The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2254 page)

Shrove Tuesday
.

The day before
Ash
Wednesday, so named from the ‘shriving’, i.e.
confession
and
absolution
, of the Christian faithful on that day.

 
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(Yid., ‘small town’). Jewish communities in E. Europe, 16th-early 20th cents. The life of the Jewish community centred round home,
synagogue
(
shul
), and market. The values of
Yiddishkeyt
(‘Jewishness’) and
menshlikhkeyt
(‘humanness’) were all-important. Life in the shtetl is now well-known in the West through the paintings of Marc Chagall and the stories of Sholom Aleichem. The pattern of life was eroded in the 20th cent. through pogroms, economic depression, emigration, and ultimately the
Holocaust
.

 
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(Yid., ‘little room’).
asidic
synagogue
; developed as a centre of prayer, study, and social life when
asidim were excluded by
mitnaggedim
(their opponents) from their own synagogues.

 
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(Yid.). Small Jewish village in E. Europe; see also
SHTETL
.

 
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see
ETHICS
(Confucian).

 
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Shu Ching
.

Scripture of Historical Documents of Archaic Times, or Book of History, one of the three pre-
Confucian Classics
. Among many important ideas given religious sanction by this collection, that of the Mandate of Heaven (
T’ien
ming) was perhaps most influential.

 
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