Sotah (Hebrew: סוטה, "wayward wife") refers to a woman suspected of adultery as described and prescribed in the Book of Numbers. Part of the Biblical ritual to determine if a wife suspected and accused of adultery, but not proven to have done so based on any reliable witnesses that obviates this ritual, is the so-called "ordeal of bitter water" to be applied in certain cases of suspected adultery.^[1]

Specifically, the Hebrew Bible requires that a woman^[2] suspected of adultery, be subjected to this ordeal if her husband becomes fiercely jealous (literally has the storm-wind of jealousy) about the alleged affair, and there are not enough witnesses able to confirm the woman's guilt or innocence.^[1]

The ritual is fairly unique in the Torah, and although some scholars think that it might be mentioned by a psalm,^[3][4] there is no other Biblical evidence for the ritual ever having been carried out, nor is its existence acknowledged elsewhere in the Bible.^[4]

According to the Mishnah, the ritual of Sotah was formally abolished in the middle of the first century (20 years before the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem).^[5]

Preparations[link]

The regulations require that the ordeal take place when the woman is brought to an Israelite priest,^[6] or when she is brought before God.^[7] The Talmud reports that, for the latter situation, in the time of the Second Temple, this equated with the Nikanor gate.^[8]

The woman is required by the Biblical passage to have loosened hair during the ritual;^[9] this is often taken to be a symbol of the woman's supposed shame,^[4] but according to Josephus, it was merely the standard behaviour for anyone accused of any crime, when they appeared before the Sanhedrin.^[10] The Mishnah, however, argues that the clothing on the woman's upper body was also stripped away, leaving her bare-breasted, which could only have the significance that she was treated as a harlot (note that at this point she had not yet even been found guilty).^[11]

The ordeal[link]

This trial consisted of the wife having to drink a specific potion,^[12] which was believed to cause "her belly [to] swell, and her thigh [to] fall away" if she was guilty, and to have no malign effect but to cause her to "conceive seed" if she were innocent.^[13] The text does not specify the amount of time needed for the potion to take effect; the Mishnah argues for a period of two or three years^[14] (despite pregnancies rarely taking more than 9 months), but 19th century scholars^[who?] suspect it was probably intended to have a fairly immediate effect.^[4]

The text specifies that the potion should be made from water and dust;^[15] in the masoretic text, the water used for the potion must be holy water, and the Targum interpret it as water from the Molten Sea, but the Septuagint instead requires running water.^[4] The passage argues that the curse (against adultery) was washed into the water;^[16] it is thought that this idea derives from a belief that the words of a curse exist in their own right.^[4]

The potion also had to be mixed in an earthenware vessel;^[15] this may have been because the potion was regarded as a taboo which could be spread by contact, and therefore also made the vessel taboo, necessitating its subsequent destruction (as do the biblical rules concerning taboo animals, for any earthenware vessels into which such animals fall^[17]).^[4]

The offering[link]

The husband was required to make a sacrifice to God, as part of the ritual, probably due to a general principle that no one should seek answers from God without giving something in return.^[4] This offering is required to be placed in the wife's hands,^[9] and is literally described as her offering for her;^[6] scholars think that it is the man's offering, in relation to the ordeal of his wife, and that her holding of it is merely symbolic of this.^[4]

The offering specified is one tenth of an ephah of barley meal, unaccompanied by oil or frankincense;^[6] this is the cheaper type of flour, unlike the flour specified for all other biblical sacrifices.^[4] The specification is now thought to a rare survival of an earlier period, in which there was no restriction on the types of flour which could be used for sacrifices,^[4] although the Mishnah argues that it was a reference to the bestial nature of adultery, coarse flour being the food of beasts.^[18]

Original form of ritual(s)[link]

The text appears to suggest^[4] first that the offering should occur before the ordeal,^[19] and then that it should occur after it.^[4][20]

Secular scholars claim that due of the awkwardness of the idea that the wife has to drink the potion twice, textual scholars argue that either the first drinking must be a later addition to the text, or that the whole account of the ordeal must be spliced together from two earlier descriptions.^[4]

Noting that there are two descriptions of the location for the ritual (in the presence of a priest,^[6] and before Yahweh,^[7]) and two occasions on which the punishment for the woman is mentioned,^[21] the division into two earlier documents, first suggested by Bernhard Stade^[22] is typically as follows:

• one account is the ordeal and sacrifice before God, in which the possible miscarriage/abortion results from drinking the potion^[23]
• the other is merely a condemnation by a priest, in which the women stands with hair loosened, her guilt is assumed, and divine intervention (due to the priest's involvement) will cause a miscarriage/abortion as punishment.^[23]

Origin and similar rituals elsewhere[link]

Secular Biblical scholars think that the ordeal is itself a fusion of two earlier rituals (pre-dating the original priestly text), one using water, and the other dust.^[4] The use of dust might be connected to necromancy.^[4] In other historic semitic cultures there are many instances in which holy water was regarded as taboo, and therefore that contact with it, or its consumption, was dangerous.^[24]

Historic Arabic culture similarly had an adultery ordeal, although in scientific terms, compared to the Israelite ritual it relied more on nausea, than on directly poisoning the woman. In this Arabic ritual, the woman simply took oaths at Mecca attesting to her innocence, and asking the divinity to cause her to have a miscarriage/abortion, should she be lying;^[25] but, on the way to Mecca, she would be forced to travel on a camel, between two bags of dung.^[25]

Ordeals involving the risk of harm, including potential injury resulting from the drinking of certain potions, were common in antiquity;^[4] in parts of Europe, their judicial use even lasted until the late Middle Ages.^[4] Such ordeals were once believed to result in a direct decision by a deity, about the guilt or innocence of the party/parties undertaking the ordeal;^[4] typically divine intervention was believed to prevent the innocent being harmed, or to ensure that the guilty were, although in the case of some - witch ducking for example - the innocent were more likely to come to harm.

False accusations[link]

If the woman was unharmed by the sotah drink, the rules regard her as innocent of the accusation. The Priestly Code states that the man shall be free from blame.^[20] This is not to be confused with the Deuteronomic Code, which pertains to when a man accuses his wife of pre-marital relations; when accusation is disproven, the husband is to be whipped and fined, and is no longer to have the right of divorcing the wife.^[26] There is more reason to fine and whip the man who accuses his wife of pre-marital relations than the husband of the sotah woman. The man who accuses his wife of pre-marital relations has no proof about his wife when he accuses her, whereas by a Sotah woman, the husband initially warned her not to seclude herself with a particular man, which she thereafter did. Therefore, whether she is innocent of the accusation of adultery or not, she still has caused reasonable suspicion in the eyes of her husband.

Later attitudes to the ordeal[link]

The death penalty (for all crimes) was abolished in 40 AD,^[27] meaning that confession to the crimes was no longer as dangerous. Thus, according to the Mishnah, it became the practice for women suspected of adultery to first be brought to the Sanhedrin, before being subjected to the ordeal.^[28] Repeated attempts would be made to persuade the women to confess, including multiple suggestions to her of possible mitigating factors; if she confessed, the ordeal was not required.^[28]

Regardless of whatever its original significance was, at the time the Talmud was compiled the ordeal was simply regarded as a method of pressuring the woman into a confession.^[28] Eventually, in 70 AD,^[29] under the leadership of Johanan ben Zakkai, the Sanhedrin abolished the ordeal completely,^[28] on the basis that the men of that era were not above the suspicion of wickedness themselves.^[29]

See also[link]

Wikisource has several texts available for Numbers 5: Wycliffe, American Standard, Tyndale, Jewish Publication Society 1917, World English

• Jewish views of marriage
• Trial by ordeal
• Women in Judaism
• Nocebo

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Daniel Friedmann: From the Trial of Adam and Eve to the Judgments of Solomon and Daniel

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register (it became The Times on 1 January 1788). The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times (founded in 1821) are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News International, itself wholly owned by the News Corporation group headed by Rupert Murdoch. The Times and The Sunday Times do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have only had common ownership since 1967.

The Times is the first newspaper to have borne that name, lending it to numerous other papers around the world, including The Times of India (1838), The Straits Times (1845), The New York Times (1851), The Irish Times (1859), the Los Angeles Times (1881), The Seattle Times (1891), The Daily Times (Malawi) (1900), The Canberra Times (1926), and The Times (Malta) (1935). For distinguishing purposes it is therefore sometimes referred to, particularly in North America, as the "London Times" or "The Times of London".^[2][3]

The Times is the originator of the ubiquitous Times Roman typeface, originally developed by Stanley Morison of The Times in collaboration with the Monotype Corporation for its legibility in low-tech printing. In November 2006 The Times began printing headlines in a new font, Times Modern. The Times was printed in broadsheet format for 219 years, but switched to compact size in 2004 in an attempt to appeal more to younger readers and commuters using public transport. The Sunday Times remains a broadsheet.

Though traditionally a moderate newspaper and sometimes a supporter of the Conservatives, it supported the Labour Party in the 2001 and 2005 general elections.^[4] In 2004, according to MORI, the voting intentions of its readership were 40% for the Conservative Party, 29% for the Liberal Democrats, and 26% for Labour.^[5] The Times had an average daily circulation of 394,102 in March 2012.^[1] An American edition has been published since 6 June 2006.^[2]

History[link]

Front page of The Times from December 4, 1788.

1785 to 1890[link]

The Times was founded by publisher John Walter on 1 January 1785 as The Daily Universal Register, with Walter in the role of editor. Walter changed the title after 940 editions on 1 January 1788 to The Times. In 1803, Walter handed ownership and editorship to his son of the same name. Walter senior had spent sixteen months in Newgate prison for libel printed in The Times, but his pioneering efforts to obtain Continental news, especially from France, helped build the paper's reputation among policy makers and financiers.

The Times used contributions from significant figures in the fields of politics, science, literature, and the arts to build its reputation. For much of its early life, the profits of The Times were very large and the competition minimal, so it could pay far better than its rivals for information or writers.

In 1809, John Stoddart was appointed general editor, replaced in 1817 by Thomas Barnes. Under Barnes and his successor in 1841, John Thadeus Delane, the influence of The Times rose to great heights, especially in politics and amongst the City of London. Peter Fraser and Edward Sterling were two noted journalists, and gained for The Times the pompous/satirical nickname 'The Thunderer' (from "We thundered out the other day an article on social and political reform.").The increased circulation and influence of the paper was based in part to its early adoption of the steam-driven rotary printing press. Distribution via steam trains to rapidly growing concentrations of urban populations helped ensure the profitability of the paper and its growing influence.^[6]

The Times was the first newspaper to send war correspondents to cover particular conflicts. W. H. Russell, the paper's correspondent with the army in the Crimean War, was immensely influential^[7] with his dispatches back to England.

In other events of the nineteenth century, The Times opposed the repeal of the Corn Laws^{[citation needed]} until the number of demonstrations convinced the editorial board otherwise, and only reluctantly supported aid to victims of the Irish Potato Famine. It enthusiastically supported the Great Reform Bill of 1832, which reduced corruption and increased the electorate from 400 000 people to 800 000 people (still a small minority of the population). During the American Civil War, The Times represented the view of the wealthy classes, favouring the secessionists, but it was not a supporter of slavery.

The third John Walter, the founder's grandson, succeeded his father in 1847. The paper continued as more or less independent, but from the 1850s The Times was beginning to suffer from the rise in competition from the penny press, notably The Daily Telegraph and The Morning Post.

During the 19th century, it was not infrequent for the Foreign Office to approach The Times and ask for continental intelligence, which was often superior to that conveyed by official sources.^[8]

1890 to 1981[link]

The Times faced financial extinction in 1890 under Arthur Fraser Walter, but it was rescued by an energetic editor, Charles Frederic Moberly Bell. During his tenure (1890–1911), The Times became associated with selling the Encyclopædia Britannica using aggressive American marketing methods introduced by Horace Everett Hooper and his advertising executive, Henry Haxton. Due to legal fights between the Britannica's two owners, Hooper and Walter Montgomery Jackson, The Times severed its connection in 1908 and was bought by pioneering newspaper magnate, Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe.

In editorials published on 29 and 31 July 1914, Wickham Steed, the Times's Chief Editor, argued that the British Empire should enter World War I.^[9] On 8 May 1920, also under the editorship of Steed, The Times in an editorial endorsed the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as a genuine document, and called Jews the world's greatest danger. In the leader entitled "The Jewish Peril, a Disturbing Pamphlet: Call for Inquiry", Steed wrote about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion:

What are these 'Protocols'? Are they authentic? If so, what malevolent assembly concocted these plans and gloated over their exposition? Are they forgery? If so, whence comes the uncanny note of prophecy, prophecy in part fulfilled, in part so far gone in the way of fulfillment?".^[10]

The following year, when Philip Graves, the Constantinople (modern Istanbul) correspondent of The Times, exposed The Protocols as a forgery, 'The Times retracted the editorial of the previous year.

In 1922, John Jacob Astor, son of the 1st Viscount Astor, bought The Times from the Northcliffe estate. The paper gained a measure of notoriety in the 1930s with its advocacy of German appeasement; then-editor Geoffrey Dawson was closely allied with those in the government who practised appeasement^{[citation needed]}, most notably Neville Chamberlain.

Kim Philby, a Soviet double agent, was a correspondent for the newspaper in Spain during the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s. Philby was admired for his courage in obtaining high-quality reporting from the front lines of the bloody conflict. He later joined MI6 during World War II, was promoted into senior positions after the war ended, then eventually defected to the Soviet Union in 1963.^[11]

Between 1941 and 1946, the left-wing British historian E.H. Carr was Assistant Editor. Carr was well known for the strongly pro-Soviet tone of his editorials.^[12] In December 1944, when fighting broke out in Athens between the Greek Communist ELAS and the British Army, Carr in a Times editorial sided with the Communists, leading Winston Churchill to condemn him and that leader in a speech to the House of Commons.^[13] As a result of Carr's editorial, The Times became popularly known during World War II as the threepenny Daily Worker (the price of the Daily Worker was one penny)^[14]

On 3 May 1966 it started printing news on the front page for the first time - previously the front page featured small advertisements, usually of interest to the moneyed classes in British society.^{[citation needed]} In 1967, members of the Astor family sold the paper to Canadian publishing magnate Roy Thomson, The Thomson Corporation merged it with The Sunday Times to form Times Newspapers Limited.

An industrial dispute prompted the management to shut the paper for nearly a year (1 December 1978 – 12 November 1979).

The Thomson Corporation management were struggling to run the business due to the 1979 Energy Crisis and union demands. Management were left with no choice but to save both titles by finding a buyer who was in a position to guarantee the survival of both titles, and also one who had the resources and was committed to funding the introduction of modern printing methods.

Several suitors appeared, including Robert Maxwell, Tiny Rowland and Lord Rothermere; however, only one buyer was in a position to meet the full Thomson remit, Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch.

1981 to present: Murdoch-era[link]

In 1981, The Times and The Sunday Times were bought from Thomson by Rupert Murdoch's News International.^[15] The acquisition followed three weeks of intensive bargaining with the unions by company negotiators, John Collier and Bill O'Neill.

After 14 years as editor, William Rees-Mogg resigned the post upon the completion of the change of ownership.^[16] Murdoch began to make his mark on the paper by appointing Harold Evans as his replacement.^[17] One of his most important changes was the introduction of new technology and efficiency measures. In March–May 1982, following agreement with print unions, the hot-metal Linotype printing process used to print The Times since the 19th century was phased out and replaced by computer input and photo-composition. This allowed print room staff at The Times and The Sunday Times to be reduced by half.^{[citation needed]} However, direct input of text by journalists ("single stroke" input) was still not achieved, and this was to remain an interim measure until the Wapping dispute of 1986, when The Times moved from New Printing House Square in Gray's Inn Road (near Fleet Street) to new offices in Wapping.^[18]

Robert Fisk,^[19] seven times British International Journalist of the Year,^[20] resigned as foreign correspondent in 1988 over what he saw as "political censorship" of his article on the shooting-down of Iran Air Flight 655 in July 1988. He wrote in detail about his reasons for resigning from the paper due to meddling with his stories, and the paper's pro-Israel stance.^[21]

In June 1990, The Times ceased its policy of using courtesy titles ("Mr", "Mrs", or "Miss" prefixes) for living persons before full names on first reference, but it continues to use them before surnames on subsequent references. The more formal style is now confined to the "Court and Social" page, though "Ms" is now acceptable in that section, as well as before surnames in news sections.

In November 2003, News International began producing the newspaper in both broadsheet and tabloid sizes. On 13 September 2004, the weekday broadsheet was withdrawn from sale in Northern Ireland. Since 1 November 2004, the paper has been printed solely in tabloid format.

The Conservative Party announced plans to launch litigation against The Times over an incident in which the newspaper claimed that Conservative election strategist Lynton Crosby had admitted that his party would not win the 2005 General Election. The Times later published a clarification, and the litigation was dropped.

On 6 June 2005, The Times redesigned its Letters page, dropping the practice of printing correspondents' full postal addresses. Published letters were long regarded as one of the paper's key constituents. Author/solicitor David Green of Castle Morris Pembrokeshire has had more letters published on the main letters page than any other known contributor – 158 by 31 January 2008. According to its leading article, "From Our Own Correspondents", removal of full postal addresses was in order to fit more letters onto the page.

In a 2007 meeting with the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications, which was investigating media ownership and the news, Murdoch stated that the law and the independent board prevented him from exercising editorial control.^[22]

In May 2008 printing of The Times switched from Wapping to new plants at Broxbourne on the outskirts of London, and Merseyside and Glasgow, enabling the paper to be produced with full colour on every page for the first time.

Some^[who?] allege that The Times' partisan opinion pieces also damage its status as 'paper of record,' particularly when attacking interests that go against those of its parent company – News International. In 2010 it published an opinion piece attacking the BBC for being 'one of a group of' signatories to a letter criticising BSkyB share options in October 2010.^[23]

In March 2012, it became the first British newspaper to formally endorse same-sex marriage.

Content[link]

Copies of The Times and supplements from December 2005

The Times features news for the first half of the paper with the leading articles on the second page, the Opinion/Comment section begins after the first news section with world news normally following this. The business pages begin on the centre spread, and are followed by The Register, containing obituaries, Court & Social section, and related material. The sport section is at the end of the main paper.

[edit] Times2

The Times's main supplement is the times2, featuring various lifestyle columns.^{[clarification needed]} It was discontinued on 1 March 2010 but reintroduced on 11 October 2010 after negative feedback. Its regular features include a puzzles section called Mind Games. Its previous incarnation began on 5 September 2005, before which it was called T2 and previously Times 2. Regular features include columns by a different columnist each weekday. There was a column by Marcus du Sautoy each Wednesday, for example. The back pages are devoted to puzzles and contain sudoku, "Killer Sudoku", "KenKen", word polygon puzzles, and a crossword simpler and more concise than the main "Times Crossword".

The supplement contains arts and lifestyle features, TV and radio listings and reviews.

[edit] The Game

The Game is included in the newspaper on Mondays, and details all the weekend's football activity (Premier League and Football League Championship, League One and League Two.) The Scottish edition of The Game also includes results and analysis from Scottish Premier League games.

Saturday supplements[link]

The Saturday edition of The Times contains a variety of supplements. These supplements were relaunched in January 2009 as: Sport, Weekend (including travel and lifestyle features), Saturday Review (arts, books, and ideas), The Times Magazine (columns on various topics), and Playlist (an entertainment listings guide).

Saturday Review is the first regular supplement published in broadsheet format since the paper switched to a compact size in 2004.

At the beginning of summer 2011 Saturday Review switched to the tabloid format

The Times Magazine features columns touching on various subjects such as celebrities, fashion and beauty, food and drink, homes and gardens or simply writers' anecdotes. Notable contributors include Giles Coren, Food and Drink Writer of the Year in 2005.

Online presence[link]

The Times and The Sunday Times have had an online presence since March 1999, originally at the-times.co.uk and sunday-times.co.uk, and later at timesonline.co.uk.^[24] There are now two websites: thetimes.co.uk is aimed at daily readers, and the thesundaytimes.co.uk site at providing weekly magazine-like content. There are also iPad and Android editions of both newspapers. Since July 2010, News International has required readers who do not subscribe to the print edition to pay £2 per week to read The Times and The Sunday Times online.^[25]

Visits to the websites have decreased by 87% since the paywall was introduced, from 21 million unique users per month to 2.7 million.^[26] In April 2009, the timesonline site had a readership of 750,000 readers per day.^[27] As of October 2011, there were around 111,000 subscribers to the Times' digital products ^[28]

Ownership[link]

John Walter, the founder of The Times

The Times has had the following eight owners since its foundation in 1785:

• 1785 to 1803 - John Walter;
• 1803 to 1847 - John Walter, 2nd;
• 1847 to 1894 - John Walter, 3rd;
• 1894 to 1908 - Arthur Fraser Walter;
• 1908 to 1922 - Lord Northcliffe;
• 1922 to 1966 - Astor family;
• 1966 to 1981 - Roy Thomson; and
• 1981 to present - News International (a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corporation, run by Rupert Murdoch).

Readership[link]

At the time of Harold Evans' appointment as editor in 1981, The Times had an average daily sale of 282,000 copies, in comparision to the 1.4 million daily sales of its traditional rival The Daily Telegraph.^[29] By November 2005 The Times sold an average of 691,283 copies per day, the second-highest of any British "quality" newspaper (after The Daily Telegraph, which had a circulation of 903,405 copies in the period), and the highest in terms of full-rate sales.^[30] By March 2012 The Times' average daily circulation had fallen to 394,102 copies, compared to The Daily Telegraph's 576,378, with the two retaining respectively the second-highest and highest circulations among British "quality" newspapers.^[1] In contrast The Sun, the highest-selling "tabloid" daily newspaper in the United Kingdom, sold an average of 2,614,725 copies in March 2012, and the Daily Mail, the highest-selling "middle market" British daily newspaper, sold an average of 1,952,524 copies in the period.^[1]

In a 2009 national readership survey The Times was found to have the highest number of ABC1 25–44 readers and the largest numbers of readers in London of any of the "quality" papers.^[31]

Typeface[link]

An example of the Times New Roman font

In 1908 The Times started using the Monotype Modern typeface.^[32]

The Times commissioned the serif typeface Times New Roman, created by Victor Lardent at the English branch of Monotype, in 1931.^[33] It was commissioned after Stanley Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically antiquated.^[34] The font was supervised by Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times. Morison used an older font named Plantin as the basis for his design, but made revisions for legibility and economy of space. Times New Roman made its debut in the 3 October 1932 issue of The Times newspaper.^[35] After one year, the design was released for commercial sale. The Times stayed with Times New Roman for 40 years, but new production techniques and the format change from broadsheet to tabloid in 2004 have caused the newspaper to switch font five times since 1972. However, all the new fonts have been variants of the original New Roman font:

• Times Europa was designed by Walter Tracy in 1972 for The Times, as a sturdier alternative to the Times font family, designed for the demands of faster printing presses and cheaper paper. The typeface features more open counter spaces.
• Times Roman replaced Times Europa on 30 August 1982.^[36]
• Times Millennium was made in 1991,^[36] drawn by Gunnlaugur Briem on the instructions of Aurobind Patel, composing manager of News International.
• Times Classic first appeared in 2001.^[37] Designed as an economical face by the British type team of Dave Farey and Richard Dawson, it took advantage of the new PC-based publishing system at the newspaper, while obviating the production shortcomings of its predecessor Times Millennium. The new typeface included 120 letters per font. Initially the family comprised ten fonts, but a condensed version was added in 2004.
• Times Modern was unveiled on 20 November 2006, as the successor of Times Classic.^[36] Designed for improving legibility in smaller font sizes, it uses 45-degree angled bracket serifs. The font was published by Elsner + Flake as EF Times Modern; it was designed by Research Studios, led by Ben Preston (deputy editor of The Times) and designer Neville Brody.^[38]

Political allegiance[link]

The Times had declared its support for Clement Attlee's Labour at the 1945 general election; the party went on to win the election by a landslide over Winston Churchill's Conservative government. However, the newspaper reverted to the Tories for the next election five years later. It supported the Conservatives for the subsequent three elections, followed by support for both the Conservatives and the Liberal Party for the next five elections, expressly supporting a Con-Lib coalition in 1974. The paper then backed the Conservatives solidly until 2001.

For the 2001 general election The Times declared its support for Tony Blair's Labour government, which was re-elected by a landslide. It supported Labour again in 2005, when Labour achieved a third successive win, though with a reduced majority.^[39] For the 2010 general election, however, the newspaper declared its support for the Tories once again; the election ended in the Tories taking the most votes and seats but having to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in order to form a government as they had failed to gain an overall majority.^[40]

This makes it the most varied newspaper in terms of political support in British history.^[41]

Sponsorships[link]

The Times, along with the British Film Institute, sponsors the "The Times" bfi London Film Festival.

The Times sponsors the Cheltenham Literature Festival and the Asia House Festival of Asian Literature at Asia House, London.

Notable people[link]

Editors[link]

Notable columnists and journalists[link]

Related publications[link]

[edit] Times Literary Supplement

The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) is a separately-paid-for weekly literature and society magazine.

[edit] The Times Science Review

Between 1951 and 1966 The Times published a separately-paid-for quarterly science review, The Times Science Review. Remarkably, in 1953 both the newspaper and its science supplement failed to report on the discovery of the structure of DNA in Cambridge, which was reported on by both the News Chronicle and The New York Times.

The Times started a new (but free) monthly science magazine, Eureka, in October 2009.

Times Atlases[link]

(Times Books Group Ltd)

• The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, 2007 ISBN 978-0-00-780150-3

In fiction[link]

• In the dystopian future world of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Times has been transformed into the organ of the totalitarian ruling party, its editorials—of which several are quoted in the book—reflecting Big Brother's pronouncements.
• Rex Stout's fictional detective Nero Wolfe is described as fond of solving the London Times' crossword puzzle at his New York home, in preference to those of American papers.
• In the James Bond series by Ian Fleming, James Bond, reads The Times. As described by Fleming in From Russia, with Love: "The Times was the only paper that Bond ever read."

See also[link]

Journalism portal

• List of newspapers by date

[edit] References

Further reading[link]

• Evans‏, Harold (1983). Good Times, Bad Times. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-78295-9  - includes sections of black-and-white photographic plates, plus a few charts and diagrams in text pages.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The Times

Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Times

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Times

• Official website (Mobile)
• The Sunday Times site
• Times World Atlases official website including a History and Heritage section detailing landmark Times atlases
• Archive from 1785 to 2006 – full text and original layout, searchable (not free of charge, registration required)
• Neil, Andrew; Griffiths, Ian; Fitzpatrick, Barry (15 January 2006). "Three views of the industrial dispute twenty years on". The Observer (UK). http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1686500,00.html. 
• The Times editor Robert Thomson lecture online: From the editorial desk of The Times, RMIT School of Applied Communication Public Lecture series
• Anthony Trollope's satire on the mid-nineteenth century Times
• Journalism Now: The Times Winchester University Journalism History project on the Times in the nineteenth century

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Jews
Hebrew: יהודים‎ (Yehudim)

Total population
13,428,300 [1]
Regions with significant populations
Israel 5,703,700 [1]
United States 5,275,000 [1]  France 483,500 [1]  Canada 375,000 [1]  United Kingdom 292,000 [1]  Russia 205,000 [1]  Argentina 182,300 [1]  Germany 119,000 [1]  Australia 107,500 [1]  Brazil 95,600 [1]  Ukraine 71,500 [1]  South Africa 70,800 [1]  Hungary 48,600 [1]  Mexico 39,400 [1]  Belgium 30,300 [1]  Netherlands 30,000 [1]  Italy 28,400 [1]  Chile 20,500 [1]
Languages
Predominant spoken languages: Hebrew · English · Russian · the vernacular languages of other countries in the diaspora Historical languages: Yiddish · Ladino · Judeo-Arabic · others Sacred languages: Biblical Hebrew · Aramaic
Religion
Judaism

Part of a series on
Jews and Judaism
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Religion God in Judaism Names Principles of faith Mitzvot 613 Halakha Shabbat Holidays Prayer Tzedakah Land of Israel Brit Bar and Bat Mitzvah Marriage Bereavement Philosophy Ethics Kabbalah Customs Synagogue Rabbi
Texts Tanakh Torah Nevi'im Ketuvim Targum Talmud Mishnah Gemara Rabbinic Midrash Tosefta Mishneh Torah Tur Shulchan Aruch Zohar
Communities Ashkenazi Sephardi Mizrahi Bukharan Kurdish Mountain Romaniotes Related groups: Lemba Khazars Karaim Krymchaks Samaritans Crypto-Jews Mosaic Arabs
Population Land of Israel Israeli Jews Palestinian Jews Europe Russia Poland Germany Netherlands Austria Hungary Romania United Kingdom France Portugal Spain Italy Greece Bulgaria Asia Iraq Yemen Syria Lebanon Iran Turkey Georgia India Pakistan China Africa Morocco Algeria Tunisia Libya Egypt Ethiopia South Africa North America United States Canada Latin America Argentina Brazil Mexico Oceania Australia New Zealand Judaism by country Lists of Jews Rabbis Historical population comparisons
Denominations Alternative Conservative Humanistic Karaite Liberal Orthodox Haymanot Reconstructionist Reform Renewal Traditional
Culture Minyan Wedding Niddah Pidyon haben Music Cuisine Hiloni Shidduch Zeved habat Conversion to Judaism
Languages Hebrew Biblical Yiddish Juhuri Judæo-Iranian Ladino Judeo-Aramaic Judeo-Arabic
History Timeline Leaders Ancient Kingdom of Judah Temple in Jerusalem Babylonian captivity Yehud Medinata Jerusalem in Judaism Timeline Hasmonean dynasty Sanhedrin Schisms Pharisees Jewish–Roman wars Christianity and Judaism Islamic–Jewish relations Diaspora Middle Ages Sabbateans Hasidism Haskalah Emancipation The Holocaust Aliyah Israel history Arab–Israeli conflict Land of Israel Baal teshuva Persecution Antisemitism history
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v t e

The Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים‎‎ ISO 259-3 Yhudim Israeli pronunciation [jehuˈdim]), also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and an ethnoreligious group, originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation.^[2][3][4] Converts to Judaism, whose status as Jews within the Jewish ethnos is equal to those born into it, have been absorbed into the Jewish people throughout the millennia.

In Jewish tradition, Jewish ancestry is traced to the Biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the second millennium BCE. The modern State of Israel defines itself as a Jewish state in its Basic Laws, and Israel's Law of Return states: "Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh."^[5] Israel is the only country where Jews are a majority of the population. Jews achieved political autonomy twice before in ancient history. The first of these periods lasted from 1350^[6] to 586 BCE, and encompassed the periods of the Judges, the United Monarchy, and the Divided Monarchy of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, ending with the destruction of the First Temple. The second was the period of the Hasmonean Kingdom spanning from 140 to 37 BCE. Since the destruction of the First Temple, most Jews have lived in diaspora.^[7] A minority in every country in which they live (except Israel), they have frequently experienced persecution throughout history, resulting in a population that has fluctuated both in numbers and distribution over the centuries.

As of 2010^[update], the world Jewish population was estimated at 13.4 million by the North American Jewish Data Bank,^[1] or roughly 0.2% of the total world population. According to this report, about 42.5% of all Jews reside in Israel (5.7 million), and 39.3% in the United States (5.3 million), with most of the remainder living in Europe (1.5 million) and Canada (0.4 million).^[1] These numbers include all those who consider themselves Jews, whether or not they are affiliated with a Jewish organization. The total world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure. In addition to issues with census methodology, there are halakhic disputes regarding who is a Jew and secular, political, and ancestral identification factors that may affect the figure considerably.^[8]