Jewry

From Middle English Jewery, from Old French juerie. By surface analysis, Jew +‎ -ry.

• IPA^(key): /ˈd͡ʒuːɹi/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uːɹi

Jewry (countable and uncountable, plural Jewries)

1. Jewish people considered collectively.

   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.
   • 1973, Eisig Silberschlag, “Notes”, in From Renaissance to Renaissance: Hebrew Literature from 1492-1970‎, New York: Ktav Publishing, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 389:

     The Nazis who murdered Katzenelson also burned the entire Jewry of Radoshkowitz—Mane’s birthplace and burialplace in the vicinity of Vilna.

3. (obsolete) Judaism.
4. (obsolete) The land of the Jews; Judea.
   • 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 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
• Klal Yisrael

• Jew
• ghetto
• Judaism

Jewry

1. Alternative form of Jewery