Overview of Jewish History Trivia Quiz

Answer: King Saul

Saul was a farmer's son, who had gone to find his father's runaway donkeys. He met the prophet Samuel, who anointed him King of Israel. Over the years, Saul's reign was characterized by much bravery and successful military campaigns. However, as the story goes, he committed a grave sin by allowing his people to pillage their enemies, against the will of God. For this he was cursed, and later went mad with power.

In this madness he sought to kill the young David, who was his household 'squire' at the time, and who he thought was plotting to overthrow him. Saul eventually died in battle by falling on his own sword, after his son Jonathan was killed. King David wrote a song of lamentation for both these fallen men.

Answer: Judeans returning from Babylon

The First Temple was torn down by the Babylonians when they conquered Judea in 586 BC. All treasures within were taken to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar II. Decades later, when king Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon in 537 BC, he released the Judeans (Jews) from their exile and also returned much of the treasure to them. Resettlement in Judea had begun a short period of time before that, but the influx of Jews returning from Babylon prompted the rebuilding of the temple, which took nearly twenty years.

This second temple was destroyed by the Romans.

Answer: The Seleucid Empire

Seleucus was one of the top generals in Alexander's army. He received control over Babylonia, and his new empire later became one of the greatest powers, rivaling the budding Roman Empire. He took Judea from the Ptolemaic Empire around 300 BC, and his descendants held on to Judea for a considerable time (at least 100 years).

As Seleucid rule crumbled due to incompetent leadership, and as pressure mounted on Judeans to convert to Greek idolatry (often by force), Judean rebels waged a successful campaign to drive the Seleucids out of Judea.

They established a new royal line, and ruled over a sovereign nation for over a century, before being conquered by the Roman Empire. The victory over the Seleucids is still commemorated in the festival of "Hanukkah".

Answer: Poland

Several periods of the Roman Empire saw attempts by Romans to force a change of religion in Judea, by placing idols or statues within the Temple Mount, an act which defies the First and Second Commandments. Josephus Flavius, a Jewish scholar who later wrote history at the Roman court, recounts how this eventually led to a great rebellion against the Romans, which ended in the destruction of the Second Temple by Roman legions, and the massacre and expulsion of most of the population into other Roman territories.

While Jews continued to live in Judea, the majority of Jews were now in exile. While Poland later became one of the largest Jewish communities ever to exist, it did not become a center for Jewish population until more than a millennium later, when many Jews escaped religious persecution in the Holy Roman Empire.

Answer: The Khazars

Some academics claim that the Khazars were already themselves descended from Persian or Babylonian Jews, while others believe that the conversion was relatively spontaneous. In any case, there are several reports of this occurrence, and also reports that the Jews of Spain had at one point established contact with the Khazar Empire in order to entertain the idea of ending the Jewish Diaspora by re-congregating all Jewish communities there.

However, even if that story is true, the Khazar Empire was destroyed several years later, and the idea never came to pass.

Some scholars have sutdied the suggestion that much of the current-day Jewish Ashkenazi population (that is, Jews of East European descent) are in fact partially or even fully descendents of the Khazars.

However, there is no conclusive evidence to support or deny the claim. Still, the search for the capital of the Khazar Empire is still going strong, in the area of the Crimean Peninsula.

Answer: Spain, under Moorish rule in the 10th century

Jews in Western Europe had suffered considerably under the yoke of Visigoth kings in Spain. As Islam spread to the western parts of North Africa, the Jews saw their future with those Muslim nations which later became the Moors. The Jews assisted the Moors in their conquest of Spain, and as a result enjoyed one of the calmest periods in the history of the Diaspora.

Hispanic Jewish scholars wrote in Arabic, and produced some of the most important works of Jewish literature concerning philosophy and science.

Many Jews served as advisors to the Moorish kings, and many are still entombed in lavish coffins underneath the royal palaces preserved from that era. As the Christian kings took back Spain from the Moors, Jewish life in Spain once again became all but impossible.

Answer: 1492

The Inquisition was targeted not only at Jews, but also at Muslims, and especially at Christians who did not adhere to the specific religious beliefs condoned by the papacy. Jews had already gone through many persecutions and incidents of blood-libel, but the Inquisition was perhaps the most effective method at eradicating all Jewish and Muslim belief from the Iberian Peninsula.

The majority of Jews were either slain or forced to convert to Christianity, although many of the converts continued to practice their religion in secret.

They were called the "Marranos", the "damned", and part of the Inquisition's purpose was to locate, expose, and expunge them. However, many Jews chose either to commit suicide and avoid conversion, or leave Spain and resettle in other lands.

As Judaism had already been completely outlawed in England and France, most Jews chose to resettle in North Africa and Germany. In Germany however, persecution also became a problem, and many Jewish communities resettled far to the east, in Poland, Russia, and modern-day Ukraine.

Answer: Kaifeng

The common assumption today is that Jews first migrated to China from Babylonia, although actual records of Jewish settlers only go back to around the 10th century AD. The community enjoyed relative peace in Kaifeng, although it did not distinguish itself with any exceptional literary works or records of any major events. It is believed that this community continued to exist for almost a millennium, until it slowly became assimilated into local culture and disappeared. There are still several buildings in Kaifeng today that bear the markings of Jewish faith (such as the Star of David), and there are isolated incidents of Chinese folk rediscovering their Jewish heritage in recent decades.

Also, in the early 20th century, several Russian Jewish communities escaped the 1917 revolution to cities in Manchuria (especially to the city of Harbin), and some Jews also resettled in other cities after escaping from the Holocaust in Europe.

Answer: Farmers escaping persecution

Jewish settlers had come to Palestine to rejoin local Jewish communities almost constantly for the past two thousand years, but they came in very small numbers, and had gone through many exterminations, especially at the time of the Crusaders. When Czar Alexander II was assassinated in Russia in 1881, and the Jews blamed for plotting the assassination, roughly 3.5 million of them, mostly farmers and small-scale merchants, fled the country to seek shelter from persecution and brutal reprisals. The vast majority went to America and Eastern Europe, but a relatively small group of around 25,000-35,000 eventually made it to Palestine. Some settled in the mixed Arab and Jewish towns, but the more idealistic decided to work the land of their ancestors and create settlements in largely unpopulated areas. The first of these settlers established a small colony called Rishon Le'Zion ("First for Zion") south of modern-day Tel-Aviv, and with the help of the famous Baron de Rothschild erected a successful winery there.

Also, while scholars were very slow to admit this, some part of the First Aliyah was comprised of Yemeni Jews who had made the journey from the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula.

Answer: Judea

The largest concentration of Jewish populations at the time was (and continues to be) along the Coastal Plain, with the second largest being in Jerusalem. However, Jerusalem was to be given neither to the Jewish nor Arab states - it was to be declared an international zone, governed by the United Nations themselves. While the revisionist groups in Zionist politics were not at all pleased about having to give up the ancient heritage of Judea, the majority of the population rejoiced at the world's acceptance of their plight. However, this was short-lived, as the Arabs of Palestine and the neighbouring Arab states loathed the idea of giving up any part of the land to what they considered to be colonialist invaders, and began a campaign to disrupt any chance to create a Jewish state there. In 1948, just one day after the British mandate in Palestine ended, five of these Arab states declared war on Israel in an attempt to terminate it. The rest, as they say, is history.

Thanks for playing!