2022. While the navigator managed to eject the pilot died.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Yom Kippur (; , , , ) is the holiest day in Judaism and Samaritanism. It occurs annually on the 10th of Tishrei, the first month of the Hebrew calendar. Primarily centered on atonement and repentance, the day's observances consist of full fasting and ascetic behavior accompanied by intensive prayer as well as sin confessions (traditionally inside of a synagogue). Alongside the related holiday of Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur is one of the two components of the "High Holy Days" of Judaism.


title: Yom Kippur

text: () means "day" in Hebrew and () is translated to "atonement". The common English translation of Yom Kippur is Day of Atonement; however, this translation lacks precision. The name Yom Kippur is based on the Torah verse, "...but on the 10th day of the seventh month it is the day of "kippurim" unto you..." The literal translation of "kippurim" is cleansing. Yom Kippur is a Jewish day to atone for misdeeds and become cleansed and purified from them.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Yom Kippur is "the tenth day of [the] seventh month" (Tishrei) and is also known as the "Sabbath of Sabbaths". Rosh Hashanah (referred to in the Torah as "Yom Teruah") is the first day of that month according to the Hebrew calendar. Yom Kippur completes the annual period known in Judaism as the High Holy Days or "Yamim Nora'im" ("Days of Awe") that commences with Rosh Hashanah. The ten days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur correspond to the last ten days of the 40-day period Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the second set of tablets.


title: Yom Kippur

text: According to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each person's fate for the coming year into a book, the Book of Life, on Rosh Hashanah, and waits until Yom Kippur to "seal" the verdict. During the Days of Awe, a Jew tries to amend their behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God ("bein adam leMakom") and against other human beings ("bein adam lechavero"). The evening and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt ("Vidui"). At the end of Yom Kippur, one hopes that they have been forgiven by God.


title: Yom Kippur

text: The Yom Kippur prayer service includes several unique aspects. One is the actual number of prayer services. Unlike a regular day, which has three prayer services ("Ma'ariv", the evening prayer; "Shacharit", the morning prayer; and "Mincha", the afternoon prayer), or a Shabbat or Yom Tov, which have four prayer services ("Ma'ariv"; "Shacharit"; "Mussaf", the additional prayer; and "Mincha"), Yom Kippur has five prayer services ("Ma'ariv"; "Shacharit"; "Mussaf"; "Mincha"; and "Ne'ilah", the closing prayer). The prayer services also include private and public confessions of sins ("Vidui") and a unique prayer dedicated to the special Yom Kippur "avodah" (service) of the Kohen Gadol (high priest) in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.


title: Yom Kippur

text: As one of the most culturally significant Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur is observed by many secular Jews who may not observe other holidays. Many secular Jews attend synagogue on Yom Kippur—for many secular Jews the High Holy Days are the only times of the year during which they attend synagogue—causing synagogue attendance to soar.


title: Yom Kippur

text: "Erev Yom Kippur" (lit. "eve [of] day [of] atonement") is the day preceding Yom Kippur, corresponding to the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei. This day is commemorated with additional morning prayers, asking others for forgiveness, giving charity, performing the kapparot ritual, an extended afternoon prayer service, and two festive meals.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Leviticus 16:29 mandates establishment of this holy day on the tenth day of the seventh month as the day of atonement for sins. It calls it the Sabbath of Sabbaths and a day upon which one must afflict one's soul.


title: Yom Kippur

text: A parallel has been drawn between these activities and the human condition according to the Biblical account of the expulsion from the garden of Eden. Refraining from these symbolically represents a return to a pristine state of re-attachment to the purity of Edenic existence, and symbolically therefore one avoids that which arose as a need only after the exile from Eden: The Eden account tells of God saying "thorns and thistles will grow in your way...the snake will raise its head (to bite you) and you will give your heel (to crush it)" and so in the new post-Edenic existence it became necessary to wear strong protective shoes, and so these are avoided on Yom Kippur. The Eden account also states that as opposed to the automatic food and drink in Eden, it will be necessary to work for it "by the sweat of your brow", and so food and drink are refrained from on Yom Kippur, as well as washing, and the use of cosmetics to remove sweat or its odor etc. Similarly for the description of the post-Edenic relationship between man and woman, and so on Yom Kippur marital relations are avoided.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Total abstention from food and drink as well as keeping the other traditions begins at sundown, and ends after nightfall the following day. One should add a few minutes to the beginning and end of the day, called "tosefet Yom Kippur", lit. "addition to Yom Kippur". Although the fast is required of all healthy men over 13 or women over 12, it is waived in the case of any life-threatening medical conditions.


title: Yom Kippur

text: By refraining from these activities, the body is uncomfortable but can still survive. The soul is considered to be the life force in a body. Therefore, by making one’s body uncomfortable, one’s soul is uncomfortable. By feeling pain one can feel how others feel when they are in pain. This is the purpose of the prohibitions.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Virtually all Jewish holidays involve meals, but since Yom Kippur involves fasting, Jewish law requires one to eat a large and festive meal on the afternoon before Yom Kippur, after the "Mincha" (afternoon) prayer. This meal is meant to make up for the inability to eat a large meal on the day of Yom Kippur instead, due to the prohibition from eating or drinking.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Wearing white clothing (or a kittel for Ashkenazi Jews), is traditional to symbolize one's purity on this day. Many Orthodox men immerse themselves in a "mikveh" on the day before Yom Kippur.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Before sunset on Yom Kippur eve, worshipers gather in the synagogue. The Ark is opened and in many communities some of the Sifrei Torah (Torah scrolls) are removed. Two people stand on each side of the Hazzan (in some communities holding the Torah Scrolls), and the three recite (in Hebrew):


title: Yom Kippur

text: The cantor then chants the Kol Nidre prayer (Aramaic: כל נדרי, English translation: "All vows"). It is recited in Aramaic, except in the Italian and Romaniote rites where it is recited in Hebrew ("Kol Nedarim", Hebrew: כל נדרים). Its name "Kol Nidre" is taken from the opening words, and translates "All vows":


title: Yom Kippur

text: All personal vows we are likely to make, all personal oaths and pledges we are likely to take between this Yom Kippur and the next Yom Kippur (in some versions: which we took between last Yom Kippur and this Yom Kippur), we publicly renounce. Let them all be relinquished and abandoned, null and void, neither firm nor established. Let our personal vows, pledges and oaths be considered neither vows nor pledges nor oaths.


title: Yom Kippur

text: The original texted of Kol Nidrei concludes: "as it says: 'May all the people of Israel be forgiven, including all the strangers who live in their midst, for all the people are in fault.'" In the Ashkenazic rite, the words 'as it says' were removed, so this verse became an independent recitation.


title: Yom Kippur

text: If Torah scrolls were removed they are then placed back into the Ark and the Ark is closed. In some communities there is a brief sermon at this point, and the Yom Kippur evening service begins.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Many married Ashkenazi Orthodox men wear a "kittel", a white robe-like garment for evening prayers on Yom Kippur, also used in Eastern European communities by men on their wedding day. They also wear a tallit (prayer shawl), which is typically worn only during morning services.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Prayer services begin with the Kol Nidre prayer, which according to some needs to be recited before sunset. Kol Nidre is a prayer that dates back to 9th century Israel. It is recited in a dramatic manner, before the open ark, with the Ashkenazic melody that dates back to the 16th century. Then the service continues with the evening prayers ("Ma'ariv" or "Arvit") and an extended Selichot service.


title: Yom Kippur

text: All of the prayer services of Yom Kippur include litanies and petitions of forgiveness called piyyutim and selichot. Notable piyyutim include HaAderet v'HaEmunah and Mareh Kohen. The morning prayers are recited, followed by Torah reading, followed by an added prayer ("Mussaf") as on all other holidays. This is followed by "Mincha" (the afternoon prayer) which includes a reading (Haftarah) of the entire Book of Jonah, which has as its theme the story of God's willingness to forgive those who repent.


title: Yom Kippur

text: The service concludes with the "Ne'ila" ("closing") prayer, which begins shortly before sunset, when the "gates of prayer" will be closed. Yom Kippur comes to an end with a recitation of "Shema Yisrael" and the blowing of the "shofar", which marks the conclusion of the fast.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Reform synagogues generally experience their largest attendance of the year on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah for worship services. The prayer philosophy of Reform, as described in the introduction of the movement's High Holy Day prayerbook, "Mishkan Hanefesh", is to reflect "varied theological approaches that enable a diverse congregation to share religious experience... with a commitment to Reform tradition, as well as [to] the larger Jewish tradition." A central feature of these Reform services is the rabbinic sermon. "For more than a century and a half in the Reform Movement," writes Rabbi Lance Sussman, "High Holiday sermons were among the most anticipated events in synagogue life, especially on the eve of Rosh Hashanah and Kol Nidre night."


title: Yom Kippur

text: The Talmud states, "Yom Kippur atones for those who repent and does not atone for those who do not repent". Repentance in Judaism is done through a process called Teshuva, which in its most basic form consists of regretting having committed the sin, resolving not to commit that sin in the future and to confess that sin before God. Confession in Judaism is called "Vidui" (Hebrew וידוי). There is also a commandment to repent on Yom Kippur. Accordingly, Yom Kippur is unique for the confessional, or "Vidui", that is part of the prayer services. In keeping with the requirement to repent on Yom Kippur, Jews recite the full "Vidui" a total of nine times: once during Mincha on Yom Kippur eve, and on Yom Kippur itself during Ma'ariv (two times), Shacharit (two times), Musaf (two times), and Mincha (two times); at Ne’eilah, only the short confessional is said. The first time in each service takes place during the personal recitation of the Amidah (standing, silent prayer), and the second time during the cantor's repetition of the Amidah (except during the preceding Mincha), in a public recitation.


title: Yom Kippur

text: The Yom Kippur confessional consists of two parts: a short confession beginning with the word "Ashamnu" (אשמנו, "we have sinned"), which is a series of words describing sin arranged according to the aleph-bet (Hebrew alphabetic order), and a long confession, beginning with the words "Al Cheyt" (על חטא, "for the sin"), which is a set of 22 double acrostics, also arranged according to the aleph-bet, enumerating a range of sins.


title: Yom Kippur

text: A recitation of the sacrificial service of the Temple in Jerusalem traditionally features prominently in both the liturgy and the religious thought of the holiday. Specifically, the "Avodah" ("service") in the Musaf prayer recounts in great detail the sacrificial ceremonies of the Yom Kippur Korbanot (sacrificial offerings) that are recited in the prayers but have not been performed for nearly 2,000 years, since the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans.


title: Yom Kippur

text: This traditional prominence is rooted in the Babylonian Talmud’s description of how to attain atonement following the destruction of the Temple. According to Talmud tractate Yoma, in the absence of a Temple, Jews are obligated to study the High Priest’s ritual on Yom Kippur, and this study helps achieve atonement for those who are unable to benefit from its actual performance. In Orthodox Judaism, accordingly, studying the Temple ritual on Yom Kippur represents a positive rabbinically ordained obligation which Jews seeking atonement are required to fulfill.


title: Yom Kippur

text: In Orthodox synagogues and many Conservative ones a detailed description of the Temple ritual is recited on the day. In most Orthodox and some Conservative synagogues, the entire congregation prostrates themselves at each point in the recitation where the Kohen Gadol (High Priest) would pronounce God’s holiest name.


title: Yom Kippur

text: The main section of the Avodah is a threefold recitation of the High Priest’s actions regarding expiation in the Holy of Holies. Performing the sacrificial acts and reciting Leviticus 16:30, ("Your upright children"). (These three times, plus in some congregations the "Aleinu" prayer during the Musaf Amidah on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, are the only times in Jewish services when Jews engage in prostration, with the exception of some Yemenite Jews and "talmedhei haRambam" (disciples of Maimonides) who may prostrate themselves on other occasions during the year. A variety of liturgical poems are added, including a poem recounting the radiance of the countenance of the Kohen Gadol after exiting the Holy of Holies, traditionally believed to emit palpable light in a manner echoing the Torah's account of the countenance of Moses after descending from Mount Sinai, as well as prayers for the speedy rebuilding of the Temple and the restoration of sacrificial worship. There are a variety of other customs, such as hand gestures to mime the sprinkling of blood (one sprinkling upwards and seven downwards per set of eight).


title: Yom Kippur

text: Orthodox liturgies include prayers lamenting the inability to perform the Temple service and petitioning for its restoration, which Conservative synagogues generally omit. In some Conservative synagogues, only the "Hazzan" (cantor) engages in full prostration. Some Conservative synagogues abridge the recitation of the Avodah service to varying degrees, and some omit it entirely. Reconstructionist services omit the entire service as inconsistent with modern sensibilities.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Yom Kippur falls each year on the 10th day of the Jewish month of Tishrei, which is 9 days after the first day of Rosh Hashanah. In terms of the Gregorian calendar, the earliest date on which Yom Kippur can fall is September 14, as happened most recently in 1899 and 2013. The latest Yom Kippur can occur relative to the Gregorian dates is on October 14, as happened in 1967 and will happen again in 2043. After 2089, the differences between the Hebrew calendar and the Gregorian calendar will result in Yom Kippur falling no earlier than September 15. Gregorian calendar dates for recent and upcoming Yom Kippur holidays are:


title: Yom Kippur

text: The Torah calls the day "Yom HaKippurim" (יוֹם הַכִּיפּוּרִים) and in it Leviticus 23:27 decrees a strict prohibition of work and affliction of the soul upon the tenth day of the seventh month, later known as Tishrei. The laws of Yom Kippur are mentioned in three passages in the Torah:


title: Yom Kippur

text: Traditionally, Yom Kippur is considered the date on which Moses received the second set of Ten Commandments. It occurred following the completion of the second 40 days of instructions from God. At this same time, the Israelites were granted atonement for the sin of the Golden Calf; hence, its designation as the Day of Atonement.


title: Yom Kippur

text: The following summary of the Temple service is based on the traditional Jewish religious account described in Mishnah tractate Yoma, appearing in contemporary traditional Jewish prayer books for Yom Kippur, and studied as part of a traditional Jewish Yom Kippur worship service.


title: Yom Kippur

text: While the Temple in Jerusalem was standing (from Biblical times through 70 CE), the Kohen Gadol (High Priest) was mandated by the Torah to perform a complex set of special services and sacrifices for Yom Kippur to attain Divine atonement, the word "kippur" meaning "atone" in Hebrew. These services were considered to be the most important parts of Yom Kippur because through them the Kohen Gadol made atonement for all Jews and the world. During the service, the Kohen Gadol entered the Holy of Holies in the center of the Temple, the only time of the year that anyone went inside. Doing so required special purification and preparation, including five immersions in a "mikveh" (ritual bath), and four changes of clothing.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Seven days prior to Yom Kippur, the Kohen Gadol was sequestered in the Palhedrin chamber in the Temple, where he reviewed (studied) the service with the sages familiar with the Temple, and was sprinkled with spring water containing ashes of the Red Heifer as purification. The Talmud (Tractate Yoma) also reports that he practiced the incense offering ritual in the Avitnas chamber.


title: Yom Kippur

text: On the day of Yom Kippur, the Kohen Gadol had to follow a precise order of services, sacrifices, and purifications:


title: Yom Kippur

text: The Kohen Gadol wore five sets of garments (three golden and two white linen), immersed in the "mikveh" five times, and washed his hands and feet ten times. Sacrifices included two (daily) lambs, one bull, two goats, and two rams, with accompanying "mincha" (meal) offerings, wine libations, and three incense offerings (the regular two daily and an additional one for Yom Kippur). The Kohen Gadol entered the Holy of Holies four times. The Tetragrammaton was pronounced three times, once for each confession.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Yom Kippur is a legal holiday in Israel. There are no radio or television broadcasts, airports are shut down, there is no public transportation, and all shops and businesses are closed.


title: Yom Kippur

text: In 2013, 73% of the Jewish people of Israel said that they were intending to fast on Yom Kippur. It is very common in Israel to wish "Tsom Kal" ([an] easy fast) or "Tsom Mo'il" ([a] benefiting fast) to everyone before Yom Kippur, even if one does not know whether they will fast or not.


title: Yom Kippur

text: It is considered impolite to eat in public on Yom Kippur or to sound music or to drive a motor vehicle. There is no legal prohibition on any of these, but in practice such actions are almost universally avoided in Israel during Yom Kippur, except for emergency services.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Over the last few decades, bicycle-riding and inline skating on the empty streets have become common among secular Israeli youths, especially on the eve of Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv


title: Yom Kippur

text: In 1973, an air raid siren was sounded on the afternoon of Yom Kippur and radio broadcasts were resumed to alert the public to the surprise attack on Israel by Egypt and Syria that launched the Yom Kippur War.


title: Yom Kippur

text: In baseball, Sandy Koufax, the Hall of Fame pitcher, decided not to pitch Game 1 of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur. Koufax garnered national attention for his decision, as an example of the conflict between social pressures and personal beliefs.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Hall of Fame first baseman Hank Greenberg attracted national attention in 1934, nearly three decades earlier, when he refused to play baseball on Yom Kippur, even though the Tigers were in the middle of a pennant race, and he was leading the league in runs batted in. The "Detroit Free Press" columnist and poet Edgar A. Guest wrote a poem titled "Speaking of Greenberg", which ended with the lines ""We shall miss him on the infield and shall miss him at the bat / But he's true to his religion—and I honor him for that."" When Greenberg arrived in synagogue on Yom Kippur, the service stopped suddenly, and the congregation gave an embarrassed Greenberg a standing ovation.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Shawn Green, similarly, made headlines in 2001 for sitting out a game for the first time in 415 games (then the longest streak among active players) on Yom Kippur, even though his team was in the middle of a playoff race. Other baseball players who have similarly sat out games on Yom Kippur include former Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees third baseman Kevin Youkilis, former Houston Astros catcher and former Los Angeles Angels manager Brad Ausmus, and outfielder Art Shamsky.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Gabe Carimi, the Consensus All-American left tackle in American football who won the 2010 Outland Trophy as the nation's top collegiate interior lineman, faced a conflict in his freshman year of college in 2007. That year Yom Kippur fell on a Saturday, and he fasted until an hour before his football game against Iowa started that night. Carimi said, "Religion is a part of me, and I don't want to just say I'm Jewish. I actually do make sacrifices that I know are hard choices." In 2004, Matt Bernstein, standout fullback at University of Wisconsin–Madison, fasted on Yom Kippur, then broke his fast on the sidelines before rushing for 123 yards in a game against Penn State.


title: Yom Kippur

text: In 2011, golfer Laetitia Beck declined a request to join the University of North Carolina Tar Heels Invitational competition, because it conflicted with Yom Kippur. Instead, she spent the day fasting and praying. She said: "My Judaism is very important to me, and ... on Yom Kippur, no matter what, I have to fast." Boris Gelfand, Israel's top chess player, played his game in the prestigious London Grand Prix Chess Tournament on 25 September 2012 (eve of Yom Kippur) earlier, to avoid playing on the holiday.


title: Yom Kippur

text: In 2013, the International Tennis Federation fined the Israel Tennis Association "more than $13,000 ... for the inconvenience" of having to reschedule a tennis match between the Israeli and Belgian teams that was originally scheduled on Yom Kippur. Dudi Sela, Israel's #1 player, quit his quarterfinal match in the third set of the 2017 Shenzhen Open so he could begin observing Yom Kippur by the time the sun set, forfeiting a possible $34,000 in prize money and 90 rankings points.


title: Yom Kippur

text: Since 2016 the United Nations has officially recognized Yom Kippur, stating that from then on no official meetings would take place on the day. In addition, the United Nations stated that, beginning in 2016, they would have nine official holidays and seven floating holidays of which each employee would be able to choose one. It stated that the floating holidays will be Yom Kippur, Day of Vesak, Diwali, Gurpurab, Orthodox Christmas, Orthodox Good Friday, and Presidents' Day. This was the first time the United Nations officially recognized any Jewish holiday.


title: Yom Kippur

text: According to textual scholars, the biblical regulations covering Yom Kippur are spliced together from multiple source texts, as indicated by the duplication of the confession over the bullock, and the incongruity in one verse stating that the high priest should not enter the Holy of Holies (with the inference that there are exceptions for certain explicitly identified festivals), and the next verse indicating that they can enter whenever they wish (as long as a specific ritual is carried out first). Although Rashi tried to find a harmonistic explanation for this incongruity, the Leviticus Rabbah maintains that it was indeed the case that the high priest could enter at any time if these rituals were carried out. Textual scholars argue that the ritual is composed from three sources, and a couple of redactional additions:


title: Yom Kippur

text: On the basis of their assumptions, these scholars believe that the original ceremony was simply the ritual purification of the sanctuary from any accidental ritual impurity, at the start of each new year, as seen in the Book of Ezekiel. Textual scholars date this original ceremony to before the priestly source, but after JE. According to the Book of Ezekiel, the sanctuary was to be cleansed by the sprinkling of bullock's blood, on the first day of the first and of the seventh months—near the start of the civil year and of the ecclesiastical year, respectively; although the masoretic text of the Book of Ezekiel has the second of these cleansings on the seventh of the first month, biblical scholars regard the Septuagint, which has the second cleaning as being the first of the seventh month, as being more accurate here. It appears that during the period that the Holiness Code and the Book of Ezekiel were written, the new year began on the tenth day of the seventh month, and thus liberal biblical scholars believe that by the time the Priestly Code was compiled, the date of the new year and of the day of atonement had swapped around.


title: All the Light We Cannot See

text: All the Light We Cannot See is a 2014 war novel that was written by American author Anthony Doerr. The novel is set during World War II and centers around the characters Marie-Laure Leblanc, a blind French girl who takes refuge in her uncle's house in Saint-Malo after Paris is invaded by Nazi Germany; and Werner Pfennig, a bright German boy who is accepted into a military school because of his skills in radio technology before being sent to the military. The novel is written in a poetic style, and almost all of the chapters alternate between Marie-Laure's story and Werner's story, both of which parallel each other. The narrative has a nonlinear structure, flashing between the Battle of Saint-Malo and the events leading up to it. The story has moral themes such as the dangers of possession and the nature of sacrifice, and portrays fascination with science and nature.


title: All the Light We Cannot See

text: Doerr's first inspiration came from a 2004 train ride, during which he watched a man become angry because his telephone call cut out. Doerr felt the man was unappreciative of the "miracle" of being able to communicate across long distances. He decided to set the novel in World War II with a focus on the Battle of Saint-Malo after a book trip to the town in 2005. Scribner published the novel on May 6, 2014, to commercial and critical success. "All the Light We Cannot See" was on "The New York Times" Best Seller list for over 200 weeks and ultimately sold over 15 million copies. Several publications considered it to be among the best books of 2014, and it won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. A television adaptation produced by Netflix and 21 Laps Entertainment was announced in 2019.


title: All the Light We Cannot See

text: Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a girl who lives in Paris with her father Daniel, the master locksmith at the Museum of Natural History. Marie-Laure went blind at the age of six in 1934, and Daniel aids Marie-Laure adapt to her blindness by creating a model of Paris for her to feel and training her to navigate it. Marie-Laure hears stories about a diamond known as the Sea of Flames that is hidden within the museum; the diamond is said to grant immortality at the cost of endless misfortune to those around the owner. The only way to end the curse is to return the stone to the ocean, its rightful owner.


title: All the Light We Cannot See

text: When Germany invades France in 1940, Marie-Laure and Daniel flee to the coastal town of Saint-Malo to take refuge with her great-uncle Etienne, a reclusive and shell-shocked veteran of the Great War who spends his time broadcasting old records of his dead brother across Europe. Unbeknown to Marie-Laure, the museum has entrusted her father with either the Sea of Flames diamond or one of three exact copies that were made to protect the original gem. Months later, while building a model town of Saint-Malo for Marie-Laure, Daniel is arrested and suspected of conspiracy. He is not heard from again, leaving Marie-Laure alone with Etienne and his longtime maid and housekeeper Madame Manec.


title: All the Light We Cannot See

text: Madame Manec participates in the French Resistance along with other local women. These activities have some success but Madame Manec becomes ill and dies. Marie-Laure and Etienne continue their efforts over the next few years, transmitting secret messages alongside piano recordings and important Morse code information. Eventually, while Marie-Laure is going home to deliver a routine Resistance message from the bakery, she is visited by Sergeant Major Reinhold von Rumpel, a Nazi gemologist who is searching for the Sea of Flames and has tracked the real one to Saint-Malo. Von Rumpel asks the frightened Marie-Laure if her father left her anything and leaves when she says "just a dumb model". Etienne takes over Marie-Laure's role of message deliverer, and she later opens the model of Etienne's house on the Saint-Malo model and finds the Sea of Flames. Etienne is eventually arrested on false charges of terrorism and sent to Fort National.


title: All the Light We Cannot See

text: In Germany, Werner Pfennig is an orphan in the coal-mining town of Zollverein. Werner is exceptionally bright and has a natural skill for repairing radios. He discovers this skill in 1934 at the age of eight after he finds a broken radio with his sister Jutta, fixes it, and uses it to hear science and music programs transmitted across Europe. In 1940, Werner's skill earns him a place at the National Political Institute of Education at Schulpforta, a draconian state boarding school teaching Nazi values. Jutta hates Nazi values and has been listening to French radio broadcasts relating horrifying stories about Germany's invasion, and is angered by Werner when he accepts a place at Schulpforta. Before leaving for Schulpforta, Werner promises Jutta he will return to Zollverein in two years to fly away with her on an airplane.