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Yamhad Dynasty
Template:Royal house The Yamhad dynasty was an ancient Amorite royal family founded in c. 1810 BC by Sumu-Epuh of Yamhad who had his capital in the city of Aleppo. Started as a local dynasty, the family expanded its influence through the actions of its energetic ruler Yarim-Lim I who turned it into the most influential family in the Levant through both diplomatic and military tools. At its height the dynasty controlled most of northern Syria and the modern Turkish province of Hatay with a cadet branch ruling in the city of Alalakh (Land of Mukish). The dynasty was ousted during a short Hittite occupation of Aleppo in the beginning of the 16th century BC but was restored and expanded the kingdom again before being driven out of Aleppo by the Mitannians in c. 1524. Idrimi a member of the dynasty was able to conquer Alalakh leaving his descendents to rule until the last of them was dethroned by the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I in c. 1344 BC.
  • 987
  • 24 Oct 2022
Topic Review
World Jewish Congress Lawsuit Against Swiss Banks
The World Jewish Congress lawsuit against Swiss banks was launched in 1995 to retrieve deposits made into Swiss banks by victims of Nazi persecution during and prior to World War II. Initiated as WJC negotiations with both the Government of Switzerland and its banks over burdensome proof-of-ownership requirements for accounts, strong support from United States politicians and leaked documents from a bank guard pressured a settlement in 1998 in a U.S. court for multiple classes of people affected by government and banking practices. As of 2015, US$1.28 billion has been disbursed for 457,100 claimants.
  • 798
  • 08 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Workplace Relationships
Workplace relationships are unique interpersonal relationships with important implications for the individuals in those relationships, and the organizations in which the relationships exist and develop. Workplace relationships directly affect a worker's ability and drive to succeed. These connections are multifaceted, can exist in and out of the organization, and be both positive and negative. One such detriment lies in the nonexistence of workplace relationships, which can lead to feelings of loneliness. Workplace relationships are not limited to friendships, but also include superior-subordinate, romantic, and family relationships.
  • 572
  • 23 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Woodcock–Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities
The Woodcock–Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities is a set of intelligence tests first developed in 1977 by Richard Woodcock and Mary E. Bonner Johnson (although Johnson's contribution is disputed). It was revised in 1989, again in 2001, and most recently in 2014; this last version is commonly referred to as the WJ IV. They may be administered to children from age two right up to the oldest adults (with norms utilizing individuals in their 90s). The previous edition WJ III was praised for covering "a wide variety of cognitive skills".
  • 1.3K
  • 20 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Women of the Wall
Women of the Wall (Hebrew: נשות הכותל, Neshot HaKotel) is a multi-denominational feminist organization based in Israel whose goal is to secure the rights of women to pray at the Western Wall, also called the Kotel, in a fashion that includes singing, reading aloud from the Torah and wearing religious garments (tallit, tefillin and kippah). Pew Research Center has identified Israel as one of the countries that place "high" restrictions on religion, and there have been limits placed on non-Orthodox streams of Judaism. One of those restrictions is that the Rabbi of the Western Wall has enforced gender segregation and limitations on religious garb worn by women. When the "Women of the Wall" hold monthly prayer services for women on Rosh Hodesh, they observe gender segregation so that Orthodox members may fully participate. But their use of religious garb, singing and reading from a Torah have upset many members of the Orthodox Jewish community, sparking protests and arrests. In May 2013 a judge ruled that a 2003 Israeli Supreme Court ruling prohibiting women from carrying a Torah or wearing prayer shawls had been misinterpreted and that Women of the Wall prayer gatherings at the wall should not be deemed illegal. In January 2016, the Israeli Cabinet approved a plan to designate a new space at the Kotel that would be available for egalitarian prayer and which would not be controlled by the Rabbinate. Women of the Wall welcomed the decision, but the plan faced opposition from other factions, including some ultra-Orthodox members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition, who threatened to withdraw over the government's plan to create non-Orthodox prayer space at the Western Wall in deference to the Women of the Wall. In January 2017, the Israeli High Court ruled that if the government of Israel could not find "good cause" to prohibit women reading from the Torah in prayer services at the Kotel within 30 days, women could do so; they also ruled that the Israeli government could no longer argue that the Robinson's Arch area of the plaza is access to the Kotel. The petition for women to read from the Torah at the Kotel had been brought by a group that split off from the Women of the Wall, calling itself the "Original Women of the Wall". In June 2017, it was announced that the plan approved in January 2016 had been suspended. According to Ronit Kampf, the group's struggle has been "the most covered women's issue in the history of the Israeli media."
  • 646
  • 14 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Wiktionary
Wiktionary is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary of all words in all languages. It is collaboratively edited via a wiki, and its name is a portmanteau of the words wiki and dictionary. It is available in 171 languages and in Simple English. Like its sister project Wikipedia, Wiktionary is run by the Wikimedia Foundation, and is written collaboratively by volunteers, dubbed "Wiktionarians". Its wiki software, MediaWiki, allows almost anyone with access to the website to create and edit entries. Because Wiktionary is not limited by print space considerations, most of Wiktionary's language editions provide definitions and translations of words from many languages, and some editions offer additional information typically found in thesauri and lexicons. The English Wiktionary includes a thesaurus (formerly known as Wikisaurus) of synonyms of various words. Wiktionary data are frequently used in various natural language processing tasks.
  • 7.6K
  • 08 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Wife-carrying
Wife carrying (Finnish: eukonkanto or akankanto, Estonian: naisekandmine, Swedish: kärringkånk) is a contest in which male competitors race while each carrying a female teammate. The objective is for the male to carry the female through a special obstacle track in the fastest time. The sport was first introduced at Sonkajärvi, Finland . Several types of carrying may be practised: either a classic piggyback, a fireman's carry (over the shoulder), or Estonian-style (wife upside-down on his back with her legs over the neck and shoulders).
  • 3.9K
  • 11 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Widow Conservation
Widow conservation was a practice in Protestant Europe in the early modern age, when the widow of a parish vicar (or sometimes her daughter) would marry her husband's successor to the vicarage to ensure her economic support. The practice was common in Scandinavia (Änkekonservering/Enkekonservering) and Protestant parts of Germany (Konservierung von Pfarrwitwen). It is related to other forms of widow inheritance, including the levirate marriage known in the Old Testament as yibbum. At the introduction of the Protestant Reformation, priests were allowed to marry. However, as they did not own the vicarage and property attached to their profession, their wife and children were left without a home and means of support after their death. The future support of the widows and children of vicars thereby became a concern for the various churches. The most common solution was for the successor of a vicar to be required to marry the widow (or perhaps her daughter) of his predecessor, thereby "conserving" her.
  • 200
  • 10 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Widow
A widow is a woman whose spouse has died and a widower is a man whose spouse has died. The treatment of widows and widowers around the world varies.
  • 2.9K
  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Wicked Problems
Wicked problem thinking is regaining interest in different disciplines, mostly because of the complex and interdependent contemporary issues that are particularly challenging for policy makers. This type of problems is difficult, even impossible to tackle by defining optimal solutions because of both deep uncertainty and high complexity. The causes and effects of wicked problems are cross-scale and multi-level; they are extremely difficult to identify due to the system dynamics and non-linear interactions. Thus, most of these problems are symptoms of or related to other problems. Moreover, wicked problems are poorly formulated and boundary-spanning issues where involved stakeholders bring different perspectives to the definitions and potential resolution of the issue. Indeed, the wicked nature stems from biophysical and social complexity, where divergent values related to multi-stakeholders’ perceptions and interests influence largely the problem-solving and determining desirable outcomes.
  • 1.6K
  • 28 Sep 2021
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