Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
to effi cient agriculture, so they leveled the burial mounds
during the communalization program. Tradition-bound
villagers strongly opposed the practice, and they harbored
a reserve of deep resentment that exploded much later in
the revolutionary changes of the 1970s.
Geomancy is still a powerful force in China today,
even in urban areas with large populations. Geographer
Elizabeth Teather studied the rise of cremation and colum-
baria (resting places for ashes) in Hong Kong, investigat-
ing the impact Feng Shui has had on the structures and the
continued infl uence of Chinese religious beliefs on burial
practices in the extremely densely populated city of Hong
Kong. Traditional Chinese beliefs favor a coffi n and burial
plot aligned with Feng Shui teachings. However, with the
growth of China's population, the government has highly
encouraged cremation over the past few decades. The
availability of burial plots in cities like Hong Kong is quite
low, and the costs of burial plots have risen in turn.
Teather explains that although cremation is on the
rise in Hong Kong, traditional Chinese beliefs are dictat-
ing the fi nal resting places of ashes. Most Chinese people,
she states, have a “cultural need to keep ancestral remains
appropriately stored and in a single place.” In North
America and Europe, a family often chooses to scatter
the ashes of a cremated loved one, but a Chinese family is
more likely to keep the ashes together in a single identifi -
able space so that they can return to visit the ancestor dur-
ing Gravesweeping Festivals—annual commemorations
of ancestors during which people visit and tend the graves
of their ancestors. Teather describes how Feng Shui mas-
ters are consulted in the building of columbaria and how
Feng Shui helps dictate the price placed on the niches
for sale in the columbaria, with the lowest prices for the
niches near the “grime of the fl oor.”
(Common Era) and drove the Jews away, scattering the
adherents to the faith far and wide. Jews retained only a
small presence on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean
until the late nineteenth century.
Our map shows that, unlike most other ethnic reli-
gions, Judaism is not limited to contiguous territories.
Rather, Judaism is distributed throughout parts of the
Middle East and North Africa, Russia, Ukraine, Europe,
and parts of North and South America (Fig. 7.6). According
to
The Atlas of Religion
, of all the world's 18 million Jews,
40.5 percent live in the United States, 40.2 percent live
in Israel, and then in rank order, less than 5 percent live
in France, Canada, the United Kingdom, Russia, and
Argentina. Judaism is one of the world's most infl uential
religions, although it claims only 18 million adherents.
During the nineteenth century, a
Reform
movement
developed with the objective of adjusting Judaism and its
practices to current times. However, many feared that this
reform would cause a loss of identity and cohesion, and
the
Orthodox
movement sought to retain the old precepts.
Between those two extremes is a sector that is less strictly
orthodox but not as liberal as that of the reformers; it is
known as the
Conservative
movement. Signifi cant differ-
ences in ideas and practices are associated with these three
branches, but Judaism is united by a strong sense of ethnic
distinctiveness.
Diffusion of Judaism
The scattering of Jews after the Roman destruction of
Jerusalem is known as the
diaspora
—a term that now signi-
fi es the spatial dispersion of members of any ethnic group.
The Jews who went north into Central Europe came to be
known as
Ashkenazim
, and the Jews who scattered across
North Africa and into the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and
Portugal) are called
Sephardim
. For centuries, both the
Ashkenazim and the Sephardim were persecuted, denied
citizenship, driven into ghettos, and massacred (Fig. 7.11).
In the face of constant threats to their existence, the
Jews were sustained by extraordinary efforts to maintain
a sense of community and faith. The idea of a homeland
for the Jewish people, which became popular during
the nineteenth century, developed into the ideology of
Zionism
. Zionist ideals are rooted in the belief that Jews
should not be absorbed into other societies. The horrors
of the Nazi campaign against Jews from the 1930s through
World War II, when the Nazis established concentration
camps and killed some six million Jews, persuaded many
Jews to adopt Zionism. Jews from all over the world con-
cluded that their only hope of survival was to establish a
strongly defended homeland on the shores of the eastern
Mediterranean. Aided by sympathetic members of the
international community, the Zionist goal of a Jewish
state became a reality in 1948, when a United Nations
resolution carved two states, Israel and Palestine, out of
the territory of the eastern Mediterranean.
From the Hearth of the Eastern Mediterranean
Judaism
Judaism
grew out of the belief system of the Jews, one of
several nomadic Semitic tribes living in Southwest Asia
about 4000 years ago. The roots of Jewish religious tra-
dition lie in the teachings of Abraham (from Ur), who is
credited with uniting his people to worship only one God.
According to Jewish teaching, Abraham and God have a
covenant in which the Jews agree to worship only one God,
and God agrees to protect his chosen people, the Jews.
The history of the Jews is fi lled with upheaval. Moses
led them from Egypt, where they had been enslaved, to
Canaan, where an internal confl ict developed and the
nation split into two branches, Israel and Judah. Israel was
subsequently wiped out by enemies, but Judah survived
longer, only to be conquered by the Babylonians and the
Assyrians. The Jews regrouped to rebuild their headquar-
ters, Jerusalem, but then fell victim to a series of foreign
powers. The Romans destroyed their holy city in 70
ce