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ZAKHORIUM
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§ 08 · Sources

Critical apparatus

Every statement in the atlas points to a precise location in a registered source. Page references are checked automatically against the text of the edition used; the text of the work is not reproduced here.

§ 01Registry

Registered sources

§ 02Page map

Printed edition pages

Citations use the printed page number of the reference edition. An internal map checks each reference against the text of the cited page; the work's text is not published here.

Printed page (examples)

1

Start of ch. 1

Printed page (examples)

62

Start of ch. 3

Printed page (examples)

519

Start of the chronology

Citation density per page · chapters 1 to 15 · pp. 1–518 · ticks mark where each chapter begins

§ 03Statements

3038 statements, by page

164 tradition or narrative · 1908 scholarly reconstruction · 94 contested interpretation · 864 documented evidence · 8 illustrative reconstruction
  • Documented evidenceAttested by contemporary evidence: texts, inscriptions, coins, papyri or archaeology.
  • Scholarly reconstructionHistorians' inference from indirect evidence.
  • Tradition or narrativeA literary, traditional or religious account; significant in itself, but not independently verified.
  • Contested interpretationScholars explicitly disagree; see the positions in the debate.
  • Illustrative reconstructionA hypothesis or visual scheme to guide reading; not a historical claim.
  1. p. 1For centuries, Jews have located their beginnings in the five books attributed to Moses. These recount Abraham, Sarah and their descendants, departure from Egypt, and revelation at Mount Sinai.c1-origins-tradition
  2. p. 1, p. 1Over recent centuries scholars have come to question the traditional account and proposed many alternative reconstructions, some openly at odds with the Bible. The authors admit that nobody has reached agreement on how the Jews arose.c1-scholars-doubt-tradition
  3. p. 1Thanks to historical and archaeological research, say the authors, one can no longer be sure that figures such as Abraham, Moses and David existed. Doubting them, however, does not settle the question of how the Jews originated.c1-figures-uncertain
  4. p. 1Fixing a beginning is hard because the people described in most of the Bible do not call themselves Jews but Israelites ('sons of Israel'), and their culture and religion differ in many ways from those of later Jews.c1-israelites-not-jews
  5. p. 1, p. 1Many scholars place the shift from Israelites to Jews after the Babylonian Exile of 586 BCE; some put it after Alexander's conquests, and others later still, in the age of Roman rule and the rise of Christianity. Depending on the answer, Jewish history starts 4,000 years ago or 2,000.c1-when-israelites-become-jews
  6. p. 1, p. 1The word 'Jew' derives from the name Judah (Yehuda), which in the Bible itself refers to an Israelite tribe, a territory in southern Canaan and the kingdom of David and his descendants. After the biblical era the terms for 'Jew' came to signal a way of life or beliefs, and today can mean a religion, a cultural or ethnic identity, or a national identity.c1-jew-term-ambiguity
  7. p. 1Levy holds that descendants of the 1497 converts were among the pioneers of gold and diamond discovery and of founding the first gold towns.c9-new-christians-gold-pioneers
  8. p. 1According to Levy, Garcia Rodrigues Paes, treated as a marrano, built the Commerce Road (New Road) that shortened the route between Rio de Janeiro and Ouro Preto.c9-caminho-novo
  9. p. 1, p. 3Collected studies since the late twentieth century (including The Ways That Never Parted and Boyarin's work) moved Jewish believers and Gentile 'Judaizers' from the margins to the center of debate: they embody the unclean separation of the traditions, without a single consensus among scholars.cjb-ways-never-parted-frame
  10. p. 2, p. 2The authors begin in two places: with Israelite history before the Babylonian Exile of 586 BCE, covered here, and with the Hebrew Bible's emergence, covered in Chapter 2. In their view, Jewishness and the Bible developed inseparably.c1-two-starting-points
  11. p. 2Modern scholarship doubts the value of the Hebrew Bible as a historical document: it asks whether Abraham and Moses existed and whether central events such as the Exodus and the revelation at Sinai occurred. The skepticism has alienated some Jews and Christians who take the Bible as an exact account, but, say the authors, its reasons cannot be waved aside at the outset.c1-bible-as-history-doubt
  12. p. 2, p. 2Jewish culture did not appear suddenly: it evolved from an earlier Israelite culture, from which it inherited beliefs, practices, languages, texts and patterns of social organization. Questions such as the origins of circumcision, the Sabbath and dietary rules can be answered only by looking at this pre-Jewish culture, and biblical literature is the richest source on it.c1-why-start-with-bible
  13. p. 2, p. 2Even if the Bible had no value as a historical source, knowing what it says is essential, because for at least two thousand years Jews have turned to it to learn who they are. Many trace their lineage to Abraham and Jacob, retell the Exodus at Passover as if they were in Egypt and expect a messiah from David's line; even secular Jews draw on it for poetry and art.c1-bible-as-self-image
  14. p. 2Because the Bible's testimony alone is open to question, the chapter presents Israelite history as reconstructed by biblical scholars, who set it within the context of other ancient Near Eastern sources and archaeological excavation.c1-reconstruct-from-near-east
  15. p. 2, p. 3, p. 115The model of an early and absolute 'parting of the ways' between Judaism and Christianity, after which each tradition supposedly lived in relative isolation, does not fit the literary and archaeological data of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages well.cjb-parting-not-simple
  16. p. 2Hayes and Roth note that many scholars favor Shoah (catastrophic destruction) because 'Holocaust' derives from a burnt offering and carries sanctifying connotations; yet since the 1950s Holocaust has become the most prevalent descriptor across languages and the apt heading for the field.c-h502-hayes-holocaust-term-prevalent
  17. p. 3, p. 3The abbreviations BCE and CE used in this book rest on a Christian reckoning of time: dating from Jesus's birth was devised in the sixth century by a monk, Dionysius Exiguus, and many scholars think Jesus was born between 6 and 4 BCE. 'Before the Common Era' and 'Common Era' were adopted to mark dates common to all humanity.c1-bce-ce-christian
  18. p. 3Counting 'before Christ' was developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, running backward from 1 BC; there is no year zero.c1-no-year-zero
  19. p. 3Jews have long followed a distinct calendar that begins with the traditional date assigned to the world's creation. Its origins are obscure, but communities seem to have adopted creation as the epoch in the tenth or eleventh century, perhaps responding to the Christian calendar's growing influence; 2018 corresponded to 5778.c1-jewish-calendar
  20. p. 3Applying BCE and CE to Jewish history has value, since it places the Jews within humanity's broader history, but it also reminds us that the way we think about the past was shaped by the Christian European context in which the discipline of history arose.c1-calendar-lesson
  21. p. 3, p. 4In 1 Samuel 17, David defeats the Philistine Goliath with a sling. But another biblical passage (2 Samuel 21:19) credits Goliath's killing to an obscure warrior, Elhanan of Bethlehem, described in the same terms.c1-goliath-two-versions
  22. p. 3, p. 3Interpreters tried to reconcile the accounts by suggesting Elhanan was another name for David, but the Bible treats the two as different people. Chronicles, written much later than Samuel, claims that Elhanan killed Goliath's brother, a solution the authors find contrived.c1-goliath-harmonizations
  23. p. 3Levy stresses the relevant role of New Christians in the early gold involvement in Minas, a territory of disputes and pioneering.c9-gold-new-christians-role
  24. p. 3, p. 4In this strand, 'Jewish believers in Jesus' means people Jewish by birth or by conversion who, somehow, held Jesus to be their savior. The criterion is ethnicity, not a single package of theology or praxis. That includes both those who kept a Jewish way of life and those who assimilated into mixed communities with a Gentile majority.cjb-definition-ethnicity
  25. p. 3Chazan places Latin Christendom's awakening (late tenth into the eleventh century) in population growth, economic development, political stability, military strength, and cultural creativity, with mutual reinforcement across those planes.c-h502-chazan-latin-christendom-expansion
  26. p. 3Fonrobert and Jaffee note that the label 'rabbinic literature' itself comes from modern historians of Judaism; the phrase would have made no sense to those who produced the writings.c-h502-fonrobert-rabbinic-literature-modern-term
  27. p. 3According to the Companion's introduction, almost nothing is known about the last generation of sages who edited the material and gave manuscripts their approximate shape; the producers blurred historical traces of redaction, and centuries separate assumed redaction from the earliest surviving manuscripts.c-h502-fonrobert-blurred-redaction
  28. p. 3The Companion argues that rabbinic texts defy easy classification and fit traditional Western categories such as law code, encyclopedia, or even 'literature' only with great difficulty, if at all.c-h502-fonrobert-genres-resist-western
  29. p. 4, p. 4The authors find it more likely that Goliath's real slayer was Elhanan, and that the famous version in 1 Samuel 17 is a later development meant to enhance King David's heroic image. The biblical duel, they conclude, probably does not reflect what actually happened.c1-goliath-elhanan-likely
  30. p. 4, p. 4Modern scholars do not seek to undermine religious beliefs: they follow a way of knowing based on empirical evidence, free questioning and reasoned explanation rather than tradition. Like judges at a trial, they want to hear several witnesses and cross-examine them before reaching a verdict.c1-scholarly-method
  31. p. 4, p. 4For modern scholarship, what the Bible says about the past becomes more credible when independent sources back it up: texts written outside the Bible (inscriptions from Israel and texts from other Near Eastern cultures) and archaeology. Confirmation sometimes occurs, but more often the evidence challenges what was believed or speaks to aspects the Bible does not record.c1-corroboration
  32. p. 4The two kinds of evidence complement each other: texts reveal what people thought and how they expressed themselves; archaeology (pottery, ruins, tools, weapons, jewelry) shows what they did, what they ate, how they worked, fought and buried their dead.c1-two-kinds-of-evidence
  33. p. 4, p. 4Biblical scholarship today lives in a lively, unresolved debate about what actually happened in Israelite history: some think the Bible teaches much about ancient Israel; others propose alternative accounts that diverge from it or contradict it. The authors stress that these reconstructions are always hypothetical.c1-debate-unresolved
  34. p. 4, p. 4Canaan was continuously inhabited from prehistory and holds some of the oldest known settlements, such as the site of the later city of Jericho, occupied as early as 9000 BCE. The Bible acknowledges that people lived there before the Israelites, and literary and archaeological evidence confirms it.c1-canaan-ancient-settlement
  35. p. 4Canaan's cultures were always tied to the region's topography: a coastal strip in the west, fertile valleys and rugged hills in the interior, and desert to the east and south.c1-canaan-geography
  36. p. 4, p. 4During the Late Bronze Age, about 1550 to 1200 BCE, city-states including Hazor, Megiddo and Jerusalem dominated Canaan. Their kings controlled nearby territory and sometimes fought each other, yet all answered to Egypt's king because Canaan belonged to his empire.c1-late-bronze-city-states
  37. p. 4, p. 4The geographical backdrop the Bible records is accurate: there are stories in the Negev, in the hills near Jerusalem and in the north, by the Sea of Galilee and Mount Carmel. Whoever produced Genesis, Judges and Samuel knew the terrain, weather, animals and plants of ancient Canaan.c1-bible-knows-canaan
  38. p. 4In ancient sources the usual division is ethnic: believers 'from the Jews' and 'from the Gentiles'. Over time 'Christian' came to sound, to many Jewish ears, like something Gentile and non-Jewish; for that reason many modern Jewish believers resent the label 'Jewish Christian'.cjb-term-christian-shift
  39. p. 5, p. 5Basic questions remain open: when the Israelites appeared in Canaan; whether they were migrants or refugees, as Genesis says, or arose from the local population; whether their history there began with a violent conquest, as in Joshua. Only two things are certain: many scholars doubt what the Bible says about Israel's earliest days, and it does not tell the whole story.c1-open-origin-questions
  40. p. 5, p. 5, p. 519A people named 'Israel' already lived in Canaan during the thirteenth century BCE. A precisely datable stele preserves their name in a victory song commissioned during the Egyptian ruler Merneptah's reign, about 1213 to 1203 BCE. The book's timeline therefore places Israel in Canaan by 1207 BCE.c1-merneptah-israel
  41. p. 5, p. 5The stele's lines list enemies Merneptah defeated in Canaan: Canaan itself, Ashkelon, Gezer, Yanoam and Israel, the last declared devastated and without offspring. The claim was exaggerated, since, as the authors wryly put it, otherwise this book would have been very short.c1-merneptah-text
  42. p. 5, p. 6The Egyptians used special signs to mark what kind of thing a word named. On the stele, Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam carry the sign for a city-state, while Israel carries the sign for a people or ethnic group. The difference may indicate that the early Israelites were not tied to a city but were a rural or nomadic people, which fits Genesis's description.c1-merneptah-determinative
  43. p. 5The Handbook introduction ties Nazi control of Europe to population engineering whose central aim was wiping out Jewry, bound up with nationalism and race thinking.c-h502-hayes-demographic-engineering-core
  44. p. 6, p. 6The only explanation of the name Israel from an Israelite source is in Genesis, where it is another name for Jacob. There are two versions of how Jacob received it: in Genesis 32, after wrestling with God, and in Genesis 35, at a place later called Bethel, with no struggle. This shows there was more than one understanding of the name within Israel itself.c1-name-israel-genesis
  45. p. 6, p. 6The Bible probably preserves later explanations for a name after people had forgotten its first meaning. Because Canaanite usage could make 'El' the god El, scholars conjecture that 'Israel' described his action, perhaps 'El prevailed', 'El fought' or 'El protected'. After the first century CE, some Jews read it as 'the man who saw God'.c1-name-israel-alternatives
  46. p. 6Written evidence for Israelite history disappears after the Merneptah Stele and resumes only in the ninth century BCE. The missing record covers exactly when Israelite society was developing in Canaan.c1-documentary-gap
  47. p. 6, p. 6According to the Bible, the Israelites did not begin as Canaanites but as outsiders: Abraham went with Sarah to Canaan, at God's command, from a region between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Even after settling they kept ties there: Abraham sends for a wife for Isaac in Mesopotamia, and Jacob finds Leah and Rachel there.c1-bible-immigrant-story
  48. p. 6, p. 6Whether or not Abraham existed, the Bible registers a Near Eastern geography consistent with what is known from other sources. Mesopotamia hosted Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians, and Ur, an ancient city there, is probably the one named in Genesis 12 as Abraham's birthplace; Babylon is the Babel of Genesis 11.c1-mesopotamia-geography-fits
  49. p. 7, p. 7The Tower of Babel seems to echo a large temple tower built in Babylon, much later than the time Abraham would have lived; this suggests the story was composed relatively late.c1-tower-of-babel-late
  50. p. 7, p. 7Scholars tried to give the patriarchs historical plausibility by linking them to the Amurru, a people known from Mesopotamian sources as 'westerners', perhaps nomadic in origin and prominent between 2000 and 1600 BCE. That would be roughly Abraham's period if one counts backward from a David around 1000 BCE using the Bible's chronology. The effort became known as the Amorite hypothesis.c1-amorite-hypothesis
  51. p. 7, p. 7There is no way to prove the Amorite hypothesis. Looking for a nomadic herder like Abraham in the scant remains of the distant past is harder than finding a pin in a haystack, since one does not even know which period to search. Nor can it be proved that he did not exist.c1-abraham-unprovable
  52. p. 7, p. 7In Hebron, in the West Bank, religious Jews venerate the Cave of Machpelah as Abraham's tomb. The identification developed among Jews and Christians in antiquity and rests on no evidence that Abraham and his descendants are buried there; the site is entangled in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.c1-cave-of-machpelah
  53. p. 7, p. 7Names resembling Abram and Jacob appear in Mesopotamian sources from the early or middle second millennium BCE, and customs described in Genesis (adopting a servant as heir, arranged marriages, deathbed blessings) seemed at first to match texts from sites such as Nuzi. These parallels were read as memory of an origin among nomads tied to Mesopotamia.c1-patriarch-parallels
  54. p. 7, p. 7The authors regard this as scarcely more than informed speculation. No particular Genesis episode has independent corroboration, and the proposed Amorite connection has not persuaded scholars. A figure like Abraham could have lived a millennium after the Amurru because later periods also offer parallels for his name and mobile way of life.c1-patriarchs-guesswork
  55. p. 7, p. 7Genesis itself bears signs of late composition: it says Abraham's family came from 'Ur of the Chaldeans', yet the Chaldeans are known only from sources from the ninth century BCE on; and it mentions the Philistines, who appear in Canaan only after about 1200 BCE. Whatever real memories it holds seem set within a narrative of a later age.c1-genesis-anachronisms
  56. p. 7To date there is no agreed method for separating genuine historical experience from fictional invention in Genesis, and many scholars are skeptical of most of what the book claims about the past.c1-genesis-no-method
  57. p. 7, p. 8According to the Bible, Jacob's son Joseph was taken to Egypt as a slave and, thanks to his skill at interpreting dreams, rose to the second-highest post in the kingdom; during a famine in Canaan his father and eleven brothers moved there. His descendants, the 12 tribes, thrived until a new king enslaved them. Moses, raised in the household of the king's daughter, freed them with ten plagues, and they left, crossing the Red Sea, which God parted and closed over the Egyptians.c1-exodus-story
  58. p. 7The same religious racist ideology that operated in Portugal was extended to Brazil, where New Christians held important economic positions.c9-brazil-racist-ideology
  59. p. 7The accusation of Judaism hung over New Christians and served religious repression in the colony.c9-brazil-judaism-accusation
  60. p. 8The word 'Exodus' comes from the Greek for 'going out', used by Christians as the title of the biblical book that tells this story.c1-exodus-name
  61. p. 8, p. 8The authors ask how much of the biblical Exodus can be confirmed as a historical event: whether the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, whether a Moses freed them and whether they trekked across the Sinai wilderness before settling in Canaan.c1-exodus-questions
  62. p. 8, p. 8Egypt was real and had been in contact with Canaan since before writing: Egyptians went to Canaan as travelers, soldiers, traders and, when Canaan was under their rule, administrators; Canaanites went to Egypt as migrants, slaves and traders (the name Canaan itself may derive from 'trader'). Hieroglyphic writing and kingship arose there around the fourth millennium BCE.c1-egypt-canaan-traffic
  63. p. 8, p. 8Mesopotamia, the plain between the Tigris and Euphrates, is where the first civilization arose; the earliest known there was Sumerian. Advanced irrigation produced larger settlements, and towns such as Uruk became city-states with dynastic rulers. One of them, Sargon, founded the first empire in history and, according to legend, like Moses, was set in a basket on the river, raised by a royal gardener or water-drawer, and became king.c1-box-mesopotamia
  64. p. 8, p. 8The Nile's floods came on a regular, predictable cycle unlike those of the Tigris and Euphrates. With fewer invasions and migrations, Egypt attained greater political stability. Historians divide its past into Old, Middle and New Kingdoms separated by three 'intermediate periods'. Israel emerged as the New Kingdom, which peaked under Ramesses II from 1279 to 1212 BCE, yielded to the Third Intermediate Period.c1-box-egypt
  65. p. 8, p. 8Toward the end of the third millennium BCE the Sumerians were overtaken by the Akkadians, from Akkad (where Sargon came from), who replaced Sumerian with a Semitic language, Akkadian. From what remained of that empire two variants arose: Assyria in the north and Babylon in the south. The Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires appear in the Bible as major threats to Israel: the Assyrians exiled 10 of the 12 tribes, and the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and exiled the population whose descendants would be the Jews.c1-box-assyria-babylon
  66. p. 9, p. 9The Bible's picture of Israelites moving back and forth between Canaan and Egypt, as agents of the Egyptian government or as slaves, is plausible in a general sense. But showing something is possible does not prove the Exodus happened, and the silence of sources outside the Bible leads some to conclude it did not.c1-exodus-general-plausibility
  67. p. 9, p. 9The Merneptah Stele is the only reference to Israel in Egyptian literature of this period, and the people it names already live in Canaan: nothing hints at former slaves, plagues or a sea crossing. Even the period of the Exodus cannot be fixed: some place it in the fifteenth century BCE, others in the thirteenth, and the Bible's chronology does not match other sources clearly.c1-merneptah-silence
  68. p. 9, p. 9The account of Moses's mother setting him afloat in a Nile basket closely resembles legends about other Near Eastern rulers. One concerns Sargon I, who founded Mesopotamia's first great empire around 2300 BCE: his inscription says his mother put him in a reed basket on a river, and he was found by a water-drawer, Akki, who raised him.c1-moses-sargon-legend
  69. p. 9, p. 10As David's portrait may incorporate stories associated with other heroes, Moses's image may likewise have grown through literary elaboration. A historical Moses remains possible, but the biblical account does not reveal a clear boundary between history and fiction.c1-moses-real-or-fiction
  70. p. 9, p. 9The Philistines apparently belonged to the Sea Peoples, Aegean seaborne raiders who swept across the eastern Mediterranean late in the second millennium BCE and threatened Egypt during the era of Ramesses II and Merneptah. In the twelfth century BCE they settled southern coastal Canaan and founded Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gath. Greeks and Romans derived the name Palestine from them.c1-box-philistines
  71. p. 9, p. 9Phoenicians occupied the Canaanite coast across modern northern Israel and Lebanon. In contrast with Philistine immigrants, they were Canaanites whose culture resembled Israelite culture. From cities including Byblos and Tyre, their merchants and sailors established Mediterranean colonies, among them Carthage in modern Tunisia.c1-box-phoenicians
  72. p. 9, p. 9The Arameans, based in Syria, appear to have begun as seminomads but by the time of Israel's political consolidation were forming kingdoms between Assyria and the neo-Hittite kingdoms. They were an occasional threat to Israel but were themselves subdued by the Assyrians. Their language, Aramaic, became an international language of the Near East, used for administration by many non-Arameans, including Jews.c1-box-arameans
  73. p. 9, p. 9Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites lived east of the Jordan and had cultures resembling Israel's. Genesis makes them kin, connecting Ammon and Moab to Abraham's nephew Lot and Edom to Jacob's brother Esau, while also portraying them as enemies. Each developed a kingdom as Israel's monarchy formed. Edom endured into the first century BCE, when its descendants were known as Idumeans.c1-box-transjordan
  74. p. 9, p. 9The Bible calls the land's pre-Israelite inhabitants west of the Jordan Canaanites. The five books of Moses command their expulsion and erasure, while other biblical texts imply they continued under Israelite rule as slaves. Jerusalem's pre-Davidic Jebusites were among them and may have remained as enslaved or lower-status residents after David conquered the city.c1-box-canaanites
  75. p. 9, p. 9, p. 3These medieval and early modern converts and conversos are Jews (or descendants of Jews) linked to the Christian faith, in the ethnic sense of this strand. They do not, however, form a continuous 'Nazarene' church from antiquity: they are phenomena of mission, coercion, polemic and social pressure inside Latin Christendom, distinct from the patristic sects.cjb-medieval-not-nazarene-line
  76. p. 9, p. 3Claiming unbroken communal continuity from ancient Nazarenes to contemporary Messianic Judaism is a fragile position. What historiography supports more securely is the recurrence, across centuries, of Jews who believed in Jesus, under different names and conditions.cjb-not-simple-continuity
  77. p. 10, p. 10The Hyksos (from the Egyptian for 'rulers of foreign lands') were a line of Asiatic rulers, possibly from Canaan itself, who held part of Egypt in the seventeenth century BCE and were driven out by native Egyptians in the sixteenth century BCE.c1-hyksos
  78. p. 10, p. 10, p. 10The Hyksos expulsion calls the Exodus to mind (a new king who does not remember Joseph and fears the Israelites, followed by Israel's flight), and some see Hyksos rule as the backdrop for Joseph's rise. The Egyptian historian Manetho, over 2,000 years ago, already blended the two stories. The authors, however, hesitate to tie the Exodus to any specific event, since traffic between Canaan and Egypt was constant.c1-hyksos-exodus-link
  79. p. 10, p. 10Egyptian texts from 1500 to 1100 BCE also mention the Shasu, seminomads from the Palestine area, another candidate for 'proto-Israelites', as were the Habiru. The evidence is lacking to decide; it is even possible that the Bible absorbs memories of several such groups: Amorites, Hyksos and Shasu.c1-shasu-habiru-candidates
  80. p. 10, p. 15A relief in the Egyptian temple at Karnak, from the fourteenth century BCE, shows the Shasu after their defeat by the Egyptians; some scholars identify them as the early Israelites or as the people from whom the Israelites descended. The book also notes that if it is an image of the early Israelites, they would be indistinguishable from other Canaanites.c1-shasu-karnak-relief
  81. p. 10, p. 10Unable to verify the biblical account, many recent scholars favor another explanation, at odds with the Bible: the Israelites did not come from outside, neither from Mesopotamia nor from Egypt, but Israelite culture arose within Canaan as an offshoot of the local indigenous culture. On this hypothesis, the Bible's effort to set Israel apart from the Canaanites is historically misleading.c1-indigenous-hypothesis
  82. p. 10, p. 10According to the book of Joshua, Israel settled by destroying cities such as Jericho and Ai, yet there is no clear archaeological evidence of this massive conquest. A few cities, such as Hazor, show destruction, with no proof that the Israelites caused it; others, supposedly destroyed, show no signs of violence. Ai does not even seem to have been inhabited at that time.c1-no-conquest-evidence
  83. p. 10New Christian identity in Brazil resulted largely from external pressure of laws, customs, propaganda, and prejudice.c9-brazil-identity-pressure
  84. p. 10Novinsky argues that Jewish customs and traditions persisted in Portuguese America across centuries.c9-brazil-judaism-persistence
  85. p. 11As for the famous conquest of Jericho, there is no evidence of destruction in this period: the city at that time did not even have walls to come tumbling down.c1-jericho-no-walls
  86. p. 11, p. 11The Bible itself is inconsistent: according to Judges 1:8, the tribe of Judah attacked Jerusalem, killed its inhabitants and set it on fire; a few verses later (1:21), the tribe of Benjamin did not capture it and the Jebusites still live there with them. Two traditions about taking Jerusalem, with different tribes and outcomes, and no way to know which to believe.c1-jerusalem-two-accounts
  87. p. 11, p. 11What archaeology has found is the rapid growth of settlements in Canaan's central highlands in the period associated with Joshua: previously sparsely inhabited, being hard to farm and short of water, they were settled using terraced slopes and cisterns. The settlements seem new and multiply after about 1200 BCE.c1-highland-settlements
  88. p. 11, p. 11Nothing clearly identifies these settlers as immigrants from Sinai or Egypt: their houses and pottery scarcely differ from local forms. The claim that they had been nomads also fails. Without using the biblical Exodus and conquest as a premise, the evidence instead permits seeing them as Canaanites driven by social or economic pressures into rugged country beyond city-state control.c1-highland-settlers-local
  89. p. 11, p. 11Hundreds of texts from the ancient Syrian city-state of Ugarit, prosperous in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BCE, are among the best sources on Canaanite culture before Israel. The Ugaritians did not live in Canaan, but their culture, religion and mythology were related to those of the Canaanites: El, the supreme creator deity; Asherah, his consort; and Baal, a warrior god tied to fertility.c1-ugarit-texts
  90. p. 11, p. 11Ugaritic literature describes its gods in ways parallel to the Bible's God, who receives titles of El or Baal (in Genesis 14:19 he is 'El Elyon', El the Most High). There are also parallels in ritual and literary form, such as poetic parallelism, in which the two halves of a line correspond.c1-ugarit-biblical-parallels
  91. p. 11Dating to about 1400 to 1300 BCE, a bronze male figure probably represents Baal, Canaan's storm god. He stands as a warrior ready to throw a spear or lightning bolt, imagery comparable to Psalm 18's portrayal of God.c1-baal-figurine
  92. p. 11, p. 419Ancient Christian and Jewish sources mention 'Nazarenes' / 'Nazoraeans' (and related terms) as a designation for Jews linked to Jesus. Modern reconstruction depends on Irenaeus, Origen, Epiphanius, Jerome and others, with gaps and polemics; the disappearance of the name in the fourth century does not prove the end of all Jewish believers.cjb-nazarenes-name
  93. p. 12, p. 12Hebrew, the language of most of the Bible, is sometimes called 'yehudit', the language of Judah (northern Israelites seem to have spoken a slightly different dialect). It belongs to the western branch of the Semitic family, alongside Arabic, Aramaic and Ugaritic, and its closest relatives are the languages of Canaan: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite and Phoenician. Had Israel's ancestors come from Mesopotamia or Egypt, one would expect another tongue.c1-hebrew-language
  94. p. 12, p. 12The Philistines reached Canaan's coast in the early twelfth century BCE, part of a larger migration of 'Sea Peoples' from the Mycenaean Aegean world. Philistine pottery is a variant of Mycenaean; their urban design, craftsmanship, dress and habits (they ate pork and drank wine mixed with water) point to the Aegean, and even the word seren, 'ruler', is probably related to Greek tyrannos.c1-philistines-aegean
  95. p. 12, p. 12The Philistines can be shown to be outsiders because their distinct culture appears in the archaeological and linguistic record and traces back to another part of the world. Not so with the Israelites: their language, religion and material culture tie them to earlier Canaanite culture, as if they were an outgrowth of it.c1-philistines-vs-israelites-origins
  96. p. 12If the Israelites came from Canaan's native population, how did they come to see themselves as different, as outsiders who had displaced the land's earlier inhabitants? The authors say this is a question still under investigation and that they do not know the answer.c1-self-image-puzzle
  97. p. 12, p. 12Across the thirteenth and twelfth centuries BCE, the transition out of the Late Bronze Age into the early Iron Age brought political turmoil, decentralization and major migrations. Egypt's New Kingdom and the Hittite kingdom declined, Ugarit and other centers fell, and trade networks collapsed. Canaan experienced shrinking cities, severed Egyptian ties, Philistine arrival and a more rural economy.c1-bronze-iron-upheaval
  98. p. 12, p. 12When powers such as Egypt withdrew, smaller peoples occupied the political space and formed kingdoms. Israel's Moabite and Edomite neighbors, for example, shared cultures and allegiance to national deities. Israel can be understood as emerging within this wider pattern.c1-new-small-kingdoms
  99. p. 12, p. 12, p. 13Discovered at Egyptian El-Amarna in 1887, letters addressed to Egypt's king by Canaanite rulers from Tyre, Shechem, Jerusalem and elsewhere reveal the difficulty of governing Canaan. Egypt stationed a governor in Gaza but relied mainly on quarrelling local kings. The correspondence also illuminates the Canaanite language from which Hebrew developed.c1-amarna-letters
  100. p. 12According to Reif's synthesis of Zunz, rite names borrowed from countries of origin do not imply uniformity across a whole territory: in the Middle Ages borders were fluid, and distant regions might share a rite while neighbours differed.cl-zunz-rite-names-not-uniform
  101. p. 13, p. 13The Amarna Letters mention a group called the Habiru (or Hapiru), whose meaning is uncertain: perhaps 'dust maker' or 'vagabond'. The term applied to people in unstable, marginal positions, such as laborers, mercenaries, runaways and rebels, concentrated outside the city-states' control; they may have been brigands or fugitives, Canaanites living beyond the reach of their kings and the Egyptians.c1-habiru-definition
  102. p. 13, p. 13Dating the events of the Bible is hard because its chronology is implausible (Methuselah is said to have lived 969 years) or too vague. A partial chronology can be built by correlating the biblical one with outside sources. Left out are Abraham's journey, the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan, not because they can be proved not to have happened, but because they cannot be securely placed in known history.c1-chronology-box-intro
  103. p. 13, p. 519Many sources attest that Sea Peoples reached the southeastern Mediterranean shore around 1180 BCE. Among them were Philistines, who settled along southern coastal Canaan and left a clear archaeological signature. They moved farther into Canaan after Ramesses III died and Egyptian control ended in 1153 BCE, presumably bringing them into contact with Israelites.c1-sea-peoples-philistine-arrival
  104. p. 13, p. 519Egypt's King Shishak invaded Canaan around 925 BCE. First Kings 14:26 assigns the campaign to Rehoboam's fifth year, and an Egyptian account makes this the earliest particular biblical event corroborated externally. If biblical chronology is correct, Solomon died in 930 BCE, five years before the invasion, placing Israel's monarchy's rise around 1000 BCE.c1-shishak-confirmed
  105. p. 13, p. 13A Tel Dan inscription shows that Israel and Judah existed as kingdoms by the ninth century BCE: it names Israel's king and another ruler belonging to the House of David. No evidence, however, establishes that David and Solomon once united both kingdoms as the Bible says.c1-tel-dan-inscription
  106. p. 13, p. 519In 853 BCE, Ahab, king of Israel, took part in a battle against the Assyrians, reported only by an outside source: a text of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III. Assyrian and Babylonian sources also name later kings of Israel and Judah, down to the early sixth century BCE (Jehu, Hezekiah, Jehoiachin, the last surviving king of Judah), and the order of their reigns agrees with the Bible.c1-ahab-shalmaneser
  107. p. 13, p. 519Assyrian and Babylonian records corroborate Assyria's destruction of the Northern Kingdom in 722 to 720 BCE, described in 2 Kings 17. Inscription fragments, architecture in Assyrian styles and imported Assyrian pottery further attest imperial rule over the conquered kingdom.c1-assyria-conquers-israel
  108. p. 13, p. 519Assyrian records corroborate the 701 BCE conquest of most Judah described in 2 Kings 18 and 19. Particularly detailed palace reliefs commissioned by Sennacherib portray the siege of the Judahite city Lachish.c1-assyria-conquers-judah-701
  109. p. 13, p. 13, p. 519The Babylonian capture of Jerusalem in 598 or 597 BCE (2 Kings 24) is confirmed by a Babylonian chronicle, according to which the king of Babylon marched west, besieged the city of Judah, took it on the second of Adar, seized the king, appointed another of his choosing and carried off heavy tribute. Babylonian texts also attest Judahites in Babylonia and mention Jehoiachin, the captive king.c1-babylonian-chronicle-598
  110. p. 13Two seals bearing the name Baruch, probably the scribe who wrote down Jeremiah's prophecies, have been published, but at least one of them is now suspected to be a forgery.c1-baruch-seals
  111. p. 14, p. 14The Habiru intrigue scholars because the name resembles 'Hebrew', a word that in the Bible always refers to Israel. There are problems: Habiru seems to be a social class, not an ethnic group, and appears outside Canaan too. Even so, some suppose the Israelites came from Habiru refugees in the mountains, who asserted themselves as Egyptian control and the city-states declined. No evidence confirms this.c1-habiru-hebrew
  112. p. 14, p. 14Taken together, the evidence raises the possibility that the Israelites originated in a manner completely different from what the Bible asserts. This should not be viewed as established fact: it rests on debatable hypotheses, and the consensus, if there is one, is open to revision. What is certain is that one cannot assume the origins of the ancient Israelites are known; the Bible tells only part of the story.c1-origins-open
  113. p. 14, p. 14Doubting the Bible does not make it useless as a source: an Egyptian inscription proves a people called Israel in Canaan by the thirteenth century BCE; the existence of peoples it names (Egyptians, Philistines, Assyrians, Moabites, Edomites) can be confirmed; and its description of terrain, weather and economy matches Iron Age Canaan (from about 1200 to the sixth century BCE).c1-bible-still-valuable
  114. p. 14, p. 14The following account focuses on biblical events that external evidence corroborates at least partly, setting aside unconfirmed episodes such as the encounter with God at Sinai. It therefore begins Israelite history with developments in Canaan after the thirteenth century BCE, rather than with Abraham or the Exodus, and often accords with biblical reporting from roughly 900 to 500 BCE.c1-method-corroborated-history
  115. p. 14, p. 14Wherever the Israelites came from, by the ninth century BCE they had formed a state, a political entity governed from a center. King Hezekiah, who ruled around 700 BCE during the Assyrian attack, is named in an Assyrian inscription, and archaeologists have uncovered a tunnel he had built to give Jerusalem a secure water source.c1-state-by-ninth-century
  116. p. 15, p. 15The end of Egyptian control over Canaan in the twelfth century BCE was one of the decisive changes for Israel's emergence. The Bible does not recall that Canaan had been an Egyptian colony (it remembers ancestors as slaves in Egypt itself), but memory and history agree that Israel had to break free of Egypt to form an independent society. An Egyptian tale about the official Wenamun, who went to buy timber in Byblos and was told by the local ruler to leave, hints at the region's growing independence.c1-egyptian-control-ends
  117. p. 15, p. 15The Bible shows the Philistines as a major threat before the monarchy, and archaeology confirms that they established a secure foothold on the coast and began to expand into Canaan's interior. The incursion may have pushed local inhabitants inland, which would explain the proliferation of small settlements in the central highlands.c1-philistine-pressure
  118. p. 15, p. 15Some scholars propose that Philistine domination prompted the first Israelite state. Beth Shemesh, on the boundary between Philistine and Israelite territory and excavated since the 1990s, has yielded elaborate fortifications. Building them would have required centralized authority, perhaps an Israelite government protecting its frontier.c1-beth-shemesh-fortifications
  119. p. 15, p. 15At Beth Shemesh and other sites, archaeologists found practices that set the population, presumably proto-Israelite, apart from nearby Philistines: pig bones are almost absent there, whereas frequent at Philistine sites. Archaeologists theorize that the taboo on pork may have arisen in this period as a marker of difference and allegiance, and a similar explanation has been proposed for circumcision, which the Bible itself stresses as a mark of difference between Israelites and Philistines.c1-pork-and-circumcision
  120. p. 15, p. 15According to this theory, until the Philistines arrived the Israelites did not actively distinguish themselves from their neighbors; only afterward, starting in the region of closest contact, did they develop a collective self-awareness through practices of their own. The authors warn it is only a theory and does not explain why Israelites also set themselves apart from other Canaanites; Israelite identity, like that of many peoples, may have crystallized as a reaction to the real or perceived threat of another people.c1-identity-as-reaction
  121. p. 15In Nulman's glossary, Amidah literally means 'standing': the eighteen blessings (now nineteen) said daily while standing; on Sabbath and festivals seven are uttered, and on Musaf of Rosh Hashanah nine.cl-amidah-standing-eighteen
  122. p. 16, p. 16As the Bible depicts it, before the Philistines the Israelites were a loose confederation of tribes, united in theory by common ancestry. The book of Judges, named for the temporary leaders who led them into battle, records attempts at hereditary leadership that fail; only in the conflict with the Philistines is permanent, centralized rule established. Saul dies in battle against them, together with his son Jonathan, and David replaces them and secures the kingdom from the Philistine threat.c1-judges-to-kings
  123. p. 16, p. 16According to the Bible, David was the turning point: he made Jerusalem the capital and, unlike Saul, passed power to a son, Solomon, though not without violent family conflict that killed Solomon's older brothers Amnon, Absalom and Adonijah. Solomon, described as a ruler of extraordinary wisdom, organized the tribes into one political unit, amassed a great fortune, dominated neighboring kingdoms and undertook building works, among them the Temple in Jerusalem.c1-david-solomon-biblical-portrait
  124. p. 16, p. 16During the twentieth century's first five or six decades, archaeologists believed several discoveries attested Solomon: Megiddo stables, a Red Sea port and Hazor fortifications. These finds appeared to make Solomon's age Israel's earliest securely historical period, until scholarly agreement broke down.c1-solomonic-archaeology-old
  125. p. 16, p. 16In recent decades the consensus has broken down. Some archaeologists see something real in the biblical description of the kingdoms of David and Solomon, pointing to impressive structures they say prove an Israelite state in the tenth century BCE; others think the finds once attributed to that period were misinterpreted and belong to other ages. There is still no clear, incontrovertible evidence of Solomon's reign, not even of his temple.c1-consensus-fractured
  126. p. 16Today's impressive visible remains on Jerusalem's Temple Mount belong to the Second Temple period. No physical trace of an older building survives there.c1-temple-mount-second-temple
  127. p. 16, p. 16Even according to the Bible, David and Solomon's kingdom did not stay intact for long. The monarchy was controversial from the start: the prophet Samuel had warned the Israelites of a king's dangers, and Solomon's policy of drawing forced labor from his subjects for his grand projects deepened the misgivings. When his son Rehoboam took power, Jeroboam led 10 of the 12 tribes in a rebellion, leaving the Davidic kingdom reduced to the territory of the tribe of Judah.c1-monarchy-dissent
  128. p. 16, p. 16Jeroboam founded the northern Kingdom of Israel. Israel and Judah then coexisted for two centuries before Assyria destroyed the northern state and deported its inhabitants, remembered as the ten 'lost tribes'. Because the southern kingdom was closely associated with Judah's territory, it was also called the Kingdom of Judah.c1-two-kingdoms
  129. p. 16, p. 16The ninth-century Dan inscription and later Mesopotamian records confirm both kingdoms. Whether Israel and Judah ever formed one united kingdom remains unresolved. Some scholars argue they were separate from the outset, with the northern state arising during the ninth century and Judah developing fully only after that state's late eighth-century destruction.c1-united-kingdom-open
  130. p. 16, p. 17The Kingdom of Israel, in the north, had close ties with Phoenicia (Ahab married the Phoenician Jezebel) and seems to have benefited from greater agricultural and trading resources. Judah, in the south and more isolated, was the smaller and poorer but politically steadier: in the north power passed from one family to another through coups and assassinations, while the Davidic dynasty persisted in Judah almost without interruption.c1-israel-vs-judah
  131. p. 16Nulman records Arvit as a name for the evening service (from erev, 'evening'), used interchangeably with Ma'ariv.cl-arvit-evening
  132. p. 16, p. 16Flusser holds that Second Temple Jewish life turned on halakhah, a natural component in the Land of Israel but apparently less so in the Diaspora: Philo reports Alexandrian Jews who treat Torah laws as mere allegory, and some who ignore nearly all commandments save Yom Kippur.c-h502-flusser-halakhah-land-vs-diaspora
  133. p. 16Flusser links the mishnaic wedding formula dat moshe veyehudit (m. Ketubot 7:6) to a possible desire to mark Jewish practice off from Samaritan rite; later readers took the phrase as sages' decrees, and yehudit gave way to dat Israel.c-h502-flusser-dat-moshe-veyehudit
  134. p. 17, p. 17The monarchy tried to create, in both Judah and Israel, a political and religious center for Israelite culture, concentrating power, wealth and religious symbols under royal control. In Judah the center was Jerusalem, home to the king and a temple; the city, inhabited by only a few thousand people in the tenth century BCE, had by the seventh century BCE an estimated population of 25,000 or more.c1-monarchy-centralizes
  135. p. 17, p. 17From a historical perspective, it is wrong to deny that Solomon's Temple existed: although nothing of it survives, the biblical description cannot be dismissed as fantasy, since it matches in many ways the temple architecture of Canaan and Syria at the time. But it is also certain that the search for it has led many scholars astray.c1-temple-box-judgment
  136. p. 17, p. 17The reconstruction of Solomon's Temple rests on 1 Kings 6 and 7, but we do not know what it looked like, since there are no contemporary images or archaeological evidence. Between 1909 and 1911 the British adventurer Montagu Parker tried to find the temple and its treasures beneath the Temple Mount, encroaching on a site sacred to Muslims; the attempt sparked rioting, and no archaeologist has continued the search.c1-temple-reconstruction-unknown
  137. p. 17, p. 17For a time scholars thought they had one piece of evidence for Solomon's Temple: a thumb-sized pomegranate-shaped ornament bearing Hebrew words that suggested a link with the Temple. In 2005 a team commissioned to investigate it announced that the inscription was probably a modern forgery.c1-ivory-pomegranate
  138. p. 17Because archaeology has produced no evidence of Solomon's Temple, the question has become politically charged within the Israeli-Palestinian dispute over control of Jerusalem.c1-temple-politicized
  139. p. 17Langer summarizes that the rabbis structured their liturgy around three core elements: recitation of Shema, the Amidah, and the reading of Scripture, though much more was added over time.cl-core-elements-shema-amidah-scripture
  140. p. 17Nulman lists Birkhot Hashahar as the morning benedictions that open the morning cycle in the traditional liturgical glossary.cl-birkhot-hashahar
  141. p. 18, p. 18According to 1 Kings 12, Jeroboam built two sanctuaries at his kingdom's borders, Bethel in the south and Dan in the north, each housing a golden calf, to dissuade Israelites from going to the Temple in Jerusalem. The calves have not been found, but an imposing sanctuary has been unearthed at Dan, with a large platform where they may have been displayed. The Kingdom of Israel took longer to settle on a capital, finally Samaria, where a huge palace has been excavated.c1-jeroboam-sanctuaries
  142. p. 18, p. 18Israel and Judah spoke one language and may have revered one god, yet the Bible presents distinct worship centered at Jerusalem in Judah and at Dan and Bethel in the north. Class divisions also sharpened, especially in wealthier Israel. In the mid-eighth century BCE, Amos and other prophets condemned elite indulgence and exploitation of poor people.c1-two-cults-and-class
  143. p. 18A ninth- or eighth-century BCE ivory plaque from Samaria's royal palace, in the Northern Kingdom's capital, depicts a winged sphinx. Alongside roughly 500 other palace ivories, it indicates the prosperity enjoyed by Israel's elite.c1-samaria-ivories
  144. p. 18, p. 18The editor who produced the account of the monarchy running from Joshua through 2 Kings, known as the Deuteronomistic History, was a sharp critic of kingship: he blamed his people's misfortunes on the kings' wickedness and suggested Israel should never have sought a king. When the monarchy ended in Israel (eighth century BCE) and in Judah (sixth century BCE), there may have been subjects glad to see it go.c1-deuteronomistic-critic
  145. p. 18, p. 18After the Davidic monarchy fell in the Babylonian Exile of 586 BCE it was never restored, but its influence persisted. Messianism, the expectation that God would send a savior of royal lineage to free Israel and rebuild the Temple, was born of the post-exilic hope that God would restore the king. God is called king in prayers, and Jerusalem remains important, as the word Zionism shows, from Zion, a biblical synonym for Jerusalem.c1-monarchy-legacy
  146. p. 18Nulman defines Hallel ('praise') as the Psalm 113-118 cycle used at morning prayer for Rosh Hodesh, Hanukkah, and the three pilgrimage festivals.cl-hallel-psalms-festivals
  147. p. 19, p. 19Most ancient Israelites lived in villages (one estimate gives 66 percent of Canaan's population between 1000 and 500 BCE); towns were tiny by today's standards, and Jerusalem in the tenth century BCE probably had 1,000 to 2,000 inhabitants. The center of social and economic life was not the palace or temple but the house, probably occupied by the nuclear family.c1-village-life
  148. p. 19, p. 19The Bible portrays the entire people as an extended family of 12 tribes descended from Jacob's sons. The first group named is Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan and Naphtali; the list continues with Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, whose line divides into Ephraim and Manasseh, and Benjamin. Genesis thus narrates Israelite origins as one family's history.c1-twelve-tribes
  149. p. 19, p. 19Scholars combine biblical testimony and archaeology to reconstruct domestic life. The common four-room house, probably containing additional rooms, spread through Canaan around 1200 BCE, during Israelite settlement. Its ground level chiefly stored provisions and sheltered animals, adding security and warmth, while family members may have occupied rear rooms or an upper floor.c1-four-room-house
  150. p. 19, p. 19Houses shared courtyards with relatives, and neighboring villages were probably kin. According to the Bible, it fell to the next of kin to avenge the murder of a family member (which could spark cycles of revenge) and, if a married man died without an heir, to father a child with the widow to preserve the inheritance, a practice called levirate marriage.c1-kin-obligations
  151. p. 19Boys were preferred to girls and firstborn children to their juniors. Yet biblical stories repeatedly let younger siblings prevail: Isaac displaces Ishmael, Jacob overcomes Esau, Joseph eclipses Reuben, and David and Solomon become kings despite older brothers with stronger claims.c1-younger-siblings
  152. p. 19, p. 20Modern historians call Israel a nation, but that label misses the Israelites' kinship-centered self-understanding reflected in Genesis. An Israelite traced his family back at least five generations, while people outside that genealogy counted as foreigners. Nearby Edomites, considered Esau's descendants, nevertheless stood closer to Israel in the family tree than Egyptians did.c1-identity-as-kinship
  153. p. 19For Langer, the Shema gathers three biblical passages (Deut 6:4-9, Deut 11:13-21, and Num 15:37-41); its name is the first word of Deut 6:4 ('Listen').cl-shema-three-passages
  154. p. 19Langer notes that Amidah slots track the Temple's sacrificial hours in Jerusalem, as their closest replacement; festival Musaf turns explicitly to that day's offerings.cl-amidah-times-match-sacrifices
  155. p. 20, p. 20The kinship-based structure left widows, orphans and resident foreigners on the margins, in a highly vulnerable position. In the Bible God is the 'father of orphans and protector of widows' (Psalm 68), and a strong hospitality code existed; even so, some Israelites were suspicious and at times abusive toward strangers, a problem the Bible repeatedly addresses ('you shall not oppress a resident alien', Exodus 22:21).c1-kinship-and-vulnerable
  156. p. 20Nulman defines Kabbalat Shabbat ('Welcoming the Sabbath') as the opening of the service that welcomes the Sabbath.cl-kabbalat-shabbat-opening
  157. p. 20Chazan separates 70 CE from demographic 'exile': defeat did not at once make Jews an exilic people; only in the third century, amid unrest in Roman Palestine, did many emigrate to more peaceful Mesopotamia.c-h502-chazan-exile-third-century
  158. p. 21, p. 21The most cherished possession of an Israelite family was its land, the source of its livelihood. When King Ahab tried to buy Naboth's vineyard, Naboth refused, saying God forbade him to give up his ancestral inheritance (1 Kings 21:3). This is why one of the worst punishments biblical authors can imagine is exile, the separation of Israel from its land.c1-land-and-exile
  159. p. 21, p. 21The father or grandfather was the household's ultimate authority and passed it to male heirs; a woman was under male control all her life, first her father's and, at marriage (brokered between the groom and her father), her husband's. The house was also an economic center (storage, animal stabling, pottery and textiles), where women probably played an important role, but their main role was bearing and raising children.c1-household-authority
  160. p. 21Genesis presents children, particularly sons, as God's greatest blessing to Abraham's descendants after land. Its narrator attends first to Sarah, Hagar, Rebecca and Rachel, and later to Leah, Bilhah and Zilpah, chiefly insofar as these women bring that promise to fulfillment.c1-matriarchs-and-offspring
  161. p. 21, p. 22, p. 28, p. 32Paul Phillip Levertoff (born Feivel in Orsha, Belarus; d. 31 July 1954) was, according to Quiñónez, a major pioneer of the Hebrew Christian movement: a Jewish believer in Jesus, missionary and later Anglican priest in London, who sought a 'Hebrew Christian Church' with its own liturgy.cjb-levertoff-hebrew-christian
  162. p. 22, p. 22The ancient Near East accepted slavery, including Israel. Although the remembered escape from bondage inspired modern abolitionists, Exodus does not reject the institution itself: it portrays Egypt's treatment as wrong because Israelites did not deserve it. That memory encourages sympathy and limits servitude among Israelites, but slavery remained embedded in society and the biblical writers never proposed abolishing it.c1-slavery-accepted
  163. p. 22, p. 22Family ties came under great strain in the Babylonian Exile and later under Greek and Roman rule, when alternatives to family life arose, such as voluntary communities (the early Christian and the rabbinic), which drew some men away from family responsibilities. Still, vestiges of the old family structure persisted, such as tribal identification: survivors of the Exile still identified as members of tribes (most from Judah, some from Levi and Benjamin), and this continued into the first century.c1-family-ties-strained
  164. p. 22Today the word 'Jewish', derived from Judah, has no practical tribal meaning, yet traces persist. Some Jews identify as Levite descendants, belonging to the family assigned worship duties by the Bible. This paternal identity often appears in surnames such as Levi or Levine.c1-levite-trace
  165. p. 22, p. 519The political opening created by the end of Egyptian domination began to close in the ninth and eighth centuries BCE, when the Assyrian Empire expanded from Mesopotamia into Syria and Canaan. As with other kingdoms, Assyria forced the kings of Israel and Judah to submit and pay tribute.c1-assyria-expands
  166. p. 22, p. 22The larger Northern Kingdom resisted Assyria until Shalmaneser V and his successor Sargon II crushed its revolt and destroyed it in 722 to 720 BCE, as Assyrian records corroborate. Assyria deported the population elsewhere in its empire. The fate of the 'ten lost tribes' remains unknown, while Samaritans still claim descent from Ephraim and Manasseh.c1-fall-of-samaria
  167. p. 22, p. 22A few decades later Sennacherib's Assyria also conquered Judah, an episode in 2 Kings 18 and 19 that external evidence partly corroborates. Verses 18:13 and 14 say Sennacherib captured every fortified Judahite city, while Hezekiah contacted him at Lachish and paid three hundred silver talents and thirty gold talents.c1-sennacherib-bible-account
  168. p. 22, p. 23Sennacherib's own annals say, in compatible terms, that Hezekiah did not submit, that he besieged 46 fortified cities and countless villages, deported 200,150 people along with their animals and treated the rest as booty, and that he shut Hezekiah up in Jerusalem 'like a bird in a cage'.c1-sennacherib-annals
  169. p. 22Nulman identifies Minhah as the afternoon service; in Temple times the term also referred to the meal-offering.cl-minhah-afternoon
  170. p. 23, p. 23Sennacherib did not destroy Jerusalem, as the Assyrians had done with Samaria, perhaps because Hezekiah agreed to pay a fine, as 2 Kings 18:14 says. But the Bible says what saved the city was divine intervention: an angel struck down 185,000 Assyrian soldiers, and Sennacherib went home. None of this is in the Assyrian version, which describes a typical victory. Each author had reasons to give his own account: the biblical one stresses God's power; the Assyrian one, Sennacherib's.c1-jerusalem-survival-accounts
  171. p. 23, p. 23Assyrian domination is well attested archaeologically, with destruction layers, inscriptions and building remains, and left a deep mark on biblical literature: much of the prophetic literature (Isaiah, Amos, Micah) comes from the Assyrian period and records fear, confusion and resentment. It interprets the conquest as divine punishment but also holds out God coming to the rescue, as in Isaiah 10:24 to 27.c1-assyria-prophecy
  172. p. 23A panel from the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, from Nimrud, around 825 BCE, shows the tribute of King Jehu of Israel, on his knees at the Assyrian king's feet.c1-jehu-obelisk
  173. p. 23For Nulman, Musaf originally names the additional sacrifice in the Temple; in synagogal liturgy it becomes the corresponding additional service.cl-musaf-additional
  174. p. 23Nulman defines Ne'ilah ('closing') as the fifth and final service of Yom Kippur.cl-neilah-closing-yom-kippur
  175. p. 23In Richard S. Levy's Handbook essay, a broad clinical definition of antisemitism is not enough to link prejudice to genocide: one must distinguish an ancient, adaptable body of anti-Jewish attitudes from the concrete willingness to act against Jews.c-h502-hayes-antisemitism-attitude-vs-action
  176. p. 24, p. 24Sex and the sacred seem incompatible in the Hebrew Bible: before the revelation at Sinai, Israel had to abstain from sexual activity (Exodus 19:15), and priests had more restrictions. God never acts in a sexual way, and his worship, so far as we know, involved no sex. This does not mean condemnation of sexual expression in other contexts: the Song of Songs, attributed to Solomon but probably written by someone else, celebrates erotic desire, which is never condemned.c1-box-sex-sacred
  177. p. 24, p. 24The Hebrew Bible does not treat sex as sinful in itself: Genesis 1 presents it as fulfillment of the first commandment, 'be fruitful and multiply'. But it recognizes it as a potentially destructive act for the community: according to Leviticus 18, the land expelled the Canaanites largely because of their sexual conduct. At the same time, the Bible allows polygamy (for men) and relations with concubines, and tolerates rape in a way that would be unacceptable today.c1-box-sex-community
  178. p. 24, p. 24In Israelite culture, fathers and husbands controlled women's sexual activity, and female sexuality outside that control was seen as shameful and threatening. Biblical law regulates the sexual lives of both men and women but imposes more restrictions on women: a man could have multiple partners and divorce to marry another, but a woman could not have several husbands, sex before marriage or the right to initiate divorce. The law never explicitly prohibits lesbianism, probably because what women did among themselves was of little interest to its lawmakers.c1-box-women-control
  179. p. 24Nulman defines Pesukay Dezimrah as 'verses of song': psalms that open Shaharit; Sephardim name the section Zemirot.cl-pesukei-dezimrah-verses-song
  180. p. 25, p. 25Genesis records episodes of sexual violence and deceit in Jacob's family: Dinah was raped by a man who afterward offered to marry her; Reuben lay with his father's concubine; Judah had relations with his daughter-in-law Tamar, in disguise, thinking she was a prostitute; and Joseph was propositioned by another man's wife. Whether or not they happened, the authors recognize that sexual behavior often involved violence and deceit, and biblical law sought to protect Israelites.c1-box-jacobs-children
  181. p. 25, p. 25Scientists have recently introduced a third source beyond texts and archaeology: DNA. By comparing genetic samples of Jews with those of non-Jews in the same place or of Jews elsewhere, analysis shows that Jewish populations often have a genetic history of their own: they often married non-Jews but also register the effect of endogamy. The profiles of many Jews indicate ancestors from the Near East.c1-box-genetics-sources
  182. p. 25, p. 25Genetic research is new and controversial, and some critics question how the evidence is interpreted; the Nazis used biology to justify genocide, and some fear similar misuse. A famous 1997 study (Skorecki, Hammer and others, in the journal Nature) indicated that the Cohanim, Jewish men who believe themselves descended from Aaron's priestly caste, descend from a common paternal lineage 2,000 or 3,000 years old; more recent research has called aspects of the study into question, and its own authors have revised their interpretation.c1-box-genetics-controversy
  183. p. 25Thus far genetic research has not dramatically altered accounts of ancient Jewish history and has, if anything, supported a fairly traditional picture. It may nevertheless broaden knowledge of Jewish reproductive history. Its ability to illuminate female ancestors is especially promising because ancient Jewish women are otherwise difficult to recover. The authors advise both skepticism and openness.c1-box-genetics-so-far
  184. p. 25, p. 26Ugaritic literature shows that pre-Israelite Canaanite religion personified death as Mot, a ravenous deity capable of consuming multitudes and defeating gods, including Baal in one myth. Biblical texts may echo this story but do not make death divine: the Hebrew Bible contains neither battles between God and death nor rites intended to repel it.c1-box-death-mot
  185. p. 25Nulman defines Shaharit (from 'dawn') as the first prayer service of the day, in the morning.cl-shaharit-dawn-service
  186. p. 25Nulman defines Selihah/Selihot as a penitential 'forgiveness' prayer: in the Ashkenazic rite a week or more before Rosh Hashanah; in the Sephardic ritual from the first of Elul; also on fast days in the yearly cycle.cl-selihot-forgiveness-elul
  187. p. 26, p. 26Prophets including Samuel, Nathan and Elijah chiefly addressed kings, mediating between ruler and God or condemning royal abuses. Following Assyrian conquest, prophecy assumed new tasks: consoling people, imagining life after defeat and expressing demands for revenge as political autonomy and confidence in divine protection faltered.c1-prophecy-new-role
  188. p. 26The Kingdom of Judah survived the Assyrian conquest because, for whatever reason, the Assyrians left it standing, even if reduced: they destroyed many cities and seized much territory but never destroyed Jerusalem itself.c1-judah-survives-assyria
  189. p. 26, p. 26The Babylonian conquest between 598 and 586 BCE was far more devastating. The Neo-Babylonians came from the south and were under Assyrian domination until the Assyrian empire disintegrated in the last decades of the seventh century BCE; then Nebuchadnezzar II (604 to 562 BCE) sought to take over Assyria's territories in Syria and Canaan, a link to Egypt and the Mediterranean.c1-babylonian-threat
  190. p. 26, p. 26Compared with other Near Eastern writings, the Hebrew Bible gives surprisingly little attention to death. Much of the Gilgamesh Epic pursues immortality, while Egyptian culture appears preoccupied with death and an afterlife. Biblical dead enter silent, gloomy Sheol; Enoch, Elijah and Elisha's resurrection miracle are unusual exceptions. Israelites believed in ghosts, as 1 Samuel 28 shows, but scripture prohibits consulting or offering to the dead.c1-box-death-sheol
  191. p. 26, p. 26Israelites, like neighboring peoples, mourned intensely by ripping garments, covering their heads with dust, striking their chests, shaving hair and chanting laments. Tomb jewelry, figurines and possible food offerings indicate care for the dead. Yet the Bible expresses no desire for immortality. Its ideal is long, prosperous life with many children, exemplified by Abraham dying at 175 with numerous descendants and burial beside Sarah on his own land.c1-box-mourning-and-good-death
  192. p. 26Nulman records that Shemoneh Esray ('eighteen') remains the popular name of the Amidah even after an added blessing raised the total to nineteen.cl-shemoneh-name-retained
  193. p. 26In Nulman's glossary, Tachanun is the supplicatory prayer recited in the daily morning and afternoon services.cl-tahanun-supplicatory
  194. p. 27, p. 27, p. 519Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah in 598 BCE, deported King Jehoiachin and installed Jehoiachin's uncle under the new name Zedekiah. Judah might have remained a vassal, but Zedekiah joined an anti-Babylonian revolt. Nebuchadnezzar returned and ended the kingdom. In 587 or 586 BCE he burned and plundered Jerusalem's Temple, killed Zedekiah and his sons, and deported much of the population to Babylonia. The timeline dates the First Temple's destruction to that year.c1-destruction-of-judah
  195. p. 27, p. 27The book of Jeremiah, the second-longest prophetic book after Isaiah, shows how Judahites adapted to captivity. In Jeremiah 29, a letter the prophet is said to have written to the exiles does not encourage them to hope for return but urges them to settle down in the cities where they were deported: build houses, plant gardens, marry, have children and seek the city's welfare, for in its welfare will be theirs.c1-jeremiah-letter
  196. p. 27, p. 27Confronting his society's devastation, Jeremiah does not call for immediate recovery of Canaan, Judahite independence or the Temple. He tells his audience to adapt, accept foreign government temporarily and establish lives in exile, while foretelling a 'new covenant' through which God would eventually renew what had been lost.c1-jeremiah-adaptation
  197. p. 27, p. 27Documents from Nippur's Murashu banking family show that fifth-century BCE Judahites established themselves in Mesopotamia. Many people with recognizably Judahite names appear integrated into Babylonian economic and social life. Little besides names distinguishes them from others, and some children received Babylonian names invoking deities such as Shamash.c1-murashu-archive
  198. p. 27, p. 27The exiles did not lose their connection to their former lives: the same book of Jeremiah that counsels them to settle also urges long-term hope for Israel's restoration, with a renewed relationship with God, a revitalized Davidic dynasty and even a newly reunified Israelite people. Texts such as this are our best evidence of how Judahite society survived the blow, despite losing so many central institutions, through a process of creative adjustment.c1-exile-hope-and-identity
  199. p. 27, p. 27Learning to adapt in this way proved crucial for the long-term survival of Judahite culture. After the biblical era its descendants, the Jews, would be ruled by other foreigners (Persians, Greeks, Romans, Muslims and others), and texts such as Jeremiah were an important resource for coping, endorsing submission as religiously acceptable and proposing ways to keep the relationship with God outside Canaan.c1-adaptation-as-legacy
  200. p. 27, p. 27The Bible and outside evidence show that religious life in Israel and Judah, though with some distinguishing traits, resembled that of surrounding cultures. At the center of Near Eastern religion was a relationship with the gods, beings like humans but bigger, stronger and far longer-lived; the temple was the setting for interaction between gods and humans, and myths tried to understand that relationship. Two aims of religious practice were divination, to discern the gods' intentions, and prayer and sacrifice, to win their goodwill.c1-religion-near-east
  201. p. 28, p. 28There are Israelite parallels. Archaeologists have found sanctuaries in Israel and Judah (not the Jerusalem Temple), such as the one at Dan in the north and a temple at Arad in Judah, whose design, like that of the Temple described in the Bible, has the conventional features of Syria-Palestinian temples. Some biblical sacrifices and rituals resemble those of Ugarit, and the psalms have ancient Near Eastern counterparts. God has features of a typical regional deity: creator, warrior, king, who convenes heavenly councils and crushes his foes.c1-israelite-cult-parallels
  202. p. 28, p. 28A priestly class served God in sanctuaries and supervised worship and sacrifice, as priests did for other deities. Although the Bible rejects some neighboring divination, it permits interpreting dreams and casting lots. Prophecy likewise has parallels: a Jordanian inscription from Deir 'Alla records visions of Balaam, the non-Israelite prophet of Numbers 22 to 24, while Assyria preserved collections of prophetic oracles.c1-priests-and-prophecy-parallels
  203. p. 28, p. 28The Bible rejects portraying God in human or animal form, and no statue of him has been discovered. Evidence nevertheless suggests Israelites believed he inhabited the sanctuary and appeared indirectly through signs of presence. The Ark of the Covenant functioned in this way, perhaps as God's footstool or vehicle. Other cultures also used nonrepresentational symbols, so the practice may not have been uniquely Israelite.c1-aniconism
  204. p. 28, p. 28Kingdom-period inscriptions from Israel and Judah name Canaanite deities including Baal, Asherah and El. Most references, however, concern YHWH, who is absent from Ugaritic writings and other evidence for Canaanite religion. Beyond the Bible his name occurs in letters, prayers and blessings, while its shortened 'yahu' appears in names such as Uriyahu, 'YHWH is my light', and Netanyahu, 'YHWH has given'. Such names show the relationship's importance for identity.c1-yahwistic-names
  205. p. 28Penner argues that in Second Temple Judaism it is not chiefly prayer times as such that build group identity, but the distinctive meaning attached to certain times; at Qumran, more extensive daily practices would have helped set the community apart.cl-times-group-identity
  206. p. 28In Nulman's glossary, Vidui is confession of sins expressed in Yom Kippur prayers as well as in the daily prayers, and in special forms (such as at the deathbed).cl-vidui-yom-kippur-glossary
  207. p. 29, p. 29Compared with Canaan's other gods, Yahweh appears new. He is absent from Ugaritic literature and other Canaanite evidence, although a few comparable place and personal names exist. Israel's name, already attested in the thirteenth century BCE, contains 'El' rather than Yahweh. His first securely dated appearance comes only during Israel's monarchy, leaving his origins a matter of informed conjecture.c1-yahweh-new-deity
  208. p. 29, p. 29Some scholars attribute Yahweh's rise to influence from Akhenaten, the iconoclastic fourteenth-century BCE Egyptian ruler who promoted an early monotheistic form centered on Aten, the sun god. Because Israelites may have been in Egypt then, some writers infer an effect on Israel's concept of God. Sigmund Freud popularized this proposal in Moses and Monotheism.c1-akhenaten-theory
  209. p. 29, p. 29Continuities nevertheless connect Yahweh with older Canaanite religion. Although modern Judaism is monotheistic, biblical passages reveal an earlier Israelite faith closer to Canaanite polytheism, associating Yahweh with El or Baal and admitting lesser divine beings. Psalm 89 offers one example through its 'council of the holy ones' and 'sons of els', a phrase that may mean 'gods'.c1-early-polytheism-traces
  210. p. 29, p. 29A drawing on a piece of pottery from Kuntillet Ajrud, an outpost in the southern Negev from the eighth century BCE, has above the largest standing figure an inscription mentioning YHWH and 'his Asherah', the name of a goddess from Ugaritic and Canaanite religion. Some scholars identify that figure as Yahweh and the seated figure as his companion Asherah, but the interpretation is sharply debated, and many see Egyptian deities.c1-kuntillet-figure
  211. p. 29Novinsky focuses on the New Christian who stayed in Portuguese lands even when able to choose Holland or Recife.c9-bahia-focus-stayers
  212. p. 29That group, not the Dutch-occupation surge, linked to about two hundred and fifty years of New Christian presence in Brazil.c9-bahia-long-persistence
  213. p. 29, p. 30, p. 21In 1925 Levertoff published the Hebrew liturgy Meal of the Holy King for services at Holy Trinity (London). He also helped translate the Zohar into English (Soncino). Quiñónez reads this as a bridge between Jewish learning and Hebrew Christian practice, without conflating the movement with the patristic sects.cjb-levertoff-liturgy-zohar
  214. p. 29Penner notes that the Hebrew Bible yields scant support for scheduled daily prayer or for prayer already heavily ritualized: sacrifice stands as the foremost worship mode in that literature.cl-hb-little-fixed-daily
  215. p. 30, p. 30YHWH's earliest extrabiblical attestation appears on the ninth-century BCE Moabite Mesha Stele, where the context links him with Israel. Whether his history is older remains unknown, so scholars seek clues to his origins within biblical texts.c1-mesha-yhwh
  216. p. 30, p. 30The meaning of YHWH is unknown, and it is not even clear how to pronounce it, since its vowels were forgotten: after the biblical era Jews began to avoid pronouncing the name, and the vowels now written come from Adonay, 'My Lord'. The Bible suggests a link to the verb 'to be' (Exodus 3:14, 'I am who I am'), but some scholars think the name comes from the causative form, 'the one who causes to be', that is, the Creator. Other etymologies have been proposed.c1-yhwh-name-meaning
  217. p. 30, p. 30If Yahweh's name derives from his role as a creator god, this would link him to El, who plays that role in Canaanite mythology. Other connections support the idea that Yahweh arose within the Canaanite pantheon as a version of El: the Bible gives him 'El' names (El Elyon), the name Israel incorporates El, and Yahweh is associated with Asherah, El's consort.c1-el-origin-theory
  218. p. 30, p. 30Other biblical clues suggest Yahweh came from outside Canaan, from the Sinai wilderness: a few texts describe him coming from the south, and inscriptions from Kuntillet Ajrud speak of 'Yahweh of the South'. That territory was inhabited by the Midianites, and some scholars have proposed that Yahweh began as a Midianite god (the Midianite hypothesis). At Sinai Moses meets Yahweh in the burning bush and Israel makes its covenant, stories that may reflect a vague memory of him as a deity first met there.c1-midianite-hypothesis
  219. p. 30, p. 30Yahweh's Canaanite connections and possible Midianite origin might be reconciled in two ways. Israel may have adopted him from Midian before joining him to northern traditions about El. Alternatively, regional forms may once have coexisted, like the many local Baals, including Yahweh of Samaria and Yahweh of the South, before being combined into the biblical God.c1-yahweh-conflation
  220. p. 30, p. 30Psalm 89 and other psalms have parallels in Ugarit: the 'holy ones' convene in assemblies, like the one in which Baal meets the gods before confronting Yam, the Sea; Yahweh's subjugation of the sea parallels Baal's victory; the dragon Lotan, whom Baal fights, corresponds to the monster Rahab of the psalm and to Leviathan, a variant of Lotan (Psalm 74). Mount Zaphon in northern Syria, Baal's home, resembles the Bible's holy mountains and above all Zion, and the Bible transfers the name 'Zaphon' to Zion in Psalm 48.c1-ugaritic-divine-battles
  221. p. 30, p. 30Hebrew inscriptions at Negev's Kuntillet Ajrud mention 'Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah' and 'Yahweh of the South and his Asherah'. Ugaritic tradition identifies Asherah as El's companion. The phrase could denote that goddess or a cult object associated with her. Though debated, it may imply that some Israelites once understood Yahweh as having a partner, as El did in Ugaritic myth.c1-kuntillet-inscriptions
  222. p. 31, p. 31This led to the theory that early Israelite religion was not very different from earlier Canaanite religion: Yahweh would be another name for El, with a consort Asherah, or a variant of Baal, defeating Baal's enemies and taking up residence on a sacred mountain; lesser deities would exist, overshadowed by Yahweh's superior power. A similar process occurred among neighbors in the first millennium: Ugarit acknowledged more than 200 gods in the second millennium, but Canaanite states of the first have ten or fewer; Moab coalesced around Chemosh, Edom around Qaws and Ammon around Milkom.c1-early-religion-theory
  223. p. 31, p. 31How did monotheism arise, the belief in Yahweh not just as supreme god but as the only god? Some trace it to Akhenaten, but exclusive worship of Yahweh may have emerged later, in the period of Assyrian and Babylonian conquest. The Bible has many passages praising God as the most powerful or unique, but these do not rule out other gods, and truly monotheistic statements are surprisingly rare, found only in texts from the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian period, such as Isaiah 44:6 to 8.c1-monotheism-late
  224. p. 31, p. 31The catalyst for this change may have been Mesopotamian imperialism: Assyrians and Babylonians were polytheistic but flirted with quasi-monotheistic ideas. An Assyrian text describes the body of the god Ninurta as a composite of all the other gods, as if they were extensions of a single supreme god, and the monotheism of Isaiah 44 may reflect such ideas. Alternatively, monotheism may have developed as a reaction to Mesopotamian dominance, a way to resist subordinating Yahweh to the conqueror's gods by denying their existence. The authors acknowledge they do not know how monotheism took root.c1-monotheism-causes
  225. p. 31, p. 31As in other Near Eastern cultures, identity in Israel and Judah was defined not only by kinship, birthplace and political allegiance but also by a relationship with a deity, expressed in ritual, myth and even a person's name. Yahweh was the most popular deity in first-millennium Canaan, associated with Israel and Judah as Chemosh was with the Moabites and Qaws with the Edomites. Loyalty to him survived Assyrian and Babylonian conquest, as did the importance of the Temple, sacrifice and prayer, the avoidance of divine images, the roles of priest and prophet, and the use of stories like those in the Bible to understand God's relationship to humans.c1-yahweh-identity-continuities
  226. p. 31The Ark, the symbolic center of worship in the Temple, was somehow lost before the Babylonian Exile, but the Temple and other elements of worship survived in memory.c1-ark-lost
  227. p. 31, p. 31The chapter's historical reconstruction diverges sharply from biblical Israel's story. It omits Abraham, Moses, King David, the Exodus and Joshua's conquest. While scripture separates Israelites from Canaanites and places their beginnings abroad, the authors propose that Israelite culture may have branched from Canaanite culture, with Amorites, Hyksos and Habiru among possible precursors. Evidence also suggests Israelite religion resembled neighboring traditions.c1-reconstruction-without-figures
  228. p. 31, p. 32Despite challenges to its historical account, the Bible remains the richest source for the Israelite culture from which Jewish culture developed. It preserves the start of Israelite culture's transformation into Jewish culture: a distinct Judahite form emerged and then changed under Assyrian and Babylonian conquest.c1-bible-most-valuable-source
  229. p. 32, p. 32Babylonian rule ended David's dynasty, destroyed the Temple and exiled Judahites, decisively advancing the transition from Judahite to Jewish culture. Those disruptions alone do not explain it, because the Hebrew Bible was itself a catalyst. Reading texts that became scripture to recover a lost way of life, Judahites began creating a new culture organized around interpreting sacred writings. Understanding Jewish culture's rise therefore requires studying the Bible.c1-bible-as-catalyst
  230. p. 32In Bahia, New Christians moved from merchants without honors to mill owners and landholders.c9-bahia-social-ascent
  231. p. 33The chapter opens with a question: at what point did the Israelites of scripture, the inhabitants of the kingdom of Judah in the south, become what we now call Jews, and what warrants changing the name we use for them?c2-chapter-question
  232. p. 33An answer is hard to give because historians do not agree on when the people later known as Jews came into being. The authors say it is much easier to explain why these questions cannot be answered than to answer them.c2-no-origin-agreement
  233. p. 33The survivors of the Babylonian Exile are called 'Jews' partly because most came from the tribe of Judah (some were from Levi and Benjamin) or from the former Kingdom of Judah. Yet the term suggests more than that: a cultural and religious transformation that followed the Exile.c2-exiles-from-judah
  234. p. 33The word 'Jew' descends from biblical Hebrew 'yehudi', which in the Bible refers to a person of the tribe of Judah, fourth of Jacob's twelve sons, or to a subject of David's kingdom, based in territory of that tribe. The label implies a different identity from what 'Jewish' suggests in later periods.c2-yehudi-bible
  235. p. 33In the first century CE the word (and its Aramaic, Greek and Latin counterparts) still had tribal and geographic overtones, yet it could also mean someone committed to laws and customs of his own, unlike those of other peoples such as the Greeks. To be Jewish in that sense required neither descent from Judah nor residence in its land, only certain beliefs and conduct.c2-yehudi-first-century
  236. p. 33For many scholars, 'Jew' and 'Judaism' name an identity of religion, not one of tribe, ethnicity or place. The authors admit that how this change came about is not fully understood, nor is it clear how to separate 'Israelite' from 'Jew'.c2-jew-as-religious-identity
  237. p. 33, p. 519During the nineteenth century a set of documents surfaced that revealed a Judahite (or Jewish?) community of the fifth century BCE in an unlikely spot: Elephantine, a small island in the middle of the Nile in what is now southern Egypt.c2-elephantine-find
  238. p. 33Egypt was then ruled by Persia, and these people served there as imperial troops, living with their families to help guard the border zone between southern Egypt and Nubia.c2-elephantine-soldiers
  239. p. 33The Elephantine Papyri, written in Aramaic, include private and official letters, legal and financial records and a literary work about a wise courtier called Ahiqar, and they give a vivid picture of the people who produced them.c2-elephantine-papyri
  240. p. 33These people called themselves 'yehudiyin', a term many scholars translate as 'Jews', and there are good reasons for doing so: they worshiped Yahweh (Yaho in the Elephantine texts), bore names with a Yahwistic element and observed holy days such as the Sabbath and Passover.c2-elephantine-yahwists
  241. p. 33But they differ from the Jews known from other sources: they did not treat Jerusalem as the only legitimate place of sacrifice (they offered to Yaho at a temple on the island itself, destroyed in 410 BCE) and seem to have acknowledged other gods beside him.c2-elephantine-differences
  242. p. 33, p. 34The papyri contain no texts that cite or interpret the Bible, let alone biblical manuscripts, and there is no sign that Abraham, Moses, Joshua or David belonged to the community's collective memory. They may have learned something of biblical law through contacts with Jerusalem authorities.c2-elephantine-no-bible
  243. p. 33Inquisition agents tied the New Christian to the Dutch invasion, although documents show active participation in Bahia's defense.c9-bahia-dutch-myth
  244. p. 33Reif notes that in various biblical reports prayer appears as direct and personal communication with God, outside the institutional cult.cl-biblical-prayer-personal
  245. p. 34Because the definition of 'Jewish' is blurry, the authors do not try to fix a date at which Judahite culture turned Jewish. They prefer to examine events that, seen in retrospect, proved decisive in that transition.c2-no-single-date
  246. p. 34The few surviving sources suggest that continuity with the past mattered deeply to the Judahite/Jewish culture that emerged after the Exile. The figures in late books such as Ezra and Nehemiah identify with pre-exilic Israelites and want to preserve their inherited traditions.c2-continuity-value
  247. p. 34Moving from 'Judahite' to 'Jewish' for this period, the authors explain, marks a difference without erasing the line of continuity between the two cultures. Only from our later vantage point do we recognize something new in the sources.c2-label-shift
  248. p. 34The chapter treats two developments that may be linked: the coming of Persian rule in the 500s BCE and the emergence of the Bible as sacred scripture. For that reason much of it is a history of the Bible more than of the Jews in the Persian period.c2-two-developments
  249. p. 34Persian rule brought down the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the power that had devastated the Kingdom of Judah, and for the next two centuries it framed the political, social and cultural setting of the ancestors of the Jews.c2-persia-shaped-world
  250. p. 34, p. 34Some biblical texts were composed before the Exile, but much of the Bible took shape in the Persian age. It was then that reading the Bible began to weigh on Jewish identity, an influence that endures wherever Jews still read it for clues about where they come from and how to live.c2-bible-took-shape
  251. p. 34If 'Jewish' simply means coming from Judah or descending from Judahites, then Elephantine's community qualifies. Still, it would be an error to imagine it resembling the Jews of later sources; it is arguably less anachronistic to treat it as a distinct branch growing out of older Judahite culture.c2-elephantine-label
  252. p. 34, p. 34, p. 519Scholars debate whether the Babylonian conquest was really as ruinous as the Bible implies, but most see it as a turning point. Once the Davidic dynasty ended, Judah was no longer independent, and its people's fate came to depend on foreign governments.c2-babylon-watershed
  253. p. 34The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple struck at the core of Judahite religious life and forced the people to find new ways of relating to God.c2-temple-loss
  254. p. 34Many people may have stayed in Judah, but a significant part of the population was exiled to Babylon. This exiled group appears to be where the texts gathered in the Jewish Bible came from.c2-exiles-source-of-bible
  255. p. 34The conquest had a devastating effect on Judahite culture, measured by the archaeological evidence of destruction in this period, but it also spurred a great deal of creativity, measured by the literature of the time preserved in the Bible.c2-devastation-creativity
  256. p. 34Several biblical books were newly composed during Babylonian domination or in the following centuries: Jeremiah, Ezekiel and other prophetic texts that respond to the conquest; Lamentations, which mourns Jerusalem's destruction; and the narratives of Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles (two parts), roughly a quarter of the Jewish Bible's books. Ruth may date from the same time, but that cannot be proven.c2-books-composed-after-conquest
  257. p. 34, p. 35Other books, though drawing on older sources, are thought to have been revised and expanded after the conquest, among them the Deuteronomistic History, a modern name for a hypothesized work joining Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. The last two chapters of 2 Kings report the Exile itself, and many scholars believe the Five Books of Moses were also edited and expanded then.c2-books-revised
  258. p. 35Of the creativity of this period only what the Bible preserved remains, and it reflects the outlook of those exiled to Babylonia, not of those who remained in the land. Even so, Judahite culture plainly did more than survive; it flourished, thanks to prophets, historians, psalmists and unnamed editors.c2-only-bible-survives
  259. p. 35Because of this burst of religious and literary creativity, born of the drive to sustain Israelite culture after a trauma, many scholars place the start of Judaism in 587 or 586 BCE, the year Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple.c2-judaism-587
  260. p. 35, p. 519Babylonian rule was fairly short: it came to an end in 539 BCE, when Cyrus II, founder of the Achaemenid dynasty, defeated the Neo-Babylonian Empire; his line would be the dominant power of the Near East for two centuries. The book's timeline records Cyrus's edict allowing the exiles to return to Yehud and rebuild the Temple.c2-babylon-falls-539
  261. p. 35The origins of the Persian Empire, which emerged around 550 BCE, are mysterious, since few sources cover its earliest history. What we do know is that its ruling family came from what is now Iran and soon built an empire reaching Egypt and pressing into the Greek world, which led to the war recorded by Herodotus.c2-persian-origins
  262. p. 35Map 2.1 of the book shows the empire of the Persian Achaemenid dynasty (539 to 332 BCE), with Babylon, Judah/Yehud with Jerusalem, Egypt with Elephantine and the capitals Susa, Persepolis and Ecbatana.c2-map-persian-empire
  263. p. 35Persia seems to have affected Judah far less than it did the Greeks: the biblical sources depict Persian rule as a time of calm and recovery, not of war and ruin. Even so, it may have set deep changes in motion.c2-persia-peace-in-bible
  264. p. 35Cyrus was a remarkably effective empire builder: he consolidated his power in Iran, conquered Asia Minor, where he planted the roots of the quarrel with the Greeks, and in 539 BCE subdued Babylon, gaining control of the Judahites in the city itself and of those in the former Kingdom of Judah.c2-cyrus-builder
  265. p. 35In the Bible's telling, these conquests were God's means of restoring his people: he handed Cyrus an empire so that Cyrus would send the Judahites home and rebuild the Jerusalem temple. Greeks recalled the Persians as haughty barbarians, whereas the Bible recalls them as kindly patrons.c2-cyrus-in-bible
  266. p. 36Chapters 40 to 55 of Isaiah, called Deutero-Isaiah because they look like a later addition, praise Cyrus as a savior appointed by God, calling him 'shepherd' and 'anointed', to help restore the Judahites.c2-deutero-isaiah
  267. p. 36Scholars place this section of Isaiah in the Persian period, even though the prophet lived in the Assyrian era, because it names Cyrus explicitly. By calling him 'shepherd' and 'anointed', the text uses language normally applied to the kings of Judah, likening him to David, the highest praise for a political leader.c2-deutero-isaiah-dating
  268. p. 36Because the portrait of Persian rule is so glowing, some historians suggest that Deutero-Isaiah is pro-Persian propaganda, a proposal not implausible given how Persian rule presented itself to the peoples it governed.c2-isaiah-propaganda
  269. p. 36, p. 36The Cyrus Cylinder, a Babylonian text of the same period found in 1879 and now kept in the British Museum, is cylindrical probably because it was used to roll out multiple impressions of its text on fresh clay tablets. Its text tells how the Babylonian god Marduk chose Cyrus to bring the divine images of Babylonia back to their sanctuary.c2-cyrus-cylinder
  270. p. 36The Cylinder presents Cyrus as a devout restorer of tradition, much as Deutero-Isaiah claims God chose him to restore the Temple. Some call both works propaganda, attempts to make the Persian conquest look like a continuation of local custom.c2-cylinder-parallel
  271. p. 36To absorb diverse peoples more easily, Cyrus aligned himself with each one's beliefs and enlisted local experts to present him in terms that fit local religion: a Babylonian scribe composed the Cylinder, and the author of Deutero-Isaiah showed him as God's agent modeled on an Israelite king. Different languages and gods, the same rhetorical strategy.c2-cyrus-strategy
  272. p. 36Why did the Judahites ally with Persia, given their resistance to the Assyrians and Babylonians? They may have recalled how badly earlier revolts had ended, since the revolt against Babylon had led to Jerusalem's destruction.c2-why-ally-persia
  273. p. 36Prophetic texts of the period, such as the book of Haggai, suggest that the returning Judahites had great difficulty farming the land, and famine and poverty may have been one reason they accepted Persia as patron.c2-haggai-hardship
  274. p. 36Another reason may have been the presence of other inhabitants in the land, whom the Bible calls 'the people of the land', neighbors who tried to thwart the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple. They seem to have included remnants of Ammonites, Moabites and Canaanite groups, plus the people living in what had been the Kingdom of Israel.c2-people-of-the-land
  275. p. 36According to the Bible, the inhabitants of the former Israel were not Israelites but foreigners brought in to replace the Israelites the Assyrians had deported; they adopted some Israelite ways and saw the newcomers as rivals. Later Jewish sources describe them as forebears of the Samaritans, but the Samaritans do not see themselves that way.c2-samaritan-forebears
  276. p. 36, p. 37Both the returning exiles and their opponents appealed to the Persian government, and the Judahites prevailed partly because they won that support. They seem to have embraced Persian rule because an alliance with it looked like the way to meet their needs from a very fragile position.c2-persian-support-won
  277. p. 36, p. 36, p. 37In seventh-century Visigothic Spain, Skarsaune distinguishes forced conversions (a temporary survival strategy) from permanent voluntary ones, which Jews themselves treated as apostasy. Under Bishop Aurasius of Toledo (603 to 615), Rabbi Isaac, Joseph, Naphtali and other prominent Jews converted; the synagogue head Levi Samuel reacted harshly, and Count Froga even carried out internal Jewish 'justice' against the converts.cjb-visigothic-voluntary-converts
  278. p. 36Flusser argues that end-of-days doctrines in apocalyptic texts voiced views of mainstream Judaism of the day (redemption, messiah, kingdom of heaven), rooted in the biblical heritage and in Israel's political and economic crises.c-h502-flusser-apocalyptic-mainstream
  279. p. 37The community's temple was menaced by worshippers of the Egyptian god Khnum, lord of the Nile's source, and was wrecked in 410 BCE. To get it rebuilt, the Judahites petitioned the Persian governor Bagavahya.c2-elephantine-khnum
  280. p. 37, p. 37In exchange for support, the community offered to pray to God on the governor's behalf in the restored temple. Like the Jews of the Bible, it tried to secure its survival by allying itself with Persian power, offering loyalty in return for protection from hostile neighbors. The group's history can scarcely be followed past this effort, and the temple may never have been rebuilt.c2-elephantine-petition
  281. p. 37, p. 37The Judahites could return to the land and rebuild the Temple, but not restore an independent state with a king of their own. The territory was now administered as a province called Yehud (Aramaic for Yehuda), part of a larger imperial unit, the satrapy 'Beyond the River', which took in Canaan and other lands west of the Euphrates.c2-yehud-province
  282. p. 37Not all Judahites may have accepted Persian rule, and biblical texts of the period hint at some restlessness. Any attempt to regain independence failed, and Persian control only tightened over time.c2-restiveness
  283. p. 37, p. 519Cyrus's son Cambyses conquered Egypt, which gave Persia a bigger interest in the territory connecting Egypt with the rest of the empire, Yehud included. He died before reaching home, and his successor, Darius I (522 to 486 BCE), consolidated the empire: he reorganized administration, expanded roads and started a waterway linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.c2-cambyses-darius
  284. p. 37, p. 519Darius's permission to finish the Temple, begun under Cyrus but halted under Cambyses, may have been part of that effort: a way of binding Yehud more closely to Persian rule by sponsoring Jerusalem and its temple.c2-darius-temple
  285. p. 37Persian rule brought a linguistic shift. The Bible is called Hebrew for its language, but that is slightly misleading: parts of Ezra, Nehemiah and Daniel are in Aramaic, a language that spread in the Persian era because it served imperial administration.c2-aramaic-in-bible
  286. p. 37, p. 37Hebrew was not abandoned, but Aramaic grew so influential that it changed Hebrew grammar and vocabulary and even the way Hebrew is written: the Aramaic alphabet displaced the pre-exilic Hebrew script, and Hebrew is written in it to this day. A few Persian words also entered, such as 'pardes' (garden), source of 'paradise'.c2-aramaic-script
  287. p. 37, p. 37Biblical literature of the Achaemenid age often portrays Persian rulers favorably. The book of Esther, probably of the fourth century BCE, tells of an attempt to destroy the Jews in the reign of Ahasuerus, but blames his adviser Haman, who misleads him, not the king; Esther, married to him, uses her influence to revoke the decree.c2-esther-king-not-hostile
  288. p. 37, p. 37Esther's happy ending is commemorated at Purim, named for the 'pur', the lot Haman cast to choose the day of the Jews' destruction. In Esther's Persian Empire, fellow subjects try to hurt the Jews, but the king himself is no enemy: what saves them is their bond with him.c2-purim-origin
  289. p. 37In preserving their religious tradition this way, the Judahites had to give up the aspiration to political autonomy. Accepting foreign rule meant keeping local traditions alive in settings controlled by other peoples, sometimes by playing down or reinterpreting the culture to avoid confrontation.c2-autonomy-sacrificed
  290. p. 37, p. 37, p. 38Julian of Toledo (c. 642 to 690), son of Jews and not a convert himself, became the most powerful primate of the Visigothic church. Skarsaune treats him as the most prominent named Jewish believer in that church: trained under Eugenius II, he marked Spain as an independent archbishop until March 690.cjb-julian-of-toledo
  291. p. 38The Judahites had to learn their rulers' languages and, through new trade contacts, were exposed to cultural influences. Their identity changed: beyond membership in a family or kingdom, they were now subjects of a vast empire, ruled by a distant sovereign who, through his officials, shaped Judah's political and religious life.c2-new-identity
  292. p. 38The Persian era is also when the Judahites first seem to turn to the writings destined to become the Bible as a way of keeping their ancestral culture alive. It looks conservative, but it is a new phase and perhaps the single most important development of the period for understanding how Judahite culture gave rise to Jewish culture.c2-turn-to-texts
  293. p. 38Historians often tie this turn to Ezra the scribe, a priest and learned leader of the Judahite community under Persian rule, who may have been active around 450 BCE.c2-ezra-figure
  294. p. 38Later Jewish tradition remembered Ezra as a Moses-like figure who 're-revealed' the laws of Moses in the form later Jews knew; he was even thought to have re-written the biblical text, converting it from the old paleo-Hebrew letters to the Aramaic script used now. That is not quite the role the Bible itself gives him.c2-ezra-in-tradition
  295. p. 38In the Bible, the Persian king Artaxerxes sends Ezra at the head of a group of exiles and to regulate life in Judah and Jerusalem 'according to the law of your God' (Ezra 7). The phrase is vague, but many scholars think it means the laws of the Five Books of Moses, which he was to put into force in the province of Yehud.c2-ezra-in-bible
  296. p. 38Some scholars believe the Five Books of Moses were introduced during Ezra's administration: not written then, since they likely rest on pre-exilic sources, but gathered, edited and proclaimed as a binding law for the people of Judah.c2-torah-under-ezra
  297. p. 38, p. 39Together with another official, Nehemiah, a Judahite cupbearer of the Persian king who was likewise dispatched to Yehud to rebuild Jerusalem, Ezra is linked to the revival of Judahite culture as one founded on scripture, shaped by reading and interpreting sacred texts.c2-nehemiah-mission
  298. p. 38Nehemiah, who played an important role in rebuilding Jerusalem, seems to have been troubled by marriages between Israelites and non-Israelite women, and cursed and beat Judahites married to women from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab. The ban seems to have arisen from fear that such marriages would lead to worship of Canaanite gods, but Nehemiah's worry was different: that the children were losing the ability to speak the language of Judah.c2-nehemiah-intermarriage
  299. p. 38Other parts of the Hebrew Bible are less plainly opposed. The ban is aimed at non-Israelites living within Canaan; there is no general ban on marrying foreigners, and Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses marry Arameans, Egyptians, Midianites and Ethiopians, women who were not Canaanites.c2-intermarriage-not-blanket
  300. p. 38The Bible even portrays mixed marriages in a positive light. The most famous case is Ruth, a book many scholars think was written in the age of Ezra and Nehemiah, which holds that David himself descended from the marriage of the Israelite Boaz and the Moabite Ruth. Esther's marriage to Ahasuerus likewise does not trouble the author of Esther.c2-intermarriage-positive
  301. p. 38Gerber describes Cordoba's Jewish quarter shifting: before the Muslim conquest it lay southwest near the wall; in the tenth century it enlarged northward so that medieval Arab historians called the gate Bab el-Yahud, the Gate of the Jews.c-h502-gerber-cordoba-bab-el-yahud
  302. p. 38For Gerber, residential segregation in medieval Muslim times was not necessarily discriminatory: it followed Middle Eastern urban patterns in which groups (Jews, Christians, Berbers) often lived in their own neighborhoods.c-h502-gerber-segregation-not-always-bias
  303. p. 39The book illustrates the chapter with a relief sculpture of King Darius the Great (figure 2.2).c2-darius-relief
  304. p. 39What actually happened probably differs from the biblical account. Ezra and Nehemiah are known through books that give little information and suffer from confused chronology and other historiographical problems, and we cannot be sure they were contemporaries, as the Bible suggests, or who came first.c2-ezra-nehemiah-caution
  305. p. 39Even so, the Persian period does look like the time when the Bible's core, the Five Books of Moses and perhaps others, became a scripture that Judahites and Jews consulted about where they came from, what they owed God and what lay ahead.c2-persian-core-scripture
  306. p. 39By 'Bible' the authors mean the Jewish biblical canon, which began not as one book but as a set of scrolls held to carry unique authority because God revealed or inspired them (the word comes from the Greek 'biblia sacra', 'sacred texts'). The Christian canon is different and took shape much later, after the first century CE.c2-bible-defined
  307. p. 39The authors condense the formation of the Jewish Bible into two stages: the composition of the texts and their embrace as scripture, a record of divine revelation and the basis of belief and practice, a process known as canonization, the declaring of something to be sacred and binding, which appears to have crystallized under Persian rule. In truth, composition and canonization cannot be neatly separated.c2-two-stages
  308. p. 39Writing arose in the fourth millennium BCE, some 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, in the Near East and perhaps first in Mesopotamia, and it changed human life by letting information last longer and travel farther.c2-writing-invented
  309. p. 40Picturing the Bible as a book is anachronistic. The book as an object, sheets of parchment or paper bound between covers, appeared only later, coming into use after the rise of Christianity; before that, Israelites wrote on animal-hide scrolls, tablets of clay, wood or wax, potsherds and stones. Jews transmitted biblical texts as separate scrolls, and they were published as a single volume only long afterward.c2-bible-not-a-book
  310. p. 40, p. 40Most Jews in antiquity had no means of owning or handling a Torah scroll: in the first century CE there was probably one copy per village, if that, few could read, and reading was often a public event performed before an audience. Few authors signed their work, and many added material anonymously, under the name of the early prophet or sage whose words they were expanding.c2-ancient-readers
  311. p. 40Much of today's Bible comes from changes made long after antiquity. The ancient Hebrew texts did not carry the titles Genesis, Exodus and so on, which come from the Greek and Latin translations read by Christians; Jewish tradition names each book by its first word (Bereshit, 'In the beginning'). The chapter divisions are likewise medieval.c2-titles-chapters
  312. p. 40Writing also created a way to cross the barrier between humans and gods, a function it took on in the Near East during the second millennium BCE. In Mesopotamia some texts were believed to issue from the gods' own mouths, taken down by human dictation, or to record episodes of revelation, and the notion of writing as a link between people and the divine would be vital for biblical literature.c2-writing-and-gods
  313. p. 40Writing reached Canaan well before the Israelites did. It was probably in Canaan or nearby, as in Sinai, that the alphabet was invented between 2000 and 1500 BCE. With few signs (22 in Hebrew), each originally a picture of a word beginning with the sound represented ('mem', which became our M, comes from a drawing of water, 'mayim'), the word 'alphabet' derives from 'aleph' and 'bet'.c2-alphabet-origin
  314. p. 40In the 1970s the movement formerly called 'Hebrew Christianity' renamed itself 'Messianic Judaism'. The inversion (Judaism as genus, Messianic as species) and the shift from 'Christian' to 'Messianic' sought emphasis on Jewish tradition and to avoid hearing 'Christian' as synonymous with goy.cjb-messianic-rename
  315. p. 41, p. 41The alphabet was widely adopted because it was easier to learn and faster to write than systems requiring memorization of hundreds or thousands of signs, which explains why it prevailed in Canaan and later spread to Greece and Rome. Around 1050 BCE the Canaanite alphabet reached a standard shape, out of which regional scripts grew: Phoenician, Edomite, Moabite and Israelite.c2-alphabet-spread
  316. p. 41Literacy was scarce in antiquity. Israel and Judah developed a class of full-time scribes, who drafted and read official records for the king or the Temple, and Ezra is one example of such a scholar. They seldom worked on their own: rulers and temples generated most of the documents of the Near East.c2-scribes
  317. p. 41The alphabet was easy enough that scribes were not its only users: there is also unofficial writing, produced by individuals for themselves, such as pious graffiti, tomb inscriptions and even a plea for help from someone trying to recover a confiscated cloak.c2-informal-writing
  318. p. 41, p. 41A burial site at Ketef Hinnom, just south of Jerusalem, yielded two tiny silver amulets engraved with priestly blessings nearly the same as Numbers 6:24 and 25. They date from the 600s or 500s BCE and, as the earliest known appearance of a biblical text beyond the Bible, show that such material was starting to be put in writing.c2-ketef-hinnom
  319. p. 41, p. 41Without the Hebrew Bible itself, nothing in the inscriptional record would lead us to guess that ancient Judah had so varied and sophisticated a literature. Who wrote it, when and why has occupied scholars for roughly three centuries, producing countless hypotheses; the authors point to a few basic points of consensus.c2-inscriptions-silent
  320. p. 41, p. 42Deciphering cuneiform was a landmark of nineteenth-century scholarship, which made it possible to read texts unread for millennia and to find precise resemblances to biblical literature. Foremost was the Gilgamesh Epic, announced in 1872 by George Smith, whose flood story closely resembles that of Genesis 6 to 9.c2-cuneiform-parallels
  321. p. 42, p. 42, p. 42The book compares passages: the sending out of birds to see whether the waters had receded (raven and dove in Genesis; dove, swallow and raven in Gilgamesh), the sacrifices whose aroma pleases the divinity, and the sign of the covenant, the bow in Genesis and the goddess Ishtar's jeweled necklace in Gilgamesh, probably a rainbow. In Gilgamesh the flood is narrated by its survivor himself, Utnapishtim.c2-flood-parallels
  322. p. 42The flood was only one point of resemblance between biblical and Babylonian literature. Sources discovered in the twentieth century showed that the Bible has much in common with Egypt, with the Hittites and with pre-Israelite Canaanite culture, documented at Ugarit, in the Amarna Letters and in Phoenician inscriptions, across nearly every genre it contains: legal collections, ritual texts, prophecies, proverbs, psalms and laments.c2-parallels-widespread
  323. p. 43, p. 519The book's timeline dates the code of the Babylonian king Hammurabi to the 1800s or 1700s BCE, well before any trace of Israel; he wanted to bring justice to his realm. A copy carved on a stela about eight feet tall turned up in 1901 and 1902. It pictures Hammurabi being handed emblems of justice by the god Shamash, and its prologue affirms divine backing for the laws, although the king is the one who inscribes and enforces them.c2-hammurabi-stela
  324. p. 43, p. 43Some of Hammurabi's laws are strikingly like laws of the Five Books of Moses, such as those about a destroyed eye or tooth of a slave. The Babylonian laws distinguish social classes, which biblical law does not, and impose different penalties, but form and content are so similar that, for scholars, biblical law is rooted in the older legal tradition of the Near East.c2-hammurabi-biblical-law
  325. p. 43Pieces of a Mesopotamian legal text resembling Hammurabi's were recently unearthed in Canaan itself, at the Bronze Age city of Hazor, a sign that such codes were known in the region and could have influenced the development of biblical law.c2-hazor-law-fragments
  326. p. 43So the literature of the Hebrew Bible did not come from a cultural vacuum: its writers used compositional techniques and narrative, legal and other traditions shared with scribes of other Near Eastern cultures. The distinctiveness of biblical literature shows up only against a backdrop of widespread similarity.c2-no-cultural-vacuum
  327. p. 43Scholars concluded that the Bible came from human hands, not from divine revelation or prophetic inspiration: many writers rather than one, working through a long process of writing and collecting. The comparative approach places it in the ancient Near East but does not say who wrote it.c2-human-authorship
  328. p. 43Before the modern age it hardly occurred to Jews and Christians to ask who wrote the Bible, since they thought they knew: they held that it had a divine source and had been recorded by Moses and other prophets taking down God's words.c2-traditional-authorship
  329. p. 43In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in a Europe questioning traditional ideas and religious authority, scholars began to doubt the traditional explanation and spotted details in the Five Books that seemed hard to square with divine or Mosaic authorship.c2-doubts-17-18
  330. p. 43The Five Books do not describe Moses as author of the whole narrative; that was an inference by ancient readers who wanted to know who wrote anonymous texts and chose Moses because he is shown writing down God's words. The texts never name him as author, speak of him in the third person and, in Deuteronomy 34, describe his death and burial, which the real Moses could not have written.c2-moses-not-named
  331. p. 43, p. 44Clues in the text indicate that the author lived long after Moses. One example is Genesis 36:31, which mentions kings who ruled Edom before any king ruled the Israelites, a reference to the Israelite monarchy that places the verse after its establishment around 1000 BCE, not in the days of Moses.c2-genesis-36-clue
  332. p. 44What most sets the Hebrew Bible apart from other Near Eastern texts is its reception history: it was never lost or forgotten, preserved first by Jews and then by Christians too, and stayed alive for readers. The Gilgamesh Epic, by contrast, essentially died and was revived only by modern scholarship.c2-distinct-reception
  333. p. 44Part of the Bible's distinctiveness stems from its authors' theological premises, their conviction that Yahweh was the one god who counted, but not from those alone: according to modern literary scholarship, they developed their own forms of literary communication, with new ways of conveying psychological and moral complexity.c2-biblical-artistry
  334. p. 44, p. 44A close reading reveals features hard to explain if there was a single author. In Genesis 6:19 God instructs Noah to bring two of each animal; in 7:2 and 3 he gives another order, seven pairs of clean animals and two of unclean, and the text shifts from the name Elohim to Yahweh. There are also doublets, the same story told twice: two accounts of Hagar's expulsion and two of Jacob's name changing to Israel.c2-doublets-inconsistencies
  335. p. 44, p. 45To explain this, scholars proposed the Documentary Hypothesis: the Five Books would not be one author's work but a blend of earlier sources, stitched by an editor into a story that is coherent yet far from smooth. It posits four sources: P (priestly), J (probably from Judah, from German Jahwist), E (which prefers the name Elohim) and D (the core of Deuteronomy, written separately).c2-documentary-hypothesis
  336. p. 44When his sources contradicted one another, the editor sometimes let the contradiction stand, perhaps to reach audiences with a stake in different versions. Trying to separate out and recover such earlier sources is called source criticism.c2-editor-left-contradictions
  337. p. 44, p. 44Nulman places Adon Olam in Shaharit since the fifteenth century; most attribute authorship to the poet-philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol (1021-1058), while others point to Rav Sherirah Gaon, Rav Hai Gaon, or even Rabbi Yohanan b. Zakkai.cl-adon-olam-ibn-gabirol
  338. p. 45The Documentary Hypothesis is still only a hypothesis, because the original sources have never turned up. Even so, no one has offered a more plausible explanation of the odd way the Five Books tell their story, and it fits the literary practice of the Near East, where texts were often composites of preexisting material, as the evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic illustrates.c2-dh-remains-hypothesis
  339. p. 45The hypothesis does not apply to other books, but scholarship has reached similar conclusions about many of them. Deutero-Isaiah was written long after the prophet Isaiah of the eighth century BCE: chapters 1 to 39 seem to come from the Assyrian period, but those from 40 on reflect Persian conditions and name Cyrus. Jeremiah and Ezekiel, too, seem to have expanded through many later additions.c2-other-books-composite
  340. p. 45This approach challenges the traditional view and the very idea of authorship. Tying a book to a named person suits the modern notion of individual authorship, but according to scholarship the Five Books, Isaiah and other texts have no individual author: they are more like the Web, developing over time, without a plan, through the contributions of many people.c2-web-like-authorship
  341. p. 45, p. 46The Dead Sea Scrolls, introduced in Chapter 3, contain the oldest surviving copies of biblical texts, some from the second century BCE. Many manuscripts diverge from today's Hebrew Bible and keep older versions of books like Samuel and Jeremiah, letting us see how the text grew and changed in transmission.c2-dss-earliest-copies
  342. p. 45The writing of biblical literature is bound up with the history of the Kingdom of Judah and reflects a Judahite, not northern Israelite, point of view. Two and perhaps three of the Five Books' sources (J, P and probably D) come from Judahite authors, with only E possibly from the north; Samuel and Kings, centered on the Davidic monarchy and the Temple, also come from Judah, as do Isaiah, Jeremiah and most prophets, or else from Judahites in exile, as with Ezekiel.c2-judahite-point-of-view
  343. p. 45This bias explains questions the text raises: why Genesis favors Judah, Jacob's son, over his older brothers; why the best kings (Hezekiah and Josiah) come from David's house in Judah and many of the worst (Jeroboam, Ahab) from the Northern Kingdom; why the Jerusalem Temple is central while northern temples are marginalized; and why the Bible takes more interest in the Judahite survivors of the Babylonian conquest than in the Israelite survivors of the Assyrian one.c2-judah-bias-questions
  344. p. 46One example is 1 Samuel 11: a version found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q Samuel A) contains a passage about the cruelty of Nahash the Ammonite that is absent from the present Hebrew text. The passage could have been inserted later, but more probably a scribe dropped it by mistake while copying the text that became the version Jews read today.c2-1samuel-11
  345. p. 46The effort to trace the Bible's transmission as a text, reconstructing its earliest form and how it changed, is text criticism, which compares different versions to reconstruct the history of scribal transmission and how the versions relate.c2-text-criticism
  346. p. 46, p. 519After the Kingdom of Israel fell in 722 to 720 BCE, its people vanished from view, taken to other regions of Assyria's realm and likely absorbed. Whatever northern literature the Bible contains probably got there because some Israelites escaped and passed their traditions on to Judah. Judah was destroyed as well, yet its people endured and kept their traditions going in exile, so it was almost surely this community that saved the texts of the Jewish Bible.c2-why-judah-preserved
  347. p. 47, p. 47Among the Elephantine texts is the tale of Ahiqar, an Assyrian sage, an Aramaic composition of the fifth century BCE. No one knows whether a Judahite wrote it, but Judahites knew it. Except for this accidental find and a handful of inscriptions, everything surviving from Judah before the second century BCE was preserved because it entered the biblical canon.c2-ahiqar
  348. p. 47The era of Babylonian conquest and Persian rule did not yield the Bible but a miscellany of texts on scrolls, not books in our sense. That miscellany is the biblical canon, a body of writings Jews regard as uniquely authoritative in religion. Why some books made it in and others did not is unknown.c2-canon-assortment
  349. p. 47Any text composed in pre-exilic Judah, during the Exile or under Persian rule that was left out of the canon did not survive, with the possible exception of Ahiqar. Besides this chance find and a few inscriptions, all texts from Judah and the Jews before the second century BCE were handed down because of their sacred status.c2-canon-saved-texts
  350. p. 47In the Near East, scribes compiled catalogues of books worthy of a library or a school curriculum. The first collections of Judahite literature may have had similar motives, but the collection became something different: Jews came to believe that their tie to their ancestors and their hopes for what lay ahead hinged on these books, and they felt bound to follow the laws of the Five Books.c2-canon-beyond-library
  351. p. 47The texts of the Bible were not necessarily written for such ends. Some, like Genesis, may have begun as stories parents told children about where things came from; certain psalms may have been meant for Temple worship; there are prophetic texts of social criticism, educational texts by scribes, and the Song of Songs, so erotic that scholars suspect a marriage hymn or even something raunchier.c2-canon-hodgepodge
  352. p. 47The earliest stages of the canon may predate the Exile. According to 2 Kings 22 and 23, during the reign of Josiah (640 to 609 BCE) a long-lost Torah of Moses was found during Temple repairs, setting out the commands the people had to follow to keep their covenant with God. Josiah realizes they have been violated and launches a major religious reform, suppressing idolatrous practices.c2-josiah-scroll
  353. p. 47Asked to capture three centuries of biblical research in a sentence, the authors would say its main achievement was recasting a text once viewed as supernatural and timeless as the creation of people in a specific historical age. Much of its writing can be linked to experiences we can document, such as Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian domination, rather than to events of doubtful historicity, like the Exodus.c2-300-years-summary
  354. p. 47Scholars are probably right that Genesis blends the work of human writers active from 1000 to 500 BCE, that it is at bottom a variation on ancient Near Eastern literature, and that history left its mark on how it was written. None of this lessens the puzzle of how such a text ended up being regarded as divine revelation.c2-composition-window
  355. p. 48Ezra-Nehemiah, treated as a single work in biblical manuscripts and by modern scholars, was probably written in the fourth century BCE and is a chief source on the early post-exilic community. It speaks of 'the book of the law' or 'the law of Moses', a text that, if not the present Five Books, anticipates many of their features.c2-ezra-nehemiah-composed
  356. p. 48This law book held divine commands Israel had to obey, it was called a 'teaching' (Torah) of Moses, and hearing it read aloud in public was a significant shared experience.c2-law-book-features
  357. p. 48, p. 49According to Ezra-Nehemiah, the return and the rebuilding of the Temple were not enough. On reaching Yehud, Ezra and Nehemiah found Jerusalem largely unrestored, the people discontented and close to blending into the surrounding population, marrying outsiders and losing their own language. Full restoration required the people to recommit to God's law by reading and studying Moses's teaching.c2-return-not-enough
  358. p. 48Modern scholars suspect that the scroll was Deuteronomy and that its 'rediscovery' was a ruse staged by the king to present a freshly written law book as an old text of Moses that people would feel bound to obey. If so, 2 Kings 22 and 23 shows how one of the Five Books of Moses was first made public, and the canon was already forming before the Exile.c2-josiah-deuteronomy
  359. p. 48Before this, Judahite religion does not seem to have been scripture-centered: figures like David consult prophets to discern God's will and are never shown studying the laws of Moses or working to interpret them. Beyond Josiah's reform, the push toward scripture came from the Babylonian conquest and the upheaval that followed.c2-pre-exilic-not-scripture
  360. p. 48, p. 48Judahites seeking to salvage their culture turned to the texts to fill the gap that the loss of other institutions had opened. God had been thought to dwell in the Temple, and its ruin put him out of reach; Nebuchadnezzar also ended the Davidic line. The texts of ancient Judah, like the cultic vessels deported to Babylon, were a link to the lost past.c2-texts-fill-vacuum
  361. p. 48The texts gained value because they preserved, or seemed to preserve, God's words to Israel: the promise to Abraham, the revelation at Sinai, and the visions and oracles of prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah. Addressed to earlier Israelites, some messages also aimed at future generations and seemed to speak to precisely the dire circumstances of the Judahites after the conquest.c2-texts-addressed-exiles
  362. p. 48If, as the texts suggested, exile was punishment for wrongdoing, there was still a chance to soften God's anger and repair the relationship. Jews found in the Five Books of Moses guidance on what God required of them, and biblical interpretation, the reading and explaining of texts, arose in this period as a way to reestablish the bond with God.c2-interpretation-emerges
  363. p. 48Flusser notes that the hope of rebuilding Jerusalem changed shape over time, yet it roots in earlier Temple destructions; after 70 CE the view spread that God himself would rebuild city and Temple.c-h502-flusser-jerusalem-rebuild-hope
  364. p. 49The climax of Ezra-Nehemiah comes in Nehemiah 8: Ezra gathers the people in Jerusalem to hear the law read in public, and on the following day study and interpretation start. The Levites explain the Torah to the people, who listen standing, reading from the scroll, translating and giving the sense so that all understand.c2-nehemiah-8-reading
  365. p. 49On this account, neither the rebuilding of the Temple nor the presence of prophets sufficed to restore the relationship with God: only reading and understanding the Torah ('teaching', a word later applied to the Five Books of Moses) did so. As Ezra opens the scroll, it is as if God himself becomes present.c2-torah-restores
  366. p. 49Reading the Torah was not easy: literacy remained rare, and biblical literature, composed in a Hebrew dialect unlike the Aramaic-laden Hebrew of the post-exilic era and rich in puzzles of interpretation, demanded training that few experts had. This is why figures like Ezra mattered so much.c2-reading-needs-experts
  367. p. 49The authors read Ezra's public reading as a sign of a major change on the road from Israelite to Jewish culture: a sacred text, the Torah of Moses, becoming the final authority for communal and religious norms, with reading as the act that joins the Judahites to God. The Torah in question was probably an earlier form of today's.c2-ezra-shift
  368. p. 49The Persians may have encouraged this development, since they cared how the communities they ruled were run. In the Bible's account, Ezra and Nehemiah were charged by the Persian king himself with governing Judah by the law of God, and there may be some truth in that.c2-persians-encouraged
  369. p. 49To hold the empire together, Darius I evidently sought to codify the local laws of his subject communities. A document from Egypt suggests he told his satrap to assemble a panel of Egyptian wise men who would write down all of Egypt's ancient laws, whether civil, priestly or private.c2-darius-egyptian-laws
  370. p. 49A comparable effort may lie behind the book of Ezra, in which the Persian Empire does more than acknowledge God's law: it lends its own authority, ordering that the ignorant be instructed and granting Ezra the power to penalize offenders.c2-ezra-persian-law
  371. p. 49, p. 50One Elephantine document is a letter from a certain Hananiah to the community, dated to 418 BCE, instructing it how to keep Passover. It is fragmentary and much of its content has to be reconstructed, but it appears to have been ordered by the Persian authorities: 'word was sent from the king'.c2-hananiah-letter
  372. p. 49, p. 50As reconstructed by scholars, the letter instructs the community to count fourteen days of the month of Nisan and observe Passover, to keep the festival of unleavened bread from the 15th to the 21st, to stay ritually clean, to refrain from work on certain days, to drink no beer or eat anything leavened, and to seal up any leaven between those dates (much of the original content is fragmentary).c2-hananiah-instructions
  373. p. 49, p. 50Hananiah never names the Torah as the origin of these rules, yet several of his instructions seem to derive from it, though not every one. Elephantine's community apparently did not know Moses's laws, since its documents never quote them; the letter could be an attempt to bring them in or enforce them.c2-hananiah-torah-link
  374. p. 50Read together with Ezra, the letter hints at how the laws attributed to Moses may have gained authority in Judahite culture: honoring local custom and treating the Torah's laws as a written form of that custom among the Judahites, Persia may have enlisted officials like Ezra, or the Hananiah of the letter, to teach and enforce them as a regional code.c2-persia-recruited-officials
  375. p. 50About 120 years after Hananiah's letter, a Greek traveler named Hecataeus, a contemporary of Alexander the Great, described Judah as a society that seemed governed by the laws of Moses, who is said to have led the colony and set up the temple, its worship and its laws.c2-hecataeus
  376. p. 50If that testimony is taken as genuine, then by the fourth century BCE, late in Persian rule, Judah was a society run by the laws of Moses; according to Jewish sources from the first century BCE onward, foreign rulers recognized the Jews' right to follow them. The gap between the Elephantine papyri and Hecataeus cannot be filled in detail, but the Torah seems to have taken root as a religious and social charter in the Persian period, perhaps with encouragement from the Persian government.c2-torah-charter
  377. p. 50The authors caution that they are not claiming Persian rule produced the Five Books or that Persian interests drove their canonization. The books belonged to the cultural inheritance Jews received from ancient Israel, a link to their forebears, and Jews turned to them for answers about their roots and about keeping their bond with their god.c2-not-persian-invention
  378. p. 50The books may have existed earlier, but little evidence shows that they held the authority they later enjoyed: the papyri left by the Elephantine community of Persian times show no trace of them. The picture looks different in the following centuries, and the Persian policy of promoting the spread and enforcement of local legal tradition helps explain the change.c2-torah-authority-new
  379. p. 50The Jewish canon has three parts: the Torah (the Five Books of Moses), the Prophets (the narratives from Joshua to Kings, the 'major' prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and twelve 'minor' prophets) and the Writings (Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah and others). From this structure comes one of the words used to this day for the Bible: Tanakh, an acronym of Torah, Nevi'im and Ketuvim.c2-canon-three-parts
  380. p. 50How and when the books of the Prophets and the Writings entered the Bible is unknown, but what little can be inferred suggests that their canonization was shaped by that of the Torah, with these later books seen as a kind of supplement or extension of it.c2-prophets-after-torah
  381. p. 50The latest books in the Prophets section, 'minor' prophets such as Haggai and Zechariah, were composed in the Persian period, and it is reasonable to suppose the section was settled then. It preserves what the prophets after Moses said and did, keeping revelation going through the monarchy and the exile. Moses was seen as a prophet like no other, with closer access to God.c2-prophets-settled-persian
  382. p. 50José Gonçalves Salvador distinguishes the observant Jew, the New Christian (and descendants) forced to baptism, and the crypto-Jew who practiced Christianity only for convenience.c9-salvador-new-christian-definition
  383. p. 50Chazan shows that medieval Christians likewise projected a tripartite Jewish history (happy past, rupture, splendid future), yet that 'redeeming' future meant erasing Judaism and absorbing Jews into the Christian faith.c-h502-chazan-christian-tripartite-future
  384. p. 50In the Companion, Lieberman's theory reverses the usual intuition: rather than writing conferring fixity and authority, fixity would have been oral and authority would attach to the orally performed version, restoring the Mishnah's orality (while still leaving later written versions unexplained).c-h502-fonrobert-lieberman-oral-fixity
  385. p. 50Flusser places the hope for rebuilding Jerusalem and the Amidah blessing's conclusion 'builder of Jerusalem' in the Second Temple period, tying it to Psalm 147:2.c-h502-flusser-jerusalem-benediction
  386. p. 50Gerber highlights Hasdai ibn Shaprut's Hebrew letters to the Khazar ruler Joseph, kept and retold for centuries among Spanish Jews as a mirror of his personal qualities.c-h502-gerber-hasdai-khazar-letter
  387. p. 51For the authors, the rise of the Bible and of biblical interpretation marks the beginning of Jewish history as distinct from Israelite history. It cannot be pinned to a single year or century; it was a gradual change of cultural and religious outlook that took a long time.c2-jewish-begins-with-bible
  388. p. 51These Jews saw themselves as direct descendants of the Israelites, and the culture they built approximated the Israel described in the Bible: devoted to YHWH, centered on Jerusalem. What sets it apart from earlier Israelite religion is that it was generated by reading the Bible itself.c2-reconstituted-culture
  389. p. 51The prophets rarely add laws, but they record other divine messages that reinforce the Torah's authority: urging loyalty to God, avoidance of other gods and social justice, and warning of punishment for disobedience. The closing verses of the last book, Malachi, urge Israel to remember Moses's teaching, a sign that the section was regarded as an addendum to the Torah.c2-prophets-reinforce-torah
  390. p. 51The third section, the Writings, collects praise of God, instructional works and stories, and resists easy generalization. It probably took its final form last and seems to have stayed somewhat fluid well beyond the Persian period, though it may have begun to take shape then. How books like Job or Esther entered it is unknown.c2-writings-last
  391. p. 51Several books of the Writings tie to David and Solomon: many psalms are ascribed to David, Ruth recounts the life of his great-grandmother, Chronicles centers largely on his reign, and tradition credits Solomon with Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs. In Samuel and Kings they are great but sinful kings; in the Writings, pious figures, almost Moses-like, which may explain their inclusion.c2-david-solomon-in-writings
  392. p. 51Scholars are fairly confident that canonization began in the Persian period, but when it ended is unclear. Centuries later there was still debate over whether books like Ecclesiastes belonged in the canon, and other books may have been viewed as canonical by some Jews and rejected by others. Even so, once the Second Temple era closed, most Jews seem to have agreed on the contents, which were close to today's Jewish Bible.c2-canon-never-sharp
  393. p. 51Since there was no way to authenticate a work as genuinely biblical, authors tried to pass certain texts off as biblical by imitating the style of Genesis and ascribing authorship to figures like Moses and Solomon, producing the writings now called the Pseudepigrapha, from the Greek for 'false writing'. There are many, written in the centuries after the Persian period, attributed to Enoch, Moses and others, but they did not enter today's Jewish canon.c2-pseudepigrapha-defined
  394. p. 51A few of these Bible-like works belong today to certain Christian canons, such as the Wisdom of Solomon, among what Catholics call the deuterocanonical books and Protestants, who exclude them, call the Apocrypha. For the most part, though, they were composed too late to win mainstream acceptance among Jews.c2-apocrypha-christian
  395. p. 52, p. 52Most of the pseudepigraphical works were known long before the Dead Sea Scrolls, from translations into Greek, Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic and Armenian preserved by Christian communities. Jews wrote them between 200 BCE and 200 CE (Christians later reworked several). Written centuries after the age they describe, they do not illuminate the time of Abraham and Moses, but they help us understand how the Bible was interpreted in early Judaism.c2-pseudepigrapha-origin
  396. p. 52, p. 52Examples: 1 Enoch and other works attributed to Enoch, of whom Genesis says he 'walked with God', recount what he supposedly witnessed and was taught in heaven, among it the mysteries of nature and the future, and seem to have first appeared in the third and second centuries BCE. Jubilees, written in the mid-second century BCE, tells of an alternative revelation to Moses at Sinai by an angel and follows a 364-day solar calendar, unlike the lunar basis of the Jewish calendar.c2-enoch-jubilees
  397. p. 52The Wisdom of Solomon, probably dating to the first century BCE or CE, speaks of divine judgment after death, with the wicked punished and the righteous granted immortality, and belongs to the Greek Bible and to certain Christian churches. The Testament of Solomon, perhaps of the fifth or sixth century CE, tells how the king enlisted demons to help build the Temple.c2-solomon-pseudepigrapha
  398. p. 52There are also books written to emulate the Bible, with stories set in biblical times. From the Apocrypha come Tobit, about an upright man living among Israelites carried off to Assyria, and Judith, about a pious widow who single-handedly saved her people from Nebuchadnezzar; from the Pseudepigrapha, Joseph and Aseneth, about Joseph's Egyptian wife, here depicted as a convert.c2-biblical-like-books
  399. p. 52Nulman places Ahavah Rabbah ('With abounding love') as the second blessing before the Shema in Ashkenazic Shaharit; the Talmud records the dispute between 'abounding love' and 'everlasting love', and Tosafot fixes Ahavah Rabbah for morning and Ahavat Olam for evening. The blessing began the priestly prayer service in the Temple.cl-ahavah-rabbah-ashkenaz-morning
  400. p. 53Protestants chose a canon lacking the deuterocanonical or Apocryphal books and sought to go back to the Hebrew in their translations and commentaries, yet their Bible, like every Christian Bible, also contains the New Testament, which Jews do not count as scripture. Muslims likewise include Abraham, Moses and David in their sacred history, but their canon is the Quran, which records the later revelations to Muhammad.c2-other-canons
  401. p. 53One could say that every religious community that venerates the Bible has its own conception of it. The authors concentrate on the Bible as Jews define and understand it, a text now organized in three parts: Torah, Prophets and Writings.c2-many-bibles
  402. p. 53, p. 53At the heart of the Jewish Bible lie the Five Books of Moses (Bereshit, Shemot, Vayikra, Bamidbar and Devarim, meaning Genesis through Deuteronomy), the part identified with the 'Torah of Moses' named in Ezra-Nehemiah. Torah may mean 'law', which is how the Septuagint translated it with the Greek 'nomos', or 'teaching'; early Jews understood it in both senses, as a divine statute and as a source of wisdom and guidance for life.c2-torah-law-or-teaching
  403. p. 53, p. 53The Prophets section contains two sorts of writing. The 'Former Prophets' (Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings) narrate events from the conquest of Canaan down to the Exile and were deemed prophetic because prophets like Samuel were thought to have written them. The 'Latter Prophets' preserve the sayings of prophets from the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian eras: Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel are called 'major' because their books are long, the remaining twelve 'minor' because theirs are short.c2-prophets-section
  404. p. 53The Writings take in Psalms, Proverbs, the Song of Songs, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah and other assorted works, which early Jews also viewed as prophetic. The Torah and the Prophets record how God tried to reach Israel, whereas several Writings show the human half of that exchange: prayers of thanks or need (Psalms) and reflections on how God works (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes).c2-writings-human-side
  405. p. 53, p. 53The Jewish Bible in use today is the Masoretic Bible, named for the Masoretes, the scribes who copied this version of the text and were active between the sixth and tenth centuries CE. Besides copying it they devised aids for reading, since the original Hebrew Bible mainly records consonants, with almost no vowels, and has no punctuation.c2-masoretic-bible
  406. p. 53The Aleppo Codex, copied about 930 CE, is the earliest known manuscript containing the entire Hebrew Bible. Riots in Syria in 1947 harmed it (on the page shown in the book the bottom right corner has been burned off), yet most of it survived.c2-aleppo-codex
  407. p. 54, p. 54Lacking such guides, the biblical text can bewilder, since it is ambiguous and even hard to pronounce. To make interpretation easier the Masoretes added vowel signs, a system of accents, divisions of the text that shaped public reading in the synagogue, and notes in the margins about specific words.c2-masoretic-aids
  408. p. 54The Septuagint, a name first given to the Greek version of the Torah alone but used loosely here for the Greek version of the whole Jewish Bible, keeps a form of the canon from a much earlier time than the Masoretic Bible. It comes before the Masoretes' scribal labors and also renders a text that was not identical to theirs.c2-septuagint-earlier
  409. p. 54, p. 54In the Greek account of David and Goliath, for instance, about 50 verses are missing compared with the Masoretic account. The Septuagint is also arranged in another order than Torah, Prophets and Writings, and it has books the Masoretic Bible lacks entirely, such as the deuterocanonical Tobit and Judith. It may preserve an alternate Bible from before text and sequence became fixed.c2-septuagint-differences
  410. p. 54, p. 54By the 100s CE Jewish religious authorities had chosen the textual version that would become the Masoretic Bible, and most variants among Hebrew manuscripts disappeared. One reason could be that other forms were gone (the Temple may have kept manuscripts, and its fall in 70 CE could have destroyed them); another could be that, with Jews split into sects and a new Christian movement reading the Bible its own way, leaders wished to limit the disputes that variant texts invited.c2-text-standardized
  411. p. 54The Masoretic Bible became the version Jews accepted as authoritative and was copied through the Middle Ages with only minor variation; Johannes Gutenberg's printing press, which dates to about 1440, fixed its form and contents even more firmly.c2-masoretic-transmission-print
  412. p. 54Setting the Masoretic Bible beside the biblical scrolls found near the Dead Sea reveals that the Jewish Bible of today shares much with what early Jews read but also departs from it in important ways.c2-bible-today-differs
  413. p. 54, p. 54The Bible begins with God as creator of all the world's peoples but soon narrows to his relationship with Israel, a people favored as a 'treasured possession' (Exodus 19:5), with blessings and protection but also responsibilities that set it apart from others. Why God chooses the Israelites is never made clear.c2-god-creator-israel-chosen
  414. p. 54The biblical writers are wary of outsiders, above all the Canaanites, whom they tie to idol worship and sexual offenses, yet Israel's own forebears hardly behave well: Jacob tricks his way to his father's blessing, Joseph's jealous brothers sell him into slavery, and the Israelites leaving Egypt turn out disobedient and disloyal.c2-flawed-ancestors
  415. p. 54In spite of all this, God picks them out for favor. He promises Abraham a multitude of descendants and the land of Canaan; he rescues the Israelites from Egyptian slavery; he shields them in the desert against hunger and foes; at Mount Sinai he discloses himself through Moses and instructs them to make a mobile sanctuary where he can dwell among them; and after four decades of wandering he lets them go into Canaan, a 'land of milk and honey'.c2-divine-acts-narrative
  416. p. 54, p. 54What most occupies the Hebrew Bible is the question of how to keep up the unique bond with God formed at Sinai. The Five Books call that bond a covenant, a freely accepted agreement tying God and Israel to duties toward each other. Its roots reach back to Noah and Abraham, each of whom has a covenant with God, but the Torah mostly deals with the Sinai covenant, brokered by Moses, whose terms are the laws of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.c2-covenant-central-problem
  417. p. 54, p. 55The Sinai covenant is of immense importance for Jewish religious life and thought: its obligations set the ground rules for Israelite society in Canaan (dealings with neighbors, slaves, enemies, criminals and those living among them) and, no less, the framework of the ongoing relationship with God, that is, how to approach him and keep his support through sacrifices.c2-sinai-framework
  418. p. 54In Penner's reading, timing language in lament psalms works rhetorically to intensify piety in ominous situations rather than mirroring an everyday habit of morning-and-evening prayer.cl-psalms-not-daily-custom
  419. p. 54According to Nulman, Ahavat Olam ('Everlasting love') is the second blessing formula before the evening Shema in Ashkenaz (and morning and evening in Sephardic, hasidic, and Italian rites); the talmudic compromise decision separated the two openings to avoid confusion.cl-ahavat-olam-evening-formula
  420. p. 55The commandments are wide in scope. They include directions for constructing the Tabernacle, where God was believed to be present, rules about the Sabbath and other holy days, prohibitions on foods and sexual conduct, and laws for running the courts and caring for the needy. Observing them was vital to the tie with God: it gave Israel title to Canaan and guaranteed, or brought back, divine protection.c2-commandments-range
  421. p. 55Even now, the revelation at Sinai and the covenant sealed there are the moments that define how Jews relate to God, and for Jews they matter as much as the crucifixion does for Christians.c2-sinai-like-crucifixion
  422. p. 55, p. 55The second essential idea: Israel's relationship with God depends on intermediaries, who often turn out flawed. Since God cannot be seen (some texts hint he may have a body, but apart from Moses and a few exceptional mortals, seeing him is lethal) and even hearing his voice was overwhelming, Deuteronomy says that at Sinai the Israelites could not bear to hear it and turned to Moses.c2-intermediaries-needed
  423. p. 55, p. 55Israelites relied on objects to stand for the divine presence or carry it. The best known is the Ark of the Covenant, a chest of wood that held the covenant tablets of Sinai and acted as God's throne or footstool, with the figures of two cherubs at its sides. Approaching or even gazing at it was so perilous that it stayed concealed inside a tent, the Tabernacle. David brought it to Jerusalem, and soon afterward it was installed in Solomon's Temple.c2-ark-tabernacle
  424. p. 55The Temple became a further sign of God's presence. He was believed to dwell in its inner chamber, the Holy of Holies, and Israelites who came on pilgrim festivals such as Sukkot, Passover and Shavuot sensed that they were physically close to him.c2-temple-god-presence
  425. p. 55The second way of interacting with God was through special people empowered to speak or act on his behalf: the prophet, the king and the priest, whose authority came from their status as God's representative or servant. Many biblical texts are ascribed to prophets, others to the founders of the monarchy, David and Solomon, and the priests left behind the ritual legislation of the Five Books.c2-human-intermediaries
  426. p. 55A prophet served as God's mouthpiece, able both to hear him and to reply. Some saw visions or dreamed, some heard a voice, some read the signs God sent. Much prophecy foretells, sometimes grim punishment and sometimes a hopeful era of peace with God, though at least occasionally the Israelites could alter what lay ahead by changing their behavior. Prophets also denounced the injustices of the wealthy and powerful, comforted people in danger or ruin, and at times argued with God for mercy.c2-prophet-roles
  427. p. 55Moses is the pattern for the prophet as go-between: he passes on God's words, proves God's might by wonders, and pleads for the people when God is angry. One biblical passage (Numbers 12:6 to 8) says that later prophets were less close to God, perceiving him in visions and dreams, whereas Moses addressed him 'face to face'.c2-moses-model-prophet
  428. p. 55The original group of Jewish believers in Jesus held that the Nazarene was Israel's hoped-for royal Messiah, on the basis that God had raised and exalted him. They understood themselves as the nucleus of a renewed Israel, and the outpouring of the Spirit as entry into the new life the prophets had foretold.cjb-jerusalem-community
  429. p. 55, p. 116In the Jerusalem community, James the brother of Jesus held recognized leadership; tradition and later sources locate there the center of the Jewish-believing movement in the first century, before and after James's death.cjb-james-leadership
  430. p. 56The first prophets of the monarchy, Samuel and Nathan under David and Elijah and Elisha in the northern kingdom, seem to have left no writings, although Jewish tradition credits Samuel with 1 and 2 Samuel. With the Assyrian conquest, certain prophets or their disciples began committing prophecies to writing, which is how the Major and Minor Prophets came to exist.c2-prophets-begin-writing
  431. p. 56, p. 56Modern Jewish thinkers who remain loyal to the Sinai covenant while accepting scholarship face a daunting puzzle: Sinai describes an event that clashes with a scientific picture of the world. A supernatural being stands at its center, and even the more believable details, like a mountain called Sinai or a prophet called Moses, cannot be checked against history. Some biblical scholars hold that the whole Sinai story is invented and was inserted into the Torah at a later stage.c2-sinai-modern-challenge
  432. p. 56, p. 56Apart from historical difficulties, modern experience and modern values collide with the account. The mass murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust, religious and secular, cast doubt on the pledge made to Israel at Sinai. Feminist Jews take issue with the Torah for different reasons: women are pushed to the margins of its stories, and its laws and rites shut them out and have even been used to excuse mistreating them.c2-sinai-holocaust-feminist
  433. p. 56, p. 56One response was to play down Sinai as a historical occurrence and highlight what it does inside the mind, in how it is lived, felt and remembered. The German-Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig (1886 to 1929) held that the Bible captures something real, yet it scarcely mattered to him whether the Israelites truly passed through the Red Sea as told, since an unusual natural event could lie behind the story. What mattered was the spiritual and psychological truth in the stories: sensing life as a gift from beyond oneself (the heart of the Creation account) or sensing oneself under command (the root of Sinai).c2-rosenzweig-sinai
  434. p. 56Rosenzweig did not treat religious experience as only something the mind projects; in the Bible he found a real disclosure of God. Yet in his view revelation came without words, and every word in the Torah was human-made, a position shaped by modern biblical criticism. That criticism's attack on the account's historical accuracy did not bother him, because reading the Torah was in itself a religious act that brings its readers face to face with God through the force of its stories.c2-rosenzweig-no-verbal-revelation
  435. p. 56, p. 56Others adapted traditional methods of reading such as midrash, which discovers meaning in what the biblical text leaves unsaid. Emil Fackenheim (1916 to 2003), a philosopher who fled the Nazis, boldly described the Holocaust as a second revelation: it endangered Jewish faith in God but also commanded Jews to stay loyal to the Sinai covenant and so to deprive Hitler of any victory after his death. The feminist theologian Judith Plaskow, drawing on midrash, imagines Sinai anew, dropping the Bible's masculine image of God and making women full participants in revelation.c2-fackenheim-plaskow
  436. p. 56Many Jews consider such efforts irrelevant. Some observant Jews do not admit that scholarship poses any problem, or do not know of it, and secular Jews may find no point in saving a tale they regard as myth. A good number, though, stand somewhere in the middle between religious tradition and secular attitudes, and the reinterpretations above grew out of their effort to reconcile those opposed outlooks.c2-sinai-many-responses
  437. p. 57To be a priest one had to descend from Aaron, Moses's brother. The wider tribe of Levi, Aaron's own, were assigned subordinate duties at the sanctuary, as a lesser order of Temple staff who watched over it and kept up its worship (the Levites). The priest brought Israel's gifts before the Lord, safeguarded the shrine's sanctity, and relayed God's messages by means of the Urim and Thummim, enigmatic objects the priests wore.c2-priests-levites
  438. p. 57The priests were, in the fullest sense, God's servants, who tended his Temple and handled the offerings made to him, and they were also specialists with the skills to build and run the sanctuary, to ward off the impurity forever endangering it and making it unfit for God, and to direct sacrifices and other rites.c2-priests-experts
  439. p. 57Kingship, too, passed by descent: for the Bible only David's heirs are rightful kings. The king commanded Israel's armies for God, dispensed justice, and kept God within reach by building and maintaining the Temple. God names David and his successors his 'sons' and, in something like a covenant with David, vows to keep his kingdom going forever.c2-king-role
  440. p. 57A prophet bestowed kingship by installing the ruler as God's agent in a rite of anointing, in which oil was poured over his head or body. That rite is why a king could be called the 'anointed one', the mashiach, which gives us 'messiah'.c2-anointing-messiah
  441. p. 57, p. 57The Bible shows its go-betweens falling short. Israel's and Judah's kings repeatedly let people down: many turn to other gods, and even David and Solomon commit grave sins (David sleeps with Bathsheba and arranges her husband's death; Solomon, wise for most of his reign, ends up serving the foreign gods of his wives). Priests become corrupt, and in Ezekiel God is so enraged by Temple conditions that he starts its destruction himself. Prophecy as well often cannot win people over.c2-intermediaries-fail
  442. p. 57A third basic point is that crises in Israel's bond with God are survivable. The Bible lays out what keeping that bond requires, yet it also stages how readily it breaks, as Israel, misled by its rulers, regularly breaks its duties. Prophets were supposed to sound the alarm, but even Moses struggled to make the changeable Israelites pay attention.c2-crisis-overcome
  443. p. 57, p. 57In the Bible's telling, Israel finally fails in its part of the covenant and estranges God so completely that he lets foes wipe out the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and carry the people away. Much biblical writing wrestles with the nation's misfortunes and asks why a just God permits such suffering. The book of Job proposes that humans cannot grasp God's ways; Job, a righteous non-Israelite, stands for every believer who suffers without comprehension. Other texts name the cause outright: God is punishing the sins of the people or of their forebears.c2-covenant-failure-exile
  444. p. 57, p. 57Biblical writers look beyond catastrophe to a time when Judah and all Israel are restored. Beside their condemnations, the prophetic books picture a coming reconciliation in which God rescues Israel from its enemies, gives back what it lost and renews the covenant. This is the root of the end-time vision of later Jews and Christians. Yet the restoration is not guaranteed; the prophets keep urging the people to reform, as though their destiny rested with them.c2-restoration-hope
  445. p. 57Nulman attributes Akdamut Milin (Aramaic poem before the Torah on Shavuot's first day, Ashkenazic rite) to the hazzan Meir, called Nehorai, son of Isaac of Orleans (1000s).cl-akdamut-meir-orleans
  446. p. 58, p. 58Later Jews held that the Torah itself preserves the chance of correcting course, because in it Israelites could find what God requires of them and how to atone. That helps explain the Bible's great value to Jews after the Babylonian and Persian conquests: scripture showed how much their forebears' sins had cost them, and it also offered hope and direction.c2-torah-keeps-repentance
  447. p. 58Jews seeking guidance from the Bible ran into a difficulty: its texts were not always easy to understand, being written in an archaic language, incomplete, not always coherent and composed for a different age than theirs. A. J. Jacobs's book A Year of Living Biblically, in which he tries to follow every biblical law literally, shows the modern version of the problem: many laws are impractical or clash with present-day American values.c2-interpretation-difficulties
  448. p. 58The Sabbath commandment illustrates the problem. A great deal is at stake: God promises to punish those who disobey, and their descendants, and to show kindness 'to the thousandth generation' to those who obey (Exodus 20:5 and 6). But keeping the Sabbath requires knowing what the text does not say: it forbids work on the seventh day, but what counts as work? Preparing a meal? Tending a child or a sick person? And if someone died because of keeping the Sabbath, would that not break the commandment against killing?c2-sabbath-gaps
  449. p. 58Another problem was applying ancient texts to contemporary reality. In 2 Samuel 7 David is assured by God that his line will reign forever, but what could that mean in a world with no Davidic dynasty and with Jews under foreign powers? Isaiah's prophecies speak of the Assyrians, but what did they mean when Jews faced Greeks and Romans? Early interpretation assumed the Bible was perpetually relevant, which stood in tension with the fact that much of it was out of date.c2-davidic-promise-outdated
  450. p. 58Early Jewish readers solved these problems in ways that often violate our sense of literal meaning: they saw significance in tiny details, derived from a spare law like the Sabbath's numerous restrictions and rituals with no apparent basis in the text, read prophecies about the past as predictions of their own future, and filled gaps with fanciful stories and newly made laws. There was a logic to it: they assumed God had planted the inconsistencies and gaps in the text for a reason, as signals of an encrypted message to be uncovered by resolving them.c2-early-interpretation-method
  451. p. 58The Bible contains two versions of the Ten Commandments, in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, nearly the same but varying in small ways, among them the wording of the Sabbath command: Exodus says to 'remember' the Sabbath day, Deuteronomy to 'keep' or 'guard' it. For modern scholars the two versions are one more doublet in the Torah, evidence that the text combines material from different sources.c2-ten-commandments-two-versions
  452. p. 58, p. 58In Córdoba in the 850s the layman Paulus Alvarus supported the Mozarabic martyr movement. In a letter he stresses Jewish ancestors who encountered Jesus and recognized him as Messiah; Skarsaune cautiously includes him among Jewish believers of the Muslim period. There was little obvious social incentive to convert from Judaism to Christianity under the Caliphate, which makes Alvarus's self-presentation historically significant.cjb-paulus-alvarus
  453. p. 59Wrestling with the Bible, trying to grasp it and connect it to the present, is one of the few threads running through all of Jewish history, tying together very different communities. Even after modern scholarship questioned divine authorship and many Jews became secular, it remains central.c2-bible-constant
  454. p. 59One can argue that Jewish culture predates the Bible (Elephantine shows a Judahite community with no sign of a Bible) or that the Bible predates the Jews (it began to form in ancient Judah before the Exile and the missions of Ezra and Nehemiah). The authors do not settle this chicken-and-egg problem: they say only that Jews and the Bible developed inseparably.c2-chicken-egg
  455. p. 59, p. 59For ancient Jewish interpreters the difference was no contradiction but a sign that God was sending two distinct messages. The Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael says 'remember' and 'keep' were spoken by God as one word, citing Psalm 62:12, which in its reading says God spoke one thing and humans heard two. That would be a feat of communication impossible for mortals; for these interpreters the whole Torah exceeds the limits of human communication and must be read deeply and creatively.c2-remember-keep-mekhilta
  456. p. 59Some early Jews, including the Dead Sea Scrolls community, concluded that 'keep' the Sabbath in Deuteronomy 5 was a distinct commandment revealed at the same time: the duty was not only to observe the day but to safeguard it by stopping work beforehand so as not to miss its start. The biblical Sabbath began at sunset on Friday, yet by the first century CE many Jews were already laying down their work earlier, around 3 p.m., and what led them to do so was their reading of the command to 'guard' the Sabbath.c2-dss-sabbath-guard
  457. p. 59This reading had its reasons: the Torah never specifies the moment the Sabbath starts, an ambiguity that puts a person at risk of violating it, and fixing the start early enough removed any chance of failing to rest. To modern eyes such interpretation inflates a small discrepancy beyond what the text intends, but early Jews held other standards of plausibility: details that seem trivial to us had serious religious and existential consequences for people who needed to understand the text to sustain their covenant with God.c2-sabbath-start-ambiguity
  458. p. 59Zunz (ed. Reif) states that the core statutory prayers handed down via Talmud and Geonim usually match Amram's Siddur across rites, though details and placements vary (Roman, German, Spanish).cl-zunz-amram-base-across-rites
  459. p. 60, p. 60The expression 'Old Testament' is Christian in origin. It goes back to Jeremiah, who foresaw God someday making a 'new covenant', which Christians believed Jesus had brought about. Once Christians had their own canon, in the 200s and 300s CE, the portion on Jesus (the Gospels and the rest) was labeled the New Testament as the document of that covenant, and the remainder, standing for the Sinai covenant, became the Old Testament. In early Christian eyes the Sinai covenant applied only to Israel and had been superseded by Jesus's covenant, open to every nation.c2-old-testament-term
  460. p. 60The Old Testament is not identical to the Jewish Bible in other respects either: the books come in another order, and most Christians read it in Greek, Latin or some other translation instead of Hebrew. Still, the chief objection Jews have to the name is that it defines the Hebrew Bible by reference to the New Testament, a work they do not regard as part of scripture.c2-old-testament-differences
  461. p. 60, p. 60Jews reject the New Testament because they do not take Jesus to be the messiah or God's son. In his day some Jews were hoping for a messiah, a deliverer descended from David, but to many Jesus did not match the profile, since he died without rescuing his people from their rulers. Early Christianity further taught that Jesus released Jews from obeying Moses's laws, which clashed with what Jews saw as the heart of their covenant duties; some Jews of the time would accept death before breaking those laws.c2-why-no-new-testament
  462. p. 60The authors add that, around this period, certain Jews may have been waiting for a pair of messianic figures, the earlier one destined to suffer or die before the later one arrived, and that Jesus's suffering and death could have been compatible with that expectation.c2-two-messiahs-possible
  463. p. 60'People of the book' was originally a name Muslims gave to Jews, and to others as well: Christians and a group called Sabians qualified too, since all were defined by devotion to a scripture. For Jews the 'Book' is the Torah, whose figures and events Muslims also treat as part of sacred history, although they held that Jewish transmitters had distorted its written form.c2-people-of-the-book-origin
  464. p. 60, p. 61Under Islamic rule such groups counted as non-Muslims who could be urged to convert; those who declined had a lower legal standing that carried a special levy, the jizyah. Anyone who accepted these conditions was to be protected, so 'people of the book' was comparatively better than being labeled a pagan. Jews eventually adopted the phrase as their own and lost sight of its negative undertone in Islam, and nowadays it is sometimes used to mean a Jewish devotion to books generally and not just the Torah.c2-people-of-the-book-status
  465. p. 60Zunz describes the Castilian (Spanish) rite as the purest form among rites of the Islamic world: simple, self-consistent, and relatively independent of prolific poets.cl-zunz-castilian-rite-islamic
  466. p. 60, p. 60Gerber narrates Judah Halevi's spring 1140 decision to renounce court and Andalusian fame at the peak of his career in order to return to the land of Israel, to contemporaries' astonishment.c-h502-gerber-halevi-leaves-spain
  467. p. 61, p. 61Why do Jews not apply the Bible's death penalty today, say for collecting sticks on the Sabbath? The authors reply that rabbinic thinking shaped what biblical law means in Jewish culture; the rabbis arose in the centuries after the Second Temple fell. They regarded their contemporaries as inheritors of the Sinai covenant, so biblical law, capital cases included, still bound them. But in their view Sinai had also given an Oral Torah, absent from the Five Books and handed down by word of mouth from Moses to Joshua, then to the prophets and finally to the rabbis.c2-death-penalty-sabbath
  468. p. 61, p. 61The Oral Torah expands on biblical law, filling in what the Bible leaves out, adding conditions and carving out exceptions. Rabbinic Jews do not carry out the death penalty for breaking the Sabbath because, they hold, no court in our time has the power to order it, and even a competent court would probably not have applied it to such a trivial offense. Their readings of scripture in effect made the penalty unenforceable, either by requiring extremely strict proof (a prior specific warning to the offender) or by limiting it to the era of desert wandering.c2-oral-torah-details
  469. p. 61The Five Books portray the Ark of the Covenant as a chest holding the covenant tablets. It was hazardous to peer into or touch, and the Bible has God killing people who mishandled it. David takes it to Jerusalem and Solomon sets it in the Temple, but its subsequent fate is murky: the Bible lists no ark among the sacred objects hauled off to Babylon when the Babylonians razed the Temple, and it never says the ark was removed or destroyed beforehand.c2-ark-what-happened
  470. p. 61Nobody knows where the ark went. One set of sources says it was concealed under the Temple's site or inside a cave; another says the Romans took it after the Second Temple fell; Ethiopian tradition holds that it was secretly brought to Ethiopia and remains there. These are all later traditions, and the ark's true location is unknown.c2-ark-later-traditions
  471. p. 61, p. 61The ark lives on metaphorically in Jewish practice. A synagogue keeps its Torah scrolls in a cabinet or recess called the 'holy ark', aron ha-kodesh, a name that honors the ark of the Holy of Holies. It echoes the Temple, but its chief job is to shield the sacred Torah scroll, which has become the main sign of God's presence among the people. So what became of the ark parallels how Judaism moved from a Temple-based religion to one that approaches God through the Torah.c2-holy-ark-synagogue
  472. p. 61, p. 65Penner sees substantial difficulties with the claim that m. Tamid 5.1 accurately describes a Second Temple priestly liturgy (including a full Shema complex with Num 15 and blessings).cl-tamid-shema-difficulties
  473. p. 62, p. 62Ezekiel, a Jewish author writing in Greek at some point in the last three centuries BCE, turned the Exodus story into a tragedy, the Exagoge. Only 269 of its lines have come down to us, and its techniques probably owe something to Euripides and Aeschylus.c3-exagoge
  474. p. 62, p. 63Ezekiel most likely lived in Alexandria or in another Hellenized city, where his education encompassed both the Bible and Greek literature.c3-ezekiel-alexandria
  475. p. 62, p. 519Alexander was born in 356 BCE in Macedonia and, before turning 30, conquered the Persian Empire, overcoming Darius III in 331 BCE. He died in 323 BCE.c3-alexander-conquest
  476. p. 62Alexander's conquests ushered in the so-called Hellenistic age, which continued until Rome conquered the Near East and the Mediterranean in the first century BCE. Koine Greek spread widely.c3-hellenistic-age
  477. p. 62Greek-style cities, with a Greek notion of citizenship, were founded or reorganized across the Near East. The best known was Alexandria, which Alexander founded personally. Jerusalem, too, was reorganized along these lines.c3-hellenistic-cities
  478. p. 63The Book of Jubilees, written in the second century BCE, retells the Pentateuch without signs of Greek influence. It was composed in Hebrew (Hebrew fragments of it are among the Dead Sea Scrolls) and survives complete only in Ethiopic and Latin translations. Its author seems opposed to any foreign influence.c3-jubilees
  479. p. 63Whether or not to imitate the Greeks depended not only on geography but also on economic standing (probably only the privileged had access to the schools where Greek was learned) and on proximity to cities with Greek institutions.c3-hellenization-factors
  480. p. 63In the Hellenistic age, Greek identity did not in principle depend on birth: anyone willing to adopt the Greek language and customs could attain it. This offered social advancement, but many Jews also saw it as a threat to ancestral traditions and associated it with the loss of independence and with economic exploitation.c3-greek-identity-open
  481. p. 63, p. 64Nulman places Al Hanisim (Hanukkah and Purim miracles in the thanksgiving blessing) with a short version in Soferim and the current text taken from the Siddur of Rav Amram Gaon and Siddur R. Sa'adyah Gaon.cl-al-hanisim-amram-saadia
  482. p. 64In 333 BCE, at Issus, Alexander confronted the Persian king Darius III. Darius survived, but the defeat signaled that Achaemenid power was nearing its end; power. The battle was depicted in a first-century BCE mosaic found at Pompeii.c3-issus
  483. p. 64Clearchus, a disciple of Aristotle, related that his teacher had supposedly met a Jew with a Greek soul. The story is probably untrue: Aristotle himself never mentions the encounter, and the first contact between Jews and Greeks is unknown.c3-clearchus
  484. p. 64Commercial contacts between Palestine and the Greek world go back to the Persian period or earlier, and a Greek military footprint can be traced along the Palestinian coast as early as the seventh century BCE.c3-first-contacts
  485. p. 64On conquering Judea, Alexander probably kept the Persian administrative practice, letting Jews follow their own ancestral laws. The Macedonians probably substituted Greek for Aramaic as the language of government.c3-alexander-judea-admin
  486. p. 64Accounts claim that the ancestors of the Samaritans rebelled against the Greeks. In a cave at Wadi ed-Daliyeh, about 200 skeletons were found, perhaps of refugees hunted down by Alexander's forces; Aramaic papyri dated between 365 and 335 BCE place these occupants at the time of the conquest.c3-wadi-daliyeh
  487. p. 64Josephus suggests that the Jews were reluctant to accept Greek rule, remaining loyal to Persia, but nothing indicates a Judean revolt in this period. Josephus may be right in saying that the people soon submitted to Alexander of their own accord.c3-josephus-submission
  488. p. 64, p. 65After Alexander's death in 323 BCE, his generals, the Diadochi, fought for control of his empire. Located between Egypt and Mesopotamia, Judea was caught in the middle of the conflict. After decades of war, the empire was divided into separate kingdoms.c3-diadochi
  489. p. 65, p. 519Ptolemy, one of Alexander's generals, secured Egypt and founded a dynasty that continued until Rome's conquest in 30 BCE. Judea remained under Ptolemaic rule until 200 BCE. The book's timeline records that, upon Alexander's death, Ptolemaic control extended over Egypt and Judea.c3-ptolemaic-rule
  490. p. 65From 200 BCE, Judea belonged to the Syrian kingdom founded by Seleucus I, which held it until Rome took over the region early in the first century BCE.c3-seleucid-kingdom
  491. p. 65The rulers of these kingdoms were Greeks, but from Macedonia rather than classical Athens. Their Greek-style cities were not independent city-states: they received their status from kings who expected loyalty, tribute and military support.c3-macedonians
  492. p. 65The term Hellenistic came to denote a fusion of Greek and Near Eastern culture: not a one-way process but a mutual adaptation. Cleopatra VII (69 to 30 BCE), of Macedonian descent, presented herself as an Egyptian queen.c3-two-way
  493. p. 65, p. 66The papyri of Zenon, who toured Palestine in 259 and 258 BCE as an agent of a finance minister of Ptolemy II, were discovered in Egypt in 1915. They reveal a Palestine monitored, controlled and economically exploited by the Ptolemaic king, with an administration based in Ptolemais (modern Akko) and reaching down to the village level.c3-zenon
  494. p. 65Map 3.1 in the book depicts the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kingdoms before the Seleucid conquest of Judea around 200 BCE, with Antioch in the Seleucid kingdom and Alexandria and Leontopolis in the Ptolemaic one.c3-zones-map
  495. p. 66The Ptolemies relied on local aristocrats such as one Tobias, whose family later became notorious for its role in tax collection. The papyri also suggest growing urbanization and perhaps the learning of Greek by some inhabitants.c3-tobiads
  496. p. 66Coins minted by the Jerusalem authorities between 300 and 250 BCE bear the image of Ptolemy I and his wife Berenice, a sign that Jerusalem itself was tightly linked to Ptolemaic rule.c3-jerusalem-coins
  497. p. 66There is little evidence of how Jews reacted to Ptolemaic rule; the fourth and third centuries BCE are still a sort of dark age for our understanding of Judean history.c3-dark-age
  498. p. 66The dating of Ecclesiastes is debated: some place it at the start of the Hellenistic age because of parallels with Greek philosophy, but it was written in Hebrew and the parallels do not prove influence. Because it contains Persian loanwords, it must date from the Persian period or later.c3-ecclesiastes
  499. p. 66Only in the second century BCE does Judean society begin to show signs of significant impact from Hellenistic culture, and even then scholars disagree over the depth of that effect.c3-hellenization-depth
  500. p. 66Jewish communities had long existed outside Judah, in Mesopotamia and Egypt: certain ones, like the community in Babylonia, arose from the exile; others, like the one at Elephantine, came about in other ways. Under Hellenistic rule they grew larger and more dispersed, for economic and political reasons, including military careers in Ptolemaic service.c3-diaspora-growth
  501. p. 66The Letter of Aristeas claims that Ptolemy I took 100,000 Judean captives to Egypt and placed 30,000 of them in forts. The figures are probably exaggerated, but they point to one of the processes that enlarged Egypt's Jewish community.c3-aristeas-captives
  502. p. 66According to Josephus, many Jews went to Egypt voluntarily. He may be projecting his own time onto the past, but papyri and inscriptions confirm that Jews in Egypt owned land, worked as tenant farmers and served the government as police officers and tax collectors. For them Egypt was not exile but a place of opportunity.c3-egypt-opportunities
  503. p. 66Nulman defines Al Hayt as the long confession said through every Yom Kippur Amidah and its hazzan's repetition (except Ne'ilah), at eve Minhah, and by bride and bridegroom; Ashamnu remains Vidui's short form.cl-al-het-yom-kippur-confession
  504. p. 67, p. 67Scholars once believed that diaspora Jews were more susceptible to Hellenization than those of Judea. Many now dismiss this contrast as simplistic: even within Jerusalem, or within a single family, reactions varied. Still, the Jews of Alexandria probably confronted Hellenization somewhat earlier, whereas third-century BCE Judea was a peripheral region, possibly home to a Hellenized elite in Jerusalem, though its population was still mostly rural.c3-diaspora-contrast
  505. p. 67By the time of Ptolemy II, the library of Alexandria was already in operation, and its collection, which the book estimates at 200,000 volumes, drew the finest scholars.c3-library
  506. p. 67Only a small part of the Jewish literary output of Alexandria survives, preserved mainly in quotations by later Christian authors. It includes histories, epics and philosophy in Greek. The first known Jewish writer composing in Greek is the historian Demetrius, probably from the late third century BCE.c3-jewish-greek-literature
  507. p. 67A Jew named Philo (not the famous Philo of Alexandria, of the first century CE) composed an epic poem on Jerusalem.c3-philo-epic
  508. p. 67, p. 67Aristobulus, the first known Jewish philosopher, resided in Alexandria during the 100s BCE. His work contains the oldest examples of allegorical interpretation of the Bible, a technique borrowed from Greek scholars who read Homer and Hesiod: God's 'hand', for example, would signify divine power.c3-aristobulus
  509. p. 68Aristobulus acknowledged Plato's merit but argued that Moses was the best philosopher and that Plato had copied the Jewish laws. Imitating Greek culture did not mean abandoning Jewish identity.c3-aristobulus-plato
  510. p. 68The Hebrew term galut ('exile') presupposes that living outside the land is an imposed punishment. Many Jews, however, moved voluntarily; Philo of Alexandria describes the communities outside Palestine as colonies rather than exiles. For this reason many scholars prefer diaspora, from the Greek for 'dispersion'. The appropriate term depends on each community's history.c3-galut-diaspora
  511. p. 68, p. 68, p. 68Rendering the Torah into Greek, the Septuagint, was the most lasting attempt to bring Jewish and Greek cultures together. Many Jews of Ptolemaic Egypt probably spoke Greek as their native tongue. Even the learned Philo of Alexandria seems to have known little Hebrew. Influences from Greek philosophy, law and even mythology can be detected in the translation.c3-septuagint
  512. p. 68According to the Letter of Aristeas, a work written in Alexandria during the second or first century BCE, Ptolemy II commissioned the translation of the Jewish laws for his library and asked the high priest in Jerusalem for six translators drawn from each of the twelve tribes. These 72 translators would account for the name Septuagint, from the Latin for 'seventy'.c3-aristeas-account
  513. p. 68, p. 519It is not at all clear whether the Letter of Aristeas accurately describes the origin of the Septuagint; the translation may have arisen within the Jewish community itself, perhaps with the king's support. The book's timeline links the Septuagint to the reign of Ptolemy II (283 to 246 BCE).c3-aristeas-reliability
  514. p. 69The Jews of Alexandria held a yearly festival in honor of the Septuagint on the island of the city's lighthouse; Philo describes the island as the site from which the 'light' of this version of the Bible first shone toward the world.c3-septuagint-festival
  515. p. 69By the first century CE, Jews made up most of the population in two of Alexandria's five districts. The community ran its own courts and had a partly autonomous leader, called ethnarch at least under Rome. The districts were not ghettos: nothing confined Jews to them.c3-alexandria-quarters
  516. p. 69The Jewish temple at Elephantine was destroyed in the late fifth century BCE, and the Jews there apparently were unable to rebuild it.c3-elephantine-temple
  517. p. 69, p. 70In the second century BCE, a high priest named Onias (Onias III or Onias IV: Josephus, the only source, seems to confuse the two) fled Judea and, with permission from the Ptolemaic king (probably Ptolemy VI), built at Leontopolis a temple modeled on the one in Jerusalem, on a smaller scale. Onias saw it as the fulfillment of Isaiah 19:19. The temple operated until the Romans closed it in 74 CE.c3-leontopolis
  518. p. 69For Goodman, Temple-period buildings identified as synagogues (Masada, Herodium, Gamala, etc.) were essentially communal rather than alternative temples: in Tiberias the 'prayer house' also hosted political meetings (Josephus, 67 CE).c-h502-goodman-synagogue-communal
  519. p. 69Goodman notes that treating the synagogue building as sacred while the Temple still stood appears more often outside the land of Israel than within it (e.g. Philo; 'holy places which are called synagogues').c-h502-goodman-synagogue-sanctity-diaspora
  520. p. 70, p. 70The oldest attestation of what would later be called the synagogue comes from Ptolemaic Egypt, in the third century BCE. Inscriptions call it proseuche, 'house of prayer', a term used until about the second century CE. This does not prove that it arose in Egypt; its origin is debated.c3-proseuche
  521. p. 70One synagogue in Alexandria was so imposing that Jews remembered it centuries after its destruction during the war against the Romans of 115 to 117 CE.c3-alexandria-synagogue
  522. p. 70The Jews of Egypt cultivated a close relationship with the Ptolemies as patrons: synagogue inscriptions pay tribute to the royal couple. Jews and Ptolemies shared the condition of being foreigners in Egypt, in a pattern inherited from the Persians (military service in exchange for support of communal institutions).c3-ptolemaic-patronage
  523. p. 70Penner suggests the Temple was not the hub of institutional campaigns to establish scheduled daily prayer; visiting the Temple to pray looks like personal piety rather than communal duty.cl-temple-not-fixed-daily-center
  524. p. 70According to Goodman, for most Jews nothing in a synagogue rivaled Temple sacrificial worship; communal prayer was valued, especially far from Jerusalem, yet no one yet thought such prayer might substitute for sacrifice, since Moses' law had not clearly decreed it.c-h502-goodman-prayer-not-yet-sacrifice-substitute
  525. p. 71The oldest examples of anti-Jewish literature come from Ptolemaic Egypt. Manetho, an Egyptian priest who had adopted Greek culture, wrote a kind of anti-Exodus in which Moses is a renegade priest and his followers are associated with the Hyksos or with lepers.c3-manetho
  526. p. 71Accusations of this kind threatened Jews in two ways: they could incite violence (as in Alexandria in the first century CE) and poison their relations with the Ptolemies. In the late third century BCE, native Egyptians gained a larger place in government, and Egyptian Jews found themselves on more precarious footing.c3-egyptian-pressure
  527. p. 71Some of the Jewish literature of the time responds to this pressure. In Artapanus's account, Abraham teaches astronomy to the king of Egypt, Joseph organizes Egyptian agriculture and Moses is honored as a god by the priests: the Jews appear as benefactors, not as misanthropic foreigners.c3-artapanus
  528. p. 71Hellenization ought not to be seen merely as assimilation: in Egypt it also served to preserve Jewish culture, making it possible to maintain identity and community in a setting where Jews were resented by the native population and depended on their Greek rulers.c3-hellenization-preservation
  529. p. 71, p. 72, p. 519The Wisdom of Ben Sira, which a sage called Jesus ben Sira wrote around 200 BCE, survived in Greek among the apocryphal books (as Ecclesiasticus). In the late nineteenth century, large fragments of the Hebrew original were found in the Cairo Genizah. There is no consensus on how far the work reflects Hellenization.c3-ben-sira
  530. p. 72, p. 519Between 202 and 200 BCE, the Seleucid kingdom of Antiochus III seized Judea from the Ptolemaic kingdom; Antiochus seems to have confirmed the Jews' right to live by their ancestral customs, a policy maintained by his successor Seleucus IV.c3-antiochus-iii
  531. p. 72Seleucus IV, who reigned from 187 to 175 BCE, is said to have attempted to plunder the Temple in Jerusalem. His official Heliodorus failed (according to the Jewish account, angelic beings knocked him off his horse). After Seleucus's assassination, attributed to Heliodorus, his brother Antiochus IV ascended the throne.c3-heliodorus
  532. p. 72The Maccabean Revolt is remembered today at Hanukkah, an eight-day festival during which a nine-branched candelabrum is lit; it celebrates the rededication of the Temple desecrated by Antiochus IV and falls on 25 Kislev.c3-hanukkah-memory
  533. p. 73, p. 75The events are known chiefly from 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees, preserved in the Apocrypha. Neither can be fully trusted: they contradict each other on key points, date from long after the events and recount miracles. They may have exaggerated Antiochus's impieties to discredit him, as the Cyrus Cylinder did with the Babylonian king Nabonidus.c3-maccabees-sources
  534. p. 73The most powerful office in Judean society was that of high priest, which seems to have been restricted to the Oniad family. A priest named Jason ousted Onias III by bribing Antiochus; years later, Menelaus offered a bribe of his own, paid out of the Temple treasury, which outraged the population of Jerusalem.c3-high-priesthood
  535. p. 73, p. 73Jason founded a gymnasium in Jerusalem, a Greek institution where young men were trained in body and mind. According to 2 Maccabees, the young men began wearing Greek hats. That they trained naked is an inference by historians, since the sources do not say so; 1 Maccabees mentions epispasm, a technique for concealing circumcision.c3-gymnasium
  536. p. 73Jason wanted to turn Jerusalem into a polis, with all the privileges that status brought (rights for its male inhabitants, the minting of coins), and even wished to give it the name Antioch, after Antiochus.c3-polis-antioch
  537. p. 73Menelaus went further: he took gold vessels out of the Temple so as to bribe a Greek official and then sell them to other cities, and had Onias, a former high priest who criticized him, murdered.c3-menelaus
  538. p. 74, p. 74Antiochus viewed the struggles between Jason and Menelaus as a revolt. He plundered the Temple, is said to have set up in it some sacrilegious object (an idol or an altar) in order to rededicate it to Zeus, and installed in Jerusalem a citadel garrisoned by non-Jewish soldiers.c3-antiochus-intervention
  539. p. 74, p. 519Antiochus issued an edict banning Jewish religious practice: circumcision, the Sabbath and the Torah. Copies of the Torah were destroyed and those who followed its laws were executed; there are reports of Jews forced to eat pork. The book's timeline dates the rededication of the Temple to Zeus and these prohibitions to 167 BCE.c3-persecution-edict
  540. p. 75The first recorded cases of people electing death for the sake of their religion appear in the narrative of 2 Maccabees about Antiochus's persecution. The Bible contains no such accounts, which leads scholars to place the origin of martyrdom in this period.c3-martyrdom
  541. p. 75In 62 CE James the brother of Jesus was executed in Jerusalem along with some others under the high priest (Josephus, Ant. 20.199-203). Bauckham, in Skarsaune's volume, places this as the third major bout of violence against the Jerusalem church in the first century, after Stephen and the killing of James son of Zebedee under Agrippa I (c. 42).cjb-james-death-62
  542. p. 75For the Jerusalem community as Bauckham reconstructs it, Jewish obedience to the Torah was taken entirely for granted; what damaged Paul's reputation there was not, in principle, his policy toward Gentile converts, but the rumor that he encouraged Jews to abandon full Torah observance (Acts 21:21).cjb-jerusalem-torah-taken-for-granted
  543. p. 75, p. 81The Letter of Aristeas (paragraphs 158 to 160), probably Alexandrian (mid to late second century BCE), is for Penner among the earliest potential witnesses to using Deut 6:7 as a prooftext for turning to God twice daily when lying down and rising, in a household setting.cl-aristeas-deut-twice-daily
  544. p. 76When Jason and Menelaus brought in Greek institutions, they may not have been abandoning tradition, as 1 and 2 Maccabees allege, or pursuing an aggressive religious reform, as Bickerman argued. They may simply have been trying, for practical reasons, to raise Jerusalem's status in a Hellenized world.c3-jason-menelaus-pragmatism
  545. p. 76, p. 78It is in this period that the term Judaism first appears, a Greek word for a way of life defined by the laws of Moses and by practices such as circumcision, the Sabbath and Temple worship. 2 Maccabees is the earliest known text in which both Judaism and Hellenism appear as terms.c3-judaism-term
  546. p. 76As long as they could live by their own customs, Jews show no sign of having resisted Seleucid rule. Once Antiochus intervened, they had to choose between their law and Greek ways: some escaped to the desert, some chose death, and many took up arms.c3-no-resistance-before
  547. p. 76, p. 519According to 1 Maccabees, Antiochus's officials went to Modiin to force the Jews to sacrifice. The priest Mattathias refused, killed a Jew who stepped forward to sacrifice as well as a Seleucid officer, and fled with his five sons to the hills, starting a guerrilla war.c3-modiin
  548. p. 76Another group, the Hasidim ('the pious'), appears to have taken part in the revolt even earlier, but its leaders were overshadowed by Mattathias and his family.c3-hasidim
  549. p. 76When Mattathias died, his son Judah assumed leadership. Judah's nickname, 'the Maccabee' or 'the Hammer', is the source of the names Maccabees and Maccabean Revolt.c3-maccabee-name
  550. p. 76At first, as Bickerman proposed, the revolt may have been less a rebellion against foreign rule than an internal Jewish civil war, with the Maccabees attacking Jewish collaborators first.c3-civil-war
  551. p. 76, p. 520Judah, a skilled guerrilla commander, recaptured Jerusalem and reinstated worship at the Temple, an event commemorated at Hanukkah. He was helped by Antiochus's preoccupation with the eastern part of his kingdom and by Roman support. The book's timeline dates the purification and rededication of the Temple to 164 BCE.c3-judah-victories
  552. p. 76In 161 BCE Judah defeated Nicanor, the Seleucid general who had vowed to tear down the Temple. The narrative of 2 Maccabees closes with this victory.c3-nicanor
  553. p. 76Judah fell in battle; the struggle continued under his brothers, first Jonathan and, after Jonathan's death, Simon.c3-brothers
  554. p. 76Chazan notes that nationalist/Zionist thinkers likewise projected the Jewish 'middle period' as a vale of tears and an unremitting saga of persecution; religious/cultural Zionists balanced that suffering against remarkable Jewish creativity in the era.c-h502-chazan-zionist-vale-of-tears
  555. p. 77It is unclear when to date the end of the revolt: to 161 BCE, where 2 Maccabees ends the story, or to the late 140s BCE, when Simon obtained from Demetrius II Nicator exemption from tribute and confirmation as high priest.c3-revolt-end
  556. p. 77, p. 520By around 140 BCE, according to 1 Maccabees, the Maccabees had secured their hold on Judea. Simon was proclaimed the Jews' high priest and ruler 'forever', which turned the family into a dynasty: the Hasmoneans, a name possibly taken from the family's place of origin.c3-simon-hasmoneans
  557. p. 77, p. 520Hasmonean rule over Judea lasted until 63 BCE, when the region fell to Rome: Pompey intervened in favor of Hyrcanus II, arrested Aristobulus II and conquered Jerusalem.c3-roman-control-63
  558. p. 77Even after the Seleucids returned the Jews' right to their laws, the Hasmonean campaign continued: Simon captured Gezer, drove out its non-Jewish population and resettled it with Jews.c3-gezer
  559. p. 77John Hyrcanus, son of Simon, held power between 134 and 104 BCE. After conquering the Idumeans, descendants of the Edomites, he allowed them to stay on their land only if they became Jews. This forced conversion imitated Antiochus's attempt to make Jews give up their own way of life.c3-hyrcanus-idumeans
  560. p. 77His son Aristobulus I presented the Itureans, a people settled in present-day Lebanon, with the same option.c3-aristobulus-itureans
  561. p. 77, p. 78Hasmonean power peaked under Alexander Jannaeus, whose reign ran from 103 to 76 BCE: an effective conqueror, cruel and resented by many of his subjects, he took the Greek cities of the coast and forcibly converted their inhabitants. Josephus implausibly states that he killed 50,000 Jews.c3-jannaeus
  562. p. 77, p. 77There is literary and material evidence of an effort to restore the traditional way of life: 1 Maccabees imitates the style of Joshua and Samuel; Hanukkah seems to have been based on biblical models when introduced by the Maccabees (Sukkot and the dedication of the First Temple); Hasmonean coinage employs the old Hebrew script; and pottery suggests that foreign wine and goods were being boycotted.c3-re-judaization
  563. p. 77The Hasmoneans did not reverse Hellenization. They maintained relations with the Spartans, the Romans and, under John Hyrcanus, the Seleucids themselves; they adopted Greek names (Alexander, Alexandra), built palaces and tombs on Hellenistic models and minted coins with Greek legends. One of them was nicknamed Philhellene, 'friend of the Greeks'.c3-hasmonean-hellenization
  564. p. 78The Hasmoneans became unpopular, but not necessarily for adopting Greek customs: what counted against them were their questionable claim to the high priesthood, taxes and conscription for their wars, cruelty and the misuse of communal funds (John Hyrcanus drew funds from David's tomb to pay mercenaries).c3-hasmonean-unpopularity
  565. p. 78Women also played a part in the revolt. 2 Maccabees tells the story of a nameless mother who exhorts her seven sons to perish resisting Antiochus before dying herself (later tradition would call her Miriam or Hannah). The book of Judith, set in biblical times, may reflect the events of the revolt.c3-women-revolt
  566. p. 78, p. 79The story of Judith, a widow who defends Israel while the men look on helplessly, has parallels with Judah Maccabee: similar names and the decapitation of a hostile general (Holofernes in one case, Nicanor in the other). In later Jewish tradition, Judith is sometimes cast as kin to the Maccabees and her story is read at Hanukkah.c3-judith-parallels
  567. p. 78, p. 520Salome Alexandra (Shelamzion in Hebrew) ruled Jewish society from 76 to 67 BCE. She was not high priest, but she appointed whoever held the office. Her death in 67 BCE set off the succession struggle between her sons Aristobulus II and Hyrcanus II.c3-salome-alexandra
  568. p. 78, p. 792 Maccabees is the abridgment of a five-volume work, now lost, by one Jason of Cyrene. Although it sets Judaism against Hellenism, it was written in Greek and imitates Greek literature: the problem, as 2 Maccabees 4:13 puts it, was 'Hellenization carried to an extreme', that is, Greek practices contrary to the laws of Moses.c3-2macc-jason-cyrene
  569. p. 79In this period, being Jewish also comes to mean a commitment to a way of life, not just descent or place of birth. Some scholars see here the transition from Israel to the Jews. The strongest evidence is the first conversion stories: the Idumeans and other non-Jews under the Hasmoneans, Achior in the book of Judith and Antiochus himself in 2 Maccabees.c3-identity-shift
  570. p. 79Some Jewish sources describe this way of life with the Greek term politeia, 'citizenship'. Josephus says that Moses invited into the community all who wished to live under the same laws, since it is not only family ties that make someone a member (Against Apion 2.210).c3-politeia
  571. p. 79, p. 79Nulman lists rival traditions about Aleinu (Alaynu): ascribed to Joshua at Jericho's conquest; to the Amora Rav (third century), credited with editing the Rosh Hashanah Musaf that embeds it; or to the Men of the Great Assembly in the Second Temple period.cl-aleinu-competing-authorships
  572. p. 79For Nulman, Aleinu belonged essentially to the High Holy Day Musaf (Malkhuyot section); its transfer to daily recital took place about 1300, and with the Al Kayn Nekaveh paragraph it became the closing prayer.cl-aleinu-daily-about-1300
  573. p. 80With Jews scattered across several continents, divided by languages and political settings, what appears to bind their culture together is fidelity to tradition: the laws of Moses, the customs of the ancestors and the Temple. That same importance produced divisions over how to interpret and maintain the tradition.c3-tradition-unity
  574. p. 80The Samaritans, descendants of the northern tribes, saw themselves as heirs of Israel under the law of Moses, but located worship on Mount Gerizim, near present-day Nablus, and revered only the five books of Moses. The conflict with the Jews seems to go back to the Persian period; excavations indicate that a cult was established on Gerizim at that time. The community survives today, numbering a few hundred people.c3-samaritans
  575. p. 80, p. 81The high priest had for centuries come from the line of Zadok. The family lost the office during Antiochus's persecution, and the Maccabees' subsequent occupation of it seemed illegitimate for many Jews. Misgivings about the Temple and its priesthood seem to have fueled dissident groups.c3-zadokites
  576. p. 80Flusser describes Essene posture toward power as conditional pacifism ('militant defeatism'): no ruler rises without divine will; in practice, behavior differed little from the peace-seeking faction within rabbinic circles.c-h502-flusser-essene-conditional-pacifism
  577. p. 81New kinds of religious authority gained influence: charismatic teachers and prophets whose authority came from interpreting the biblical text or from familiarity with oral traditions. Priests did not lose their influence, but now had to compete for it.c3-new-authorities
  578. p. 81, p. 82We know three groups by name: Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes. They are described mainly by Josephus, in the first century CE, but emerged in the second century BCE. The Essenes probably fit the definition of a sect; the Sadducees were perhaps more a social class of wealthy priests; the Pharisees, popular and politically influential, sometimes look more like a political faction. Josephus calls them haireseis, 'schools of thought'.c3-three-groups
  579. p. 82, p. 82According to Josephus, the Pharisees believed in fate while leaving room for human decision, and in the survival of the soul; the Sadducees rejected belief in an immortal soul and the rule of fate; the Essenes believed in immortality and providence, without the same scope for human will. The Pharisees also followed the 'tradition of the fathers', laws not written in Scripture.c3-group-beliefs
  580. p. 82Which group produced part of the Dead Sea Scrolls is a recent controversy. Pliny locates an Essene settlement between Jericho and En-Gedi, and the scrolls community resembles the Essenes in many respects. Most scholars identify it as Essene, but some argue that it was a branch of the Sadducees.c3-dss-identification
  581. p. 82, p. 82, p. 520In the earlier decades of the second century BCE, probably after Antiochus's persecution, the sect formed around a leader called the Teacher of Righteousness, in conflict with a 'Wicked Priest', perhaps the high priest of the day (once identified with Jonathan or Simon, though his identity remains a mystery). Around 150 BCE, the Teacher and his circle retreated into the Judean desert, where, according to many scholars, they founded the settlement at Qumran.c3-teacher-withdrawal
  582. p. 82A large share of the scrolls did not originate in this community: works such as 1 Enoch and Tobit were already known from translations before the discovery, which revealed their Hebrew or Aramaic originals.c3-dss-not-all-sectarian
  583. p. 83Texts such as the Community Rule and the Damascus Document show an organized, disciplined and hierarchical community, with rites of initiation and expulsion. Contrary to what was once thought, its members were perhaps not celibate; in the Qumran cemetery, the men lie in the main area and the women in extensions.c3-dss-community
  584. p. 83In Ant. 4.212, read with Josephus's Exodus narrative, Penner argues that Josephus situates the origins of daily prayer in Israel's sacred history, portraying Moses as exemplar and originator of the tradition of bearing witness to God morning and at bedtime.cl-josephus-moses-exemplar
  585. p. 84The community seems to have objected to the use of a lunar calendar of 354 days instead of a solar calendar of 364 days; for the book of Jubilees, this meant that Temple sacrifices and festivals were being celebrated on the wrong days.c3-calendar
  586. p. 84, p. 84The scrolls had been hidden in caves near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea and were found mainly between 1947 and 1956, starting with a Bedouin shepherd's discovery of seven scrolls. In 1896, Solomon Schechter had already found two copies of the Damascus Document in the Cairo Genizah. The Qumran site was excavated in the 1950s; its connection with the scrolls is still debated.c3-dss-discovery
  587. p. 84The Dead Sea Scrolls comprise some 900 texts, of which approximately 115 compositions are attributed to the sect. The Cairo Genizah yielded more than 200,000 fragments and, according to the authors, surpasses the scrolls in what it reveals about Jewish history.c3-dss-numbers
  588. p. 84, p. 84The scrolls offer the oldest surviving witnesses to the biblical text, an inside view of an ancient Jewish sect and the Jewish background from which Christianity emerged, although they do not mention Jesus. According to the authors, however, they have not transformed in any fundamental way how the period is understood, which still depends on 1 and 2 Maccabees and on Josephus.c3-dss-significance
  589. p. 85The delay in publishing the scrolls, which lasted into the 1980s and 1990s, was due to a small team, lack of funding and other factors. According to the authors, there are no grounds for imagining a conspiracy to suppress them.c3-dss-no-coverup
  590. p. 85The sect's scribes preferred Hebrew, in a dialect of their own that avoided Greek loanwords and used codes such as 'Wicked Priest'. One scholar described it as an 'anti-language'.c3-dss-hebrew
  591. p. 85A large share of New Christians in Bahia between 1624 and 1654 had arrived after the General Pardon of 1605.c9-bahia-after-pardon-1605
  592. p. 86Although the chapter's scope runs from the 300s BCE through the first, Greek influence on Jewish culture kept growing long after that.c3-period-frame
  593. p. 86The sect believed it was living as the final age of days. The War Scroll describes a battle lasting 40 years between the 'sons of light', God with his angels and the righteous Israelites, and the 'sons of darkness'.c3-war-scroll
  594. p. 86Not even the scrolls community escaped Hellenization: united by beliefs and rituals rather than kinship, it was a voluntary association similar to the philosophical schools, clubs and mystery cults of the Hellenistic world.c3-voluntary-association
  595. p. 86, p. 87The Passover seder, structured by the Haggadah with changes traceable to the third century CE, has many features of the Greek symposium: reclining, drinking wine, singing praises, asking questions about the food. The word afikomen comes from Greek. This does not mean that the Haggadah was deliberately patterned on the symposium.c3-seder-symposium
  596. p. 86More than other groups, the New Christian had pressing reasons to remain in the colony despite attractions from Holland or Recife.c9-bahia-reasons-to-stay
  597. p. 87At its height, the Jewish community of Alexandria probably ran to hundreds of thousands of people, and it produced Philo of Alexandria, a first-century CE philosopher. It declined in late antiquity, and its literature has reached us only because Christians preserved it.c3-alexandria-size
  598. p. 89The Maccabees relied on more than God against the Seleucids: they also turned to Rome, cultivating a 'friendship', a word that then meant a political alliance. Because the Seleucids had lost to the Romans before, fear of Roman intervention may partly explain why they agreed to make peace with the Jews.c4-roman-friendship
  599. p. 89The irony, for the authors, is that the greater danger came from the allies, not the enemies. A century later, Roman support became the pretext for annexing Judea, and Rome's rule shook the traditional Jewish way of life more than anything under the Seleucids had.c4-roman-danger
  600. p. 89, p. 520It all began with Salome Alexandra's death in 67 BCE: her sons Aristobulus II and Hyrcanus II fought over the succession. Pompey, already master of the lands of the former Seleucid kingdom, used the dispute to enter Judean politics in the guise of a neutral mediator.c4-hasmonean-feud
  601. p. 89, p. 520Pompey heard both parties and held off deciding. Aristobulus, however, would not be controlled; in 63 BCE the Roman general had him arrested and advanced on Jerusalem to finish off his remaining backers. In the book's timeline the intervention appears as taken in Hyrcanus II's favor.c4-pompey-63
  602. p. 89Pompey's entry into the Temple, where only priests could tread, shocked the Jews. Otherwise, Josephus says, he treated the tradition with respect: he left the sanctuary's treasures untouched and had the sacrificial cult start again.c4-pompey-temple
  603. p. 89, p. 89Hyrcanus was given the government of Judea, but real power passed to Rome: much of the Hasmonean lands went to a Roman governor, and Judea began paying tribute as a dependency. Full annexation took a while, yet Josephus dates the Jews' subjection to Rome from this moment.c4-hyrcanus-ruler
  604. p. 89Jewish uprisings across the first two centuries CE emptied Judea of many of its Jews. Over the course of Roman rule, the hub of communal life moved away from Jerusalem, to a region farther north and to diaspora centers such as Babylon and Rome.c4-population-shift
  605. p. 89Once the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, Jewish worship came to do without sacrifice or building, for example in synagogue prayer. By the second century the Hasmoneans, Pharisees, Sadducees and the Dead Sea sect were gone; gaining ground were movements without a Temple center: Christianity, born inside Judaism, and rabbinic Judaism.c4-religious-diffusion
  606. p. 89The authors split the Roman period into two chapters. This one covers the first phase, from Pompey's conquest in 63 BCE to the revolts that end in 135 CE; the next follows Jewish culture up to the seventh century.c4-chapter-scope
  607. p. 89Reif notes that although Shema and Amidah basics are taking shape in talmudic sources, the wider rabbinic community still lacks one shared prayer-book and shows no uniform approach to detail among its groupings.cl-talmudic-no-fixed-siddur
  608. p. 90Romans and Jews had traits in common: agrarian, patriarchal societies attached to tradition, revering their gods or God and their inherited customs, both marked by contact with Greek culture. The decisive difference, already in the second century BCE, was power: Rome acted in the Hellenistic world as a far superior force.c4-romans-like-jews
  609. p. 90Rome had dominated Italy since the fourth century BCE. In the west only Carthage stood against it; after three Punic Wars it was defeated for good in the second century BCE, and Spain and North Africa came under Roman control. In the east, the Seleucids and Ptolemies also ended up giving way.c4-rome-rise
  610. p. 90, p. 520Cleopatra VII, the last Ptolemaic ruler, hoped to revive her kingdom alongside Mark Antony, her Roman lover. In 31 BCE Octavian, adopted posthumously by Julius Caesar, defeated them both and added the title of pharaoh to his powers. The book's timeline records the conquest of Egypt and the end of the Ptolemies in 30 BCE.c4-actium
  611. p. 90, p. 91, p. 520The Roman republic was an oligarchy centered on the Senate, a council of elders that advised and filled offices. Octavian posed as the restorer of that order, but removed awkward senators and installed allies; the docile Senate gave him titles (Imperator, Augustus) and command of every legion and governor. The republic survived only as a façade.c4-republic-to-empire
  612. p. 90, p. 90In Octavian's day Roman territory already reached from the Iberian Peninsula to the Euphrates River. Map 4.1 in the book gives the empire's borders in the second and third centuries CE and marks the regions contested with Parthia.c4-roman-map
  613. p. 91Roman expansion brought most of the world's Jews under one government, from Judea and Egypt to North Africa, Asia Minor, Greece and the capital itself. By the first century CE only one sizable Jewish community remained outside the empire: that of the Parthian kingdom, which had taken the lands east of the Euphrates from the Seleucids and rivaled Rome.c4-jews-under-rome
  614. p. 91Almost nothing is known of the Jews of Parthia: the main source, the Babylonian Talmud, only crystallized during the 500s and 600s CE. So from 63 BCE to the Talmudic age, the Jewish history that can be written is in practice that of the Jews of the Roman Empire.c4-parthian-sources
  615. p. 91, p. 520For early Roman rule, no source weighs as much as Flavius Josephus. Born in 37 CE, of priestly and Hasmonean lineage, he commanded Jewish troops in the revolt of 66 CE and later went over to the Roman side.c4-josephus-bio
  616. p. 91, p. 91In 67 CE, at Yodefat (Jotapata), Josephus and his soldiers were trapped in a cave. The men demanded a collective suicide; Josephus agreed and suggested drawing lots for the order of the killings. He ended up among the last two and, with the other survivor, gave himself up to the Romans. Josephus hints that God saved him; historians suspect he cheated in the draw.c4-yodefat
  617. p. 91, p. 520During the siege of Jerusalem, Josephus worked for the Romans as interpreter and go-between. After 70 CE he settled in Rome and wrote the history of the revolt, the Jewish Antiquities (from biblical origins to shortly before the war), Against Apion and an autobiography. His latest texts seem to date from the 90s, hence the assumption that he died around 100 CE.c4-josephus-works
  618. p. 91Josephus is not alone: there are Philo of Alexandria, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the pseudepigrapha, mentions in Greek and Latin authors and the New Testament, as well as ruins such as those of the Temple, Caesarea and Masada, inscriptions and coins. Still, he alone narrates in detail the first 150 or so years of Roman rule, and without him this material would be hard to piece together.c4-other-sources
  619. p. 91In part, Josephus has been confirmed by other evidence. What he reports about the Essenes matches the Dead Sea Scrolls sect on several points; digs at the southwest angle of the Temple Mount support part of his architectural description; and the finds at Masada have confirmed much of his account of the siege.c4-josephus-corroborated
  620. p. 91Josephus's standards were those of Greco-Roman historiography, not today's. He reproduced older sources without checking them, accepted explanations now seen as simplistic, and made up speeches and details to liven up the text or press a point.c4-josephus-methods
  621. p. 91, p. 92Josephus's credibility also suffers from his interests. He needed to answer the charge of treason and to please Vespasian, Titus and Domitian, a dynasty whose standing rested on victory over the Jews; hence the name Flavius, taken from the imperial family, and the claim, perhaps inflated, that Titus approved his account. The result extols Rome and blames the rebels, not the emperors, for the loss of the Temple.c4-josephus-propaganda
  622. p. 91On 23 May 1536 a bull of Paul III established the Holy Office tribunal in Portugal.c8-pt-inquisition-1536
  623. p. 91The Portuguese tribunal emerged from a contest between Church and state interests.c8-pt-inquisition-church-state
  624. p. 91John III faced prolonged Curia resistance before securing the definitive Inquisition bull.c8-joao-iii-curia
  625. p. 91In a Bahia council loan, Novinsky identified 27 New Christians (15 percent of contributors) providing 16 percent of the sum raised.c9-bahia-camara-loan-share
  626. p. 91In a 1639 collection recorded in the minutes, 23 of 104 contributors (22 percent) were New Christians.c9-bahia-camara-1639
  627. p. 92, p. 92For the authors, Josephus's pro-Roman bias also teaches something: it shows one of the paths Jews took in the face of conquest, the voluntary submission of those who could not win and would not die. In his history of the war, Josephus lists peoples who had already bowed, such as the Athenians, and concludes that so invincible a power could only enjoy divine favor.c4-josephus-submission
  628. p. 92Josephus was no exception: in Palestine (the Romans' name for the strip between the Mediterranean and the Jordan) and in Alexandria, many Jews not only accepted Rome but served it. In Philo's family, his nephew Tiberius Julius Alexander rose to governor-general and was Titus's deputy at the siege of 70 CE. Philo himself saw in emperors such as Augustus a reflection of divine virtues.c4-philo-family
  629. p. 92Today such praise sounds servile, but it follows an old survival tactic, already visible in Deutero-Isaiah, which treats the Persian Cyrus as God's instrument. And there were practical motives: Rome offered roads and public works, relative peace, a developed law and guarantees for Jewish religion and rights, while defying it was extremely risky.c4-survival-strategy
  630. p. 92For New Christians accused of Judaism, the most common sentence was imprisonment and perpetual penitential habit.c8-pt-sentence-habit
  631. p. 92In Brazil, New Christians accused of Judaism could receive a death sentence at the stake.c8-pt-brazil-stake
  632. p. 93Perhaps, privately, Jews like Philo and Josephus loathed Roman rule; they nonetheless judged outward submission the safest course, and may have genuinely believed that Rome's power came from God, who was using it for his purposes as he had once used the Persians.c4-secret-resentment
  633. p. 93, p. 520Rome, like earlier empires, liked to govern through local elites. The Hasmoneans caused too much trouble and were swapped for someone more obedient: Herod, from an Idumean family forcibly converted in Hasmonean times, who ruled Judea starting in 37 BCE and died in 4 BCE. The book's timeline says he captured Jerusalem with Roman help, taking it from a Hasmonean dynasty that had been restored for a short time.c4-herod-rise
  634. p. 93Herod invested in Roman friendship: he founded Caesarea and other cities in Augustus's honor and met him on several occasions. In return for the peace he secured, with troops that mixed Romans, Gauls and Germans, he gained land and prestige. He also kept the priesthood on a short leash, installing a friend as high priest, and likewise the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem.c4-herod-rome
  635. p. 93The name Sanhedrin comes from Greek and means 'meeting' or 'assembly'. It apparently worked as a high court or council with weight in Jerusalem's religious and civic matters. It became famous for the trial of Jesus, but little is clearly known about its history and operation.c4-sanhedrin
  636. p. 93, p. 520Herod never stopped building: Caesarea, the fortress of Masada, palaces, theaters, works as far off as Greece. Nothing compares to the Temple, whose rebuilding began in 20 BCE: the old building was torn down and the new one rose on a huge platform with courts, gates, porticos and the Antonia fortress. It took 10,000 workmen and years of labor (the book cites John), and excavation of the retaining walls has confirmed the size of the complex.c4-herod-builder
  637. p. 93Few monuments of the time were as impressive. Josephus reports that for this very reason Titus was reluctant to destroy the Temple, which he regarded as an 'ornament' of the empire.c4-temple-ornament
  638. p. 93Rome's backing was not enough to make Herod legitimate. By tradition he had no right to the throne or the high priesthood, since he did not descend from David or Aaron; even his status as a Jew was doubted, as his Idumean grandfather had converted under force. He took the Hasmonean princess Mariamne as his second wife to gain prestige, but the marriage ended with her execution.c4-herod-legitimacy
  639. p. 93Athletic games and Greek-style arenas in Jerusalem irritated Herod's subjects. Suspicion went so far that people believed his theater held human figures; the king had to show the building to critics to prove otherwise. Seen this way, the Temple project served to clean up his image, as heir to Solomon's piety, and to employ artisans and laborers for decades.c4-herod-hellenizing
  640. p. 93Matthew 2:1 to 18 tells how Herod, learning of the birth in Bethlehem of a 'king of the Jews' he could not locate, had the town's children killed. Only this Gospel has the episode, perhaps invented to echo the pharaoh of Exodus; it is not necessarily history, but it fits Herod's harshness toward possible rivals.c4-massacre-bethlehem
  641. p. 93, p. 94Herod eliminated anyone who seemed dangerous to him. He killed his wife, three of his sons and his mother-in-law, among many others, a violence that drew notice even among Romans. Centuries later a story had Augustus remark that it was better to be Herod's pig than his son.c4-herod-ruthless
  642. p. 93Vicar Temudo's report, marked by prejudice, claims that most inhabitants of the land were Jews.c9-bahia-temudo-report
  643. p. 94, p. 520Herod's fears had grounds: rivals abounded, surviving Hasmoneans among them, and there were attempts on his life. He kept ahead of his enemies, raised fortresses such as Masada and built a large network of spies. In this way, with effective propaganda, intelligence and violence, he held the throne for more than thirty years.c4-herod-survival
  644. p. 94, p. 94After Herod died, three sons shared out the kingdom. Archelaus received Judea, Samaria and Idumea and ruled from 4 BCE to 6 CE; Herod Antipas got Galilee and Perea, to the north, from 4 BCE to 39 CE; Herod Philip got the Golan, in the far north, from 4 BCE to 33 or 34 CE. Archelaus governed so badly that Augustus exiled him to Gaul; his brothers did better.c4-herod-sons
  645. p. 94, p. 520In 37 CE the dynasty had a short revival under Agrippa I, Herod's grandson, popular in Judea for his religious zeal; he died as early as 44 CE. Agrippa II, his successor, and his sister Berenice lost control of Jerusalem, which rebelled in 66. After the war of 66 to 70 CE and the fall of the Temple, Herodian power practically ceased to exist.c4-agrippa
  646. p. 94Roman backing explains why the Herodians lasted over a hundred years, but it may also explain why so many subjects rejected them. Moreover, every failure, like that of Archelaus, forced Rome to take closer control, which made the tension worse.c4-herodian-legitimacy
  647. p. 94, p. 520With Archelaus removed, Rome sent its own administrators to Judea, low-ranking officials titled prefect and later procurator. Cruel, corrupt and contemptuous of Jewish tradition, they made the friction worse. The book's timeline dates the start of this direct rule to 6 CE.c4-direct-rule
  648. p. 94, p. 95, p. 520Pontius Pilate was the most famous and most hated of these governors. He held the prefecture from 26 to 37 CE, or from 19 to 37 according to a recent proposal. Philo charges him with bribes, insults, plunder and summary executions. His affronts to Jewish tradition led to several clashes, but what cost him his post was his handling of the Samaritans.c4-pilate
  649. p. 95There were exceptions: Philo praises Petronius, a governor who helped avert a war under Caligula. On the whole, though, Pilate seems to represent well the procurators of the decades before the revolt: violent when it came to keeping order, short of troops, possibly corrupt and without understanding of Jewish customs.c4-procurators-typical
  650. p. 95, p. 95A box in the book gathers Roman authors' views of the Jews, from sympathy to aversion. Varro (116 to 27 BCE) thought the Jewish God was Jupiter under another name, the name being unimportant. Cicero (106 to 43 BCE) considered Jewish rites incompatible with Rome's prestige and with old Roman custom.c4-roman-eyes-range
  651. p. 95, p. 95Seneca, who killed himself in 65 CE, complained that Jewish customs were spreading so far that the conquered were setting rules for the conquerors. Tacitus (56 to 117 CE) is the most hostile: he portrays the Jews as loyal among themselves and hostile to every other people, and says converts learned to scorn gods, homeland and kin.c4-roman-eyes-hostile
  652. p. 95, p. 95One cannot generalize from Josephus. Rome won over the Jewish elite (Herodians, high priests, aristocrats like Philo) to serve as a bridge to the people; but outside that circle, and even inside it, many hated the Romans for their cruelty, their neglect of tradition and their taxes. The uprisings after Herod's death show that Rome's formula was failing.c4-elite-vs-many
  653. p. 95The relationship with Rome varied by region: Galileans seem to have accepted Roman rule somewhat more readily than the Jews of Judea. Even so, conflicts in Judea affected Jews across the empire.c4-galilee-different
  654. p. 95, p. 96For Philo, Augustus was the model sovereign: he brought peace, united the world, civilized the barbarians and put an end to piracy; Caligula, by contrast, was dreadful, but in his view most successors acted with benevolence toward the Jews. Archaeology shows what prompted this judgment: aqueducts in Jerusalem and Caesarea, better roads, streets and ports.c4-philo-augustus
  655. p. 95, p. 96, p. 95Petrus Alfonsi (formerly Moses), a Jew of Arabic culture from al-Andalus, was baptized at Huesca in 1106. His Dialogue between the Jewish self 'Moses' and the Christian self 'Petrus' is, for Skarsaune, better informed about Jewish faith and praxis than earlier adversus iudaeos tradition; he also translated from Arabic into Latin and mediated among the three worlds of Iberian convivencia.cjb-petrus-alfonsi
  656. p. 96If Rome brought benefits, why so much rejection? The empire knew how to control populations not only by force but also through patronage: it handed out favors to win loyalty. It did the same with the Jews: privileges for their communities, gifts to the Temple and ties with leaders such as Herod.c4-patronage
  657. p. 96Part of the resistance came from faith: for some Jews, obeying a human sovereign was incompatible with God. In an uprising in 6 CE, the teacher Judas preached that God alone reigned and that no Jew should submit to a man. Judas apparently died early on, but the idea lived on in the so-called Fourth Philosophy, as Josephus names it, which was still alive at the great revolt and drove groups such as the Sicarii and Zealots.c4-judas-fourth-philosophy
  658. p. 96, p. 520Most Jews probably saw no contradiction between being faithful to God and living under Rome; principled refusal was a minority stance. Over time, though, concrete threats arose. The worst came from Caligula, who, doubting Jewish loyalty, ordered a statue of himself as Jupiter (Zeus, in the book's timeline) placed in the Temple. The governor Petronius delayed the order, and the emperor's assassination ended the crisis before a revolt broke out.c4-caligula-statue
  659. p. 96An emperor threatening the Temple was rare; local affronts, careless or deliberate, were frequent, and any spark would do. Josephus reports a huge riot set off by a single Roman soldier, who turned his back on a crowd of Jews and made a rude noise in their direction.c4-local-offenses
  660. p. 96, p. 96There was also poverty. The Mediterranean economy under Rome made some Jews rich but impoverished many: first-century Judea saw famines and joblessness. Rome seized land and levied taxes and tolls (some 30 percent of a farmer's income, by one estimate); added to this were the famine of the 40s, joblessness once the Temple works ended, and the concentration of land in the hands of Herod and the rich. In debt or landless, some entered bondage themselves, or put their children into it; others became bandits.c4-economic-hardship
  661. p. 96The revolt was not a peasant movement: some rebels came from the elite, like Josephus himself. But economic motives seem to have counted, since the war offered a way to shake off taxes, plunder the palaces of the rich and lay hands on the Temple treasury.c4-not-peasant-revolt
  662. p. 96Resentment grew because many Jews dreamed of another reality. Heirs to the apocalypticism born in the Hellenistic period, they expected God to defeat the Romans. Several apocalypses date from Roman times, such as the War Scroll, with its final clash of the 'sons of light', perhaps the sect itself, against the 'sons of darkness', who may have included the Romans.c4-apocalyptic-hope
  663. p. 96, p. 97For many scholars these texts were passive resistance: a dream that told people to wait for God. The authors point to another possible reading, as a spur to action. Certainty that the end was coming, with God and his angels joining the fight, may have driven uprisings, perhaps even the great revolt, and the War Scroll may have worked as a training manual.c4-apocalyptic-function
  664. p. 96John III reinforced the law barring New Christians from leaving Portugal, even under papal pressure.c8-pt-exit-ban
  665. p. 96Novinsky argues that recent research adds the Jewish origin of Paulista bandeirantes to understanding the conflict with Jesuit reductions.c9-bandeirantes-jewish-origin
  666. p. 97Why, then, risk revolt against a virtually invincible power? Rome punished ferociously, and crucifixion was its best-known tool of intimidation, 'the most wretched of deaths' in Josephus's words: reserved for slaves, mutinous soldiers and foreigners deemed enemies, it was carried out beside the busiest roads so everyone would see.c4-crucifixion
  667. p. 97Material traces of crucifixion are extremely rare. One came from a tomb on the outskirts of Jerusalem in 1968: a heel bone still pierced by a nail, from a man in his twenties; the Hebrew inscription reads 'Jehohanan son of HGQWL'. One hypothesis for the rarity: nails were removed from bodies because they were believed to have healing power as amulets.c4-yehohanan
  668. p. 97, p. 520Even so, in 66 CE many Jews, far from all of them, judged revolt both necessary and possible. The act that announced it was public: the sacrifices offered in the Temple for the emperor and the Roman people were stopped. So began what is now called the First Jewish Revolt, which soon passed from Judea to the rest of Palestine and is perhaps the best-documented provincial rebellion in the empire.c4-revolt-66
  669. p. 97The spark was a clash between Jews and Greeks at Caesarea, made worse by the procurator Florus's heavy-handed response. The fuel, however, was religious, economic and social resentment built up since Pompey invaded Judea in 63 BCE.c4-revolt-trigger
  670. p. 97In the diaspora hardly anyone joined, but in Palestine support was broad: south and north (Judea, Galilee, the Golan), among poor and rich, priests and laymen. Free of Rome for a time, the rebels set up a government and a defense force and even struck coins, until Rome sent enough troops to crush them.c4-revolt-support
  671. p. 97, p. 98The picture of foolish rebels comes from Josephus, who wrote after the disaster and with sympathy for Rome. At the time there were grounds for optimism: Cestius Gallus, governor of Syria sent by Nero, was unexpectedly beaten; after Nero's death in 68, three emperors followed one another in a year until Vespasian seized power; the Jews greatly outnumbered the few Roman troops in the region, knew the land and held Jerusalem, with its three walls, and fortresses such as Masada.c4-rebel-confidence
  672. p. 98The rebels also counted on Parthia, Rome's great rival in the east, based in today's Iran; the Parthians had briefly occupied Jerusalem in 40 BCE. The link would be the large Jewish community of Mesopotamia, beyond Rome's borders.c4-parthian-hope
  673. p. 98And they counted on God. Before the war, Rome had crushed small movements led by prophetic figures who promised wonders: Theudas announced that he would split the Jordan like Moses or Joshua; an Egyptian prophet whose name went unrecorded led thousands on a failed march against Jerusalem. The leaders died, but not the hope of divine intervention against Rome.c4-sign-prophets
  674. p. 98On the eve of the war, signs multiplied. Sages read in the Torah an announcement that a man from Judea would master the world; people saw a sword-shaped star over the city, a glow in the sanctuary at Passover and armed troops crossing the sky. Even surrounded on the Temple Mount at the end of the war, the rebels still awaited God's protection.c4-omens
  675. p. 98, p. 98The word 'zealot', now a synonym for fanatic, comes from a group in the revolt. In the Bible, zeal is the jealous defense of God and people, sometimes violent, as when the priest Phinehas kills an Israelite and a Midianite woman. Some scholars call all the rebels of the time Zealots; in Josephus's writings, however, the Zealots form a faction of their own, born late in the war, alongside the Sicarii (whose name comes from a dagger) and Simon son of Giora's men.c4-zealots-box
  676. p. 98In the final stretch, holed up in the Temple, the Zealots fought rival factions and the city's provisional government, which had opted to surrender; they killed the high priest and others accused of treason. A rival faction drove some of them out of the Temple; the rest died fighting Rome.c4-zealots-temple
  677. p. 98, p. 98, p. 520When Vespasian went back to Rome to become emperor, the campaign halted; his son Titus resumed it with a huge army and won within a year. The rebel factions were attacking one another for mastery of the Temple Mount, and the city was crowded with refugees and Passover pilgrims. Some six months into the siege the walls gave way; in August of 70 CE the Temple was destroyed.c4-siege-jerusalem
  678. p. 98, p. 99Josephus clears Titus: the fire supposedly came from a soldier, without orders and against the general's wishes. For some scholars this is another of Josephus's attempts to shield his imperial patrons; Titus, they hold, gave the order to burn the Temple.c4-temple-fire
  679. p. 98Under governor Antonio Teles da Silva, Bahia saw the Great Inquest of 1646.c9-bahia-grande-inquiricao-1646
  680. p. 98Antonio Teles da Silva, governor until 1647, was a familiar of the Holy Office and backed inquisitorial persecution.c9-bahia-teles-familiar
  681. p. 98After 1628, attacks by bandeirantes such as Antonio Raposo Tavares and Pedro Vaz de Barros (both conversos, according to Novinsky) intensified the destruction of Jesuit reductions.c9-bandeirantes-jesuit-conflict
  682. p. 99, p. 109The fall of the Temple never left Jewish memory: it is still lamented on Tisha b'Av, the fast of the ninth of the month of Av. On that day Jews came to perform mourning rites and visit the Temple site, and many prayed for its rebuilding.c4-tisha-bav
  683. p. 99Josephus speaks of a million dead in the siege of Jerusalem. The figure is inflated, but it conveys the scale of the catastrophe the revolt meant for Judea.c4-million-dead
  684. p. 99, p. 520Resistance did not end in 70. At Masada, about 960 rebels, Sicarii rather than Zealots, endured the Roman siege until 73 CE; when capture became imminent, they killed themselves so as not to be enslaved.c4-masada-73
  685. p. 99, p. 99Rome took steps so the Jews would never rebel again. The rebel leaders were paraded through Rome and executed; the Temple objects ended up in the capital, and rebuilding was forbidden; a special tax began to divert to a temple of Jupiter in Rome the money once sent to the Temple; a whole legion stayed in Jerusalem; and the temple at Leontopolis was shut so it would not become a seat of rebellion.c4-aftermath-70
  686. p. 99, p. 520In the mixed cities of North Africa, Jews shared cities with large Greek-speaking and indigenous communities, and coexistence often turned to violence. Alexandria is the best-known case. Greeks and Egyptians resented the Jews, Rome stoked the rivalry by sometimes taking sides and sometimes setting one group against the other, and the Jews, insecure in their position, feared their neighbors and at times attacked them. In 38 CE an anti-Jewish riot left many dead and synagogues destroyed; in 41, with Caligula's death, came the Jewish reprisal; in 66 a new fight ended with a Roman massacre of Jews.c4-alexandria-conflict
  687. p. 99Josephus relates that, once the war in Judea was lost, surviving rebels tried to carry the revolt to Egypt and Cyrene, in today's Libya. They were turned in to the Romans by Jews who wanted no trouble. Their instinct was not absurd, however: those communities would eventually revolt, only decades later.c4-rebels-to-cyrene
  688. p. 99The First Revolt opened a series of uprisings, in the diaspora and in Judea itself. The later ones are less well known because no historian like Josephus narrated them in order, but they may have threatened Rome even more and brought even harsher reprisals.c4-series-of-revolts
  689. p. 99, p. 520Under Trajan, between 115 and 117 CE, came the so-called Diaspora Revolt: several Jewish uprisings that ended up linked together. It apparently began in Libya, as one more clash between Jews and Greeks like those in Alexandria; this time, however, Rome failed to contain the violence, which reached Egypt, Cyprus and perhaps Mesopotamia.c4-diaspora-revolt
  690. p. 99Cassius Dio, a Roman historian, ascribes atrocities in this war to the Jews, cannibalism included. The charge is likely invented: decades earlier, Greco-Egyptian authors such as Apion were already claiming that Jews kidnapped Greeks to sacrifice and devour them. Even so, it reveals the panic the revolt aroused among non-Jews.c4-cassius-dio-charge
  691. p. 99, p. 99The harshness of the repression shows how great the danger was. In Mesopotamia thousands were killed; Cyprus forbade Jews to remain; in Egypt, the Alexandrian community was crushed. Jews still lived in the city, but the community that had given the world the Septuagint and Philo practically vanished.c4-diaspora-backlash
  692. p. 99, p. 520Not even this disaster ended hopes of being rid of Rome. Some fifteen years later, in 132 CE, Judea rose again, in the Bar Kochba Revolt. As with the Diaspora Revolt, the sources suffice to show its importance but not to reconstruct it clearly.c4-bar-kochba-outbreak
  693. p. 100The siege of Masada is one of the best-remembered passages in Josephus, who may have taken it from another source. In it Eleazar ben Yair, head of the Sicarii, makes a passionate but reasoned speech for suicide as the only free and honorable way out; then comes the terrible scene in which the men kill their families and then each other, with ten chosen by lot to dispatch the rest.c4-masada-account
  694. p. 100, p. 100There are good reasons to believe the episode. Masada yielded remains of men, women and children, perhaps the defenders and the families they killed, and eleven pottery sherds bearing men's names or nicknames, possibly the lots (Josephus mentions ten). Recently some scholars have come to doubt the account: certain details may have been invented, by Josephus or his source, to win over Greek and Roman readers, and Eleazar's speech recalls the last words of Socrates.c4-masada-evidence
  695. p. 100, p. 101Whatever the truth, the episode touches a theme dear to Josephus: when it is right to choose death. Jews honored those who died rather than betray God or the Law, and Romans admired suicide that saved honor and spared the humiliation of defeat; Masada is exemplary in both senses. But Josephus also has reservations: in the cave at Yodefat he himself argued the opposite, and it is unclear whether he thought Masada's choice was right.c4-voluntary-death
  696. p. 100, p. 100It is not known for sure why the revolt broke out, and perhaps it never will be. The few sources (late mentions in Roman, Christian and rabbinic texts) suggest two causes. The first would be an imperial ban on circumcision, or on castration confused with it; but there is hardly any proof of such a law, and it is hard to see why Rome would strike at so many subjects, Jewish and not, who circumcised. Many scholars therefore prefer the second: a reaction to Hadrian's plan to remake Jerusalem as a pagan city, Aelia Capitolina.c4-bk-causes
  697. p. 100, p. 101'Aelia' referred to Hadrian's family; 'Capitolina', to Jupiter Capitolinus. A temple of Jupiter may even have been raised where the Temple had stood. Such a city would have wounded the Jews, who would lose the hope of rebuilding the sanctuary and see Jerusalem's Jewish identity erased. Yet this hypothesis has problems too: there are signs that the pagan refoundation came after the revolt, as a punishment, and not before it, as a cause. For the authors, we simply cannot say what sparked the uprising.c4-aelia-capitolina
  698. p. 100For Novinsky, once the Jewish origin of the bandeirantes is recognized, the Inquisition (including the Lima tribunal) enters the mission conflict alongside traditional economic explanations.c9-bandeirantes-inquisition-lima
  699. p. 100Nulman ascribes An'im Zemirot (Shir Hakavod) to Rabbi Yehudah he-Hasid of Regensburg (d. 1217); the poem was adapted in various rites as a daily or Sabbath hymn.cl-anim-zemirot-yehudah-hasid
  700. p. 100Chazan describes western Europe's clearing of Jews culminating in Iberian expulsions of the 1490s, reinforced by further forced moves from Italy into Germany, pushing southern Jews into the Ottoman Empire and northern Jews further into eastern Europe.c-h502-chazan-expulsions-eastward
  701. p. 100Fraade (in the Companion) urges modesty when cataloguing Second Temple Judaisms and their textual practices: much of what lies between the Hebrew Bible and early rabbinic interpretation may simply not have survived.c-h502-fonrobert-fraade-modesty-varieties
  702. p. 101, p. 101Little is known about the leadership either. Rabbinic literature says that Rabbi Akiba saw in Simon bar Kosiba, whom his followers called Bar Kochba, the messiah foretold in Scripture; the nickname, 'Son of a Star', alludes to Numbers 24:17. Perhaps, then, the aim was to open the messianic age. In the rebels' own documents, however, Bar Kochba is a devout commander who never claims a messianic or supernatural role.c4-bk-messiah
  703. p. 101, p. 103Bar Kochba is known to have had his own administration, able to issue coinage: in fact Roman coins restruck, with the imperial portraits erased and his name put in their place. From them we know he used the title nasi, rendered 'prince', 'patriarch' or 'president', a term Ezekiel applies to a quasi-royal figure. Some carry the name of a priest, Eleazar, and the Temple façade, a hint that they may have wanted to restore it; but, the authors say, that is only an educated guess.c4-bk-coins
  704. p. 101, p. 211A third pattern, distinct from sacrifice and from household scriptural prooftexting, ties daily prayer to luminary cycles; Penner notes that affiliation between worship and heavenly luminaries, especially at sunrise, is widely discussed for the Second Temple period.cl-luminary-pattern
  705. p. 102One of the Bar Kochba rebels' coins shows on one face what looks like the Temple façade, perhaps with the lost Ark of the Covenant inside; on the other, a lulav and etrog, emblems of the Sukkot festival, which was tied to the Temple's inauguration. These images allow the supposition that restoring the Temple was among the revolt's aims.c4-bk-coin-imagery
  706. p. 102For a long time, Bar Kochba was more legend than history. Greek and Roman authors say little; Christian and rabbinic texts, written much later and already aware of the tragic outcome, make him a bandit and a false messiah, with much that is legendary. Even his name was uncertain: 'Son of a Star' (Bar Kochba), as in Christian sources, or 'Son of a Liar' (Bar Kozeba), as in rabbinic ones?c4-bk-name-sources
  707. p. 102, p. 102Documents from the revolt began to surface in the 1950s, and in 1961 and 1962 came the greatest find: fifteen letters between Bar Kochba and his men, in a Judean desert cave where some of them had hidden. The archaeologist Yigael Yadin named it the 'Cave of Letters'. The letters reveal the leader's real name, Shimon Bar Kosiba; the other two names were nicknames, and Bar Kozeba a mockery. The cave also held skeletal remains, one of them a child's, textiles among the oldest of the Roman era and the papers of a woman named Babatha.c4-cave-of-letters
  708. p. 102, p. 102In two letters, Bar Kochba struggles to keep his men in line: he accuses those of En-Gedi of living comfortably off the property of the 'House of Israel' without caring for their brothers, and threatens to put others' feet in chains. Some read in them a war going downhill, but being undated they cannot be put in order. The 'Galileans' mentioned in one of them are puzzling: perhaps Christians, but no one knows for sure.c4-letters-content
  709. p. 103, p. 103Of the war's course there is only a sketch. It apparently began in the summer of 132 CE and took in much of Judea; it is debated whether it reached Galilee and whether the rebels ever held Jerusalem. Coins inscribed 'for the freedom of Jerusalem' do not settle whether this was an achievement or only a wish. Judging by inscriptions, Rome may have deployed up to 11 or 12 legions, over 50,000 soldiers by one estimate; a triumphal arch about ten meters high, whose remains lie near Beth Shean, suggests how highly the Romans prized the victory.c4-bk-course
  710. p. 103, p. 520The end came in 135 CE at Bethar, near Jerusalem to the southwest: in the last major battle, Bar Kochba died.c4-bethar
  711. p. 103, p. 103In rabbinic sources the following years appear as a time of fierce persecution: Rome supposedly banned circumcision and Torah study, among other practices, and cruelly executed those who kept them in public. The martyrdom of Akiba and nine other sages attained legendary status, as an example of kiddush ha-shem, the 'sanctification of the Name'. Scholars, however, doubt that such a persecution ever existed.c4-hadrianic-persecution
  712. p. 103, p. 103Persecution or not, Judea came out devastated and lost much of its Jewish population. Cassius Dio speaks of 985 villages destroyed, 580,000 killed and so many captives that slave prices plunged across the empire. Entering Jerusalem became a capital offense, except on the ninth of Av, when mourning the Temple was allowed. Jewish culture lived on in Galilee and in the diaspora, as in Babylonia and Rome, yet within Judea it was largely wiped out.c4-bk-devastation
  713. p. 103To sever the bond between the land and the Jewish people, the Romans renamed the region Palestina, a name taken from the Philistines, former inhabitants of its coast.c4-palestina
  714. p. 103Josephus had already concluded that revolting against Rome was folly; after Bar Kochba, Jewish thinkers seem to have reached a similar conclusion. Rabbinic literature, the main Jewish literary source from 200 to 650 CE, holds diverse opinions: some sages praise Rome and work with it (Judah the Patriarch is said to have been close to the emperor), while others denounce its oppression. On the whole, though, it steps back from open confrontation, keeps its distance from Bar Kochba and sharply limits the cases in which martyrdom is justified.c4-rabbinic-attitudes
  715. p. 103A rabbinic story, probably legendary but revealing, makes rabbinic culture the heir of Yohanan ben Zakkai. Opposed to the revolt, he supposedly left Jerusalem inside a coffin and put himself, and his tradition, in Roman hands rather than die alongside the rebels.c4-yohanan-coffin
  716. p. 103, p. 104Between accepting and confronting Rome there was a middle course: calculated ambiguity. One example may be Jesus's answer about the tax to Rome. A yes would make him look like a collaborator to a people angered by taxation; a no would mean rejecting the empire and inviting repression. He replied: 'Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's'. On the surface it is advice to pay; but if God is the only king, nothing truly belongs to Caesar. A Roman would hear obedience; a Jew hostile to Rome, something subversive. The authors leave aside whether the scene is historical, but judge it plausible, with parallels in rabbinic literature.c4-render-unto-caesar
  717. p. 103Jesuit documentation cited by Novinsky sums up the Paulista picture: 'The Portuguese of São Paulo, some are Jews, others are heretics'.c9-jesuit-label-paulistas-jews
  718. p. 104Apocalypses were another way to resist without confronting. 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, probably written in the late first or early second century CE, put into the mouths of figures from the time of the First Temple's fall reflections on the fall of the Second. They explain the destruction as punishment for Israel's sin, yet announce the ruin of God's enemies and the people's restoration, and assure that the Temple's essence survives, either in the Ark hidden underground or in a heavenly sanctuary. Authorial fantasy, yes, but perhaps a sign of a clandestine culture that nursed dreams of revenge disguised as biblical stories.c4-2baruch-4ezra
  719. p. 104Emigrating was another way out. After Bar Kochba, and with the economic crisis of third-century Palestine, even rabbinic sages seem to have left for Syria, Asia Minor and Babylonia, the last especially attractive because it lay outside the empire. The sages who stayed tried to stem this flight, restricting emigration and extolling life in the Holy Land, without success. One of them even read the Babylonian exile as God's way of shielding the Jews from Roman decrees.c4-emigration
  720. p. 104Resistance to Rome probably went on after the first century, but many Jews came to avoid direct confrontation. The authors see in this a key to survival: Christianity and rabbinic Judaism, the most successful movements born after Bar Kochba, both took a nonconfrontational stance, and the longest-lasting communities under Rome were, it seems, those that accommodated its power or those that moved out of its reach.c4-nonconfrontation
  721. p. 104There was no single way of being Jewish before 70 CE: everything depended on whether one was Pharisee or Essene, clergy or lay, male or female, living in Jerusalem or in a Galilean village. Almost all this variety is lost. The written sources are the work of intellectuals, or else inscriptions, papyri and coins that mostly record business, public acts and legal matters.c4-diversity
  722. p. 105The Gospels show a first-century Palestine full of the poor, hungry and sick, sometimes reduced to begging, prostitution or theft. Jesus and, later, the rabbis cared about them and encouraged charity, though they distrusted those who practiced it for show. The poor themselves, however, left no texts; those with money flaunted it in decorated houses and tombs, and the poor had no means of leaving monuments.c4-poor
  723. p. 105, p. 105On slavery, Jews thought like the empire's other inhabitants and took it as normal, with exceptions such as the Essenes, who owned no slaves. Many free Jews lived by heavy labor out of necessity: fields on large estates, quarries supplying Jerusalem, salt extraction at the Dead Sea, fishing on the Sea of Galilee, as some of Jesus's disciples did. Neither slaves nor laborers left accounts of their own.c4-slaves-laborers
  724. p. 105The greatest gap is the voice of women, who appear little in the sources and almost never speak for themselves. In some places they may have been expected to stay out of public life: Philo, referring to Alexandria, says that the home is woman's place. Nothing ensures it was so everywhere, and in the Gospels many women approach Jesus freely; they do seem to have been expected, however, to cover their heads with a mantle.c4-women
  725. p. 105, p. 102A rare exception surfaced in 1961, in the same cave as Bar Kochba's letters: the archive of Babatha, a young Jewish widow of the second century CE, discovered by Yigael Yadin. The documents, dated from 93 to 132 CE, deal with her marriages, the fight over support for her child and her business affairs. Stored in a crack of a remote cave, they show how little has survived about Jewish women in antiquity.c4-babatha
  726. p. 105What set Jews apart from Greeks and Romans was a source of pride for Philo and Josephus, who claim that Jews would die before abandoning their ancestors' customs; the right to follow them was always at stake in dealings with Rome. Sectarian disputes went on, but shared loyalty to the laws of Moses and the tradition of the fathers united many Jews and gave their culture a profile of its own.c4-ancestral-customs
  727. p. 105The Temple was the heart of this tradition. At the three pilgrimage festivals, Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot, Jews were meant to go up to Jerusalem; it is not known whether they went every year, but under Rome the crowds ran to tens of thousands, and the Temple complex had to grow to hold them. Synagogues already existed, but worshiping God seemed unthinkable without the Temple; even the Dead Sea community, critical of how it was run, modeled itself on it and hoped to see it restored at the end of days.c4-pilgrimage
  728. p. 106Without Davidic kings, the priests, especially the top families, became Judea's elite, religious and political alike. Hence the efforts of Herod and the Romans to control the high priesthood: they meddled in appointments and even kept the high priest's vestments in their own hands. The priesthood as a whole, however, kept its prestige: Josephus displays his priestly origin as proof of nobility, and the labels 'priest' and 'priestess' (the second applied to wives and daughters) still conferred status centuries after 70.c4-priests
  729. p. 106Outside the Temple, many Jews shared habits of their own, such as the Sabbath and the synagogue, upheld in Palestine and the diaspora alike. For reasons still obscure, ritual purity gained weight, at least in Jerusalem and Palestine. Impurity was thought of as a contagion, coming from bodily fluids, corpses or non-Jews defiled by idolatry; it was not an illness, but it had to be removed before drawing near the holy. To that end people used stone vessels, a material deemed immune to impurity, and the ritual bath, the mikveh.c4-purity
  730. p. 106Each group had its own way of handling impurity. The Pharisees insisted on washing hands before eating. The Essenes rejected oil, which other Jews used when bathing, and relieved themselves out of sight, burying their waste, whereas other Jews, seeing no impurity in it, had no such concern.c4-purity-groups
  731. p. 106A Hasmonean palace at Jericho holds the oldest mikveh with a known date, believed to have been in use between 150 and 100 BCE. The Hasmoneans were priests, and other early mikvaot turn up in priestly settings; so it is supposed that priests were the ones who adopted the ritual bath, in order to enter the Temple in a state of purity. After 70, immersion stayed important for other reasons, such as women's purification after menstruation and conversion, a use that suggests Christian baptism may derive from it.c4-jericho-mikveh
  732. p. 106, p. 107Jews also stood out for refusing statues and cult images. It was once thought they rejected images of every kind: the commandment against idols was sometimes taken as a ban on portraying God or people. But that reading is not compulsory, and third- and fourth-century synagogues contain human figures. In the closing decades of the Second Temple era, though, the Jewish art that survives, from paintings to coins, favors geometric patterns, plants, birds, fish and symbols like the menorah, and shows neither people nor God.c4-images
  733. p. 107In Rome, the Arch of Titus celebrates the victory over the Jews in the First Revolt. On one relief, a procession bears the menorah and other spoils from Jerusalem. The objects were kept in a Roman temple and later stolen or destroyed; the menorah, however, remained a Jewish symbol, found in synagogues of every age and on the emblem of the State of Israel.c4-arch-of-titus
  734. p. 107, p. 108Philo describes crowds from countless cities, arriving by land and sea from every point of the compass, who made friends at the festivals and felt united. That was the ideal; in practice there was overcrowding, disorder and even riots. Those unable to travel paid the annual half-shekel, which funded the daily sacrifice. For the authors it is no exaggeration to say that loyalty to the Temple was what held together Jews scattered and divided by geography, politics and economics.c4-temple-unity
  735. p. 107Jerusalem had no images of gods, but in Alexandria or Rome Jews lived with statues worshiped by their neighbors. They tolerated their presence; what they refused was to venerate them. That was where they parted from Greeks, Egyptians and other peoples, for whom adding worship of the emperor's statue to their practices posed no problem.c4-images-diaspora
  736. p. 107, p. 116The scroll labeled 4Q503 preserves communal blessings meant for evening and for sunrise across one month's days; damage is severe (about 225 fragments), so reconstruction stays partial.cl-4q503-evening-sunrise
  737. p. 107Nulman describes Ashamnu as a twenty-four-phrase alphabetic acrostic: the brief Vidui beside Al Hayt, used on Yom Kippur, in Selihot, Tachanun, and other penitential moments.cl-ashamnu-short-vidui
  738. p. 108Little was written in the century after the destruction, but that little conveys desolation; the author of 2 Baruch can barely conceive of life without the Temple. The loss was concrete: without sacrifices there was no way to do what the Torah commanded to atone for sin or give thanks to God. The priesthood, the elite of the first century, lost its function, and the end of pilgrimage threatened the bond between diaspora and homeland. To some it must have seemed the end of everything.c4-loss-of-temple
  739. p. 108, p. 108Even so, Jewish religious life survived. Many still hoped for the Temple's return, but forms of devotion without sacrifice gradually emerged. Some already existed and had never depended on the Temple, such as circumcision, the Sabbath and the dietary rules. The synagogue, well rooted in Palestine and the diaspora, housed public Torah reading, prayer and donations. The next two centuries are poorly documented, but everything suggests it was then that lasting alternatives, practicable anywhere, took hold.c4-continuity
  740. p. 108How to explain this adaptability? The authors are not sure, but they point to changes before 70. Some Jews had already turned away from the Temple and its priests, like the Dead Sea community, which, having broken with Jerusalem, prayed instead of sacrificing. They may not have meant to replace the cult, but they created options that many others would take up after the destruction.c4-pre70-changes
  741. p. 108, p. 109Antiochus's persecution and the Maccabean revolt had already led some Jews to question the priests' legitimacy, and the meddling of Herod and Rome in appointments made matters worse. Meanwhile other leaders appeared, such as wonder-workers, prophets and sages, who owed their authority not to lineage or the Temple but to supernatural gifts or to interpretation. The Teacher of Righteousness was one, back in the Hellenistic period; Jesus was another, under Rome. When the Temple fell, there were people who could lead without it.c4-new-leaders
  742. p. 108, p. 108Goodman warns that reading Josephus through a post-70 lens misleads: Jews lived peacefully for long stretches in the Roman world, and diaspora communities (Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Rome) could keep customs such as the Sabbath on grounds of their antiquity.c-h502-goodman-roman-diaspora-privileges
  743. p. 109Perhaps the decisive turn was not 70 alone, but 70 together with Bar Kochba. It was probably the second war, by turning Jerusalem into a pagan city, that closed the door on a rebuilding like the one that had followed the loss of the First Temple. With so few sources, the authors admit they are 'more or less guessing'.c4-bk-turning-point
  744. p. 109, p. 109What happened to the Jews foreshadowed a trend across the Roman world: the retreat of temple religion. In the second and third centuries, pagan thinkers such as Lucian of Samosata and Porphyry already treated sacrifice as ignorant devotion; at the end of the fourth century, the Christian empire abolished public sacrifices. Temples were abandoned, destroyed or turned into churches and, later, mosques. Authority passed from priests to philosophers, monks and spiritual teachers, and reading sacred texts became a central way of seeking God.c4-broader-trend
  745. p. 109The authors admit the causes are not well understood. Christianity was the most evident driver, but not the only one. The codex, ancestor of the book, cheaper and more portable than the scroll, may have given scripture new weight, not only among Christians but also among the Manicheans, followers of the prophet Mani. And religion itself changed, with more stress on inner transformation, care for others and communities bound by faith rather than by blood or hometown.c4-codex
  746. p. 109On the Jews, the loss of the Temple imposed these changes earlier than on other peoples, and against their will. In retrospect, however, it prepared them for the templeless world then being born: study of scripture took the place of sacrifice as the central religious act, and other authorities overshadowed the priest.c4-forced-earlier
  747. p. 110From this arose the rabbi, a new figure: neither priest nor prophet, but a teacher whose authority rested on mastery of the Torah and on piety. Perhaps heirs of the Pharisees or of other Second Temple groups, these sages formed a network of teachers and disciples. They studied the Temple and its rites minutely, but their hallmark was treating study, not the cult, as the chief means of relating to God.c4-rabbi
  748. p. 110Rabbinic Judaism was not the only templeless movement to grow after 70: there was also Christianity, which arose as an expression of Jewish culture shortly before and after the destruction. At first the separation was not sharp, for Jesus, the twelve disciples and Paul were Jews and saw themselves in the line of Abraham and Moses. Christian origins are therefore Jewish history too.c4-christianity-jewish
  749. p. 110At the root of Christianity stands a Jew who taught and worked wonders from place to place and was executed in Jerusalem while Pontius Pilate was governor. His Hebrew name was probably Yehoshua or Yeshua; he became known by the Greek form, Jesus. 'Christ' is a title, not a name: christos renders the Hebrew for 'anointed' into Greek, and his followers used it to present him as a king of David's line.c4-jesus-name
  750. p. 110The most celebrated Jew of the first century is, for the historian, almost unknown. He wrote nothing, no contemporary mentions him, and the available sources, Paul's letters and the four Gospels, came 30 to 60 years later. Many Christians take them as accurate; modern research is wary, because they are hard to confirm, contradict each other and reflect the beliefs and purposes of their writers.c4-jesus-sources
  751. p. 110, p. 520Some things are relatively secure. The traditional date of 1 CE for his birth is doubtful: he may have been born in any year between 4 BCE and 6 CE, and the Gospels muddle the question. He is said to have come from Bethlehem, David's town, but he was called Jesus of Nazareth, his parents' Galilean town.c4-jesus-birth
  752. p. 110, p. 520According to the Gospels, Jesus was early on linked to John the Baptist, a popular prophet who baptized him, immersing him in water for the forgiveness of sins. Outside the New Testament the link cannot be confirmed, but Josephus independently attests that John existed, advocated baptism and was executed by Herod. Baptism seems to come from the Jewish use of immersion as purification. In the book's timeline the execution is dated 28 or 29 CE.c4-john-baptist
  753. p. 110, p. 110, p. 520Other Gospel characters have proven existence: Herod, Pontius Pilate and even Caiaphas, high priest when Jesus died. That Jesus was crucified scholars do not doubt; it was the cruel punishment that Rome used against bandits and slaves to intimidate anyone who dared challenge the order. But each Gospel tells of the execution in its own way, and they disagree even about its timing. The book's timeline dates the death to 30 CE.c4-corroborated-figures
  754. p. 111The currents the book describes in chapter 3, Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes, were still active in the first century. The Pharisees seem to have had the most popular influence, but no current was 'the' Judaism. Christianity began as one more of them: founded by a Jew, with Jewish followers. It recalled the Pharisees in being popular, centered on teachers and expecting the resurrection of the dead, and the Essenes in proposing a life apart, devoted to God. On the evidence of the New Testament alone, it would look like just another Jewish sect of the time.c4-jesus-movement-sect
  755. p. 111For many Jews of the late Second Temple period, present suffering was temporary and a better age would soon come. All expected divine rescue, but they pictured the end differently: in some apocalypses God acts in person or through angels; in others, through a messiah, either a king descended from David or a priest descended from Aaron. The Dead Sea community seems to have expected both, acting in stages. Behind this lay the idea of a script fixed in advance, kept secret and revealed by God to a few.c4-eschatology
  756. p. 111The Dead Sea sect believed itself near the end, or already at its start: not yet at judgment and messianic redemption, but in a prior phase of trial. The War Scroll seems meant as preparation for the ultimate combat between the sons of light, with God and the angels at their side, and the sons of darkness, an army commanded by foreign enemies called the Kittim, perhaps the Romans.c4-war-scroll-kittim
  757. p. 111The early Jesus movement saw itself at the same point in history. As with the Teacher of Righteousness, the Gospel portrait of Jesus knows the plan of the last days and reveals it to his disciples, but he goes further: he is the deliverer himself, the messiah. The New Testament blends several Jewish images in him: Davidic king (hence the importance of Bethlehem), Son of Man and priestly messiah, the last in the Letter to the Hebrews. What is original is the idea that he would fulfill his mission in two comings, the second at the end of days; even this has a partial precedent in the two messiahs awaited at the Dead Sea.c4-jesus-messiah
  758. p. 111, p. 113The book of Revelation, from during or just after the First Revolt, shows Christians who pictured the end as a war between God's forces and the Devil's, a scene very close to that of the War Scroll; final judgment and resurrection also have Jewish roots. Not everything does, however: belief in Jesus as a divine being, son of God, has no clear Jewish precedent and seems to come from the Greek notion of the 'divine man', part god, part mortal. Even so, the Dead Sea Scrolls have shown that much of Christian eschatology grew out of Jewish beliefs.c4-revelation
  759. p. 112, p. 112Paul, in the 50s, is the first to speak of Jesus, but he only encountered him after his death and says almost nothing about his life. The Gospels are the basis of any biography, but they are later, lack outside confirmation and at times contradict one another. In Mark, Jesus is crucified at 9 a.m., the day after the Seder; in John, after noon, on the eve of that meal. Since John calls Jesus the 'lamb of God', he may have chosen this date so that Jesus died at the same hour the Passover lamb was sacrificed.c4-hj-paul-gospels
  760. p. 112, p. 112There is a brief passage about Jesus in the Jewish Antiquities (18:63 to 64): a wise man who worked wonders, condemned to the cross by Pilate, and there called the messiah. Since the fourth century, Christian historians have invoked it as proof; since the sixteenth, however, scholars have suspected Christian forgery or retouching, because calling Jesus the messiah would make Josephus a Christian, which contradicts what he says of himself, and because the line is missing from an old Arabic version. And even if it is his, it was written in the 80s or 90s, far from the events.c4-hj-josephus-passage
  761. p. 112The supposed archaeological traces of Jesus have also failed. In 2002 an ossuary was announced with the Aramaic inscription 'James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus'. For about a year scholars debated whether the Jesus named was the Jesus of the Gospels, to no avail: the box is probably authentic, but the inscription has been proven fake.c4-hj-james-ossuary
  762. p. 112, p. 113Noncanonical gospels, such as the one attributed to Judas Iscariot, are later and less reliable; only Thomas, depending on how it is dated, may be earlier than some canonical ones, but it gathers sayings rather than telling a life. In the Gospels' defense, their authors know Judea from Herod to Pilate well, which rules out dismissing them as is done with Genesis and Exodus. With no other sources to check them against, however, they reveal more about the faith of the first Christians than about the real Jesus.c4-hj-assessment
  763. p. 112Falbel notes that New Christians reached Brazil from the first years of colonization, yet the Captaincy of São Vicente and the Paulista coast remained little studied compared with other regions.c9-sao-vicente-presence
  764. p. 112Cabral's fleet already included the Jewish convert Gaspar da Gama, a marker Falbel cites for converts from the discovery onward.c9-gaspar-da-gama
  765. p. 113There is an ossuary, a box used to hold the bones of the dead, engraved with the name Caiaphas; the high priest of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus's trial bore that name.c4-caiaphas-ossuary
  766. p. 113, p. 114The Last Supper took place at or near Passover, and two Gospels call it a Passover meal. Some scholars therefore interpret it as a seder and compare its gestures with the Passover customs of rabbinic sources and the scrolls: the explanation given to the bread and wine, the hymn at the end. Moreover, Jesus's allusions to the end of days recall the banquet described in the Rule of the Congregation, at which the messiah, or the two messiahs, would eat bread and drink wine before Israel's leaders. The discussion remains open.c4-last-supper
  767. p. 114Movements could outlive their founder. Judas the Galilean vanishes from the sources after his failed revolt against Rome in 6 CE, yet his influence persisted during the war decades later, and Acts 5:37, composed roughly 80 to 90 CE, still mentions him.c4-judas-legacy
  768. p. 114Under Rome, many Jews saw the world as peopled by supernatural beings besides God. Angels, who already appear in the Hebrew Bible, now had names, personalities and defined tasks; demons took the blame for ailments of body and mind. Judging by the Gospels, people who could drive out demons were much sought after in first-century Palestine, and the Dead Sea Scrolls and Josephus record exorcism techniques.c4-angels-demons
  769. p. 114, p. 114Among the evil spirits, the most powerful became Satan, or similar figures such as Mastema, Belial and Asmodeus; 'devil' comes from the Greek diabolos, 'slanderer', used in the Greek Bible for Satan. In the Hebrew Bible the term (meaning 'adversary') is rare and barely works as a proper name; by the first century Satan is already a fallen angel, an enemy who controls people and whom God will defeat at the end. Horns, red color and pitchfork came later. Persian dualism is one proposed explanation for this development, not the only one; curiously, Satan at times resembles the Roman emperor.c4-satan
  770. p. 115, p. 115Many charismatic leaders of the time ended up dead, but their movements did not always die with them. Jesus's continued not just out of loyalty: his followers read the execution in light of Jewish ideas. Many apocalypses foresaw that the righteous would suffer and die in a tribulation before final salvation, and such death could even hasten it: in the Testament of Moses, a first-century text, the Levite Taxo retreats to a cave ready to die to force God's intervention. The first Christians saw in Jesus's death a sacrifice for others and the start of the final age.c4-death-understood
  771. p. 115, p. 115The authors highlight the parallels with apocalyptic literature, but grant that other comparisons are possible. Some scholars prefer to link Jesus to Jewish wisdom, to the teacher of parables, and compare him with Hillel, who also coined a 'golden rule'. Others discern signs of opposition to Rome in his deeds and words; Judas Iscariot, whose name recalls 'Sicarii', has even fueled the idea of ties to that group, which, for the authors, already exceeds the evidence.c4-jesus-contexts
  772. p. 115, p. 520Hillel, a celebrated teacher active in the first century BCE, carried great weight in later rabbinic culture. The book's timeline places the activity of Hillel and Shammai in that century.c4-hillel
  773. p. 115If Christianity is so Jewish in origin, why are Christians not Jews? For scholars, the 'parting of the ways', which turned the two traditions into distinct and often rival communities, was slow and complex, stretching over centuries. Its seeds, however, lie in the earliest times: if not in Jesus himself, then certainly in Paul, his oldest and most influential interpreter.c4-parting-ways
  774. p. 115, p. 520Before his conversion, Paul was a Jew close to the Pharisees. His encounter with Jesus steered him, and the Christian movement, onto a path different from that of other Jewish followers. In the letters he wrote between 50 and 60 CE (not all those bearing his name are his), he organized communities in Asia Minor, Greece and Rome and set out his theology: the Sinai covenant had held for a time, but with Christ's death and resurrection the Law, like a teacher whose work is done, was no longer needed, and non-Jews could enter a 'new covenant' through faith.c4-paul
  775. p. 115Receiving Gentiles did not in itself break with Judaism: many Jewish communities welcomed proselytes and also 'God-fearers', non-Jews who worshiped Israel's God and kept his law without converting. Paul's novelty was to make Judaism and the Law unnecessary as a path to God. He was proposing not a Judaism open to all but a new relationship in which 'there is neither Jew nor Greek' (Galatians 3:28).c4-god-fearers
  776. p. 115Debates on Paulista ethnicity included the thesis of 'Hebrew blood' in Piratininga; Falbel places that discussion in the historiography of São Vicente and the plateau.c9-paulista-ethnicity-debate
  777. p. 115, p. 3The mission to Gentiles without requiring the law of Moses created tension inside the circle of Jewish believers itself: the issue was not only theological but communal, about who belonged to renewed Israel and on what terms.cjb-gentile-mission-tension
  778. p. 116Paul apparently never stopped regarding himself as a Jew, and for a while there were Jewish Christians. But his theology offered a strong reason to accept Gentiles without making them Jews. When the four canonical Gospels took shape, from about 70 to 100 CE, many Christians no longer saw themselves as Jews; in the second century Ignatius, who would die a martyr, condemned Judaizing Christians for mixing two communities he deemed wholly different.c4-jewish-christians
  779. p. 116, p. 116Jesus and the disciples kept the Sabbath. He allowed debatable practices, such as letting his hungry disciples pluck ears of grain, but what was permitted on the Sabbath was argued among Jews generally, and Jesus never suggests changing the day of worship. The switch to Sunday, day of the resurrection, came after Paul, among Christians of Gentile origin who did not feel bound by the 'Old Covenant'; a landmark was the official adoption of Sunday as a day of rest in the fourth century. The change proclaimed a new beginning and distance from the Jews, but by carrying features of the Sabbath over to Sunday, Christians also acknowledged a tie to Judaism.c4-sabbath-sunday
  780. p. 116Even as it drew away from Jewish culture, Christianity claimed the Bible and presented itself as the true heir of Abraham and Moses. In this it recalls the Samaritans, who stood outside Judaism (they resided outside Judea, avoided the Jerusalem Temple and used another canon) but honored the Five Books of Moses, claimed descent from Ephraim and Manasseh and had on Mount Gerizim the cult they held Moses had established. Hostility between Jews and Samaritans came from the differences, but also from both seeing themselves as biblical Israel; the Christians would be a rival of the same kind.c4-samaritan-analogy
  781. p. 116, p. 117From this rivalry sprang a fierce Christian anti-Judaism, already present in the Gospels and well marked by the second century. It inherited suspicions from pagan Judeophobia but did not simply repeat it: Christians could not mock Jews for rejecting statues or worshiping a foreign God, since they did the same. The attack became theological and moral: the Jews were supposedly guilty of Jesus's death and of denying that he was messiah and son of God. And, unlike the pagan kind, this anti-Judaism drew on reading the Bible itself.c4-christian-anti-judaism
  782. p. 116, p. 117A fourth-century text attributed, perhaps wrongly, to Gregory of Nyssa gathers the main charges: the Jews had supposedly rejected Jesus as messiah and son of God; had killed God by plotting Jesus's death, an idea that sets aside the fact that the Romans executed him; and were 'confederates of the devil', hiding sins under a show of piety.c4-gregory-themes
  783. p. 116Mott argues that the Inquisition in São Paulo was more frequent than historiography usually allows and located 47 episodes involving captaincy residents.c9-inquisition-sao-paulo
  784. p. 116Of Brazilians burned at Lisbon autos-da-fé, Mott highlights at least two residents of the Piratininga plateau: Teotônio da Costa (1686) and Miguel de Mendonça Valhadolid (1731), accused of practicing the Law of Moses.c9-piratininga-burned
  785. p. 116In the second century Ignatius condemned Christians who 'Judaized', treating Judaism and Christianity as communities that must not mix. That kind of rhetorical boundary is evidence of contact and dispute, not of complete isolation.cjb-ignatius-boundary
  786. p. 116For Nulman, Asher Yatzar (the body blessing in the preliminary Shaharit and after bodily functions) is quoted in the Talmud in the name of Abaye; the end-formula is ascribed to R. Papa, and the text rests on Exod 15:26 and Judg 13:19.cl-asher-yatzar-talmud-abaye
  787. p. 117, p. 117One Christian charge was deicide, extended to the whole Jewish people, then and forever, as if today's Jews had taken part in the trial. The earliest known version is in Melito, bishop of Sardis, who died around 190 CE. The idea still circulates: in 2011 Benedict XVI felt the need to publish a work showing why the Jews are not responsible for Jesus's death.c4-deicide
  788. p. 117, p. 117It was the Romans who executed Jesus, but some Gospels strive to lay the blame on the Jews as a people, who even accept it (Matthew 27:25). Scholars explain: writing between 70 and 100 CE, the authors may have wanted to dissociate themselves from the Jews, rebels against Rome or punished for it, and not to alienate the Gentile, especially Roman, audience they hoped to convert. Religious readers may resist this reading, but the Catholic Church, on reexamining the New Testament, found in it no ground for blaming the Jews collectively.c4-gospel-blame
  789. p. 117, p. 117That some Jews informed on Jesus or backed his death is possible. Josephus himself is an example of a Jew who sided with Rome against his compatriots, whether for self-protection, rivalry or sincere conviction; historically, nothing rules out that Judas Iscariot or others handed him over. From there to collective guilt, however, is a huge leap: nearly all the Jews of the empire did not even know who Jesus was. It would be like blaming all Italians today because Romans took part in the execution. And the charge of deicide served for centuries as a justification for prejudice.c4-informers
  790. p. 117In the first two or three centuries, Christian hostility may have threatened Jews no more than Samaritan hostility did. Even after the punishments that followed the revolts, Judaism's legal standing changed little: Rome treated it as a legitimate, protected religion, whereas Christianity went through several waves of official persecution.c4-legal-status
  791. p. 117Nulman ties thrice-daily Ashrei recital (Ps 145 with prefixed verses) to the talmudic emphasis that whoever recites the psalm thrice daily is assured of a share in the world to come; that is why the two opening verses repeat the word Ashrei three times.cl-ashrei-thrice-world-to-come
  792. p. 118, p. 520The Samaritans today number a few hundred; the Christians, by contrast, grew quickly, and their anti-Judaism weighed more as their influence increased. In the first century they were already in Syria, Asia Minor, Greece and Rome (where the agitation caused by Christian preaching led to another expulsion of the city's Jews in the 40s) and were winning African converts; by the second century they were throughout the empire and beyond. Still persecuted in the early fourth century, they then won over the emperor himself: in 312, before a battle, Constantine I had a vision and ordered his troops to put a sign of Christ on their equipment. From then on, nearly every emperor protected the Church.c4-christian-growth
  793. p. 118, p. 520The Christian empire never outlawed Judaism, but Jews became exposed as they had not been before. Christian mobs attacked synagogues, as they did pagan temples, and turned some into churches; they could also expel Jewish residents from their towns, as in Alexandria in 414. The authorities did not always approve and sometimes stepped in, but not even the emperor could do everything: in 388, after the synagogue of Callinicum in Mesopotamia was burned, Theodosius wanted to have it rebuilt and backed down before Saint Ambrose. The Church did not seek to wipe out the Jews, who were kept, much as the Old Testament itself was kept, but they became a marginal minority in a society premised on their alleged theological failings.c4-christianized-empire
  794. p. 118, p. 118In the first decades, with Jesus, the disciples and perhaps still Paul, Christians were hard to tell apart from Jews: one of several ways of understanding God, the Torah and the future. It is only because we know what came later that we hesitate to call them Jews, but they were, and their texts shed light on Jewish life in Galilee or on how a group dealt with the early death of its teacher. What made Christianity different was not mixing Jewish and non-Jewish elements, something Philo and Josephus also did, but its success in attracting Gentiles and its effort to separate itself from earlier tradition.c4-early-christians-jews
  795. p. 118Conflicts with Rome, from Pompey to Bar Kochba, transformed Jewish culture. With the Temple destroyed, sacrifice and priesthood had to be replaced; Rome's response to the Diaspora Revolt hastened the fall of great communities like Alexandria's; and after Bar Kochba, the de-Judaization of Jerusalem and Judea buried the dream of rebuilding the Temple and shifted Palestine's Jewish heartland into Galilee. The outcome was a culture very different from that of 100 BCE.c4-transition-summary
  796. p. 119Not everything, however, is explained by conflict. The Roman world itself was changing: it split into two halves in the third century, gained a new eastern capital, Constantinople, faced migrations, invasions and economic crises, and gradually became Christian. Historians therefore usually call the span from the third century through the Muslim conquests of the 600s and 700s 'late antiquity', a transition between the pagan empire and the medieval cultures, marked by the growing strength of monotheism.c4-late-antiquity
  797. p. 119The next chapter deals with rabbinic Judaism. Although it is commonly presented as a response to the fall of the Second Temple, the authors note that it only developed centuries later, probably when many Jews had already learned to live without the Temple.c4-rabbinic-later
  798. p. 120, p. 120, p. 120Over the centuries after the Second Temple fell, a group of sages formed to whom we now give the title rabbi. They changed Judaism lastingly: they rethought what the Torah was and how to study it, found paths to God that did without the Temple, and produced new works (Mishnah, midrash, Talmud) that came to guide Jewish life with a weight comparable to the Hebrew Bible's. How much they counted in their own time is hard to say, but their effect on later Jewish culture was so great that present-day Judaism is in practice a rabbinic Judaism, shaped by ideas and practices of late antiquity.c5-rabbis-transformative
  799. p. 120The rabbis left no historical account of themselves, as the biblical authors did for ancient Israel or Josephus for the Second Temple period.c5-no-rabbinic-history
  800. p. 120, p. 120Pirkei Avot, the 'Chapters of the Fathers', is an anthology of sayings of rabbinic sages included in the Mishnah. Its opening chapter traces an intellectual genealogy that carries the Torah from Moses to Joshua, to the prophets and elders, and from them to Yohanan ben Zakkai and his students: the rabbis saw themselves as successors to Moses, in a tradition reaching back to Sinai.c5-pirkei-avot
  801. p. 120While the Temple stood, religious authority was embodied by the priest, whose essential task was to carry out the sanctuary's rites. After the destruction the central figure became the rabbi: a teacher and scholar who owed his position to learning rather than to the family he came from, and whose authority sprang from studying and interpreting the Torah.c5-priest-to-rabbi
  802. p. 120, p. 121In Jewish antiquity 'rabbi' ('my teacher') was a respectful form of address that disciples used for sages, judges and teachers, Jesus among them. In this chapter the word has a narrower sense: it designates members of a network of sages formed after the Second Temple was destroyed, the one that appears in the Mishnah, the Talmud and related texts.c5-rabbi-title
  803. p. 120, p. 120In Steinweis's Handbook essay, SS rhetoric foreshadowed wartime antisemitic barbarism: on the eve of Kristallnacht, Himmler vowed to drive Jews out with 'unprecedented ruthlessness'; afterward Das Schwarze Korps spoke of the 'hard necessity' of exterminating the 'Jewish underworld' by fire and sword.c-h502-hayes-steinweis-ss-kristallnacht
  804. p. 121These sages set the transformation in motion, but Jewish culture as a whole became broadly 'rabbinized' only a long time after they had died.c5-rabbinization-later
  805. p. 121Almost everything known about the rabbis comes from texts that are hard to contextualize. Christian sources and the archaeological remains of synagogues, tombs and inscriptions help, but they are not enough for a complete picture of Jewish life beyond what rabbinic literature represents.c5-sources-problem
  806. p. 121Rabbinic culture had two cradles: Palestine, under Roman control, and Babylonia, under the Sasanian dynasty.c5-two-settings
  807. p. 121After the Bar Kochba Revolt, many Jews probably saw themselves as continuing their ancestral traditions. There was no longer a Temple, but it remained important, at least as a memory and a symbol of what had been lost and might yet be regained.c5-temple-memory
  808. p. 121, p. 121, p. 520Julian, the emperor whom Christian sources nicknamed 'the Apostate', launched the rebuilding of the Temple in 362 CE. The project belonged to his attempt to turn the empire back from Christianization, and it may also have been meant to bring Jews to his side in the war with Persia.c5-julian-plan
  809. p. 121, p. 121On the Western ('Wailing') Wall, what survives of the enclosure of Herod's Temple complex, an inscription echoes a verse of Isaiah 66: seeing it would gladden the heart and make bones flourish like grass. Scholars think it may date from that moment, as a reaction to the attempt to restore the Temple.c5-isaiah-inscription
  810. p. 121Julian died before finishing the project: assassinated by a Christian or killed in battle, depending on which sources one follows.c5-julian-death
  811. p. 121Jews developed customs that kept the memory of the Temple's loss alive, such as the fast of Tisha B'Av and the breaking of a glass at weddings, and continued to pray for its restoration, looking to the messiah rather than to foreign rulers.c5-temple-mourning
  812. p. 121Hope for restoration did not prevent adaptation to a world without the Temple. Julian's failure seems to have made little difference: rabbinic sources never mention it, a sign that the Temple's presence or absence already mattered little to Jewish religious life.c5-adapting-without-temple
  813. p. 121, p. 122Jews took part in the Roman culture around them: their economy, clothing (tunics and mantles) and leisure often cannot be told apart from their neighbors'. The public baths, places for washing, socializing, medical treatment and pleasure, became an important part of Jewish social life despite statues and public nudity.c5-participation
  814. p. 122At the same time they marked their identity: they might avoid mixing linen and wool, following biblical law, and some men added fringes (tzitzit) to their mantles. The fringed mantle, the tallit, is today part of the dress of observant Jews.c5-distinct-clothing
  815. p. 122, p. 122The synagogue existed by the third century BCE and developed further once the Second Temple was destroyed. By the first century there were synagogues, or equivalent institutions under other names, all over the eastern Mediterranean: in Palestine, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece and perhaps Italy. Rome alone shows signs of at least 11. Their number, spread and the money spent on them show how central they were to community life.c5-synagogue-spread
  816. p. 122, p. 122Justice, business and the freeing of slaves took place there, as in a community center; but the synagogue's essential function was to put Jews in touch with the Bible, since it held the Torah scrolls and was where the Torah was read in public. Some may have had a 'seat of Moses', a seat of honor where the leader or a respected elder may have sat, though what it was for is debated.c5-synagogue-functions
  817. p. 122Since it predated 70, the synagogue was not created to take the Temple's place. Over time, however, it came to be understood as a sort of stand-in Temple that reproduced some of its features: the niche for the scrolls was named the holy ark (aron hakodesh), after the chest in Solomon's Temple.c5-virtual-temple
  818. p. 122The architecture and decoration of synagogues imitated non-Jewish public buildings. Some had mosaic floors with the Greco-Roman zodiac, the personified seasons and the sun god Helios: those who frequented them evidently did not see this as a violation of the biblical ban on divine images.c5-synagogue-adaptation
  819. p. 122Other elements came from churches, such as the screen that hid the Torah scroll: it evoked the Temple's Holy of Holies but also imitated the screens that separated clergy from laity in churches. Some synagogue and church screens came from the same workshops.c5-synagogue-screens
  820. p. 122The risings of the first and second centuries wrecked certain communities in the Roman world, but others flourished, and new communities appeared even in remote regions such as Germania and Gaul.c5-new-communities
  821. p. 122, p. 123There are also signs of political and cultural decline, especially from the fourth century CE. Some historians argue for a sharp demographic fall: estimates speak of 10 to 12 million Jews in the first century and about 2 million a thousand years later. The authors urge a fair amount of skepticism, since there are hardly any population figures for so early a period.c5-decline
  822. p. 123, p. 123Once the Herodians were gone, a leadership of national reach appeared in Palestine in the second or third century CE: the patriarch, nasi in Hebrew, who held some legal authority and was recognized by Rome. He claimed descent from David, which gave him a quasi-royal air; he was wealthy, respected and influential in Palestine and the diaspora. His powers, though, seem to have been narrow, confined to internal judicial and religious questions such as fixing the calendar.c5-patriarch
  823. p. 123, p. 137The nature of the patriarch's authority, his standing in the eyes of the Roman government and when he became important are debated by historians; it seems clear, however, that the office was important by the third century CE.c5-patriarch-debate
  824. p. 123, p. 521By 429 CE the office of patriarch had been done away with. Local Jewish councils may have taken over its role, but no later leadership had the stability and visibility of the Herodian dynasty, the high priesthood or the patriarchate itself.c5-patriarchate-abolished
  825. p. 123, p. 123At Beth Alpha, near Beth Shean, the mosaic floor of a sixth-century synagogue carries a Greco-Roman zodiac: Helios, the sun god, sits at the center, ringed by the 12 classical signs, each with a Hebrew name. Such zodiacs may have served, as among non-Jews, to follow the cycle of the year; in time the zodiac became a Jewish decorative motif in its own right.c5-beth-alpha-zodiac
  826. p. 123Another possible reflection of decline is the forms of escape: apocalyptic or messianic fantasy and, for many, perhaps conversion to Christianity.c5-messianic-escape
  827. p. 123, p. 123Around 450 CE a certain Moses of Crete led a messianic movement; he is said to have claimed to be Moses himself, returned to save the Israelites. When the sea did not open before his followers, the outcome was tragic.c5-moses-of-crete
  828. p. 123The Book of Zerubbabel, a seventh-century work, shows that Jewish messianism lasted to the end of antiquity: in it Zerubbabel meets the messiah in Rome disguised as a beggar, who will one day reveal himself as a new emperor, displace Rome and restore the kingdom of Israel.c5-zerubbabel
  829. p. 123, p. 123, p. 520In the third century CE the Sasanian kingdom, successor to the Parthians in Iran and Mesopotamia, made leaving Roman rule more feasible. Under Shapur I (c. 240 to 270) the Sasanians defeated the Romans, captured the emperor himself and took territory inhabited by many Jews. Shapur and his successors seemed hospitable; rabbinic literature makes him a close friend of the sage Samuel.c5-sasanian-refuge
  830. p. 123There were no revolts comparable to those of the first and second centuries, only occasional uprisings such as that of 351/352 under Gallus. Perhaps the consequences of the earlier rebellions discouraged new ones, but the Jews' situation may also have improved within a few decades of Bar Kochba.c5-no-revolts
  831. p. 123, p. 124, p. 124In 193 Septimius Severus became emperor, founding a dynasty that lasted until 235. Some measures suggest hostility (perhaps a ban on conversion to Judaism and Christianity), but the evidence is thin; on the other hand, he let Jews hold high office without duties contrary to their faith and backed the patriarch as an intermediary with Rome.c5-severans
  832. p. 124A relief found in Iran celebrates Shapur I's triumph over Valerian, emperor of Rome.c5-shapur-relief
  833. p. 124Under Alexander Severus (222 to 235), the dynasty's last emperor, he appears to have maintained a fairly positive relationship with Jews for a Roman synagogue to bear his name. Relations seem to have improved under the Severans.c5-alexander-severus
  834. p. 124, p. 124The end of the Severans in 235 opened fifty years of turmoil: the currency lost value and collapsed, there were invasions, political murders, civil wars and epidemics. Recent research doubts that the crisis struck the whole empire, but does not deny that the period brought deep and disruptive change.c5-third-century-crisis
  835. p. 124, p. 124, p. 520In 285 CE Diocletian judged it necessary to share rule with a co-emperor, which split the empire into western and eastern halves; after Theodosius I died in 395, the separation became permanent.c5-diocletian-split
  836. p. 124, p. 124, p. 521Most Jews lived in the East, which did not decline as abruptly as the West. Rome was sacked in 410, and by the end of the fifth century the Western Empire had fallen, whereas the Eastern one, later called Byzantine, survived until the fifteenth century. To some extent, the weakening of Jewish life under Rome tracks the weakening of the empire itself.c5-west-east
  837. p. 124The Christianization of the Roman Empire made life extremely difficult for Jews. Born of Judaism, Christianity developed a competing reading of the Bible that could demonize Jews. Until the end of the third century, however, Christians were themselves a persecuted minority, above all under Diocletian.c5-christianization
  838. p. 124, p. 124, p. 520The major turning point came with Constantine the Great (324 to 337), founder of Constantinople. After a divine vision on the eve of a battle, he and nearly all his successors used legislation and the state to support Christianity and reduce the influence of the Jews. With the exception of Julian (361 to 363), Christianity would have imperial backing from the fourth century on.c5-constantine
  839. p. 124, p. 124Even once Christianized, the empire did not seek to stamp out Judaism, which stayed legally recognized. Some Christians were sympathetic to Jews and went to synagogues and Jewish feasts, and in certain towns synagogues went up next to churches, a sign of close contact.c5-judaism-legal
  840. p. 125, p. 125, p. 520Augustine of Hippo (354 to 430) disagreed sharply with the Jews: he held that they misread the Bible and that their dispersion and suffering were punishment for rejecting Christ. Even so, unlike other Christian thinkers, he did not preach violence: Jews were to go on existing, even in humiliation, to serve as living proof of Christian faith. This view probably weighed heavily in allowing Jews to survive under Christian governments through the Middle Ages.c5-augustine
  841. p. 125Some Christian leaders were bent on converting the Jews, at times by force, threatening them with expulsion or death. Overall, though, Augustine's line won out, and Jewish communities went on existing, if in weakened form.c5-forced-conversion
  842. p. 125, p. 125Constantine did not change the Jews' legal status much; he even lifted the ban on their visiting Jerusalem and mourning the Temple's loss. But his legislation took a hostile tone, calling Judaism a 'nefarious sect'.c5-constantine-law
  843. p. 125Later emperors and church councils legislated to prevent close social interaction between Jews and Christians: Christians were forbidden to attend synagogues, and Jews to marry Christians, own Christian slaves or hold certain high offices.c5-anti-jewish-laws
  844. p. 125The Gospels place Jesus's death and resurrection at Passover, so the two festivals were often kept together, with Christians relying on the Jewish calendar. In the fourth century, uneasy with that reliance, Christians adopted another method of reckoning that cut Easter loose from Passover: a sign that the two communities were drifting apart.c5-easter
  845. p. 125From the fourth century Christianity was no longer a minority but the ruling power. Its laws did more than contain Jews as rivals: they lowered them to second-class citizens, set apart from Christians, deprived of safeguards they had had under the pagan empire and dependent on a government hostile to their faith.c5-second-class
  846. p. 125Legally weakened, Jews were exposed to assaults by local Christian communities led by bishops, whose power grew from the fourth century on. The synagogue was a frequent target. Roman law formally shielded it from destruction and seizure, but the very need for the government to step in reveals how much violence there was.c5-bishops-violence
  847. p. 125, p. 125A notorious case: in 388 CE, at Callinicum in present-day Syria, the synagogue was destroyed by a crowd stirred up by the town's bishop. Theodosius the Great wanted it rebuilt, but Ambrose, the powerful bishop of Milan, persuaded him to drop the idea.c5-callinicum
  848. p. 125There is no general rule for Christian-Roman conduct toward the Jews: sometimes the government acted against them, sometimes it defended them. As the empire fragmented from the fifth century, the picture grew more varied still, and in the West, without central imperial power, bishops gained even more weight.c5-mixed-treatment
  849. p. 125, p. 125In the sixth century, at Clermont (in today's France), Bishop Avitus, who wished to see the local Jews baptized, stoked a conflict between Jews and Christians. The result was a destroyed synagogue and a community compelled to convert under threat of being driven out.c5-clermont
  850. p. 125, p. 125, p. 521Not everyone acted this way. Gregory the Great, pope from 590, also wanted the Jews to convert, but he ordered bishops to repay Jews for confiscated synagogues and condemned conversion by force.c5-gregory
  851. p. 126Christianity inherited from Judaism a veneration for the Holy Land but gave it another meaning. Early Christians thought of it metaphorically or of the heavenly Jerusalem; over time, however, physical geography gained importance. In the third century, Caesarea, on the Palestinian coast, was already a hub of Christian activity, and even before the fourth century many Christians went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where they placed the crucifixion and resurrection.c5-holy-land-meaning
  852. p. 126, p. 126The fourth century was the turning point. After his mother, Helena, traveled to Jerusalem and uncovered relics believed to be of Jesus's cross, Constantine began building at the site the church that became known as the Holy Sepulchre. By the fifth century there were churches elsewhere in Jerusalem and at places linked with Jesus, such as Galilee, attracting more pilgrims and immigrants.c5-helena
  853. p. 126, p. 126Jews did not leave the region and may even have prospered: they built or refurbished impressive synagogues in over a hundred places, and the arrival of Christian pilgrims and immigrants may have helped their economy even as it outnumbered them. Christianity nonetheless came to dominate: there were churches everywhere, monasteries even in the Judean desert, and Jews became a minority. Christians would remain dominant there until the seventh century, when first the Sasanians and then the Muslims conquered the land.c5-holy-land-jews
  854. p. 126The so-called Madaba map was part of the mosaic floor of a Byzantine church at Madaba, Jordan, and came to light in the nineteenth century. Made in the sixth century, it shows the Holy Land already Christianized, centered on Jerusalem, and Christian shrines can be made out in it, such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre beside the Cardo, the colonnaded avenue.c5-madaba-map
  855. p. 126, p. 127Judaism had no monks as such, but it is probably no accident that the late antique rabbi shares so many traits with them. In both cases there were strong bonds between master and disciples, and both mediated between people and God and among people themselves, settling disputes. The rabbis were not celibate, but saw study as an alternative to sexual life. Direct influence is hard to trace; still, by popularizing a religious figure whose prestige came from personal discipline, monasticism prepared the ground for the rabbi.c5-monks-rabbis
  856. p. 127Under Christian Rome, Jews faced stereotypes spread by theologians, pressure to convert and assaults, in a situation where the state protected them less, laws hemmed them in and they could be caught between Christian factions or in Rome's wars against the Sasanians and, later, the Muslims. They came off better than the pagans, who all but vanished, but their condition worsened, above all compared with that of the Jews of Babylonia.c5-threats
  857. p. 127Babylonian Jewry was already numerous before the Second Temple fell, but its history in the interval can barely be followed: a few mentions in Josephus, little archaeology and much later rabbinic sources remain. From the third century it 'finds a voice' and becomes a major hub, which in time eclipsed Jewish culture in the Christian world and turned rabbinic culture from the subculture of a few scholars into a Jewish culture of almost worldwide reach.c5-babylonian-jewry-voice
  858. p. 127, p. 127For a long time, whoever ruled Judea also ruled the Jews of Babylonia: Babylonians, Persians, Seleucids. In the first century BCE, however, Babylonia passed to the Parthian confederacy, based in Iran, and the two paths parted. With the Parthians' fall in the third century CE, power went to the Sasanians, another multiethnic Persian empire, bound up with Zoroastrianism, the faith going back to the prophet Zarathustra that tells of the supreme god Ahura Mazda and his war against the evil spirit Angra Mainyu.c5-parthians-sasanians
  859. p. 127, p. 127Zealous Zoroastrian priests and their royal allies sometimes banned Jewish practices and persecuted Jews, and Jews had to keep Hanukkah candles out of sight so as not to offend the sanctity of fire. But overall the relationship was far more cordial than under Christian Rome: interventions were sporadic, and Zoroastrians never accused the Jews of killing God or tried to convert them.c5-zoroastrian-relations
  860. p. 127, p. 127Central to this relationship was the exilarch, a leadership tracing itself to the Babylonian Exile but which really emerged in the third century CE. Like the patriarch, he was a semi-royal representative of Davidic descent, controlled courts and mediated with the foreign government; but he was more powerful and more durable, persisting in various forms into the fifteenth century.c5-exilarch
  861. p. 128, p. 128, p. 128The exilarch also held economic power: he appointed whoever oversaw the market. Between 512 and 520 the exilarch Mar Zutra II felt strong enough to revolt against the Sasanians and kept an independent state going for seven years, proof that relations were not always cordial. Most of the time, however, the exilarch acted as a bridge to the state; a Persian source even says that Yazdegerd I, king in the early fifth century, wed an exilarch's daughter.c5-mar-zutra
  862. p. 128The Sasanians also had an interest in good relations: Mesopotamia was a frontier zone with Rome, the kingdom's Christians were suspected of sympathizing with their Roman coreligionists, and the Jews had a history of good relations with the Persians and bad relations with Rome.c5-sasanian-interest
  863. p. 128, p. 128The Jews of Babylonia were well embedded in their surroundings. In Mahoza, by a canal joining the Euphrates and the Tigris, they lived alongside non-Jewish neighbors every day, and they spoke everyday Aramaic, not Hebrew or the Persian of the Sasanian elite. They did not dissolve, however: it has been observed that Babylonian rabbinic texts took in far less Persian vocabulary than Palestinian ones took in from Greek.c5-mahoza
  864. p. 128, p. 128, p. 128Palestinian rabbinic sources show ambivalence about marriage, in tension with Torah study; Babylonian ones prefer that the sage marry early: Rav Hisda, married at 16, regretted not marrying at 14. Palestine inclines to monogamy; Babylonia accepts polygamy and even a 'wife for a day'. The differences may reflect Greco-Roman philosophy and monasticism on one side, and Zoroastrian culture, which valued childbearing, on the other.c5-marriage-difference
  865. p. 128, p. 128, p. 128The Bible forbids magic, yet Jews resorted to what we would call magical practices: they consulted the stars, warded off demons, used incantations and amulets. Sefer HaRazim ('Book of Secrets'), a Palestinian collection of magical recipes from the fourth or fifth century, is in Hebrew but invokes Helios in Greek spelled out in Hebrew letters. In Babylonia the evidence comes mostly from hundreds of magic bowls from Mesopotamia and Iran, marked by local culture: certain demons, such as Lilith, bear Mesopotamian or Persian names.c5-magic
  866. p. 128, p. 130The bowls apparently served to shut evil spirits inside them; many turned up overturned, like traps. The caption of one, with a magical Aramaic inscription, describes it as protection against such spirits.c5-bowls-purpose
  867. p. 128, p. 128Chazan distinguishes a 'developmental' Jewish economic niche (Christian rulers recruiting capable urban Jews) from a more systemic and durable niche opened by the Church's campaign against Christian usury, in which moneylending became a Jewish specialty in parts of Europe.c-h502-chazan-niche-moneylending
  868. p. 128Chazan insists that Jews specializing in commerce and later in lending never implied that each Jew under medieval Christian rule worked as a merchant or a creditor.c-h502-chazan-not-every-jew-lender
  869. p. 128For Chazan, the equilibrium of the Jewish economic niche on the Iberian peninsula shattered in 1391, when popular and ecclesiastical animosity brought ruinous violence.c-h502-chazan-1391-equilibrium-break
  870. p. 129, p. 129The synagogue of Dura-Europos, on the Euphrates, was found in 1932. The city, founded in the Seleucid period, changed hands between Parthians and Romans and then between Romans and Sasanians. Around 256 CE, in the city's final defense, the inhabitants tore off the roof of the synagogue, which stood by the wall, and filled it with sand to strengthen the wall, thereby preserving its paintings.c5-dura-synagogue
  871. p. 129, p. 129The murals of biblical scenes show that Jews of the time did not necessarily read the commandment against divine images as a ban on figurative art: there are many human figures, including a nude daughter of Pharaoh in the Nile. Some characters wear Roman dress and others Persian, a reflection of the city's border position.c5-dura-murals
  872. p. 129A scene from the Dura-Europos synagogue paintings shows Mordecai and Haman, from the book of Esther, in Persian dress.c5-dura-mordecai
  873. p. 129, p. 129The murals suffered violence: the eyes of some figures were gouged out. The perpetrators may have been pious Jews offended by human images, but that is speculation; noting that several mutilated figures wear Persian dress, one scholar has suggested they were Roman soldiers symbolically striking at Persian enemies.c5-dura-eyes
  874. p. 129, p. 129The synagogue ended up destroyed in a battle between Romans and Sasanians; according to recent archaeological finds, the fighting may have involved toxic gas against the Roman defenders. The Jews of southern Mesopotamia, Babylonia proper, by contrast lived near the heart of Sasanian power and could build a steadier, better protected community.c5-dura-end
  875. p. 129, p. 129There were trade routes and much traffic between the two empires: soldiers, diplomats, traders and intellectuals, such as the Athenian philosophers who took refuge at the Sasanian court after their academy closed in 529. Jews were important intermediaries, and their movement between Palestine and Babylonia was crucial for the transfer of rabbinic culture.c5-connections
  876. p. 130, p. 521, p. 521In the seventh century the Islamic conquest took much of its territory from the Byzantine Empire and ended the Sasanian kingdom in the middle of the century. It is the end of the story told in the chapter, but not of the Jewish culture formed in Sasanian Babylonia, whose influence grew with Islamic expansion.c5-islamic-conquest
  877. p. 130Outside rabbinic texts, rabbis rarely appear; the magic bowls, for instance, sometimes mention Yehoshua bar Perahya, a rabbi that literature knows. But the archaeology and inscriptions of Palestine and elsewhere show almost no sign of the great names of the Mishnah and Talmud.c5-rabbis-invisible
  878. p. 130, p. 147Beside the town of Beth Shearim, in Galilee, lies a vast cemetery of about 30 catacombs, in use from the second to the fourth century. Graves of several rabbis turned up there, three of them successors of Judah the Patriarch. Tradition says that when Judah died, Jews from all over the Roman world wanted to be laid to rest near him.c5-beth-shearim
  879. p. 131, p. 131In northern Israel, an inscription probably of the fourth century identified a building as Rabbi Eliezer ha-Qappar's study house, another name familiar from rabbinic literature. Evidence of this kind confirms that there were rabbis in Palestine but says little about their activity and influence: they belonged to Jewish society without yet holding the central place they would have in the Middle Ages and modern times.c5-eliezer-haqappar
  880. p. 131This raises a puzzle that occupies scholars: in hindsight we know that the rabbis, or at least their literature, ended up redefining Jewish identity across much of the world. How did a handful of sages, with almost no visible effect outside their study circles, manage that?c5-mystery
  881. p. 131Rabbinic literature is vast (the Talmud is called a 'sea'), technical and opaque, but it is a tricky historical source: its stories appear in later texts, mix legend with memory and often tell us more about the anonymous editors than about the people described.c5-rabbinic-lit-tricky
  882. p. 131, p. 131A famous story tells how Yohanan ben Zakkai got from Jerusalem to Yavneh. During the Jewish Revolt the rebels watched the city so that no one would desert to the Romans, and Yohanan got out only by hiding in a coffin borne by his disciples. Brought to Vespasian, he announced that the general would come to power, and soon a messenger from Rome brought word that Vespasian was emperor. In gratitude the general let the sage make one request; in one version Yohanan asks to settle at Yavneh with his disciples, which would thereby have become the first seat of rabbinic study and legal authority once the Temple was gone.c5-yohanan-story
  883. p. 131, p. 131The story dates from long after Yohanan and survives in several divergent versions. The prophecy about Vespasian is suspiciously similar to a story Josephus tells about himself, and escapes in coffins appear in Josephus and classical authors. It is impossible to tell which details belonged to the original version, or whether any reflects what really happened.c5-yohanan-story-doubts
  884. p. 131, p. 134, p. 131Yavneh, called Jamnia in Greek sources of the Roman era, was a coastal town; today's Tel Aviv lies to its north. Religious Jews revere a tomb there ascribed to Gamliel II, Yohanan's successor; the tomb in fact arose only much later, in the Islamic period, and no excavation has revealed such early rabbinic activity at Yavneh or at any other site.c5-yavneh-place
  885. p. 132The chapter's scope runs from the Temple's destruction in 70 CE to the coming of the Islamic age.c5-period-frame
  886. p. 132, p. 132To organize the story, the chapter picks three moments: the rise of the rabbis after the Temple's destruction, their gaining authority over the Jewish community in the following centuries, and the move of rabbinic culture to Babylonia, from where it spread across the Jewish world. The authors admit this narrative simplifies: reconstructions vary widely, the sources do not allow even a clear chronology, and Yohanan or Judah the Patriarch, as flesh-and-blood people, almost entirely elude us.c5-three-moments
  887. p. 132How the rabbis arose, between the end of the Second Temple and the year 200, can only be speculated: no rabbinic literature survives from that span, only traditions set down centuries later whose accuracy is debatable. Combining them with Josephus and other Second Temple sources, though, reasonable conjectures can be ventured.c5-emergence-speculation
  888. p. 132, p. 132, p. 520, p. 132Pirkei Avot traces the rabbinic line back to Second Temple sages, among them Hillel and Shammai, both probably active in the first century BCE. Hillel holds a special place in rabbinic memory: he was supposedly born in Babylonia, was Herod's contemporary, and is linked to the first list of rules for interpreting the Torah and to famous sayings such as the one asking who will be for me if I am not for myself. The two figure as founders of schools, circles of disciples rather than institutions, and their debates take up much room in rabbinic recollection of the Second Temple. Hillel is also named as forebear of the family of sages that would hold the patriarchate.c5-hillel-shammai
  889. p. 132, p. 132Did Hillel, Shammai and the other sages of Pirkei Avot really do and say what rabbinic literature ascribes to them? There is no way of knowing. Some have tried to see in Hillel's teachers, Avtalion and Shemaya, two sages Josephus mentions, the Pharisee Pollion and his disciple Samais, but the idea is shaky, and for Hillel himself no evidence older than the rabbis exists.c5-hillel-historicity
  890. p. 132The title rabbi ('my master') seems to come from the Second Temple period, when disciples used it to address esteemed teachers; in the New Testament that is how people speak to Jesus. The rabbis gave it a use of their own, deciding who deserved it and keeping it for sages after the Temple's destruction; Hillel, for example, is not given the title.c5-rabbi-title-continuity
  891. p. 132, p. 132A grandson of Hillel, Gamliel I, the Elder, carries weight in rabbinic literature: he is credited, for instance, with the rule that a widow could marry again on the strength of a single witness to her husband's death, and Gamliel II and Judah ha-Nasi descend from him. He also appears in the New Testament: in Acts 5 he is a Pharisee esteemed as a legal teacher, and in Acts 22 he is Paul's instructor.c5-gamliel-elder
  892. p. 132For Reif, it is in the newly emerging Geonic liturgical situation that the Jewish prayer-book makes its first appearance, with geonic guidelines on regular blessings and prayers.cl-geonic-first-prayer-book
  893. p. 132Reif places the earliest piyyutim (liturgical poems) in late-talmudic Palestine; after overcoming much Babylonian animosity, they were folded into liturgy sections to which they could be linked.cl-piyyut-holy-land-origin
  894. p. 133, p. 133The rabbis resemble the Pharisees in several ideas: respect for an extrascriptural tradition passed from teacher to disciple, taking the Pharisees' side against the Sadducees, and parallel positions, such as the view between fate and free will that Josephus attributes to the Pharisees, which echoes a teaching of Akiba in Pirkei Avot. These parallels support the thesis that rabbinic Judaism is a post-Temple offshoot of Pharisaic Judaism.c5-pharisee-parallels
  895. p. 133, p. 133, p. 133But the rabbis never identified themselves as Pharisees or with any other sect. It has been argued that they opposed sectarianism and that the movement absorbed people of various affiliations: Pharisees, priests, Zealots, scribes and perhaps even followers of Jesus (a suspicion raised about Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, who reportedly told Akiba of a teaching heard from 'Yeshua son of Pantera').c5-not-pharisees
  896. p. 133Avot de Rabbi Nathan relates that Joshua, Yohanan's chief disciple, wept at the sight of the ruined Temple, where Israel had atoned for its sins. Yohanan comforted him: there was an atonement as effective as that one, deeds of kindness (gemilut hasidim). Like other stories about him, this is more legend than history; even so, the real Yohanan may indeed have adjusted tradition to the Temple's loss.c5-gemilut-hasadim
  897. p. 133Before 70, the shofar could be blown on Rosh Hashanah only in the Temple; Yohanan reportedly decreed that after the destruction it could be blown anywhere. Such ordinances attributed to him allowed practices that had depended on the Temple to continue.c5-shofar
  898. p. 133, p. 133, p. 520, p. 520The Bar Kochba Revolt (132 to 135, according to the book's timeline) also left its mark on rabbinic Judaism. Some rabbis backed it and some did not. Akiba himself is said to have seen the messiah in Bar Kochba; the nickname 'son of a star' pointed to the prophecy of Numbers 24:17 about a star rising out of Jacob, and that aura may have emboldened Jews to take on a far stronger enemy. The end was catastrophic: the rebels lost, Bar Kochba apparently fell in battle, and Akiba and other sages were executed.c5-bar-kochba-messiah
  899. p. 133, p. 133The rabbinic texts, written after the revolt, record the rethinking: one rabbi supposedly read Numbers as foretelling a liar, kozav, a play on the leader's real name, Bar Koseba. Many scholars think the rabbis then set about restraining messianism, advising against calculating the messiah's coming, pushing the messianic age into an indefinite future or downplaying what it would change.c5-kozav
  900. p. 134, p. 134The rabbis may also have moved away from martyrdom, an ideal that had inspired Jews since the Maccabean revolt and in the wars with Rome. One rabbinic view demanded death only to avoid the gravest sins (murder, idolatry and incest); otherwise one could break the law to stay alive. This stands in contrast to Philo and Josephus, for whom Jews would choose death over disobeying the slightest detail of the law.c5-martyrdom
  901. p. 134The flight from Jerusalem to Yavneh makes Yohanan ben Zakkai the model of a Judaism that trades revolt and heroic death for acceptance of Roman rule and devotion to study.c5-yohanan-submission
  902. p. 134Beyond late anecdotes, there is no evidence for Yohanan and other rabbis of the first two centuries. It is not even certain that there was yet a 'rabbinic movement': they may have operated individually or in small circles, and a coherent network of scholars, with shared lifestyle, beliefs, ways of interpretation and institutions, may not crystallize until after Yohanan and Akiba.c5-no-evidence-early
  903. p. 134, p. 134Why did the rabbis thrive and other groups not? An educated guess: Herodian power depended on Roman support, which was lost; the priests' authority depended on the Temple, which was also their source of income. That of the Pharisees and rabbis came from expertise in law and Scripture, from each sage's reputation and charisma, not from a central institution. That is why the movement survived the execution of teachers such as Akiba: disciples passed on the teachings.c5-why-success
  904. p. 134Some sages were also respected for supernatural and healing powers, such as Rabbi Meir, Akiba's second-century disciple, known as a wonder-worker.c5-meir
  905. p. 134Rabbinic tradition takes Yohanan from Jerusalem to Yavneh. After Bar Kochba, the hub of rabbinic activity moved north: first to Usha, then to other places in Galilee, a quieter and richer region than a Judea devastated by war.c5-galilee-shift
  906. p. 134, p. 135It was probably also crucial that the rabbis were willing to live under Rome. Some, probably including Akiba, supported Bar Kochba, but after the disaster the movement avoided open rebellion; its literature can be very critical of Rome but recommends submission. This posture may have spared it the fate of the Zealots and the Bar Kochba rebels, who did not survive their revolts.c5-roman-accommodation
  907. p. 134In Browning's Handbook essay, a Nazi official (Palfinger) asserts that a rapid dying out of the Jews was a matter of total indifference, if not desirable, illustrating the bureaucratic brutality of occupation policy.c-h502-hayes-browning-dying-out-indifference
  908. p. 135In the Second Temple period the priesthood was at its height: until the Herodians rose, the high priest was in practice Judea's ruler, and even afterward the upper priestly ranks stayed at the top of the elite, wealthy and influential. The Temple's destruction removed its main reason for being, offering sacrifices and guarding the sanctuary's holiness. Even so, priests neither vanished nor lost their prestige, and in late antique Palestine they may have regained some weight as a cultural elite.c5-priests-after
  909. p. 135, p. 135One sign of this comeback is the piyyutim, elaborate and allusive synagogue poems, usually in Hebrew, made to accompany the Torah reading on the Sabbath, at festivals and on other occasions. Some were written by Galilean priests, such as one Yohanan the Priest, or by people close to the priestly families that settled there after the destruction. The poems speak of the Temple, long for its rebuilding, name the 24 priestly courses and glorify the Yom Kippur sacrifice; a Yom Kippur liturgy still in use today rests on them.c5-piyyutim-priests
  910. p. 135Priests may also have produced Hekhalot literature, an offshoot of apocalyptic, whose descriptions of the heavens and angelic worship are modeled on the Temple cult ('hekhalot' are the chambers of this heavenly Temple).c5-hekhalot-priests
  911. p. 135The priests never restored the cult or fully recovered their power; by the time these genres were composed, they may already have been absorbed into the rabbinic movement. To this day the priests' privileges in worship (being called first to the Torah, reciting the priestly blessing) are set by rabbinic law, a sign of their subordination to rabbinic authority.c5-priests-absorbed
  912. p. 135, p. 135According to rabbinic literature, Yohanan brought the Sanhedrin to Yavneh, and that court supposedly decided matters for the entire Jewish community. Some historians, however, doubt that the Sanhedrin even existed; and if there were Jewish courts in Palestine after the revolt, nothing actually shows that Yohanan ran them. In his lifetime he may have had little influence.c5-sanhedrin
  913. p. 135, p. 135, p. 135Paul and other Christian missionaries had influence because they went out to people: they toured the big cities of the Roman world and wrote in Greek, the language of many diaspora Jews. The early rabbis did not work that way. They wrote in a learned Hebrew and Aramaic that Jews outside Palestine could hardly follow, and even there they moved mostly among villages and small towns, rather than in the cities, where they would have stood out more. No inscription or archaeological trace of the time shows their influence.c5-paul-vs-rabbis
  914. p. 135In the chapter 'Path to Expulsion', Gerber notes that research still debates why each Iberian protagonist acted and how far each bears responsibility for the expulsion.c-h502-gerber-path-to-expulsion-disagreement
  915. p. 136, p. 136No text is more fundamental to rabbinic Judaism than the Mishnah, which to this day holds a near-scriptural rank in Jewish religious life, just below the Bible. It contains neither prophecy nor historical narrative; it gathers traditions that had circulated orally, ascribed to sages from the late Second Temple period to the early third century, when the work was composed. With it the rabbis appear for the first time as a defined group, albeit one full of internal disagreement.c5-mishnah-status
  916. p. 136, p. 136The name comes from a Hebrew word for 'to repeat' or 'to study'. The work collects mainly legal rulings and opinions, anonymous or attributed, along with anecdotes, biblical interpretation and sayings. It is divided into six orders: Zeraim (Seeds, agricultural produce of the Land of Israel), Moed (Sacred time), Nashim (Wives, marriage and divorce), Neziqin (Damages, courts and civil and criminal law), Qodashim (Holy things, the Temple cult) and Toharot (Purities). There are 63 tractates in all.c5-mishnah-structure
  917. p. 136, p. 136, p. 136The Mishnah reads like a law code, but it is hard to imagine it functioning as one: the order on the Temple had no application in a world without a Temple, and the work frequently records dissenting opinions. At the very start of tractate Berachot, on how late the evening Shema may be recited, it gives three views (Rabbi Eliezer, the sages, Rabbi Gamliel) without deciding. Its purpose, then, was not only to fix the law but to preserve the views of many sages.c5-mishnah-not-code
  918. p. 136, p. 136, p. 520The oldest known account of how the Mishnah came about is that of Sherira Gaon, who headed an important rabbinic academy in Babylonia in the tenth century. In his view the work was arranged by Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi, active around the year 200, building on teachings and arrangements by earlier rabbis. The Temple's destruction, other crises and the growth of the oral tradition, ever more varied as it passed down the generations, supposedly made Judah fear that some of it would be lost, so he fixed and ordered it.c5-sherira
  919. p. 136, p. 137Sherira was writing some seven centuries later and probably projected onto the Mishnah the role it had in his own academic culture. The Mishnah seems to draw on earlier oral sources but does not say who compiled it or why; Judah figures prominently in it but is not identified as its editor, an identification only later sources make and whose accuracy is unclear.c5-sherira-critique
  920. p. 137, p. 137From the same period comes the Tosefta (the name means 'addition'), which largely follows the Mishnah's arrangement and content but departs from it on many points; it is ascribed not to Judah but to Hiyya and his pupil Oshaya. Is it a complement, a revised version, a study aid, or another group of rabbis' rival version? For some scholars at least parts of it come before the Mishnah; for others it is later; for others still, the two took shape side by side. So many hypotheses show how poorly we understand how either work was formed.c5-tosefta
  921. p. 137, p. 137That memory ties the Mishnah to Judah ha-Nasi suggests a link with the patriarchate: nasi appears to be the Hebrew word for 'patriarch', and the institution's backing may be what first gave the text authority. Around 240 CE a letter by the Christian scholar Origen speaks of a Jewish leader called the ethnarch, very possibly the patriarch, who acted almost like a king.c5-mishnah-patriarchate
  922. p. 137, p. 137, p. 137, p. 520Judah may have been the most influential patriarch and, it seems, the first to act outside rabbinic circles, dispatching rabbis to communities as judges and scribes. By taking the patriarchate's seat to Sepphoris, a major Galilean city, he helped the movement urbanize and reach more people; he may also have created paid posts for some sages and a tithe on behalf of poor disciples. He also cultivated ties with Roman power that extended his office's authority to Jewish communities elsewhere in the empire.c5-judah-outreach
  923. p. 137Rabbinic literature remembers Judah as a personal friend of the Roman ruler 'Antoninus', perhaps the Severan emperor Caracalla. This is probably an exaggeration, but he may have had a close relationship with the local Roman government.c5-antoninus
  924. p. 137, p. 137The compilation, by Judah or by loyal disciples, can be seen as an extension of the patriarch's influence: it does not impose Judah's views but exerts a subtle authority by deciding what was worth transmitting. The Tosefta and later sources show that the Mishnah preserves only part of a much larger body of teaching. Perhaps it sought to determine what constituted the tradition; but it may be misleading to look for an overarching agenda, since we do not know what purpose it was meant to serve.c5-mishnah-authority
  925. p. 137, p. 137For later rabbis the Mishnah marked a divide: the sages recorded in it became known as Tannaim (from Aramaic tanna, 'repeater'); those living after Judah to about 500 CE, as Amoraim (from amora, 'speaker', the spokesman who repeated the master's words aloud). The distinction, imposed after the fact, is artificial, but the Amoraim's subordinate authority shows the Mishnah's significance.c5-tannaim-amoraim
  926. p. 138, p. 138, p. 138Palestinians and Babylonians each answered the Mishnah in their own way. The Palestinian answer is the Talmud of the Land of Israel, also called the Palestinian or Jerusalem Talmud, finished in the fourth or early fifth century; despite the name, probably not in Jerusalem but in Tiberias, in Galilee, which ended up as the seat of rabbinic activity in Palestine. The Babylonian answer is the Babylonian Talmud, finished in the sixth or seventh century.c5-palestinian-talmud
  927. p. 138, p. 138, p. 138, p. 138The Palestinian Talmud mixes Hebrew with the Aramaic spoken in Galilee and is full of words taken over from Greek and Latin, a sign of a Hellenized, Roman Palestine; scholars also sense in it far more hostility toward Rome than the Babylonian Talmud shows toward the Sasanians. It comments on just over half the Mishnah's tractates and mixes biblical interpretation, stories and other material loosely tied to the passage at hand, which gives it an unfinished air. Judging it by the Babylonian Talmud's standard, however, is anachronistic; what matters is that it shows the Mishnah already treated as a quasi-scripture, to be explained, harmonized and mined for legal conclusions.c5-yerushalmi-character
  928. p. 138In the Tannaitic period in Palestine, works interpreting the legal parts of the Torah were also composed: the Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael (Exodus), Sifra (Leviticus), Sifre Be-Midbar (Numbers) and Sifre Devarim (Deuteronomy).c5-halakhic-midrashim
  929. p. 138, p. 138Many of the Mishnah's laws were, as it says itself, 'mountains hanging by a hair', with little support in the text of the Torah. Some early sages sought their biblical origins through midrash; others held that this tradition was an inheritance independent of the Torah.c5-mountains-hair
  930. p. 138, p. 138The Mishnah outlived the patriarchate. The rabbis kept some independence and over time took over powers of the patriarch, such as regulating the calendar and ordaining rabbis. And the Mishnah itself, a new scripture authorizing laws beyond the Torah, gave its experts an authority that depended on no office or geographic center.c5-mishnah-outlives
  931. p. 139Though Palestine was becoming Christian, Jewish culture there, rabbinic culture included, flourished in certain places. Besides the Palestinian Talmud and many works of biblical interpretation, that milieu produced Aramaic translations of the Bible (targum) that added a good deal to the text, liturgical poems (piyyut, from the Greek for 'poetry'), magical texts and Hekhalot literature, the oldest Jewish mystical writings.c5-palestine-flourish
  932. p. 139, p. 139, p. 139, p. 139At the start of late antiquity most Jews in the Near East spoke Aramaic, a Semitic language close to Hebrew. Already in the Persian period Aramaic changed Hebrew itself: the Canaanite script was replaced by the Aramaic square script. The need for Aramaic translations of the Bible (targumim) appears as early as the Dead Sea Scrolls; the most important targum, Onkelos, is Babylonian. Today Aramaic survives among Kurdish Jews and in texts such as the Zohar, the ketubah and the Kaddish.c5-aramaic
  933. p. 139, p. 139, p. 139From the seventh century on the Masoretes were at work, scribes based at first in Tiberias who sought to fix the correct form of the Hebrew Bible's text and secure its pronunciation and chanting in the synagogue. To do so they devised dozens of vowel and punctuation marks placed above and below the consonants: on the first word alone, bereshit, they added 14, and they gave the same care to each of the Bible's roughly half million words. Whether they were rabbinic Jews is uncertain (some may have opposed the rabbis), but they came out of the same milieu, and their work reveals a vigorous intellectual life in a Christian-dominated setting.c5-masoretes
  934. p. 140, p. 140, p. 140, p. 140An inscription from the synagogue at Rehov, in the Beth Shean Valley, from the sixth or seventh century, cites laws on tithes and agriculture that parallel the Tosefta and the Palestinian Talmud, and mentions 'Rabbi', perhaps Judah ha-Nasi. It is evidence that rabbinic literature was already influencing synagogue life in some communities.c5-rehov
  935. p. 140But this is little evidence, and late. When did the rabbis begin to influence the wider community, the courts, the synagogues, the prayers of non-rabbis? Despite much research, the answers remain elusive.c5-rehov-limits
  936. p. 140The rabbis of Palestine were at a disadvantage under a Christianized empire that pressed for conversion and imposed discrimination, confiscation of synagogues and bursts of violence. The Jews of Babylonia lived in a more receptive environment, with a more stable communal structure under the exilarch, and it was there that rabbinic culture took the form that, by the end of antiquity, would direct Jewish life.c5-babylon-receptive
  937. p. 141Jews had been in Babylonia since the Exile of 586 BCE, but little is known of their history in the centuries that followed. After the third century CE the region began to stand out as a major rabbinic center.c5-babylonia-origins
  938. p. 141, p. 141, p. 520, p. 147The turn shows in the career of Rav Abba, known simply as Rav. According to rabbinic sources he was born in Babylonia, went to study in Palestine like other Babylonian sages, and was reportedly ordained there by Judah ha-Nasi. Around 219 he came back and opened at Sura, a trading town on the banks of the Euphrates, a study house (bet midrash) that would become one of Babylonia's great academies. Later Babylonian sages saw this return as the moment they began to regard themselves as equals of the Land of Israel (Bava Kama 80a).c5-rav
  939. p. 141As with Yohanan and Judah, Rav's portrayal may not be accurate, but it shows how the Babylonian sages saw themselves: without breaking with Palestine, whose figures they esteemed, they claimed comparable authority and developed a rabbinic culture of their own.c5-rav-portrayal
  940. p. 141, p. 141Many other sages emigrated to Babylonia, probably because life in Palestine was growing harder: sages martyred in the Bar Kochba Revolt, a 'de-Judaized' Judea, the economic downturn of the third century and Christianization, which produced a Christian majority by the fifth century.c5-emigration
  941. p. 141, p. 141Babylonian independence is already detectable in the second century, when the sage Hananiah, who emigrated after the Bar Kochba Revolt, tried to regulate the calendar from Babylonia, a direct challenge to Palestinian supremacy. The threat of excommunication was enough to stop him, but the episode foreshadowed the Babylonian sages' self-confidence.c5-hananiah
  942. p. 141The Babylonian sages could not deny Palestine's central place, but they claimed nearly equal standing. They boasted of older biblical roots: Babylonia had supposedly held the Garden of Eden and been Abraham's homeland, arguably the place where Jewish history began. It was also a land of exile, but, they said, its Jews had zealously kept their lineage pure, without intermarriage; those of doubtful descent had supposedly returned to Palestine with Ezra (Qiddushin 69b). Some may have thought themselves even more authentic than their Palestinian colleagues.c5-babylonian-pedigree
  943. p. 141, p. 141The Babylonian Talmud, the Babylonian response to the Mishnah, builds on Palestinian tradition but adapts it and adds the voice of the Babylonian Amoraim, cited alongside the Palestinian ones. Their anonymous successors, the Saboraim ('explainers') or, in a modern term, Stamaim ('anonymous ones'), finalized the Talmud between 500 and 700 CE. The result, with carefully structured argument, dialectic and stories, runs to some 2.5 million words.c5-bavli-composition
  944. p. 141The Babylonian Talmud mixes Palestinian and Babylonian traditions as if all the sages were taking part in one conversation, but by comparing the literatures scholars can distinguish the two variants of rabbinic culture.c5-bavli-mix
  945. p. 142, p. 142The Talmud, or Gemara, is a commentary on the Mishnah that seeks its reasons, raises questions and resolves contradictions. Its basic unit is not the chapter but the sugya, an analysis launched by an issue in the Mishnah that proceeds through a back-and-forth of claims and objections (shakla ve-tarya, in Aramaic), full of digressions.c5-sugya
  946. p. 142, p. 143Take Qiddushin 39b. Rabbi Jacob holds that whenever the Torah announces a reward next to a commandment, as with honoring one's parents or sending away the mother bird before taking chicks from a nest, the reward lies in the world to come. The Talmud then tells of a son who, at his father's request, climbed up for chicks, shooed off the mother bird, came down and died in a fall: if even fulfilling both commandments did not give him a long life, the promised 'long life' must be in the next world. Some rabbis said a similar episode made Jacob's grandfather, Elisha ben Abuyah, abandon his faith; that is why the rabbis will not even say his name and call him Aher, 'the Other'.c5-qiddushin-39b
  947. p. 142Nulman says the authorship of Av Harahamim is unknown; it was composed in memory of the Rhineland communities annihilated after the First Crusades (1096), and Baer dates the language to the 'evil days' of the decrees of 1096 and 1146.cl-av-harahamim-crusades-1096
  948. p. 143, p. 144The Talmud then challenges and defends Jacob's position in successive objections and replies, a classic example of its dialectic. Behind what looks like argument for its own sake lie grave questions: why do bad things happen to those who keep the commandments? Why does God make promises he seems not to keep?c5-talmud-dialectic
  949. p. 144, p. 144By the time the Babylonian Talmud took its final form, in the sixth and seventh centuries, the sages of Babylonia had an intellectual culture of their own. They studied in large academies, more organized, hierarchical, closed, elitist and lasting than the Palestinian circles and study houses. With teaching centralized, students traveled farther and spent longer away from home. The Babylonian legend of Akiba's wife, who waited 24 years for him, is exaggerated but has a kernel of truth: it probably mirrors not the couple's life but the experience of Babylonian sages parted from their wives for long stretches.c5-babylonian-academies
  950. p. 144, p. 144Babylonian study followed an ethos of argument tempered by etiquette: people debated for the love of debate and the respect won by sharpness, without necessarily reaching a conclusion. After Resh Lakish's death, Rabbi Yohanan was given a new partner who always agreed with him; rather than being consoled, he mourned his old partner, who had raised 24 objections to every statement (Bava Metsia 84a).c5-debate-ethos
  951. p. 144It was the form of rabbinic culture reflected in the Babylonian Talmud that most influenced later Jewish culture: 'the Talmud' today means the Babylonian one, and its way of understanding the Mishnah and scriptural interpretation became the standard.c5-bavli-authoritative
  952. p. 145After the Talmud there emerged in Babylonia the Geonim (singular: Gaon), heads of the two most important academies, Sura and Pumbedita. They retained their influence after the Muslims defeated the Sasanians, and through them Babylonian rabbinic culture reached Jewish communities throughout the Islamic world.c5-geonim
  953. p. 145The rabbis of Babylonia had advantages: a more secure environment than that of Roman, Christian Palestine and, whereas the Palestinians lost institutional backing with the end of the patriarchate, an association with the exilarchate, which outlasted the Sasanian kingdom itself.c5-babylonian-advantages
  954. p. 145, p. 145In the mid-seventh century the Muslims defeated the Sasanians, and the Islamic conquest brought most of the lands where Jews lived under one power, linking the Jews of Babylonia once again with those of Palestine, Egypt, North Africa and even distant Spain. To reach the farthest communities the Geonim apparently relied on the Jews of Qayrawan, in today's Tunisia, as a relay point. They also had a model in Muslim scholars, who were building a religious-legal system for the same vast territory.c5-islamic-unification
  955. p. 145, p. 145, p. 145In the eighth century papermaking reached the Middle East. The academies of Sura and Pumbedita had moved to Baghdad, the new capital the Muslims founded in Iraq, and a paper mill began working there in 794, multiplying the circulation of books. The Geonim, without giving up oral teaching, made use of it: they answered questions from distant communities in writing (responsa) and in the eighth century allowed the Talmud to be put in writing, though as Oral Torah it was meant to pass by word of mouth. Writing trimmed their authority somewhat, since other Jews began drawing their own conclusions from the text, but it spread Babylonian rabbinic Judaism through the lands of Islam.c5-paper
  956. p. 145, p. 145By the ninth century the Babylonian rabbinic leaders were presenting themselves as the final legal authority of the Jewish world, meaning the Jews under Islam, who in the Middle Ages made up about 90 percent of all Jews. It was then that Pirkoi ben Baboi, a Geonic scholar, wrote to North African Jews saying that the pure tradition had been kept by the Babylonian sages, not the Palestinian ones: under a hostile Rome the latter had let the Torah be corrupted, whereas the Babylonian academies had kept it intact and should therefore have the last word.c5-pirkoi
  957. p. 145In the 920s, a new dispute between Palestinian and Babylonian rabbis over who would set the calendar, traditionally Palestine's prerogative, ended with the Babylonian calculation prevailing, confirming the ascendancy of Babylonian rabbinic culture.c5-calendar-920s
  958. p. 145, p. 146Many Jews rejected the authority of the rabbis and their sources, above all the Karaites; but the strength of that reaction is itself evidence of how far rabbinic culture had reached by the end of antiquity. In the transition to the Middle Ages, Jewish culture was splitting into two sides: rabbinic Judaism and a Judaism opposed to the rabbis, born as a reaction against the Judaism of the Babylonian sages.c5-karaites
  959. p. 146, p. 146, p. 146In a legal dispute Rabbi Eliezer invokes miracles: a carob tree moves, the water of a channel flows backward and a heavenly voice declares him right. The sages answer that the Torah, given at Sinai, commands following the majority. And God, laughing, concedes: 'My sons have defeated me' (Bava Metsia 59b). In this Babylonian theology God is a fellow scholar, who can be challenged respectfully with good arguments and can even lose the debate.c5-arguing-with-god
  960. p. 146To describe rabbinic impact, the authors rely on the Babylonian Talmud as mediated by the Geonim. It would be anachronistic to apply it to the rabbis of Palestine or of Babylonia before the sixth century, but it was this view that most influenced later Jewish culture.c5-talmud-defines
  961. p. 146, p. 147The underlying change, perhaps the root of all the others, was to make the rabbi the authorized interpreter of Jewish tradition. The Bible knows three go-betweens between God and Israel: the priest with his Temple, the king and the prophet. Rabbinic literature aligns the rabbi with all three and, at the same time, puts him in their place. Without contesting the priests' privileges, the rabbis took over their function by turning Torah study into a substitute for sacrifice; without calling themselves kings, they reimagined David as a sage devoted to the Torah, and the patriarch claimed descent from him; without pretending to prophesy, they presented themselves as heirs of the Torah given to Moses. In one Talmudic story Moses sits in on a lesson of Akiba's, understands nothing, and marvels that God chose him rather than such a sage (Menahot 29b).c5-rabbi-intermediary
  962. p. 146Nulman places Avinu Malkaynu in talmudic days: after prayer and fasting failed to bring rain, Rabbi Akiba is said to have stepped before the ark with 'Our Father, our King…' and rain fell; later verses multiplied because of disasters and persecutions (Sephardic, Ashkenazic, and Polish rites differ in count).cl-avinu-akiba-rain-talmud
  963. p. 147A disciple of Yohanan and contemporary of Gamliel II, Eliezer ben Hyrcanus is remembered for a dispute in which the other sages voted against him even after a heavenly voice backed him, and also for being accused of heresy and excommunicated.c5-eliezer-heresy
  964. p. 147, p. 147Akiba ben Joseph lived in the second century, came from a humble family and is revered for his modesty and for dying a martyr in the Bar Kochba Revolt. Rabbinic memory credits him with systematizing legal tradition and with new principles of reading that gave weight to each detail of the biblical text. His colleagues and students included Ishmael ben Elisha, Shimon ben Azzai, Meir and Shimon bar Yohai, whom later tradition took to be the author of the Zohar.c5-akiba-profile
  965. p. 147, p. 147An orphan, Rabbi Yohanan bar Nappaha rose to master of the Torah and in the third century directed the Tiberias academy, in Palestine. He is remembered for his debates with Resh Lakish, another Palestinian sage who, tradition says, had been a bandit and a gladiator before turning to study.c5-yohanan-nappaha
  966. p. 147, p. 147In the third century Samuel directed the Nehardea academy in Babylonia and was a friend of the Persian king Shapur I; his controversies with Rav are central to the Babylonian Talmud. He is responsible for a long-lived political principle in Jewish tradition: 'the law of the land is the law', that is, the laws of the society Jews live in bind them and at times even override Jewish law.c5-samuel
  967. p. 147, p. 147Rav Ashi, head of the Sura academy in the early fifth century, cultivated good relations with the Persian government. Following later Geonim, he is credited, along with Ravina, with much of the work that led to the Babylonian Talmud, completed by subsequent generations.c5-rav-ashi
  968. p. 147, p. 147One group was left almost entirely outside rabbinic circles: women. Rabbinic literature grants the learning of a handful, such as Beruriah, Meir's wife, but as a rule the rabbis did not accept women as teachers or students. The question of women rabbis was raised only in the nineteenth century, and the first women ordained as rabbis, in the twentieth century, came from the Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative movements.c5-women
  969. p. 148The rabbi's central activity was Torah study, a lifelong commitment; some sages said God had created humanity for this purpose (Sanhedrin 99b). It was not like being a monk, since rabbis married and worked, but study required deferring other pursuits and existed in tension with them.c5-torah-study
  970. p. 148, p. 148The rabbis created their own way of interpreting the Bible, midrash (from a root meaning 'to seek', 'to investigate'). The midrashic collections come from Palestine; in Babylonia, midrash was incorporated into the Talmud. Midrash fastens on small gaps and redundancies: even a deviation in a word's spelling hints at a message to be drawn out.c5-midrash
  971. p. 148Halakhic and aggadic midrash are distinguished. Halakhah (from the root 'to walk') is the study of law and custom; Aggadah (from the root 'to tell') covers stories, wisdom and non-legal teachings. Both use the same creativity to find in the text legal guidance and moral and cosmological lessons it does not make explicit.c5-halakhah-aggadah
  972. p. 148Midrash can seem fanciful to the modern reader: it turns Adam, Jacob and David into rabbinic sages and sometimes reverses the plain sense. The verse used in the Eliezer story to justify majority rule (Exodus 23:2) actually says: 'You shall not follow a majority in wrongdoing.' Even so, midrash had rules that gave freedom but also set limits.c5-midrash-method
  973. p. 148, p. 148There is no single midrashic reading: rabbinic literature gives a verse different, even contradictory meanings side by side. Like the hammer that strikes many sparks from rock, a verse has many meanings (Sanhedrin 34a). This mirrors a culture that celebrated disagreement, 'the war of Torah'.c5-many-meanings
  974. p. 148, p. 149Even when it decides, rabbinic literature does not discredit the losing view. After three years of dispute between the schools of Shammai and Hillel, a divine voice declared that both were 'the words of the living God', but that the law followed Hillel (Erubin 13b), because his disciples were gracious and modest and taught the rival school's words as well.c5-both-living-god
  975. p. 149, p. 149By the time the Babylonian Talmud was composed, the sages held that revelation to Moses had come in two forms: the Written Torah, that is, the Bible, and the Oral Torah, kept by the sages. The latter was put in writing only late, in the Mishnah and the Talmudic commentary; before that it passed from master to disciple through direct teaching. It may grow out of the unwritten tradition the Pharisees revered, but for the rabbis it was not merely ancestral heritage: it was the Torah itself, handed down at Sinai, as a midrash on Exodus 24:12 teaches (Berakhot 5a).c5-oral-torah
  976. p. 149, p. 149The Oral Torah was paradoxical: it grew with the rabbis' rulings, debates and interpretations and included contradictory views, yet all of it, even students' questions, had supposedly been revealed to Moses at Sinai, though he did not realize it. In the story in Shabbat 31a, Hillel teaches the alphabet to a would-be convert who accepts only the Written Torah, in one order one day and reversed the next, to show that without a teacher and the Oral Torah the Written cannot be understood.c5-oral-torah-paradox
  977. p. 150, p. 150The Written Torah was insufficient on its own: a commandment such as keeping the Sabbath is too vague to practice without supplements. The Oral Torah filled the gaps and let the rabbis create an ongoing revelation. Conservative, because it revered the biblical inheritance, and creative, because it valued innovation, rabbinic culture resolved the tension by understanding its creativity as part of the tradition.c5-oral-torah-creative
  978. p. 150A midrash in Genesis Rabbah asks why the Torah begins with bet, the second letter, rather than aleph. Answers: since bet is closed behind and open in front, one should not inquire into what is above and below; bet has the value two, pointing to two worlds; bet begins the word 'blessing', and aleph the word 'curse'.c5-bet
  979. p. 150, p. 150The rabbis themselves disagreed about the rules of reading. Ishmael, a second-century sage, is linked to the maxim that the Torah speaks as human beings speak; hence he refused Akiba's effort, in his own day, to find divine meaning in repeated words and even single letters. Tradition gives Hillel a list of 7 rules (middot) and Ishmael one of 13, though midrash is not limited to them. A well-known technique is gematria, which reckons the numerical value of letters.c5-ishmael-akiba
  980. p. 150For Chazan, the medieval image of Jewish servitude was realized above all in rulers' power to banish Jews, a practice that spread from advanced northwestern Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries into other regions in the fifteenth.c-h502-chazan-banishment-servitude
  981. p. 150Hezser (in the Companion) notes that rabbinic texts treat Sabbath, festivals, purity, circumcision, and immersion with no equivalent in Roman civil codes, and also mix in nonlegal material (anecdotes, exegesis, historical notes).c-h502-fonrobert-hezser-roman-law-gap
  982. p. 151In late antiquity this conception of the Torah was confined to a small group of intellectuals, with little evidence of effect on the wider community. That began to change at the end of the period and above all in the Islamic era, through the Geonim's influence.c5-small-group
  983. p. 151It is hard to reconstruct how Jewish worship became rabbinized. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain prayers that illuminate its prehistory, but there is a large gap before the rabbinic evidence from 200 CE on. The duty to say the Shema twice daily is taken as given in the Mishnah; some evidence suggests the rabbis did not invent it, yet when it began remains unknown.c5-shema-origins
  984. p. 151, p. 151After Bar Kochba's defeat and Julian's failure there was no prospect of rebuilding the Temple, but it remained the rabbis' model of worship: they tied the timing of the three daily prayers to the sacrifices, adopted the Temple's 'Amen', deferred to priests and Levites and required prayer facing the Temple. There is no evidence, however, that they tried to rebuild it: their religious life presupposed its absence.c5-temple-model
  985. p. 151With the Temple gone, the synagogue became, with the rabbis' acceptance, the chief place of collective prayer, but the home also gained a role, as the reshaping of Passover shows. In Second Temple times the festival called for pilgrimage to the Temple and a special sacrifice. Under rabbinic influence it came to center on a household meal that borrowed customs of the Greco-Roman symposium and turned the telling of the Exodus into a kind of study session.c5-passover-home
  986. p. 151, p. 151The rabbinic Sabbath is a classic example: the rabbis identified 39 categories of labor in the biblical prohibition, such as writing two letters, and regulated what could be carried, how food was prepared and even which sandals could be worn (those with protruding nails were forbidden). Many rules derive not from verses but from the Oral Torah.c5-sabbath-39
  987. p. 151When the Mishnah and Talmud debate such matters, the discussion seems mostly theoretical: it dealt with law, but not necessarily law as practiced, to the point that the Mishnah regulates the worship of a Temple that no longer existed. And judging by synagogue art and other evidence of religious practice, the rabbis had little effect on the community in their time; rabbinic literature itself concedes that many did not follow its prescriptions.c5-academic-law
  988. p. 151, p. 151According to Langer, the prayer's original weekday structure was a series of eighteen blessings (Land of Israel rite); the Babylonian rite, which became normative under the geonim, separated two themes and reached nineteen blessings.cl-amidah-eighteen-vs-babylonian-nineteen
  989. p. 152, p. 152, p. 152After the Temple's destruction, praying became a collective, organized activity. The texts of that prayer were worked out by the sages of the Mishnah and both Talmuds, and the Geonim fixed them in a prayer book used to this day. Since the Mishnah, communities pray three times a day, though the Mishnah debated whether the evening prayer was obligatory. The order rests on two pillars: the Shema with its blessings and the Amidah, or Tefilah, a sequence of blessings mixing praise and requests. For communal prayer the rabbis required ten adult men, the minyan; only in the twentieth century did some communities begin to count women.c5-prayer
  990. p. 152, p. 152In canonizing the Mishnah and Talmud, the Geonic period also canonized the practices they had developed. Drawing on earlier rabbinic tradition, the Geonim produced and spread the first prayer book, which fixed the text and sequence of the service: the first siddur grew out of the order of prayers that Amram Gaon set out in the ninth century in a written reply, probably addressed to the Jews of Spain. The Haggadah, the text that orders the Passover seder, was also canonized then; though it uses Mishnaic material, it is a Geonic work, codified by Amram in his siddur, and its earliest versions date from that era.c5-amram-siddur
  991. p. 152The Geonim deserve the credit for turning rabbinic teachings into religious practice beyond the academies: they standardized the content, put it in writing and used their authority, prestige and international contacts to spread it through the Islamic world.c5-geonim-institutionalized
  992. p. 152, p. 152Later practices should not be projected onto late antiquity: the kippah, the bar mitzvah and the Kaddish for the dead arose only in the medieval or early modern period. But Jewish worship remains thoroughly rabbinized, as shown by the Haggadah, the most widely circulated Jewish text after the Bible.c5-later-practices
  993. p. 153Langer describes the Amidah modeled on Hannah's prayer (1 Sm 1:13): silent recital with moving lips; with a minyan, the precentor repeats it aloud and adds the Qedushah in the third blessing.cl-amidah-silent-then-repetition
  994. p. 154, p. 154The label 'Middle Ages' was coined by Christian writers in the fifteenth century as a disparaging name for the gap between antiquity and the Renaissance. Historians now find it problematic, because it is Eurocentric and treats a thousand years as a mere interlude; the authors keep it by convention, without seeing anything inferior or gloomy about this stretch of Jewish history.c6-middle-ages-term
  995. p. 154, p. 154Diocletian split the Roman Empire into western and eastern parts in 286 CE. The West, pressed by Germanic and other invasions, lasted until 476, when its last emperor was deposed. For Jewish history this mattered only secondarily, since most Jews lived in the Byzantine and Persian empires.c6-diocletian-476
  996. p. 154The Byzantine Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, outlived its western counterpart by centuries, though only as a shadow of itself in its last couple of centuries, until the Ottoman Turks took the city in 1453, at the close of the medieval period.c6-byzantine-1453
  997. p. 154, p. 154Within a few decades of Muhammad's death in 632, his successors had built an empire reaching far beyond the Arabian Landmass, where the new faith was born. The authors see the ascent of Islam in the seventh century as the start of an entirely new era, for Jews as well.c6-muhammad-empire
  998. p. 154, p. 154, p. 521, p. 521In 636 Muslim Arab forces defeated the Romans at Yarmuk, and by 641 they controlled Syria and Palestine; they beat the Persians in 637 at Qadisiyya and pressed on into Iraq and Persia. Egypt and North That Africa followed, and by the early eighth century the empire stretched from Spain to Afghanistan. The book's timeline dates the conquest of Palestine to 634 and that of Iraq to 642.c6-conquests
  999. p. 154, p. 154The new empire sheltered the great majority of the world's Jews. Palestine and Babylonia, the two main centers, long split by the Roman-Persian frontier, were joined for the first time since Alexander the Great; unlike Alexander's realm, though, the caliphate endured for centuries, and almost all the lands it took then, Spain excepted, remain in the Muslim world.c6-one-empire
  1000. p. 154Roughly nine in ten Jews are estimated to have lived in the Islamic world during the early Middle Ages, a proportion that held until about 1200.c6-ninety-percent
  1001. p. 155The balance shifted slowly, partly through emigration to Christian Europe but mostly because Christian forces on the Iberian Peninsula won back lands the Muslims had taken in the eighth century, bringing more and more Iberian Jews into Christendom.c6-balance-shift
  1002. p. 155, p. 155Gathering most Jews under Islamic rule is, for the authors, enough to justify the convention of dating the Jewish Middle Ages from the rise of Islam. The period also matches other major social and cultural shifts, such as the now central weight of rabbinic literature: the Mishnah and Talmud became a source of legal and religious authority.c6-islam-starts-middle-ages
  1003. p. 155, p. 155For much of the early Middle Ages, Jewish leaders in Palestine and in Baghdad vied for influence and authority over the scattered diaspora. At the end of this course, which was far from inevitable, the Babylonian Talmud had become the chief reference work of rabbinic culture, medieval and later.c6-competing-centers
  1004. p. 155, p. 155For the authors, the passage to the early modern era comes at the close of the fifteenth century, above all with the expulsion of Spain's Jews in 1492. The Jewish Middle Ages are thus long, more than eight centuries across very diverse geographic and cultural settings, and the book can offer only some of their basic conditions.c6-end-1492
  1005. p. 155, p. 155Jews across the medieval world shared a scriptural heritage (Bible, Mishna and Talmudic corpus) and a sense of common destiny, but their experiences were shaped by Muslim and Christian surroundings. This chapter deals with the Jews of the Islamic world, the huge majority early on; the next turns to Christendom.c6-chapter-scope
  1006. p. 155, p. 155At the start of the Middle Ages, communities around the Mediterranean and the Middle East looked to one of two spiritual centers, Palestine or Babylonia. Cities such as Cairo or Ramla housed Palestinian, Babylonian and Karaite synagogues side by side. Each group sent queries about religious law, contributed funds to the academies of Tiberias (later Jerusalem) and Baghdad, and received honorific titles from their leaders.c6-oriented-centers
  1007. p. 155, p. 155From the tenth century the Islamic world broke into smaller political units, and a growing number of Jews moved west. By the late 10th and early eleventh centuries independent Jewish centers had appeared, in Egypt, Tunisia and Spain, freeing themselves from the hegemony of the older eastern centers. The result was a set of territorially defined Jewish subcultures, in touch with one another yet each with its own identity.c6-fragmentation-10th
  1008. p. 155, p. 521Muhammad, born in 570 CE, is said to have had his first revelation at the age of forty, in 610. Revelations continued through his life and, gathered after his death in 632, make up Islam's holy book, the Qur'an.c6-muhammad-birth
  1009. p. 156, p. 156, p. 521Muhammad's uncompromising monotheism did not sit well in Mecca, a pagan pilgrimage and trading center. Facing growing hostility, he left with his followers for the oasis of Yathrib, later Medina, some 250 miles to the north. That migration, the hijra, marks the start of the Islamic calendar. In Medina he founded the first community of believers (umma) as both prophet and political leader, and there he met many Jews.c6-hijra
  1010. p. 156, p. 156The Qur'an is full of figures and stories known from the Hebraic Bible and the New Testament. Abraham is portrayed as the spiritual forefather and first monotheist; Moses, David, Solomon and Jesus are accepted as true prophets. Muhammad was to be the 'seal of prophecy', charged with restoring the pure revelation that, in Islamic theology, Jews and Christians had corrupted.c6-quran-figures
  1011. p. 156, p. 156The Jewish and Christian elements in Islam owe to Muhammad's contact with members of both faiths in Arabia, first in Mecca and then in Medina. The influence shows in the Qur'an and in early practice: Muslims revere Jerusalem, from which Muhammad was believed to have ascended to heaven, and at first prayed facing it, until another revelation turned the direction of prayer (qibla) toward Mecca.c6-jewish-influence-islam
  1012. p. 156, p. 156The Jews of Medina neither recognized Muhammad as a prophet nor joined his new religion. For a time, peaceful coexistence was secured by Muhammad's own ordinance for Medina, which said the Jews had their religion and the Muslims theirs, with an ominous warning against wrongdoers.c6-jews-reject
  1013. p. 156, p. 156Muhammad's conflict with the Jews of Medina is sometimes called the first anti-Jewish persecution of Islamic history, but the authors prefer to see it as a collision of political and economic interests. As he consolidated his authority and took Mecca in 630, Muhammad also faced Jewish critics who rejected his mission and were accused, rightly or wrongly, of disloyalty and of threatening his rule.c6-medina-conflict-political
  1014. p. 156, p. 156This mostly political struggle ended with two major Jewish clans being expelled from Yathrib in 624 and 625, with their territories then allotted among Muhammad's allies.c6-clans-expelled
  1015. p. 156, p. 156In 627 a third Jewish clan, the Banu Qurayza, stood accused of plotting with the Meccan forces besieging Medina. Muhammad resolved to make an warning of them, and several hundred are said to have been killed.c6-qurayza
  1016. p. 156, p. 156, p. 521The following year Muhammad moved against the oasis of Khaybar, where certain of the Jews expelled from Medina had resettled. The battle ended with the Jews surrendering, accepting the victors' terms and handing over half their produce in return for peace. This set an important precedent for how Jews and Christians were treated in places conquered by Muhammad and, later, by his successors.c6-khaybar
  1017. p. 156, p. 156Jews and Christians, the 'people of the book', were granted peace and safeguards in exchange for a tribute, the jizya, which later became a regular poll tax. The basis is a Qur'anic verse (9:29) that calls for fighting those given the Scriptures until they pay the tribute.c6-jizya
  1018. p. 156The Muslim community was expected to wage war on those who refused Islam, but unlike pagans, who in theory could only convert or die, Jews and Christians would be left alone if they acknowledged Muslim political supremacy, paid the tribute and accepted an inferior, humbled status in Islamic social order.c6-jihad-dhimma
  1019. p. 156, p. 156Muhammad's first encounter with the Jews was one of conflict and war, yet its outcome laid the groundwork for a remarkably stable modus vivendi that let Jews and Christians live, and often prosper, under Muslim rule throughout the Middle Ages. What the Qur'an and the hadith say about them reflects an ambivalence born of the early confrontations, but also a potential for toleration.c6-modus-vivendi
  1020. p. 157, p. 157, p. 521The first four caliphs ruled from Medina. Mu'awiya then founded the first caliphal dynasty, the Umayyad, and moved the capital to Damascus; it lasted until 750, by which time the empire ran from the Atlantic to the Indus delta. Expansion into Christian Europe was halted by the defeat at Tours (732) and the failed siege of Constantinople (717 to 718).c6-umayyad-dynasty
  1021. p. 157Muslims long remained a minority within their vast empire, as Islamization lagged behind political and military control. Calculations suggest that as late as the 10th century most Egyptians were still Copts, while Christians formed a majority in northern Syria into the 1100s.c6-muslim-minority
  1022. p. 157, p. 157Since imposing the new faith by force across so vast a territory would have been impossible, and since the Qur'an declares there is no compulsion in religion, Islamic law (shari'a) recognized the continued presence of Jewish and Christian communities. Treated as dhimmis, 'protected people', Jews and Christians had their lives and religious freedom guarded in return for a special poll tax, the jizya.c6-dhimmi-status
  1023. p. 157, p. 157, p. 521The conditions governing relations between dhimmis and Muslims appear in the so-called Pact of Umar, which tradition ascribes to the 2nd caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab (634 to 644). The oldest known version of the text, however, dates from the tenth century.c6-pact-origin
  1024. p. 157, p. 157Under these circumstances the shift to Islamic rule was probably not especially traumatic and may even have been welcome to many non-Muslim populations. Jews were used to being a religious minority, and their legal standing under Islam proved much like what they had known in Roman and Byzantine law; for the Middle Eastern Christians too, mostly Monophysites who resented Orthodox Byzantine rule, the change may have been smaller than one would suppose.c6-transition-mild
  1025. p. 157, p. 157More striking than the Pact of Umar's clauses is its form: it was framed as a treaty binding both sides. Jews and Christians accepted the restrictions, and the Muslim state recognized a set place for their communities. Legal protection thus did not hinge on the whim of each ruler but was written into Islamic law as a basic principle.c6-pact-treaty-form
  1026. p. 157Several clauses reflected conditions of the early conquest years: dhimmis were not to shelter spies or bear weapons, rules that arguably served the young empire's security more than any theological aim.c6-pact-security
  1027. p. 157, p. 157Another clause barred building new houses of worship or restoring ruined ones, likely derived from a similar Byzantine restriction on synagogues. Over time loopholes were made and ways around the ban were found: the synagogues and churches in Muslim-founded cities such as (new) Cairo, Kufa and Baghdad bear witness to it.c6-pact-worship
  1028. p. 157, p. 157, p. 157Other conditions served to enforce a social hierarchy symbolically, with dhimmis in an inferior though legally secured position: rising before Muslims, not riding on saddles, not building houses taller than theirs. Public showing of dhimmi religions was also restricted, at first perhaps to shield the young Muslim community from their influence and later to mark the hierarchy, and selling wine to Muslims was forbidden.c6-pact-hierarchy
  1029. p. 158, p. 158The Qur'an was not revealed all at once but in portions across the prophet's life, from about 611 until 632. Its chapters (suras) were arranged by length, longest to shortest, and its passages on Jews and Christians have to be understood as reacting to Muhammad's personal dealings with the Jews of Arabia.c6-quran-revealed
  1030. p. 158, p. 158In 628 Medina's Muslim community beat Khaybar's Jewish residents, who yielded and received guarantees for their lives and goods against a yearly levy. The precedent was confirmed by a later revelation, verse 9:29, the classic proof text in Islamic law for relations with the 'people of the book'. The Qur'an mandated the state's political expansion but forbade using force to spread the religion (2:256).c6-quran-khaybar-tribute
  1031. p. 158, p. 158Some Qur'anic passages show a favorable attitude toward Jews and Christians and seem to voice an early hope that the Jews of Medina might be drawn to the new faith. One asks the children of Israel to keep their covenant; another promises reward to believers, Jews, Christians and Sabeans who trust in God and the Last Day and do good.c6-quran-positive
  1032. p. 158, p. 158It soon became that clear that the Jews rejected Muhammad's prophetic claims, and relations in Medina deteriorated quickly. Other passages reflect the tension, such as one warning against taking Jews and Christians as friends, and another singling out the Jews, no doubt because of political rivalry with the early Muslims and the charge of conspiring with Mecca's pagans.c6-quran-negative
  1033. p. 158, p. 158The Qur'an's attitudes toward Jews and Christians are thus ambiguous: their traditions are acknowledged as legitimate faiths grounded in earlier revelation, yet they are also charged with having tampered with God's word, and political tension produced plainly hostile statements, especially about the Jews. In the end, what shaped Muslim-Jewish relations across the Middle Ages was the duty to tolerate the 'people of the book', who paid the jizya and accepted a lower social rank.c6-quran-ambiguous
  1034. p. 159, p. 159Not all the Pact's conditions were enforced. Despite a stipulation not to speak as Muslims do, Arabic quickly became the shared vernacular of every religion, Jews included, across the Islamic world west of Iran. In dress too the dhimmis seem to have taken on Muslim customs.c6-arabic-vernacular
  1035. p. 159In 850 the caliph al-Mutawakkil, from Baghdad, decreed a distinctive costume for Jews and Christians so that they could easily be distinguished from Muslims.c6-mutawakkil-850
  1036. p. 159, p. 159The basic terms of the Pact of Umar (keeping social boundaries and hierarchy, building no new synagogues and churches) were more often broken than kept. Numerous Muslim rulers employed dhimmis in open office, even over Muslims, and complaints about Jews or Christians breaching their status were frequent.c6-pact-breach
  1037. p. 159, p. 159Around the start of the twelfth century a legal scholar in Tangiers received a complaint against a Jewish doctor in Fez, who dressed like a Muslim notable and lacked the required distinguishing marks. The scholar restated the Pact of Umar's conditions and urged the authorities in Fez to enforce them, opening with a saying of Muhammad on the dhimmis: abase them, but do not oppress them. The point was to apply the law, not to repress arbitrarily.c6-tangier-fez-doctor
  1038. p. 159For most of the medieval period it was only when further interests were at stake, such as political rivalry or economic tension, that Muslim authorities were pushed to enforce the Pact's more restrictive rules strictly.c6-enforcement-conditional
  1039. p. 159The most striking difference between the legal position of Jews under Islam and under Christendom in the Middle Ages lay not in more or less discrimination or tolerance but in the remarkable stability of the status Islamic law gave them.c6-legal-stability
  1040. p. 159, p. 159The Pact of Umar did not curb economic freedom or freedom of residence and travel, which set it apart from conditions in numerous parts of Christian Europe, where Jews were barred from various occupations and could not settle wherever they liked. In the Islamic world a Jew (or Christian) needed only the receipt for the annual poll tax to move freely across the whole territory.c6-economic-freedom
  1041. p. 159, p. 159The Jews of medieval Islam were engaged in a wide range of activities: trade, metalwork, weaving, tanning, sugar and silk production, and also owning farmland, vineyards and orchards. The community's elite were often doctors, some in the service of Muslim rulers, families in large-scale that international trade, and religious leaders.c6-economic-activities
  1042. p. 159, p. 159, p. 521, p. 521In 750 the Umayyads that fell to the Abbasids, a competing dynasty that nearly wiped out the Umayyad ruling clan. The new rulers moved the caliphate from Damascus to Baghdad, founded in 762, and in doing so redrew the political geography of the Middle East.c6-abbasids-750
  1043. p. 159, p. 159, p. 159The Geonim, who headed the Babylonian rabbinic academies of Sura and Pumbedita, thus found themselves next to the empire's seat of power. By the ninth century both yeshivot had relocated to Baghdad, where their heads vied for influence and authority with the exilarch, the titular head of the Babylonian Jewish community.c6-geonim-political-center
  1044. p. 160The exilarch (rosh ha-golah) claimed descent from the biblical Davidic dynasty and represented the community before the caliphal authorities.c6-exilarch
  1045. p. 160Under the Abbasids Baghdad became the largest metropolis in the Islamic world and, it is estimated, the largest in the world outside China. It was the seat of the caliphate and a commercial hub, drawing immigrants from across the empire and beyond.c6-baghdad-city
  1046. p. 160, p. 160The Abbasid rulers abandoned the Umayyad practice of preferring prior Arabian notables, since plenty of non-Arabian Muslims of the Muslim East had fueled the revolt against the Umayyads. The mix of ethnic groups and religious cultures made Baghdad a cosmopolitan and creative center. Caliph al-Mansur (754 to 775) sponsored the translation into Arabic of Persian texts and of Greek philosophy and science.c6-abbasid-cosmopolitan
  1047. p. 160The book's Map 6.1 charts how Islam spread from Muhammad's time up to the start of the Abbasid caliphate in 750.c6-map-expansion
  1048. p. 160, p. 160The Jews, with their that two yeshivot and the exilarch, were part of Baghdad's cultural mix and joined the theological and philosophical discussions that grew from the meeting of Greek philosophy and monotheism. Muslims, Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians all took part in Arabic kalam, the rational theology of the day. A Muslim visitor from Spain was taken aback by a debate in which no one could cite sacred books, since opponents rejected them, and everyone had to rely on reasoned argument alone.c6-kalam-jews
  1049. p. 160, p. 161, p. 521Saadya ben Yosef (882 or 892 to 942) was the most prominent figure of Baghdad's Jewish culture. He presided as Gaon over the Sura academy from 928 until his death and was the first outsider to head one of the two Babylonian yeshivot. Born in Egypt, he translated nearly all the Bible into Arabic and contributed to Hebrew philology, drafting the first known Hebrew dictionary, as well as to liturgy and rabbinic law.c6-saadya-bio
  1050. p. 161, p. 161Writing in Arabic, and spurred by kalam and by the intellectual atmosphere of the early Abbasid caliphate, Saadya composed the Book of Beliefs and Opinions. It opens with epistemology and goes on to prove that the world was created, define God and his attributes, explain the reasons for divine law and reconcile free will with providence, all to place the Written and Spoken Torah on rational grounds.c6-saadya-beliefs-opinions
  1051. p. 161, p. 161For Saadya, revelation delivers truth to those unable to reason their way to it and guides those engaged in philosophical speculation; reason and revelation always lead to the same truth, and there can be no contradiction between philosophy and the revealed Torah. He said, for instance, that our belief in Moses does not rest on miracles alone: we asked for wonders only after hearing the message and finding it right.c6-saadya-reason-revelation
  1052. p. 161Besides being a thinker at ease with the rational theology of Muslim scholars, Saadya was a advocate of Babylonian over Palestinian rabbinic leadership.c6-saadya-babylonian-champion
  1053. p. 161, p. 161The problem facing the Israelite calendar, and the Jewish one built on it, was how to reconcile the Torah's lunar months with the agricultural, solar cycle: twelve lunar months fall about eleven days short of the solar year. Without adjustment, Passover, which the Bible sets in spring, would drift through the seasons; the rabbis therefore added an extra month in 7 years out of every 19.c6-calendar-problem
  1054. p. 161, p. 161Proclaiming the start of a lunar month, and whether a year would be a leap year, had for a long time belonged to the Jewish authorities of the Land of Israel. On sighting the nascent moon, the rabbinic court in Palestine declared the month and notified communities by a system of beacons. Until the controversy of the 920s, any discrepancy between other communities' tables and the observation in Palestine was settled in favor of the latter.c6-calendar-prerogative
  1055. p. 161, p. 161In 921 Meir Gaon of Tiberias proclaimed the calendar for the following three years, including leap years, and his version departed from the Babylonians' mathematical calculation. Rather than defer to the prerogative of the Land of Israel, Saadya saw an opportunity to assert the independence and primacy of the Babylonian academies. In the fall of 922 communities celebrated the New Year on distinct days, depending on whether they followed Palestinian or Babylonian authorities.c6-calendar-921
  1056. p. 161, p. 161In the end, it appears, the Babylonian reckoning won out, and the Jewish calendar today yet follows it, though the conflict flared up on occasion and some communities kept resisting the dominance of the Babylonian rabbis.c6-calendar-outcome
  1057. p. 161, p. 161Babylonian rabbinic culture centered on the academies of Sura and Pumbedita, which doubled as a high court. As the calendar dispute showed, they contended with the Palestinian academy for the allegiance of communities everywhere, the yeshivah of Tiberias, which moved to Jerusalem in the 10th century.c6-academies-function
  1058. p. 161, p. 161The Babylonian academies convened the kallot ('gatherings') twice yearly, in late winter and in late summer; scholars traveled from distant places with gifts from their communities and hoped to be granted titles of honor by the Geonim.c6-kallot
  1059. p. 161, p. 162Writing responsa (singular: responsum) was probably the chief means by which a Gaon exercised authority over long distances: a 'justice by correspondence' in which he drafted a legal opinion answering a specific inquiry and thereby set a precedent. The responsum has been a major part of Jewish law ever since, dealing with the order of prayers, dietary laws, marriage and divorce, that personal injury and business liability.c6-responsa
  1060. p. 161Among those accused in Minas, 64 percent were merchants and 23 percent miners, mostly middle class.c9-minas-merchants-miners
  1061. p. 161In the set of fifty-seven Minas trials Novinsky studied, none of the accused appeared engaged in the slave trade.c9-minas-no-slave-trade-sample
  1062. p. 161According to Novinsky, Minas marranos made up 42 percent of Brazilians sentenced to death by the Inquisition.c9-minas-death-share
  1063. p. 161Being a marrano in Minas was, for Novinsky, more a feeling and a worldview than a stable religious practice.c9-minas-marranism-worldview
  1064. p. 161Goodman urges that for the rabbinic movement before 70 one should privilege the Mishnah and other third-century tannaitic sources: those texts indicate study groups of sages already well established at least a century before the Temple's destruction.c-h502-goodman-tannaitic-study-groups-pre-70
  1065. p. 161For Goodman, the rabbinic oral tradition matters chiefly as perception: sages believed in it and saw Moses-derived authority through it, even when Bible and Josephus preserve no such chains.c-h502-goodman-oral-torah-perception
  1066. p. 162, p. 162With the Geonim's prestige behind them, responsa linked the most remote communities, which could use their arguments to settle questions of prayer, business, divorce, dowries and inheritance. Sustaining such correspondence over long distances owed much to the Islamic empire, which joined the great majority of medieval Jews under a common legal system and a shared Arabic-speaking culture.c6-responsa-connection
  1067. p. 162, p. 162The Babylonian Geonim's influence over the diaspora was formidable. A sign of their success: Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi (1013 to 1103), a rabbinic sage in North Africa, ruled that where the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds disagreed, the latter would take precedence. The Palestinian Talmud stayed an authoritative source, but today 'the Talmud' means the Babylonian one.c6-alfasi-bavli
  1068. p. 162, p. 162Historians generally link the Babylonian tradition's dominance to political dynamics: the Geonim found themselves at the quite center of the empire once the Abbasids made it their capital. There is no evidence that closeness to the caliphs raised their political power, but being in the empire's political, cultural and commercial hub could only widen their reach, whereas Palestine was a provincial backwater.c6-why-bavli-dominant
  1069. p. 162Ironically, though, the Babylonian school's spread and ascendancy were also linked to the waning of Abbasid power and of the Babylonian academies themselves.c6-abbasid-decline-spread
  1070. p. 162The label of illustration 6.1 notes that Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock was raised under Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik (685 to 705) on the Temple's site, and that Jerusalem acquired religious meaning in Islam and became a major destination of pilgrimage for Muslims, as it was for Jews and Christians.c6-dome-of-rock
  1071. p. 162In the eighteenth century Minas Gerais drew Portuguese New Christians seeking gold and new opportunities.c9-minas-attraction
  1072. p. 162Novinsky drew on fifty-seven unpublished trials of New Christians arrested in Minas; eleven had already been born in Brazil.c9-minas-57-trials
  1073. p. 162Nulman places Ayl Malay Rahamim (memorial for the departed) as coming into being in Western and Eastern communities for martyrs of the Crusades and the Chmielnicki massacres; Davidson lists dozens of medieval versions.cl-el-malei-crusades-chmielnicki
  1074. p. 163, p. 163The idea of prayer as a continuous obligation, repeated several times daily in a fixed sequence of blessings, seems to have taken shape over the Second Temple and rabbinic periods. The first prayer book, the siddur ('ordering'), appeared only in the Gaonic period: the earliest systematic ordering was compiled in the ninth century by Amram from the Talmud and earlier Gaonic sources, and Saadya produced another about a century later.c6-siddur-origin
  1075. p. 163, p. 163The Geonim's prayer book was substantially enlarged over the centuries with piyyutim (liturgical poems), and the Hebrew poetry of medieval Spain and the Kabbalah also left their mark. Regional variants arose (Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Italian, Yemenite), yet the service's basic structure and the very existence of a prayer book show the influence of the Gaonic effort.c6-siddur-legacy
  1076. p. 163, p. 163Communal prayer is required at three set times a day, matching the Temple's sacrifices, and calls for a quorum (minyan) of at least ten adult males. It is built around the Shema and the Amida, a sequence of 19 petitions said standing; the Kaddish, largely in Aramaic, closes sections of the service, and the mourners' version seems to have joined Jewish mourning practice in the Middle Ages. The Torah is read publicly on Mondays, Thursdays and the Sabbath.c6-prayer-structure
  1077. p. 163, p. 163In the late ninth and the tenth century a sizeable number of Jews moved out of the eastern Islamic lands (Persia and Iraq) toward the west, to Egypt, North Africa and Muslim Spain, paralleling the shift of political power to emerging centers such as Cairo, Qayrawan and Córdoba. The Babylonians carried their traditions with them and helped spread Babylonian rabbinic Judaism.c6-east-west-migration
  1078. p. 163The Muslim geography-writer al-Maqdisi (d. around 990) remarked that Fustat, old Cairo, had 'superseded' Baghdad and become the greatest glory of the Muslims.c6-maqdisi-fustat
  1079. p. 163When the Babylonian academies closed their own doors around 1040, the Babylonian rabbinic tradition already prevailed in medieval Jewish culture, reaching North Africa and Spain.c6-academies-fold
  1080. p. 163, p. 163, p. 163The Palestinian tradition stayed dominant in fixing the standard text of the Bible. The Masoretes of Tiberias, active in the eighth and ninth centuries, fixed the proper reading of the biblical text and supplied it with vowels and chanting signs. The Aleppo Codex, the oldest surviving medieval manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, was made by the Tiberian Masoretic sage Aharon ben Asher and finished about 900.c6-masoretes-aleppo
  1081. p. 163, p. 163, p. 521, p. 521In 909 the Fatimid rulers of Ifriqiya, in present-day Tunisia, set up a counter-caliphate defying the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad. Sixty that years later they conquered Egypt and soon Palestine. By the tenth century the once-united Islamic empire had begun to fragment; the Abbasid caliphate survived in name until 1258, when Mongol invaders sacked Baghdad, but power passed to rival dynasties, especially in the West.c6-fatimids-909
  1082. p. 164, p. 164The Fatimid caliphs, Shi'ites among a mostly Sunni population, were themselves something of a religious minority, which together with the large share of non-Muslims in Egypt may explain the attitude often described as tolerant toward dhimmis. Non-Muslim or newly converted courtiers were so prominent that the Fatimids were criticized; an eleventh-century author sneered that the Jews had reached the peak of their desires. Ya'qub Ibn Killis, a Babylonian Jew who converted to Islam, rose to chief minister.c6-fatimid-tolerance
  1083. p. 164, p. 164Karaites made up many of the Jews working at the Fatimid court. The name comes from the Hebrew root qara', 'to read': the Karaites rejected the authority of the Mishnah and Talmud and held that law must be derived through critical interpretation of the biblical text, without the mediation of an 'oral tradition'.c6-karaite-doctrine
  1084. p. 164, p. 164The Karaites differed from the rabbis on concrete matters: they read the biblical ban on kindling fire on the Sabbath as also forbidding letting a fire lit beforehand burn; they rejected the nonliteral reading that bars mixing meat and milk, and were therefore called 'eaters of meat with milk'; and they criticized the second festival day rabbinic Jews keep outside the Land of Israel.c6-karaite-examples
  1085. p. 164, p. 164, p. 521Karaism is generally said to have arisen in the eighth century, and by the 10th century its adherents were tracing their origins to the scholar Anan ben David. Historians today think, however, that the followers of Anan and the Karaites were initially different groups with different ideas, merged only later in the Karaite imagination.c6-karaite-origins
  1086. p. 164, p. 164, p. 164By the 10th century Karaite communities were well established across the Middle East, with their own synagogues, especially in Egypt and Palestine. Stressing the duty to dwell in the Holy Land, they formed a significant part of Jerusalem's Jewish population. After the Crusades many moved to the Byzantine Empire and some as far as Poland and Lithuania, led by Tobias ben Moses, credited with translating Karaite texts from Arabic into Hebrew.c6-karaite-communities
  1087. p. 164, p. 164Despite the success of the relocation, the Karaites drew comparatively few followers: according to Benjamin of Tudela in the twelfth century, only 500 lived in Constantinople. The great majority of medieval Jews kept to the rabbinic tradition, which weathered the challenge, though in the tenth century Karaite scholars contributed significantly to Hebrew philology, philosophy and biblical exegesis.c6-karaite-small
  1088. p. 164, p. 164, p. 165Despite the polemics, rabbinic Jews and Karaites did not live in sealed-off communities: the Cairo Genizah shows frequent mixed marriages in Egypt, with contracts settling how to reconcile the couple's practices. Karaite elites helped the Gaon of the Jerusalem yeshivah obtain appointment from the Fatimid caliph, and the Geonim of Sura and Pumbedita used Karaite merchants such as the Tustari family to dispatch responsa to Egypt and North Africa.c6-karaite-rabbinic-ties
  1089. p. 165, p. 165The yeshivah of Tiberias moved to Jerusalem in the 10th century and, because of the Crusades (Jerusalem fell in 1099), relocated first to Tyre, then Damascus, and finally to Fustat in Egypt. Egyptian Jews were closely tied to the Palestinian Gaonic leaders.c6-yeshiva-moves
  1090. p. 165, p. 165, p. 165In the last third of the 11th century a competitor to the Palestinian Gaon arose as head of Egypt's Jews: the ra'is al-yahud ('head of the Jews' in Arabic, nagid in Hebrew), appointed by the caliphal government to represent the community to Muslim authorities. The office often went to court physicians, like Maimonides, who led Egypt's Jews during the 1170s and once more from roughly 1195 until 1204; his descendants held it from the twelfth century to the fifteenth.c6-rais-al-yahud
  1091. p. 165, p. 165Some historians see the ascent of the ra'is al-yahud as an example of the shift from an 'ecumenical' to a 'territorial' organization of medieval Jewish life. In the early Abbasid and Fatimid era Jews everywhere gathered around competing spiritual hubs in Palestine and Babylonia, but by the eleventh century a different pattern had appeared: the Jews of Egypt, joined under shared territorial leaders, looked past a fading Gaonic authority. Tunisia and Muslim Spain followed, giving rise to local and regional Jewish identities.c6-territorial-communities
  1092. p. 165, p. 165The Karaite writer Daniel ben Moshe al-Qumisi, in the ninth century, urged his readers to remember Jerusalem and to follow the example of the Christians and Muslims flocking to the city as pilgrims. In the Fatimid period, Jews from Egypt, around the Mediterranean and indeed from Northern Europe went to great trouble to travel to Jerusalem for the annual Sukkot pilgrimage.c6-qumisi-pilgrimage
  1093. p. 165, p. 165, p. 521When Frankish armies took Jerusalem in 1099 they barred Jews from residing in the town; Jewish life there restarted solely once troops under Salah al-Din recaptured it 88 years later. A rabbi from nearby Aleppo testified to the Crusaders' ravages in Palestine. The book's timeline also records the devastation of Jewish institutions of learning in Jerusalem.c6-crusaders-1099
  1094. p. 165, p. 165On the whole the Crusaders had to reach an accommodation with the local population (they lost their last stronghold, Acre, in 1291), and Palestine continued to draw Jewish pilgrims and immigrants. The Spanish poet and philosopher Judah ha-Levi set out for it in 1140; in the thirteenth that century rabbis from Northern Europe migrated to the Holy Land, and Nahmanides made his home in the Land of Israel some years before dying in 1270.c6-crusader-accommodation
  1095. p. 165Once the Jerusalem yeshivah had moved to Syria and then Egypt, and the Crusades brought upheaval, the Land of Israel no longer served the later medieval Jewish world as a cultural center, let alone a political one.c6-land-of-israel-decline
  1096. p. 165, p. 165, p. 521The period of Islamic rule in Spain (Sefarad in Hebrew, al-Andalus in Arabic) is commonly recalled as a 'golden age' of Jewish history. Like Fatimid Egypt, Muslim Spain in the tenth and eleventh centuries became a center of Jewish that culture in its own right. A survivor of the defeated Umayyad dynasty had fled there, and his descendant Abd ar-Rahman III (912 to 961) founded the Córdoba Umayyad caliphate in 929 as a counter-caliphate to Baghdad.c6-andalus-intro
  1097. p. 165, p. 165, p. 166Córdoba was then an immense, refined city of perhaps 100,000 people or more, with great libraries (the caliph's reputedly held 400,000 volumes), a splendid mosque and an enormous royal palace on the outskirts, Madinat az-Zahra. Jewish observers also praised the land for its bounty and as a center of trade and culture.c6-cordoba-city
  1098. p. 165Reif notes similarities between the Seder Hibbur Berakhoth (Italian / minhag Roma rite) and Palestinian traditions documented in the Genizah, in piyyutim, morning blessings, and aspects tied to the Shema and Qedushah.cl-italian-rite-palestinian-links
  1099. p. 166, p. 167, p. 521Hasdai ibn Shaprut (919 to 970), physician and adviser to Abd ar-That Rahman III and his successor al-Hakam (961 to 976), rose at court on his reputation as a doctor, in particular his discovery of antidotes to poison. Once he had won the caliph's trust he served repeatedly as a diplomatic go-between: in negotiations with the Byzantine emperor, a shared enemy of the Abbasids, and in relations with Christian rulers in Europe.c6-hasdai-rise
  1100. p. 166, p. 166, p. 166The Muslim learned writer Sa'id al-Andalusi (d. 1070) portrayed Hasdai as guiding Sefarad's Jews toward a fresh age of learned autonomy apart from older eastern hubs. Before, Andalusian Jews had turned to those of Baghdad to learn the law and settle the calendar; Hasdai, with the caliph's help, obtained the works of Eastern Jews and taught them. For the authors this was part of a larger process: the decline of the Babylonian center and the rise of new ones.c6-saidi-hasdai
  1101. p. 166, p. 166When Scripture and other sacred writings wear out, Jews do not treat them as ordinary trash: they are buried in consecrated ground. Since digging a hole for every worn document would be inefficient, writings were placed in a repository, the genizah, until they could be buried all at once. The genizah of the Palestinian synagogue in Earlier Cairo, for reasons unknown, was never emptied and gathered thousands of books and documents over the centuries, from sacred texts to business letters, presumably because they were written in Hebrew script.c6-genizah-what
  1102. p. 166, p. 166In the mid-nineteenth century the scholar Abraham Firkovitch began mining the Cairo Genizah for books and documents and took them to Russia, where in St. Petersburg the largest collection from this cache remains. Only later in that century did Solomon Schechter, a Talmudist at Cambridge, grasp the Genizah's enormous significance, after two Scottish women brought back the Hebrew text of Ben Sira, previously known only in Greek. He carried thousands of pages to Cambridge and assembled there an enormous collection of Judeo-Arabic and Hebraic documents.c6-genizah-discovery
  1103. p. 166, p. 166The Genizah documents (letters, contracts, sales bills, wills and literary texts spanning the 10th to 12th centuries) have transformed not only medieval Jewish history but the history of the region in general, with their wealth of information on daily life, commerce, that marriage and Muslim-Jewish relations. Historians from many fields now rely on them as a window onto the Mediterranean world of a thousand years ago.c6-genizah-value
  1104. p. 167, p. 167Hasdai wrote to Joseph, king of the Khazar people, a Turkic people living north of the Black Sea whose elite had adopted Judaism. Intrigued by the idea of a sovereign Jewish state, he asked the king whether he had any word of the messiah's coming (he did not).c6-hasdai-khazars
  1105. p. 167When the Byzantine emperor sent the caliph a rare Greek manuscript on pharmacology, he also sent a monk to translate it from Greek into Latin (De Materia Medica), and it came to Hasdai to put the Latin into Arabic.c6-hasdai-translator
  1106. p. 167, p. 167Like the caliph, who supported Islamic and secular learning, Hasdai took up the patronage of arts and sciences. That Among his protégés were Menahem ben Saruq and Dunash ben Labrat, two of the foremost scholar-poets of the Hebrew language, who helped lay the foundations of the 'golden age' of Hebraic poetry in medieval Spain and whose work typified the encounter between Jewish-Hebraic and Islamic-Arabic culture.c6-hasdai-patron
  1107. p. 167, p. 167Menahem ben Saruq (c. 920 to 970) left Tortosa, in northeastern Spain, for Córdoba near the mid-tenth century, becoming Hasdai's private secretary. He wrote Hasdai's letter to the ruler of the Khazars, but later fell out of favor and composed a long poem lamenting the abuse he had suffered.c6-menahem-career
  1108. p. 167, p. 167, p. 167One of Menahem's greatest achievements was the Mahberet ('notebook'), a pioneering Hebrew dictionary that defined biblical words in Hebrew rather than translating them into another tongue such as Arabic. Written in Hebrew, it had wide impact as the main source of philological instruction for those who did not know Arabic, especially in Christian Europe, where Rashi and his grandson Jacob Tam relied on it. Its enduring fame rests on showing that Hebrew is a language governed by coherent, discernible rules.c6-mahberet
  1109. p. 167, p. 167, p. 521Dunash ben Labrat (920 to 990), who had studied under Saadya in Iraq, is credited with introducing Arabic meter into Hebraic poetry. He was also a notable grammarian: he distinguished transitive from intransitive verbs and identified Hebrew verbs as built on three-letter roots. He sharply criticized Menahem's lexicon, claiming its misunderstandings would lead to impiety.c6-dunash
  1110. p. 167, p. 167The rise of Hebraic poetry in al-Andalus shows how the Jews of medieval Islam embraced their surrounding society's cultural values and made them their own. Celebrating Hebrew was a Jewish counterpart of the Islamic that celebration of Arabic as the Qur'an's language: grammarians and poets adapted to Hebrew, the language of the Bible, the ideal of arabiyya, Arabic as the perfect, divine tongue, and Hebrew came to be seen as a 'holy tongue'. Jews also used Arabic, as a vernacular and for philosophical and scientific writing.c6-hebrew-arabiyya
  1111. p. 167, p. 167Menahem and Dunash disagreed about adapting Arabic rules to Hebrew poetry. Menahem held that Arabic standards could not be laid over Hebrew, since biblical poetry shows no discernible meter and should be the model; Dunash concluded, from the close linguistic kinship of the two languages, that Arabic poetry could and should serve as the model, and devised a technique for imitating Arabic quantitative meter in Hebrew. In the end Dunash's approach came to dominate secular (and some liturgical) poetry in medieval Spain.c6-menahem-dunash-debate
  1112. p. 168, p. 168The content of Hebrew poetry was likewise formed by the conventions of its Arabic counterpart. Despite the image of a deeply religious age, much of the poetic output was frankly secular: beside splendid religious poems, many still in the prayer book, it celebrated the courtly life of al-Andalus, wine and love. Modern readers are often most surprised by the homoerotic imagery, a sign that homosexuality was not the taboo it was in biblical law and of the influence of an Arabic Islamic culture that saw no problem with such poetry or with wine.c6-secular-poetry
  1113. p. 168, p. 168Samuel ha-Nagid (ibn Naghrela) numbers among the great names of Spanish Hebrew poetry in its eleventh-century heyday. Deeply learned in rabbinic tradition, he procured copies of the Mishnah and Talmud for scholars in Sefarad and donated olive oil to light synagogues in Jerusalem, yet much of his verse mirrors the worldly court culture of al-Andalus, where he felt at ease.c6-samuel-profile
  1114. p. 168, p. 168The poem by Samuel ha-Nagid the book quotes (urging that half the day go to God and the rest to work and drink) illustrates the balance the Hebrew poets of al-Andalus, and the Jews of the medieval Islamic world generally, struck between devotion to rabbinic culture and a secular culture shared with their neighbors: a striking appeal to worldly time in a supposedly religious era.c6-samuel-poem
  1115. p. 168, p. 168, p. 521, p. 521The Spanish caliphate lasted until the early eleventh century, when local rulers again shook off Córdoba's central power. Spain slid into civil war and the caliphate gave way to small principalities, the taifas. Their disunity emboldened the Catholic kings of the north to push back, and by the end of the eleventh century the Reconquista had won back about the northern half of the peninsula, Toledo falling to the Christians in 1085.c6-taifas
  1116. p. 168, p. 168, p. 521Despite the changed political circumstances, the 'golden age' of Jewish culture continued. Like Hasdai under the caliphate, other Jewish scholar-leaders served the taifa kings' courts, Samuel ha-Nagid foremost among them, the Muslim ruler of Granada's trusted counselor and chief minister. In several poems he hints at having commanded troops in Granada's campaigns, and his achievements arguably mark the peak of what a dhimmi could attain in medieval Islam.c6-samuel-vizier
  1117. p. 168, p. 168Samuel's son Joseph, who succeeded him in the political role, suffered a downfall that illustrates the limits of the social and religious order of the time. The Jewish chronicler Abraham ibn Daud, in the Sefer ha-Kabbalah, said he lacked his father's humility and grew haughty to his own ruin. Muslim sources corroborate the image of a Joseph overconfident in his power, entangled in palace intrigue and ethnic tension in Granada.c6-joseph-fall
  1118. p. 168, p. 168, p. 521In 1066 a violent mob rose against Joseph and killed him along with many members of Granada's Jewish community. The episode, pogrom-like, shows that even in the 'golden age' a whole community could pay for the real or alleged misdeeds of one leader, and that medieval coexistence could turn into violence. Curiously, it is hardly known from Jewish sources and is described in contemporary Muslim Arabic ones.c6-granada-1066
  1119. p. 168, p. 169Before the 1066 attack, a venomous poem against Joseph ibn That Naghrela and the Jews of Granada by a Muslim author, Abu Ishaq of Elvira, seems to have played a role; it shows poetry's social and political role and the unease of many Muslims at the rise of Jews (and Christians) to power under Islam. Even in this polemic the author felt obliged to give a legal argument: the Jews had supposedly violated their covenant, that is, the conditions of the Pact of Umar, so revenge was acceptable.c6-abu-ishaq
  1120. p. 169, p. 170According to one Muslim source some 3,000 people that were killed in the attack. The poem's legal reasoning does not change that fact, but it helps explain why such eruptions of violence were the exception, and fairly rare, in the Islamic Middle Ages.c6-1066-rarity
  1121. p. 169, p. 169As at the end of the 2nd Temple period, many medieval Jews kept messianic expectations, often heightened by turbulent events such as the Crusades, the Mongol invasion or the expulsion from Iberia. Jewish culture never developed a single picture of the messianic age: Maimonides counted messianism among Judaism's essential doctrines, but others, like Joseph Albo (c. 1380 to 1445), left it out as a central tenet. Even so, belief in a messiah in the broad sense seems to have been widely shared.c6-medieval-messianism
  1122. p. 169, p. 169, p. 169At particular times groups of Jews expected the messiah in their lifetime, sometimes within a few years or months. We know little about these movements, which centered on a charismatic individual, usually thought to be of Davidic descent, who claimed or was acclaimed as messiah; historians call them 'false messiahs' because, judged in retrospect, they did not bring redemption, though their followers did not see them so. One of the earliest was Serenus (or Severus), who advocated suspending Jewish law and was arrested and handed over by the caliph to the Jewish community for execution. Another was David Alroy, a messianic leader from twelfth-century Kurdistan.c6-false-messiahs
  1123. p. 169Maimonides tells of a messianic claimant in Yemen who, asked for proof, said 'cut off my head and I that will come back to life immediately'. His captor complied, the promised resurrection did not follow, and yet, by Maimonides's account, many foolish people kept expecting the man to rise.c6-yemen-messiah
  1124. p. 169, p. 169Medieval messianism can be that seen as the mirror image of everyday Jewish life: the messiah embodied the hope of being redeemed from diaspora conditions and returning to the Land of Israel. Even a man as well off as Hasdai ibn Shaprut asked when the promised redemption would come, a reminder that medieval Jewish life held more than earning a living or keeping a home.c6-messianism-mirror
  1125. p. 170, p. 170The book's Map 6.2 shows the Christian reconquest of Muslim Spain (Portuguese, Castilian and Aragonese) and marks Granada as the last Muslim that kingdom on Iberian soil, conquered in 1492.c6-map-reconquista
  1126. p. 170, p. 170, p. 521Two Berber dynasties from North Africa intervened to hold back the Reconquista. The Almoravids came first, entering al-Andalus in 1086 after Toledo fell and imposing a severe religious regime: on taking Granada in 1090 they destroyed and scattered its Jewish community, which had barely recovered from the violence of 1066.c6-almoravids
  1127. p. 170, p. 170, p. 521In the 1140s the Almohads, likewise North African Berbers but still more zealous, supplanted the Almoravids. Their rule brought one of the rare cases of compulsory conversion to Islam in medieval times: thousands of Jews in Northward Africa and Muslim Spain were made to convert or flee, north into Christian-held lands or east to Egypt. Few details of the Almohad persecution are known; a letter by a Jew of Moroccan origin in Egypt says the congregations of the West 'either apostatized or were killed'.c6-almohads
  1128. p. 170, p. 170The Almohad persecution drove the great sage Maimonides, born in Córdoba in 1135, to leave Spain with his family. Puzzlingly, they moved first to Fez, in Morocco, the Almohad heartland, and he later moved on to Egypt. On forced Islamization, Maimonides ruled that a temporary conversion to save one's life was allowed (Islam, being monotheistic, does not count as idolatry in Jewish law), provided the person left the persecuting country as soon as possible and went elsewhere to return to Judaism.c6-maimonides-flight
  1129. p. 170, p. 171The Almohad persecution did not end Jewish lives in Muslim al-Andalus, but it did mark the end of the 'golden age' Jews had known under Islamic rule. The center of gravity of Jewish life and culture in Iberia moved to Christian lands, to which the book returns in the next chapter.c6-golden-age-end
  1130. p. 171, p. 171, p. 171, p. 521Muslim al-Andalus proved especially fertile ground for Jewish engagement with the main cultural currents of the time, and ideas about God, creation and prophecy passed easily between authors of different religions. Bahya ibn Paquda, in the latter eleventh century, copied almost verbatim a passage from an Arabic theological text by a Christian author into his Duties of the Heart, and the same text turns up in the Islamic thinker al-Ghazzali. The Fountain of Life (Fons Vitae) by Solomon ibn Gabirol (c. 1020 to 1057) had more influence on Christian theology, in Latin translation, than the lost original ever had among Jews.c6-philosophy-exchange
  1131. p. 171, p. 171Two philosophical traditions shaped Jewish philosophy (as they did Muslim and Christian): Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism. Neoplatonism, a reading of Plato that arose in late antiquity, sees all existence as the result of an 'emanation' from a pure spiritual first principle; the farther from the source, the more material. The human soul, spiritual in origin, can free itself from the body and return to purity, and some of Gabirol's poetry voices these ideas.c6-neoplatonism
  1132. p. 171, p. 171Aristotelianism, more influential, dominated medieval Jewish that philosophy from the twelfth century far into the early modern era. Abraham ibn Daud of Spain criticized Gabirol's Neoplatonism, in Emunah Ramah, and developed in its place a Jewish engagement with Aristotle. Jewish thinkers in the Islamic world knew Aristotle through Arabic translations of his works and of Greek commentaries, and through Islamic philosophers such as al-Farabi, Avicenna and above all Averroes, born in Córdoba.c6-aristotelianism
  1133. p. 171, p. 171The Jewish Aristotelians differed from the practitioners of rational theology (kalam) and from the Neoplatonists in drawing a sharp line between philosophical and prophetic knowledge. Where thinkers like Saadya maintained that reason and faith that could always be reconciled, the Aristotelians held that these were two entirely different bodies of knowing, and philosophy needed to operate regardless of the Bible's revealed truths; only afterward could one set philosophy and religion side by side and perhaps harmonize them.c6-aristotelian-boundary
  1134. p. 171, p. 172The creation of the world preoccupied the Jewish Aristotelians, as it did their Muslim and Christian counterparts: Aristotle held that the world was eternal, while the Bible teaches that God created it. Some philosophers accepted an eternal world; others tried to defend creation from within philosophical discourse. Maimonides rejected the kalam's arguments for creation as flawed and advanced his own theory refuting Aristotle's eternal universe; Isaac Albalag, living in Christian That Europe in the thirteenth century, accepted an eternal universe as the more reasonable proposition.c6-creation-debate
  1135. p. 172, p. 172, p. 521Judah ha-Levi (c. 1075 to 1141), born in Christian Spain but living mostly in Muslim al-Andalus until he left for Palestine in 1140, worried about what rational philosophy implied for rabbinic Judaism. He wrote in Arabic a treatise, later translated into Hebrew, known as the Sefer ha-Kuzari (Book of the Khazar), defending the despised faith against Christianity, Islam, the Karaites and, above all, rational philosophy.c6-halevi-profile
  1136. p. 172, p. 172Ha-Levi framed his defense of Judaism as a conversation between a Khazar king and a rabbi. The tale is invented, although the Khazar elite's conversion to Judaism seems to be a historical fact: the king dreams that an angel tells him his intentions are that praiseworthy but his actions are not, and sets out to find the truth. He summons a philosopher, a Christian and a Muslim, none of whom convinces him, until he calls a rabbi, who lays out Judaism's principles.c6-kuzari-frame
  1137. p. 172, p. 172Through the rabbi's voice, ha-Levi sets Judaism against philosophy. Unlike Saadya, for whom there could be no final contradiction between reasoned philosophy and revealed religion, the Kuzari posits an insurmountable that difference between philosophical and prophetic knowledge: only the Jewish people possess the spirit of prophecy, and God revealed himself specifically to them. His rabbi notes, for instance, that Moses did not introduce himself to Pharaoh as sent by the God of heaven and earth.c6-kuzari-vs-philosophy
  1138. p. 172, p. 172Much of the Kuzari extols the superior qualities of the Jewish people, the Land of Israel and Hebrew, and ha-Levi even says a gentile who joins sincerely shares Israel's good fortune but is not equal to it, lacking the spirit of prophecy passed from Abraham to Isaac and Jacob and on to the people as a community of common descent. Modern readers are disturbed by this ethnocentric (some say racist) view of Jewish identity, which does not seem to have troubled his medieval readers.c6-kuzari-ethnocentrism
  1139. p. 172, p. 172Squeezed between Islam and Christendom, ha-Levi yearned for Israel. In a famous poem he lamented being at the far western end with his heart in the East: Zion bound by Edom, a frequent medieval Jewish label for Christianity, meaning the Crusaders who had taken the holy city and banished its Jews, and he by the 'chains of Arabia', an allusion to the turbulent Almoravid era. Still, he represented the literary 'golden age' of Spanish Jewry: about 800 of his poems survive, including secular verse about wine, affection, and how handsome boys and women seemed.c6-halevi-poem
  1140. p. 172, p. 173, p. 521Another sage of Spanish origin, That Moses Maimonides (Moshe ben Maimon, the Rambam, 1135 to 1204), born in Córdoba, became the commanding figure of medieval Jewry under Islam. He and his family had to leave Spain amid the Almohad persecution: they went first to Fez, and he eventually settled in Cairo, where he worked as a physician for the Fatimid court and gained authority in the Egyptian Jewish community.c6-maimonides-intro
  1141. p. 172In the Minas trials, Novinsky records New Christians tied to Bahia and Rio de Janeiro as well as Minas.c9-brazil-bahia-rio
  1142. p. 173, p. 173, p. 173Maimonides shaped Jewish culture in three ways. He ranked among its finest philosophers (working inside the prevailing current of Jewish Aristotelianism) and set out his worldview in the Guide to the Perplexed, written in Arabic. He wrote in Hebrew a classic of Jewish law, the comprehensive code Mishneh Torah. And he was a political leader, founding what became essentially a dynasty of leadership of the Egyptian Jewish community for several generations. He also wrote to the Jews of Yemen, warning them against false messiahs.c6-maimonides-roles
  1143. p. 173, p. 173, p. 173The Guide to the Perplexed (composed in the late 1180s) addressed every theme that engaged medieval philosophers: reason and prophecy, creation, the rationale of the commandments, free will versus divine foreknowledge, the existence of evil and the nature of God. That Maimonides acknowledged the limits of reason: we can know that only what God is not, and ascribing positive traits to him would be a philosophical error. The Bible's anthropomorphic language therefore had to be read metaphorically. The trouble with this rationalism was that the Aristotelians' God stayed elusive, unknowable and impersonal.c6-guide-themes
  1144. p. 173, p. 173, p. 173Saadya distinguished commandments that reason can grasp from those accepted only on revelation's authority, such as the ceremonial laws prescribing sacrifices. Maimonides disagreed: all divine commandments can be derived through reason, though a law whose reason one cannot find must still be fulfilled in full. In his bold explanation, the Temple sacrifices were essentially a concession to the customs of the time, since human nature likes what it is used to.c6-commandments-reason
  1145. p. 173, p. 173Such a historical, rational explanation raised the question of why one should yet practice the commandments once their philosophical meaning was understood. Maimonides grasped the danger of philosophical study: the Guide was not meant for the 'vulgar' or for beginners, nor for those who had studied only the science of the Law, since philosophy was the highest form of understanding but perilous for the uninitiated, who could be led away from Jewish law and tradition. He compared it to water: whoever can swim brings pearls up from the sea floor; whoever cannot, drowns.c6-maimonides-danger
  1146. p. 174, p. 174Within medieval Islamic culture, Maimonides's philosophy earned wide esteem. After Samuel ibn Tibbon rendered the Guide from Arabic into Hebrew, in 1204, Jewish readers in Christian Europe came to know it as well. Some adopted rational philosophy, and Jewish Aristotelian thinking thrived among scholars in northern Spain and southern France, Levi ben Gershon (That Gersonides) of fourteenth-century Provence being the most notable example.c6-guide-translation
  1147. p. 174, p. 174, p. 175Others regarded Maimonides's philosophy as a grave danger to Jewish tradition. In the 1230s a fierce quarrel broke out among Jewish thinkers in Spain and France, with excommunications and counter-excommunications traded between pro- and anti-Maimonidean camps; the polemic flared again in the early 1300s, when opponents issued a ban on studying philosophy and science under the age of 25. The ban could that hardly be enforced, not least because the decree exempted students of medicine.c6-maimonidean-controversy
  1148. p. 174The caption of Figure 6.2 presents the statue of Maimonides (1135 to 1204) in Córdoba, where he was born, as the eminent medieval sage of rabbinic law and philosopher.c6-statue-caption
  1149. p. 175, p. 175A text by Joseph ben Judah ibn Aknin, written in Arabic around 1180, lays out a plan of study to age 20 that begins with traditional Jewish sources and climbs to Greek philosophy and science: reading and writing; Pentateuch, Prophets and Writings with attention to vocalization, then the Mishnah up to age ten and Hebrew grammar; Talmud from fifteen, with deeper understanding and independent thought at eighteen; religious poetry and verse of beauty.c6-aknin-curriculum
  1150. p. 175, p. 175Only once the Talmud was firmly absorbed came philosophical observations on religion (refuting the errors of apostates and heretics) and then philosophy, in three groups (mathematical sciences, natural sciences and metaphysics), all preceded by logic, which serves as an instrument and keeps the mental powers in order.c6-aknin-philosophy
  1151. p. 175, p. 175Through most of the medieval and early modern centuries, until the Jewish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century revived interest in his philosophy, people knew Maimonides mainly for the Mishneh Torah ('repetition of the law'). He was not the first medieval rabbi to compile a full digest of Jewish law: a century before, Isaac Alfasi, who headed the rabbinic academy at Lucena near Córdoba, had done the same.c6-mishneh-torah-reputation
  1152. p. 175, p. 175The Mishneh Torah was nonetheless a major innovation. Maimonides used a plain Hebrew patterned on Mishnaic language, to reach as wide an audience as possible; he rearranged the vast material of classical rabbinic literature into chapters by subject, making the code more accessible; and he gave up the ambiguity and back-and-forth typical of Talmudic argument, presenting clear legal rulings concisely. Although Jewish law today sometimes differs from his rulings, the work remains one of the great pieces of medieval rabbinic literature.c6-mishneh-torah-innovations
  1153. p. 176, p. 176, p. 176The study of the Bible also saw much innovation in the Middle Ages, and again al-Andalus was a major center. The running commentary on the biblical text arose, many examples still appearing in the traditional Jewish printed Bible called the Mikraot Gedolot ('big Scriptures'). Two modes of interpretation stand out: derash, which seeks to go beyond the explicit sense and draw out latent senses suggested by grammar, diction or spelling; and peshat, the plain sense, which tries to understand the text in its literary and linguistic context.c6-bible-commentary
  1154. p. 176, p. 176Commentators made great advances in understanding the peshat with the grammatical and philological tools they learned from Muslim scholars, who developed those fields through study of the Qur'an. Relying on peshat also helped against rival readings, such as those of Christian theologians, since its principles were shared across religions, unlike the more figurative Jewish midrash or Christological readings.c6-peshat-muslim-tools
  1155. p. 176, p. 176, p. 176, p. 521One of the most famous commentators was Abraham ibn Ezra (1089 to 1164), a close friend of Judah ha-Levi, who used Arabic grammatical science to reason out the Bible's contextual meaning. Also a poet, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer, he is remembered chiefly for his commentary, the first in the Islamic world scripted in Hebrew rather than Arabic. He sought a compromise between those relying on midrash and those trying to understand the Bible by reason alone; some of his suggestions, such as that the second half of Isaiah was written after the exile, anticipate modern biblical scholarship.c6-ibn-ezra
  1156. p. 176, p. 176The need for commentary shows the peculiar mix of conservatism and innovation of the Jewish Middle Ages, an innovation fostered by the encounter with Muslim intellectual culture. Most of the Bible was already over a thousand years old, and the Talmud was harder still to understand. Through reason, commentators unraveled the puzzles of these texts, while Maimonides tried to cut through the tangled structure of Talmudic argument to a clear and, in his view, reasoned summary of the Oral Torah. Philosophy, poetry and biblical commentary all show Jews' religious traditionalism and their openness to outside ideas.c6-commentary-mix
  1157. p. 176, p. 176Most medieval Jews were neither poets nor philosophers, and the average person's life was hardly shaped by debates between Jewish That Aristotelians like Maimonides and their critics. Fortunately, a vast number of medieval documents survived in a storage room of a synagogue in Old Cairo and give a glimpse toward the everyday lives of Jews in the Islamic world between the 10th and twelfth centuries.c6-ordinary-lives
  1158. p. 176, p. 176By the tenth century, when records from the Genizah become abundant, two shifts in population had remade the Jewish world: movement from east to west, which meant Babylonia's relative decline and the rise of new centers in Egypt, North Africa and Spain; and urbanization. In pre-Islamic Babylonia many Jews still lived in the countryside, but the Islamic conquest set off a gradual move to the cities, partly because of special taxes on non-Muslim landowners and partly because of the opportunities of the cosmopolitan centers.c6-urbanization
  1159. p. 177, p. 177One still reads of Jews owning orchards, fields or herds in the tenth or eleventh centuries, but they usually left farmland to local agents. By and large they had turned into a city-based, highly mobile society, as Genizah letters show. Hundreds of letters put Jewish traders of Sijilmasa (Morocco) or Seville (Iberia) in close touch with partners in Cairo and places as remote as Samarkand, Constantinople and India's ports.c6-urban-mobile
  1160. p. 177, p. 177, p. 178A great merchant family deserves mention, though its scale was unusual: the Radhanites, dealers in silks, slaves, furs and swords, whose business extended to Europe and China. A Muslim chronicler described them: they spoke Arabic, Persian, Greek, Frankish, Andalusian and Slavonic and traveled from West to East and back by land and sea, crossing Egypt and the Red Sea toward India and China, from where they brought musk, aloeswood, camphor and cinnamon. Map 6.3 shows their circuit.c6-radhanites
  1161. p. 177, p. 177Islamic rule helped such far-flung trade by introducing newer, safer vessels, building more lighthouses and uniting a territory from the Atlantic coast to India under an Arabic-speaking Islamic culture. Even after the Abbasid caliphate's demise, political borders did that not permanently disrupt what could be called, anachronistically, a vast free-trade area.c6-islamic-trade
  1162. p. 177, p. 177Most Jewish merchants operated on a more modest scale, but the Genizah preserves many documents of families keeping close trading ties with Jews in other lands. Partners were often relatives, and marriage politics were that another way of forging alliances among merchant families in different places. It was not an exclusively Jewish operation: the letters mention cooperation with Muslim traders, especially in organizing overland travel, usually by caravan.c6-merchant-networks
  1163. p. 177, p. 177, p. 177High-profile luxury trade exposed Jewish traders to extortion, since they could be accused of subverting the inferiority of dhimma. An early-11th-century letter sent by the Taherti brothers from Qayrawan (Tunisia) toward Cairo's Tustari brothers asks them to repurchase robes a man had seized by imposition. According to Goitein, Taherti may have been forced to sell the garments to a Muslim, perhaps a competitor, who might have warned that he would cite the Pact of Umar and denounce him for wearing luxury clothes. It did not stop him from entrusting his goods to Muslim merchants' caravans.c6-taherti-letter
  1164. p. 177, p. 177, p. 179In the second half of the twelfth century an anonymous Jewish convert of Toledo wrote a defense of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the fulfilment of prophecy; the work survives only because a Muslim polemicist of Córdoba (al-Imam al-Qurtubi) refuted it. Skarsaune places him in the Toledan circle of translators and polemicists, after Petrus Alfonsi and before the thirteenth-century Dominican turn.cjb-toledo-anonymous-convert
  1165. p. 177Nulman places Ayn Kaylohaynu in the pioneering Siddur linked to Rav Amram (around 875), already in its present form by Rashi's time; Rashi says it was prescribed for Shabbat because the Tefillah has only seven blessings instead of eighteen/nineteen.cl-ein-keloheinu-amram
  1166. p. 178, p. 178It has often been said that Jewish communities enjoyed legal autonomy under Islam. But in the conditions reflected in the Genizah documents, each individual dhimmi was personally liable for remitting his own poll tax to the state; the government consulted Christian and Jewish leaders in assessing the overall tax burden, but the community did not collect that tax (practice may have differed elsewhere and in other periods).c6-poll-tax-individual
  1167. p. 178, p. 178, p. 178Islamic courts often got involved in internal Jewish affairs. The Muslim government, for example, would seize part of the inheritance of a Jew who left only female heirs, since under Islamic law a daughter never inherited more than half her father's estate, whereas under Jewish law the daughters would have been entitled to all of it. But Jews also turned to Muslim courts on their own initiative, when differences in inheritance law would benefit them, and to register contracts such as the sale of a house.c6-islamic-courts
  1168. p. 178, p. 178, p. 178Some individuals directly challenged the rabbis' authority by taking their case to a Muslim judge. In Maimonides's time a Jewish man who was a kohen, barred by Jewish law from marrying a divorced woman, contracted the marriage before a Muslim judge. When community leaders wanted to cut the poetic insertions in the liturgy, their adversaries readily brought in the Muslim authorities; and opponents of reforms by Moses's son Abraham Maimonides in the Cairo synagogue (a new seating plan, no cushions, a revised liturgy) denounced the plan to the sultan.c6-challenge-rabbis
  1169. p. 178, p. 178Cooperation among traders and even stable partnerships between members of distinct religious communities were common. With no residential restrictions, Jews and Muslims frequently lived side by side and, sharing Arabic as a language, had plenty of daily contact. In the twelfth century Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish traveler from Christian Europe, visited many Middle Eastern cities and wrote an extensive travelogue.c6-neighbors
  1170. p. 179, p. 179Benjamin remarked in surprise that Jews and Muslims appeared to share even some religious customs, for instance honoring saints' tombs. At the pilgrimage to the burial grounds of the prophet Ezekiel in Babylonia, between the New Year and the Day of Atonement, the Jews rejoiced greatly; the head of the diaspora and the heads of the academies came from Baghdad, Arab merchants arrived as well and distinguished Muslims also came to pray, so great was their love for the prophet.c6-ezekiel-tomb
  1171. p. 179, p. 179, p. 179None of this means a community like medieval Cairo knew no tension. The Judeo-Arabic letters of the Genizah minted the word sinut (Hebraic in origin, missing from scripture and Talmudic literature), to denote anti-Jewish hatred. Maimonides, a respected court physician who headed Egypt's Jewish community, observed darkly in a letter to the Jews of Yemen that God had cast them into the midst of the nation of Ishmael, which persecutes them severely and devises ways to harm and debase them. Jews of the Genizah era, then, knew good times and bad.c6-sinut
  1172. p. 179, p. 179One strand of Jewish commerce needs attention because antisemites have exploited it: the trade in slaves. The claim that Jews controlled the slave trade in past ages deliberately distorts history, though it is true that that Jews in the Islamic world took part in it, as did Muslims and Christians of the same era, that all trading in and owning slaves.c6-slave-trade-distortion
  1173. p. 179, p. 179What was perhaps distinctive about Jewish slave owning was the legal issues raised by the possibility of conversion to The Jewish faith. Biblical law distinguished Israelite from non-Israelite slaves, and the former had protections the latter lacked, which gave non-Jewish that slaves an incentive to convert. A master was forbidden to compel conversion, but a slave could choose to convert, and for some this evidently opened a path to freedom, which accounts for Christian efforts to bar Jews from owning Christian slaves.c6-slave-conversion
  1174. p. 179, p. 179A large share of the Jewish that community, in medieval Cairo as in other places, lived in deep poverty. In that age the government did not concern itself with welfare, though prominent court members made pious private endowments for the poor, and the community also tried to ease poverty. In the Mishneh Torah Maimonides ruled that the poor should be given what they lack (clothing, furnishings, help to marry); the highest form of charity was to give a fellow Jew an opportunity to earn his own living.c6-poverty-charity
  1175. p. 179, p. 179, p. 180A frequent challenge was supporting poor foreigners, such as refugees who came to Cairo hoping for a better life; a letter of solicitation from the Genizah, by a man from Rahba in Iraq, shows such hopes were sometimes disappointed. Another was supporting communities elsewhere, above all in the Holy Land, and ransoming Jews captured by pirates. A mid-eleventh-century letter from Alexandria to Old Cairo concerns three captives whom Byzantine soldiers had plundered: forty of the fifty dinars needed were still lacking, and the communities of Fustat were asked to take them on.c6-refugees-captives
  1176. p. 180, p. 180Pirates were just one of the hazards of travel, and many long-distance merchants died on the road. Maimonides grieved for years over his brother David, a merchant who drowned in the Indian Ocean. A common difficulty was what became of the wives left at home: if the husband failed to return and there was no proof of death, the woman stayed tied to him, unable to remarry or collect the money guaranteed in her marriage contract, becoming an agunah. Among both Muslims and Jews it was common for a husband to grant his wife a conditional divorce before leaving.c6-travel-agunah
  1177. p. 180, p. 180, p. 180Marriage was usually an arrangement between two families that served the economic interests of each, and endogamy, particularly among first cousins, was common because it kept capital (the dowry) inside the extended family. The choice of spouse was usually the bride's father's, but there are cases of brides defying others' plans, and legally a woman could that not be married against her will. A Genizah letter tells of Rebecca, a young Karaite woman in Jerusalem courted by two men, who in the end decided to marry neither.c6-marriage-families
  1178. p. 180, p. 180, p. 180A medieval Jewish marriage was formalized in stages: parents chose future mates and agreed the terms; then came betrothal, in which the families committed to the contract (and only a divorce could undo it), and the wedding itself, under the huppah, soon combined into one ceremony. The marriage contract, the ketubbah, bound husband and wife to care for each other's well-being; many were formulaic, like those used today, but Karaite ones, or those for mixed Karaite-rabbinic marriages, were more personalized and detailed.c6-marriage-stages
  1179. p. 180, p. 180Polygamy remained lawful in the Islamic world, whereas Jews in Christian Europe had made monogamy the norm. Jewish communities under Islam accepted that a man might have several wives so long as he supported each, but in practice this seems to have been uncommon, and most families had a husband, a wife and, by one rough estimate from Genizah data, four children on average. Remarriage of divorced or widowed women was frequent: almost half (45 percent) of the women in the documents married more than once.c6-polygamy-remarriage
  1180. p. 180Gerber describes Jews and conversos in Spanish colonies signing on as captains or crew and often landing co-religionists or jumping ship in South America; Jewish captains knew secret coves for illegal passengers and goods.c-h502-gerber-new-world-secret-coves
  1181. p. 181, p. 181It was a male-headed society where the bulk of women relied on men (fathers and husbands) for their livelihood, and only a few, such as a wealthy widow, could live alone and take part in the city's economic life. That does not mean women had no economic role: some owned real estate they leased, lent money or entered business partnerships.c6-women-economic
  1182. p. 181, p. 181, p. 181A woman going out was expected to cover her hair and dress modestly but, unlike a Muslim woman, did not have to veil her face. Homes did not confine them: the synagogues of medieval Cairo had women's galleries and attendance seems to have been common, though women stayed barred from taking an active part in the service. They usually knew the basic Hebrew prayers, but few were formally schooled, and studying the Bible and rabbinic texts was reserved for men. There were exceptions, such as a Genizah poem attributed to the wife of Dunash ben Labrat, whose name is unknown, and women went to the public baths and traveled, often without their husbands.c6-women-public-life
  1183. p. 181, p. 181Just as in late antiquity, the synagogue stayed at the center of communal life: a place of prayer and Torah reading, but also the hub of every communal matter. The rabbinic court met there, children's classes were held, travelers were hosted and open charity was dispensed: in Cairo, bread to the poor twice a week and, occasionally, wheat, clothing or cash. The subcommunities each kept their own synagogues (Babylonian, Palestinian, Karaite), though the division was not so clear-cut and people sometimes switched from one congregation to another.c6-synagogue-center
  1184. p. 181, p. 181As the community's main public space, the synagogue was where communal hierarchies were put on display (through seating, for instance) and where public bans against transgressors of rabbinic prerogative were declared. It was also where individuals, women included, had the right to voice grievances if they that felt wronged by the legal system and, in exceptional cases, to interrupt the public prayer service and speak before the whole community.c6-synagogue-voice
  1185. p. 181, p. 181, p. 181The merchant letters of the Genizah plainly separate the lands of Islam from Christian Europe, Byzantine and Western alike, yet the border was not watertight: Jewish traders from Northern Europe and Byzantium often show up in the papers. Traffic also flowed the other way: Ibrahim b. Ya'qub, a Jewish traveler from tenth-century Spain, was amazed at finding Indian and Far Eastern spices in Mainz without difficulty, brought by trade routes across the Muslim world, and at meeting a man able to translate a manuscript on biblical cantillation from Arabic into Hebrew.c6-islam-christendom-border
  1186. p. 181The authors conclude that the gap between Jews 'under the Crescent' and those 'under the Cross' should not be overstated. The book now turns, in the next chapter, to the second group, the growing Jewish communities of Christian Europe.c6-crescent-and-cross
  1187. p. 182, p. 182Langer summarizes that major praise after the meal follows the order of Deut 8:10's verbs (eat, be satisfied, praise); after a bread meal comes Birkat HaMazon in four paragraphs, the last added by the rabbis after the Bar Kokhba revolt's failure (135 CE).cl-birkat-hamazon-dt810-model
  1188. p. 183, p. 183Splitting the medieval Jewish world between Islamic lands and Christendom has drawbacks. Communities on both sides shared a good deal: their legal standing came partly from Roman law, and cultural contact between the two areas was frequent, so each shaped the other.c7-division-problems
  1189. p. 183, p. 183The Babylonian Talmud, made in Babylonian academies and carried across the Diaspora under the Islamic empire, became rabbinic culture's supreme reference work (though never its only authority) thanks to the scholars of medieval northern Europe, beginning with Rashi (1040 to 1105). In historian Talya Fishman's phrase, the Jews became the 'people of the Talmud'.c7-talmud-people
  1190. p. 183Spain, which for much of the Middle Ages was both borderland and war zone between Islam and the Christian West, is another place where a sharp split between Jews of the Muslim world and Jews of the Christian world says little about how people lived.c7-spain-blurs
  1191. p. 183, p. 183Differences inside each area were large. What did the lone Jewish merchants of the Carolingian realm share with old urban communities such as Constantinople or Rome? Can the richly documented Jews of the Cairo Genizah stand in for the many Islamic communities we know almost nothing about?c7-internal-diversity
  1192. p. 183Local circumstances and chance often set the daily experience of medieval Jews, so any broad picture has to simplify a complicated and ever-changing reality.c7-local-circumstances
  1193. p. 183, p. 183The bond between Christianity and Judaism was unique and produced an encounter that was unusually close yet prone to friction and even violence. Christians took over the Hebrew scriptures as a portion of their own holy books (the 'Old Testament') and saw themselves as the 'new Israel', replacing the Jews as the chosen people, which colored their attitude toward the older faith.c7-christian-jewish-bond
  1194. p. 183, p. 183Jews and Christians both worked to set social and theological boundaries between their communities, yet they also affected one another. That their dialogue was usually phrased as polemic or darkened by violence should not hide that medieval Christian culture took shape in key respects as a direct answer to Judaism, and that Judaism too was reshaped by Christianity.c7-mutual-shaping
  1195. p. 183, p. 184Salo Baron denounced the 'lachrymose' tendency in much Jewish historiography: the habit of reading medieval history as a chain of persecutions running from the Crusades to the Black Death, with Jewish society doomed from the start and finished off by a run of expulsions. The authors say this gloomy view fails to honor the long stretches of Jewish life and cultural bloom in medieval Europe.c7-lachrymose
  1196. p. 184, p. 184Violence, even extreme violence, did occur, and Christian hostility toward Jews must not be played down. But neither Jewish life nor Jewish-Christian relations can be boiled down to those disasters, and dwelling on the negative cannot explain why Christian Europe's Jewish communities would eventually form a larger share of world Jewry than those in the Islamic world.c7-violence-real
  1197. p. 184, p. 184Any medieval population figure is only a rough estimate. Travelers like the twelfth-century Jew Benjamin of Tudela, together with other Jewish and non-Jewish sources, supply figures, but they are mostly untrustworthy. Salo Baron's modern 'guesstimate' serves only as an order of magnitude.c7-pop-unreliable
  1198. p. 184On Baron's estimate, around 1300 France and the 'Holy Roman Empire' (mostly German-speaking Central Europe) held about 100,000 Jews each.c7-pop-1300
  1199. p. 184, p. 184By about 1490 the Jewish population of France had shrunk to 20,000 (after expulsions from much of the country in the fourteenth century) and that of the Empire to 80,000. Southern Europe had grown instead: Italy from 50,000 to 120,000, Spain from 150,000 to 250,000 and Portugal from 40,000 to 80,000, before the expulsion from Spain in 1492.c7-pop-1490
  1200. p. 184, p. 184Eastern Europe saw spectacular growth in Jewish numbers, mostly through immigration from France and the German lands: Poland-Lithuania went from roughly 5,000 Jews in 1300 to 30,000 by 1490, and Hungary from 5,000 to 20,000. For comparison, twelfth-century Egypt is put at somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000.c7-pop-east
  1201. p. 184, p. 184Despite their wide margin of error, the figures reveal a general pattern of Jewish demographic growth in Europe, except in lands that expelled their Jews. In no medieval kingdom other than Spain did Jews exceed 1 percent of the whole population, though they were often a much larger share of town dwellers.c7-pop-trend
  1202. p. 184, p. 184Because of what they bequeathed to later Jewish cultures, the chapter's story centers on two areas: Ashkenaz (northern France and the German Empire) and Sefarad (the Christian kingdoms of medieval Spain), with some attention to Italy and other regions such as the Byzantine Empire.c7-focus
  1203. p. 184, p. 184, p. 185The Christian attitude toward Judaism and Jews was always ambiguous. Two first-century letters of the apostle Paul show it: in Romans the Jews' stumbling is not final, God has not wholly rejected them, and at the end of days they will again hold their place as the chosen people.c7-paul-ambiguity
  1204. p. 185, p. 185Galatians speaks differently: God's tie to Christians would have replaced the old covenant with the Jews. Paul equates Christians with the heirs of Isaac and assigns the Jews the role of Ishmael, driven into the desert with Hagar, suggesting that the remnants of Judaism had to be cleared away so the new faith could be fulfilled.c7-paul-galatians
  1205. p. 185, p. 185Medieval Christendom swung between two poles: Jews seen as living in error yet indispensable, and so entitled to a place in Christian society; or Jews seen as a potential danger to the purity of Christian belief and society. For most of the period the pragmatic, tolerant stance won out, but the harsher outlook of Galatians was always available to be acted on.c7-two-poles
  1206. p. 185, p. 185Augustine (354 to 430), regarded as the founder of Western Christianity, set the attitude that became dominant. Citing Psalm 59:12 ('Kill them not, lest my people forget'), he argued that Jews had an important role within Christian society and should be tolerated as 'witnesses' to Christianity's truth: they vouched for the antiquity of biblical prophecy, which Christians read as foretelling Jesus.c7-augustine-witness
  1207. p. 185, p. 185For Augustine, the Jews' life as a scattered and discriminated-against minority proved they had been punished for rejecting Jesus and showed what existence without grace looks like. He set 'carnal' Judaism, bound to the law, against 'spiritual' Christianity, freed by grace: Jewish fate was living proof of Christendom's truth.c7-augustine-foil
  1208. p. 185, p. 185This theological framework was adopted by later church leaders and, in medieval law, became a basic toleration of Jews, though not 'tolerance' in the modern sense. Pope Gregory I (590 to 604) declared that Jews were not to be unjustly restrained or wronged; the aim was a balance between imposing restrictions and an inferior rank and avoiding arbitrary treatment.c7-toleration
  1209. p. 185, p. 185The canon Sicut Iudaeis non, which first appeared in the twelfth century and was repeated by nearly all later popes, restated the Augustinian balance: it prescribed an inferior place for Jews but granted them basic guarantees and legal protection. The treatment differed sharply from the Church's attitude to other religions, above all Islam, viewed as an enemy of Christendom.c7-sicut-iudaeis
  1210. p. 185In a letter of 1063, Pope Alexander II spelled out the contrast: the Jewish question was a wholly separate case from that of the Saracens (Muslims), since the latter actively waged war on Christians while the former were everywhere ready to be subservient.c7-alexander-ii
  1211. p. 185, p. 185The Jews' peculiar position was also conveyed through images: sculptures on church facades, stained glass and illuminated manuscripts showed two women, Ecclesia (Christendom) and Synagoga (the Jews). Synagoga, head bowed, staff broken and eyes bound, stands for divine chastisement; Ecclesia, proud, crowned and holding an intact scepter, stands for Christian triumph. Each figure needs the other: the message only emerges from the contrast.c7-ecclesia-synagoga
  1212. p. 185, p. 185Christianity began as the faith of a small minority in the Roman Empire. It was in 313 that Constantine became a Christian emperor, and Christianity in time became the official religion. The process was not straight: Julian, the last pagan emperor, who ruled briefly in the early 360s, tried and failed to turn back the empire's Christianization.c7-constantine-julian
  1213. p. 186, p. 186Roman imperial law had long recognized Judaism's status, and Jews were citizens of the empire. The first-century rebellion against Roman rule in Judea did not alter Jews' legal position elsewhere. Even once the empire was Christian, state and Church interests never fully coincided, and across the whole Middle Ages the two frequently competed for authority over the Jews.c7-roman-law-status
  1214. p. 186, p. 186In 388 a bishop in Mesopotamia allowed a synagogue to be burned. Emperor Theodosius I rebuked him and ordered it rebuilt, which angered Ambrose, bishop of Milan, who excommunicated the emperor. Theodosius gave way at first, but a few years later declared every attack on synagogues a serious crime.c7-theodosius-388
  1215. p. 186, p. 186In the 430s Theodosius II (408 to 450) redefined the Jews' legal position to fit the empire's new Christian character. His Theodosian Code reaffirmed Jewish citizenship and protection against arbitrary loss of rights, but lumped 'Jews, Samaritans, Heretics, and Pagans' into a single section and added fresh restrictions.c7-theodosian-code
  1216. p. 186, p. 186Under the Code, Jews could not hold public office or any authority over Christians, build new synagogues, or convert a Christian to Judaism, the last on pain of death and forfeiture of property.c7-theodosian-restrictions
  1217. p. 186, p. 186Later imperial law codes, such as Justinian's (527 to 565) in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, added further limits. Because Justinian saw himself as head of both Church and state, his code undermined the Jews' standing still more: they lost any legal autonomy and their testimony against Christians was no longer accepted in court.c7-justinian
  1218. p. 186, p. 186Diocletian divided the Roman Empire in two in 286 CE; the western half fell to invasions from the north and its last emperor, Romulus Augustus, was deposed in 476. New dynastic kingdoms arose in Spain, England, France and elsewhere. In 800 Charlemagne was crowned emperor by the pope; after the death of his son Louis the Pious in 840 the empire split in three, and the eastern part became known as the Holy Roman Empire.c7-roman-fall-carolingians
  1219. p. 186, p. 186In the Carolingian Empire Jews kept the collective rights they had under Roman law. The emperors, above all Louis the Pious, went further and granted privileges to individual Jewish merchants, with special rights and protection meant to boost trade.c7-carolingian-privileges
  1220. p. 186, p. 186A typical Carolingian charter placed a certain R. Domatus and his nephew Samuel under royal protection: it exempted them from taxes, residence fees and road tolls, let them trade and sell their goods, live by their own laws and hire Christian workers (except on Christian feast days and Sundays). It set witness rules for disputes with Christians and a penalty of ten pounds of gold to the palace for anyone who killed them, so long as they stayed loyal to the emperor.c7-carolingian-charter
  1221. p. 186, p. 186The charter records Jewish complaints about Christians who pushed Jews' slaves into baptism as a way of escaping their masters. The emperor sided with the Jews on this point, decreeing that no one could baptize a Jew's slave without the owner's consent.c7-slave-baptism
  1222. p. 186, p. 187Such ample rights angered church leaders like Agobard, bishop of Lyon, who in 833 joined a rebellion against Louis the Pious. Agobard denounced the decree as contrary to Church law, which insisted on Jewish inferiority and forbade any fraternizing with Jews, and barred those who fraternized and dined with Jews from breaking bread with the priests.c7-agobard
  1223. p. 187Figure 7.1 in the book shows medieval statues of the Church (a proud, victorious woman) and the synagogue (a blindfolded woman with a broken scepter) from the cathedral at Bamberg, Germany, built in the thirteenth century; comparable images stood in numerous other Christian-European sites, Notre Dame in Paris among them.c7-bamberg-figure
  1224. p. 187, p. 187Up to roughly the tenth century, Jews in the Carolingian realm as a group held a legal standing informed by the Roman-law inheritance. Over time that standing eroded, and the charters once issued to individual merchants became the sole basis of Jewish existence in the empire.c7-carolingian-erosion
  1225. p. 187, p. 188As historian Kenneth Stow observed, from the late eleventh century Jews no longer lived in a territory by inherent right: residence came to rest on a charter a ruler granted to the whole community. The terms were sometimes quite generous, but now the entire community depended on privileges, and Jews who once held an inherent status under Roman law came to rely on individual patrons.c7-stow-charter
  1226. p. 188, p. 188As political power splintered across the Holy Roman Empire, by the end of the eleventh century it was local rulers, not the central imperial authorities, who granted Jews privileges, took responsibility for protecting them and were free to withdraw those privileges whenever convenient.c7-fragmented-power
  1227. p. 188, p. 188An eleventh-century charter for an entire community that illustrates the point is the one issued in 1084 by Bishop Rüdiger of Speyer (surnamed Huozmann). Wishing to turn the village into a city and enrich it with Jews, he settled them outside the other burghers' quarter and ringed them with a wall against the rabble. He gave them free exchange of gold and silver, trade, church land for a cemetery, and a Jewish leader to settle disputes, with appeal to the bishop. He declared the status more generous than any Jews held in the German kingdom.c7-speyer-charter
  1228. p. 188, p. 188The protection promised by local charters was fragile, since it hinged on the goodwill and strength of the authorities who had issued them, as the First Crusade would show. The Jews' legal status stayed ambiguous and set them apart from everyone: they were not treated like townspeople, yet they were not foreigners either.c7-charter-fragile
  1229. p. 188, p. 188As monarchs centralized power, Jews came to depend on royal authority. Frederick I Barbarossa made this explicit in 1157, declaring that the Jews were in the Crown's protective custody 'because they pertain to our chamber'. In 1234 Frederick II declared the empire's Jews to be servi, 'serfs', of the royal treasury.c7-royal-chamber
  1230. p. 188, p. 188In other European kingdoms too, rulers claimed the Jews as Crown 'property': Richard I of England (1189), Duke Frederick II of Austria (1244) and Boleslav of Poland (1264). A thirteenth-century Castilian legal compilation, the Libro de los fueros de Castilla, held that Jews belong to the king even when they stand under nobles, knights or monasteries.c7-property-crown
  1231. p. 188, p. 188Royal protection could help Jews, but it bound them to a singular status that set them apart from the rest of society. Because townspeople linked them with royal power, attacking Jews became a way to show discontent with the Crown: in Girona in 1320 it was reported that some people, scorning royal authority, threw rocks and hurt Jews. Sole reliance on the Crown also left Jews open to unchecked exploitation.c7-royal-protection-cost
  1232. p. 188, p. 188The king could tax Jews at his discretion. In England a series of levies across the thirteenth century ruined much of English Jewry and cut its economic value to the Crown. In 1290, needing revenue from the landed nobility, Edward I seized the debts owed to Jews, let knights repay the treasury without the interest, got the immediate payment he wanted and yielded to religious and economic pressure to expel the Jews from the kingdom for good.c7-edward-tallages
  1233. p. 189, p. 189The thirteenth century saw not only the expulsion of Jews from England but also a stiffening of the Catholic Church's attitude. In reaffirming Sicut Iudaeis, Innocent III (1198 to 1216) left no doubt about his feelings: he spoke of 'Jewish perfidy', worthy of condemnation, yet said Jews should not be severely oppressed since through them the truth of the Christian faith is shown.c7-thirteenth-hardening
  1234. p. 189, p. 189The Fourth Lateran Council, which Innocent III called in 1215, dealt among much else with the Jews' place in Christian society. It condemned 'immoderate usury' (lending at excessive interest), restated the old ban on Jews holding positions of authority and stressed social segregation: in every Christian province, Jews and Saracens of either sex were to be visibly set apart from other peoples through their clothing.c7-lateran-iv
  1235. p. 189, p. 189The decree suggests that socializing across religious lines was common and that across much of Christian Europe Jews were indistinguishable from Christians. The prospect of a Jewish man sleeping with a Christian woman (even a prostitute) was seen as endangering Christian society's purity; a thirteenth-century Castilian code prescribed death for Jews who lived with Christian women.c7-lateran-mixing
  1236. p. 189, p. 189The worry reached beyond sex. The Siete partidas of Alfonso X of Castile also barred Christians from inviting Jews to eat or drink, from accepting their invitations or from drinking wine they had made. Any social contact could breach the ideal order of Christian society, though Jewish leaders were just as uneasy about unrestrained mixing, sexual encounters above all.c7-siete-partidas-food
  1237. p. 189, p. 189The Lateran IV solution, familiar from Islamic rules for religious minorities, was distinction by dress. Secular Christian rulers carried out the vague order by requiring Jews to sew a special badge on their clothes so that they were easily recognized as Jews and thus marked as social outcasts. How far such rules were enforced is hard to tell and varied from place to place.c7-badge
  1238. p. 189, p. 189Though more anxious, the thirteenth-century Church remained tied to Gregory I's traditional stance. In the 1230s Pope Gregory IX defended Jews against arbitrary treatment and exploitation by secular authorities: writing to the archbishops and bishops of France he warned that certain lords tormented Jews cruelly to extract what they demanded.c7-gregory-ix-protection
  1239. p. 189, p. 189The same Gregory IX opened a fresh phase in the clash with Judaism when he answered a charge brought in 1236 by Nicholas Donin, a Jewish convert to Christianity. Donin wrote a text of 35 accusations against the Talmud, portraying it as blasphemous, insulting to Christianity and proof that Jews had strayed from the books of the Old Testament. The pope wrote to the kings of Catholic Europe asking them to seize every copy, but only in Paris did anything follow.c7-donin-charges
  1240. p. 189, p. 189In 1242 a trial of the Talmud was staged in Paris. The Inquisition, predictably, found the charges well founded, and twenty-four cartloads of Talmud manuscripts and other rabbinic works went up in flames in public.c7-paris-trial
  1241. p. 189, p. 189Annette Yoshiko Reed argues that 'Jewish-Christian' texts and groups (including Pseudo-Clementine material) do not fit a modern schema that treats Judaism and Christianity as closed categories. Some late antique authors and communities treated Jesus as a distinctive actor in the story of salvation while still finding no clash with Torah observance and the ongoing validity of God's covenant with Israel.cjb-reed-pseudo-clementines
  1242. p. 189, p. 189, p. 9In later medieval Europe some Jews who converted to Christianity became polemicists against Judaism. Nicholas Donin brought the pope, in 1236, thirty-five charges against the Talmud; the Paris trial (1242) ended with the public burning of manuscripts. Pritz cites Donin and, later, Pfefferkorn as examples of converts hostile to the tradition they left.cjb-donin-convert-polemic
  1243. p. 190, p. 190Some Christian theologians preferred that the Talmud be censored, not destroyed: new Christian interest in it had convinced them that rabbinic texts themselves could serve the polemical assault on Judaism. Just as earlier theologians had interpreted the Hebrew Bible through Christ, they now asserted the Talmud and other ancient Jewish texts held veiled references to Jesus.c7-censor-talmud
  1244. p. 190, p. 190In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Spain witnessed several staged public disputations in which a Christian champion, typically a Jewish convert who knew both traditions, tried to prove that, read correctly, the Talmud vindicated Jesus as messiah and that Jews erred in rejecting Christianity.c7-spanish-debates
  1245. p. 190, p. 190The best known of these contests occurred in the summer of 1263 in Barcelona: the convert Pablo Cristiani confronted Moses ben Nahman (Nahmanides), counted among the foremost rabbis of the day, in a debate summoned by King James I of Aragon. Two accounts were written, a Christian one in Latin and Nahmanides's reply in Hebrew, and he proved a brilliant debater.c7-barcelona-1263
  1246. p. 190, p. 190Nahmanides's own account makes it seem that he 'won' the debate. But when it came to the Dominican friars' notice, his written polemic was judged a blasphemous insult to Christianity and he was forced to leave Spain, eventually settling in the Holy Land. It appears he meant his reply as a guide for Jews who found themselves having to refute Christian religious polemics.c7-nahmanides-fate
  1247. p. 190Spain staged further debates of this kind at Majorca (1286), Avila (1370s) and Pamplona (1375).c7-other-debates
  1248. p. 190, p. 190King James I of Aragon, who employed Jews and Muslims in running his kingdom, actively backed the missionary campaign to win over the Jews. As early as 1242 he even decreed that Jews and Muslims must attend missionary sermons by Dominican and Franciscan friars, promising that state officials would compel any reluctant person to appear.c7-james-missionary
  1249. p. 190Despite the Church's increasingly hostile attitude and growing pressure to convert, Jewish culture kept flourishing across Christian Europe in the thirteenth century, and the Jewish communities of northern Europe and the Mediterranean continued to grow.c7-culture-flourished
  1250. p. 190, p. 190Though less common than Jewish conversions to Christianity, there are cases of conversion from Christianity to Judaism, often of clerics trained in Scripture. Bodo, chaplain to Emperor Louis the Pious, converted to Judaism in 838, took the Hebrew name Eliezer and fled to Muslim Spain, where he stayed for the rest of his life.c7-bodo-eliezer
  1251. p. 190, p. 190Jewish households could include slaves and servants, who sometimes took on their masters' religion. Jewish law encouraged circumcising and converting non-Jewish slaves, and most converts to Judaism probably came from this group. Once converted and freed, they held full standing as formal proselytes and the protection of Jewish law.c7-slave-converts
  1252. p. 190, p. 190Slave conversion troubled Christian authorities deeply, and they sought to block it. In 633 a church council meeting at Toledo (the fourth held there) issued a text called 'On the Keeping of Slaves': Jews were not to own or purchase Christian slaves, and any they held were to be removed from their control and freed. The line between Christianity and Judaism stayed clear because Christian authorities policed it too, not only because Jews defended it.c7-toledo-633
  1253. p. 190, p. 190Today the great majority of Jews are Ashkenazi, and Jewish culture as now known, particularly in North America, carries an Ashkenazi flavor. Yet well into the eleventh century, Ashkenaz sat at the far edge of Jewish life: most Jews in antiquity and the early Middle Ages lived in Mediterranean lands and the Middle East, and a Jewish presence in northern Europe took shape only slowly.c7-ashkenaz-backwater
  1254. p. 190, p. 190In 1263 in Barcelona, King James I forced Nahmanides to debate Pablo Cristiani, a Jewish convert to Christianity. It was the best known of medieval Spain's staged debates: two accounts survive (a Christian Latin one and Nahmanides's Hebrew reply).cjb-pablo-cristiani-barcelona
  1255. p. 191, p. 191For medieval Jews, 'Ashkenaz', a place name found three times in the Bible, meant a zone covering the communities of the German Empire and northern France (the latter sometimes called 'Tsarfat'). By the twelfth century the cultural identities of Ashkenaz and Tsarfat had grown more distinct, though the two regions stayed in close touch.c7-ashkenaz-definition
  1256. p. 191, p. 191In Carolingian times (Charlemagne and Louis the Pious), several Jewish merchants came over the Alps out of Italy and settled in German-Empire towns, chiefly along the Rhine. Through the eleventh century the leading northern community was Mainz; others arose at Speyer, Worms, Cologne, Regensburg and Trier.c7-rhineland-merchants
  1257. p. 191, p. 191Jewish settlement in the towns of Ashkenaz was small compared with the big urban communities of the Islamic world, and the overall count was small beside medieval Spain's Jews. Around 1000 there may have been just 4,000 or 5,000 Jews in the German Empire; some scholars put the figure near 100,000 by the 1300s, scattered over a thousand towns.c7-ashkenaz-numbers
  1258. p. 191, p. 191Southern France, especially Provence, had old Jewish communities tied to Catalonia and Christian Spain. Of northern France before the year 1000 very little is known; afterward regions such as Normandy and Champagne drew Jewish merchants (later pulled into moneylending) and became centers of learning. Troyes was Rashi's city. In England, Jews of French origin began to settle after the Norman conquest of 1066.c7-northern-france
  1259. p. 191, p. 191As Speyer's charter shows, Jews generally had the right to judge their own internal affairs. Like everyone, they were ultimately subject to royal power, and they found a basis for this in the Talmudic principle dina de-malkhuta dina, 'the law of the kingdom is law'. Even so, as a tight group set apart from Christian society, they had wide room to run their own affairs by Jewish law, guided by rabbinic and lay leaders who were more intertwined in Ashkenaz than elsewhere.c7-self-government
  1260. p. 191, p. 191Every community stood on its own and local custom carried special weight in Ashkenaz; no supreme religious authority above the localities, and no clear chain of command, ever emerged. In some places kings named someone to oversee the Jews (the Presbyter of the Jews in England, the Rab de la Corte of Castile), but these officials were go-betweens with the government, not superiors in matters of Jewish law. Rabbis from various places sometimes met in irregular synods; mostly, authority lay with the local rabbi or with leaders whose prestige came from scholarly renown, not from an office.c7-no-supreme-authority
  1261. p. 191, p. 191Several scholars shaped Ashkenazi Jewry profoundly, in their own lifetimes and afterward: Gershom ben Judah, known as Rabbenu Gershom (died 1040); Solomon ben Isaac, or Rashi (died 1105); Jacob ben Meir Tam, or Rabbenu Tam (died 1171); and Meir ben Barukh of Rothenburg (died 1293).c7-ashkenaz-leaders
  1262. p. 191, p. 191Rabbenu Gershom is credited with decrees (takkanot) that gave medieval Ashkenazi culture its legal outline, among them bans on polygamy and on divorcing a wife without her consent. A further rule credited to him held that once a majority of a community's leadership approved an ordinance, the whole community was bound by it.c7-gershom-takkanot
  1263. p. 191, p. 191One legal innovation of the Ashkenazi communities was the herem ha-yishuv, which let a local community regulate Jewish settlement and keep newcomers out, whether to shield itself from outside competition or to exclude people thought to damage public morals. Communities in the Islamic world generally laid no claim to such a right, probably reflecting the differing legal standing of Jews under Christian and Muslim rule.c7-herem-yishuv
  1264. p. 191, p. 192Another common arrangement was the maarufiya, a monopoly giving one Jew an exclusive business tie to a Christian and shielding him from rivals among Jewish businessmen dealing with the same client. The practice makes sense in a setting where Jewish merchants and financiers often handled major transactions for Christian patrons, chiefly nobles.c7-maarufiya
  1265. p. 192, p. 192A long-standing narrative holds that Ashkenaz and Sefarad grew from the two rival centers of antiquity: Ashkenazi culture supposedly came from Palestine, brought by merchant families through the Byzantine world and Italy who settled beyond the Alps under the Carolingians, the best known being the Kalonymus family of Lucca. Sephardi culture is said to have come from Babylonia.c7-two-roots-narrative
  1266. p. 192, p. 192Recent historians have challenged this account as overly simple: rabbis in both Ashkenaz and Sefarad received Talmudic teaching from the Geonim of Babylonia, and if they applied it differently, that owed mostly to the surrounding medieval cultures, not to the lineage of their traditions. The same holds for liturgy: the piyutim preserved in Ashkenaz often trace to Palestine, but the core shape and text of every prayer rite, the Ashkenazi one included, follow the Babylonian pattern.c7-roots-revised
  1267. p. 192, p. 192The towering figure was Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, Rashi (1040 to 1105), a native of Troyes in northern France. He studied at the rabbinic academies of Mainz and Worms and, at about age 25, went back to Troyes, where he founded his own school. The learning of Rashi, his sons and his pupils transformed the study of Bible and Talmud throughout the Jewish world.c7-rashi-life
  1268. p. 192, p. 192Rashi wrote a commentary on most of the Bible's books and a comprehensive one on nearly the whole Babylonian Talmud. In 1475 his biblical commentary became the first Hebrew book ever printed, and nearly every later Jewish edition of the Hebrew Bible has carried it.c7-rashi-bible
  1269. p. 192, p. 192His Talmud commentary reached the whole Jewish world: within fifty years of his death his glosses were familiar to rabbis across Europe, and within a century scholars everywhere read them, Christian Hebraists trying to grasp the Talmud among them. When the full Babylonian Talmud came off the presses in Italy in the 1520s, Rashi's glosses appeared in the margins, and every standard edition since has carried them.c7-rashi-reach
  1270. p. 192, p. 192In his Bible commentary Rashi blended midrashic interpretation with a search for the text's 'plain meaning' (peshat), generally picking the midrashic reading closest to that sense. He clarified hard passages, rendered obscure words into the French of his day and in essence offered a digest of the traditional rabbinic understanding.c7-rashi-method
  1271. p. 192, p. 192On Leviticus 19:18 ('You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge'), Rashi teaches the difference through an everyday scene: someone who refuses to lend a sickle and later, when asked for an axe, replies 'I won't lend, since you did not lend to me' acts from vengeance; someone who does lend but says 'I am not like you, who would not lend me the axe' bears a grudge.c7-rashi-example
  1272. p. 193, p. 193In his Talmud commentary Rashi fixed the correct reading of the text (before printing, many manuscripts circulated with variants), glossed hard words and passages and defined technical vocabulary. Meant to be used alongside the text, it was a key step in putting into writing a tradition that had stayed oral in Ashkenaz much longer than among Sephardi Jews in Spain or North Africa, and it let the Talmud be read as a coherent narrative and become the hub of Ashkenazi teaching and law.c7-rashi-talmud
  1273. p. 193, p. 193Rashi's sons and students carried on the systematic study of the Talmud, taking his commentary as their starting point. These further glosses are the tosafot, and their authors, at work in France and Germany during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, are the tosafists. Just as with Rashi's commentary, nearly every printed Talmud includes the tosafot, and as early as the thirteenth century their method was brought to Sephardi Jewry by Nahmanides of Girona.c7-tosafists
  1274. p. 193, p. 193According to one recent historian, the tosafists treated the whole Talmud as a unified and inherently coherent body, spotted textual parallels and built a comprehensive system of cross-references, assuming its wording was fixed and authoritative and that it never contradicted itself. They developed a refined dialectical method and drew on Geonic writings, the work of Hebrew grammarians in Spain and the Talmudic dictionary Arukh by Natan ben Yehiel of Rome (completed 1101).c7-tosafist-method
  1275. p. 193, p. 193The tosafists were aware of the tension between the Talmud's precepts and the actual customs of Ashkenazi Jews, and, treating both as authoritative, they tried to harmonize seemingly incompatible readings of the law. Rashi and the tosafists helped create a distinctly Ashkenazi culture, apart from the Sephardi one, yet their approach to the Talmud shaped, down to today, how Jews elsewhere deal with the text.c7-tosafist-custom
  1276. p. 193, p. 193Simha ben Samuel of Vitry, a student of Rashi, composed the Mahzor Vitry, a collection of liturgy and law with the prayers for the whole year and rules on the Sabbath, festivals, marriage and ritual slaughter: a singular source for legal traditions and customs among northern French Jews around the turn of the eleventh century. Other tosafists systematically gathered the customs (minhag) of Ashkenazi Jews, a society especially alert to local and family custom, so much so that it often invoked the saying 'custom overrides law' (minhag mevatel Halakhah), found in the Jerusalem Talmud.c7-mahzor-vitry
  1277. p. 193, p. 194Asher ben Yehiel (the 'Rosh'), a tosafist scholar, emigrated in 1303 from his native Germany to Toledo, in the Christian kingdom of Castile. There his son Jacob ben Asher (died 1340) wrote a new comprehensive code of Jewish law, the Arba'ah Turim, the product of an encounter between Ashkenazi and Sephardi culture: it followed Maimonides and the father's rulings, carried Ashkenazi rabbinic learning to Spain and adopted a fresh thematic, four-part layout that became the model for later codes, the most influential being Joseph Caro's (annotated by Moses Isserles) in the sixteenth century.c7-asher-turim
  1278. p. 194, p. 194At about the time the tosafists made Talmud study the cultural ideal of Ashkenaz, a very different religious movement arose in Rhineland towns: the Hasidei Ashkenaz, the 'Ashkenazi pietists', not to be confused with the later Hasidism of eighteenth-century Eastern Europe. Their teachings are linked above all to three descendants of the Kalonymus family: Samuel, Judah and Eleazar.c7-hasidei-emerge
  1279. p. 194, p. 194The pietists wrote extensively on esoteric themes, but their best-known work gathers roughly 2,000 exempla (moralizing tales) and exegetical vignettes, the Sefer Hasidim ('Book of the Pious'), ascribed to Samuel the Pious together with Judah the Pious, his son (died 1217). It sets out the ideals and virtues of Ashkenazi pietism and also offers a glimpse of ordinary medieval Ashkenazi life.c7-sefer-hasidim
  1280. p. 194, p. 194As Eleazar of Worms told it, the Hasidei Ashkenaz kept an ancient esoteric tradition handed down by a certain 'Abu Aaron', who had learned it in Babylonia and brought 'the secret of the arrangement of prayers, and the remaining secrets' to Italy, whence they passed to the Kalonymus family of Lucca, which later moved to Ashkenaz.c7-abu-aaron
  1281. p. 194, p. 194The pietist ideal sprang from an uncompromising wish to fulfill the 'will of the Creator' (retson ha-bore) beyond what religious law itself required. Invoking the Talmudic maxim 'you shall forever be resourceful in fearing God', they built an ideology of piety with an intense sense of self-sacrifice in service of God's will. The Sefer Hasidim contrasts the readiness of knights, respectable women and even thieves to risk everything for honor or gain with the effort the pietist should make for the Creator's honor.c7-creator-will
  1282. p. 194, p. 194The pietists drew on the ideal of martyrdom that emerged from the First Crusade's tragedy: if one was willing to give up one's life for the 'sanctification of God's name' (kiddush ha-shem), the righteous person should accept the burden of piety in daily life, going past the letter of Halakhah without contradicting it, with prohibitions and pious acts stricter than the law required. The greater the suffering, the greater the reward, and only by overcoming the urge to sin could one reach true piety.c7-pietist-martyrdom-penance
  1283. p. 194, p. 194From this came a highly original view of repentance: the pietists taught that atonement came in different kinds, with ritualized penitential practices matched both to the gravity of the transgression and to its deserved punishment, and also offsetting the pleasure drawn from sinning, through prolonged fasts and abstentions, for instance. Another form, which Eleazar admitted was not found in practice, was to re-enter the situation of the sin and resist temptation.c7-pietist-repentance
  1284. p. 195, p. 195Judah the Pious, who wrote most of the Sefer Hasidim, hoped to shape the pietists into a socially separate group, a kind of sect apart from the mainstream Jewish community. He separated the 'righteous' (those who followed his ideal) from the 'wicked' (all other Jews), counting even the most learned rabbinic scholars among the wicked if they did not belong to the Hasidei Ashkenaz, and expected the pietist to undertake ever more demanding devotions that would atone for his generation's sins.c7-judah-sect
  1285. p. 195, p. 195Judah's sectarian program ultimately failed, and it is unclear how large the Hasidei Ashkenaz were as a movement, if they ever became one. His cousin Eleazar of Worms reshaped Judah's sectarian idea into a personal, individual pietism that could draw in Ashkenazi society broadly and not just a small elite.c7-eleazar-individual
  1286. p. 195, p. 195Pope Urban II in 1095 summoned all Catholics to a campaign for seizing Jerusalem and Palestine from Muslim hands. The following year the earliest crusading bands left northern France, and in 1099 their armies captured Jerusalem and founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which lasted until Saladin recovered it in 1187.c7-urban-1095
  1287. p. 195, p. 195As the first crusading knights moved through the Rhineland in spring 1096, they aimed their anger at the Jewish communities on their path. A Hebrew chronicle spells out the motive: before going far off to take vengeance on the Ishmaelites (Muslims), vengeance should be taken on the Jews living among them, whose fathers were said to have slain and hanged Jesus on the cross.c7-rhineland-1096
  1288. p. 195, p. 195In spring 1096 crusader knights and the unruly crowds that followed them fell upon Jewish communities in the Rhineland and other parts of Central Europe, killing about a thousand Jews and forcing many more to accept baptism. At Speyer the local bishop shielded all the city's Jews but 11. At Regensburg the Jews were driven into the Danube and baptized. Many other communities, such as Mainz and Worms, were destroyed.c7-1096-toll
  1289. p. 195, p. 195For all the bloodshed, forced baptisms and martyrdoms, Rhineland's Ashkenazi communities rebounded more swiftly than one might expect. Although many historians have seen in the First Crusade a watershed of medieval Jewish history, it did not permanently halt the growth of Jewish life in northern Europe or begin an era of unbroken persecution.c7-recovery-1096
  1290. p. 195In 1097 Emperor Henry IV of Germany decreed that Jews forcibly converted the previous year could go back to their old faith.c7-henry-iv-1097
  1291. p. 195, p. 195In the Second and Third Crusades (1140s and late 1180s) the violent attacks were not repeated. Bernard of Clairvaux, the Second Crusade's spiritual leader, actively protected the Rhineland Jews, and Ephraim of Bonn, author of a chronicle of that campaign, described nothing resembling the sweeping violence of the first. Eleazar of Worms related in memoirs of the Third that the Jews won from Emperor Frederick Barbarossa a decree that anyone who killed a Jew would be killed and that joining the Crusade was no excuse.c7-later-crusades
  1292. p. 195, p. 195What may matter even more for the Crusade's lasting effect is how the events of 1096 were remembered by later generations. The Jewish response to the violence shaped Ashkenazi culture: liturgical poems, memorial lists of the dead and detailed chronicles expressed a martyr's ideal of self-sacrifice. The main narratives are an anonymous account traditionally (but wrongly) credited to a Solomon ben Samson and a shorter chronicle, Mainz Anonymous, which dwell on the supposedly heroic conduct of those who chose martyrdom, even suicide, rather than fall to the Crusaders or accept baptism.c7-crusade-memory
  1293. p. 195, p. 195Reed criticizes the tendency (still in Marcel Simon) to treat late 'Jewish Christianity' as a fossilized form or stunted survival after a decisive parting. That narrative echoes heresiology: it minimizes and marginalizes evidence that varieties of belief and worship with Jesus and Torah could persist and even thrive beyond the apostolic age.cjb-reed-against-fossil
  1294. p. 196, p. 196Historians still argue over how reliable these chronicles and the accounts in liturgical poems are. There is no doubt that many Jews were killed and that others took their own lives and those of their families, yet how widespread this was remains uncertain. The texts praising self-sacrifice were written, sometimes decades afterward, not as objective histories: their authors may have wanted to justify acts of killing and suicide hard to square with Jewish law, or to answer the growing danger of voluntary conversion to Christianity in the twelfth century, a reading proposed by historians Jeremy Cohen and Avraham Grossman.c7-chronicles-reliability
  1295. p. 196, p. 196However reliable the details of the Hebrew Crusade narratives may be, they fixed the image and the ideal of the martyr, kiddush ha-shem, the 'sanctification of God's Name', in the shared memory of Ashkenazi Jews.c7-martyrdom-image
  1296. p. 196, p. 196Christian observers at the time of the Crusades also noticed the acts of self-sacrifice: Albert of Aix, for one, recorded that the Jews, seeing themselves and their children attacked, fell on one another and perished at each other's hands, and that mothers cut the throats of the babies they nursed rather than see them killed by the weapons of the uncircumcised.c7-albert-of-aix
  1297. p. 196, p. 196The accounts in the Hebrew narratives include grim and disturbing descriptions that are, of course, impossible to verify and may be implausibly detailed given that those who lived through the events did not survive to tell them. Even so, the chronicles show a community caught between brutal violence and an equally radical ideology of religious martyrdom.c7-chronicles-unverifiable
  1298. p. 196, p. 197Mainz Anonymous tells of Meshullam ben Isaac of Worms, who called out to those around him and to his wife Zipporah, announced he would offer up their son Isaac, born in her old age, as Abraham did with his own, and, despite Zipporah's plea to be slain first, carried out the sacrifice; the Crusaders then killed the couple.c7-meshullam
  1299. p. 196, p. 196Map 7.1 in the book traces the crusaders' route in 1096 through the Rhineland and Danube towns, distinguishing towns where they massacred Jews, those where the archbishop or clergy tried to protect them (often in vain) and those where the crusaders themselves were massacred by the Hungarians.c7-map71
  1300. p. 197, p. 197The chronicle credited to Solomon ben Samson tells of Rachel of Mainz, resolved to sacrifice her four children; the father, witnessing the scene after the Crusaders killed Rachel, threw himself on his own sword. The Hebrew accounts highlight the active, heroic role of women.c7-rachel-mainz
  1301. p. 197, p. 197The Jews did not simply wait for disaster in order to sacrifice themselves: the father who fell on his sword was armed, and the chronicles say that when Mainz was attacked by the Crusaders of Count Emicho, young and old put on armor and took up weapons, led by Rabbi Kalonymus ben Meshullam, the community's chief. But worn down by hardships and fasting, they lacked strength to withstand the enemy.c7-jews-armed
  1302. p. 197Besides praising the heroic conduct of the Mainz Jews, willing both to defend themselves and to bear martyrdom, the authors ask whether the account may contain a subtle critique of the religious leadership, which may have drained the community with pious but counterproductive acts for instance repeated fasting, in the vain hope of warding off catastrophe.c7-fasting-critique
  1303. p. 197, p. 197In making sense of the martyrdom reported in the chronicles, one must remember that many Jews did not truly face a choice between baptism and death: in many cases the Crusaders and the mob meant to kill, not convert. The ideology of self-sacrifice credited to the Crusade generation is above all an expression of what took shape afterward, in reaction to the events and in the chronicles themselves. Individuals like 'Rachel' or 'Meshullam' need not have been zealots for kiddush ha-shem; desperation may be all that moved them.c7-no-real-choice
  1304. p. 197, p. 197Ironically, the ideology of martyrdom seems to have been shaped by the values of Christian society. A crusading knight could not count on coming home alive, and his participation was a sacrifice in both material and bodily terms; the pope promised an indulgence that would cleanse sins and bring reward in the afterlife. In that climate of religious sacrifice it may not have seemed so odd that Jews took up a similar ideal, if only to show that Judaism was no less than Christendom.c7-martyrdom-christian-roots
  1305. p. 197The thirteenth-century Hasidei Ashkenaz still promoted kiddush ha-shem (of a spiritual kind) as an all-embracing ideal that should steer the conduct of the pious.c7-hasidei-kiddush
  1306. p. 198, p. 198Tied to the celebration of martyrs came a stronger sense of memorializing the dead. According to historian Ivan Marcus, the Ashkenazi custom of reciting each year the list of a place's righteous dead, and later the anniversary of a parent's death, comes mainly from the Christian monastic habit of compiling necrologies. Like their Christian neighbors, Ashkenazi Jews began producing memorial books (Memorbücher) and adopted rituals like yizkor, said on Yom Kippur and on the three pilgrimage festivals, and the Kaddish as mourners' prayer.c7-memorial-books
  1307. p. 198, p. 198The anti-Jewish current in medieval Christian culture left a deep imprint on Jewish culture and demography. In many Jews it bred a profound loathing of Christianity, a feeling hidden from outsiders yet sometimes breaking into ritual and literature. Jews wrote polemics of their own or lampooned Christianity, as in Toledot Yeshu, a mocking life of Jesus that flips the Christian habit of turning Jewish sources against Jews by turning the New Testament against Christians.c7-jewish-anti-christian
  1308. p. 198, p. 198In a Toledot Yeshu passage the book quotes, Jesus argues disrespectfully with the sages about the Talmud, and the story exposes something unusual about his paternity: not that he was God's son but that he was the product of an illegitimate union, the son of Joseph Pandera. In the tale, Jesus is forced to flee to Upper Galilee.c7-toledot-yeshu-passage
  1309. p. 198, p. 198Christian sources accuse Jews of other blasphemous acts, such as relieving themselves on Christian symbols or hanging a Haman effigy at Purim as a parody of the Crucifixion. One is first inclined to dismiss these reports as fabrications, like the host-desecration charge, but recent scholars think they may hold some truth: Purim, a boisterous, carnivalesque festival, may have offered a moment to vent bottled-up resentment of Christianity in a mocking, if not openly confrontational, manner.c7-purim-mockery
  1310. p. 198, p. 198Traumatic as the First Crusade surely was, the violence stayed relatively local and subsided fast, and attacks on Jews remained the exception until the close of the thirteenth century.c7-first-crusade-localized
  1311. p. 198, p. 198The Rindfleisch massacres, named for the leader of a mob that ran amok for five months in 1298 and ravaged more than 40 communities across Bavaria, left at least 3,400 victims according to the memorial books.c7-rindfleisch
  1312. p. 198, p. 198The Armleder massacres of the 1330s likewise began with a host-desecration accusation. They covered a wider area, including over a hundred Jewish communities in Alsace, and turned partly on Christians as well.c7-armleder
  1313. p. 198, p. 198In the late 1340s, with Europe staggered by bubonic plague, the Black Death, which by some estimates killed as much as a third of its people, Christians again rounded on the Jews, accused of poisoning wells and believed by many to have drawn down God's anger by living among Christians.c7-black-death-accusations
  1314. p. 198, p. 198In Provence and Catalonia, the account goes, the massacres killed more victims than the epidemic did, and the violence rapidly engulfed much of Western and Central Europe, hitting hundreds of communities from France and northern Spain through the German Empire to northern Italy and Hungary. It was undoubtedly the worst anti-Jewish persecution the medieval world had yet witnessed, though oddly it did not draw from Jews a literary outpouring on the scale of the Crusades.c7-black-death-scale
  1315. p. 198, p. 199, p. 199Once the massacres subsided, many towns that had driven out their Jews during the plague took them back to help restore normal life, yet violence against Jews remained a factor at a comparatively high level, in how often it occurred and how widely it spread.c7-after-plague
  1316. p. 199, p. 199The English barons offered King Edward an urgently needed advance of 115,000 pounds in exchange for expelling the Jews and cancelling debts to them (debts the Crown would otherwise have claimed), and only he knew how good the deal was for the monarchy: just about 10,000 pounds of Jewish loans remained outstanding.c7-edward-barons-deal
  1317. p. 199, p. 199When the Black Death struck, Jewish life in most of France and in England was already over: in 1290 King Edward banished the Jews from England under pressure from the landed nobility, the chief debtors of Jewish moneylenders.c7-edward-expulsion-1290
  1318. p. 199, p. 199France was more tangled, since political authority was more fragmented. Philip IV's expulsion of the Jews in 1306 applied only to the royal lands of central France, around Paris, and later kings let some return, only to expel them again within a few years. The expulsion became final only in 1394, and even then some Jews lingered in the southeast until 1501, and the papal lands around Avignon never saw them permanently removed.c7-france-expulsions
  1319. p. 199, p. 199Several factors drove the expulsions in England and France: growing Church hostility, popular anti-Jewish feeling and the Jews' central part in moneylending. Because Jews were viewed as the royal treasury's 'property', noblemen who defaulted lost their lands to the central crown. By squeezing taxes and irregular payments from the Jews, kings in effect taxed their Christian clients too, and the harder the crown exploited them, the more it eroded their capacity to keep serving the economy and the crown itself.c7-expulsion-factors
  1320. p. 199A ritual murder charge in the French town of Blois in 1171 led to the trial and execution of over 30 Jews.c7-blois-1171
  1321. p. 199, p. 199In 1190, with the English king away on crusade, Jews were assaulted in many parts of England. At York they took shelter in the king's tower and ended in mass suicide, as many had done in Germany a century earlier during the First Crusade. Their assailants then burned every bond for debts to Jews that had been lodged in the town's cathedral.c7-york-1190
  1322. p. 199, p. 199As a result the king ordered every debt owed to Jews to be recorded in two copies, one kept in the royal treasury. This gave the crown first-hand knowledge of all its Jewish subjects' business and a chance to use the information against nobles in debt to Jewish creditors.c7-duplicate-records
  1323. p. 199, p. 199The fourteenth century was framed by great disasters: a decade before 1300, all Jews were banished from England; a century later, in 1391, Spain's Jews were struck by massacres and compulsory baptisms that left behind a gravely shaken community. In the middle decades, chiefly amid the plague, widespread persecution struck the greater part of Europe's Jewish communities.c7-century-bookends
  1324. p. 199, p. 199None of this means Jewish life across the century and everywhere was an unbroken tale of woe, but the fourteenth century did witness the unraveling of the older medieval order, and Jewish life in Western Europe needed a long time to recover, a process belonging to the early modern period (Chapter 8).c7-not-only-suffering
  1325. p. 199, p. 199Medieval Spain's Jews lived on the border between Islam and Christendom. Christians regarded the centuries-long struggle to retake the Iberian lands that had fallen to Muslim control from 711 on as a crusade, in other words a holy war, and gave the campaign the name Reconquista. Jews in al-Andalus and in the Christian kingdoms of the north were caught up in the conflict even though they had nothing at stake in the contest between the combatants.c7-sefarad-frontier
  1326. p. 199, p. 199The renowned Hebrew poet and philosopher Judah ha-Levi mourned in a poem the lot of the Jews between the hosts of Seir (Christendom) and Kedar (Islam): the two sides wage their wars, and the Jews fall when they fall.c7-judah-halevi-wars
  1327. p. 200, p. 200In 1144 the Jews of Norwich, England, confronted a bizarre charge: when the corpse of a Christian boy named William turned up in the woods, rumor said the town's Jews had kidnapped, tormented and ritually murdered him, as their forebears supposedly did to Jesus. The 1144 accusation was probably the first of its sort and was soon echoed at Blois in 1171. At Norwich the local sheriff looked into it and ruled the charge false.c7-norwich-1144
  1328. p. 200, p. 200In 1235 at Fulda, in Germany, a further accusation emerged: that Jews had not just slain a Christian child but also used his blood in ritual. Thus was born the blood libel, and Jews all over Europe found themselves exposed, dozens of times, to similarly absurd charges.c7-fulda-1235
  1329. p. 200, p. 200Most of the time, a blood libel set off mob violence against the accused community. Sometimes the authorities stepped in to defend the Jews; at other times they appeared to credit the libel. Given the strict ban on consuming even the blood of kosher animals, anyone acquainted with Jewish law and custom could see that the libel had to be an invention. Several kings, emperors and popes declared the charges false, to no avail: the libel endured, was exploited by the Nazis and still turns up in antisemitic and anti-Zionist propaganda in the Middle East.c7-blood-libel-false
  1330. p. 200, p. 200The link between Jews and blood fed other medieval fantasies: Christian blood was said to work as a miracle remedy for Jews (a blind Jew who smeared monks' blood on his eyes would see again; the leprous Constantine was said to have been told by his Jewish doctor to wash himself in Christian children's blood; Richard the Lionheart was told much the same), and Jewish men were believed to menstruate, a view voiced by the Italian astrologer Cecco d'Ascoli.c7-blood-fantasies
  1331. p. 200, p. 200The host-desecration accusation followed a similar course. Its trigger was the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which officially affirmed transubstantiation. Some Christians held that Jews, accepting the doctrine themselves, pierced and maimed the host in a re-enactment of the crucifixion, supposedly making it bleed. The first known case came in 1243; typically a cult arose at the site and townspeople sought revenge on local Jews, many of whom were tried and executed.c7-host-desecration
  1332. p. 200, p. 200In 1290 a Jewish moneylender in Paris was charged with desecrating the host, an episode marked by a chapel built on the spot and probably one trigger of the 1306 expulsion of Jews from France. Another charge, in 1370, brought about the virtual end of the Jewish community of medieval Belgium. The final Jew executed for the supposed 'crime' of desecrating the host died in the 1600s.c7-host-paris-1290
  1333. p. 200, p. 200The poet-philosopher Moses ibn Ezra likewise alluded to the political upheavals of his day: in one text he lamented being uprooted from his native Granada after it fell to the Almoravids, a Muslim dynasty that brought religious intolerance and persecution to al-Andalus in the late eleventh century. He found shelter in Christian northern Spain.c7-ibn-ezra-displaced
  1334. p. 200, p. 201Ibn Ezra set the sophistication of Arabic-speaking al-Andalus against what he saw as a culturally inferior, backward Jewish community in Christian Spain, while toward the Jews of the Christian north he felt nothing but disdain, as his poem about a land of 'savages who love corruption' shows.c7-ibn-ezra-scorn
  1335. p. 200Chazan insists that anyone who grants the vigor and creativity of medieval western Christendom should examine that society's intrinsic appeal, and beyond it the Roman Church's efforts to draw Jews in.c-h502-chazan-christendom-intrinsic-appeal
  1336. p. 201, p. 201Something more lies in Ibn Ezra's text, a passing remark: the Jews of Christian Spain 'have adopted their neighbors' ways', 'mingle' with Christian society and are 'reckoned among their number'. However crude their culture looked to the Andalusi poet, the Jews of the north seemed quite at home in Christian society: no shadow of impending persecution hung over them, but deep integration, and they were nearly indistinguishable from their Christian neighbors.c7-spain-integration
  1337. p. 201, p. 201Once medieval Jewish history is no longer limited to thinkers, poets and rabbinic scholars, and attention turns to Jewish society at large (merchants, vineyard owners, butchers, artisans, and women, who were mostly shut out of the celebrated high literary culture), a more nuanced portrait of medieval Jewish life appears.c7-beyond-elites
  1338. p. 201, p. 201Toledo, taken in 1085, was the first big triumph of the Christian Reconquista. Even after the Christians made it capital of Castile, its Jews maintained a strongly Arabized culture, and their linguistic skills let their elites take part in cultural and diplomatic exchange between the peninsula's Christian and Muslim states.c7-toledo-1085
  1339. p. 201, p. 201Still in the thirteenth century, Jews played a significant role in the translation program sponsored by Alfonso X of Castile, which opened Arabic scholarship in mathematics, philosophy, medicine, astronomy and other fields to Christian readers in Europe. Jews rendered texts from Arabic into a Romance vernacular (Castilian), and a Christian scholar then put the Romance version into Latin.c7-alfonso-translators
  1340. p. 201, p. 201The cultural give-and-take that lasted for centuries, despite Reconquista warfare and sectarian violence, shows in the synagogue built in Toledo in 1357 at the behest of Samuel ha-Levi Abulafia, a wealthy court Jew who served as treasurer to King Pedro I of Castile.c7-el-transito
  1341. p. 201, p. 201The stucco wall decoration blended Islamic art (geometric and floral motifs, Hebrew and Arabic script as ornament) with the emblems of Christian Castile (the royal arms of Castile and León) and a Hebrew inscription praising the patron, Samuel ha-Levi. The model for such work lies in the fourteenth-century Alcázar of Seville, itself inspired by the Alhambra, palace of the Nasrid sultans of Granada, the final Muslim realm left in the Iberian Peninsula.c7-el-transito-decor
  1342. p. 201, p. 201The Reconquista sped up during the 1200s, and around 1250 the Christian kingdoms of Castile, Aragon and Portugal controlled most of the peninsula. The big cities fell in turn: Córdoba (1236), then Valencia (1238), Seville (1248) and Murcia (1266). The fast tempo of conquest demanded a growing stream of settlers to repopulate the lands now under Christian rule, and many Jews were among the newcomers.c7-reconquest-conquests
  1343. p. 201, p. 201Spain also drew Jewish immigrants from beyond the Pyrenees, with Asher ben Yehiel, who relocated from Germany to Toledo, arguably the most famous case. Arriving in Castile, he was startled by the legal autonomy Jewish communities seemed to enjoy: nowhere else he knew were capital cases judged by Jews, except there. He accepted the custom for them but never agreed with them on taking life.c7-asher-capital-cases
  1344. p. 202, p. 202Jewish communities in Christian Spain thus held the right to impose the death penalty on their own members, a privilege that no Jewish community anywhere else, medieval or early modern, ever enjoyed.c7-capital-punishment-right
  1345. p. 202, p. 202None of this should lead us to overstate the community's hold over individual Jews, or to mistake the privileges granted to the community for real legal autonomy, which stayed subject to the Crown's final say. As elsewhere in Europe, the monarchs of Spain's Christian kingdoms treated Jews as 'property' of the royal treasury, which allowed individual Jews to bypass communal institutions and their rabbis and appeal to Christian authorities instead.c7-autonomy-limits
  1346. p. 202, p. 202At least in the early phase after the Christian conquest, many Jews settled in places with no organized community or religious infrastructure at all.c7-no-organized-community
  1347. p. 202, p. 202Jews took part in the Reconquista's colonization effort from the very beginning. Two Jewish moneylenders, Raguel and Vidas, appear in the medieval epic of El Cid Campeador, who took Valencia from the Muslims in the 1090s (the city went back to Muslim rule and was finally retaken by James I of Aragon in 1236). Out of favor with King Alfonso VI, the Cid in the poem turns to them for money.c7-el-cid-moneylenders
  1348. p. 202, p. 202Jewish financiers could offer a vital service: not tied a priori to Christian or Muslim political interests, they were seen as politically neutral figures who could be trusted amid political intrigue and military confrontation.c7-neutral-financiers
  1349. p. 202, p. 202Throughout the Iberian Peninsula's Christian kingdoms, Jews were also hired as tax farmers: they fronted funds to the state and then recouped them from local taxpayers, pocketing a profit. It was a standard arrangement in every premodern state.c7-tax-farming
  1350. p. 202, p. 202According to historian Javier Castaño, Jews were less prominent in tax farming in Christian Spain than commonly thought, yet still played a part far out of proportion to their population share: they made up about 3 percent of Castile in the late 1400s, yet 15 percent of the 500 tax farmers known for the years 1439 to 1469 were Jews.c7-castano-tax-farming
  1351. p. 202, p. 203Most Jews were of course not involved in moneylending or tax farming, and economic life in Reconquista Spain was far more varied than in many other parts of Europe: Jews worked as tailors, butchers, goldsmiths or merchants, but also owned farmland and made wine or olive oil.c7-economic-diversity
  1352. p. 202, p. 202An illuminated Hebrew manuscript of a Jewish prayer book from Spain (c. 1300) shows knights on horseback, reflecting a culture that celebrated chivalric virtues during the Christian 'reconquest' of Spain.c7-fig73
  1353. p. 203, p. 203With Castile, Aragon and Portugal advancing their conquests during the 1200s and leaving just a small remnant state under Muslim rule until Granada's capture in 1492, royal authorities increasingly asserted themselves in the new territories. Laws were codified and legal practice unified, the crowning achievement arguably being Las Siete Partidas, compiled under Alfonso X of Castile (fully applied only in the following century).c7-crown-consolidates
  1354. p. 203, p. 203Once the Crown asserted direct oversight of the Jewish communities, its interests clashed with those of other players: the barons, Christian towns and the Catholic Church. Each pressed its own claims on the minority and competed for a share of its taxes. The Church, for instance, insisted that Jewish landholders too owe the tithe (diezmo) that Christian landholders paid, but even where the Crown agreed it applied the rules unevenly.c7-competing-claims
  1355. p. 203, p. 203In the towns, where most Jews lived, municipal authorities regarded the monarch's exclusive sovereignty over Jews as an encroachment on town prerogatives, and Jewish communities often sat at the center of power struggles. Because they counted as royal property, Jews were especially prone to take the blame for popular anger at the Crown, and anti-Jewish violence drew on traditional prejudice as much as on political circumstances.c7-royal-property-brunt
  1356. p. 203, p. 203In the plague-time attacks of the late 1340s, Jews were assaulted in Barcelona, and King Peter IV of Aragon tried to assert his authority and secure their protection against popular hostility, apparently stirred up by certain preachers in local churches. In late May 1348 he wrote to the city's councilors reminding them that the Jews lived under his special protection, and ten days later he wrote to the bishop and clergy asking that sermons inciting people against the Jews be completely suppressed.c7-barcelona-1348
  1357. p. 203, p. 203The royal warning seems not to have secured the Jews of Barcelona: Peter IV, in February 1349, again wrote to the city's councilors about the 'rash intrusion' against the city's Jewish aljama, noting that justice had still not been done and that the attackers, going unpunished, were spreading threats to strike and destroy the Jews during the coming Holy Week.c7-barcelona-1349
  1358. p. 203, p. 203Religiously motivated anti-Jewish feeling could thus be mobilized into violence against the minority, but this always happened within a particular local political setting in which Crown, Church, municipal government and the Jewish community all had a role.c7-local-politics
  1359. p. 204, p. 203Across much of Reconquista Spain the picture grew more tangled, since a sizeable Muslim minority came to live under Christian rule beside the Jews. Although many Jews kept an Arabized culture, this did not necessarily mean good relations with their Arabic-speaking Muslim neighbors: the two minorities collided over rival business interests, conversions, or intimate contact between members of each group.c7-muslim-minority
  1360. p. 204, p. 204At times relations between the minorities deteriorated into violence, mirroring patterns of anti-minority hostility in Christian society. A striking example: Muslims joined Christian assaults on Jews during Easter's Holy Week. King James of Aragon recorded that, early in the 1300s, some Muslims of Deroca scaled the walls of the castle where Jews lived and attacked them with stones and swords, seriously wounding some.c7-deroca
  1361. p. 204, p. 204Literary life among Christian Spain's Jews both extended the heritage of Muslim al-Andalus and absorbed of influences from Europe beyond the Pyrenees. An example is the Hebrew poetry of Todros ben Judah Abulafia (d. 1306), which carried on the Andalusi tradition while trying out new styles inspired by Christian Europe's troubadour verse.c7-sefarad-literary
  1362. p. 204, p. 204The best-known scholar of medieval Christian Spain, arguably, was Moses ben Nahman, or Nahmanides (1194 to 1270), born in Girona, Catalonia, who left for the Holy Land in 1267 and spent his last years in Jerusalem and Acre. He played a central part in the 1230s controversy over Maimonides' philosophical writings, and Aragon's king ordered him into a public disputation with the convert Pablo Cristiani at Barcelona in 1263. About 50 of his works survive.c7-nahmanides-life
  1363. p. 204, p. 204More than anyone, Nahmanides brought into the Sephardi world the Talmud scholarship pioneered by the French tosafists, and he fashioned a fresh blend of the Talmudic learning of Spain, northern France and Provence. Like the tosafists, he valued detailed study of the Talmud's wording as an end in itself, not chiefly as a means of fixing legal practice, which had been the center of the Sephardi approach.c7-nahmanides-talmud
  1364. p. 204, p. 204Kabbalah was the second field in which Nahmanides left a major mark, chiefly through his Bible commentary, which took its place beside those of Abraham ibn Ezra and Rashi among the classics. He was the first to weave Kabbalah into his biblical glosses: he often gave an interpretation 'by way of the plain meaning of Scripture' and then another introduced as 'by the way of Truth', that is, in the spirit of Kabbalah.c7-nahmanides-kabbalah
  1365. p. 204, p. 204Kabbalah literally means 'tradition', something 'received', and names the mystical teachings that grew up in Provence and Spain during the 1100s and 1200s. Mysticism usually denotes a religious experience of communion with the divine that transforms the individual's consciousness and leads to disclosure of 'secret', 'hidden' knowledge. The mid-twelfth century saw a new Jewish mystical literature emerge in Provence.c7-kabbalah-definition
  1366. p. 204, p. 205It was probably no accident that the same Provençal region saw a quarrel over Jewish philosophy and Maimonides' writings, and in a sense Kabbalah answered philosophy's challenge. For Aristotelians like Maimonides, the commandments chiefly served an educational purpose, since a self-sufficient, all-powerful God did not 'need' ritual or prayer. Kabbalah offered the opposite view: the words of prayer and the performance of commandments had a real effect within the divine realm itself and literally kept the universe going.c7-kabbalah-vs-philosophy
  1367. p. 204Nulman defines Barekhu as the opening formula ('Bless the Lord…') said by the sheli'ah tzibbur to summon the people to public worship at Shaharit and Arvit; the Zohar justifies the summons by saying that all sacred acts require summoning.cl-barekhu-public-summons
  1368. p. 205, p. 205One of the earliest Kabbalistic works was the strange, obscure Sefer ha-Bahir ('Book of Clarity', ironically), composed in twelfth-century Provence in the guise of an ancient midrash on each Bible verse. For all its obscurity it had a large effect on later Kabbalistic literature: it listed ten 'potencies' of God, matching the ten 'Let there be' phrases of the creation story, an idea Kabbalah later developed into the sefirot.c7-bahir
  1369. p. 205, p. 205Later Kabbalah developed the idea of ten potencies (or spheres), the sefirot, into an elaborate scheme of linked powers that jointly constituted the divinity. Kabbalah presented a mythical universe in which 'God', the divine realm, was the stage for the interplay of the ten sefirot, all contained within the one God.c7-sefirot-system
  1370. p. 205, p. 205Nahmanides, Jonah Gerondi (died 1263) and others advanced this Kabbalistic lore in Catalonia during the thirteenth century, south of the Pyrenees. Another Kabbalistic school took shape in Castile in the late thirteenth century.c7-catalonia-castile-schools
  1371. p. 205, p. 205The Zohar ('Book of Splendor'), Jewish mysticism's most influential single work, emerged around 1290 from this circle of Castilian kabbalists. Moses de León played the leading part in writing and circulating it, a mystical homily on the Pentateuch written in archaic Aramaic.c7-zohar-emerges
  1372. p. 205, p. 205The Castilian kabbalists claimed that the text kept a tradition reaching to the second-century circle of Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai and his students. Although certain critical spirits doubted the work's ancient pedigree, it won broad acceptance across the Jewish world as a source of divinely inspired truth, as authoritative as the Mishnah or the Talmud.c7-zohar-pedigree
  1373. p. 205, p. 205In the kabbalists' view, God's revelation in the Torah was not meant to convey historical knowledge of the world's or the Jewish people's beginnings, nor is its chief aim to teach law. Beneath the text's surface lies a hidden, deeper message: the very essence of God is encoded in the biblical text, and Kabbalah is the key that unlocks the secrets of the divine.c7-torah-hidden
  1374. p. 205, p. 205The Zohar says, through Rabbi Simeon, that one who sees the Torah merely as a book of stories and everyday matters is lost: the tales are only its 'outer garments', the body of the Torah is its precepts, and the truly wise reach through to the soul, the true Torah, root of all principles.c7-zohar-garments
  1375. p. 205, p. 205In kabbalistic thought the world arose by way of a process of 'emanation'. The final root of everything that exists is the ein-sof, the 'Infinite', from which layers of emanation spring, described as beams of light or streams of water. The ten sefirot come first among what emanation yields, arranged in a set order of decreasing closeness to the source, forming an intricate structure of ten manifestations of the divine that interact with each other and are all part of the divine realm itself.c7-emanation
  1376. p. 205, p. 222, p. 226Skarsaune links the ecclesiastical 'discovery' of the Talmud in the thirteenth century (Paris, 1240s) to a new Dominican missionary strategy: proving Jesus's messiahship from rabbinic literature. That prepares the public debates (Barcelona 1263) in which converts such as Pablo Cristiani confront rabbis with the Talmud itself.cjb-talmud-discovery-mission
  1377. p. 206, p. 207The sefirot have two sides, left and right, often pictured as the 'male' and 'female' sides of the divinity. Kabbalistic literature uses the image of sexual union to explain how the sefirot of 'wisdom' (hokhmah, right) and 'understanding' (binah, left) join to produce the lower seven sefirot. Ideally the two sides stay in perfect balance; if the side of 'judgment' grows too strong, it empowers the forces of evil.c7-sefirot-sides
  1378. p. 206, p. 206The book's diagram shows the ten sefirot and their relations. Keter is the topmost, a limit the mind cannot pass; the lower seven sefirot arose from the joining of Hokhmah and Binah, God's male and female sides. Mystics believed humans mirrored this structure and so could influence God through their actions, fostering a harmonious relationship among the system's parts.c7-fig74
  1379. p. 207, p. 207The kabbalist's ultimate task is to restore perfect harmony and bring about the union of the sefirot, which is done through prayer and performing the commandments. Divine energy is channeled from the highest sefirah, keter ('crown'), down to the lowest, malkhut ('kingdom') or shekhinah, where the divine world connects with the lower worlds, those of angels and, at the bottom, the material one inhabited by humans.c7-kabbalist-task
  1380. p. 207, p. 207The strength of this theosophical structure was that it let kabbalists relate to the personal God of revelation. Where philosophers like Maimonides had tried to explain away the Bible's anthropomorphic language, the kabbalists embraced it as a clue to what the divine 'looked' like, which let them experience the divine through mystical practice and believe that prayers and commandments directly affected the structure of the sefirot and the proper working of the cosmos.c7-kabbalah-strength
  1381. p. 207, p. 207Kabbalah's rise in the Christian Spain of the 1200s should not hide the survival of other strands of Jewish literary creativity. In philosophy, Hasdai Crescas of Barcelona (c. 1340 to c. 1411) continued a long, distinguished tradition of Spanish Jewry with Or Adonai ('The Light of the Lord'), finished in 1410, a systematic account of Judaism's central dogmas. He criticized medieval Jewish Aristotelianism, Maimonides' included.c7-crescas-philosophy
  1382. p. 207, p. 207Some scholars point to how modern Crescas' philosophy seems, which 'foreshadows the scientific revolution'. One example is his case against the Aristotelian idea of space: where Jewish Aristotelians held the universe to be finite, Crescas proposed it was open and infinite. Matter, for him, was a primary entity existing in actuality, not merely the potential for being.c7-crescas-modern
  1383. p. 207, p. 207Philosophical speculation went on among Jews uprooted when Spain expelled them in 1492, but ultimately it was Kabbalah that shaped Jewish culture most deeply and durably over the centuries that followed.c7-kabbalah-lasting
  1384. p. 207, p. 207During the summer of 1391 Jewish communities across the Iberian Peninsula came under attack; tens of thousands, it appears, were killed or took Christianity to escape the bloodshed. The riots started at Seville in June of that year, and how they spread so fast through Castile and into the Crown of Aragon is still poorly understood, though there were many precedents elsewhere in medieval Europe.c7-1391-riots
  1385. p. 207, p. 207The violence of 1391 was followed by lasting pressure to convert, above all through another staged disputation, this time at Tortosa, which ran for many months, from February 1413 to November 1414. In consequence still more Jews embraced Catholicism, thinning the ranks of Spanish Jewry and creating an entire new social class of converts, the conversos.c7-tortosa
  1386. p. 207, p. 207Historians in the past pointed to a contrast between the evident readiness of Rhineland Ashkenazi Jews to die as martyrs instead of accepting baptism during the First Crusade and the sweeping baptisms of Spanish Jews from 1391 onward. The comparison is shaky from the start, since the two settings were entirely different, in separate parts of Europe and three centuries apart. It also errs in another way: there was widespread 'martyrdom' in Spain, and thousands died, whether at their attackers' hands or by giving up their own lives.c7-martyrdom-comparison
  1387. p. 207, p. 207, p. 207In summer 1391 riots that began in Seville killed or drove to baptism tens of thousands of Jews across Iberia. The Tortosa disputation (1413 to 1414) further increased conversions and consolidated the social class of conversos, whose ambiguous identity (and the charge of 'Judaizing') would shape Spain and Portugal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.cjb-1391-mass-conversion
  1388. p. 208, p. 208Hasdai Crescas described the events of 1391 in a moving letter sent to southern France: at Toledo the rabbis 'sanctified the Name' in public and many converted, unable to endure the strain; the following Sabbath it was the turn of the Barcelona community, with some 250 dead. The rest took refuge in the fortress, where mobs shot at them with bows and catapults; numerous victims died as martyrs, and every survivor was baptized, and only a few escaped to baronial towns. Today, he wrote, no one is known as a Jew in Barcelona.c7-crescas-letter
  1389. p. 208, p. 208Crescas writes of hundreds of victims, whereas other sources name thousands, and the historian Haim Beinart went so far as to estimate that as many as a third of Spain's Jews were killed and another third baptized in 1391.c7-1391-casualties
  1390. p. 208, p. 208Given the trauma of summer 1391 and the fact that only a hundred years later, in 1492, the Jews were expelled from Spain, it is easy to read the last century of Spanish Jewry as one of inevitable decline.c7-last-century-decline
  1391. p. 208, p. 208What is surprising is that Spain's surviving Jewish communities seemed to find their footing again once they got over the initial shock of 1391. Christian Spain's Jewish geography had changed greatly: cities such as Barcelona, and the island of Mallorca, no longer had any Jewish community, and others were shadows of their old selves. Yet for 1480 a recent estimate still reckons about 100,000 Jews in Castile alone (roughly 3 percent of all Castilians), with most Jews now in small towns instead of the large urban hubs.c7-spain-recovery
  1392. p. 208, p. 208Cultural creativity went on, and peaceable Jewish-Christian collaboration did not cease either. During the 1420s and 1430s, Rabbi Moses Arragel of Guadalajara prepared a Bible in Romance with commentary, commissioned by the head of the military Order of Calatrava. In 1476 a Hebrew press opened at Guadalajara, and printing in Hebrew was flourishing across Spain by the time of the expulsion.c7-late-creativity
  1393. p. 208, p. 208The economy, too, showed signs of revival: Spain's fifteenth-century Jewish communities were rebuilding, and one historian, in a recent study of the Jews of Morvedre, north of Valencia, even speaks of a 'Jewish renaissance'.c7-morvedre-renaissance
  1394. p. 208, p. 208Doubts about studying philosophy were held by the eminent Spanish rabbi Solomon ben Adret (1235 to 1310), who knew the work of Maimonides and other philosophers and was not wholly against philosophical speculation. The ban quoted in the book is a compromise: it forbids the study of philosophy until age 25, without going as far as those who would have outlawed it altogether.c7-adret-ban
  1395. p. 208, p. 208The ban's text decrees that for fifty years, under threat of excommunication, no one in the community below age 25 may study, in the original or in translation, the books the Greeks wrote on religious philosophy and science. Medicine is exempted from the prohibition, since the Torah allows the physician to heal.c7-adret-ban-terms
  1396. p. 209, p. 209In Castile, Abraham Benveniste was named Rab de la Corte in 1421, a sort of 'chief rabbi' for the kingdom's Jews, and in 1432 he convened a conference of Castilian communities at Valladolid. A range of ordinances was passed and communal life was reorganized. The drive toward centralization went on under the next leader, Abraham Seneor, a prominent banker at the royal court.c7-castile-centralization
  1397. p. 209, p. 209According to Javier Castaño, the push for centralization produced a 'development of proto-national consciousness' among Castile's Jews. Ironically, as the Jewish story in medieval Spain drew to a close, Castilian and Aragonese Jews may have identified more than ever with their respective kingdoms. It is perhaps not altogether surprising, then, that the exiled Spanish Jews clung so stubbornly to their Iberian legacy even after being expelled in 1492.c7-proto-national
  1398. p. 209, p. 209Map 7.2 in the book, covering how Jews were expelled from and moved around Western Europe from 1000 to 1500, marks Jewish communities with their dates of expulsion, the direction of flight and dispersal of the expelled, mostly toward Poland, Italy and the Ottoman Empire, and the principal places of resettlement.c7-map72
  1399. p. 209, p. 209The usual image of medieval Jewish society in Christian Europe is that of a community living in isolation from non-Jews, frequently persecuted and steered by religious tradition. On each of the three counts, medieval Jewish life proved more intricate. It is true that the basic religious gap between Christians and Jews was assumed by everyone and shaped their encounters, that Jews were often victims of violence, and that religious tradition underpinned how they lived and thought.c7-apart-image
  1400. p. 209, p. 209In a 1928 article the American-Jewish historian Salo Baron argued that the situation of Jews in medieval society is frequently misunderstood. Jews were mostly city dwellers, hence a small minority, set apart by legal status and privileges, from the overwhelming majority, the peasants. Peasants were almost everywhere serfs bound to the land they worked, sold along with it if the landowner sold his holdings.c7-baron-1928
  1401. p. 209, p. 209, p. 209Penner identifies three distinct patterns of daily prayer in the Second Temple period: analogy with daily cultic sacrifice; legitimation through scripture (especially Deut 6:7, and in Josephus also Moses as exemplar); coordination with the cycles of the heavenly luminaries.cl-penner-three-patterns
  1402. p. 209Across the Second Temple era, Penner finds daily prayer advanced as a significant religious practice, with multiple strategies arising to justify it (naturalization by analogy and etiology).cl-daily-prayer-prominence
  1403. p. 210, p. 210Jews never held 'equal rights' in medieval societies, Christian or Muslim, but then hardly anyone did, a notion that would have meant nothing at the time. Jews formed a clearly defined group with certain privileges and with openings closed to the peasant mass. At the same time, as a group they always faced certain restrictions, but that was true of nearly everyone else in medieval society too, nobles aside.c7-no-equal-rights
  1404. p. 210, p. 210Christian and Jewish authorities shared an interest in keeping clear dividing lines between the communities: anyone who crossed the boundaries was treated by both as a danger to the social and religious order. Church and state were in a far stronger position to set and enforce rules. But when the Church insisted that Christians not share Jewish food or drink Jewish-made wine, it asked for nothing the rabbis would not also have endorsed: Jewish dietary law likewise served to maintain sharp social borders between Jews and gentiles.c7-both-sides-boundaries
  1405. p. 210, p. 210Everyday reality was another matter; consider the problem of sharing wine. Talmudic rules on producing and handling wine are strict, so many Jews took up winemaking, in places from northern France to southern Spain, supplying the community with a drink used in religious ritual (the Sabbath blessing over wine) and also a staple of daily life. By one historian's calculation, a Jewish household in Umbria late in the 1400s got through 1.5 to 3 liters of wine a day, on average.c7-wine
  1406. p. 210, p. 210Christianity extended past the reach of the Catholic Church and assumed a markedly distinct shape in southeastern Europe and Asia Minor. In the divided Roman Empire the eastern half came to be called the Byzantine Empire, though its inhabitants called themselves Romans and saw their emperor as heir to Caesar's throne. Shrunk by Muslim conquest, it lost Italy by the end of the eleventh century, and the Seljuk Turks seized much of Asia Minor in 1071, yet a much-diminished empire lasted until Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453.c7-byzantine-empire
  1407. p. 210, p. 210Byzantine Jewry's position differed from that of Catholic Europe's Jews. In a state that took itself to be the Roman Empire's continuation, Byzantine Jews regarded themselves as Romans and did not hesitate to cite Judaism's ancient legal status as a legally recognized religion, using it for protection. On the other hand, they also met legal discrimination and persecution.c7-byzantine-status
  1408. p. 210, p. 210On the eve of the Muslim conquest of Palestine in 634, Jews were reeling under persecution ordered by Emperor Heraclius (610 to 641) because they had (allegedly) helped the Persians capture Jerusalem in 614, seemingly a major reason Jews were so open to Muslim rule in Palestine and other lands taken from the Byzantines.c7-heraclius
  1409. p. 210, p. 210Several later emperors also tried to convert the Jews by force, and the iconoclast quarrel of the 700s and 800s, a rift over whether Christians ought to venerate sacred images, was especially harsh on Jews, who were identified with the anti-image camp because of Judaism's religious ban on graven images.c7-iconoclasm
  1410. p. 210, p. 210These incidents aside, being one of the empire's many ethnic groups, Byzantine Jews lived a comparatively stable life. The traveler Benjamin of Tudela observed that 'there is much hatred against them', yet the Jews are 'rich and good men, charitable and religious'. In the eleventh century conditions were welcoming enough to draw immigrants. Centers of study arose in Thebes and Constantinople, and Jewish merchants did well in the textile trade despite efforts to keep them out of silk.c7-byzantine-life
  1411. p. 210, p. 210Byzantine Rabbanite Judaism produced few great scholars of law, though many poets and midrashists came from the empire. Byzantine Karaite legalists, by contrast, set the agenda for their whole movement for four centuries. The Rabbanite Tobias ben Eliezer wrote the well-known midrashic compilation Midrash Leqah Tov and took part in a messianic movement that swept the Jews of Greece as the Crusaders moved east.c7-byzantine-scholars
  1412. p. 210In the final chapter, Novinsky asks what the Brazilian New Christian was, the divided man between being Christian and being Jewish.c9-bahia-divided-man
  1413. p. 211, p. 211Despite the theoretical limits of religious law, it was known that some Jews in Italy were relaxed about tasting non-Jewish wine: Leone da Modena, a rabbi of Venice, explained in the seventeenth century that Italian forebears had always drunk ordinary wine. Christians, for their part, ignored Church warnings when it came to enjoying Jewish wine: in the fourteenth century Taddeo, a father and abbot of an Umbrian monastery, praised a Jewish winemaker's Trebbiano reds as the area's best, and monks of the confraternity of S. Stefano regularly patronized a Jewish-run tavern at Assisi in the 1380s.c7-wine-practice
  1414. p. 211, p. 211Jewish-Christian interaction showed up in every walk of life, from 'court Jews' down to the lower classes. In high culture there are many cases of mutual influence, reaching from philosophy and theology into literature. Immanuel of Rome, a Hebrew poet (d. 1328) was shaped by the Hebrew poetic tradition of Spain but plainly knew Italian poetry, and his poem on 'hell and paradise' reflects the influence of Dante's epic.c7-cross-cultural
  1415. p. 211, p. 211Cross-communal cooperation also turns up at the other end of the social scale, among outcasts of both societies. A surprising case is Abramo di Ventura da Roma, who in the 1430s lived as a professional criminal in Perugia, heading a gang of Jews and Christians whose specialty was abducting the sons and daughters of rich Jewish merchants and bankers for ransom.c7-abramo-ventura
  1416. p. 211, p. 211In Ashkenaz too, social reality was more complex than the picture of a society more traditional and more deferential to rabbinic authority. In thirteenth-century France, Rabbi Isaac of Corbeil was asked about a Jewish woman who accepted baptism and took a Christian lover, then had second thoughts and went back to Judaism, and whose Christian partner converted to Judaism. May they marry? He ruled that they may not. It was hardly a typical case, but it suggests that in Ashkenaz as well, Jewish-Christian relations could not always be policed as authorities of both faiths wished.c7-isaac-corbeil
  1417. p. 211, p. 211As they took in practices and values from the surrounding Christian society, Ashkenazi Jews transformed them and made them their own, a good illustration of how interreligious exchange worked in the Middle Ages, always mixing elements of accommodation and resistance.c7-accommodation-resistance
  1418. p. 211, p. 211The Jewish rite of circumcision underwent changes in the Middle Ages that in some cases seem modeled on Christian baptism. In Charlemagne's time godparents were brought in from the Byzantine East to the Catholic West, and probably not by chance a comparable honorific role arose in the Ashkenazi rite: the ba'al ha-brit or sandek, an adult (sometimes a woman) who takes the infant to the father and keeps hold of him through the circumcision.c7-sandek
  1419. p. 211, p. 211Another childhood ritual, meant to bring young boys into Torah study, may also have been influenced by Christianity: the boy was given honey cakes inscribed with Bible verses, symbolically acting out Ezekiel 3:3 ('it was as sweet as honey in my mouth'). The historian Ivan Marcus has proposed that the custom may have been a Jewish reworking of the Church's central liturgical mystery, the Eucharist.c7-honey-cakes
  1420. p. 211, p. 211Jews, then, took influence from Christian neighbors' rituals and religious ideas, but adapting them to Judaism was neither imitation nor cultural assimilation: it was a process that changed the meaning of the adopted rituals and symbols and made them their own.c7-adaptation-not-imitation
  1421. p. 212For Penner, descriptions in 1QS VI 6-7, 1QS IX 26b-X 8a, 1QHᵃ XX 7-14, and 4Q334 indicate that the Qumran community practiced regular nocturnal prayer; texts such as 4Q503 and 4Q510-511 enter with less certainty.cl-qumran-nocturnal
  1422. p. 213The 1492 expulsion capped a long Jewish departure from western Europe.c8-western-exodus
  1423. p. 213Germany issued no universal expulsion, yet numerous cities and regions removed their Jews.c8-german-expulsions
  1424. p. 213By 1570 Frankfurt was Germany's sole free imperial city still containing Jewish residents.c8-frankfurt-1570
  1425. p. 213The Ottoman realm and Poland-Lithuania became the two major eastern Jewish centers.c8-eastern-centers
  1426. p. 213Displaced communities rebuilt a resilient culture transformed by their new settings.c8-resilient-rebuilding
  1427. p. 213The early modern era brought gradual transition rather than a revolutionary break in Jewish identity.c8-early-modern-transition
  1428. p. 213Deep changes opened fissures while the structure of Jewish tradition remained strong.c8-tradition-remained
  1429. p. 213Iberian exiles carried their heritage abroad and often came to dominate local traditions.c8-sephardi-hegemony
  1430. p. 213Migration carried Yiddish into eastern Europe and Ladino into Ottoman lands.c8-languages-migrate
  1431. p. 213Sephardi practice transformed and in some places displaced Romaniot custom.c8-romaniot-change
  1432. p. 214Yiddish and Ladino linguistically distinguished Jews from many surrounding populations.c8-distinct-jewish-languages
  1433. p. 214Portugal imposed collective conversion in 1497, five years after Spain's expulsion.c8-portugal-1497
  1434. p. 214Many conversos retained Jewish identity and practice within a clandestine subculture.c8-converso-subculture
  1435. p. 214For conversos, religiously affirming Jewishness became an individual choice.c8-converso-choice
  1436. p. 214Print vastly widened the exchange of knowledge among Jewish traditions.c8-print-exchange
  1437. p. 214Kabbalistic teachings once restricted to a few reached much broader audiences.c8-kabbalah-spread
  1438. p. 214New astronomy challenged inherited Jewish, Christian, and classical cosmologies.c8-science-challenge
  1439. p. 214Jews from several regions studied medicine at Pavia and Padua, then carried secular science home.c8-medical-students
  1440. p. 214Rulers increasingly placed political and economic interests above religious considerations.c8-state-interest
  1441. p. 214Nulman attributes the composition of Barukh She'amar (opening of Pesukei Dezimra) to the Men of the Great Assembly, to whom tradition says it was revealed from heaven with eighty-seven words (the numerical value of paz, 'refined gold').cl-barukh-sheamar-great-assembly
  1442. p. 215Mercantilism encouraged states to treat Jewish merchants and financiers as assets.c8-mercantilism-jews
  1443. p. 215Estimates suggest Polish-Lithuanian Jewry rose from about 30,000 in 1500 to 100,000, perhaps more, by 1575.c8-ashkenazi-growth
  1444. p. 215At the opening of the eighteenth century, Ashkenazim became a majority of world Jewry.c8-ashkenazi-majority
  1445. p. 215Around the middle of the sixteenth century, each of Salonika and Istanbul housed roughly 20,000 Jews.c8-ottoman-metropolises
  1446. p. 215After 1650 Amsterdam and Livorno saw rapid Jewish population growth.c8-western-port-growth
  1447. p. 216Gutenberg produced his two-volume Bible in 1455.c8-gutenberg
  1448. p. 216An Avignon contract of 1444 records a Jewish-Christian attempt at Hebrew printing.c8-avignon-experiment
  1449. p. 216The Arba'ah Turim and Rashi's commentary were among the earliest printed Hebrew books.c8-first-hebrew-print
  1450. p. 216Sephardi exiles opened a Hebrew press in Constantinople as early as 1493.c8-constantinople-press
  1451. p. 216The Soncino family began printing in 1484 and later worked in the Ottoman Empire.c8-soncino
  1452. p. 216Daniel Bomberg issued a rabbinic Bible in Venice in 1517 and 1518.c8-bomberg-bible
  1453. p. 216Modern Talmud pagination still follows Bomberg's complete edition.c8-bomberg-talmud
  1454. p. 216Printed books expanded readership, literacy, and access to Jewish texts.c8-print-democratized
  1455. p. 216The printed page stabilized texts and helped standardize practice, especially liturgy.c8-print-standardized
  1456. p. 216Individual reading made learning less dependent on direct rabbinic guidance.c8-rabbinic-authority-print
  1457. p. 216Printing began a slow transformation because books remained costly and scarce.c8-print-gradual
  1458. p. 217The Ashkenazi center shifted from France and Germany to Poland-Lithuania.c8-ashkenaz-shift
  1459. p. 217Former rabbi Solomon ha-Levi became Pablo de Santa María and bishop of Burgos.c8-solomon-halevi
  1460. p. 217Conversion divided spouses, siblings, and cousins between Judaism and Christianity.c8-divided-families
  1461. p. 217Conversos remained near Jewish relatives who could support clandestine practice.c8-converso-neighbors
  1462. p. 217The Toledo violence of 1449 targeted conversos rather than Jews.c8-toledo-1449
  1463. p. 218Blood-purity statutes excluded people of Jewish descent despite their Christian faith.c8-purity-blood
  1464. p. 218Blood purity detached Jewish identity from religion and made it hereditary.c8-identity-racialized
  1465. p. 218The Tortosa disputation of 1413 to 1414 ended in a proclaimed Christian victory and further conversions.c8-tortosa
  1466. p. 218In 1478 the Catholic Monarchs asked the pope to authorize a national Inquisition, which began operating in 1481.c8-inquisition-founded
  1467. p. 218The Inquisition tried Christians for heresy, not Jews as such.c8-inquisition-target
  1468. p. 218A tribunal's arrival opened a thirty- or forty-day grace period for confessions.c8-grace-period
  1469. p. 218Food practices, Sabbath rest, and mourning rites were treated as signs of Judaizing.c8-judaizing-signs
  1470. p. 218Inquisitorial records preserve detailed testimony about converso daily life.c8-inquisition-records
  1471. p. 218María Días testified in 1483 that neighbors prepared for Sabbath and avoided non-kosher meat.c8-maria-dias
  1472. p. 219Those convicted of Judaizing could lose property and be handed to secular power for execution.c8-auto-da-fe
  1473. p. 219Between 1540 and 1700, under 2 percent of Inquisition defendants were reportedly burned.c8-inquisition-rate
  1474. p. 219For Aragon, one estimate assigns 520 executions to 942 crypto-Jewish cases.c8-aragon-crypto-jews
  1475. p. 219Granada's conquest in January 1492 consolidated Catholic monarchy across most of Spain.c8-granada-1492
  1476. p. 219The March edict justified expulsion as a way to stop Jews influencing conversos.c8-expulsion-edict
  1477. p. 220Map 8.1 connects Spain's expulsion with Sephardi communities around the Mediterranean and Atlantic.c8-map-sephardi
  1478. p. 220Historians differ over whether expulsion sought departure, conversion, or religious unity.c8-expulsion-debate
  1479. p. 220Expulsion produced little immediate gain and limited direct economic damage.c8-expulsion-economy
  1480. p. 220Probably about 100,000 Jews left Spain.c8-exile-number
  1481. p. 220In December 1496 Manuel ordered Jews to leave Portugal within ten months.c8-portugal-edict
  1482. p. 220In 1497 the state seized Jewish children up to age fourteen for baptism.c8-children-seized
  1483. p. 220Portugal collectively converted Jews and prohibited their emigration.c8-portugal-conversion
  1484. p. 221The Inquisition was established in Lima and Mexico City in 1569.c8-inquisition-overseas
  1485. p. 221After 1506 Portuguese conversos emigrated steadily toward the Mediterranean and northern Europe.c8-converso-emigration
  1486. p. 221The Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453 and made it their imperial capital.c8-ottoman-conquest
  1487. p. 221Sephardi exiles built a flourishing center under the sultans' protection.c8-ottoman-refuge
  1488. p. 221The story that Bayezid II invited Spanish Jews is popular but historically inaccurate.c8-bayezid-myth
  1489. p. 221Isaac Zarfati presented Turkey to German Jews as a land of peace and opportunity.c8-zarfati-letter
  1490. p. 221The Ottoman conquest of 1516 and 1517 incorporated Syria, Palestine, and the Jewish Holy Land.c8-ottoman-holy-land
  1491. p. 221Safed became a new center of Jewish learning in Ottoman Galilee.c8-safed-center
  1492. p. 221After 1453 the sürgün policy transferred whole groups, including Jews, into Istanbul.c8-surgun
  1493. p. 222Moses Almosnino joined a Salonikan mission to the sultan during the 1560s.c8-almosnino
  1494. p. 222Istanbul counted roughly 12,000 Jewish residents in 1490 and more than 20,000 by 1688.c8-istanbul-growth
  1495. p. 222Salonika reached roughly 30,000 Jews, half the city's population, in the seventeenth century.c8-salonika-growth
  1496. p. 222Ottoman Jewish society centered on major port cities.c8-ottoman-urban
  1497. p. 222Jews and Christians were protected dhimmis subject to jizya and uneven restrictions.c8-ottoman-dhimmi
  1498. p. 222The Ottoman state left daily administration and religion to non-Muslim communities.c8-communal-autonomy
  1499. p. 222Rabbinic responsa are important sources for Ottoman Jewish life.c8-responsa-source
  1500. p. 222Local Janina merchants asked to exclude visiting Jewish competitors.c8-janina-merchants
  1501. p. 222Samuel de Medina rejected exclusion by citing commercial freedom across the empire.c8-medina-ruling
  1502. p. 222Ottoman cities allowed Jewish guilds and guilds with mixed religious membership.c8-mixed-guilds
  1503. p. 223Sephardi migrants brought broadcloth techniques to Salonika and Safed.c8-textile-transfer
  1504. p. 223Salonikan Jews paid part of the jizya in cloth supplied to the Janissaries.c8-cloth-tax
  1505. p. 223English competition weakened the Ottoman Jewish textile industry.c8-textile-decline
  1506. p. 223Sephardi networks connected Ottoman, Italian, and Atlantic ports.c8-trading-diaspora
  1507. p. 223Sixteenth-century Ottoman expansion coincided with Jewish prosperity and broad religious freedom.c8-ottoman-golden-age
  1508. p. 223In Salonika Ladino became so common in trade that non-Jews also used it.c8-ladino-market
  1509. p. 223Greek-speaking communities continued beside newly arrived Sephardim.c8-romaniot-coexist
  1510. p. 223Spanish ballads kept older texts while adopting Ottoman melodies.c8-ottoman-music
  1511. p. 223During the sixteenth century Ladino remained mainly popular while rabbis wrote in Hebrew.c8-ladino-popular
  1512. p. 224Jacob Huli published the first volume of the Ladino biblical commentary Me'am Lo'ez in 1730.c8-meam-loez
  1513. p. 224Gracia Mendes left Portugal after the Inquisition's creation and preserved the family fortune.c8-gracia-flight
  1514. p. 224The Mendes family lived openly as Jews in Ferrara from about 1553.c8-gracia-open-jew
  1515. p. 224Joseph Nasi became duke of Naxos and controlled a wide tax-farming network.c8-joseph-naxos
  1516. p. 224Gracia and Joseph tried to organize an Ottoman boycott of Ancona in 1555.c8-ancona-boycott
  1517. p. 224The boycott answered Paul IV's execution of two dozen conversos.c8-ancona-martyrs
  1518. p. 224Safed attracted conversos, Sephardim, and Jews from many regions after Ottoman conquest.c8-safed-immigration
  1519. p. 224By the late 1560s Safed may have held 1,800 Jewish households.c8-safed-population
  1520. p. 225The tomb attributed to Shimon bar Yohai at Meron drew pilgrims from the fourteenth century.c8-meron-pilgrimage
  1521. p. 225The Zohar, compiled in thirteenth-century Spain, became Kabbalah's leading authority.c8-zohar-authority
  1522. p. 225Joseph Karo, mystic and jurist, published the Shulhan Arukh in Venice in 1565.c8-joseph-karo
  1523. p. 225Isaac Luria lived in Safed for under three years before dying at thirty-eight.c8-luria-safed
  1524. p. 225Safed kabbalists cultivated vigils, mourning for the Temple, and self-mortification.c8-safed-asceticism
  1525. p. 225Because Luria did not write his teachings, Haim Vital became their chief transmitter.c8-vital-transmission
  1526. p. 225Tikkun would free divine sparks trapped in matter and restore divine unity.c8-tikkun
  1527. p. 225In Lurianic Kabbalah, every commandment performed with proper intent could advance redemption.c8-ritual-cosmic
  1528. p. 226The doctrine of gilgul explained soul-sparks transmigrating until reassembled.c8-gilgul
  1529. p. 226Philosophers such as Saadya rejected transmigration, while early Kabbalah accepted it.c8-gilgul-precedents
  1530. p. 226Safed mystics developed the ritual welcome of the Sabbath queen.c8-kabbalat-shabbat
  1531. p. 226All-night study on Shavuot's first night also traces to this milieu.c8-shavuot-vigil
  1532. p. 226Many Spanish exiles settled in Morocco after 1492.c8-morocco-migration
  1533. p. 226The distinction between exiled megorashim and native toshavim lasted for centuries.c8-megorashim-toshavim
  1534. p. 226Moroccan Jewry included Spanish-speaking port traders and Arabic-speaking inland brokers.c8-moroccan-diversity
  1535. p. 226For Reif, nineteenth- and twentieth-century liturgical adjustments differ from earlier innovations: dictated by reformation in response to non-Jewish environmental ideologies, or by highly circumspect adjustments for community change and cataclysmic events.cl-modern-reform-ideologies
  1536. p. 227Coffee reached major Middle Eastern cities around the mid-sixteenth century.c8-coffee-spread
  1537. p. 227Rabbis debated blessing, Passover, and Sabbath rules but did not prohibit coffee itself.c8-jewish-coffee
  1538. p. 227According to the historian Elliott Horowitz, coffee may have favored nocturnal Kabbalistic vigils.c8-coffee-kabbalah
  1539. p. 227Fez transferred its Jews into a mellah in 1438, partly for protection.c8-fez-mellah
  1540. p. 227Sultan Abd al-Haqq appointed the Jew Aaron ben Batash as vizier.c8-aaron-ben-batash
  1541. p. 227Rebels killed many inhabitants of Fez's mellah in 1465.c8-fez-1465
  1542. p. 228Moroccan Jewish life combined harsh restrictions, economic integration, and occasional court access.c8-morocco-ambiguity
  1543. p. 228Marrakesh's mellah arose in the mid-sixteenth century within a dynastic urban project.c8-marrakesh-mellah
  1544. p. 228Marrakesh's mellah also housed Christian foreigners and a Franciscan church.c8-mixed-mellah
  1545. p. 228European travel accounts record separation and integration while carrying prejudice against Jews and Muslims.c8-travelers-bias
  1546. p. 228Italy served as a cultural bridge and crossroads of Jewish traditions.c8-italy-crossroads
  1547. p. 229War refugees enlarged Venice's Jewish presence from 1509.c8-venice-refugees
  1548. p. 229Venetian authorities defended Jewish lenders as a necessary service for poor Christians.c8-venice-poor
  1549. p. 229Venice established the first Jewish ghetto in March 1516.c8-ghetto-1516
  1550. p. 229Paul IV's bull Cum nimis absurdum opened a new phase of Catholic pressure.c8-cum-nimis
  1551. p. 229The Church ordered Talmud burnings throughout Italy in 1553.c8-talmud-burning
  1552. p. 230The 1595 expurgatory index required changes to 420 Hebrew works.c8-index-hebrew
  1553. p. 230In 1555 roughly four thousand Roman Jews were confined beside the Tiber.c8-rome-ghetto
  1554. p. 230Ghettos spread through Italian cities during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.c8-italian-ghettos
  1555. p. 230Paradoxically, the Italian ghetto era saw relatively little physical anti-Jewish violence.c8-ghetto-violence
  1556. p. 230The ghetto restricted and controlled Jews while also creating a recognized space (in Venice, the start of a permanent presence).c8-ghetto-ambivalence
  1557. p. 230State interest and economic usefulness began to outweigh some religious objections.c8-raison-detat
  1558. p. 230Venice's 1548 charter permitted synagogues before other minorities received houses of worship.c8-venice-synagogues
  1559. p. 230Nulman describes Berikh Shemayh as a kabbalistic Aramaic prayer quoted from the Zohar and introduced into the liturgy by Isaac Luria (Ari); the Zohar attributes it to Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai (second century). It was prescribed in Italy in 1540 and spread from about 1599.cl-berikh-shemeh-luria-zohar
  1560. p. 231Leone Modena's autobiography reveals close cultural proximity between Jews and Christians.c8-modena-autobiography
  1561. p. 231In 1622 Christians and nobles heard Modena preach in a packed synagogue.c8-modena-sermon
  1562. p. 231Italian acculturation adapted neighboring practices without erasing Jewish difference.c8-acculturation-not-assimilation
  1563. p. 231Sara Coppio Sullam gathered Christian intellectuals in her Venetian ghetto salon.c8-sara-sullam
  1564. p. 231Sullam published a manifesto answering a public charge of heresy.c8-sullam-manifesto
  1565. p. 231Venice's ghetto contained at least eight synagogues serving diverse communities.c8-venice-diverse
  1566. p. 231In Rome five rites shared the building known as the Cinque Scole.c8-cinque-scole
  1567. p. 232Sixteenth-century Italian Jewry probably numbered no more than thirty thousand.c8-italian-population
  1568. p. 232Voluntary confraternities organized study, charity, sociability, and mutual aid.c8-confraternities
  1569. p. 232Ferrara's Gemilut Hasadim confraternity cared for poor patients and burials.c8-gemilut-hasadim
  1570. p. 232Rabbis called pursuits outside ritual and study bitul torah.c8-bitul-torah
  1571. p. 232Fifteenth-century scholars coined the term Middle Ages for the period before their own age, known as the Renaissance.c8-renaissance-definition
  1572. p. 232Italian Jews cultivated rhetoric, music, and dance; synagogues across Europe show Renaissance influence in architecture.c8-jewish-renaissance-arts
  1573. p. 232Mordechai Maisel sponsored extensive rebuilding in Prague's ghetto late in the sixteenth century.c8-maisel-prague
  1574. p. 232Isaac Lampronti used contemporary science to revisit killing lice on Sabbath.c8-lampronti-science
  1575. p. 233Padua trained Jewish physicians in medicine, liberal arts, Latin, and natural science.c8-padua-medicine
  1576. p. 233Jewish historical writing briefly revived after Spain's expulsion.c8-history-revival
  1577. p. 233Shlomo ibn Verga sought social and historical rather than theological causes for persecution.c8-ibn-verga
  1578. p. 233Samuel Usque published a historical consolation in Portuguese at Ferrara in 1553.c8-samuel-usque
  1579. p. 233Elijah Capsali chronicled both Venice's state and the Ottoman realm.c8-capsali
  1580. p. 233Joseph ha-Kohen composed annals of France and Turkey and rendered into Hebrew an account of Mexico's conquest.c8-joseph-hakohen
  1581. p. 233David Gans divided general and Jewish history in his 1592 Tsemah David.c8-david-gans
  1582. p. 233Azariah de' Rossi stood as the Jewish Renaissance's most finished scholar and remained a disputed figure.c8-azariah-derossi
  1583. p. 233Some of the leading rabbis of the time banned Me'or Einayim, later rediscovered in the Jewish Enlightenment.c8-meor-einayim-ban
  1584. p. 233De' Rossi compared the Talmud, ancient Jewish sources, and non-Jewish authors.c8-derossi-method
  1585. p. 234De' Rossi distinguished rabbinic legal authority from historical statements open to error.c8-derossi-history-authority
  1586. p. 234He defended critical use of gentile scholars without accepting claims hostile to Torah.c8-gentile-sources
  1587. p. 234Humanists studied Hebrew beside Greek and Latin to reach texts in their original languages.c8-humanist-hebrew
  1588. p. 234Pico della Mirandola learned from Jewish scholars including Delmedigo and Alemanno.c8-pico-jewish-teachers
  1589. p. 234Johannes Reuchlin regarded Hebrew as humanity's original language.c8-reuchlin-hebrew
  1590. p. 234Spicer (in the Handbook) notes that the Church rejected race-based Jew-hatred that treated ancestry as a permanent stamp of Jewish identity and thereby emptied baptism of effect.c-h502-hayes-spicer-church-rejects-racial
  1591. p. 235Reuchlin opposed Pfefferkorn's proposed wholesale confiscation of Hebrew books.c8-reuchlin-affair
  1592. p. 235Reuchlin's defense of Hebrew literature did not eliminate his prejudice against Jews.c8-reuchlin-limits
  1593. p. 235Erasmus placed little value on Hebrew and rejected Reuchlin's Kabbalistic engagement.c8-erasmus
  1594. p. 235The Reformation split western Christendom and unsettled inherited religious certainties.c8-reformation-split
  1595. p. 235Historians disagree over the Reformation's positive and negative effects on Jews.c8-luther-debate
  1596. p. 235In 1523 Luther criticized Catholic persecution and urged tolerance to facilitate conversion.c8-luther-1523
  1597. p. 235In 1543 Luther advocated burning synagogues, destroying homes, confiscating prayer-books and Talmuds, and restricting rabbis and travel.c8-luther-1543
  1598. p. 236Despite his changing tone, Luther always sought conversion and never accepted Judaism as legitimate.c8-luther-continuity
  1599. p. 236Josel of Rosheim represented German Jews before Maximilian I and Charles V.c8-josel-defense
  1600. p. 236In 1543 Josel persuaded Strasbourg to ban reprinting Luther's anti-Jewish texts.c8-strasbourg-ban
  1601. p. 236More tolerant Protestant currents helped prepare Jewish readmission to England.c8-readmission-england
  1602. p. 236After 1570 ritual-murder trials declined through imperial protection, self-defense, and new ideas.c8-blood-libel-decline
  1603. p. 236Popular belief in blood libel endured long after trials declined.c8-blood-libel-persisted
  1604. p. 236The Thirty Years' War stalemate strengthened pragmatic state politics.c8-thirty-years-war
  1605. p. 236State economic interests contributed to Jewish life's return to western Europe.c8-return-west
  1606. p. 238The early modern era carried Sephardim from Iberia toward Ottoman lands while Ashkenazim moved from Central Europe into Poland.c9-parallel-migrations
  1607. p. 238Poland-Lithuania became the principal heartland of Ashkenazi Jewish life.c9-poland-heartland
  1608. p. 238By the late seventeenth century, Polish-Lithuanian Jewry was the world's largest Jewish community.c9-largest-community
  1609. p. 238Moses Isserles portrayed Poland as less hostile to Jews than German lands.c9-isserles-peace
  1610. p. 238A popular legend heard in Polin a divine instruction meaning 'dwell here'.c9-polin-legend
  1611. p. 238Bernard Weinryb counted more than fifty local persecutions from the 1530s into the early eighteenth century.c9-local-persecutions
  1612. p. 238Neither the massacres of 1648 nor the invasions that followed halted Jewish demographic expansion.c9-growth-after-1648
  1613. p. 238Jewish movement from German territories into Poland probably began by the eleventh century.c9-migration-eleventh
  1614. p. 238After the seventeenth-century massacres, refugees moved toward Germany and other western regions.c9-reverse-migration
  1615. p. 238One estimate places 150,000 to 170,000 Jews in Poland-Lithuania around the middle of the sixteenth century.c9-population-estimate
  1616. p. 238The Union of Lublin in 1569 created a multinational and multireligious commonwealth.c9-union-lublin
  1617. p. 238The state bordered the Baltic in the north and the Black Sea in the south and encompassed many peoples.c9-commonwealth-scale
  1618. p. 238Catholics formed less than half the population alongside Orthodox Christians, Protestants, Muslims, and Jews.c9-religious-diversity
  1619. p. 238Reif records broad circulation of printed prayer-books across Poland and nearby lands, with a parallel sixteenth-century surge in Turkey and later presses in Germany and Holland.cl-print-siddur-dissemination
  1620. p. 238Nulman identifies Birkat HaLevanah (also Kiddush Levanah) as the blessing for consecration of the moon; the sages read Exod 12:2 as 'see the moon in this form and then sanctify it', with witnesses before the Bet Din.cl-birkat-halevanah-moon
  1621. p. 239Jews lacked modern equal rights yet possessed broad religious freedom and communal autonomy.c9-autonomy-toleration
  1622. p. 239Casimir III's privilege of 1334 confirmed the charter Boleslav of Kalisz had granted in 1264.c9-casimir-charter
  1623. p. 239Jewish legal standing varied with local authorities and circumstances.c9-plural-jurisdictions
  1624. p. 239Warsaw, Cracow, Gdansk, and Lublin were among cities that did not admit Jewish settlers.c9-city-exclusions
  1625. p. 239Warsaw obtained a royal right to exclude Jews in 1527.c9-warsaw-1527
  1626. p. 239Kazimierz held roughly 4,500 Jewish residents during the early 1600s.c9-kazimierz-population
  1627. p. 239After 1572, nobles elected the monarch through the Sejm.c9-nobles-republic
  1628. p. 239The constitution of 1505 required unanimous parliamentary approval for legislation.c9-constitution-1505
  1629. p. 239By the seventeenth century, the Commonwealth resembled a federation of estates more than a centralized state.c9-decentralized-state
  1630. p. 239After 1569, Polish settlement expanded into Belarus and Ukraine.c9-eastward-settlement
  1631. p. 240Jan Zamoyski left an estate containing eleven towns and more than two hundred villages in 1605.c9-zamoyski-estate
  1632. p. 240Zamoyski welcomed Sephardi immigrants to Zamosc to promote commerce with Ottoman territories.c9-zamosc-sephardim
  1633. p. 240Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski owned one hundred towns and 1,300 villages.c9-ostrogski-estate
  1634. p. 240Magnates maintained their own courts and private armies on their estates.c9-magnate-autonomy
  1635. p. 240Many Jews managed estates, marketed produce, and supplied village populations.c9-jewish-intermediaries
  1636. p. 240The arenda leased monopolies and became central to relations among magnates, Jews, and peasants.c9-arenda
  1637. p. 240Leases could encompass liquor, salt mines, mills, tobacco, warehouses, and tolls.c9-arenda-range
  1638. p. 240A Jewish leaseholder could provoke resentment when collecting prices, taxes, and tolls.c9-arrendator-conflict
  1639. p. 240Anti-Jewish hostility could arise from economic conflicts as readily as from religious prejudice.c9-economic-hostility
  1640. p. 240In 1539, Sigismund I placed Jews on noble estates under their owners' authority.c9-sigismund-authority
  1641. p. 240Settlement policy depended on each magnate, producing an unstable legal condition.c9-noble-whims
  1642. p. 240In general, nobles and Jewish leaseholders gained mutual advantages from their contracts.c9-aligned-interests
  1643. p. 240A Moravian autobiography says the author's mother supported the family by making oat brandy.c9-moravian-mother
  1644. p. 240Jewish women participated actively in economic life and were not confined to the home.c9-women-economy
  1645. p. 241The memoirist's father received a distillery from the local count under a lease.c9-distillery-lease
  1646. p. 241The same count jailed and expelled the leaseholder after rivals accused him.c9-patronage-risk
  1647. p. 241Communal leaders prohibited bringing internal Jewish disputes before non-Jewish courts.c9-outside-courts
  1648. p. 241The semiautonomous kehillah performed functions comparable to a Christian municipality.c9-kehillah-parallel
  1649. p. 241The principal boundary between Jews and Christians concerned jurisdiction, not necessarily residence.c9-jurisdiction-boundary
  1650. p. 241The community elected leaders, raised taxes, maintained courts, and provided social services.c9-community-services
  1651. p. 241Taxpaying members annually elected lay leaders called tovim.c9-tovim
  1652. p. 241The rabbi was an employee of the kehillah, although his religious authority legitimized its institutions.c9-rabbi-employee
  1653. p. 241The community could grant or deny newcomers the right of residence.c9-residence-right
  1654. p. 241The communal residence right was known as hezqat ha-yishuv.c9-hezqat-yishuv
  1655. p. 241In Kazimierz, a nonresident Jew could neither settle nor conduct business.c9-kazimierz-outsiders
  1656. p. 241The shtadlan represented the community before royal officials, cities, and magnates.c9-shtadlan
  1657. p. 242During the sixteenth century, the Council of Four Lands arose to coordinate Polish Jewish communities.c9-four-lands
  1658. p. 242Lithuania had an equivalent Council of Provinces.c9-lithuanian-council
  1659. p. 242The councils met during commercial fairs such as Lublin's.c9-council-fairs
  1660. p. 242By 1576, the council had a central court, apportioned taxes, and mediated regional disputes.c9-council-functions
  1661. p. 242A Lithuanian resolution of 1623 ordered close watching of assemblies to stop harmful measures.c9-sejmiki-watch
  1662. p. 242Religion and rabbinic law permeated individual and collective existence.c9-religion-pervasive
  1663. p. 242Isserles performed a Sabbath wedding to spare an impoverished bride humiliation.c9-isserles-wedding
  1664. p. 242The episode demonstrates pragmatic flexibility within commitment to Halakhah.c9-halakhic-flexibility
  1665. p. 243In 1648, Bogdan Chmielnicki led a Cossack uprising against Polish rule.c9-cossack-revolt
  1666. p. 243Chmielnicki joined Cossacks with Ukrainian peasants and Crimean Tatars.c9-rebel-alliance
  1667. p. 243Many Jewish refugees were overtaken and killed in fortified towns such as Nemirov.c9-nemirov
  1668. p. 243Nathan Neta Hanover narrated the massacres in Yeven Metsulah.c9-hanover-chronicle
  1669. p. 243Hanover recorded that Catholic Poles were massacred as well.c9-poles-also-killed
  1670. p. 243Historians emphasize the revolt's social and political dimensions in addition to religion.c9-social-political-revolt
  1671. p. 243Jews were associated with the regime because they served Polish landowners as agents.c9-agents-targeted
  1672. p. 243Shaul Stampfer argued that perhaps about twenty thousand of forty thousand Ukrainian Jews died.c9-stampfer-estimate
  1673. p. 243Shabbatai Horowitz called the massacres the third destruction.c9-third-destruction
  1674. p. 243Polish-Lithuanian Jewish communities recovered rapidly.c9-rapid-recovery
  1675. p. 243Those baptized under coercion could return to Judaism with royal permission in 1649.c9-return-after-baptism
  1676. p. 243Hanover described six pillars: study, prayer, charity, justice, truth, and peace.c9-six-pillars
  1677. p. 244Communities supported academies, teachers, young scholars, and boys.c9-academy-support
  1678. p. 244Printing broadened the reach of rabbinic learning.c9-printing-learning
  1679. p. 244The Soncinos printed tractates from the 1480s, and Bomberg issued a complete Talmud in the 1520s.c9-soncino-bomberg
  1680. p. 244Catholic censorship and bans ended Italian Talmud printing after the mid-sixteenth century.c9-italian-censorship
  1681. p. 244More than one hundred tractates were printed in Cracow and sixty in Lublin.c9-polish-printing
  1682. p. 244One historian estimated 48,000 to 80,000 copies produced by Polish presses.c9-copy-estimate
  1683. p. 244Pilpul reconciled apparent contradictions in the Talmud and its commentaries through ingenious interpretation.c9-pilpul
  1684. p. 244Judah Loew and Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller criticized pilpul.c9-pilpul-critics
  1685. p. 244During the seventeenth century, Kabbalah gained primacy and displaced philosophy in Ashkenazi culture.c9-kabbalah-ascendant
  1686. p. 244The Zohar came to occupy a place that rivaled or surpassed even the Talmud.c9-zohar-status
  1687. p. 244Joseph Karo composed the Shulhan Arukh from 1555 to 1563, and it appeared in print in 1565.c9-shulhan-arukh
  1688. p. 244Passover customs concerning legumes and rice differed among communities.c9-custom-differences
  1689. p. 245Isserles published glosses recording Ashkenazi practice where it differed from Karo.c9-isserles-glosses
  1690. p. 245Some rabbis regarded a uniform printed code as a threat to traditional legal learning.c9-code-resistance
  1691. p. 245By the seventeenth century, Isserles's annotated version had become standard across Ashkenazi lands.c9-code-accepted
  1692. p. 245Poland-Lithuania, Bohemia, Moravia, and Germany formed an Ashkenazi cultural area.c9-ashkenazi-area
  1693. p. 245Migrants preserved Yiddish in Poland-Lithuania, where the language absorbed Slavic elements.c9-yiddish-migration
  1694. p. 245No comparable Judeo-Polish language emerged.c9-no-judeo-polish
  1695. p. 245Jacob ben Isaac Ashkenazi produced the Tsenerene, an accessible Yiddish rendering of biblical readings.c9-tsenerene
  1696. p. 245The work addressed both men and women who lacked Hebrew education.c9-tsenerene-audience
  1697. p. 246Boys received formal Hebrew instruction, while girls learned mainly through informal Yiddish education.c9-gendered-education
  1698. p. 246The Jewish calendar combines lunar and solar cycles and adds a month in seven years of each nineteen-year cycle.c9-calendar-lunisolar
  1699. p. 246The Church reshaped its calendar to separate Sunday and Easter from Sabbath and Passover.c9-christian-separation
  1700. p. 246Protestant states resisted the Gregorian reform of 1582 until the eighteenth century.c9-gregorian-reform
  1701. p. 246Sefer evronot books taught Jewish calendrical calculation and defended it in Christian polemic.c9-sefer-evronot
  1702. p. 246Annual almanacs became profitable products for Hebrew printers.c9-calendar-business
  1703. p. 246Hebrew calendars included Christian holidays and commercial fairs relevant to daily life.c9-mixed-time
  1704. p. 247Tkhines gave women Yiddish prayers tied to female religious practices.c9-tkhines
  1705. p. 248The Thirty Years' War devastated Central Europe from 1618 to 1648.c9-thirty-years-war
  1706. p. 248The Empire's Jewish population generally endured less harm than nearby Christians.c9-jews-fared-better
  1707. p. 248In 1620, imperial troops looted Prague but spared the Jewish ghetto.c9-prague-spared
  1708. p. 248Jacob Bassevi financed the Habsburg war effort.c9-bassevi-financier
  1709. p. 248Jewish financiers were seen as relatively neutral in the confessional conflict.c9-neutral-outsiders
  1710. p. 248The Peace of Westphalia ended the war in 1648 and indirectly benefited religious minorities.c9-westphalia
  1711. p. 248After 1650, court Jews supplied essential services to German rulers.c9-court-jews
  1712. p. 249Samuel Oppenheimer organized resources for Austria's defense of Vienna in 1683.c9-oppenheimer
  1713. p. 249The emperor expelled Vienna's Jews in 1670.c9-vienna-expulsion
  1714. p. 249About fifty Viennese families settled in Berlin in 1671.c9-berlin-1671
  1715. p. 250Mercantilism made economic utility increasingly important in state policy.c9-mercantilism
  1716. p. 250The Livornina of 1593 protected former conversos in Livorno and Pisa from inquisitorial scrutiny.c9-livornina
  1717. p. 250By the eighteenth century, Livorno was a major Sephardi community and commercial port.c9-livorno-hub
  1718. p. 250In 1638 Simone Luzzatto published a systematic case for Jewish usefulness in international commerce.c9-luzzatto-discorso
  1719. p. 250Balthazar de Orobio fled to Amsterdam in 1662 and adopted the name Isaac along with public Judaism.c9-orobio
  1720. p. 250The Portuguese Inquisition established in 1536 drove converso emigration.c9-portuguese-inquisition
  1721. p. 250Reif notes that kabbalistic material starts entering Ashkenazi prayer-books during the 1500s (e.g. Naftali Hirs Treves's commentary printed in Thiengen in 1560).cl-kabbalah-ashkenazi-siddur-16c
  1722. p. 250, p. 250Goodman notes that public liturgy was primarily male and that women's attendance in late-antique synagogues is uncertain; in the Middle Ages, courtyards or rooms with a mehitsah (Provence, Germany) or listening through a window in Muslim lands became common patterns.c-h502-goodman-women-synagogue-space
  1723. p. 251About ten thousand Portuguese conversos moved into Spain during the early seventeenth century.c9-conversos-spain
  1724. p. 252Amsterdam, Hamburg, Venice, and Livorno allowed former conversos to live openly as Jews.c9-western-destinations
  1725. p. 252By the late seventeenth century, Portuguese communities existed in Curacao, Jamaica, Barbados, and New Amsterdam.c9-atlantic-numbers
  1726. p. 252Religious freedom and commercial opportunity drew conversos to Amsterdam.c9-amsterdam-attraction
  1727. p. 252Portuguese networks connected Amsterdam, London, and Hamburg with Iberia and the Caribbean.c9-atlantic-network
  1728. p. 252In 1730, Jews owned 115 of Suriname's four hundred plantations.c9-surinam-plantations
  1729. p. 252A synagogue was established at Joden Savanne in 1639.c9-joden-savanne
  1730. p. 252In 1657, Jews constituted ten percent of Amsterdam's stockbrokers.c9-stock-exchange
  1731. p. 253The Portuguese community opened a grand synagogue in 1675.c9-amsterdam-synagogue
  1732. p. 253Historians call these integrated commercial communities port Jews.c9-port-jews
  1733. p. 253Former conversos had to reconstruct traditions their families had lost.c9-new-jews
  1734. p. 253Spanish and Portuguese manuals taught Jewish law and practice to adults.c9-vernacular-guides
  1735. p. 253The Ets Hayim academy organized six progressive levels of reading, Bible, grammar, and law.c9-ets-hayim
  1736. p. 254Western Sephardim drew a clearer distinction between religious and secular spheres.c9-religious-secular-spheres
  1737. p. 254Their identity combined Jewish religion with Iberian culture.c9-iberian-identity
  1738. p. 254Daniel Levi de Barrios wrote Spanish poetry and drama that drew rabbinic censorship.c9-barrios
  1739. p. 255The Portuguese community discouraged marriage with Ashkenazim.c9-sephardi-endogamy
  1740. p. 255Dotar societies funded dowries according to Iberian descent.c9-dotar
  1741. p. 256Uriel da Costa rejected rabbinic traditions and later questioned the Torah's divine origin.c9-uriel-da-costa
  1742. p. 256Da Costa was excommunicated in 1618, and his later book was banned.c9-da-costa-ban
  1743. p. 256Amsterdam's leaders excommunicated Barukh Spinoza in 1656.c9-spinoza-ban
  1744. p. 256Spinoza rejected traditional Judaism without converting to another religion.c9-spinoza-secular
  1745. p. 256Nulman identifies Birkat Kohanim (Duchenen / Nesi'at Kapayim) with the biblical priestly blessing in three verses (Num 6:24-26), placed in the Shaharit Amidah, on a public fast at Minhah, and in Musaf; daily versus festival practice varies between Israel/Sepharad and Diaspora Ashkenaz.cl-birkat-kohanim-biblical-verses
  1746. p. 258Menasseh ben Israel advocated Jewish readmission to England before Cromwell.c9-england-return
  1747. p. 258The Whitehall Conference of 1655 did not formally approve readmission.c9-whitehall
  1748. p. 259Government permission for private worship and burial created modern London's Jewish community without a formal charter.c9-london-community
  1749. p. 259Twenty-three Jewish immigrants reached New Amsterdam in September 1654.c9-new-amsterdam-1654
  1750. p. 259Peter Stuyvesant tried to remove them, but the West India Company required toleration.c9-stuyvesant
  1751. p. 259The colonial law of 1740 opened naturalization to Jews resident for seven years.c9-naturalization-1740
  1752. p. 260Before the American Revolution, five Jewish communities existed along the Atlantic coast.c9-five-communities
  1753. p. 260Nathan of Gaza proclaimed Shabbatai Zvi the messiah in 1665.c9-zvi-proclaimed
  1754. p. 260Zvi challenged tradition through strange acts and a blessing that permitted what was forbidden.c9-zvi-strange-acts
  1755. p. 260Zvi married Sarah, an Ashkenazi orphan of the 1648 massacres.c9-sarah
  1756. p. 260Sephardi networks rapidly circulated the news, which also mobilized Ashkenazim.c9-movement-networks
  1757. p. 260Glickl of Hameln recorded in her seventeenth-century memoir Hamburg's reaction to news about Shabbatai Zvi.c9-glickl-memoir
  1758. p. 260In December 1665, Zvi took over an Izmir synagogue and proclaimed redemption.c9-izmir-scene
  1759. p. 261Ottoman authorities arrested Zvi en route to Istanbul in February 1666.c9-zvi-arrest
  1760. p. 261At Edirne, faced with death or conversion, Zvi embraced Islam.c9-zvi-conversion
  1761. p. 261Hundreds of Salonikan followers converted and formed the Donme sect.c9-donme
  1762. p. 261Converso messianism, massacres, refugees, print, Kabbalah, and rabbinic dissent converged in the movement.c9-sabbatian-causes
  1763. p. 262Modernity includes consciously seeing the present as distinct from earlier eras.c10-modernity-consciousness
  1764. p. 262For most Europeans, income remained nearly stagnant from 1000 until the mid-nineteenth century.c10-premodern-income
  1765. p. 262Enlightenment, science, urbanization, industrialization, and bourgeois power altered Europe's social order.c10-modern-forces
  1766. p. 262Revolution and reform expanded representative institutions while many groups remained excluded.c10-representative-politics
  1767. p. 262Enlightenment thinkers proposed reorganizing society through reason, progress, and individual liberty.c10-enlightenment-reason
  1768. p. 263Conservatism, nationalism, racial thinking, and Romanticism challenged Enlightenment universalism.c10-countercurrents
  1769. p. 263During the twentieth century, three revolutionary systems harnessed mass politics for repression.c10-mass-ideologies
  1770. p. 263Jews strongly pursued urban life, commerce, literacy, numeracy, and higher education.c10-jewish-modern-markers
  1771. p. 263Law, medicine, and journalism became fields of notable Jewish participation.c10-liberal-professions
  1772. p. 263Modern Jewish experience combined successful integration with hostile reactions to that success.c10-integration-backlash
  1773. p. 263Since 1700, new religious and secular forms of Jewishness accompanied dispersion, politics, and integration.c10-radical-transformation
  1774. p. 264Around 1700, autonomous communities still governed Jewish life through Jewish law.c10-kehillah-autonomy
  1775. p. 264Heder, yeshiva, and voluntary associations transmitted culture and provided welfare.c10-education-network
  1776. p. 264Legal separation did not mean cultural isolation, since Jews adapted surrounding customs.c10-separate-not-insular
  1777. p. 264Protective charters exchanged residence and work rights for high taxes and vertical dependence.c10-charter-status
  1778. p. 264In western Europe, nearly ninety percent of Jews worked in petty trade, crafts, and peddling.c10-western-occupations
  1779. p. 264Ascher Lehmann's journey shows how tolls and taxes consumed modest Jewish incomes.c10-ascher-taxes
  1780. p. 265Friedrich Wilhelm I multiplied taxes, entry restrictions, and occupational limits for Prussian Jews.c10-prussian-burdens
  1781. p. 265Restriction-driven poverty fueled debate over supposedly unproductive Jewish labor.c10-productive-labor-debate
  1782. p. 265About 22,500 German Jews converted to Christianity during the nineteenth century.c10-german-conversions
  1783. p. 265Nearly 1,600 Jews were baptized in Berlin between 1770 and 1830.c10-berlin-baptisms
  1784. p. 266Rahel Levin Varnhagen brought Jewish and Christian figures together in her literary salon.c10-varnhagen-salon
  1785. p. 266Varnhagen converted to Protestantism in 1819 to marry a Prussian diplomat.c10-varnhagen-conversion
  1786. p. 266Abraham Mendelssohn raised his children as Protestants to widen their social opportunities.c10-mendelssohn-children
  1787. p. 266Before 1789, southwestern French Sephardim differed sharply from Jews in Alsace and Lorraine.c10-french-diversity
  1788. p. 266Two Ashkenazi immigration waves formed the basis of modern British Jewry.c10-british-ashkenazim
  1789. p. 267By 1799, most Dutch Sephardim and four-fifths of Dutch Ashkenazim depended on welfare.c10-dutch-poverty
  1790. p. 267Atlantic trade shifts and Salonika's textile decline impoverished Ottoman Jewish communities.c10-ottoman-decline
  1791. p. 267Jewish populations in Venice and Rome shrank by roughly half during the eighteenth century.c10-italian-decline
  1792. p. 267Physiocracy privileged agriculture and made Jewish commerce a target of moral criticism.c10-physiocracy-critique
  1793. p. 267Poverty and secondhand markets helped produce an association between Jews and crime.c10-crime-stereotype
  1794. p. 267Poland-Lithuania held roughly 750,000 Jews in the eighteenth century.c10-polish-population
  1795. p. 268Up to three-quarters of Polish Jews lived in magnate-owned towns and villages.c10-private-towns
  1796. p. 268Magnates protected Jews in exchange for managerial and financial skills.c10-magnate-protection
  1797. p. 268Jews made up 80 to 90 percent of merchants in many Polish towns.c10-polish-commerce
  1798. p. 268The arenda system granted Jewish lessees monopolies over revenues and commodities.c10-arenda
  1799. p. 268Alcohol sales supported at least one-third of Polish Jews during the eighteenth century.c10-alcohol-income
  1800. p. 268In 1768, the Sejm restricted Jewish taverns lacking municipal approval.c10-liquor-restriction
  1801. p. 269Daniel Mendoza became a popular champion and publicly displayed Jewish pride.c10-mendoza-celebrity
  1802. p. 270Polish local councils joined wealthy merchants, leaseholders, and the rabbinic elite.c10-polish-kahal
  1803. p. 270Community voting and office depended on taxation, excluding the poor, women, and unmarried men.c10-communal-franchise
  1804. p. 270The Council of Four Lands, established about 1580 in this chapter (chapter 9 places a central court by 1576), operated as a Jewish national parliament.c10-four-lands
  1805. p. 270Poland's 1764 fiscal reform removed the Council's main task and led to its dissolution.c10-four-lands-dissolved
  1806. p. 270In England, Jewish modernization proceeded gradually without major rebellion against communal leaders.c10-english-acculturation
  1807. p. 271Hamburg's council tried to ban taverns, bowling, and comedies on the Sabbath and holidays, and opera for women under any circumstance.c10-hamburg-regulation
  1808. p. 271Fireworks in synagogue celebrations show Jewish borrowing from Baroque festive culture.c10-baroque-borrowing
  1809. p. 271Rabbis lamented losing authority as Jews attended concerts, bars, and theaters.c10-rabbinic-authority
  1810. p. 271Goethe described Frankfurt's Judengasse as crowded, poor, and culturally unfamiliar.c10-goethe-ghetto
  1811. p. 271Mayer Amschel Rothschild sent five sons to European centers that formed a transnational banking house.c10-rothschild-network
  1812. p. 271, p. 271Gerber describes American Sephardic community growth after World War II (post-Holocaust refugees and Jews from Muslim lands) and notes that Sephardic congregations, true to their background, tend to be traditional or Orthodox and organize along countries of origin.c-h502-gerber-american-sephardic-congregations
  1813. p. 272Eighteenth-century anthropologists classified human groups and turned physical difference into hierarchy.c10-racial-classification
  1814. p. 272Blumenbach attributed human difference to climate and rejected permanent racial traits.c10-blumenbach-environment
  1815. p. 272Blumenbach treated persistent Jewish features across the diaspora as an exception to his theory.c10-jewish-invariance
  1816. p. 273Voltaire combined contempt for Jews with rejection of lethal persecution.c10-enlightenment-ambivalence
  1817. p. 273John Toland advocated British naturalization of Jews in 1714.c10-toland-naturalization
  1818. p. 273Christian Wilhelm Dohm advocated emancipation tied to economic reform and education.c10-dohm-improvement
  1819. p. 273Dohm treated alleged Jewish deficiencies as historical rather than innate.c10-dohm-historical-difference
  1820. p. 273Johann David Michaelis claimed religion, loyalty, and even stature barred Jewish citizenship.c10-michaelis-opposition
  1821. p. 273Fichte called Jews a state within the state and imagined a violent physical solution.c10-fichte-state-within
  1822. p. 274Joseph II's 1782 Edict of Toleration removed restrictions and encouraged secular education.c10-joseph-edict
  1823. p. 274The edict required German surnames and banned Yiddish in legal and commercial documents.c10-edict-conditions
  1824. p. 274German-language Jewish schools pursued productivity, Germanization, and acculturation.c10-habsburg-schools
  1825. p. 274Naftali Herz Wessely argued that secular knowledge would improve religious understanding.c10-wessely-knowledge
  1826. p. 274Rabbinic critics accepted science as an ornament but insisted on Talmudic centrality.c10-traditionalist-response
  1827. p. 274Abbé Grégoire blamed Jewish degradation on oppression while still calling for regeneration.c10-gregoire-regeneration
  1828. p. 275Clermont-Tonnerre proposed individual rights for Jews but no national autonomy.c10-clermont-formula
  1829. p. 275In January 1790, French Sephardim received full citizenship.c10-sephardi-emancipation
  1830. p. 275In September 1791, French Ashkenazim also gained citizenship.c10-ashkenazi-emancipation
  1831. p. 275Revolutionaries viewed Jewish emancipation as a test of human capacity for transformation.c10-emancipation-experiment
  1832. p. 276After emancipation, French Jews adopted national customs, served the state, and retained Judaism.c10-french-integration
  1833. p. 276French armies carried emancipation into Holland, Italy, and western Germany.c10-napoleonic-spread
  1834. p. 276Land purchases and currency change left Alsatian peasants indebted to Jewish creditors.c10-alsatian-debt
  1835. p. 276The Alsatian crisis helped create the charge that Jews profited from modernity.c10-modernity-canard
  1836. p. 276In 1806, Napoleon suspended peasant debts to Jews for one year.c10-debt-suspension
  1837. p. 276Napoleon convened 112 Jewish notables to answer questions on loyalty, marriage, and rabbinic authority.c10-assembly-notables
  1838. p. 277The twelve questions amounted to a state-administered test of Jewish loyalty.c10-loyalty-test
  1839. p. 277The assembly affirmed Jewish loyalty to France and limited rabbis to spiritual authority.c10-assembly-response
  1840. p. 277Delegates distinguished civil marital validity from validity under Jewish religion.c10-intermarriage-answer
  1841. p. 277The question about polygamy reveals how Europeans Orientalized Judaism.c10-polygamy-orientalism
  1842. p. 277The Grand Sanhedrin ratified the answers and stirred messianic expectations.c10-grand-sanhedrin
  1843. p. 278The Sanhedrin recast Judaism as a private faith compatible with French law.c10-private-faith
  1844. p. 278Napoleon created the Consistory in 1808 as French Jewry's administrative representative.c10-consistory
  1845. p. 278The Infamous Decrees limited Jewish residence and suspended debts for ten years.c10-infamous-decrees
  1846. p. 278In 1831, Judaism received full equality with Christianity in France.c10-french-equality-1831
  1847. p. 278In Britain, Jewish rights advanced through gradual legislation without a general emancipation decree.c10-british-gradualism
  1848. p. 278The 1845 law opened all British municipal offices to Jews.c10-municipal-relief
  1849. p. 278Lionel de Rothschild entered Parliament in 1858 as England's first Jewish member.c10-rothschild-parliament
  1850. p. 279Judah Monis published North America's first Hebrew textbook in 1735.c10-monis-grammar
  1851. p. 279Twenty-three exiles from Recife reached New Amsterdam in 1654.c10-new-amsterdam-jews
  1852. p. 280The Plantation Act of 1740 naturalized Jews across the British Empire.c10-plantation-act
  1853. p. 280The United States Constitution prohibited religious tests for federal office.c10-us-religious-test
  1854. p. 280George Washington affirmed religious liberty in his response to Newport's Jews.c10-washington-newport
  1855. p. 280Canada removed the Christian parliamentary oath requirement in 1832.c10-canadian-office
  1856. p. 280Australian Jews held civil rights from the beginning of European settlement.c10-australian-equality
  1857. p. 281Thousands of Jews participated in the Risorgimento and Italian unification.c10-italian-risorgimento
  1858. p. 281Italian nationalist leaders treated Jews as loyal allies.c10-italian-nationalists
  1859. p. 281By 1871, eleven Jews had been elected to Italy's parliament.c10-italian-parliament
  1860. p. 282German political fragmentation made emancipation uneven and regional.c10-german-fragmentation
  1861. p. 282German authorities treated rights as a reward for observed improvement.c10-conditional-emancipation
  1862. p. 282Prussia's 1812 edict declared Jews natives and citizens with civic rights.c10-prussian-1812
  1863. p. 282The 1819 Hep Hep riots spread anti-Jewish violence through German cities and beyond.c10-hep-hep
  1864. p. 282German unification in 1871 finally emancipated German Jews.c10-german-emancipation-1871
  1865. p. 282Acculturation allowed European high culture to coexist with Jewish distinctiveness.c10-acculturation-distinctiveness
  1866. p. 283Freud called himself a godless Jew, expressing secular ethnic identity.c10-freud-godless
  1867. p. 283In the Ottoman Empire, Jews belonged to a protected, autonomous, and legally inferior millet.c10-ottoman-millets
  1868. p. 283The 1839 rescript promised protection of life, honor, and property for Muslims and others.c10-tanzimat-1839
  1869. p. 283The Ottoman decree of 1856 explicitly granted equality to Jews and Christians.c10-ottoman-equality-1856
  1870. p. 283The 1869 law defined all inhabitants as the sultan's subjects regardless of religion.c10-ottoman-citizenship
  1871. p. 283Taxes, bureaucratic exclusion, and uneven enforcement limited Ottoman equality.c10-ottoman-practice-gap
  1872. p. 283Imperial dissolution placed Sephardim under new homogenizing nation-states.c10-sephardi-nation-states
  1873. p. 283Republican Turkey ended the millet and pressured Jewish education through Turkicization.c10-turkicization
  1874. p. 284In the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire housed roughly five million Jews.c10-russian-five-million
  1875. p. 284Russia acquired its large Jewish population through the partitions of Poland.c10-partitions-acquisition
  1876. p. 284Because no one held rights independent of the tsar, Russia's Jewish condition was not exceptional in every respect.c10-russian-autocracy
  1877. p. 284Catherine II registered Jews as urban residents while retaining the kahals.c10-catherine-urban
  1878. p. 284A 1791 law confined Jews to territories later called the Pale of Settlement.c10-pale-1791
  1879. p. 285The Pale housed nearly five million Jews and was approximately the size of France, Germany, and Austria combined.c10-pale-scale
  1880. p. 285Russia's 1804 statute sought to place Jews in existing occupational categories.c10-statute-1804
  1881. p. 285The statute opened schools and municipal councils and offered support for agriculture.c10-statute-opportunities
  1882. p. 285The village alcohol ban threatened to displace many Jews from the countryside.c10-village-alcohol-ban
  1883. p. 285Nicholas I imposed twenty-five years of Jewish military service in 1827.c10-nicholas-conscription
  1884. p. 285About fifty thousand Jewish boys were recruited as cantonists between 1827 and 1855.c10-cantonist-children
  1885. p. 286Cantonists endured isolated barracks, violence, religious pressure, and forced baptism.c10-cantonist-coercion
  1886. p. 286Communities hired catchers to fill quotas, deepening class conflict.c10-khappers
  1887. p. 286Military service did not integrate Jews, who remained subject to distinct rules.c10-military-failure
  1888. p. 287The government formally abolished the kahals in 1844, though many continued clandestinely.c10-kahal-abolition
  1889. p. 287State-sponsored Jewish schools attracted few pupils and failed as an integration program.c10-russian-school-failure
  1890. p. 287Jewish enrollment at Russian universities rose from 129 in 1865 to 1,856 two decades later.c10-university-growth
  1891. p. 287Before World War I, Yiddish literacy encompassed nearly every Jewish boy and a majority of Jewish girls.c10-jewish-literacy
  1892. p. 287After the kahal crisis, wealthy merchants replaced part of the traditional rabbinic leadership.c10-merchant-leadership
  1893. p. 287By the mid-nineteenth century, Jews formed three-quarters of registered merchants in the Pale.c10-pale-merchants
  1894. p. 288Alexander III and Nicholas II used law to reverse Jewish integration.c10-exclusionary-turn
  1895. p. 288After 1905, Jews gained electoral political rights before full civil rights.c10-duma-paradox
  1896. p. 288The Provisional Government abolished religious and national restrictions in April 1917.c10-russian-emancipation
  1897. p. 288Soviet power recognized Jews as a nationality while restricting collective autonomy.c10-soviet-nationality
  1898. p. 288Jewish emancipation took different forms according to state, region, and political conditions.c10-multiple-emancipations
  1899. p. 288Nulman identifies Elohai Neshamah as a talmudic waking prayer: 'When he wakes he says, Elohai…'; the blessing does not open with Barukh because it follows Asher Yatzar, joining soul and body.cl-elohai-neshamah-talmud-waking
  1900. p. 290Jews did more than respond to modernity; they also helped shape it.c11-modernity-agency
  1901. p. 290During the eighteenth century, Ashkenazi communities grew increasingly different from one another.c11-ashkenazi-fracture
  1902. p. 290Divergent European policies produced sharply contrasting Jewish experiences.c11-european-policies
  1903. p. 290Hasidism, Mitnaggdism, and the Haskalah widened Eastern European Jewish diversity.c11-eastern-vibrancy
  1904. p. 290Austria, Prussia, and Russia partitioned Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795.c11-partitions-dates
  1905. p. 290The partitions placed about 750,000 Jews under Russia, 260,000 under Austria, and 160,000 under Prussia.c11-partition-numbers
  1906. p. 290Maria Theresa expelled Prague's Jews in 1744.c11-prague-expulsion
  1907. p. 290The French Revolution transformed Jews into French citizens.c11-france-citizens
  1908. p. 290German Jews became more German and middle class before gaining full civic equality.c11-german-middle-class
  1909. p. 291Imperial frontiers divided the former Polish-Lithuanian Jewish population.c11-imperial-divide
  1910. p. 291Berlin, Vienna, Prague, and Budapest became major modern Jewish centers.c11-western-centers
  1911. p. 291In Russia, Jewish transformation initially tended to arise mainly from internal religious innovation.c11-russian-path
  1912. p. 291Jacob Leibowitz adopted the name Jacob Frank during an Ottoman sojourn.c11-frank-origins
  1913. p. 291Frank rejected rabbinic authority while combining Christian, Kabbalistic, and antinomian ideas.c11-frank-doctrines
  1914. p. 291Frankists moved from considering themselves Jewish to claiming a separate religious identity.c11-frank-separate
  1915. p. 291In 1756, Frank's followers were discovered performing antinomian rites at Lanckorona.c11-lanckorona
  1916. p. 291A Jewish court at Brody excommunicated the Frankists.c11-frankist-herem
  1917. p. 291Bishop Dembowski backed the Frankists and arranged a public disputation in 1757.c11-dembowski-disputation
  1918. p. 291Following the disputation, authorities ordered the Talmud burned.c11-talmud-burning
  1919. p. 291Dembowski's death in 1757 deprived the Frankists of their protector.c11-dembowski-death
  1920. p. 292The 1759 Lwow disputation ended inconclusively.c11-lwow-disputation
  1921. p. 292Frank was baptized in September 1759 and took the name Jakub Josef.c11-frank-baptism
  1922. p. 292About three thousand Jews converted after Frank's baptism.c11-mass-conversion
  1923. p. 292During the nineteenth century, Frankist social and business ties outlived the doctrine.c11-frankism-decline
  1924. p. 292Unlike Frankism, Hasidism remained within normative Judaism and achieved lasting success.c11-hasidism-success
  1925. p. 292Hasidism arose among small circles of scholars and Kabbalists in 1750s Podolia.c11-hasidism-origins
  1926. p. 292Hasidism names diverse groups rather than one centralized organization.c11-hasidism-diverse
  1927. p. 292Recent scholarship rejects the view that Hasidism emerged from a declining community.c11-no-crisis-origin
  1928. p. 292Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov, worked as a Kabbalist, healer, and amulet writer.c11-besht-profile
  1929. p. 292Despite later portrayals as unlearned, the Besht was a respected scholar.c11-besht-scholar
  1930. p. 292From 1740 to 1760, the Besht attracted followers at Mezhbizh.c11-besht-mezhbizh
  1931. p. 292Warsaw became the principal Frankist center after 1791.c11-frankist-warsaw
  1932. p. 292Podolia was a multiethnic, multireligious setting marked by considerable toleration.c11-podolia-tolerance
  1933. p. 292The Besht treated Jewish and Christian patients and sought Christian protection when needed.c11-besht-christians
  1934. p. 293The Besht's inner circle consisted chiefly of a pietistic elite.c11-besht-elite
  1935. p. 293The Besht taught that divine presence permeated all creation.c11-divine-presence
  1936. p. 293Ordinary activities could become forms of embodied worship.c11-corporeal-worship
  1937. p. 293Early Hasidim adopted a Sephardi prayer rite associated with Isaac Luria.c11-sephardic-prayer
  1938. p. 293Published in 1815, Shivhei ha-Besht gathered more than two hundred tales about the master.c11-shivhei
  1939. p. 293Hasidic storytelling later influenced both Hebrew and Yiddish literature.c11-storytelling-legacy
  1940. p. 293The Besht neither founded institutions nor consciously organized a movement.c11-besht-no-movement
  1941. p. 293Dov Ber of Mezritch combined Talmudic learning, asceticism, and Hasidic leadership.c11-dov-ber
  1942. p. 293Dov Ber and his students developed ideas about mental preparation and song in prayer.c11-song-prayer
  1943. p. 293Hasidic tales emphasized reconciliation, repentance, and economic justice.c11-unity-tales
  1944. p. 293Hasidic music influenced synagogue worship and klezmer repertories.c11-hasidic-music
  1945. p. 294Dov Ber taught a cosmic unity in which divinity exists throughout creation.c11-shekhinah-unity
  1946. p. 294Moving Dov Ber's court to Volhynia aided Hasidic expansion.c11-court-move
  1947. p. 294Dov Ber dispatched young emissaries to recruit new adherents.c11-emissaries
  1948. p. 295Hasidism spread chiefly among Yiddish-speaking Jews.c11-yiddish-boundary
  1949. p. 295The 1780 Toledot Yaakov Yosef was the first book to set out Hasidic teachings systematically.c11-toledot
  1950. p. 295The tzaddik's authority rested on powers followers regarded as divine.c11-tzaddik-authority
  1951. p. 295Yaakov Yosef made the bond between tzaddik and followers central to Hasidic society.c11-tzaddik-masses
  1952. p. 295Aron of Karlin and Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk led important Hasidic communities.c11-post-maggid-leaders
  1953. p. 296Hasidic leadership became dynastic around the turn of the nineteenth century.c11-dynastic-succession
  1954. p. 296In 1804, Russia legalized Hasidic prayer houses.c11-russia-legalized
  1955. p. 296Shneur Zalman of Lyady developed Habad around wisdom, reason, and knowledge.c11-habad
  1956. p. 296The Tanya appeared in 1796 and became a central Habad guide.c11-tanya
  1957. p. 296The term rebbe expressed intimacy between a tzaddik and his disciples.c11-rebbe-intimacy
  1958. p. 296Hasidic leaders defended communal rules limiting competition for leases.c11-hazakah
  1959. p. 296Hasidism included learned and unlearned, wealthy and poor, rural and urban Jews.c11-big-tent
  1960. p. 296Hasidic print culture made Kabbalistic ideas more accessible.c11-kabbalah-print
  1961. p. 296In the Tanya, an ordinary Jew could attain devekut through a bond with a tzaddik.c11-beinoni
  1962. p. 296Hasidism channeled messianic longing into commandments and inner transformation.c11-messianic-longing
  1963. p. 297Concentrated prayer shifted some spiritual authority from study toward worship.c11-prayer-democratized
  1964. p. 297Hasidic worship employed bodily swaying, clapping, song, and dance.c11-ecstatic-prayer
  1965. p. 297Hasidism presented joy as a path toward closeness with God.c11-joy
  1966. p. 297At the tish, disciples sought the rebbe's leftovers as sanctified food.c11-tish
  1967. p. 297Farfel and kugel acquired mystical meanings at the Sabbath table.c11-farfel-kugel
  1968. p. 297Ritual similarities between Hasidim and nearby Christians do not prove direct borrowing.c11-religious-parallels
  1969. p. 298Historians conclude that the Hasidic court was most likely created in conscious imitation of noble households.c11-court-model
  1970. p. 298Hasidism moved Kabbalistic practice beyond the exclusive domain of specialists.c11-kabbalah-popularized
  1971. p. 298Hasidim and Mitnaggedim shared commitments to Torah, Halakhah, and Kabbalah.c11-shared-foundations
  1972. p. 298Ritual slaughter disputes connected theology with communal revenue.c11-slaughter-dispute
  1973. p. 298The conflict also pitted institutional rabbinic authority against the tzaddik's charisma.c11-authority-conflict
  1974. p. 298Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman, the Vilna Gaon, became Hasidism's leading opponent.c11-gaon-profile
  1975. p. 298Opponents accused Hasidim of disorder, drunkenness, and neglecting study.c11-mitnaggdic-charges
  1976. p. 299The Gaon mastered Bible, both Talmuds, Midrash, Kabbalah, astronomy, and algebra.c11-gaon-learning
  1977. p. 299The Gaon made Talmud study primary among forms of Jewish learning.c11-talmud-primacy
  1978. p. 299Mitnaggdism offered a distinct religious route into modernization.c11-mitnagdic-path
  1979. p. 299In 1772, the Vilna Gaon issued a herem against the Hasidim.c11-gaon-herem
  1980. p. 299The Gaon left Vilna rather than meet Hasidic leaders.c11-gaon-refused-meeting
  1981. p. 300The Hasidic and Mitnaggdic conflict peaked from 1785 to 1815.c11-campaign-peak
  1982. p. 300Russian and Austrian authorities refused to outlaw Hasidism.c11-state-refusal
  1983. p. 300Hasidim and Mitnaggedim eventually recognized one another as loyal to Torah.c11-reconciliation
  1984. p. 300Hayim of Volozhin founded his Talmud academy in 1803.c11-volozhin-founded
  1985. p. 300Extreme excommunication could amount to social death within a marginalized community.c11-herem-social-death
  1986. p. 300Most Eastern European Jews identified fully with neither camp.c11-most-unaffiliated
  1987. p. 300Goodman stresses that in the eastern Mediterranean Jews kept using Greek in Hebrew letters (ketubot, exegesis), and that Romaniot Jews of the Byzantine sphere retained Judaeo-Greek for Torah reading through the Middle Ages.c-h502-goodman-romaniot-judaeo-greek
  1988. p. 301Volozhin became an independent yeshiva supported by a broad funding network.c11-independent-yeshiva
  1989. p. 301The school trained a Jewish elite extending beyond any single community.c11-national-elite
  1990. p. 301At Volozhin, Talmud was studied for its own sake rather than vocational training.c11-torah-lishma
  1991. p. 301Its pedagogy pursued clear textual understanding instead of pilpul.c11-clear-text
  1992. p. 301Stipends freed students from direct dependence on local households.c11-stipends
  1993. p. 301Volozhin students studied in pairs within the great hall.c11-khevruta
  1994. p. 301At its height, Volozhin enrolled about 450 students.c11-volozhin-scale
  1995. p. 301Volozhin student councils raised funds and performed organizational functions.c11-student-councils
  1996. p. 302Critical analysis at the yeshiva could encourage questioning authority.c11-critical-method
  1997. p. 302The tsarist government closed Volozhin in 1892 amid curricular and political disputes.c11-volozhin-closure
  1998. p. 302Israel Salanter formed Musar to cultivate ethical self-improvement and restraint.c11-musar
  1999. p. 302Musar combined ethical texts, introspection, melodies, and sometimes personal journals.c11-musar-method
  2000. p. 302After Salanter, Musar schools ranged from emotional practice to ascetic discipline.c11-musar-diversity
  2001. p. 302In 1851 Esriel Hildesheimer opened a Hungarian yeshiva teaching secular subjects.c11-hildesheimer-yeshiva
  2002. p. 302Isaac Jacob Reines founded a Lida yeshiva in 1905 with practical and secular studies.c11-reines-lida
  2003. p. 302The Musar controversy spread through the Hebrew press.c11-musar-press
  2004. p. 303Organized resistance to secularization transformed tradition itself.c11-modern-traditionalism
  2005. p. 303Da Costa denounced rabbinic Judaism as a coercive system of empty ritual.c11-dacosta-critique
  2006. p. 303In 1640, da Costa endured public lashes and ritual humiliation in Amsterdam.c11-dacosta-punishment
  2007. p. 303Spinoza rejected providence, soul immortality, and a literally revealed Torah.c11-spinoza-rationalism
  2008. p. 303The Portuguese community excommunicated Spinoza in 1656.c11-spinoza-herem
  2009. p. 303Lida's yeshiva taught Russian, history, geography, mathematics, and science.c11-russian-secular-curriculum
  2010. p. 303Nulman calls Emet Veyatziv (Ge'ulah after the morning Shema) a scriptural ordinance in the Talmud, because remembering the Exodus is prescribed in Deut 16:3; the blessing attaches to the Shema by joining Emet to the reading's last words.cl-emet-veyatziv-scriptural
  2011. p. 304Spinoza abandoned Jewish practice without embracing Christianity.c11-spinoza-no-conversion
  2012. p. 304The Haskalah became a gateway toward several modern Jewish ideologies.c11-haskalah-gateway
  2013. p. 304Maskilim sought to align Jewish life with science, European languages, and bourgeois culture.c11-haskalah-program
  2014. p. 304Prussia's 1750 regulation weakened Jewish communal autonomy.c11-prussian-regulation
  2015. p. 305Periodicals, Hebrew prose, Yiddish drama, and salons created a Jewish republic of letters.c11-republic-letters
  2016. p. 305The Maskilic ideal combined Jewish commitment with participation in modern culture.c11-integral-jew
  2017. p. 305Moses Mendelssohn reached Berlin speaking Yiddish and later learned several European languages.c11-mendelssohn-languages
  2018. p. 305Mendelssohn's philosophical reputation earned him the title Jewish Socrates.c11-jewish-socrates
  2019. p. 305Mendelssohn's friendship with Lessing became a symbol of Enlightenment toleration.c11-lessing-friendship
  2020. p. 305, p. 323The Pseudo-Clementines (Homilies, Recognitions and related texts) have long fascinated as a possible window onto Jewish believers. Stanton warns: the literary-critical problems are almost insurmountable; later stages were shaped by didactic and hagiographical concerns rather than distinctively 'Jewish-Christian' emphases. They can be used only with rigor and caution.cjb-pseudo-clementines-caution
  2021. p. 306In 1758, Mendelssohn launched Kohelet Musar, the first Hebrew periodical.c11-kohelet-musar
  2022. p. 306The German Bible translation and Biur commentary became central to Haskalah education.c11-biur
  2023. p. 306Mendelssohn promoted Hebrew and German while rejecting Yiddish as a cultural obstacle.c11-language-reform
  2024. p. 307Opened in 1778, Berlin's Jewish Free School combined languages, sciences, and Jewish studies.c11-free-school
  2025. p. 307Physicians formed a scientifically educated Jewish vanguard in Germany.c11-physicians-vanguard
  2026. p. 307In Jerusalem, Mendelssohn defended a plural state, toleration, and freedom of conscience.c11-jerusalem-pluralism
  2027. p. 307Mendelssohn described Judaism as revealed legislation rather than revealed religion.c11-revealed-legislation
  2028. p. 307For Mendelssohn, the commandments remained binding.c11-commandments-binding
  2029. p. 307Mendelssohn rejected abandoning Judaism as the price of emancipation.c11-rights-no-price
  2030. p. 307Ha-Meassef published Hebrew poetry, exegesis, science, philology, and news.c11-hameassef
  2031. p. 308In 1806, Sulamith shifted Berlin's Haskalah toward German.c11-sulamith
  2032. p. 308David Friedlander linked religious reform with the pursuit of political equality.c11-friedlander-reform
  2033. p. 308Friedlander proposed abandoning Hebrew, Talmud study, and Kabbalistic prayer references.c11-friedlander-radical
  2034. p. 308Saul Ascher sought to define a religious essence for Judaism.c11-ascher-essence
  2035. p. 309Ladino became a Sephardi lingua franca in the Balkans and Anatolia.c11-ladino-lingua-franca
  2036. p. 309Begun by Jacob Huli in 1730, Me-am Loez popularized rabbinic learning in Ladino.c11-meam-loez
  2037. p. 309David Moses Attias advocated Western learning and European languages in Guerta de Oro.c11-attias
  2038. p. 310Eastern Haskalah relied more on Hebrew and Yiddish and met stronger communal opposition.c11-eastern-haskalah-differences
  2039. p. 310Nicholas I's government backed Haskalah as an instrument of integration and conversion.c11-official-enlightenment
  2040. p. 310In Galicia, a broad social divide separated Maskilim from impoverished masses.c11-galician-class-gap
  2041. p. 311Galician Haskalah fostered drama, fiction, poetry, and periodicals in Hebrew and Yiddish.c11-galician-literature
  2042. p. 311Yosef Perl founded a modern Jewish school at Tarnopol in 1813.c11-perl-school
  2043. p. 311Published in 1819, Megaleh Temirin inaugurated Maskilic anti-Hasidic satire.c11-perl-satire
  2044. p. 312Nahman Krochmal placed historical development at the center of Jewish philosophy.c11-krochmal-history
  2045. p. 312Levinzon's Teudah be-Yisrael advocated science, languages, and occupational reform.c11-levinzon
  2046. p. 313The 1844 law created reformed Jewish schools and state rabbinical seminaries.c11-state-schools
  2047. p. 313Max Lilienthal toured the Pale of Settlement and encountered broad distrust.c11-lilienthal-tour
  2048. p. 313Only about three thousand children attended the official Jewish schools.c11-schools-limited
  2049. p. 314Under Alexander II, a university-trained Russian-speaking Jewish intelligentsia emerged.c11-russian-intelligentsia
  2050. p. 314During the 1860s and 1870s, Maskilic writers focused on poverty and shtetl backwardness.c11-radical-haskalah
  2051. p. 314Mendele Moykher Sforim critically portrayed shtetl life in Yiddish fiction.c11-mendele-works
  2052. p. 314Eastern Haskalah produced profound cultural renewal, although its effects were delayed.c11-delayed-renewal
  2053. p. 315Abraham Mapu demonstrated modern Hebrew's literary capacity in Love of Zion.c11-mapu
  2054. p. 315In Russia's 1897 census, 97 percent of Jews named Yiddish as their mother tongue.c11-yiddish-majority
  2055. p. 315Kol Mevasser standardized spelling and provided a venue for emerging Yiddish writers.c11-kol-mevasser
  2056. p. 316Mendele, Peretz, and Sholem Aleichem raised Yiddish into a major European literature.c11-yiddish-canon
  2057. p. 316The 1908 Czernowitz conference declared Yiddish a Jewish national language.c11-czernowitz
  2058. p. 316Orthodox communities also adopted Yiddish as a conscious modern ideological choice.c11-orthodox-yiddish
  2059. p. 317Multilingualism helped Jews adapt to migration and economic change.c11-multilingualism
  2060. p. 317In 1819, students and Maskilim founded the society that launched Wissenschaft des Judentums.c11-wissenschaft-founded
  2061. p. 317The new Jewish scholarship sought university recognition and critical knowledge of tradition.c11-wissenschaft-goals
  2062. p. 317Heinrich Heine converted in 1825 to overcome professional barriers.c11-heine-conversion
  2063. p. 319Wissenschaft inaugurated secular Jewish studies and influenced new religious movements.c11-wissenschaft-impact
  2064. p. 320Leopold Zunz applied historical and philological methods to medieval Jewish literature.c11-zunz
  2065. p. 320Isaac Marcus Jost published the first comprehensive modern history of the Jews.c11-jost-history
  2066. p. 321Heinrich Graetz published his eleven-volume History of the Jews from 1853 to 1876.c11-graetz-history
  2067. p. 321Graetz portrayed Jews as a people possessing a national character.c11-graetz-national
  2068. p. 321Israel Jacobson created early reform services and became a founder of Reform Judaism.c11-jacobson
  2069. p. 321The New Israelite Temple Association founded the Hamburg Temple in 1818.c11-hamburg-temple
  2070. p. 322The Temple introduced decorum, choir, organ, German sermons, and a new prayer book.c11-temple-innovations
  2071. p. 322The new prayer book removed calls for return to Zion and a personal messiah.c11-messiah-removed
  2072. p. 322Moses Sofer led traditional opposition to the Temple reforms.c11-sofer-opposition
  2073. p. 325University-trained rabbis of the 1830s supplied Reform with historical and philosophical foundations.c11-reform-rabbis
  2074. p. 325Abraham Geiger used history to argue that Judaism had always changed.c11-geiger-history
  2075. p. 325Geiger denied that nationality was essential to Judaism.c11-geiger-religion
  2076. p. 325Rabbinical conferences gathered German reformers in 1844, 1845, and 1846.c11-reform-conferences
  2077. p. 326The 1845 conference divided over Hebrew's place in worship.c11-hebrew-debate
  2078. p. 326Zacharias Frankel left the conference after a majority questioned Hebrew's necessity.c11-frankel-walkout
  2079. p. 326Most reformers retained Saturday as the Jewish Sabbath.c11-sabbath-retained
  2080. p. 326The first confirmation ceremony for girls took place in Berlin in 1814.c11-girls-confirmation
  2081. p. 327Geiger advocated women's legal majority and rejected a gendered morning blessing.c11-geiger-women
  2082. p. 327Samuel Holdheim proposed reciprocal vows for bride and groom.c11-holdheim-wedding
  2083. p. 327The 1846 report recommended broader religious rights for women but received no vote.c11-women-report
  2084. p. 327European adoption of mixed synagogue seating came only in the twentieth century.c11-mixed-seating-late
  2085. p. 328Organ music, vernacular worship, new prayers, and greater female equality spread gradually.c11-reform-results
  2086. p. 328The term Orthodoxy arose in modernity to distinguish traditionalists from reformers.c11-orthodoxy-term
  2087. p. 329Hirsch's Nineteen Letters articulated a self-consciously modern Orthodoxy.c11-hirsch-letters
  2088. p. 329Hirsch combined Torah commitment with active participation in state and society.c11-torah-derekh-erets
  2089. p. 329Hirsch and Hildesheimer advocated Torah education for girls and women.c11-orthodox-women-study
  2090. p. 330Women's education was presented as a defense of Jewish continuity within the home.c11-home-education
  2091. p. 330Frankel combined positive revelation with continuing historical development.c11-positive-historical
  2092. p. 330Frankel rejected both unbending Orthodoxy and radical Reform.c11-frankel-moderation
  2093. p. 331Darkhe ha-Mishnah portrayed ancient rabbis as legal innovators.c11-darkhe
  2094. p. 331The Jewish Theological Seminary at Breslau was founded in 1854.c11-breslau-seminary
  2095. p. 331After 1867, Hungarian Jews divided into Neolog, Orthodox, and status quo ante organizations.c11-hungarian-schism
  2096. p. 331Monumental synagogues asserted permanence, citizenship, and Jewish pride.c11-architecture-emancipation
  2097. p. 332Budapest's Neolog community built the Great Synagogue from 1854 to 1859.c11-dohany
  2098. p. 332The building combined neo-Islamic, Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic forms.c11-dohany-style
  2099. p. 332Orthodox communities also built monumental, modern synagogues.c11-orthodox-monuments
  2100. p. 332Sydney's Great Synagogue was consecrated in 1878.c11-sydney
  2101. p. 333Rome's Great Synagogue, inaugurated in 1904, occupied the former ghetto site.c11-rome-synagogue
  2102. p. 333Modern transformations produced multiple religious and secular forms of Jewish identity.c11-creative-modernity
  2103. p. 335World Jewry grew from roughly 2.7 million people in 1800 to more than 12 million by 1910.c12-population-rise
  2104. p. 335Europe contained about 82 percent of the world's Jewish population in 1900.c12-european-concentration
  2105. p. 335The Russian Empire held about 5.2 million Jews near the start of the twentieth century.c12-russian-concentration
  2106. p. 335Nearly two million Jews lived under Austro-Hungarian rule.c12-austro-hungarian-share
  2107. p. 335High birth rates combined with low mortality to propel Jewish demographic growth.c12-demographic-balance
  2108. p. 335From 1850 to 1880, Eastern European Jewry recorded seventeen more births than deaths per thousand people.c12-eastern-natural-increase
  2109. p. 335Contemporary statistics associated Jews with longer lives and lower infant mortality.c12-health-advantage
  2110. p. 335Doctors linked the health advantage to sobriety, nutrition, breastfeeding, and hygiene.c12-health-explanations
  2111. p. 336Many shtetl women supported households through trade, craft, and household agriculture.c12-women-economic-role
  2112. p. 336Jewish businesswomen formed economic and social ties with non-Jewish village women.c12-women-bridges
  2113. p. 336Before World War I, prosperity, contraception, assimilation, and emigration slowed population growth.c12-growth-slowdown
  2114. p. 337For Salo Baron, 'metropolitanization' describes the Jewish pattern better than ordinary urbanization.c12-metropolitanization
  2115. p. 337By 1914 London counted 200,000 Jews, after 40,000 in 1880.c12-london-growth
  2116. p. 337Vienna counted 175,000 Jews in 1910, up from a community of 72,000 thirty years earlier.c12-vienna-growth
  2117. p. 337Migration from Alsace helped form the Paris Jewish quarter called the Pletzl.c12-paris-pletzl
  2118. p. 337Jewish prominence made Mokem a colloquial name for Amsterdam.c12-amsterdam-mokem
  2119. p. 337Berlin grew from 36,000 Jewish residents in 1871 to 144,000 in 1910.c12-berlin-growth
  2120. p. 337Around 1900, roughly 90,000 Jews made up half of Salonika's population.c12-salonika-metropolis
  2121. p. 337Salonika's 1917 fire left 53,000 Jews without homes.c12-salonika-fire
  2122. p. 337Russia's urban Jewish population increased by about one million from 1897 to 1910.c12-russian-urbanization
  2123. p. 337Odessa's Jewish residents numbered 200,000 in 1912, against 55,000 in 1880.c12-odessa-growth
  2124. p. 337Warsaw reached 337,000 Jewish residents in 1910, or 38 percent of its population.c12-warsaw-growth
  2125. p. 337Numerous Pale cities had Jewish majorities or very large minorities.c12-provincial-majorities
  2126. p. 337Galician migrants made Leopoldstadt, Vienna's Second District, about half Jewish.c12-leopoldstadt
  2127. p. 338Between 1881 and 1917, New York's Jewish population reached 1.5 million.c12-new-york-growth
  2128. p. 338Jewish urban concentration also marked Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Muslim lands.c12-global-urban-pattern
  2129. p. 338Cities expanded Jewish access to industry, commerce, professions, and new ideologies.c12-city-opportunities
  2130. p. 338Hostile nationalists portrayed Jewish urban life as estrangement from national soil.c12-urban-critique
  2131. p. 338Jews then accounted for 26.4 percent of New York.c12-ny-share
  2132. p. 339Modern antisemitism blamed Jews for contemporary social problems.c12-modern-antisemitism
  2133. p. 339Its central tenets were a Jewish world conspiracy and immutable racial difference.c12-conspiracy-race
  2134. p. 339Parties, clubs, associations, and lobbies professionalized anti-Jewish hostility.c12-political-organizations
  2135. p. 339Antisemitism could unite groups otherwise divided by class, religion, and nationality.c12-cross-class-appeal
  2136. p. 339The phrase Jewish question appeared in France in 1833 and gained prominence through Bruno Bauer.c12-jewish-question-term
  2137. p. 339Bauer blamed continuing Jewish cultural distinctiveness for gentile opposition.c12-bauer-assimilation
  2138. p. 339Modern conspiracy accusations repurposed older classical and religious prejudices.c12-ancient-tropes
  2139. p. 339Antisemitism turned Jews into an explanation for contradictory features of modernity.c12-critique-modernity
  2140. p. 340Successful Jewish Europeanization did not end hostility and instead produced new backlash.c12-emancipation-backlash
  2141. p. 340Richard Wagner demanded the complete erasure of Jewish particularity.c12-wagner-self-extinction
  2142. p. 340Rapid acculturation coexisted with endogamy, Jewish neighborhoods, and collective identity.c12-persistent-identity
  2143. p. 340Rural romantics attacked Jews for embodying urbanism and cosmopolitanism.c12-rural-romanticism
  2144. p. 341The department store became a target as a symbol of mass markets and industrial production.c12-department-store-symbol
  2145. p. 341Physical anthropology gave antisemitic classification of Jews a scientific appearance.c12-race-science
  2146. p. 341Researchers measured skulls, chests, stature, eyes, and hair to define a Jewish body.c12-measurements
  2147. p. 341Extreme racial thinkers moved from alleged difference to advocacy of extermination.c12-extermination-rhetoric
  2148. p. 341German small farmers and lower-middle-class groups blamed Jews for the 1873 depression.c12-german-depression
  2149. p. 341After 1871, German Jews advanced rapidly in income, education, and culture.c12-german-success
  2150. p. 342Adolf Stocker redirected his Christian Social Workers Party toward electoral antisemitism.c12-stocker-party
  2151. p. 342Stocker proposed quotas for Jewish judges and the removal of Jewish teachers.c12-stocker-quotas
  2152. p. 342In 1892, the Conservative Party adopted the antisemitic Tivoli Program.c12-tivoli-program
  2153. p. 342Nationalist, colonial, and lifestyle clubs excluded Jews from German associational life.c12-associational-exclusion
  2154. p. 342Wilhelm Marr coined antisemitism and framed racial conflict in secular language.c12-marr-term
  2155. p. 343Marr claimed emancipation gave Jews the advantage in a racial struggle.c12-marr-pessimism
  2156. p. 343The Antisemites' Petition gathered 250,000 signatures for renewed German restrictions.c12-petition-1880
  2157. p. 343The international antisemitic congress at Dresden drew more than three hundred attendees in 1882.c12-dresden-congress
  2158. p. 343At least seventy-nine ritual murder accusations appeared in Europe from 1891 through 1900.c12-blood-libel-revival
  2159. p. 343Karl Eugen Duehring argued that conversion could not alter Jewish racial identity.c12-duehring-race
  2160. p. 344Houston Stewart Chamberlain portrayed history as conflict between creative Aryans and destructive Semites.c12-chamberlain-aryan
  2161. p. 344In imperial Germany, antisemitic propaganda grew without revocation of Jewish legal rights.c12-german-paradox
  2162. p. 344Vienna combined modernist innovation with intense antisemitic politics.c12-vienna-antisemitism
  2163. p. 344Antisemites attacked acculturated Viennese Jews for integration and migrants for foreignness.c12-vienna-two-groups
  2164. p. 345Georg von Schonerer joined Pan-Germanism, Habsburg dissolution, and racial antisemitism.c12-schoenerer
  2165. p. 345Karl Lueger won Vienna's mayoralty in 1897 through antisemitic mass politics.c12-lueger-mayor
  2166. p. 346Lueger's demagoguery demonstrated the electoral power of brutal emotional rhetoric.c12-lueger-model
  2167. p. 346Viennese occultists blended Germanic paganism, eugenics, and antisemitism.c12-occult-racism
  2168. p. 346In France, antisemitic traditions arose from both the clerical right and the anticapitalist left.c12-french-right-left
  2169. p. 346Charles Fourier cast Jews as symbols of predatory commerce and rejected their emancipation.c12-fourier
  2170. p. 347Pierre-Joseph Proudhon combined anticapitalism, religious hostility, and exterminatory language.c12-proudhon
  2171. p. 347Alphonse Toussenel depicted Jewish financiers as a new economic nobility.c12-toussenel
  2172. p. 347Édouard Drumont's Jewish France (La France juive) became a major antisemitic publishing success.c12-drumont
  2173. p. 347In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus was falsely accused of espionage through forged documents.c12-dreyfus-accusation
  2174. p. 347Dreyfus was publicly degraded and sentenced to life on Devil's Island.c12-dreyfus-punishment
  2175. p. 348In 1898, Emile Zola denounced the military cover-up in J'accuse.c12-zola-jaccuse
  2176. p. 348Dreyfus received a pardon in 1899 and full exoneration only in 1906.c12-dreyfus-exoneration
  2177. p. 348The Dreyfus Affair tested the Republic and helped bring separation of church and state.c12-affair-republic
  2178. p. 348In 1840, Damascus Jews were tortured following a fabricated ritual murder charge.c12-damascus-affair
  2179. p. 348Rivalries among France, Britain, and Austria shaped the Damascus crisis.c12-damascus-imperial
  2180. p. 349In 1889 Adolphe Willette campaigned for a Paris legislative seat on an antisemitic platform.c12-willette-poster
  2181. p. 350Cremieux, Munk, and Montefiore secured the prisoners' release and recognition of innocence.c12-damascus-mission
  2182. p. 350The Jewish press transformed Damascus into an international media event.c12-jewish-press
  2183. p. 350The crisis strengthened collective action, philanthropy, and transnational Jewish responsibility.c12-mutual-responsibility
  2184. p. 350In 1858, papal police removed Edgardo Mortara from his family after a secret baptism.c12-mortara-abduction
  2185. p. 351The Mortara case mobilized liberal protest and weakened papal temporal authority.c12-mortara-impact
  2186. p. 351After 1881, the Russian state deliberately pursued Jewish exclusion.c12-russian-turn
  2187. p. 351Pogrom denoted collective violence, physical attack, and property destruction.c12-pogrom-term
  2188. p. 351Alexander II's assassination in March 1881 intensified political and religious tensions.c12-alexander-assassination
  2189. p. 351Hessia Helfman's participation came to symbolize, for the Russian right, an alleged Jewish conspiracy.c12-helfman-symbol
  2190. p. 351Roughly two hundred pogroms from 1881 to 1883 left some forty Jews dead and devastated communities.c12-pogroms-1881
  2191. p. 352Mary Antin's account preserves pogrom trauma even though it magnifies some details.c12-antin-memory
  2192. p. 352The government did not organize the 1881 pogroms, but local officials rarely intervened.c12-state-inaction
  2193. p. 352The May Laws of 1882 restricted Jewish residence, property, public employment, and commerce.c12-may-laws
  2194. p. 352In 1887, quotas capped Jewish students at ten percent in the Pale, five outside it, and three in the capitals.c12-education-quotas
  2195. p. 352From 1889, Jewish admission to the bar required ministerial permission.c12-legal-profession
  2196. p. 352By 1900, as much as 35 percent of Russian Jewry received some form of relief.c12-pale-poverty
  2197. p. 353The Kishinev pogrom began on April 6, 1903 and continued for three days.c12-kishinev-date
  2198. p. 353Pavel Krushevan circulated ritual murder claims and political conspiracy before the attack.c12-kishinev-incitement
  2199. p. 353According to official statistics, at Kishinev forty-nine Jews died, 587 were injured, and about two thousand families lost their homes.c12-kishinev-casualties
  2200. p. 353Russian and Jewish writers, historians, and activists protested the pogrom.c12-kishinev-protest
  2201. p. 353Bialik transformed Kishinev testimony into the poem In the City of Slaughter.c12-bialik-poem
  2202. p. 353The poem condemned attackers while also assailing alleged Jewish male passivity.c12-bialik-critique
  2203. p. 354The Protocols of the Elders of Zion appeared in serial form a few months after Kishinev.c12-protocols-origin
  2204. p. 354The forgery claimed to record a Jewish meeting plotting world domination.c12-protocols-forgery
  2205. p. 354After the attack, desecrated Torah scrolls were laid on stretchers for burial.c12-kishinev-torah
  2206. p. 355The Russian Revolution and German defeat helped the Protocols gain worldwide circulation.c12-protocols-global
  2207. p. 355Pogroms in roughly three hundred places during 1905 and 1906 killed more than one thousand people.c12-pogroms-1905
  2208. p. 355The state charged Mendel Beilis with ritual murder in Kiev despite knowing the actual killers.c12-beilis-trial
  2209. p. 355A peasant jury acquitted Beilis in 1913.c12-beilis-acquittal
  2210. p. 356Jews responded through modern politics, philanthropic advocacy, and mass migration.c12-three-responses
  2211. p. 356Socialism, nationalism, and territorialism frequently overlapped.c12-political-variety
  2212. p. 356Some Jewish socialists believed international revolution would resolve the Jewish question.c12-socialist-internationalism
  2213. p. 357The Bund was founded at Vilna in 1897 to organize Jewish workers.c12-bund-founded
  2214. p. 357Jewish workers faced industrial exclusion and workdays lasting sixteen to eighteen hours.c12-bund-labor
  2215. p. 357Aleksandr Kremer insisted that workers suffered both as laborers and as Jews.c12-kremer
  2216. p. 357In 1903, the Bund demanded autonomy and sole representation of the Jewish proletariat.c12-bund-autonomy
  2217. p. 357The Bund organized self-defense units during the pogroms from 1903 to 1907.c12-bund-self-defense
  2218. p. 357In 1905 membership reached 35,000, and the Bund was the largest Jewish party in Eastern Europe.c12-bund-membership
  2219. p. 357The Bund advocated national cultural autonomy through Yiddish institutions.c12-bund-yiddish
  2220. p. 358Bundist doikayt urged Jews to build their future where they already lived.c12-doikayt
  2221. p. 358In 1919, 160 Bundists won seats on Polish municipal councils.c12-bund-local-success
  2222. p. 358The Bund's refusal to form alliances limited its national political power.c12-bund-limits
  2223. p. 358Chaim Zhitlovsky tied Jewish nationhood to Yiddish language and culture.c12-yiddishism
  2224. p. 359Zhitlovsky defined secular Jewish belonging through participation in a Yiddish cultural sphere.c12-secular-jewishness
  2225. p. 359The Folkspartey, led by Shimon Dubnov and founded in 1906, advocated democratic cultural autonomy.c12-folkspartey
  2226. p. 359The party proposed minority rights, national assemblies, and publicly funded communal schools.c12-dubnov-program
  2227. p. 359Limited resources and conflict with Bundists, Zionists, and Orthodox Jews weakened the Folkspartey.c12-folkspartey-weakness
  2228. p. 360Yehuda Alkalai and Zvi Hirsch Kalischer urged human action to advance a return to Zion.c12-religious-protozionism
  2229. p. 360Moses Hess presented Jews as a nation in his 1862 Rome and Jerusalem.c12-moses-hess
  2230. p. 360After 1881, Hibbat Tsiyon formed a loose federation of groups in Russia and Romania.c12-hibbat-zion
  2231. p. 360The First Aliyah settled Jews in Palestine but, in practical terms, can be regarded as a failure.c12-first-aliyah
  2232. p. 360Zionism rebelled against messianic waiting, parental authority, and diasporic life.c12-zionist-revolution
  2233. p. 360Leon Pinsker's Auto-Emancipation responded to the pogroms of 1881.c12-pinsker-autoemancipation
  2234. p. 361Pinsker described antisemitism as hereditary and incurable Judeophobia.c12-pinsker-judeophobia
  2235. p. 361Pinsker argued that Jews needed national self-awareness and a homeland of their own.c12-pinsker-homeland
  2236. p. 361Theodor Herzl was a Viennese journalist from an assimilated family.c12-herzl-background
  2237. p. 361As late as 1893, Herzl imagined a collective conversion to Catholicism.c12-herzl-conversion-plan
  2238. p. 362The Dreyfus Affair and Lueger's election changed Herzl's assessment of assimilation.c12-herzl-dreyfus-lueger
  2239. p. 362Herzl published The Jewish State in 1896 and argued for internationally recognized sovereignty.c12-jewish-state-book
  2240. p. 362Herzl proposed a political Society of Jews and an economic Jewish Company.c12-society-company
  2241. p. 362His imagined state would be multilingual, neutral, and legally equal for non-Jews.c12-herzl-pluralism
  2242. p. 362The First Zionist Congress gathered about two hundred delegates at Basel in 1897.c12-basel-congress
  2243. p. 363The congress sought a Jewish homeland publicly recognized and secured by law.c12-basel-program
  2244. p. 363Zionist associations increased from 117 to 913 during the year after Basel.c12-zionist-growth
  2245. p. 363Herzl's diplomatic efforts with the Kaiser, sultan, and British ministers failed.c12-diplomatic-failures
  2246. p. 364Russian Zionists criticized Herzl's limited attention to Hebrew and Jewish culture.c12-cultural-critique
  2247. p. 364In 1901, Chaim Weizmann led a faction emphasizing Jewish culture.c12-democratic-faction
  2248. p. 364Herzl's institutional legacy was the World Zionist Organization.c12-wzo-legacy
  2249. p. 364Ahad Ha-Am proposed a Hebrew spiritual center instead of prioritizing immediate sovereignty.c12-ahad-cultural
  2250. p. 364He criticized uncoordinated settlement that failed to cultivate national consciousness.c12-ahad-settlement-critique
  2251. p. 365Ahad Ha-Am warned in 1891 that the Arab population would resist displacement.c12-ahad-arabs
  2252. p. 365After Kishinev, Herzl presented Britain's East African offer as a temporary refuge.c12-uganda
  2253. p. 365The 1903 congress voted 295 to 178 to send an investigating commission.c12-uganda-vote
  2254. p. 365The Jewish Territorial Organization sought a secure territory outside Palestine.c12-territorialism
  2255. p. 365The Galveston Project settled about 9,300 Jews in Texas from 1907 to 1914.c12-galveston-project
  2256. p. 366Founded in 1902, Mizrahi combined strict adherence to tradition with a nominal acceptance of Zionism.c12-mizrahi
  2257. p. 366Nahman Syrkin advocated a socialist Jewish state in Palestine.c12-labor-zionism
  2258. p. 367Ber Borochov combined class struggle with Jewish nationalism.c12-borochov
  2259. p. 367Formed in 1906, Poalei Zion became the first socialist Zionist party.c12-poalei-zion
  2260. p. 367From 1903 to 1914 the Second Aliyah added some 35,000 Jews in Palestine.c12-second-aliyah
  2261. p. 367Ben-Gurion, Katznelson, and Ben-Zvi belonged to the cadre committed to a new Hebrew society.c12-founding-generation
  2262. p. 367Founded in 1910, Degania was the first Jewish agricultural collective.c12-degania
  2263. p. 367The kibbutz organized collective property, self-labor, equality, and cooperation.c12-kibbutz-values
  2264. p. 367A. D. Gordon linked Jewish regeneration with manual agricultural labor.c12-gordon-labor
  2265. p. 367Ha-Shomer was created in 1909 to guard Jewish settlements.c12-hashomer
  2266. p. 367Middle-class newcomers preferred Tel Aviv, a city of about 2,000 people in 1914.c12-tel-aviv-1914
  2267. p. 368Pioneers adopted Hebrew surnames to symbolize a break with diasporic identity.c12-hebraized-names
  2268. p. 368The Second Aliyah gathered writers who consolidated modern Hebrew literature in Palestine.c12-modern-hebrew-literature
  2269. p. 368S. Y. Agnon explored tradition and modernity and received the Nobel Prize in 1966.c12-agnon
  2270. p. 368Eliezer ben Yehuda made his household a laboratory for reviving spoken Hebrew.c12-ben-yehuda
  2271. p. 368Ben Yehuda created modern vocabulary and worked on a seventeen-volume dictionary.c12-hebrew-dictionary
  2272. p. 368In 1914, about 85,000 Jews lived alongside roughly 700,000 Arabs in Palestine.c12-palestine-balance
  2273. p. 368The Alliance Israelite Universelle was founded in Paris in 1860 under Cremieux's leadership.c12-alliance-founded
  2274. p. 369Its school network reached 183 institutions and 43,700 pupils, from Morocco through Iran.c12-alliance-schools
  2275. p. 369Alliance education for girls expanded Jewish women's mobility and status.c12-alliance-women
  2276. p. 369Jewish philanthropy shifted from local charity toward professionally managed international networks.c12-international-philanthropy
  2277. p. 369British, Viennese, and German associations followed the Alliance model.c12-parallel-organizations
  2278. p. 369The Jewish Colonization Association funded Moisesville in Argentina beginning in 1889.c12-moisesville
  2279. p. 369In 1880, Palestine had about 25,000 Jews, mostly poor and religious.c12-old-yishuv
  2280. p. 369Civil organizations in Germany and the United States fought defamation through media and courts.c12-defense-organizations
  2281. p. 370Nearly 2.5 million Jews departed Eastern Europe from 1881 through 1924.c12-mass-emigration
  2282. p. 370About 85 percent of Eastern European Jewish emigrants went to the United States.c12-america-share
  2283. p. 370From 1830 to 1860, Central European Jewish arrivals in the United States may have reached about 200,000.c12-german-jewish-migration
  2284. p. 370Many German Jewish immigrants moved from peddling into stores, industry, and finance.c12-peddlers-business
  2285. p. 370Isaac Mayer Wise led the 1873 congregational union and the Hebrew Union College founded in 1875.c12-uahc-huc
  2286. p. 371Bertha Pappenheim founded the League of Jewish Women in 1904.c12-pappenheim-league
  2287. p. 371The League fought sexual trafficking, pursued women's communal participation, and offered vocational training.c12-pappenheim-goals
  2288. p. 371Jewish immigrants endured harsh crossings and intimidating inspections at Ellis Island.c12-ellis-island
  2289. p. 371Founded in 1881, HIAS offered housing, food, and clothing to newcomers.c12-hias
  2290. p. 371Between seventy and ninety percent of Eastern European Jewish immigrants remained in New York.c12-new-york-retention
  2291. p. 372The 1883 banquet celebrating Hebrew Union College's first graduating class symbolized divisions within American Judaism.c12-trefa-banquet
  2292. p. 372Yiddish theaters provided popular culture and dramatized generational conflict.c12-yiddish-theater
  2293. p. 372Abraham Goldfaden created a modern Jewish theatrical industry.c12-goldfaden
  2294. p. 373About ninety-five percent of Jewish immigrants stayed in the United States.c12-permanent-settlement
  2295. p. 373Eastern European Jewish migration included unusually high shares of women and children.c12-family-migration
  2296. p. 373Emma Goldman and other Jewish activists advocated contraception and reproductive rights.c12-birth-control-activism
  2297. p. 373Nulman describes Hashkivaynu as the second blessing after the Shema in Arvit (and in the bedtime prayer); it was instituted as a prayer for Divine protection because tefillin and tzitzit do not apply at night, and it counts as a long extension of redemption (ge'ulah arikhta) without interrupting the Amidah.cl-hashkiveinu-divine-protection
  2298. p. 374Jews formed more than half of skilled workers in the clothing trades.c12-garment-trades
  2299. p. 374By 1910, 540,000 Jews lived within only one and a half square miles of the Lower East Side.c12-lower-east-side-density
  2300. p. 374Lillian Wald founded the Henry Street Settlement in 1895 to provide social services.c12-lillian-wald
  2301. p. 375The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire killed 146 workers, mostly Jewish and Italian women.c12-triangle-fire
  2302. p. 375The disaster spurred factory safety legislation and union organizing.c12-factory-reform
  2303. p. 375Jewish immigrant women participated strongly in work, education, and public politics.c12-gender-public-life
  2304. p. 375In 1902, Jewish women organized a successful boycott against higher kosher meat prices.c12-meat-boycott
  2305. p. 375Middle-class German Jews and Eastern immigrants differed over class, culture, and religion.c12-uptown-downtown
  2306. p. 375Hometown societies offered insurance, loans, sickness aid, and burial coverage.c12-landsmanshaftn
  2307. p. 376The Lower East Side sustained hundreds of synagogues, at least 307 heders, and several yeshivas.c12-orthodox-institutions
  2308. p. 376Over time, diverse Jewish groups converged into a broader American community.c12-american-convergence
  2309. p. 377Nulman reports the talmudic tradition that the fourth blessing Hatov Vehamaytiv was instituted at Yavneh with reference to those slain at Bethar, when burial was permitted.cl-birkat-hamazon-hatov-yavneh
  2310. p. 378The twentieth century joined social advances with violence on a new scale.c13-age-of-extremes
  2311. p. 378The war buried the old order together with millions of young men.c13-trenches
  2312. p. 378In the east, the war brought violence and the ruin of communities.c13-eastern-devastation
  2313. p. 378In central and western Europe, patriotic excitement gave way to harsher antisemitism.c13-patriotic-break
  2314. p. 378Between the wars, nationalism and spiritual revival fed modern Jewish cultures.c13-interwar-confidence
  2315. p. 378In 1926, Freud told B'nai B'rith that being Jewish prepared him for opposition.c13-freud-opposition
  2316. p. 378Young Zionists, women, Communists, poets, and psychoanalysts challenged authority.c13-youth-rebellion
  2317. p. 378The war began on 1 August 1914 and ended on 11 November 1918.c13-war-dates
  2318. p. 378Britain, France, and Russia, joined later by the United States, beat Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottomans.c13-alliances
  2319. p. 378About 9 million people died, and nearly 22 million were missing or maimed.c13-war-dead
  2320. p. 379French losses produced a harsh treaty, and German humiliation fed Nazism.c13-versailles
  2321. p. 379Italian Fascism and the Bolshevik victory also grew out of the war.c13-fascism-bolsheviks
  2322. p. 379Roughly one and a half million Jewish soldiers took up arms for the states they lived in.c13-jewish-enlistment
  2323. p. 379The eastern front cut through the Pale and Galicia, home to nearly 4 million Jews.c13-eastern-heartland
  2324. p. 379Local populations accused Jews of aiding the enemy.c13-enemy-accusations
  2325. p. 379Russian troops destroyed homes, businesses, synagogues, and schools.c13-scorched-earth
  2326. p. 379Russian commanders drove somewhere from half a million to a million Jews east of the front.c13-mass-expulsion
  2327. p. 379In May 1915, more than 100,000 homeless Jews reached Warsaw alone.c13-warsaw-refugees
  2328. p. 379No fewer than half a million Jews wore Russian uniforms, and some 70,000 of them were killed.c13-russian-dead
  2329. p. 379In Germany, 100,000 men, 18 percent of the Jewish population, served; 12,000 died and 35,000 received decorations.c13-german-service
  2330. p. 379About 275,000 Jews, 11 percent of the total, fought in the Austro-Hungarian army.c13-austrian-service
  2331. p. 379Nulman defines Havdalah ('separation') as the prayers and blessings at the outgoing of a holier day (Sabbath/festival) and the concluding ritual with distinctions between holy and profane, light and dark.cl-havdalah-separation-ritual
  2332. p. 380Some 41,500 Jewish subjects of the empire served in British ranks.c13-british-numbers
  2333. p. 380John Monash commanded the Australian forces, the highest Jewish rank of the war.c13-monash
  2334. p. 380Ludendorff promised protection in Yiddish, then later backed Hitler.c13-ludendorff
  2335. p. 380Martin Buber turned against the war, and Gershom Scholem rejected it as well.c13-war-critics
  2336. p. 381In the trenches, Jewish soldiers felt that ordinary Germans did not want them.c13-trench-alienation
  2337. p. 381In 1916, the Prussian ministry ran a census to test whether Jews avoided the front.c13-jew-count
  2338. p. 381The ministry found disproportionate frontline service and never released the results.c13-count-hidden
  2339. p. 381The count destroyed the illusion that Jewish integration had been accepted.c13-illusion-broken
  2340. p. 381Young German Jews came to idealize eastern Jews as authentic representatives of the people.c13-eastern-ideal
  2341. p. 381Ernst Simon described a return to Judaism and Zionism after the rupture.c13-ernst-simon
  2342. p. 381After 1881, about 60,000 Orthodox, Yiddish-speaking Jews arrived from Russia.c13-british-split
  2343. p. 381The Jewish Chronicle, founded in 1841, shifted from neutrality to support on 7 August 1914.c13-chronicle
  2344. p. 381Rothschild and Lucien Wolf criticized Britain's alliance with tsarism.c13-rothschild-objection
  2345. p. 381After the Lusitania sinking in May 1915, the East End saw three days of looting of German- and Austrian-owned shops.c13-lusitania-riots
  2346. p. 381Russian immigrants were reluctant to send sons to defend Russia, Britain's ally.c13-immigrant-refusal
  2347. p. 382Zionism, Bundism, and territorialism won adherents from Europe to the Middle East.c13-nationalist-menu
  2348. p. 382Even as danger grew, secular creativity boomed in Germany, Poland, and Soviet lands.c13-culture-paradox
  2349. p. 382The 1919 Paris conference created new states on imperial ruins.c13-peace-map
  2350. p. 382Only Czechoslovakia still held, in the 1930s, to the original democratic ideal.c13-czechoslovakia
  2351. p. 382By 1919, Poland had seen more than 100 pogroms; in Lvov, 70 Jews were killed.c13-lvov-pogrom
  2352. p. 382In September 1919, Joseph Seff warned that 6 million souls in Ukraine and Poland were in peril.c13-seff-warning
  2353. p. 383Under Weimar, Germany's 564,000 Jews enjoyed unprecedented access to posts that had been closed.c13-weimar-access
  2354. p. 383Kurt Eisner overthrew the Bavarian government in November 1918 and was assassinated in 1919.c13-eisner
  2355. p. 383Hugo Preuss drafted the liberal constitution that the right called a Jewish republic.c13-preuss
  2356. p. 383Walter Rathenau became foreign minister in 1922 and was assassinated that same year.c13-rathenau
  2357. p. 383Europe's share of world Jewry fell from 82 percent in 1900 to 57 percent in 1939.c13-europe-share
  2358. p. 383In Budapest, Jews were 51 percent of lawyers; in Vienna and Budapest, 63 percent of doctors.c13-law-medicine
  2359. p. 383In 1931, Jews were 56 percent of Polish physicians and 83 percent in Lodz.c13-polish-physicians
  2360. p. 383Sixty percent of German Jews worked in commerce, against about 16 percent of non-Jews.c13-german-commerce
  2361. p. 383In 1920, Budapest had 215,000 Jews; Warsaw had 219,000, a figure that reached 352,659 by 1931.c13-budapest-size
  2362. p. 384In 1933, 9.5 million of the world's 15.3 million Jews lived in Europe.c13-map-1933
  2363. p. 384Around 1930, nearly 30 percent of Jews lived in only 19 cities.c13-urban-concentration
  2364. p. 384Goodman notes that the mourner's Kaddish likewise became integral to Sephardi culture, together with yahrzeit (a candle and a public liturgical role on the death anniversary).c-h502-goodman-mourners-kaddish-sephardi
  2365. p. 385The Bolshevik revolution mixed unprecedented emancipation with repression of collective Jewish life.c13-mixed-blessing
  2366. p. 385The February Revolution emancipated Russian Jews and abolished the Pale.c13-pale-ended
  2367. p. 385The Bund and Zionist parties were shut down when the Bolsheviks monopolized power.c13-parties-crushed
  2368. p. 385Early in the 1920s, the party's Jewish Section shut roughly a thousand Hebrew schools and 650 synagogues and religious schools.c13-yevsektsia-closures
  2369. p. 385Dissolved in 1930 on nationalism charges, the section later saw most leaders jailed or killed in the purges.c13-yevsektsia-end
  2370. p. 385A saying summed up the cost: the Trotskys made the revolution and the Bronshteyns paid for it.c13-bronshteyn-quip
  2371. p. 385Yiddish books and pamphlets rose from 76 in 1924 to 531 in 1930.c13-yiddish-print-boom
  2372. p. 385The State Jewish Theater, with Mikhoels and Chagall's sets, asserted a distinct identity.c13-mikhoels
  2373. p. 386Secular Yiddish schools rose from 366 in 1924 to 1,100 in 1930.c13-yiddish-schools
  2374. p. 386Social advancement required Russian, and Yiddish came to seem a shtetl remnant.c13-russian-route
  2375. p. 386In 1934, Birobidzhan became a Jewish Autonomous Region.c13-birobidzhan-status
  2376. p. 387The Jewish population peaked at about 30,000 in 1948, a quarter of the local total.c13-jar-peak
  2377. p. 387The 1936 to 1938 purges arrested the region's Jewish leaders for counterrevolutionary activity.c13-jar-purges
  2378. p. 387Trotsky, Zinoviev, Sverdlov, and Kamenev held central posts in the new regime.c13-soviet-command
  2379. p. 387In January 1937, 42 senior NKVD officials were Jews, and 12 of 20 directorates had Jewish heads.c13-nkvd-share
  2380. p. 387In 1922, 72 percent of Bolsheviks were ethnic Russians, yet the revolution was seen as a Jewish plot.c13-plot-myth
  2381. p. 387On the eve of 1939, two Jews in five no longer lived inside the old Pale.c13-left-the-pale
  2382. p. 387Moscow grew from 15,300 Jews in 1912 to about 250,000 in 1939.c13-moscow-growth
  2383. p. 388Jewish university students rose from 22,500 in 1929 to 98,000 in 1939.c13-university-rise
  2384. p. 388In 1939, Jews were about 70 percent of dentists in Moscow and Leningrad.c13-moscow-dentists
  2385. p. 388Russian as a declared mother tongue rose from a quarter in 1926 to 55 percent in 1939.c13-russian-mother-tongue
  2386. p. 388In the Russian Republic, mixed marriages of Jewish men rose from 17.4 to 42 percent between 1924 and 1936.c13-intermarriage
  2387. p. 388During the purges, relatives abroad made Jews vulnerable to charges of internationalism.c13-purge-isolation
  2388. p. 389From 1919, Sunday rest blocked Jewish trade on both Saturday and Sunday.c13-sunday-law
  2389. p. 389Nearly all 4,000 Jewish railway workers and 6,000 in lumber lost their jobs.c13-rail-dismissals
  2390. p. 389In Warsaw, where Jews were 30 percent of the population, only 50 of 20,000 city employees were Jews.c13-warsaw-payroll
  2391. p. 389In 1934, the rabbi of Radzilow wrote to Nehemiah Rozenbaum in Australia seeking help for Rozenbaum's starving nephew.c13-gelgor-letter
  2392. p. 389Pilsudski's 1926 coup somewhat improved conditions and legalized the kehillot in 1927.c13-pilsudski-coup
  2393. p. 390Dmowski understood Polishness as the Polish language and Catholicism, with no place for Jews.c13-dmowski
  2394. p. 390The state did not fund Yiddish and Hebrew schools and barred their graduates from universities.c13-school-costs
  2395. p. 390After 1936, nationalists organized boycotts of Jewish businesses.c13-boycott-1936
  2396. p. 390Jewish students dropped from roughly a quarter of university rolls in 1921 to a little above 8 percent by 1938.c13-university-drop
  2397. p. 390Between 1935 and 1937, pogroms killed 79 Jews and injured about 500.c13-pogroms-1935
  2398. p. 390Cardinal Hlond backed the boycott and condemned physical assault in a February 1936 pastoral letter.c13-hlond
  2399. p. 390Romanian Jewry combined Germanized elites, Yiddish-speaking masses, and Hungarian-speaking communities.c13-romania-mosaic
  2400. p. 391Cuza mobilized students, and in 1922 medical students sought to stop Jews dissecting Christian cadavers.c13-cuza-students
  2401. p. 391The Iron Guard, founded in 1927 and led by Codreanu, joined fascism, mystical Christianity, and antisemitism.c13-iron-guard
  2402. p. 391The brief 1938 Goga-Cuza government imposed Nuremberg-inspired laws, and by 1939 at least 270,000 Jews had lost citizenship.c13-goga-cuza
  2403. p. 391The March 1919 revolution, led by Bela Kun, was followed by a Red Terror.c13-bela-kun
  2404. p. 391Between 1919 and 1920, right-wing extremists killed hundreds of Jews in the White Terror.c13-white-terror
  2405. p. 391In 1920, Horthy limited Jews to 6 percent of university places.c13-horthy-quota
  2406. p. 391On 24 May 1938, the Hungarian parliament passed race laws.c13-hungary-race-law
  2407. p. 392In those decades the Jewish populations stood near 82,000 in Turkey, 75,000 in Greece, 68,000 in Yugoslavia, and 48,000 in Bulgaria.c13-balkan-counts
  2408. p. 392Salonika's 61,000 Jews formed a sixth of the inhabitants and a fifth of local economic life.c13-salonika-share
  2409. p. 392In Bulgaria, Ladino as a mother tongue fell from nearly 90 percent in 1926 to under 40 percent in 1934.c13-ladino-bulgaria
  2410. p. 392Latinization of the Turkish alphabet in the 1920s accompanied that of Ladino and weakened its press.c13-ataturk-script
  2411. p. 392Goodman records that within thirty years of Isaac Luria's death, kabbalists in Italy already called him Ari (Hebrew acronym for 'the divine Rabbi Isaac'), an elevated status produced largely by disciples' writings.c-h502-goodman-luria-ari-title
  2412. p. 393Scholem left Germany for Palestine in 1923 and turned to mystical texts.c13-scholem-departure
  2413. p. 393Kafka criticized his father's formal Judaism, limited to a few days in synagogue.c13-kafka-father
  2414. p. 393Rosenzweig and Buber prepared a new German translation of the Hebrew Bible.c13-bible-translation
  2415. p. 393Secularized Jews built new identities instead of copying intact traditions.c13-post-assimilatory
  2416. p. 394Rosenzweig founded the Lehrhaus in Frankfurt in 1920 as an adult school.c13-lehrhaus-founded
  2417. p. 394Teaching reversed the traditional path: from life back toward Torah.c13-reverse-order
  2418. p. 394In 1913, Rosenzweig abandoned conversion after Yom Kippur in Kassel.c13-kassel-return
  2419. p. 394Weimar produced the Jüdisches Lexikon and an Encyclopaedia Judaica that stopped at L.c13-encyclopedias
  2420. p. 395In the early 1920s, Berlin gathered Bialik, Berdichevsky, Greenberg, and Agnon.c13-berlin-hebrew-circle
  2421. p. 395The chapter places YIVO's founding in Berlin in 1925, with later homes in Vilna and New York; the book's timeline records the founding in Vilna.c13-yivo-founded
  2422. p. 395Polish Jewish culture circulated in Yiddish, Polish, and Hebrew.c13-polysystem
  2423. p. 395In the 1931 census, 80 percent declared Yiddish, 12 percent Polish, and 8 percent Hebrew; the chapter warns that these figures are not a true reflection of linguistic reality, especially for Hebrew.c13-census-1931
  2424. p. 396Hofmannsthal, Reinhardt, and Strauss opened the Salzburg Festival in 1920.c13-salzburg
  2425. p. 396According to Goodman, Luria and his circle usually upheld traditional rite; reading mystical meaning into liturgy reinforced practices already in place, so the Lurianic legacy deepened appreciation more than it rewrote behavior.c-h502-goodman-luria-liturgy-conservative
  2426. p. 397Hugo Bettauer, author of a Vienna without Jews, was killed by a Nazi in 1925.c13-bettauer
  2427. p. 398Director Mikhl Weichert served as a public figure of Polish Jewry, akin to Mikhoels.c13-weichert
  2428. p. 398Max Weinreich directed YIVO in Vilna from 1925 to 1939.c13-weinreich
  2429. p. 398The Bund school network served more than 24,000 pupils, from kindergarten through teacher training.c13-bund-schools
  2430. p. 399TOZ, backed by the Joint, organized summer camps against tuberculosis and other diseases.c13-toz-camps
  2431. p. 400In 1929, Nasz Przeglad organized the Miss Judea contest, won by Zofia Oldak.c13-miss-judea
  2432. p. 401The Bund, Poalei Zion, General Zionists, Folkists, Revisionists, and Agudas competed for youth.c13-party-map
  2433. p. 401Division blocked a single voice and weakened the parties in Polish politics.c13-powerlessness
  2434. p. 401About 140,000 Polish Jews reached Palestine between the wars.c13-polish-aliyah
  2435. p. 401Zionism sheltered socialists, centrists, secularists, and the religious.c13-zionist-umbrella
  2436. p. 401The Bund never elected a deputy to the Sejm, despite municipal strength.c13-bund-sejm
  2437. p. 402In 1898, Max Nordau called for a muscular Judaism, and clubs such as Maccabi and Hakoah spread.c13-muscular-judaism
  2438. p. 402Hank Greenberg refused to play on Yom Kippur in 1934.c13-greenberg-fast
  2439. p. 402Britain promised Husayn an Arab state that he believed would include Palestine.c13-husayn-pledge
  2440. p. 403Hakoah Vienna, with 5,000 members, won the Austrian championship in 1924-1925.c13-hakoah-title
  2441. p. 403Weizmann, a chemist at Manchester, opened doors of power by producing acetone for explosives.c13-acetone
  2442. p. 404In November 1917, the British cabinet favored a Jewish national home in Palestine.c13-balfour-wording
  2443. p. 404The text protected the rights of non-Jews in Palestine and of Jews in other countries.c13-safeguards
  2444. p. 404The words a and in limited the home to part of Palestine and to one destination among others.c13-a-and-in
  2445. p. 404After Herzl, Wolfssohn, Warburg, Weizmann, and Sokolow presided over the Zionist Organization.c13-wzo-line
  2446. p. 404Jabotinsky, from Odessa, saw himself as Herzl's political heir.c13-jabotinsky-heir
  2447. p. 404The Jewish Legion gathered about 5,000 volunteers in the 38th, 39th, and 40th battalions.c13-jewish-legion
  2448. p. 404Jabotinsky read the declaration as free immigration throughout Palestine, including Transjordan.c13-transjordan-claim
  2449. p. 405In 1923, Jabotinsky created Betar, a youth league named in memory of Trumpeldor.c13-betar
  2450. p. 405In 1937, Haganah dissidents formed the Irgun, the Revisionist military arm.c13-etzel
  2451. p. 405The 1933 assassination of Chaim Arlosoroff weakened the right.c13-arlosoroff
  2452. p. 405In 1935, Jabotinsky left the Zionist Organization and founded the New Zionist Organization.c13-nzo
  2453. p. 406Ahad Ha-Am already noted, in 1891, Arab objections to land purchases.c13-ahad-1891
  2454. p. 406Conquest through labor set socialist Zionists against local Arabs.c13-conquest-of-labor
  2455. p. 406Revisionists wanted a Jewish state on both banks of the Jordan.c13-both-banks
  2456. p. 406Before the Peel Commission, Jabotinsky contrasted Arab appetite with Jewish starvation.c13-appetite-starvation
  2457. p. 406At San Remo, France received Lebanon and Syria, and Britain received Palestine and Iraq.c13-san-remo
  2458. p. 406Herbert Samuel, a Jewish former cabinet minister, became high commissioner and dealt with the Jewish Agency.c13-samuel-arrival
  2459. p. 406In May 1921, riots in Jaffa and Petah Tikvah, linked to Haj Amin, killed 43 Jews.c13-jaffa-1921
  2460. p. 406Churchill's 1922 White Paper refused to make Palestine as Jewish as England is English.c13-churchill-paper
  2461. p. 407In London in 1920, Weizmann told Brandeis there was no bridge between Washington and Pinsk.c13-brandeis-split
  2462. p. 407The mandate built roads, railways, telegraph lines, and the port of Haifa.c13-haifa-port
  2463. p. 407The Third Aliyah, from 1919 to 1923, brought about 35,000 Jews, chiefly from Ukraine and Russia.c13-third-aliyah
  2464. p. 408In 1920, that generation founded the Histadrut, a union, builder, and social insurer.c13-histadrut
  2465. p. 408Henrietta Szold founded Hadassah in 1912; by 1927 there were more than 40,000 American members.c13-hadassah
  2466. p. 408In 1930, the left formed Mapai, under Ben-Gurion and Arlosoroff, accepting private capital.c13-mapai
  2467. p. 408After 1929, the Jewish Agency took over the Haganah.c13-agency-haganah
  2468. p. 408Ben-Gurion defined diaspora life as dependence and proposed to break it.c13-galut-dependence
  2469. p. 408Avraham Yitzhak Kook, appointed Ashkenazic chief rabbi in 1921, allied Orthodoxy and Zionism.c13-kook-alliance
  2470. p. 409At least half of the 67,000 immigrants of the Fourth Aliyah, from 1924 to 1929, were Polish shopkeepers and artisans.c13-fourth-aliyah-class
  2471. p. 409The Fifth Aliyah, from 1929 to 1939, brought more than 250,000 Jews, largely from Germany and Austria.c13-fifth-aliyah
  2472. p. 409Tel Aviv grew from 4,000 Jews in 1921 to 135,000 in 1935.c13-tel-aviv-boom
  2473. p. 409The 1905 Basel congress decided to create Bezalel, which opened in Jerusalem the next year.c13-bezalel
  2474. p. 410Tel Aviv architecture used strip windows, columns, balconies, and flat roofs.c13-thermometer-windows
  2475. p. 410Habimah, the world's first Hebrew theater company, was founded in Moscow in 1917.c13-habimah-1917
  2476. p. 410The company staged An-sky's The Dybbuk in Hebrew under Vakhtangov, in Bialik's translation.c13-dybbuk-vakhtangov
  2477. p. 410The Hebrew University cornerstone was laid in 1918, and the doors opened in 1925.c13-university-1925
  2478. p. 410The Technion in Haifa opened in 1924.c13-technion
  2479. p. 410According to Nulman, Kaddish did not begin inside the synagogue: it most probably arose in the talmudic era in Aramaic (spoken by Babylonian Jews) and closed a teacher's or preacher's discourse; only later did it enter the service.cl-kaddish-aramaic-talmudic-origin
  2480. p. 410Nulman records that mourners' Kaddish practice appears to take root in the 1200s; earlier the doxology closed seven days of mourning for a scholar and later accompanied every burial.cl-kaddish-mourner-thirteenth-century
  2481. p. 411Jews rose from about 85,000, 12 percent, in 1914, to 475,000, about 31 percent, on the eve of war.c13-percent-shift
  2482. p. 411In 1920, an attack on Tel Hai killed eight Jews, among them Yosef Trumpeldor.c13-tel-hai
  2483. p. 411From 23 August 1929, five days of attacks killed 133 Jews, 60 of them in Hebron, and the British killed 116 Arabs.c13-riots-1929
  2484. p. 411Around 1936 the Haganah counted 10,000 fighters on active duty plus some 40,000 reserves.c13-haganah-1936
  2485. p. 412By 1939, the Arab revolt had left nearly 5,000 Arabs and 415 Jews dead.c13-revolt-toll
  2486. p. 412The Peel Commission proposed a Jewish state on the coast and in Galilee, and a larger Arab state joined to Transjordan.c13-peel-map
  2487. p. 412The Zionist leadership accepted partition reluctantly; Revisionists and some religious Zionists rejected it.c13-partition-split
  2488. p. 413The 1939 White Paper abandoned partition and limited immigration to 75,000 more people over five years.c13-white-paper-1939
  2489. p. 413In 1914, about 1 million Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jews lived from the Balkans to Afghanistan.c13-sephardi-million
  2490. p. 413Ottoman Ladino absorbed Hebrew, Turkish, and Greek and was written in Rashi script.c13-rashi-script
  2491. p. 413Esther Azhari Moyal, in Beirut and later Jaffa, defended Arab women's rights.c13-moyal
  2492. p. 414Tunisian Jews gained citizenship in 1881, Moroccan Jews civil rights in 1912, and Libyan Jews emancipation in 1916.c13-maghreb-citizenship
  2493. p. 414The 1936 Moroccan census counted 161,000 Jews, three quarters bilingual in Berber and Arabic.c13-morocco-1936
  2494. p. 415In the late 1930s, Mussolini extended antisemitic laws to Libyan Jews.c13-libya-race-laws
  2495. p. 415In 1927, half of Turkey's 81,500 Jews lived in Istanbul.c13-istanbul-1927
  2496. p. 415Iraqi Jews divided between up to 20,000 in the mountains and Arabized communities in Baghdad.c13-kurdish-split
  2497. p. 415Baghdad's Jews named March 1917, the month British troops entered the city, a day of miracle.c13-day-of-miracle
  2498. p. 415Of 202,000 inhabitants, 80,000, or 40 percent, were Jews.c13-baghdad-40
  2499. p. 416Ezra Haddad wrote that Iraqi Jews had been Arabs before they became Jews.c13-haddad-arabs
  2500. p. 416In 1929, Alliance teacher Loubaton denounced Hebrew ignorance and mixed marriages in Tunisia.c13-loubaton
  2501. p. 416The decline of observance accompanied schooling and new secular cultures, in Europe and the East.c13-secular-pattern
  2502. p. 418From 1933 through 1945, Jews endured the worst disaster in their long past.c14-catastrophe-scale
  2503. p. 418By the time fighting ceased, Jewish dead numbered no fewer than six million.c14-six-million
  2504. p. 418Ashkenazi and Sephardi civilizations that had flourished in Europe were wiped out.c14-civilizations-destroyed
  2505. p. 418The assault on Europe's Jews had roots in the First World War.c14-war-origins
  2506. p. 418Interwar fascists praised integral nationalism, anticommunism, militarism, violence, and Jew hatred.c14-fascist-creed
  2507. p. 418Most people who cast ballots for Hitler were not motivated by the party's Jew hatred.c14-voter-motives
  2508. p. 418Large numbers of Germans felt some action toward Jews was required, yet never specified what.c14-vague-demand
  2509. p. 418Destruction of Europe's Jews was neither fated nor visible in advance when the Nazis took office.c14-not-inevitable
  2510. p. 418In his war for global conquest, Hitler treated Jews as Germany's chief foe.c14-principal-enemy
  2511. p. 418State attack on German Jews opened when Hitler became chancellor on 30 January 1933.c14-chancellor-date
  2512. p. 418Speeches and Mein Kampf (1925) labeled Jews parasites, maggots, cockroaches, bacilli, and cancer.c14-mein-kampf-slurs
  2513. p. 418Those insults were borrowed from earlier antisemites, above all Viennese occult racists who never governed.c14-borrowed-slurs
  2514. p. 418Hitler meant to practice biological politics, drawing on the nation's minds, economy, and arms.c14-biological-politics
  2515. p. 418Nazi racial ranking cast Germans as supermen and Jews as subhumans masked in human form.c14-racial-hierarchy
  2516. p. 418Hitler called the Jew a counter-man, a different god's creature, foreign to nature.c14-counter-man
  2517. p. 418, p. 20Nulman describes Kedushah De'amidah (between the second and third blessings in the Amidah repetition) as instituted by the Men of the Great Assembly, recited standing with a minyan, with a nucleus in Isa 6:3 and passages from Ezek 3:12 and Ps 146:10.cl-kedushah-great-assembly-institution
  2518. p. 419In 1922 anti-Nazi journalist Josef Hell asked what Hitler would do to Jews once fully empowered.c14-hell-interview
  2519. p. 419Hitler answered that annihilating Jews would be his first task, starting with gallows in Munich.c14-1922-annihilation
  2520. p. 419He spoke of raising as many gallows on Munich's Marienplatz as traffic would allow.c14-marienplatz
  2521. p. 419Hitler claimed the smell of caftan-wearing Jews nauseated him, and judged their morals worse still.c14-caftan-nausea
  2522. p. 419Saul Friedlander named Hitler's preaching redemptive antisemitism.c14-redemptive-antisemitism
  2523. p. 419Hitler said that in defending himself against the Jew he fought for the Lord's work.c14-work-of-the-lord
  2524. p. 419Nazi ideology also sought vengeance for the 1918 defeat and the Versailles humiliation.c14-versailles-revenge
  2525. p. 419The murder of Europe's Jews sat at the center of Nazi war aims, not beside the wider conflict.c14-war-aims-center
  2526. p. 419Intentionalist historians hold that mass murder was always Hitler's aim, set near the end of the First World War.c14-intentionalists
  2527. p. 419Functionalist historians argue the decision evolved in wartime as Germany came to control ever more Jews.c14-functionalists
  2528. p. 419The authors suggest that moderate intentionalism fits best: Jew hatred was central, yet early removal most likely meant dispossession and expulsion, not murder.c14-moderate-intentionalism
  2529. p. 419Holocaust history splits into 1933 to 1939 and 1939 to 1945.c14-two-phases
  2530. p. 419Most of what is known about Ebionites and other groups of Jewish believers comes from heresiological surveys in the church fathers, beginning with Irenaeus in the late 180s CE. The stereotyped character of those sources requires caution: they arrange theological opponents more than they describe living communities with neutrality.cjb-ebionites-heresiology
  2531. p. 420Phase one pushed Jews out of economic, social, and cultural life in Germany and Austria.c14-phase-one-scope
  2532. p. 420The party's 1920 program of twenty-five points promised to push Jews out of German public life.c14-twenty-five-points
  2533. p. 420Point 4 held that only a person of German blood could be a citizen, so no Jew could qualify.c14-point-four
  2534. p. 420Dachau, the first concentration camp, opened outside Munich in March 1933, with Jews among the earliest inmates.c14-dachau-march
  2535. p. 420Early on, Jews often entered camps as socialists rather than as Jews, and some were freed after declaring decent treatment.c14-early-camp-reason
  2536. p. 420Recent research points to some 30,000 slave labor sites, 980 concentration camps, six killing centers, and 1,000 prisoner of war camps.c14-camp-system-scale
  2537. p. 420Anti-Jewish policy ran on two tracks: local SA violence, and quieter persecution by conservative officials.c14-two-tracks
  2538. p. 420After the Night of the Long Knives, the 1934 SA purge, direction of the campaign shifted increasingly to Berlin.c14-long-knives
  2539. p. 420On 1 April 1933 the Nazis led a boycott of stores and businesses under Jewish ownership.c14-boycott-day
  2540. p. 420At ten in the morning, thugs stood outside Jewish shops with placards telling people not to purchase from Jews.c14-boycott-signs
  2541. p. 420On 4 April 1933 Zionist leader Robert Welsch answered the boycott's daubed Stars of David with the headline "The Yellow Badge, Bear It With Pride!"; the Nazi badge decree came years later.c14-welsch-pride
  2542. p. 420The yellow-badge order hit Polish Jews over age ten on 23 November 1939, and German Jews on 1 September 1941.c14-badge-dates
  2543. p. 420Edwin Landau, a 43-year-old Prussian Jew, could not believe the boycott was happening in the twentieth century.c14-landau-disbelief
  2544. p. 421Landau felt that Germany, which he had loved, had turned into an enemy, and he grew ashamed of having belonged to it.c14-landau-break
  2545. p. 421Landau belonged to the Reich Association of Jewish Frontline Soldiers and, unusually for that group, was also Orthodox.c14-frontline-association
  2546. p. 421On the Friday before the boycott, Landau wept at Sabbath dinner while taking leave of his Germanness.c14-sabbath-burial
  2547. p. 421At the cemetery he returned three generations of Germanness to his forebears, and the stones stayed silent.c14-silent-graves
  2548. p. 421On boycott day Goebbels declared that the year 1789 had been wiped from history.c14-goebbels-1789
  2549. p. 421Berlin and city halls issued hundreds of laws, decrees, and local rules that made ordinary life impossible.c14-web-of-laws
  2550. p. 421Smaller statutes, such as the 1938 ban on Jews owning guns, show the same zeal applied to a handful of people.c14-gun-ban
  2551. p. 421On 4 April the German boxing body excluded every Jewish boxer.c14-boxing-ban
  2552. p. 421On 7 April 1933 the civil service law dismissed officials who were not of Aryan descent.c14-civil-service-law
  2553. p. 421On 11 April, non-Aryan came to mean anyone with a single non-Aryan grandparent, especially a Jewish one.c14-one-grandparent
  2554. p. 422Some two million state employees and thousands of professionals combed records to prove Aryan purity.c14-ancestry-bureaucracy
  2555. p. 422When Hitler took power, Jews were 16 percent of Germany's lawyers and 11 percent of its doctors.c14-lawyer-doctor-shares
  2556. p. 422In March 1933 the National Socialist lawyers' league demanded that every firm become free of Jews.c14-judenrein-firms
  2557. p. 422Prussian authorities cancelled licenses for 60 percent of Jewish lawyers on 7 April 1933.c14-prussian-licenses
  2558. p. 422On 27 September 1933 even veteran Jewish lawyers lost their exception: no Jew could practice law anymore.c14-law-closed
  2559. p. 422Half of Berlin's physicians were Jewish, and in Vienna the share reached 60 percent.c14-berlin-vienna-doctors
  2560. p. 422The drive against Jewish doctors had three stages: removal from insurance in 1933, decertification in summer 1938, and wartime confinement to a few hospitals.c14-doctor-phases
  2561. p. 422By 1934 the yearly taxable income of Aryan doctors had risen by 25 percent.c14-aryan-windfall
  2562. p. 422More than half of German physicians joined the Nazi Party, and their professional body was the most readily Nazified.c14-doctors-party
  2563. p. 422After decertification, Jews could not treat Germans and could call themselves only sick-treaters.c14-sick-treaters
  2564. p. 422By early 1939 a mere 285 Jewish physicians remained in Germany.c14-285-left
  2565. p. 422On 12 April 1933 Victor Klemperer wrote that he was safe only as a man on the gallows with the rope at his neck.c14-klemperer-rope
  2566. p. 422On 25 April a statute capped Jewish enrollments at 5 percent in German schools and universities.c14-school-quota
  2567. p. 422Public pools were a priority: Nazis feared Jewish swimmers would foul the water and pose a sexual threat.c14-pool-panic
  2568. p. 422Hilma Geffen Ludomer of Berlin recalled that suddenly she had no girlfriends, and neighbors feared to speak with the family.c14-child-ostracism
  2569. p. 423In Dresden a teacher held up blond, blue-eyed Henny Brenner as an Aryan example, and Henny answered that she was Jewish.c14-henny-exposed
  2570. p. 423On 10 May 1933 German universities publicly burned books by liberal humanists, anti-Nazis, and Jews.c14-book-burning
  2571. p. 424Pessimistic Jews recalled Heine: burning books was only a prelude to burning people.c14-heine-warning
  2572. p. 424On 14 July, Bastille Day in France, the Nazis outlawed every other political party.c14-parties-outlawed
  2573. p. 424That same day a law allowed sterilization of people with listed conditions, among them feeble-mindedness, schizophrenia, and severe alcoholism.c14-sterilization-statute
  2574. p. 424People who later murdered Jews in the killing centers had practiced first in sterilization and mercy-killing programs.c14-euthanasia-training
  2575. p. 424The Editor Law of 4 October 1933 dismissed Jewish journalists and barred Jews from editing newspapers.c14-editor-law
  2576. p. 424Two Jewish-owned conglomerates, Ullstein and Mosse, sufficed for Nazis to allege a conspiratorial Jewish press.c14-ullstein-mosse
  2577. p. 424By 1934 at least a fifth of German Jewry had lost its livelihood.c14-livelihood-fifth
  2578. p. 424The Nuremberg Laws of September 1935 revoked German citizenship for Jews and for people deemed racially Jewish.c14-nuremberg-citizenship
  2579. p. 424The statutes barred marriage and any sexual relations of Jews with Germans, under the obsession called race defilement.c14-sex-ban
  2580. p. 424London's Times described those statutes as a cold pogrom.c14-cold-pogrom
  2581. p. 424At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, anti-Jewish signs came down so as not to offend visitors, without easing discrimination.c14-olympics-signs
  2582. p. 424Decrees from 1936 to 1939 barred Jews from accountancy, veterinary work, gardens, cinemas, theaters, and precious-metal jewelry.c14-daily-decrees
  2583. p. 424On 27 October 1937 Klemperer wrote that scorn, disgust, and deep distrust of Germany would never leave him.c14-klemperer-scorn
  2584. p. 425Kurt Baumann proposed a Jewish cultural circle because Berlin alone held 175,000 Jews, enough for theater, opera, and an orchestra.c14-baumann-numbers
  2585. p. 425In April 1933 the Nazis allowed the Kulturbund, then insisted the word German be dropped from its name.c14-kulturbund-founded
  2586. p. 425The regime used the Kulturbund to claim decent treatment, to segregate Jewish culture, and to end Jewish participation in German culture.c14-kulturbund-reasons
  2587. p. 425No event could proceed without Hans Hinkel's approval, and only the Jewish press could report them.c14-hinkel-censorship
  2588. p. 425Jews could not perform Schiller, Goethe, Wagner, or Strauss; Beethoven, Brahms, and Bach were banned in 1936, Mozart and Schubert after the Anschluss.c14-forbidden-repertoire
  2589. p. 425By 1938 the Kulturbund had 76 branches, about 20,000 members, and had staged 8,457 events.c14-kulturbund-scale
  2590. p. 425The first production was Lessing's Nathan the Wise, defended by Kurt Singer; Zionists warned it must not wall Jews into an old world of illusions.c14-nathan-premiere
  2591. p. 426The Kulturbund was dissolved on 11 September 1941, once mass murder in the east made the pretense useless.c14-kulturbund-dissolved
  2592. p. 426In September 1933 the Reich Representation of German Jews was formed, led by Rabbi Leo Baeck of Berlin.c14-baeck-body
  2593. p. 426In 1935 the name changed to Representation of Jews in Germany, since German Jew was, in Nazi ideology, an oxymoron.c14-name-forced
  2594. p. 426The body offered vocational training, schooling, welfare, and small loans to people denied jobs and schools.c14-baeck-aid
  2595. p. 426Once the last leaders had been sent to Theresienstadt in 1943, the body was closed.c14-theresienstadt-leaders
  2596. p. 426In 1933, 525,000 Jews lived in Germany, and only 37,000 left that year.c14-population-1933
  2597. p. 426In June 1933 the liberal Central Union declared that the great majority of German Jews stayed rooted in the homeland.c14-central-union-roots
  2598. p. 426In October 1933 the Orthodox community wrote Hitler that conditions were intolerable, yet did not believe the Führer approved starvation.c14-orthodox-letter
  2599. p. 426Even Zionists cautioned against wholesale departure, fearing flight would encourage other states to hasten discrimination.c14-zionist-caution
  2600. p. 427In 1933 Ismar Elbogen recalled that the forefathers had met catastrophes without surrendering the will to live.c14-elbogen-forefathers
  2601. p. 427Weimar cabinets lasted nine months on average, so many people expected a quick Nazi collapse.c14-weimar-lifespan
  2602. p. 427Up to September 1939, departures from Germany reached about 282,000, and from Austria about 117,000.c14-emigration-totals
  2603. p. 427Across 1933 to 1939 the main landings were the United States (about 95,000), Palestine (about 60,000), Britain (about 40,000), Central and South America (about 75,000), and Shanghai (just under 20,000).c14-destinations
  2604. p. 427, p. 427Skarsaune proposes that 'Ebionites' goes back to ebionim, 'poor', a biblical honorific for the persecuted chosen by God (as in the Qumran pesher on Psalm 37, edat ha-ebionim). An honorific name is likely a self-designation, not a label invented only by the Fathers.cjb-ebionite-name-poor
  2605. p. 428Lydia Gottschewski of the Nazi Women's League urged her sisters to drop pity and treat the Jew as a parasite.c14-gottschewski
  2606. p. 428In 1933 no university professor spoke out when books were burned and 1,200 Jewish colleagues were dismissed.c14-professors-silent
  2607. p. 428Hamburg banker Alwin Muenchmeyer admitted that they did nothing and thought nothing of it.c14-muenchmeyer
  2608. p. 428On 4 April 1933 Protestant bishop Otto Dibelius declared that he had always considered himself an antisemite.c14-dibelius
  2609. p. 428The Vatican concluded a concordat with the Nazis in July 1933 and did not protest the persecution.c14-concordat
  2610. p. 428As early as 1928, Goebbels asked in Der Angriff why Nazis were enemies of the Jews and blamed them for defeat.c14-goebbels-enemies
  2611. p. 428Children's books such as The Poisonous Toadstool carried images meant to frighten and instruct.c14-toadstool
  2612. p. 428In November 1937 Munich's German Museum opened The Eternal Jew, and Alfred Rosenberg told viewers the film was meant to horrify them.c14-eternal-jew-show
  2613. p. 428At the moment Hitler took office, Germany still had roughly 100,000 firms in Jewish hands.c14-enterprise-count
  2614. p. 429Before 1938 ended, some 60 to 70 percent of firms owned by Jews had shut or passed into Aryan hands, first under pressure called voluntary, then by forced transfer.c14-aryanization-stages
  2615. p. 429Herbert Göring, Hermann's brother, described joining Jewish firms' boards so as to create difficulties for the owner.c14-herbert-goering
  2616. p. 429Götz Aly argues that racial plunder funded unprecedented economic equality and upward mobility, making the regime both popular and criminal.c14-aly-equality
  2617. p. 429In 1935 Hitler declared Germany would be ready for war in four years and that Jews had to be removed beforehand.c14-four-year-war
  2618. p. 429On 12 March 1938 Hitler annexed Austria, and about 190,000 more Jews fell under Nazi rule.c14-anschluss
  2619. p. 430In Vienna, Jews were forced to scrub cobblestones while crowds taunted them.c14-vienna-scrubbing
  2620. p. 430Sigmund Freud was watched, questioned, and robbed, but celebrity spared him from kneeling; he left on 4 June 1938 with his wife and daughter.c14-freud-exit
  2621. p. 430Freud added a sarcastic line to the exit paper: he could most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone.c14-freud-quip
  2622. p. 430Freud spent his last year in London; his three sisters, denied exit visas, died in concentration camps.c14-freud-sisters
  2623. p. 430Within 18 months, five hundred bureaucrats told Himmler that de-Judaizing the Austrian economy was practically complete.c14-ostmark-dejudaized
  2624. p. 430By the end of 1938, 44,000 of 70,000 Jewish-owned apartments in Vienna had been taken by gentiles.c14-vienna-apartments
  2625. p. 430On 20 August 1938 Adolf Eichmann opened Vienna's Central Office for Jewish Emigration, which forced out 110,000 Jews by June 1939.c14-eichmann-office
  2626. p. 430The Evian Conference of 6 to 13 July 1938 gathered 32 nations and warned that none need receive more than existing law allowed.c14-evian-limits
  2627. p. 430Australian delegate Thomas Walter White said Australia had no real racial problem and did not wish to import one.c14-white-australia
  2628. p. 430On 6 December 1938 William Cooper brought an Australian Aborigines' League protest to the German consulate in Melbourne, and the consul refused the delegation.c14-cooper-protest
  2629. p. 431Frederick Charles Blair boasted of controlling Jewish entry to Canada and, asked how many would be accepted after the war, replied that none is too many.c14-blair-quota
  2630. p. 431Chaim Weizmann summed up the mood: the world split between those who wanted to be rid of Jews and those who refused to take them in.c14-weizmann-camps
  2631. p. 431The flight tax, about a quarter of property value, plus ruinous exchange rates, left little to prove an ability to live.c14-flight-tax
  2632. p. 431Relative to the whole population, the share of Jews past 60 was double, so leaving was harder.c14-older-refugees
  2633. p. 431Even so, by the outbreak of war about half the German Jewish population had managed to leave.c14-half-left
  2634. p. 431The Haavara Agreement of 27 August 1933 allowed Jewish assets to move to Palestine in exchange for German exports.c14-haavara
  2635. p. 431About 100 million Reichsmarks were transferred, and some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Palestine from 1933 to 1939.c14-haavara-scale
  2636. p. 431During 1938 both Italy and Hungary copied Germany by passing race statutes against Jews.c14-italy-hungary-laws
  2637. p. 431On 17 August 1938 every Jew was forced to add the name Israel if a man, or Sara if a woman.c14-israel-sara
  2638. p. 431Heinrich Rothmund of the Swiss alien police recommended stamping Jewish passports with the letter J, and the Nazis made it law.c14-passport-j
  2639. p. 431Appeasement led the Western powers, on 1 October 1938, to hand the Sudetenland over to Hitler.c14-sudetenland
  2640. p. 431Germany, on 28 October 1938, dumped some 17,000 Polish Jews in a border strip that belonged to neither side.c14-polish-expulsion
  2641. p. 431On 7 November in Paris, Hershel Grynszpan, son of deportees, shot secretary Ernst vom Rath, who died two days later.c14-grynszpan
  2642. p. 432On the night of 9 to 10 November, Hitler secretly authorized Goebbels's proposal for so-called spontaneous demonstrations.c14-kristallnacht-order
  2643. p. 432Some 7,500 shops were destroyed, over 1,000 synagogues looted, about 300 burned, 91 Jews killed, and about 26,000 sent to camps.c14-kristallnacht-toll
  2644. p. 432Goebbels noted a blood-red glow, burning synagogues, and an order to arrest 20 to 30 thousand Jews.c14-goebbels-diary
  2645. p. 432Hitler ordered police and fire brigades not to interfere except when German life or property was in danger.c14-police-stood-by
  2646. p. 432In Wittlich an SA man climbed the synagogue roof and hurled Torah scrolls like confetti.c14-wittlich-torah
  2647. p. 433Lawyer Max Moses Polke of Breslau was beaten, saw the synagogue burn, and was sent to Buchenwald.c14-polke-buchenwald
  2648. p. 433Polke paid a levy of 20 percent of his property and on 18 December 1938 left Germany with a Palestine certificate, leaving his mother in Breslau.c14-polke-exit
  2649. p. 433Soon after, the Nazis broadcast The Merchant of Venice, casting Shylock as the Jew who had received his due.c14-shylock-broadcast
  2650. p. 433On 12 November Göring announced that insurance paid to Jews would be seized as a one-billion-Reichsmark fine called an atonement penalty.c14-atonement-fine
  2651. p. 433Göring set 1 January 1939 as the date when Jewish commerce had to stop entirely.c14-business-cease
  2652. p. 434About 115,000 Jews left in the wake of the pogrom.c14-post-pogrom-flight
  2653. p. 434, p. 431On 13 May 1939 the St. Louis left Hamburg for Cuba with 900 Jews; the visas were voided, and Cuba, the United States, and Canada refused landing.c14-st-louis
  2654. p. 434Belgium, Holland, Britain, and France took the passengers for a time; those left on the continent were later deported and murdered.c14-st-louis-fate
  2655. p. 434The Madagascar and Nisko schemes, the latter near Radom, were dropped as impractical, though some 70,000 Jews had already been sent to the reservation by January 1940.c14-madagascar-nisko
  2656. p. 434On 6 December 1938 Goring warned that Aryanization profits belonged to the Reich, because only thus could the Führer's rearmament program be accomplished.c14-rearmament-theft
  2657. p. 434On 30 January 1939 Hitler prophesied in the Reichstag that if Jewish financiers plunged nations into another world war, the result would be annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.c14-reichstag-prophecy
  2658. p. 434World War II began on 1 September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland.c14-war-outbreak
  2659. p. 434On 23 August 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with a secret protocol on spheres of influence.c14-molotov-pact
  2660. p. 435After the Soviet invasion on 17 September, Poland fell in three weeks: 1.2 million Jews in the east came under Soviet control and more than two million in the center and west under the Nazis.c14-poland-split
  2661. p. 435Germans froze Jewish bank accounts, deposit boxes, and securities; above 2,000 zlotys, weekly withdrawals were capped at 250.c14-zloty-freeze
  2662. p. 435In Warsaw alone, Jewish real estate amounted to about 50,000 properties, valued at two billion zlotys.c14-warsaw-real-estate
  2663. p. 435An order of 16 December 1939 stripped Polish Jews in the General Government of disability pensions, unemployment insurance, and sickness benefits.c14-pensions-cut
  2664. p. 436Boryslav, captured on 1 July 1941, held 14,000 Jews; the 4 July massacre killed over 800, according to one of 400 survivors.c14-boryslav-pogrom
  2665. p. 436In August 1941 the Nazis imposed 20 million rubles on Boryslav's Jews; paying 18 rubles, the numeric value of chai, was common.c14-chai-ransom
  2666. p. 436Szaje Chaskiel recounted that in Czestochowa in January 1940 the Gestapo hanged ten Jews and shot his father for refusing to take part.c14-czestochowa-hanging
  2667. p. 437Heydrich, on 21 September 1939, ordered Polish Jews forced into ghettos, a process that ran from October 1939 until April 1941.c14-ghetto-order
  2668. p. 437Communities under 500 people were dissolved, and most ghettos were to sit along rail lines, pending a final aim not yet set.c14-rail-ghettos
  2669. p. 437Each ghetto was to have a Council of Elders, the Judenrat, with 24 members drawn from prewar secular and religious elites.c14-judenrat-size
  2670. p. 437Councils were later made to select who would be sent to the gas chambers, a strategy to make Jews complicit in their own destruction.c14-councils-selections
  2671. p. 437Nazi ghettos did not resemble Venice's of 1516: they were locked from outside, in poor districts, called by one inmate a prison without a roof.c14-venice-contrast
  2672. p. 437There were about 1,150 ghettos, differing from one another, yet all marked by terror, crowding, starvation, epidemics, and isolation.c14-ghetto-count
  2673. p. 437On 10 March 1940 Chaim Kaplan wrote that the Polish catastrophe had no parallel and that there were hardly any suicides.c14-kaplan-defiance
  2674. p. 437Early on, the Joint, an American body founded in 1914, sent food into General Government ghettos through Jewish Social Self-Help.c14-joint-aid
  2675. p. 437Nulman traces Kiddush Hayyom (sanctifying the day over wine) to the Men of the Great Assembly; the midrash links 'Remember the Sabbath day' (Exod 20:8) to remembering it over wine.cl-kiddush-great-assembly
  2676. p. 438In Warsaw, Emanuel Ringelblum led ZETOS, which ran kitchens, house committees, and aid, in opposition to the Judenrat.c14-ringelblum-zetos
  2677. p. 438In 1940 there were 788 house committees serving 7,500 people; by 1942 the number reached 1,108.c14-house-committees
  2678. p. 438In Warsaw at least 75 percent of 100,000 Jewish children under 15 required welfare aid.c14-warsaw-children
  2679. p. 438Aid from the Joint stopped after Germany's December 1941 declaration of war against the United States.c14-joint-ended
  2680. p. 438The Warsaw ghetto peaked at about 450,000 people, against a prewar Jewish population of 337,000.c14-warsaw-peak
  2681. p. 438Second in size was Lodz, holding about 200,000 Jews; third was Lvov, holding about 120,000.c14-lodz-lvov-size
  2682. p. 438Running water reached only 725 of the 31,271 flats inside the Lodz ghetto.c14-lodz-water
  2683. p. 439Late in 1940, typhus inside the Warsaw ghetto struck 43,239 people.c14-typhus-toll
  2684. p. 439Dawid Sierakowiak died on 8 August 1943 at 18 of so-called ghetto disease: tuberculosis, starvation, and exhaustion.c14-sierakowiak
  2685. p. 439In January 1941 the official daily ration in Warsaw was 220 calories; by August it was 177.c14-warsaw-calories
  2686. p. 439Starvation in the Warsaw ghetto killed 818 people in January 1941 and 5,560 in August.c14-hunger-deaths
  2687. p. 439Smuggling, often carried out by children, kept still more people from dying, though Nazis shot those caught on the spot.c14-smuggling-children
  2688. p. 439Estimates for the Warsaw ghetto put deaths from hunger and disease, by 1942, at 80,000 or more.c14-eighty-thousand
  2689. p. 439Productionists wanted ghettos exploited for the war; attritionists wanted only to destroy the inhabitants, and the latter prevailed.c14-productionists
  2690. p. 440Marion Kaplan notes that until 1937 many Jewish men tried to keep their businesses, while women recognized sooner how dire things were.c14-kaplan-women
  2691. p. 441Rabbi Joachim Prinz of Berlin said the Jew's plight was to be neighborless.c14-neighborless
  2692. p. 441In Poland, 30 percent of Jewish women worked for a living, in a Jewry poorer and more traditional than the German one.c14-polish-women-work
  2693. p. 441Women served as smugglers, couriers between ghettos, and fighters in Warsaw and in partisan units.c14-women-couriers
  2694. p. 442From April to June 1940 the Nazis conquered Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Holland, whose Jewish populations ranged from 2,000 to 350,000.c14-western-populations
  2695. p. 442Antisemitic laws were also adopted in Slovakia, Vichy France, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Croatia.c14-ally-populations
  2696. p. 442With the annexations, the Soviet Jewish population went from three million in 1939 to five million by 1940.c14-soviet-five-million
  2697. p. 443Deportation into the Soviet interior accidentally spared some 250,000 Jews from certain Nazi murder.c14-siberia-reprieve
  2698. p. 443On 22 June 1941 Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa with more than three million German soldiers and 650,000 allied troops, along a front of over 2,200 kilometers.c14-barbarossa
  2699. p. 443Hitler called the war on Stalin's Russia a war of annihilation, the race war antisemites had predicted since the nineteenth century.c14-annihilation-war
  2700. p. 443Jewish service in the Red Army reached as many as 500,000, of whom about 180,000 were killed.c14-red-army-jews
  2701. p. 443In August 1941 Ilya Ehrenburg said the Nazis reminded him that his mother's name was Hannah and that he was a Jew.c14-ehrenburg
  2702. p. 443The decision to murder Soviet Jewry appears to date from invasion planning and, in the last quarter of 1941, to have been extended to European Jewry; no signed document has been found.c14-oral-order
  2703. p. 443Living space, in this policy, required Slavic peoples to be killed, deported, or enslaved, Jews to be eliminated, and the land filled by at least half a million settlers of German ancestry.c14-lebensraum
  2704. p. 443From 1939 to 1941 over 300,000 Polish Jews fled into the Soviet Union; with the invasion, as many as one million Soviet Jews fled east, leaving about two million behind.c14-flight-east
  2705. p. 443Four mobile squads, Einsatzgruppen A, B, C, and D, followed the troops, each made up of 600 to 1,000 men.c14-einsatz-structure
  2706. p. 444Heydrich chose commanders from the educated elite. Doctorates were held by three of the first four.c14-educated-killers
  2707. p. 444No German was forced to take part in the shootings; hardly any case records punishment for seeking to be excused.c14-no-one-forced
  2708. p. 444In the first five months the squads killed approximately 100,000 Jews per month.c14-monthly-toll
  2709. p. 444In two two-day periods in November and December 1941, Einsatzgruppe A and the Latvian SS shot 25,000 Jews from Riga at Rumbula.c14-rumbula
  2710. p. 444Over 29 and 30 September 1941, unit C shot 33,371 Kiev Jews at the ravine called Babi Yar.c14-babi-yar
  2711. p. 444On 22 October 1941, after a blast at Romanian headquarters in Odessa, Romanian squads shot 19,000 Jews at the port and a further 20,000 at Dalnic.c14-odessa-retaliation
  2712. p. 444Raul Hilberg judged Romania second only to Germany in the scale of Jewish massacres.c14-hilberg-romania
  2713. p. 444Local militias helped the four killing squads reach a toll of about 1.4 million Jews by spring 1943.c14-einsatz-total
  2714. p. 444Rivka Yoselevska testified at Eichmann's 1961 trial that on 15 August 1942 she survived a shooting in which her daughter Merkele was killed.c14-yoselevska
  2715. p. 445Engineer Hermann Graebe, compared in the chapter with Oskar Schindler, used his job to protect Jews and alone among Germans testified for the prosecution at Nuremberg.c14-graebe
  2716. p. 446From 1942, Sonderkommando 1005 units under Paul Blobel exhumed and burned corpses to hide the Einsatzgruppen's crimes.c14-blobel-1005
  2717. p. 446The Wannsee Conference, postponed from 9 December 1941, took place on 20 January 1942 in a Berlin suburb.c14-wannsee-date
  2718. p. 446Heydrich said methods used so far were insufficient for the 11 million Jews across Europe slated for annihilation.c14-eleven-million
  2719. p. 446He announced that, in practical execution, Europe would be combed from west to east.c14-west-to-east
  2720. p. 446Poland held the only six killing centers: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek at Lublin, and Auschwitz.c14-six-camps
  2721. p. 447By November 1944 Auschwitz had killed more than one million Jews with gas, plus large numbers of Roma, Poles, and Soviet war prisoners, using the cyanide insecticide Zyklon B.c14-zyklon
  2722. p. 447Jews were first gassed at Chelmno on 8 December 1941, inside vans that piped exhaust into the passenger space.c14-chelmno-first
  2723. p. 447Aktion Reinhard aimed to kill the two million Polish Jews of the General Government, while exploiting some labor and seizing property.c14-aktion-reinhard
  2724. p. 447About a hundred operators came from the T-4 program, which from 1939 to 1941 killed some 100,000 sick and disabled people in Germany and Austria.c14-t4-link
  2725. p. 447About 1.7 million Jews were gassed at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka; a mere 120 people survived the three camps.c14-reinhard-toll
  2726. p. 447By Globocnik's own figures, Aktion Reinhard confiscated property worth more than 178 million Reichsmarks.c14-reinhard-loot
  2727. p. 447Nulman states Kol Nidre's date and author are hard to pin down, yet it most likely already existed under the Geonim (800s-900s); the Aramaic declaration opens Yom Kippur Arvit and, across a long history, sparked unjustified accusations against Jews.cl-kol-nidre-geonic-uncertain-author
  2728. p. 448Aktion Erntefest on 3 and 4 November 1943 murdered the last Jews of the General Government: as many as 10,000 at Trawniki, 18,000 at Majdanek, and 15,000 at Poniatowa.c14-harvest-festival
  2729. p. 448Between 22 July and 21 September 1942, about 300,000 people from the Warsaw ghetto were gassed at Treblinka, in a 52-day period.c14-warsaw-treblinka
  2730. p. 448Adam Czerniakow refused to sign the resettlement order, with a minimum quota of 6,000 a day, and killed himself the next day.c14-czerniakow-suicide
  2731. p. 448On 4 September 1942 Chaim Rumkowski asked the Lodz ghetto to hand over children and the elderly, saying limbs must be cut off to save the body.c14-rumkowski-speech
  2732. p. 449Roughly 2.75 million of the dead, out of about six million, were killed in Poland's six death centers.c14-map-camp-share
  2733. p. 449About 875,000 of Auschwitz's one million Jewish victims were sent to death immediately on arrival.c14-auschwitz-immediate
  2734. p. 449Treblinka lay 80 kilometers northeast of Warsaw. A staff of 25 to 35 SS men plus 90 to 150 auxiliary guards killed as many as 925,000 Jews there.c14-treblinka-toll
  2735. p. 449Lodz was the last ghetto liquidated; in August 1944, 70,000 Jews still remained, and the Red Army halted 75 miles from the city.c14-lodz-last
  2736. p. 450From 1942 to 1944, 107,000 Dutch Jews were gassed at Auschwitz and Sobibor, about 75 percent of Holland's prewar Jewish population.c14-dutch-deportations
  2737. p. 450France had sent 42,500 Jews east by late 1942. By 1944 the murdered exceeded 77,000, and over 14 percent of those deported were younger than 18.c14-french-toll
  2738. p. 450In Belgium more than 25,000 Jews went into hiding with help from the resistance; even so, nearly 25,000 were sent to Auschwitz.c14-belgium-hiding
  2739. p. 450At Auschwitz, Josef Mengele awaited the transports and directed people left or right, instant death or a temporary reprieve.c14-mengele-selection
  2740. p. 450About 60 percent of victims were murdered in the six camps, by assembly-line methods that Omer Bartov calls industrial murder.c14-industrial-murder
  2741. p. 451During summer 1944 the daily toll of Hungarian Jews gassed and burned at Auschwitz stood near 7,000.c14-hungarian-pace
  2742. p. 451As winter 1944 turned into 1945, camps were emptied on foot and by rail. About 250,000 prisoners, Jewish and not, died along those marches.c14-death-marches
  2743. p. 451Soviet troops reached Auschwitz on 27 January 1945 and freed the 7,000 inmates still there.c14-auschwitz-liberated
  2744. p. 451Transports called Kindertransport carried some 10,000 children out of the Reich to England.c14-kindertransport
  2745. p. 451Ringelblum organized the secret operation Oyneg Shabbes to gather materials on the martyrdom of Poland's Jews.c14-oyneg-shabbes
  2746. p. 451Thousands of documents went underground in three milk cans plus ten metal boxes. Two cans surfaced in 1946; the boxes, in 1950.c14-milk-cans
  2747. p. 451Ringelblum reported 600 clandestine synagogues, although worship was banned in most places, including Warsaw.c14-secret-synagogues
  2748. p. 452Fighting broke out in up to 100 ghettos and in Sobibor, Treblinka, and Birkenau, yet most people could not take that path.c14-armed-limits
  2749. p. 452Jewish fighters in eastern forests, in their own bands or with Soviet partisans, numbered as many as 30,000.c14-partisan-numbers
  2750. p. 452On 19 April 1943, the eve of Passover, Warsaw ghetto fighters lay in wait for Germans coming to liquidate it.c14-uprising-date
  2751. p. 452About 1,000 young people of the Jewish Fighting Organization, under Mordechai Anielewicz, fought for three weeks with pistols and Molotov cocktails.c14-anielewicz-command
  2752. p. 452On 16 May 1943 the SS commander Jürgen Stroop declared Warsaw liquidated and blew up the Great Synagogue.c14-stroop-report
  2753. p. 452Jewish fighters were not pursuing a plan for battlefield victory. Their aim was revenge and self-respect.c14-jewish-rationale
  2754. p. 453By 1 January 1942, shootings had already killed more than half of Vilna's Jews: over 30,000 out of 57,000. Abba Kovner told the youth that rescue was an illusion and only rebellion remained.c14-kovner-call
  2755. p. 453Zionist youth and Communists formed the United Partisans Organization (FPO), led by Itsik Wittenberg and Abba Kovner.c14-upo-formed
  2756. p. 453In the Rudnicki forest the fighters sang their Yiddish anthem Never Say, Zog nit keyn mol.c14-never-say
  2757. p. 453Jacob Gens, head of the Vilna Judenrat, was shot by the Gestapo on 14 September 1943, during the ghetto's final liquidation.c14-gens-shot
  2758. p. 454Germans opened Terezin on 24 November 1941 and called it a model ghetto. It was a camp, freed on 8 May 1945.c14-terezin-founded
  2759. p. 454In June 1944, before an International Red Cross visit, the ghetto was beautified and many Jews were shipped to Auschwitz to hide overcrowding.c14-red-cross-hoax
  2760. p. 454Prisoner-director Kurt Gerron was coerced into filming the supposedly excellent conditions; afterward he and most of the cast were murdered at Auschwitz.c14-gerron-film
  2761. p. 454Friedl Dicker-Brandeis taught art to children and hid 4,500 drawings in two suitcases before deportation in September 1944.c14-dicker-drawings
  2762. p. 454About 140,000 Jews were sent to Theresienstadt; some 33,000 died there and approximately 90,000 were deported and murdered elsewhere.c14-terezin-toll
  2763. p. 455On 8 August 1942 Gerhard Riegner of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva told London and Washington of a plan to exterminate all Jews under German control.c14-riegner-cable
  2764. p. 455Jan Karski entered the Warsaw ghetto and on 1 December 1942 informed the Polish government in exile in London.c14-karski
  2765. p. 455In April 1944 Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escaped Auschwitz and dictated a 32-page account of preparations to destroy Hungarian Jewry.c14-vrba-wetzler
  2766. p. 455Between 15 May and 7 July 1944, 437,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered at Auschwitz, nearly all gassed on arrival.c14-hungarian-toll
  2767. p. 455Pope Pius XII, hostile to Jews, refused any unambiguous condemnation of the murder of European Jewry.c14-pius-silence
  2768. p. 455Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat in Budapest, gave Swedish passports to 30,000 Jews and set up safe houses.c14-wallenberg
  2769. p. 456Anne Frank, born in Frankfurt on 12 June 1929, hid with her family in Amsterdam from July 1942 until arrest on 4 August 1944.c14-anne-hiding
  2770. p. 456Anne and her sister Margot died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, weeks before the British liberation on 15 April.c14-anne-death
  2771. p. 456Anne Frank belonged to the group of over one million Jewish children killed by Nazis and collaborators.c14-million-children
  2772. p. 456From 31 July to 28 August 1940, Chiune Sugihara and his wife handwrote over 6,000 transit visas, defying Tokyo's refusal.c14-sugihara-visas
  2773. p. 456Pastors Andre and Daniel Trocme, in Huguenot Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, sheltered 5,000 Jews.c14-lechambon
  2774. p. 457The Netherlands counted 140,000 Jews in 1939. Of them, 107,000 were murdered, while hiding by neighbors kept at least 25,000 survivors alive.c14-dutch-toll-rescue
  2775. p. 457When the Germans began the roundup on the night of 1 October 1943, they found few Jews: resistance, police, churches, and the royal family had hidden them; about 7,200 Jews and 700 non-Jewish relatives reached Sweden.c14-denmark-rescue
  2776. p. 457June 1944 brought a War Department refusal: camp bombing was declared impossible, without any study of whether it could be tried.c14-mccloy-refusal
  2777. p. 457Between 20 August and 13 September 1944 the Americans bombed factories at and around Auschwitz-Birkenau, while requests to strike the rail lines were dismissed.c14-factories-bombed
  2778. p. 457After receiving the Treasury report on 17 January 1944, Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board, which saved 200,000 Jews despite little funding and little presidential interest.c14-war-refugee-board
  2779. p. 457What stopped the slaughter was Allied victory, above all Red Army conquests; for six million Jews, victory came too late.c14-victory-too-late
  2780. p. 459Most survivors answered the Shoah by marrying, raising children, and earning a living.c15-survivors-rebuild
  2781. p. 459By about 1950, local politics, rather than Nazi occupation, had ended most Middle Eastern Jewish communities.c15-arab-lands-politics
  2782. p. 459During the Farhud of June 1 and 2, 1941, demobilized soldiers joined by tribesmen and ordinary Baghdadis killed 180 Jews.c15-farhud
  2783. p. 459A November 1945 pogrom in Libya killed 140 Jews and destroyed five synagogues.c15-libya-1945
  2784. p. 459June 1948 riots in Libya killed 12 Jews and wrecked 280 Jewish houses.c15-libya-1948
  2785. p. 459Further riots before Libyan independence in 1951 drove some 30,000 Jews to leave.c15-libya-departure
  2786. p. 459Aleppo's 1947 pogrom sent 7,000 of the city's 10,000 Jews into flight.c15-aleppo-1947
  2787. p. 459In 1949 Syria froze Jewish bank accounts, seized property, and dismissed nearly all Jewish civil servants.c15-syria-freeze
  2788. p. 459Roughly 800,000 Jews from Arab countries were uprooted and stripped of property once Israel existed.c15-arab-displaced
  2789. p. 459Once fighting ended, the three biggest Jewish populations were those of the Soviet Union, of Israel, and of the United States.c15-three-centers
  2790. p. 460Soviet collapse after 1990 set off another mass departure and reshaped Jewish communities worldwide.c15-post-1990-exodus
  2791. p. 460Of more than 900 youths freed at Buchenwald, 60 reached Australia and formed Melbourne's Buchenwald Boys.c15-buchenwald-boys
  2792. p. 460Each liberation anniversary, the Buchenwald Boys mark survival with the Buchenwald Ball.c15-buchenwald-ball
  2793. p. 460Cold War rivalry, decolonization, Middle Eastern wars, communism's fall, and global capitalism again remade Jewry.c15-postwar-forces
  2794. p. 460From 1945 to 1952, camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy held about 250,000 Jews, four fifths of them Polish.c15-dp-scale
  2795. p. 460The final displaced-persons camp shut in 1957.c15-last-dp-camp
  2796. p. 460By 1946, 185,000 displaced Jews were in Germany, living, to their horror, among the murderers.c15-among-murderers
  2797. p. 460Between 1945 and 1948, Brihah smuggled over 100,000 Jews toward Palestine despite Britain's blockade.c15-brihah
  2798. p. 460Jewish births in the camps reached 14.1 per thousand in 1946, against 5 per thousand among Bavarian non-Jews in 1945.c15-dp-births
  2799. p. 460A 1946 Munich Talmud showed the camps ringed by wire and Jews walking toward the Land of Israel.c15-munich-talmud
  2800. p. 460In 1946 the American zone contained four yeshivas, 18 rabbis, 16 slaughterers, and four very busy circumcisers.c15-dp-religion
  2801. p. 460Camp life produced over 170 publications and 169 sports clubs, with soccer and boxing especially popular.c15-dp-culture
  2802. p. 460The grand mufti, openly hostile to Jews, met Hitler on November 30, 1941, and spent the war years in Berlin.c15-mufti-hitler
  2803. p. 461In July 1947 the Exodus sailed from France carrying over 4,500 survivors.c15-exodus-sailing
  2804. p. 461Passengers refused to land in France, began a hunger strike, and were taken on to displaced-persons camps in Hamburg.c15-exodus-hamburg
  2805. p. 461The Exodus episode, the chapter says, garnered worldwide sympathy for Holocaust survivors seeking to reach Palestine.c15-exodus-sympathy
  2806. p. 461The Holocaust and Britain's obstruction, which kept Jewish refugees from reaching Palestine, radicalized certain elements in the Yishuv.c15-yishuv-radicalized
  2807. p. 461From summer 1942 an Einsatzgruppen unit in Athens stood ready to enter Palestine if Rommel won.c15-athens-unit
  2808. p. 461In May 1942, 600 Zionists at the Biltmore Hotel rejected the White Paper and partition and demanded a Jewish commonwealth over all of Palestine.c15-biltmore
  2809. p. 461Menachem Begin's Irgun, roughly two thousand fighters, demanded an uprising against British rule in Palestine.c15-irgun-begin
  2810. p. 461Lehi, under Yitzhak Shamir, assassinated Lord Moyne in 1944 and Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948.c15-lehi-assassinations
  2811. p. 461Britain's Black Sabbath roundup seized three thousand Jews, tortured a large number, and sent some into African exile.c15-black-sabbath
  2812. p. 461In July 1946 the Irgun destroyed the King David Hotel, where Britain kept its military and civil headquarters. Ninety-one people died.c15-king-david
  2813. p. 461In February 1947 Britain handed jurisdiction over Palestine to the United Nations.c15-un-referral
  2814. p. 461On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly approved partition by 33 votes to 13. Britain abstained.c15-partition-vote
  2815. p. 461The Soviet Union, the United States, and Latin American states voted yes. Moscow saw the Yishuv as a possible socialist ally.c15-vote-coalition
  2816. p. 462The civil war's first weeks killed more than 80 Jews and 90 Arabs.c15-civil-war-toll
  2817. p. 462Rioters in Aleppo burned three hundred Jewish houses and eleven synagogues, and two thousand Jews left. In Aden, seventy-six Jews were killed.c15-aleppo-aden-1947
  2818. p. 462Plan D drove guerrillas from villages used as attack bases; in many cases the Jewish authorities sanctioned expelling villagers. On the available evidence, the book judges that conquest, not a systematic emptying, was the aim.c15-plan-d
  2819. p. 462The conquest of Lydda and Ramle forced 100,000 Arabs from their homes.c15-lydda-ramle
  2820. p. 462On April 9, 1948, the Irgun killed about 120 Arabs at Deir Yassin, many of them unarmed civilians.c15-deir-yassin
  2821. p. 462At 4 p.m. on May 14, 1948, hours after the British flag came down, Ben-Gurion read the declaration at the Tel Aviv Museum.c15-declaration-hour
  2822. p. 462That night the United States recognized the new state. Three days later the Soviet Union did the same.c15-recognition
  2823. p. 462Ben-Gurion became prime minister and Chaim Weizmann the first president, after Albert Einstein declined the honor.c15-weizmann-einstein
  2824. p. 462The following day, forces of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq attacked, joined by volunteers from Saudi Arabia and from Yemen.c15-invasion-names
  2825. p. 462Israel called the conflict the War of Independence. Palestinians later named it the Nakba, catastrophe.c15-nakba-name
  2826. p. 462The invading forces were about twenty-five thousand. The Yishuv put some thirty-five thousand Haganah soldiers in the field, plus three thousand from the Stern group and the Irgun.c15-opening-forces
  2827. p. 462About 3,500 Jewish and non-Jewish volunteers, veterans of the Second World War, arrived from abroad and weighed on the military result.c15-machal
  2828. p. 462Czechoslovakia breached the embargo in Resolution 50 and supplied critical hardware, including fighter planes.c15-czech-arms
  2829. p. 462On May 26, 1948, Ben-Gurion created the Israel Defense Forces, folding in the Haganah, the Irgun, and the Stern group.c15-idf-founded
  2830. p. 462Foreign volunteers, especially Americans, were so numerous in the air arm that English, not Hebrew, was the working language.c15-air-language
  2831. p. 463By spring 1949 Israel had 115,000 troops, against about 60,000 in the Arab forces.c15-spring-1949-troops
  2832. p. 463A United Nations truce in June 1948 let Israel regroup and resupply its army.c15-june-truce
  2833. p. 463Israel took the western Galilee and the Negev, ending 20 percent larger than the partition plan allowed. No Palestinian state emerged.c15-territory-gain
  2834. p. 463The United Nations split Jerusalem between Israel and Jordan, and Jordan held the Western Wall.c15-jerusalem-wall
  2835. p. 463The war killed 6,373 Jews, about 1 percent of the Jewish population, and wounded another 15,000.c15-war-dead
  2836. p. 463Between 600,000 and 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled and became refugees.c15-palestinian-refugees
  2837. p. 463Fifty years separated Ben-Gurion's proclamation from Herzl's 1897 Basel diary line: "Today I created the Jewish state!"c15-herzl-fifty
  2838. p. 463Later treaties with Egypt and Jordan did not produce warm relations.c15-cold-peace
  2839. p. 463The Canaanites, about two dozen members, contrasted the sabra with the Diaspora Jew and dreamed of a Land of Kedem predating Judaism and Islam.c15-canaanites
  2840. p. 463Praise of the new Hebrew man and woman appealed to intellectuals, and the Israeli/Diaspora divide shaped early culture.c15-negation-diaspora
  2841. p. 464Some officials said Israel could not take every Jew. Finance minister Eliezer Kaplan said: we need workers and fighters.c15-kaplan-workers
  2842. p. 464On July 5, 1950, the Law of Return gave every Jew the right to immigrate. Some 700,000 arrived over the next four years.c15-law-of-return
  2843. p. 464About 350,000 survivors had reached Israel by 1949. Political and cultural integration proved very hard.c15-survivors-1949
  2844. p. 464Michael Goldman survived 80 lashes and called his family's disbelief the eighty-first blow. The story became a film.c15-eighty-first
  2845. p. 464Ben-Gurion called survivors human dust. A Mapai leader demanded they learn love of homeland, a work ethic, and morals.c15-human-dust
  2846. p. 464Survivors' presence recalled that the Yishuv had been unable to rescue large numbers or stop the Holocaust.c15-yishuv-guilt
  2847. p. 464In September 1949 Israel had 957,000 Jews. One in three was a survivor.c15-one-in-three
  2848. p. 464Yosef Rosensaft, a displaced-persons leader at Bergen-Belsen, accused Zionists of dancing the hora while others burned in the crematoria.c15-hora-rebuke
  2849. p. 464In winter 1949, in Haifa, Rita Waxman found her son Haim, separated from her in Poland when he was 14.c15-waxman-reunion
  2850. p. 464Between 1948 and 1951, Jews leaving Arab lands numbered about two hundred sixty thousand and accounted for roughly 56 percent of new arrivals.c15-mizrahi-share
  2851. p. 464Operation Magic Carpet brought 49,000 Yemenite Jews on 450 flights: 35,000 by December 1949 and 14,000 more afterward.c15-magic-carpet
  2852. p. 465Yitzhak Greenbaum objected to bringing Yemenites, saying 70 percent of them were sick.c15-greenbaum
  2853. p. 465Ben-Gurion wanted the Yemenite immigrant to forget his origin, as he claimed to have forgotten that he was Polish.c15-forget-polish
  2854. p. 465Operation Ezra and Nehemia, in 1950 and 1951, airlifted 100,000 Jews from Iraq.c15-ezra-nehemia
  2855. p. 465Iraq blocked the property of Jews who were leaving. Israel linked that freeze to the compensation sought for Palestinian refugees and treated the two demands as cancelling each other.c15-iraqi-assets
  2856. p. 465In November 1950 Ben-Gurion wrote Yigael Yadin that Yemenites were 2,000 years behind in basic concepts of civilization, while also calling them more easily absorbed and versed in Hebrew.c15-yadin-letter
  2857. p. 465The chapter map lists about 120,000 Jewish immigrants in 1948 and 240,000 in 1949.c15-map-1948-peak
  2858. p. 466Discontent among Jews from the Middle East, already sharp by the 1970s, produced a protest movement called the Black Panthers, named for the American group.c15-black-panthers-name
  2859. p. 466In 1949, housing and jobs for 230,000 immigrants were estimated at up to 700 million dollars. The government printed money and rationed food.c15-austerity-cost
  2860. p. 466The poet Uri Zvi Greenberg wanted the austerity program to become Israel's lifelong constitution.c15-greenberg-austerity
  2861. p. 466Ben-Gurion said that without austerity it would be nearly impossible to manage defense, immigrant absorption, and an acceptable living standard.c15-three-tasks
  2862. p. 466Despite splits between secular and religious, left and right, Ashkenazim and others, the chapter concludes that a nation was forged.c15-nation-forged
  2863. p. 466The election of January 25, 1949, chose 120 members by universal suffrage from age 18. Ben-Gurion's Labor won and held power until 1977.c15-first-election
  2864. p. 466Proportional representation makes small parties indispensable and, the book argues, leaves the system highly unstable.c15-proportional-instability
  2865. p. 467Hebrew as the national language and compulsory military service formed a shared culture amid near-constant war.c15-hebrew-and-army
  2866. p. 467In summer 1949 Israel signed armistices with Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. That August, Cairo barred Israeli ships from the Suez Canal.c15-armistices-1949
  2867. p. 467In 1954 Muhammad Salah al-Din, then Egypt's foreign minister, said that only Israel's final obliteration would satisfy the Arab people.c15-obliteration-boast
  2868. p. 467In October 1956, with French and British support, Israel captured Sinai. The United States, previously unaware of the scheme, rebuked London and Paris.c15-sinai-1956
  2869. p. 467Washington forced the return of Sinai. A United Nations force secured Israeli access through the Straits of Tiran.c15-tiran-un
  2870. p. 468Adolf Eichmann's Jerusalem trial ran from April 11 to August 16, 1961.c15-eichmann-dates
  2871. p. 468Eichmann lived in Argentina as Ricardo Klement until the Mossad abducted him in 1960.c15-eichmann-abduction
  2872. p. 468He was convicted on all 15 charges and hanged on the night of May 31 to June 1, 1962. His ashes were scattered at sea.c15-eichmann-verdict
  2873. p. 468Survivor testimony, much of it heard for the first time, made empathy for the victims more central to Israeli culture.c15-eichmann-empathy
  2874. p. 468In May 1967 Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran and ordered the United Nations force out of Sinai.c15-tiran-1967
  2875. p. 468Fear of hundreds of thousands of deaths led rabbis to consecrate public parks for mass graves.c15-mass-grave-fear
  2876. p. 468On June 5 the Israeli air force bombed airfields in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq.c15-june-5-strike
  2877. p. 468Israel entered Gaza and Sinai, took the Golan, occupied the West Bank, and captured East Jerusalem, growing by about 28,000 square miles.c15-six-day-gains
  2878. p. 468The war killed 776 Israeli soldiers and caused about 5,200 casualties. Soldiers at the Western Wall electrified world Jewry.c15-six-day-losses
  2879. p. 468Moshe Dayan entered the Old City and proclaimed that Israel had returned to what was holy in the land and would not part from it again.c15-dayan-return
  2880. p. 468Amos Oz warned in 1967 that even an unavoidable occupation is a corrupting occupation.c15-oz-warning
  2881. p. 468Yeshayahu Leibowitz urged Israel not to keep the territories and said a sixth-day victory became a loss on the following day.c15-leibowitz-seventh
  2882. p. 468At Khartoum in late August 1967, eight Arab states declared: no peace, no negotiation, and no recognition of Israel.c15-khartoum
  2883. p. 468The War of Attrition, from 1968 to 1970, was inconclusive. Soviet pilots flew sorties in Egyptian planes. A truce came in 1970.c15-attrition
  2884. p. 469In 1972 Black September seized Israeli athletes at the Munich Games. Eleven were killed after a failed rescue.c15-munich-athletes
  2885. p. 469At 2 p.m. on October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked on Yom Kippur. With many Israelis fasting and in synagogue, the country was caught by surprise.c15-yom-kippur-surprise
  2886. p. 469Israel prevailed, with losses of 2,688 killed, 7,200 injured, and 294 taken prisoner. The myth of military invincibility broke.c15-yom-kippur-losses
  2887. p. 469Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan were forced to resign over the Yom Kippur failure.c15-meir-resigns
  2888. p. 469OPEC tripled the price of oil and pressed Third World countries to break relations with Israel.c15-opec-oil
  2889. p. 469In 1974 Yasser Arafat addressed the General Assembly with an olive branch and a gun in his holster.c15-arafat-un
  2890. p. 469In November 1975 the General Assembly condemned Zionism as a form of racism, by 75 votes to 35, with 32 abstentions.c15-zionism-racism
  2891. p. 469In 1977 Menachem Begin and Likud won with support from Jews of Arab lands and voters alienated by Labor secularism. It was Labor's first defeat since 1948.c15-begin-1977
  2892. p. 469Sadat visited Israel in November 1977. The treaty was negotiated at Camp David in 1978, with Jimmy Carter, and signed in 1979.c15-camp-david-1979
  2893. p. 469Egyptian Islamic Jihad assassinated Sadat on October 6, 1981. Hosni Mubarak kept the treaty without changing popular sentiment.c15-sadat-killed
  2894. p. 469Under Begin, Israel formally annexed the Golan Heights, even after the treaty with Egypt.c15-golan-annex
  2895. p. 469In October 1980 Jacob Talmon wrote Begin that ruling a hostile foreign population was like trying to revive feudalism.c15-talmon-letter
  2896. p. 470In 1982 Operation Peace for Galilee sent Israeli troops into Lebanon to drive out the PLO. About 600 Israelis died.c15-lebanon-1982
  2897. p. 470Ariel Sharon went past the 25-mile limit, reached the outskirts of Beirut, and cut food, electricity, and water.c15-sharon-beirut
  2898. p. 470Abba Eban called those six weeks "a dark page in the moral history of the Jewish people."c15-eban-dark-page
  2899. p. 470Between September 16 and 18, 1982, militias from Lebanon killed as many as 2,300 civilians inside the Sabra and Shatila camps.c15-sabra-shatila
  2900. p. 470The Kahan Commission found that the Israeli army did not join the murders but could and should have stopped them, and that Sharon bore personal responsibility.c15-kahan
  2901. p. 470Under Shamir, inflation hit 400 percent a year, with panic on the Tel Aviv exchange and a run on the banks.c15-inflation-400
  2902. p. 470Shimon Peres ended the occupation of southern Lebanon in 1985, leaving about 200 soldiers in the security zone.c15-peres-1985
  2903. p. 470Hezbollah, backed by Iran, became an implacable enemy of Israel in southern Lebanon.c15-hezbollah
  2904. p. 470In 1987 Palestinians in the occupied territories launched the intifada: store closings, tax strikes, barricades, and stones. Rabin answered with brutal force, to little effect.c15-first-intifada
  2905. p. 470In the 1990 to 1991 Gulf War, Iraq fired Scud missiles at Tel Aviv. American pressure blocked an Israeli retaliation.c15-scud-gulf
  2906. p. 470Yitzhak Shamir had opposed the Egyptian treaty. As prime minister he held onto Lebanon and continued the settlement line of the man he replaced.c15-shamir-hardline
  2907. p. 471On January 25, 1991, the newspaper Davar ran a headline saying that it had happened to Israelis as well.c15-davar-headline
  2908. p. 471For Dina Porat, many in Israel read the Gulf War as a Holocaust analogy: Saddam as Hitler, and Israel barred from striking back.c15-porat-analogy
  2909. p. 471On April 7, 1992, Yom ha-Shoah, Ehud Barak took 18 Israel Defense Forces representatives to Auschwitz and said Israelis had no right to judge Europe's Jews.c15-barak-auschwitz
  2910. p. 471According to Epiphanius and Jerome, the Nazoraeans were Jesus-believing Jews settled at Beroea in Coelesyria, beside a Christian congregation and a strong Jewish one. Epiphanius also links them to Pella and Kokabe/Chochabe, but Kinzig (in Skarsaune's volume) treats those locations as unhistorical attempts to tie them to the Pella exodus and to the Ebionites.cjb-nazoraeans-beroea
  2911. p. 472On September 13, 1993, the Oslo Accord was signed at the White House. Clinton stood by as Arafat and Rabin shook hands.c15-oslo-signing
  2912. p. 472Rabin told the Palestinians, in a loud and clear voice, that there had been enough of blood and tears.c15-enough-blood
  2913. p. 472Yigal Amir, a far-right extremist, shot and killed Yitzhak Rabin in Tel Aviv on November 4, 1995.c15-rabin-killed
  2914. p. 472In July 2000 Clinton brought Ehud Barak and Arafat to Camp David. Each side blamed the other for the failure.c15-camp-david-2000
  2915. p. 472On September 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount with over 1,000 police. The second intifada erupted afterward, without being directly caused by the visit.c15-sharon-mount
  2916. p. 473On March 27, 2002, the Passover massacre at Netanya's Park Hotel killed 30 people and injured 140.c15-passover-massacre
  2917. p. 473Operation Defensive Shield, the largest West Bank operation since 1967, wrecked nearly all of the Palestinian civil administration and besieged Arafat's compound in Ramallah.c15-defensive-shield
  2918. p. 473The chapter records about 3,000 Palestinians, 1,000 Israelis, and 64 foreigners killed in the period it describes after Operation Defensive Shield.c15-intifada-toll
  2919. p. 473In March 2002 a Saudi-sponsored Arab initiative proposed withdrawal to the June 1967 lines in exchange for recognition.c15-saudi-plan
  2920. p. 473A group called the Quartet, made up of Washington, Brussels, the UN, and Moscow, offered the Roadmap for Peace, with a final deal aimed at 2005. The plan stalled.c15-roadmap
  2921. p. 473In June 2002 Sharon's government began a West Bank barrier. Israelis call it a security fence. Palestinians and supporters call it the apartheid wall.c15-barrier-names
  2922. p. 473In December 2003 Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo announced the Geneva Accord, in which Palestinians would give up the right of return in exchange for nearly all of the West Bank.c15-geneva-accord
  2923. p. 474At Annapolis in 2007, George W. Bush brought together Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas, then running Gaza, said nothing settled there would bind it.c15-annapolis
  2924. p. 474Under John Kerry, talks still aimed at a final-status deal and a two-state solution. The book treats that scenario as a distant dream.c15-two-state-dream
  2925. p. 474Hamas and supporters, from militant groups to non-violent international organizations such as BDS, repeat the slogan "from the river to the sea Palestine will be free," a formula that would end Israel as a Jewish state.c15-river-to-sea
  2926. p. 474Strident voices on the Israeli right, as the chapter reports, treat all of historic Palestine as Israel's, and some advocate expelling the Palestinians.c15-right-one-state
  2927. p. 474The chapter calls both one-state solutions, the Palestinian and the Israeli-right versions, a recipe for endless injustice.c15-one-state-recipe
  2928. p. 474The chapter treats the unsettled status of the Palestinians as Israel's hardest moral and political problem.c15-moral-challenge
  2929. p. 475In 2015 Yishai Schlissel, an ultra-Orthodox man, attacked Jerusalem's pride parade. Shira Banki died of her wounds. He had already served a sentence for a similar 2005 attack.c15-schlissel
  2930. p. 475In its first 50 years Israel's population rose from 600,000 to 6 million. Farm work fell from 16 percent of jobs in the mid-1950s to 3 percent in 1995.c15-population-six-million
  2931. p. 475Moshe Smilansky feared Tel Aviv's shopkeeping mentality would lead to hucksterism, assimilation, and apostasy. The book says he was wrong: Tel Aviv became the world's largest and liveliest Jewish city.c15-smilansky
  2932. p. 475Roughly a fifth of people in Israel are of Arab origin. About a quarter of Jewish Israelis call themselves religious.c15-arab-citizens
  2933. p. 475The Idan Raichel Project and the Ethiopian group Kafeh Shahor Hazak sing in Hebrew and Amharic, recovering roots many immigrants had dropped.c15-raichel
  2934. p. 476In the middle of the twentieth century about 900,000 Mizrahim lived in Arab lands, Iran, and Turkey.c15-mizrahi-900k
  2935. p. 476Yehouda Shenhav, an Israeli sociologist of Iraqi origin, calls the analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi Jews unfounded.c15-shenhav
  2936. p. 476At its founding Israel was about 80 percent Ashkenazic. Today the Jewish population is roughly evenly split.c15-ashkenazi-majority
  2937. p. 476Barbara Okun argues that intermarriage in Israel does not necessarily erase ethnic gaps in socioeconomic status.c15-okun
  2938. p. 476Ben-Gurion said Jews from Morocco had no education and that their customs were those of Arabs.c15-morocco-customs
  2939. p. 476In 1949 Arye Gelblum wrote in Haaretz that North African Jews had almost no education and tied their immigration to Begin's Herut.c15-gelblum
  2940. p. 477Many newcomers from Arab lands were sent to tent cities, the ma'abarot, and later to underdeveloped regions.c15-maabarot
  2941. p. 477Yosef Amoyal, a North African cobbler in Jaffa, wrote Ben-Gurion that he seemed a stepson of the Israeli people.c15-amoyal
  2942. p. 477The Wadi Salib protests began after police shot the Moroccan immigrant Ya'akov Elkarif on July 9, 1959.c15-wadi-salib
  2943. p. 477On the Night of the Panthers, May 18, 1971, five to seven thousand protesters filled Zion Square in Jerusalem.c15-night-panthers
  2944. p. 478Data from 2011 indicate that 28.8 percent of second-generation Mizrahim held a college degree, against 49.6 percent of Ashkenazim, figures the book notes are partly contested and hard to calculate.c15-degree-gap
  2945. p. 479Mizrahi demographic weight fed a process called Orientalisation or Mizrahisation, led by a second- and third-generation intellectual elite.c15-mizrahisation
  2946. p. 479After the Second World War, the biggest and most influential Jewish community lived in the United States.c15-us-largest
  2947. p. 480Judge Nathan Perlman asked Meyer Lansky to break up a German-American Bund rally, on condition that nobody be killed.c15-lansky-bund
  2948. p. 480In 1934 Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, in Cleveland, created Superman, an assimilation fantasy in which shy Clark Kent hides a man of steel.c15-superman
  2949. p. 481Rising incomes, a racial reshuffling of city neighborhoods, and scarce housing pulled American Jews toward the suburbs, where the synagogue became the communal center.c15-suburban-move
  2950. p. 481Herbert Gans described suburban synagogues as symbolic Judaism, not a return to traditional observance.c15-symbolic-judaism
  2951. p. 482Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Bernard Malamud examined harshly the passage from immigrant experience to suburban culture.c15-roth-suburb
  2952. p. 482Lenny Bruce, born Leonard Alfred Schneider, refused to censor his act after an obscenity conviction and mocked Jewish assimilation.c15-lenny-bruce
  2953. p. 483Rabbi Mortimer Cohen commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design Beth Sholom synagogue in Elkins Park. Wright's only synagogue opened in 1959 and seats 1,020.c15-beth-sholom
  2954. p. 483By 1957 roughly fifty thousand Philadelphia Jews, a fifth of that community, had relocated to suburbs on the city's north side.c15-philadelphia-suburbs
  2955. p. 485The 1978 miniseries Holocaust and Spielberg's 1993 Schindler's List widened American interest. The museum on the Washington Mall opened in 1993.c15-ushmm
  2956. p. 486The United States intermarriage rate rose from about 9 percent in 1964 to 50 percent in 2004.c15-intermarriage-rate
  2957. p. 486In 1983 the Reform movement counted as Jewish a person with a Jewish education who had either a Jewish mother or a Jewish father.c15-reform-1983
  2958. p. 487American ultra-Orthodox growth was led by Satmar's Joel Teitelbaum, Lubavitch's Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and Bobov's Shlomo Halberstam.c15-hasidic-rebbes
  2959. p. 487Around 2000, Orthodox Jews were 7 to 9 percent of American Jewry. Probably about half of that group, some 350,000 people, were Hasidim.c15-hasidic-numbers
  2960. p. 488In 1968 Meir Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League, with the motto Never Again, to protect poor Jews who remained in inner cities.c15-kahane-jdl
  2961. p. 489M. Jay Rosenberg, a left-wing radical, wrote that on June 5, 1967, his concern for Israel was that of a Jew, not of a leftist.c15-rosenberg-1967
  2962. p. 489Nulman records Lekhah Dodi as a Kabbalat Shabbat hymn composed by the kabbalist Solomon Alkabetz of Safed in 1529 (others say 1571), with the acrostic SHeLoMoH HaLeVI; Isaac Luria and Isaiah Horowitz recommended it, and it was accepted by all Jewish communities.cl-lekha-dodi-alkabetz
  2963. p. 490About 70 percent of American Jews say they support Israel and feel emotionally attached, yet the era of unquestioning support has ended.c15-pew-attachment
  2964. p. 491David Azoulay of Shas said on the radio that he could not call a Reform Jew a Jew once that person stopped following Jewish law.c15-azoulay-reform
  2965. p. 493For about two hundred and fifty years Brazil kept, at the core of society, a group marked by law as New Christian.c9-brazil-new-christian-status
  2966. p. 493Novinsky noted that even in 1971 almost nothing was known about the number and role of New Christians in colonial Brazil.c9-brazil-historiography-gap
  2967. p. 49342 percent of Jews in Israel say continued settlement building helps the country's security. Only 17 percent of American Jews agree.c15-settlement-poll
  2968. p. 493Taglit-Birthright guidelines ask programs to respect participants' integrity and not to attempt to missionize.c15-birthright-guidelines
  2969. p. 494The prewar Soviet Jewish population stood at about 3 million. In 1945 about 1.5 million remained.c15-soviet-1945
  2970. p. 494In 1943 Shlomo Mikhoels and the Yiddish poet Itsik Fefer toured the United States, Canada, and Mexico to back the Soviet war effort.c15-jafc-tour
  2971. p. 495In November 1952 the Prague trial of Rudolf Slansky presented Zionism as a channel of treason. On December 3, 11 of the 13 people executed were Jews.c15-slansky
  2972. p. 495On January 13, 1953, Pravda accused Jewish doctors of a terrorist plot in the service of the Joint.c15-doctors-plot
  2973. p. 496Pravda, a month after Stalin died on March 5, 1953, called the doctors' plot a fabrication.c15-stalin-thaw
  2974. p. 497The 1970 attempt to hijack a plane from Leningrad to Israel, and a trial in which the defendants voiced Zionism, probably helped loosen emigration in 1971 and 1972.c15-leningrad-hijack
  2975. p. 497After the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Act, Moscow hardened and barely let any Jews leave between 1980 and 1986.c15-jackson-vanik
  2976. p. 498In 1968 an antisemitic campaign in Poland led about 20,000 Jews to emigrate, mostly to Israel, by 1970.c15-poland-1968
  2977. p. 498Each summer the Cracow Jewish Festival fills the old Jewish quarter. No similar gathering in Europe is bigger.c15-cracow-festival
  2978. p. 499Between late 1949 and the close of 1989, Romania sold nearly 300,000 Jews to Israel for hard currency, above all under Nicolae Ceausescu.c15-romania-sale
  2979. p. 499Chief rabbi Moses Rosen persuaded the regime that treating Jews well would bring public opinion, trade, and political sympathies.c15-moses-rosen
  2980. p. 500The book describes contemporary East-Central Europe as a setting of virtual Judaism, surrounded by kitsch.c15-virtual-judaism
  2981. p. 500In 1995 Jacques Chirac stated, in an official capacity, that France bore guilt for how Jews were treated under Vichy.c15-chirac-1995
  2982. p. 500With over 500,000 Jews, more than half in Paris, France is home to the world's third-largest Jewish community.c15-france-size
  2983. p. 500In 1962 nearly every Jew in Algeria moved to France. A large share of the 220,000 North Africans who came were already French citizens.c15-algeria-1962
  2984. p. 501Jacques Derrida, born in Algeria in 1930 into a Jewish family, introduced deconstruction. Emmanuel Levinas, born in Lithuania, placed the other at the center of ethics.c15-derrida
  2985. p. 502In July 1948 the World Jewish Congress cautioned Jews against settling again on German soil soaked with blood.c15-wjc-germany
  2986. p. 503Juan Perón, sympathetic to the Nazis, took power in 1946, halted Jewish immigration, and sheltered fugitive Nazis, yet opened relations with Israel in 1949.c15-peron
  2987. p. 504In 2005, 372,000 Jews lived in Canada, the world's fourth-largest community, chiefly in Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg.c15-canada-2005
  2988. p. 504Helen Suzman spent 36 years in Parliament against apartheid. Joe Slovo, an immigrant from Lithuania, led the South African Communist Party and belonged to the African National Congress.c15-suzman-slovo
  2989. p. 505Mount Scopus Memorial College, founded in Melbourne in 1949, had over 3,000 students in the 1980s, spread over several campuses.c15-mount-scopus
  2990. p. 505In 1996 Australia's intermarriage rate was 15 percent, despite the community's largely secular character. About 70 percent of Jewish children attended Jewish schools.c15-australia-marriage
  2991. p. 506Ilan Halimi, a young French Jew whose family came from Morocco, was seized on January 21, 2006, held and tortured for three weeks, then killed by the Gang of Barbarians.c15-halimi
  2992. p. 506On March 19, 2012, Mohammed Merah killed four people, including three children, at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse.c15-toulouse
  2993. p. 507The Community Security Trust recorded 1,309 antisemitic incidents in the United Kingdom in 2016, a 36 percent rise from 2015.c15-cst-2016
  2994. p. 507In April 2016 Ken Livingstone was expelled from the Labour Party after saying Hitler supported Zionism before he went mad.c15-livingstone
  2995. p. 508In October 2015 a rally in Malmo heard calls for death to the Jews, and local politicians present raised no objection.c15-malmo-chants
  2996. p. 508On February 15, 2015, a gunman killed Dan Uzan, who was on security duty outside Copenhagen's main synagogue during a bat mitzvah.c15-uzan
  2997. p. 508In Norway, hundreds of young Muslims formed a ring of peace around Oslo's main synagogue.c15-ring-of-peace
  2998. p. 509Viktor Orban described George Soros's transnational empire, with international heavy artillery and huge sums, while attacking Central European University.c15-orban-soros
  2999. p. 509Nulman defines Mah Tovu as a prayer of five biblical verses (Num 24:5; Pss 5:8, 26:8, 95:6, 69:14) said upon entering the synagogue before the morning service; when these verses entered the daily liturgy is hard to ascertain.cl-mah-tovu-five-verses
  3000. p. 510Antisemites began marking Jewish journalists' names with triple parentheses, an echo from a podcast. Journalists repurposed the mark.c15-echo-mark
  3001. p. 512A survey by Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar of 1,157 Jewish students on 55 campuses found that 54 percent had experienced or witnessed antisemitism from September 2013 to March 2014.c15-kosmin-survey
  3002. p. 513The book distinguishes criticism of Israel's policies from antisemitism and states that not all such criticism expresses hatred.c15-criticism-distinction
  3003. p. 514On June 24, 2017, organizers of the Chicago Dyke March told three marchers to leave because, they said, the Star of David flag made people feel unsafe at an anti-Zionist march.c15-dyke-march
  3004. p. 515Jonathan Sacks warned that political hatred which starts by targeting Jews does not stop with them.c15-sacks-warning
  3005. p. 516The book estimates roughly 14 million Jews in the world, concentrated above all in Israel and the United States.c15-fourteen-million
  3006. p. 516The postscript notes that Taglit-Birthright, with free trips for young adults, is cited as strengthening the American tie to Israel, while others point to distancing.c15-taglit-postscript
  3007. p. 516Nulman identifies Maoz Tzur as a thirteenth-century Hanukkah hymn by an unknown poet named Mordecai (acrostic in the five stanzas); it is not part of the classic Sephardic tradition, though it enters some Siddurim.cl-maoz-tzur-13c-mordecai
  3008. p. 519The book's timeline warns that accurately dating the events of the biblical narrative is notoriously difficult and that not all scholars agree on the historicity of several of them, such as the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan; even dates from other ancient cultures, such as Egypt's, can be calculated in different ways.c1-tl-dating-caution
  3009. p. 519, p. 519The timeline records the life of Sargon I, 'the Great', founder of one of the earliest centralized empires in Mesopotamia (2334 to 2279 BCE), and the promulgation of the law code of the Babylonian king Hammurabi in the nineteenth or eighteenth century BCE.c1-tl-sargon-hammurabi
  3010. p. 519, p. 519, p. 519, p. 519In the timeline's entries on Egypt and Canaan: the expulsion of the Hyksos by native Egyptians (sixteenth century BCE); the appearance in Egypt of the 'Shasu', seminomads from Canaan (1500 to 1100 BCE); Thutmose III's victory at Megiddo, which begins Egyptian control over Canaan (1482 or 1457 BCE); the high point of the Syrian city-state of Ugarit (fourteenth to thirteenth centuries BCE); and the reign of Amenhotep IV, who renames himself Akhenaten (1377 to 1361 or 1350 to 1334 BCE).c1-tl-egypt-canaan-events
  3011. p. 519, p. 519, p. 519Also in the timeline: Merneptah rules in Egypt (1213 to 1203 BCE); the people of Israel appear to live in Canaan by 1207 BCE; the death of the Egyptian king Ramesses III and the end of Egyptian control of Canaan (1156 or 1155 BCE); the alleged period of the Judges (1200 to 1000 BCE).c1-tl-merneptah-ramesses-iii
  3012. p. 519, p. 519The timeline says that around 1000 BCE David rules as king over the Israelites, and that Solomon dies around 930 BCE.c1-tl-david-solomon
  3013. p. 519, p. 519, p. 519The timeline shows Israel and Judah as established kingdoms by the ninth century BCE. Across the ninth and eighth centuries Assyria expands from Mesopotamia through Syria and Canaan; Ahab fights it in 853 BCE; Assyria destroys the Northern Kingdom in 722 to 720 BCE and conquers most of Judah in 701 BCE.c1-tl-kingdoms-assyria
  3014. p. 519, p. 519The timeline records that the Babylonians capture Jerusalem in 598 or 597 BCE and that the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II destroys the First Temple in 587 or 586 BCE.c1-tl-babylonian-conquests
  3015. p. 519Antiochus IV ruled the Seleucid kingdom from 175 to 164 BCE.c3-antiochus-iv-reign
  3016. p. 520According to the book's timeline, in 414 Christian mobs drove the Jews out of Alexandria.c5-alexandria-414
  3017. p. 521, p. 521The book's timeline records that the Umayyads took Spain in 711 and that in 732 Charles Martel held the Muslim armies south of the Pyrenees that at the Battle of Tours.c6-tl-spain-711
  3018. p. 521In 756 Abd al-Rahman I, the Umayyad heir who had fled the Abbasids, established a princedom in Spain and ruled until 788.c6-tl-abd-rahman-756
  3019. p. 521, p. 521The timeline records that Sherira presided over the Pumbedita academy as Gaon from 968 to 998 and that Hai presided over it from 998 to 1038.c6-tl-gaonim-dates
  3020. p. 521According to the timeline, Benjamin of Tudela traveled from Spain to the Middle East between 1165 and 1173.c6-tl-benjamin-journey
  3021. p. 521, p. 521Saladin displaced the Fatimids from Egypt in 1171, and the Mamluks began to rule Egypt in 1250, a rule lasting until 1517, when the Ottomans defeated them.c6-tl-saladin-mamluks
  3022. p. 528, p. 530, p. 531Epiphanius gives a firsthand account of meeting, at Scythopolis (Beth Shean) around 355 CE, Joseph of Tiberias, a prominent Jew converted to Christianity, then at least seventy years old and holding the rank of 'count'. In a city dominated by the Arian bishop Patrophilus, Joseph was the only public Nicene Christian; there was also a younger Jewish believer who visited him secretly. Skarsaune stresses that Epiphanius is unsurprised by Jewish believers with 'orthodox' Christology integrated into mixed churches.cjb-joseph-tiberias
  3023. p. 547Nulman records that Modeh Ani appears for the first time in the sixteenth century in the mystical commentary Seder Hayom (Moses ibn Makhir of Safed, Venice 1599); the Jerusalem Talmud already cites the opening words Modeh Ani with different endings for the three daily services.cl-modeh-ani-seder-hayom
  3024. p. 548Nulman identifies Modim (Hoda'ah) as the Amidah thanksgiving blessing that, like Retzay, formed part of the priestly ritual in the Temple; the short form Modim Derabbanan composites texts of various rabbis.cl-modim-priestly-temple
  3025. p. 552Nulman explains Netilat Yadayim ('lifting up of the hands') as the blessing upon washing the hands on rising and before bread; netilah comes from Aramaic 'to raise', symbolizing a move from the physical to the moral.cl-netilat-yadayim-washing
  3026. p. 554, p. 554Nulman records obscure authorship for Nishmat Kol Hai: some attribute it to Simeon ben Shetah (first century BCE) via acrostic; others to the Men of the Great Assembly; others to an author Isaac (acrostic with Rivkah). It also appears in the Talmud as thanksgiving after rainfall and as Birkat Hashir at the Seder.cl-nishmat-competing-authors
  3027. p. 559, p. 559, p. 559In February 418, on the island of Minorca, Bishop Severus describes in a letter the conversion of 540 Jews, the island's entire Jewish population, in eight days (2 to 9 February). Jews lived mainly in Magona (east); Jamona (west) had none. The letter, whose authenticity Skarsaune accepts with Bradbury, shows earlier amicable relations, then occupation and burning of the synagogue and baptisms under pressure. This is not a 'Nazarene church': it is a local episode of Christian coercion against a Jewish diaspora community.cjb-minorca-418
  3028. p. 560The leader of Magona's Jewish community, Theodorus, was respected for public services to the city. When Christians advanced, the community awaited his return from Majorca, where he was attending to business. Severus's letter presents him as a central figure in the negotiations before the mass baptisms.cjb-theodorus-magona
  3029. p. 634Nulman defines the Shema as a faith declaration recited each morning during Shaharit and again at night during Arvit, using the three classic biblical sections.cl-shema-twice-daily-nulman
  3030. p. 634Nulman presents twice-daily Shema reading as a Torah precept, taking 'when you lie down and when you rise' (Deut 6) as night and morning; the order of the three sections is justified in the Talmud (yoke of the Kingdom before the yoke of the commandments).cl-shema-torah-precept-twice-daily
  3031. p. 684Nulman defines Tefillat Haderekh as a travel prayer in Ashkenazic and Sephardic rites, said when journeying at least one Persian mile; reciting Yehi ratzon when journeying is attributed to the prophet Elijah's caution to Rab Judah.cl-tefillat-haderekh-travel
  3032. p. 711, p. 712Nulman recounts the Or Zaru'a (thirteenth-century) tradition about Unetaneh Tokef: Rabbi Amnon of Mayence (eleventh century) is said to have composed the prayer after martyrdom under a bishop and taught it in a dream to R. Kalonymus ben Meshullam; it serves as a Silluk in the Ashkenazic rite on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.cl-unetaneh-tokef-amnon-tradition
  3033. p. 714Nulman describes Uva Letziyon Go'ayl ('A redeemer shall come to Zion') at the close of daily Shaharit and at Sabbath/festival Minhah; the core is the scriptural Kedushah (Isa 6:3, Ezek 3:12, Exod 15:18) with its Aramaic paraphrase.cl-uva-letzion-kedushah-core
  3034. p. 772Nulman describes Ya'aleh Veyavo as a prayer added on Rosh Hodesh and festivals in every Amidah and in Birkat Hamazon; the Talmud requires remembering the new month in the seventeenth benediction, and Soferim quotes the text in grace after meals.cl-yaaleh-veyavo-rosh-hodesh
  3035. p. 779Nulman attributes Yedid Nefesh to the kabbalist Eleazar ben Moses Askari of Safed, probably written in 1584 and published in Sefer Haredim; it was accepted by all of Jewry as a hymn of union and the desire of love.cl-yedid-nefesh-askari-1584
  3036. p. 798Nulman records that the two Aramaic Yekum Purkan prayers were composed in Babylonia after the completion of the Talmud, in the Jewish vernacular; although Siddur Saadia has Babylonian material, these two prayers do not appear there in the same way.cl-yekum-purkan-babylonian
  3037. p. 801Nulman identifies Yigdal as a medieval hymn composed by the Dayyan Daniel b. Yehudah of fourteenth-century Rome, based on Maimonides' Thirteen Principles; kabbalists, hasidim, and various Sephardic groups omit it for reducing the creed to thirteen principles.cl-yigdal-daniel-rome
  3038. p. 804Nulman describes Yishtabah as the concluding blessing of Pesukei Dezimra (Birkat Hashir), instituted as its close just as Barukh She'amar was fixed as the opening; it does not begin with Barukh because it stands close to Barukh She'amar.cl-yishtabach-pesukei-close

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