Jewry

From Middle English Jewery, from Old French juerie. Synchronically analyzable as Jew +‎ -ry.

• IPA^(key): /ˈd͡ʒuːɹi/

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• Rhymes: -uːɹi

Jewry (countable and uncountable, plural Jewries)

1. Jewish people considered collectively. [from 14th c.]

   Hitler attempted to murder all of European Jewry.

   • 1941, Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism‎, 3rd revised edition, published 1995, page 1:

     Darkly it [the Kabbalah] stood in their [Samuel David Luzzatto, Moritz Steinschneide, etc.] path, the ally of forces and tendencies in whose rejection pride was taken by a Jewry which, in Steinschneider’s words, regarded it as its chief task to make a decent exit from the world.

   • 1989, Geoffrey Alderman, London Jewry and London Politics, 1889–1986:

   • 2019 July 17, Talia Lavin, “When Non-Jews Wield Anti-Semitism as Political Shield”, in GQ‎:

     Jews and Israel are not synonymous; nor is support for Palestine synonymous with anti-Semitism; nor is questioning the orthodoxy of the Republican party, which the majority of us do with relish, an insult to Jewry.

2. (historical) The quarter of a town or city inhabited either partially or exclusively by Jews; historically, its main buildings were the synagogue, the ritual bath or mikve, the kosher-oriented butchery and bakery, etc. [from 17th c.]
3. (obsolete) Judaism. [16th c.]
4. (obsolete) The land of the Jews; Judea. [16th–17th c.]
   • 1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible), [Worms, Germany: Peter Schöffer], →OCLC, Mark ]:

     And all the londe off iewry, and they of Jerusalem went out unto hym, and were all baptised of hym in the ryver Jordan [...].

   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 27, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:

     Josephus reporteth, that whilst the Romane warres continued in Jurie, passing by a place where certain Jewes had been crucified three dayes before, he knew thre of his friends amongst them […].

   • 1833, “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen”, in W. B. Sandys, editor, Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern, page 102:

     In Bethlehem, in Jury / This blessed babe was born

• Jewdom

• Jew
• ghetto
• Judaism

Jewry

1. Alternative form of Jewery