Philosophy

I. Up to the Founding of the State of Israel Zionism  is the political movement which, from the late 19th century onward, aimed to enable the Jews to return to “Zion” (Mount Zion in Jerusalem being the symbol of Palestine or the Land of Israel) with a view to establishing their own state. For many centuries, the Jews dispersed throughout the entire world expressed their longing to return to the Land of Israel in the form of prayers, poems, or philosophical tractates. However, such hopes were linked to messianic expectations (Messiah: III), as for instance in the annually recited words “Next year in Jerusalem.” Following this conception, the Jews would only be allowed to return to their land after the coming of the Messiah. From the mid-19th century onward, this “longing to return” began to assume political forms that were particularly motivated by the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. M. Hess’s book  Rome and Jerusalem  (1862) cited the example of the Italian struggl...

The classical medical science of India is known as āyurveda , which is a Sanskrit word that means “knowledge ( veda ) for long life ( āyus ).” As a recognized Indian knowledge system,  āyurveda  started to take shape in the early centuries before the Common Era. At this time medical theories and practices were systematized and recorded in the Sanskrit language as formally arranged collections of medical knowledge called Saṃhitās (also occasionally called Tantras, loosely translated as “scientific works”). In many ways the early medical Saṃhitās were like our modern day encyclopedia insofar as they exhaustively strung together material on diverse issues pertaining to human life. A number of the Sanskrit medical sources from the classical period (spanning roughly from the 2nd century BCE to the 7th century CE) have survived and are available today. Textual evidence suggests that several more medical works were produced in the classical era but have been lost. For example, the ...