YIVO | Glossary

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yeshiva

(Heb., more properly yeshivah, from the root y-sh-b, “to sit”) The yeshiva in Eastern Europe was an institution that trained young men to study canonical texts and traditions, especially the Babylonian Talmud, the commentaries on it, and the legal decisions that depended on it. [See Yeshiva.]

Yishuv

(lit., “settlement”; more properly Ha-Yishuv ha-Yehudi be-Erets Yisra’el) Term used by Zionists at the end of the nineteenth century to designate Jewish settlement in Palestine. A distinction was made between the Old Yishuv and New Yishuv to designate pre- and post- 1882 Jewish populations.