Zionism is a movement aimed at establishing a national Jewish state in Palestine, the ancient Jewish homeland. Active Zionism began in the 1800's and led to the establishment of Israel in 1948. Zionism now supports various projects in Israel and acts as a cultural bridge between Israel and Jews in other countries. Zionists work to revive the national Jewish language and culture, and to establish the political and social institutions needed to re-create national Jewish life. Zion is the Hebrew poetic name for Palestine...

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Zodiac, pronounced ZOH dee ak, is a band-shaped section of the sky that contains 12 special constellations. The zodiac extends about 9 degrees on either side of the ecliptic, the yearly path the sun seems to follow in relation to other stars...

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Zoo is a place where people keep and display animals. Visiting zoos is a popular recreational and educational activity throughout the world. Almost every large city has at least one zoo, and many smaller communities also have one. Many zoos have beautiful gardens and tree-lined paths leading from one animal display to another. The word zoo is short for zoological garden...

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Zoology, pronounced zoh AHL uh jee, is the study of animals. Zoologists try to answer many questions about animals. For example, they conduct research to determine how animals carry out the activities of their lives. They also study how different species are related to one another and how species have evolved (changed over long periods). Zoologists observe the ways animals interact with one another and their environment. They also try to find out how people and animals affect one another...

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Zoroastrianism, pronounced zawr oh AS tree uh nihz uhm, is a religion founded between 1400 and 1000 B.C. by a Persian prophet named Zoroaster. Zoroaster is the Greek form of the Persian name Zarathustra, which means He of the Golden Light...

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Zurich, pronounced ZUR ihk (pop. 365,043; met. area pop. 940,180), is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton (state) of Zurich. It is a major manufacturing and commercial center. Zurich lies on Lake Zurich, along the Limmat River...

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Zworykin, pronounced ZWAWR uh kihn, Vladimir Kosma, pronounced VLAD uh meer KAHZ muh, (1889-1982), was a Russian-born American physicist and electronics engineer. He was responsible for many advances in radio, television, and the electron microscope...

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Zwingli, pronounced ZWIHNG lee or TSVIHNG lee, Huldreich, pronounced HUL drykh (1484-1531), was a leader of the Protestant Reformation. His career centered in Switzerland, but he influenced the Reformation in Germany, the Netherlands, and England...

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Following the August 1991 coup d'etat (see Glossary) in Moscow and declarations of independence by Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine, the Supreme Soviet in Minsk declared the independence of Belarus on August 25, 1991, by giving its Declaration of State Sovereignty the status of a constitutional document and renaming the country the Republic of Belarus...

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But the country's misery did not end in the summer of 1944, when the Red Army "liberated" it from the Nazis. Stalin ordered sweeping purges and mass deportations of local administrators and members of the CPSU, as well as those who had collaborated with the Nazis in any way, those who had spent the war in slave labor and prison camps in Germany and were now "ideologically contaminated" in Stalin's view, those who were suspected of antiSoviet sentiments, and those who were accused of "bourgeois nationalism." Only in 1971 did the Belorussian SSR return to its pre-World War II population level, but without its large Jewish populace...

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