Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Sephardim səfärˈdəm [key], one of the two major geographic divisions of the Jewish people, consisting of those Jews whose forebears in the Middle Ages resided in the Iberian Peninsula, as distingu...

(Encyclopedia) New Hyde Park, village (1990 pop. 9,728), Nassau co., SE N.Y., on Long Island; inc. 1927. It is a residential community with some manufacturing and truck farms. Nearby is the uninc. town of North New ...

(Encyclopedia) Mulisch, Harry mo͞oˈlĭsh [key], 1927–2010, Dutch writer. In the 1960s Mulisch became a prominent member of Amsterdam's new left. He was extremely prolific, writing fiction, nonfiction, and poetry...

(Encyclopedia) Van Rensselaer, Kiliaen kēˈlēän văn rĕnˈsələr, rĕnˈsəlērˌ [key], c.1580–1644, Dutch merchant and patroon, b. Amsterdam. He was a wealthy diamond and pearl merchant and helped found (16...

(Encyclopedia) Israëls, Jozef yōˈzəf ēsˈräĕls [key], 1824–1911, Dutch genre painter. In Amsterdam he painted somber and moving scenes from the life of the Dutch fishermen and peasantry, for which he soon b...

(Encyclopedia) de Vries, Hugo hüˈgō də vrēs [key], 1848–1935, Dutch botanist. He opened a new approach to the study of evolution by using the experimental method to investigate the processes of evolution. His...

(Encyclopedia) Jogues, Isaac (Saint Isaac Jogues) ēzäkˈ zhôg [key], 1607–46, French Jesuit missionary and martyr in the New World; one of the Jesuit Martyrs of North America. He arrived in Quebec in 1636 and i...

(Encyclopedia) New England Confederation, union for “mutual safety and welfare” formed in 1643 by representatives of the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven. They met in Boston an...

(Encyclopedia) Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, self-sustaining public corporation established in 1921 by the states of New York and New Jersey to administer the activities of the New York–New Jersey por...

(Encyclopedia) New Testament, the distinctively Christian portion of the Bible, consisting of 27 books of varying lengths dating from the earliest Christian period. The seven epistles whose authorship by St. Paul is...