Institute for Tolerance Studies Guides to Religion and Culture
Judaism
Ron Duncan Hart
Contents
Introduction
Abraham and the Origins of Monotheism
Israel: One Who Struggles with God
The Kingdom of Israel and the First Temple
The End of the Biblical Era and the Rise of Rabbinic Judaism
Jews in the Middle Ages
Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews
Jews, Israel and the Middle East
Jews in the Twenty-First Century Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Studying the oldest living religious tradition in the world is the occupation of a lifetime, which makes it daunting to write a condensed introduction for the modern reader. It could only be done after years of reading and learning about the histo- ry, culture, and religious practice of Judaism. Long hours of discussion and study with my wife, Gloria Abella Ballen, and daughter, Vanessa Paloma Elbaz, have challenged me to think
about gaps in my knowledge and understanding of Judaism. Their study and life examples have enriched my spiritual and intellectual life immeasurably. I would like to thank the pro- fessors who had roles in my academic training in religion, cul- ture, and Judaism: Professors
Seymour Berger, David Bidney z”l, Robert Chazan, Jer- emy Cohen, Helene Harpman, John Messenger, and Irven Resnick. I value the religious learning with Rabbis Ovadia Goldman, Berel Levertov, Martin Levy, David Packman, and Zalman Schachter-Shalomi z”l among others. I am especial- ly indebted to Prof. David Bidney, who gave me insight into the interaction between religion and culture. Based on his re- search on Baruch Spinoza and his personal study with Ernst Cassirer, he taught me the analysis and validity of cultural re- ality and symbolic forms. From the classroom to Shabbat din- ner in his house and long hours of conversation in labyrinth of his booklined office, he gave me a basis for my work and thought. I thank Rabbi Martin Levy, who read this manuscript and made critical corrections and suggestions, based on his extensive knowledge of Torah and Jewish history. And, I thank Prof. Helene Harpman for the rich flow of insights into the Hebrew language and Torah through years of study with her. For those, who are unnamed, thank you.
The Guides to Religion and Culture include Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Is- lam, and other volumes are planned. This series is published with the purpose of providing education and understanding of the religions traditions in our increasingly linked world. These volumes are written as an anthropology of religion, and
I have attempted to state the beliefs, practices, and histories in words that are consistent with each religious tradition. I have provided historical, social, and cultural information to define the context within which each religion has come into being and developed as a living society today. To the extent possible, I have discussed and reviewed these materials with religious scholars and believers from each tradition although I recog- nize that there are internal differences in belief and practice within religions, and I have tried to reflect those in a correct manner.
Belief and behavior are at the heart of our self definition as human individuals and the emotional core of our identity. Our religious and/or ideological identity is so important that it shapes major life decisions. This series is published recog- nizing the powerful importance of religious belief and practice among us as humans, respecting and honoring the uniqueness of the spiritual nature that defines us.
Judaism starts with monotheism, a faith in the unity of the universe based on supernatural reality, a multi-layered be- lief in the essentially spiritual nature of the cosmos. Judaism a religious legacy to the world, the oldest of the great religious traditions with a continuous history of more than 4000 years from Abraham to the present.
Each of the three great monotheistic religions, Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam, refer back to Abraham as the founder. Christianity with almost two billion followers and Islam with
1.5 billion people are the world’s largest religions, and both are evangelical. In contrast, Judaism is not a proselytizing religion, and it numbers only fourteen million people today. In spite of the common heritage of these three religions, each has devel- oped different cultures.
The core of Judaism is religious practice that folds into culture and ethnicity, and yet within the overall identity as Jews, there are differences in custom and language. Ashkenazi Jews speak Yiddish and have a heritage and lifestyle from east- ern European and Russian culture. Sephardic Jews come from Mediterranean lands, speak Judeo-Spanish and have a Medi- terranean lifestyle, and Mizrahi Jews speak Judeo-Arabic and have Middle East lifestyles. Ethiopians, Indians, and others bring distinctive ethnicities to Judaism. Within the umbrella heritage as Jews, each group has an identity focused on their cultural practices and language.
Is Judaism today a religion? A language? An ethnicity? A culture? A tradition? It includes elements of all of these. Since Judaism has a relatively small population base, social groups based on family, marriage ties, and friendships occur that re- enforce ethnic identity, solidarity, and religious and intellec- tual traditions. Judaism is a fabric of many threads woven to- gether, making a multi-colored tent for those who live within it.
AbrAhAm
Judaism begins with Abraham, and it is a story about the covenant of a human with God. Central to this legacy is the allegiance to the all powerful God, combined with a human commitment to and understanding of morality. Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar are the parental archetypes that represent
the religious, cultural and civilization traditions shared between Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
The fact that Sarah, the Sumerian from the eastern end of the ancient Middle East, raised one of Abraham’s sons, and
Hagar, the Egyptian from the opposite western end of the an- cient Middle East, raised the other son of Abraham, suggests from the beginning that the two sons would not be the same. As Genesis foretells, each would become the progenitor of dif- ferent, but multitudinous, people. As the wife in charge of the household, Sarah was key to the upbringing of Isaac, the heir to Abraham’s covenant with God, and she insisted that no foreign presence, such as Hagar, could influence that process. Her hus- band honored her position, and Hagar and her son had to leave. The Bible says that God intervened to save Ishmael and Hagar as they wandered in the wilderness. Although we know little about Hagar, it does seem that she came back to live with Abraham after Sarah died. Apparently, Isaac and Ishmael were together for the burial of Abraham, so the half-brothers seem to
have remained in contact.
Since Ishmael was the oldest son, Muslims see the Abraham- ic legacy coming through him, and according to Muslim sources Abraham went to Mecca in later life with Ishmael to help build the Ka’aba, the empty cubed space where the invisible, all pow- erful God could be worshiped. Later, the Ka’aba was corrupted by local peoples with polytheism until Muhammad came and threw out the idols and returned it to its original monotheistic purpose. In Christianity there is a parallel account of Jesus ar- riving to the Temple in Jerusalem to throw out merchants and money lenders, who had corrupted the original purpose of the Jewish house of worship.
Sarah and Isaac and Hagar and Ishmael represent the com- peting traditions of monotheism, and each was to develop dif- ferent ethnicities, cultures, and religious traditions. In this vol-
ume on Judaism, we follow the history of Sarah and Isaac, and in the companion volume on Islam, we follow the history of Hagar and Ishmael.
JudAism
Judaism is based on a culture of religious practice and of agreeing on religious truths through discussion and question. In contrast, Christianity and Islam are based on cultures of creed. Christian belief starts with the God of the Jews but adds beliefs in multiple manifestations of the godhead and the an- thropomorphization of one aspect of God that could take on human form, come to earth, and interact with people.
Islam is based on unquestioning belief in the truth of God’s word in the Qur-ān and the complete submission to God. In Islam the Qur-ān is to be memorized and recited with the interpretation of its meaning being done by special religious scholars. Although there are three different cultures between the great monotheistic religions, each shares the belief that God is the prime mover, the ultimate cause in the universe. All existence, truth, and meaning eventually connects with God.
The way the people of a civilization think about creation is a starting point to understanding their cosmology or world view. Creation defines the basic tenets about the nature of who we are and why we are here. The account of creation shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims shows the unitary God that is at the center of Abrahamic religious thought. God is the original existence, the great architect of the universe, and the source of life on the earth. The metaphysics of the creation provides a bond of unity with God as well as with nature.
The history of Jews and Judaism is the history of a people, their unique religious covenant, and a struggle understanding the supernatural and how it fits in everyday life. Jewish reli- gious experience can be based on questioning and discussion (the Torah and Talmud), or it can be based on the mystical wonder of the Kabbalah (the Zohar).
The word “Judah” refers to the southern kingdom based in Jerusalem when the country was divided into the two rival kingdoms after the death of Solomon. “Judaism”, referring to the religious practice of Jews, does not appear in the Bible, and it occurs for the first time about 100 B.C.E. in the second book of the Maccabees (ii. 21, viii. 1), where it is used to refer to the monotheistic religion of the Jews in contrast to the polytheism and worship of anthropomorphic gods in Hellenism.
Judaism is based on the premise that God created a world free of illness, evil, and death. When God gave people the power of choice over their behavior, that element of choice introduced morality. When people make wrong choices, they bring evil into the world. The Judaic tradition celebrates the oneness and goodness of God, but at the same time it intro- duces human agency in the moral and religious choices indi- viduals make.
Judaism has its origins in the covenant that Abraham made with God, an act of faith by one man in one God, which became the guiding principle for that man’s beliefs and behav- iors. The tribal history of the experiences of Abraham and his descendants became the religious history of the Jews.
As people struggled with their constancy in the belief in God and with right and wrong in their own behaviors, they aid down a history that has become a guide for understand- ing both belief and behavior. To that central belief in one God
were added the laws of religious and moral behavior. After Abraham the next major figure was Moses, who was the trans- mitter of the laws that shape Judaism. Although Moses was important for leading the Israelites out of Egypt and back to their own land, more importantly he received the guidelines for codifying the laws of religious practice and behavior.
The CulTurAl ConTexT of bibliCAl isrAel
The history of Abraham and Israel starts in the land that is modern day Iraq in the city of Ur. Abraham brought the culture and traditions of that city with him as he left it and sought his place in the world. The ancient history of Israel and Judaism was embedded in the early histories of Iraq, Egypt, and modern day Israel and Jordan. There are many cultural parallels between the Hebrews and the other Middle Eastern civilizations of this time period, and they can be seen in the oldest literature from this region and from the Bible.
1) When God began to create the heaven and the earth--2) the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from
God sweeping over the water--3) God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. 4) God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.
God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the
water, that it may separate water from water.’ 7) God made the expanse, and it separated the water which was below the expanse from the water which was above the expanse, and it was so. 8) God called the expanse Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
God said, ‘Let the water below the sky be gathered into
one area, that the dry land may appear.’ And it was so.
God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering of waters He called Seas. And God saw that this was good.
24) God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth every kind of living creature: cattle, creeping things, and wild beasts of every kind.’ And it was so. 25) God made wild beasts of every kind and cattle of every kind, and all kinds of creeping things of the earth. And God saw that this was good. 26) And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.’ 27) And God created man in
His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28) God blessed them and God said to them ‘Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth.’
1) The heaven and the earth were finished, and all their array. 2) On the seventh day God finished the work which He had been doing, and He ceased on the seventh day from all the work which He had done. 3) And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it God ceased from all the work of creation which He
had done. (Genesis 1:1-2:3)
This account of creation shows the God-centeredness of the Jewish tradition. God is the original existence, the archi- tect of the universe, and the source of life. The metaphysics of the creation forges a bond of unity with God and nature. Few other traditions have such a clear statement of the supernat- ural creation of the cosmos. In the origins literature of most other religions, it is simply assumed that the earth exists, and the stories begin with the first heroes who shape the world as we know it. The Genesis account of creation affirms the Jewish belief in the inherently godly nature of existence itself.
The bible And eArly WriTTen reCords
Monotheism became important in the Middle East after the rise of civilization and kingship, representing the abstrac- tion of the supernatural force as a unitary god, replacing the gods of nature and fertility found in early agricultural societ- ies. The concept of the high god has been explained by some as a projection of the figure of the king on earth, and in fact monotheism did appear not long after kingship in the early civilizations.
The writings about Adam and Eve and their descendants, Noah and the great flood, and the histories of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob bring the Biblical account up to recorded history. Elements of the Genesis narrative have par allels in earlier stories from the region, and the earliest is the Epic of Gilgamesh. It is the Sumerian story of the Great Flood and the ark in which people and animals were saved. Since Abraham was Sumerian, it was a story that he well might have known.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a secular story about a human
hero in contrast to the Biblical account that is about moral choices and the relationship of humans to God. Gilgamesh went to an old man and woman who had survived the great flood by taking refuge in an ark, and he asked them how to achieve immortality.
Although they told him that it was impossible, they did tell him where to find a plant that would make him young again. He found the plant, but he lost it to a serpent who ate it and became young again. Instead of losing longevity to the serpent as a result of a moral choice, as did Adam and Eve, Gilgamesh lost it by inattention, or perhaps fate. He is told:
Life, which thou seekest, thou wilt never find,
For when the gods created man, they let death be his share...
Gaze at the child that holdeth thine hand, And let thy wife delight in thine embrace. These things alone are men’s concerns. (Ferry 1992)
AbrAhAm And his rooTs in sumer
Since Abraham was Sumerian and grew up in that world, the religious roots of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim worlds can be traced to Sumerian culture. The rich grasslands of the southern Tigris-Euphrates valley were called “Edin” (or grass- lands) in the local language, and we get our word “Eden” from it. (Wood 1992:21-24) Sumerians believed that was the place of creation, where the first earth rose above the waters in the beginning of time. They built a temple with a sand mound, marking the site of creation. Within the temple was a walled garden with a sacred tree that was thought by some to be the prototype of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden.
Since Abraham’s father was an idol maker in the city of Ur, he would have grown up seeing the images that his father made of the various gods that people worshiped. Each city- state in the region dedicated itself to the worship of a primary deity whose ziggurat towered above the rest of the city. Cit- izens of the city belonged to the temple and god or goddess to which it was dedicated. So, within an overall polytheism (many gods were recognized), the city gave loyalty to one god, which is called henotheism.
This belief that each group of people had their own god continued among the Hebrews well into the biblical period, as they spoke of the gods of the Canaanites, the Moabites, and others. Religious leaders struggled to guide the Hebrews to- ward monotheism, the belief in one universal god, but the cul- tural ties to henotheism ran deep.
After the fall of Sumer, a Semitic group, the Akkadians, took the lead in the area (2340-2159 B.C.E.). Akkadian re- placed Sumerian as the dominant language, and it eventually evolved into Aramaic, a Semitic language to which both He- brew and Arabic are related. Aramaic became the lingua fran- ca for diplomacy and commerce in the Middle East, and even- tually, the Israelites lost Hebrew as their vernacular language and adopted Aramaic.
About 2000 B.C.E., the Sumerian/Akkadian tradition stagnated, and the Elamites attacked from the east (present day Iran), and desert nomads attacked from the north. All of the important cities of Sumer, including Ur, were sacked. Tem- ples were destroyed, and people were killed or taken into slav- ery. Out of the crisis of the collapse of this civilization and its gods, Abraham and his family fled Ur on a journey that would lead to a new understanding of God.
PATriArChAl JudAism: AbrAhAm, isAAC, And JACob
Terah, along with his son Abram (later to be changed to Abraham), and others left Ur after their world had been con- quered by outsiders. From Ur, which was located in the lower Tigris/Euphrates valley, his family moved northwestern to the upper reaches of the Euphrates plain to Haran. From the urban life style that they had known in Ur, Abraham and his family became nomadic herders, living in a tribal, patriarchal order.
“27)...Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begot Lot. 28) Haran died in the lifetime of his father Terah, in his native land, Ur of the Chaldees, during his father’s lifetime...31) Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldees for the land of Canaan; but when they had come as far as Haran, they settled there.” (Genesis 11:27-31)
Later Abram and Sarai, his wife, split off from the family group and moved to Canaan, the land that was to become Isra- el, and he purchased land there. God promised that he would become the father of many people, and that Canaan would be their land. Abram made a covenant of monotheism with God to worship no other gods. To celebrate the covenant his name was changed to Abraham, and he was circumcised as a mark of this new unique identity. Jews look to Abraham as their re- ligious ancestor and their biological progenitor. His grandson Jacob was to become the great struggler with God and with life, and his name would eventually be changed to Israel. Sa- rai’s name was changed to Sarah.
As a sign of the covenant with God, the male descendants of Abraham were to be circumcised, and both Ishmail and Isaac had their foreskins cut, a sign that is shared today by both Jews and Muslims. At one point God tested Abraham and asked him to sacrifice his son Isaac, the only son of Sarah. Child sacrifice did sometimes occur in the early Middle East, and Abraham came to the point of complying before he was stopped. His willingness to sacrifice his own son, who was so important to him, was a indication of his complete devotion to God. At that moment it was clear that Judaism was to honor human life. God provided a ram, and for the next 2000 years animal sacrifice became the norm for Jewish ritual offerings.
Muslims have the same account of Abraham being tested to sacrifice his son Ishmael. The angel Gabriel stopped him and provided a sheep for the sacrifice. This event is called the Eid al-Adha (the binding), and it is the second most important religious holiday in the Muslim world.
Abraham’s son, Isaac, and his grandson, Jacob, both re- turned to the family base in Haran (near the present day bor- der between Syria and Turkey) to find wives, guaranteeing the continuity of their tribal descent, and both of them lived in the land that became Israel. Apparently, Isaac never traveled outside of the land of Israel. Isaac was the spiritual heir of Abraham, but with little inclination toward religious innova-
tion or leadership. Isaac’s quietness in contrast to the activism of Abraham and his grandson Jacob has been attributed by some as the result of the traumas of his youth, losing his only brother and nearly being sacrificed by his father. After Isaac married Rebecca he lived quietly and grew the wealth of the family, being quite successful economically.
After Isaac and Esau realized what had happened, Jacob had to leave the family camp, and he traveled to his mother’s homeland, safe from his brother’s anger. He met and fell in love with his cousin, Rachel and worked seven years of bride-ser- vice for his uncle, Laban, to be able to marry her.
The father-in-law Laban tricked him into marrying Leah, the older sister first, then Jacob had to work another seven years for his true love Rachel. Jacob and his wives had twelve sons, and he also became wealthy with sheep. Eventually he was restive to return to his home in Canaan, and they began the journey back.
When they came to the stream Jabbok, Jacob wrestled with a being during the night, and near dawn the being wrenched Jacob’s thigh muscle and made him lame, then gave him a blessing, changing his name to Israel, which means he who has struggled with divine and human beings and prevailed. Jacob (now Israel) was re-united with his brother Esau, and he settled in that land with his family. His new name, Israel, has
identified his descendants since that time.
Judaism had not yet been institutionalized with a priest- hood and laws, and the practice of religion was individualized and based in the family. There was not yet a division between the supernatural and humanity because God or manifestations of God still walked among humans and took on the shape of humans. Messengers from God appeared at the tent of Abra- ham and Sarah to announce that she would become pregnant in her old age, and Jacob even wrestled with a messenger from God at the Jabbok before entering his homeland.
The people of Israel understood themselves to be the cho- sen ones of God from the time of Abraham, and the signs that proved this election were the giving of the land of Canaan to them and later the deliverance from Egypt. Their election by God was sealed by a covenant which is clearly stated at the beginning of the Ten Commandments:
I the Lord am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage: You shall have no other gods besides Me. (Exodus 20:2-3)
The concept of the covenant with God follows the lines of the suzerainty treaties of the time between vassals and the powerful states that dominated them. God is portrayed as the Great Overlord, or King, who demands loyalty and sets the terms for compliance. The covenant is not a democratic one,
rather it is one of obedience to a higher power. In this view God has been reified into a figure with human-like qualities. At this point God is seen not as an abstract, spiritual entity, but as a real actor on the human stage.
The bAbyloniAn Kingdom (2000 To 1600 b.C.e.)
During the years of the Jewish patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), another city-state, Babylon, was the emerging power in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and it had an important contribution to make to the cultural context of early Judaism.
Babylon was the kingdom that consolidated control of present day Iraq after the fall of Sumer and Akkad, and the best known king was Hammurabi (1792-1750 B.C.E.). He is remembered historically for a code of laws which is the best preserved of the early law codes. The “Code of Hammurabi” is a collection of 282 laws that is a synthesis of Sumerian and Se- mitic laws, and some of its elements are parallel to Jewish laws in the Torah. Hammurabi’s Code gave most rights to men, especially those of higher social standing. People who were slaves were treated as property with no rights, and they could be severely mutilated for the slightest offenses. The Hebrew laws in the Torah were more egalitarian, giving more rights to women and slaves.
The most famous legal principle of the Hammurabi Code was “an eye for an eye”, and it assumed that the exact retalia- tion for the offense was the best deterrent. If one man caused another to lose an eye, even if it was an accident, then his eye would be destroyed also. If one man breaks another’s bone, then the same bone of the first man will be broken.
The other well established principle of the Code referred to commercial transactions, and it is known today as “buy-
er beware”. It basically said that the consumer had no redress if he bought something that was defective or bad. The seller had no legal responsibility for what he sold once the deal was done, and the consumer had to be sure of the purchase before making it.
This was a jurisprudence system that gave categorical solutions to conflicts with little attention to balancing issues of right and wrong. It was a patriarchal culture in which the au- thority of the father could not be questioned. The Code itself was a blunt instrument designed for punishment. Toward the end of the Babylonian kingdom a severe drought struck the land of Canaan where the Hebrews were living as pastoralists, and they migrated to the Nile delta area of Egypt where the waters of the river guaranteed irrigation for agriculture. They arrived during a period when this region was controlled by the Hyksos, a Semitic group that was friendly to them.
The isrAeliTes in egyPT
While Jacob, now Israel, and his family lived in Canaan, friction developed between his older sons and Joseph, a younger son who was the son of Jacob’s favorite wife, Rachel. The older sons sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt to rid them- selves of him. But, Joseph prevailed in Egypt and emerged as the Vizier, or Prime Minister, to the Pharaoh. Later, a drought in Canaan drove his father’s family into Egypt looking for food, and Joseph intervened to settle them in the land of Gos- hen, located to the east of Egypt’s fertile delta.
were called “Princes of the Desert” or Hyksos, and they adopt- ed the traditions and religion of the pharaohs.
They were so strong that the rulers of Upper Egypt in The- bes paid tribute to them. The fertility of the Nile Valley has long been attractive to the people of the arid areas surround- ing Egypt, and it has been a magnet for migration, especially during periods of drought.
In the mid-1500’s B.C.E. the rulers of Upper Egypt at- tacked the Hyksos, driving them out of the country. This was the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty, which marked a new period of strength known as the New Kingdom, lasting from 1567 to 1085 B.C.E. The new rulers were Egyptian, and they were less tolerant of the Israelites than the Hyksos had been.
During these years the Egyptians had the Israelites build- ing the storehouse cities of Pithom and Rameses. Although Egypt was not a slave based society, the Israelites, as resident aliens, were not totally free. It was at this moment that Moses, an Israelite raised in the Pharaoh’s house, rose to lead his peo- ple out of Egypt. His confrontations with the pharaoh, includ- ing the ten plagues, give one of the most dramatic episodes in the Bible. Eventually, the pharaoh released the Israelites to return to their hereditary lands in 1312 B.C.E., according to rabbinical calculations.
Pharaoh had a change of mind and sent his army to catch the Israelites and bring them back. In a miracle, the Sea of
Reeds opened permitting the Israelites to cross on dry land, but the waters rushed back in as the Egyptian army tried to pass, trapping them with their heavy war chariots and armor. The Egyptian army was defeated, and the Israelites safely left Egypt. For forty years Moses led them as they lived in the des- ert lands between Egypt and Canaan. They received the formal religious instruction from Moses, as he spoke in the name of the one God.
moses, sinAi And forTy yeArs in The Wilderness
After escaping the Egyptians and trekking through the Si- nai desert the children of Israel led by Moses, Aaron, and Mir- iam the Israelites came to Mount Sinai. As the people camped around the base of the mountain, Moses went up to commune with God, and at that point he received the Aseret ha-D’varim, the Ten Statements or Declarations. In Judaism there are 613 mitzvot (commandments) on correct behavior, ritual, and the preparation of places of worship. The ten highlighted on the stone tablets that Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai are cat- egories of mitzvot or commandments.
The Book of Leviticus gives the most complete statement of the ritual, legal and moral practices to be followed in Ju- daism. It gives detailed instructions for correct behavior and then the rituals, the sin and guilt offerings, to be made when people have not behaved correctly with God and the fellow humans. This defines Judaism as being more about practice than belief or creed, and it gives the most detailed set of in- structions about worship and behavior of any of the early Mid- dle Eastern religions. The ten statements or commandments that Moses received on Mt. Sinai have become the basic code of behavior for both Jews and Christians.
AsereT hA-d’vArim or Ten CommAndmenTs
Belief in the One God. “I the Lord am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.”
Forbidding Improper Worship. “You shall have no other gods besides Me. You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image...You shall not bow down to them...”
Forbidding Oaths. “You shall not swear falsely by the name of the Lord your God.”
Observance of Sacred Time. “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”
Respect for Parents. “Honor your father and your mother.”
Forbidding murder. “You shall not murder.”
Forbidding Sexual Impropriety in Marriage. “You shall not commit adultery.”
Forbidding Property Theft. “You shall not steal.”
Forbidding False Statements. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
Forbidding Coveting. “You shall not covet...anything that is your neighbor’s.” (Exodus 20:1-14)
These laws were expanded to six hundred and thirteen instructions or Mitzvot, which historically have been empha- sized as the essential path to correct religious behavior. This is the levitical tradition, referring to the instructions given in the Book of Leviticus about the religious laws. Woven through the Bible is the continual attempt to keep the people faithful to God and the received teachings. Reading and studying the Bible are religious acts and a central element of worship.
Moses and that generation of the Children of Israel were to live a desert existence for the next forty years in the Sinai Peninsula. During that time, a new generation of leaders grew
up under Moses. After he passed away, Joshua and the young- er, more militant, group led the Israelites back into the Prom- ised Land, returning to the home of Abraham, Isaac, and Ja- cob. They settled in and among the Canaanites and sometimes fought with them. The land was divided among the twelve tribes, each one representing one of the sons of Jacob, and they were known as the Children of Israel.
Israel existed as a country from the time of the Judges, starting in 1244 B.C.E. to the destruction of the last kingdom in 70 C.E., a period of 1314 years. It existed in various stages. Under the Judges it was a time of consolidation, 1244 to 1052 B.C.E, then came the United Kingdom 1052 to 922 B.C.E., the Divided Kingdom, 922 to 700 B.C.E., and the Vassal State Pe- riod 701 B.C.E. to 70 C.E.
isrAel under The Judges And sAul
After settling in Israel, the Israelites consolidated their control over the land. They grew in number and were ruled by a decentralized system of clan leaders, the Judges, who could be both men and women. Some of the great stories of
Jewish history come from this time period.
ter Deborah, the land was at peace for forty years.
The wedding was canceled because of his actions, and he later fell in love with another woman, Delilah. Trusting her, he gave her the secret of his strength, and when he was asleep, she had his hair shaved and gave him helpless to the Philistines. They blinded him and imprisoned him, but in time his hair grew again.
Later, when a huge celebration had been called, all of the Philistine leadership gathered in a temple with thousands of followers and Samson was brought out to be shown as a tro- phy. With his renewed strength, he pulled down the pillars supporting the temple, killing the leadership of the Philistines and a multitude of their followers. He was buried with honor by his family for such an important victory over the Philis- tines.
power in the monarchy in Israel, and he anointed the first two kings, Saul and David. Samuel was the last of the Judges, and some think he was the greatest one. His mother Hannah had prayed for a child, and she promised that if she had a child, she would dedicate him to God’s service. After he was old enough to leave home, she put him in the care of the Judge Eli, who raised him and prepared him to be a Judge. Samuel had the unique role of being a Judge and a Prophet, transitioning from the role as a leader to a spokesperson for God. Today, Samuel is honored by Jews and Muslims.
Samuel led Israel for thirteen years, and he was the source for the Biblical books of Judges and Samuel. As Samuel was growing older, a delegation came to him asking that he estab- lish a monarchy for Israel like other nations in the region.
You have grown old, and your sons have not followed your ways, Therefore appoint a king for us to govern us like all other nations. (1 Samuel, 8:5-7)
Samuel did not want to name a king, but God told him to agree with the demand of the people. Samuel anointed Saul as the first king and later anointed David as his successor.
As the two armies faced off, for forty days Goliath would come out daily and challenge any Israelite to do hand to hand combat with him, but no one would accept the chal- lenge. Then the shepherd boy, David, who was expert with the slingshot, agreed to fight Goliath, who looked on him with disdain. David hurled a single smooth river stone that hit Goliath in the forehead, killing him, and the Israelites had
victory.
David was a hero and initially became a favorite of King Saul, but later as Saul suffered from paranoia he turned against David who had to flee. David went on to become a warrior and leader of men, eventually replacing Saul as king.
dAvid And solomon
This father/son tandem ruled Israel for eighty years, a golden age of wealth and power. Under David (ruled 1000 to 961 B.C.E.), the armies of Israel defeated surrounding king- doms, so that he ruled what is present-day Israel and much of Jordan and Syria. Israel was the dominant force between the Euphrates and the Nile Rivers. David’s son, Solomon, succeed- ed him and ruled from 961 to 922 B.C.E.
Later, the kingdom divided, and Israel was reduced to be- ing a tributary state by the Assyrians in 721 B.C.E. David and Solomon used the kingship to further the religious practice of the Israelites. David made the preparations for the Temple in Jerusalem, and Solomon built it. David established a scholarly corps that helped preserve the rich religious literature of the Jews, including the Psalms. David was a musician, and we have 150 songs attributed to him, making up the Book of Psalms, some of the most beautiful poetry in the Bible. Solomon con- tinued that tradition with the Proverbs, the wisdom sayings. David created a strong kingdom, wedged in between the polit- ical and military giants of the ancient Middle East (Egypt and the Mesopotamian kingdoms). Located at the center of trade routes between Egypt and the river kingdoms of present day Iraq, it was a vital crossroads of international commerce. Israel was a tariff collecting kingdom that flourished under David and Solomon, but after them it struggled through internal di- visions, invasions, exiles, and external domination.
David was one of the outstanding figures in historic Juda- ism, a larger than life man, who combined greatness of lead- ership with the failings of human wrong-doing. Even as a boy, he could defeat the Philistines with a single slingshot blow to kill their military hero. As king, he built a powerful military and a wealthy kingdom, but he also abused his power. In the torment of greatness, his favorite son tried to kill him to take over the kingdom. The coup attempt failed, but David suffered the anguish of the son’s treachery and death.
David was a paradox of a man, who gave us the inspir- ing songs of praise to God, while he would have his neighbor killed, to be able to marry his wife, the beautiful Bathsheba. In spite of that beginning, Bathsheba was to become important, and Solomon, her son with David, was to become the succes- sor as king and a wise and important ruler.
Solomon spent the wealth accumulated by his father on building projects including an opulent palace that took thir- teen years to build and the Temple that was considerably smaller and took seven years to build. While Solomon created an ostentatious lifestyle suited to a king of the early Middle East, he allowed his kingdom to slide into decline. A thousand year long history of divided kingdoms, defeat by larger pow- ers, and exile followed.
The Kingdom of Israel (and later Judah) was to have a ma- jor impact on the world with the genius of its religious con- tributions. The Jews were known for building kingdoms of religious thought and moral practice more than political king- doms. The rich oral traditions of law and history were written down, and the religious, narrative, and wisdom literature were to become the cultural signature of the Jewish tradition. The influence of this body of literature has had more impact on Western civilization than any other set of writings. The people
of Israel developed a literate tradition that became the defini- tion of their religion and ethnicity.
The TemPle And PriesTly JudAism
The Temple was built by Solomon as the national center of worship for the Israelite people, and it contained the Ark of the Covenant with the tablets of the commandments. People from all over Israel came there at least once a year to offer sac- rifices for their sins and to celebrate their covenant with God. The kings retained close control over the Temple through the Chief Priest, who was a member of the inner council of advi- sors to the king.
The Temple was designed by an architect from Tyre, us- ing a style that was common in Canaan and Syria at the time. Some of the features of the Temple, such as the bronze sea and the altar of burnt offering, were characteristic of other tem- ples in the region of the period, but they were reinterpreted according to the beliefs of Israel. The Temple was located near the palace of Solomon, and the parallel between the Temple and the palace suggested that the invisible God was enthroned in the Temple while the earthly king was enthroned in the pal- ace.
Priestly Judaism had its roots in the early organization of
the religion defined in the books of Moses soon after com- ing out of Egypt. While still in the desert, a tabernacle or tent served as the Temple, and it included the altar for burned sac- rifices and the Ark, which was kept in the sacred interior, the Holy of Holies. The Hebrews were a pastoral people, and sins were paid for by sacrificing one of the best lambs of the flock. “Wave” offerings, which consisted of birds or sheep, were also made to celebrate God’s goodness.
At this point, the practice of Judaism paralleled that of its
neighbors with offerings of animals as the definitive religious act. This was the first stage of institutionalized Judaism with a hereditary priesthood, who were the sons of Aaron, and a hereditary group of religious workers, the Levites, who took care of the Tabernacle and later the Temple. After the repeated invasions by more powerful neighbors and the destructions of the First and Second Temples, animal sacrifices ceased being part of Jewish religious practice.
The rivAl Kingdoms (922-700 b.C.e.)
As Israel split, the northern tribes took the name of the Kingdom of Israel, and the southern part became the King- dom of Judah. The Kingdom of Israel had the rich northern highlands, the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River basin, and the Kingdom of Judah controlled the arid desert areas of the south. The capital of the northern kingdom was Samaria, and Jerusalem was the capital of the southern kingdom. In modern Israel there is a group of Samaritans who identify themselves as the heirs of the northern kingdom and reach back to this 3000-year-old split to distinguish themselves from their kins- men from the Kingdom of Judah, the Jews.
The role of the prophets became more important during this time, and scholars continued the writing of the reli- gious literature. Over this 200 year period the two kingdoms strengthened themselves and actually regained some of the territory lost by Solomon. However, the power of Assyria was growing and in 722 B.C.E. Samaria, the capital of the Kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians, and they took many Israelites away as captives, creating the myth of the Ten Lost Tribes. Al- though an estimated 20 percent were deported, most actually stayed in Israel.
The vAssAl sTATe Period (701 b.C.e. To 70 C.e.)
In 701 B.C.E. the Assyrians returned under Sennacherib to attack the southern kingdom reducing it to a vassal state, and Israel was to remain subject to outside powers until the Roman destruction of the Temple and exile of the people in 70
C.E. As Israel slipped into decline and was repeatedly defeated by the larger powers to the north, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, and later Greece and Rome, a series of prophets emerged, in- cluding Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel among others. The term “prophet” referred to someone who spoke forth or declared, and the role of the Israeli prophet was to interpret God’s intent to the people and reproach them for not following it. These prophetic oracles spoke of impending doom but the possibil- ity of salvation if people were faithful in their religious prac- tice. There were various periods of cultural assimilation which were denounced by the prophets.
The language changed from Hebrew to Aramaic, but the rich tradition of monotheism and literature continued. The people of Judah repeatedly revolted against their overlords and were exiled in Babylon and Persia before the exile by the Romans. For the next 2000 years after the Romans, Jews re- tained their religion and cultural identity in a diaspora that ex- tended from Israel throughout Europe and eventually to Asia and the Americas.
dominAnT PoWers in The region
While the nation of Israel was being established, Egypt fell into decline, which left a power vacuum initially filled by Da- vid and the growth of the Israelite kingdom. But, eventually the Assyrians and Babylonians expanded their power in the region and defeated Israel.
Babylon and an interval with little central authority, a new Semitic group, the Assyrians, arose in what is northern Iraq today. Their extraordinarily long reign was built on military might and the use of cruelty to intimidate their foes. Under Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.E.) they reached their maximum extension, ruling most of the Middle East. They invaded lands as far south as Israel where they defeated King Hezekiah and reduced his kingdom to a vassal state.
The most famous of the short line of kings was Nebuchad- nezzar (605-562 B.C.E.), who conquered Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Judah and carried most of the Jewish leadership as captives to Babylon. The Temple was destroyed as was most of Jerusalem and the surrounding towns. Although the Jewish state had been destroyed, Jewish life continued in the land of Israel and in Babylon.
In 539 B.C.E. the Persians invaded the Chaldean king- dom in a lightening attack that allowed them to take Babylon without a fight, and it became the jewel of what was to be the world’s first empire. With that the captive Jewish population changed from Babylonian to Persian rule, and they flourished in the new empire. It is from this time period that we have the story of Esther, the Jewish queen of Persia, who saved her peo- ple, the story retold every year at Purim in the Jewish calendar.
Not all Jews were taken away in the Babylonian captivity, and eventually the captives were allowed to return home and rebuild the Temple with assistance from the Persians. The Sec- ond Temple was completed about 515 B.C.E., and it existed for six centuries until it was destroyed by the Romans in 70
C.E. During this period the Greeks defeated the Persians and became the dominant power. This was the time of the Macca- beean revolt, and the recovery of the Temple from the Greeks. Hanukkah is the holiday that celebrates that event.
Although this is a post-Biblical time, there is ample liter- ature from the period to give insight into the practice of Juda- ism. The transition from a religion based on sacrifice, as de- scribed in the Bible, to rabbinic Judaism was in process. There were debates on halacha, ritual purity, and the interpretation of Torah. Aramaic became the language of everyday use, and the literature from the period is in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
The non-canonical Jewish literature that describes this period range from the books of Judith and Maccabees to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the works of Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus among others. The story of Judith tells how a woman was able to kill the Commander of the Greek army besieging Jerusalem, which led to the breaking of the siege and the defeat of the Greeks.
The books of Maccabees narrate the history of the revolt against the Greeks that was led by the Maccabees brothers. The Dead Sea Scrolls reflect the diversity of thought within Ju- daism during this period of transition to the rabbinic period. This important time marked the emergence of post-Biblical Judaism.
Roman totalitarianism produced conflict in Judea, and many sects and movements arose offering alternatives to the confrontation between traditional Judaism and Roman he- donism and polytheism. The climax came in the first century C.E., and the period ended with the Jewish-Roman Wars from 66 to 135 C.E. These wars led to the destruction of the Second Temple and Jerusalem itself, as well as the exile of many of the Jews.
First Jewish-Roman War (66-73). In the year 6 C.E. the last Jewish king accepted Roman hegemony with the creation of Roman Judea. Over the next sixty years there were periodic rebellions against Roman rule, which came to a climax in 66
C.E. Romans were attacked because they had defiled the Tem- ple and executed thousands in harsh reprisals. After originally being defeated, the Roman army returned, laying siege to Jeru- salem and after its capture, destroying the Second Temple. The last Jewish rebels held out in Masada until April of the year 73. Many Jews were exiled after this war.
Kitos War (115-117). This was a widespread revolt by Jewish communities in the diaspora from Mesopotamia to Egypt and Cyprus. There were a series of revolts in which Jewish rebels killed Romans and others in an attempt to break Roman control. The movement was put down by the Roman army.
Bar Kokhba Revolt (132-136). Within a matter of years Jews in Judea revolted against Roman rule once again. Simon bar Kokhba was the leader of this revolt, and he was able to re- gain control of parts of Judea for a couple of years. There were messianic movements in Judea at the time, dreaming of relief from Roman rule, and Christianity was one of those. Some saw Simon bar Kokhba as the Messiah who would restore Is- rael, but he was ultimately defeated by overwhelming forces
sent in by the Romans. After this conflict Jews were prohibited from entering Jerusalem, except to attend Tisha B’Av remem- brances.
Although Jews remained in Judea, there was an exodus from the country with people going as far as Mesopotamia, Ye- men, and Morocco. During this time a significant number of Jews arrived to the opposite end of the Mediterranean world, Spain or Sefarad in Hebrew. Jews had been present in Spain from the time of the early Greek settlers, but their numbers increased after these expulsions from Israel by the Romans.
rAbbiniC JudAism
After the destruction of the Second Temple and the loss of the center for sacrificial worship, Israel carried the Torah and the Law with them in the diaspora, a portable center of reli- gious practice that could be taken anywhere the people went. Aspects of the law not related to the priestly sacrificial system could still be practiced.
The emphasis was on observing Sabbath, circumcision, and ritual cleanliness, all practices that could be observed in exile. Israel began to be re-defined in terms of religion rather than as a political state. The Law defined the ethics and mo- rality of Israel, as well as the rules of ritual behavior. Religious practice focused on the reading and study of the Torah, and the synagogue emerged as the new meeting place for Jews, who were scattered from the Middle East, across North Af- rica to Europe. The local synagogues became the new center of worship. With this focus on the synagogue and the Torah, the rabbis, local religious teachers of the Law, became the new leaders of Judaism.
mishnAhiC And TAlmudiC JudAism
After the destruction of the second Temple and the end of traditional priestly Judaism, another body of literature emerged that re-interpreted Judaism for the new era of the Diaspora.
Although the Mishnah was written in Hebrew, the schol- arly language among Jews, the Talmud was written in Arama- ic, the common language of daily discourse. The study of the Talmud through questioning and re-questioning became the norm for Jewish religious education for the next 1500 years, and it continues today.
Daniel Silver says,
The Mishnah assertively set out the traditions of the oral law; the Gemara self-consciously related these laws, ideas, and values to the written Torah and to each oth- er. Talmudic argument follows its own rules of logic, mixing in questions of equity, manifest justice, and ap- propriate legal theory, but, ultimately and finally, the law derives from the revelation.
(Silver 1974:280).
Over the centuries the Gaonim (heads of the rabbinical schools) continued to analyze and re-define interpretations of the law and ritual in Judaism. Then in the eleventh century Isaac of Fez (Alfasi) formulated a guide to talmudic law, Hala- kot, and a century after that (1180) Maimonides produced his Mishneh Torah, a Code of law and custom that has influenced Jewish life and thought to the present. In the sixteenth centu- ry, Joseph Caro (mystic and legalist) compiled the Shulchan Aruch (Table Prepared), which collected the whole of the tra- ditional law and arranged it under convenient heads in chap- ters and paragraphs. Each of those works continues to be used as important references today.
Rashi. Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchak, known as Rashi, was the most important Jewish figure in the last half of the eleventh century, and one of the major scholars of Torah and Talmud of all time. A group of religious scholars gathered around him in France, and the Rashi school of talmudic interpretation brought new interpretations that sometimes differed substan- tially from those of the dominant Sephardic schools of thought at the time. The Rashi school was the starting point for the Ashkenazi tradition of interpreting the Torah and Talmud. His commentary on the Talmud is known for its clarity, concise style and lack of mysticism, and it is still a leading reference point today for all talmudic discussions.
The Core of JeWish ThoughT
God is the first cause. The unspoken name of God in He- brew may be related the word “to be, to exist, to happen”, which gives an indication of the nature of God. Judaism has been said to be bound by laws but free in belief, and the truth is that while “belief ” in Judaism has a flexible core, the prescriptions for what to do are detailed and specific. As an Aristotelian thinker, Maimonides set out to systematize the core of Jewish religious thought, and he stated thirteen basic principles.
1. The existence of God, the Creator. 2. The oneness, the unity of God. 3. The incorporeality of God. 4. The priority and eternity of God. 5. Only God can be worshiped. 6. The truth of prophecy. 7. Moses was the greatest prophet. 8. The Law was revealed from God. 9. The Law is unchangeable. 10. God knows what we do as humans. 11. Actions will be re- warded or punished. 12. The Messiah will come. 13. The dead will be resurrected. (Kaplan 1993)
Since Judaism does not have a central authority to define and reinforce creed or dogma, each of the modern streams of Jewish thought and practice define themselves somewhat differently. Although there are historic examples, it has been rare for anyone to be excommunicated for heresy in Judaism. The most famous case is perhaps that of Spinoza and the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, which was much more concerned to dissociate itself from the thought of Spinoza than to compel Spinoza to conform to the beliefs of the Synagogue. Moving beyond Maimonides’ attempt to define a core of Jew- ish thought in the Middle Ages, Moses Mendelssohn (1728- 1786), one of the chief architects of modern Jewish thought, has suggested that Jews are not bound to any one specific
creed, reflecting the Enlightenment thinking of his time.
TiKKun olAm
The concept of Tikkun Olam is an important concept in the practice of Judaism, and it refers to repairing the world. The phrase originally appears in the Mishnah, and two dif- ferent interpretations have developed about how the world should be repaired.
First, Rabbi Isaac Luria, the sixteenth century kabbalist saw it as a religious process. He said that the balance between good and evil in the world was swayed by the actions of indi- viduals. Each person is responsible for observing the mitzvot of correct Jewish religious practice, hence contributing good and counteracting the weight of evil in the world. We repair the world through our religious actions. This understanding of Tikkun Olam has major supporters in the Orthodox tradi- tions, especially hasidic ones, and these people are also known for taking care of the health and well-being of members of their communities, giving a social dimension to Tikkun Olam. On the other hand, in more Reform oriented Jewish com- munities Tikkun Olam has taken on a meaning of repairing the world through social action and justice, such as philan- thropy, environment, supporting human rights, etc. In the United States the latter interpretation was advocated by Shlo- mo Bardin, who established the Brandeis Camp Institute in California, and it has had major support from groups that are more secular. Jews had a major role in the Civil Rights move- ments in the 1960s, and today are major supporters of human rights world-wide. Percentage wise Jewish groups have one of the highest rates of volunteering and giving monetary contri- butions to social and cultural causes, giving an identity of so-
cial consciousness to Jews.
JeWish holidAys
The Jewish year is punctuated by a series of holidays, some more important than others, but each one highlights an as- pect of Jewish history and religious practice. Holidays may be celebrated only one day in Israel, but in the rest of the world, historically people were less sure of the calendar, so holidays were celebrated for two days to guarantee that the celebration would fall on the day it should. The specific days on which the holidays are celebrated are calculated by the lunar calendar, which means they vary from year to year in the solar calendar.
5
Jews in the Middle Ages
In Jewish history the European Middle Ages cover a broad period which began shortly after the completion of the Talmud about 600 C.E. and continued to the Expulsion from Spain in 1492. Although Spain had the most important Jewish popu- lation in cultural terms during this period, there were Jewish populations throughout the Middle East and Western Europe. Judith Baskin says about this period:
While large populations thrived in the Moslem worlds of Iran and Iraq, Egypt, Spain, and North Africa,
far smaller and more insecure Jewish communities were dispersed across Christian Europe in France, Germany, Italy, and England. No matter where Jews lived, the Talmud provided a uniform pattern for family, business, community, and religious life. Still, local environments always played a vital role in the ways Jewish social and family life developed, and to study Jewish societies in the Diaspora is to observe the ambivalence of a people assuming the language, dress, and mores of their gentile neighbors while endeavoring to maintain an allegiance to the guidance and demands of Jewish legal dicta and rabbinic leadership. (1991:94-95)
This was a definitive period that shaped modern Judaism. One branch of Judaism adapted culturally to Europe while the other adapted to the Middle East. Following trade routes, other Jews migrated to India and China where small remnant communities today remember their Jewish ancestry although they have been isolated from the main body of Judaism for centuries.
Anti-Semitism is a cultural phenomenon found in societ-
ies associated with the two evangelistic monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam. In these exclusive religious traditions, people who do not accept the message central to their belief system can become a problem. After the Romans declared Christianity the official religion of their Empire, the issue be- came what to do with the Jews. Although they were an essen- tial link in the background and history of Christianity, they had rejected Christianity itself. What to do with Jews who did not fit into the monolithic Christian religious, social, and po- litical world?
Christians needed the Jews to keep direct contact with the original language of the Bible. However, he also argued that Jews had lost their place with God because they had not ac- cepted Jesus as Messiah, and their dispersal throughout the world was evidence of what happens, even to God’s chosen people for not accepting Christianity. He argued that Jews must be preserved because they had a distinctive role in God’s plan for human history and salvation. Jeremy Cohen sums up Augustine’s position saying,
The De Civitate Dei does not suffice with explicating the phenomenon of Jewish survival as the fulfillment of divine prophecy. It interprets the divine prophecy of
Jewish survival as a mandate for the faithful: Slay them not, that is ensure their survival and that of their Old Testament observance; and scatter them, guaranteeing that the conditions of their survival demonstrate the gravity of their error and the reality of their punishment. (1999:33)
Augustine shaped Christian thought toward Jews from the late Roman period to the Medieval period of Church dom- inance in Western Europe.
The writings of religious scholars became increasingly intolerant toward unbelievers, especially the Jews, in the ho- mogeneous religious environment of Medieval Europe. At the beginning of this period most European Jews lived in Spain with a degree of coexistence with Christians under Muslim rule. The crusading spirit, that launched the Crusades to the Holy Land, was also directed toward the Muslims in Spain, and Christian armies were reinforced to drive them back in the Reconquest movement. Christians took Toledo in 1085, and in response the Almoravids invaded southern Spain from Morocco in 1086, bringing a rule that was less tolerant to Jews. Jews in Spain were being pushed by the anti-Jewish policies of both Christians and Muslims contending for control of the Iberian Peninsula. To avoid this problem more and more Jews migrated north into the heartland of Europe.
Soon, most towns in the Rhineland had Jewish communi- ties, and Jews became an integral part of the local economies through trading and finance, and some became wealthy and powerful. Jews managed the Papal household during much of this period, and they frequently were administrators and trea- sury officials for kings.
As the Jewish populations became more visible and im-
portant in the 1100’s, members of the clergy spoke in an in- creasingly vituperative manner toward them. More rigid theological positions, xenophobia, and envy of Jewish wealth, power, and success all seem to have contributed to this rise in anti-Semitism in the twelfth century.
The two outstanding Christian thinkers of this pe- riod were Bernand of Clairvaux and Peter the Vener- able, Abbot of Cluny. Bernard of Clairvaux was am- bivalent toward Jewish people and said that they were superstitious and only interested in the exterior formal mean- ing of their laws and ignoring their true spiritual meanings. Because of their strictly literalistic interpretations of the scriptures, he suggested that they were intellectually deficient. Like other Medieval writers, he contrasted the Syn-
agogue and the Church as “brides of Christ” with the Syna- gogue being ungrateful and rejecting the groom, while the Church accepted Him. On top of their other unacceptable at- tributes, he said, they were guilty of the immorality of usury.
Peter the Venerable was even more destructive in his rhet- oric, asking why pursue the enemies of the Christian faith through crusades in far and distant lands when the Jews, vile blasphemers and worse than Muslims, were right in Europe? He accused the Jews of abusing and trampling on Christ and the Christian sacraments and of stealing Church property and selling it.
Although he advocated that Jews should be killed, he thought some should be kept for the greater punishment that God had waiting for them. Peter called for depriving the Jews of their wealth, which he felt they had gotten illicitly. He was advocating this at a time when his abbey was apparently in- debted to Jewish money lenders. He went on to call Jews perfid- ious, perverse, wicked, and deceptive. He concluded that since
humanness leads to Christianity, Jews were inhuman, nothing more than swine. By dehumanizing Jews, Peter prepared the way for physical attacks against Jewish communities, which would become increasingly frequent in the coming centuries. Virulent attacks on Jews were combined with contin-
ued attempts at conversion of Jewish populations. One con- verted Jew, who took the Christian name of Petrus Alfonsi, added to the attack on Jews by undermining the Doctrine of Witness of Augustine. He said that the Second Temple had been destroyed and the Jews sent into exile as punishment be- cause they did not accept Jesus as Messiah. Further, he said that Jews could no longer follow the laws of Moses because they do not have their own land or Temple. Since Jews could no longer be correctly religious, there was no justification for their not converting to Christianity. According to Alfonsi, the Jews were no longer protected by the tolerance of Augustine, and he essentially declared them the enemies of Christianity.
There were a number of accusations of Blood Libel against the Jews during the twelfth century, but the most dramatic was perhaps one that happened in England in 1255. In the township of Lincoln the body of a dead boy, named Hugo, was found, and Jews were accused of killing him in a ritual sacri- fice and using his blood to make the Passover matzah. This led to attacks on the Jewish community and the killing of many Jews.
From 1250 to 1650 there was a crescendo of increasing anti-Semitism in Europe. The Blood Libel accusation and oth- er events led to the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290. On Tisha B’Av in 1306 Jews were expelled from France and their wealth confiscated in what seems to have been primarily a money-grab by a penurious king. Increasingly in the 1300’s anti-Semitism grew, and the Dominican order of preachers
became more virulent in their condemnation of Jews. Spain exploded in 1391 with a series of attacks on Jewish commu- nities, killing thousands of people, followed in subsequent decades with restrictive legislation that deprived Jews of the possibility of normal life. These events culminated in the ex- pulsion from Spain in 1492.
Even though many Jews converted under the threat of death or exile, their ordeal was not over. The Church suspect- ed “New Christians” of not being true in their devotion, and Inquisitions were established in various regions of Christen- dom. The most famous was the Spanish Inquisition, which was established by the Spanish Crown, not the Church, but it had the authorization and approval of the Church. Inquisi- tions were set up with police powers to arrest and confiscate the property of any Christian who did not meet the criteria of the Church in religious behavior.
After the mass attacks and killing of Jews in 1391 and the Expulsion in 1492, many Jews converted to Christianity to save their lives and livelihoods. Among those converts (con- versos) there were some who still identified as Jews and se- cretly practiced some elements of Judaism. These people were known as crypto-Jews (hidden Jews). They were primary tar- gets of the Inquisition in the 1500’s, and during those years thousands of people were burned at the stake in great public events held in the plazas of major cities for Judaizing and other heretical practices.
After the Expulsion there were no more synagogues and no more rabbis, so over the next 150 years, most crypto- Jews gradually assimilated into the Christian culture of which they were a part. By 1650 the Inquisition had essentially stopped looking for crypto-Jews, considering the judaizing was no lon- ger a major issue for the Church. Jewish Mysticism Judaism is
often called the religion of reason, but it is also the religion of mysticism. Mystic insight is a key spiritual quality; it is experi- encing God directly. For mystical thinkers like Nachmanides and Luria their understanding of God and spirituality is root- ed in metaphysical, mystical experience. Rabbi Martin Levy explains it as,
God is both transcendent and imminent, and thus the aver- age person will not achieve/perceive the highest levels of spiritual understanding, or atzilut. Only a few personalities, such as Mo- ses, reach that level. Hence the divine is both understandable on some levels, and beyond us in many others. Mysticism embraces a personal belief in G-d and allows the believer to bridge the gap between divine revelation and concealment in our material world. Thus we strive to elevate ourselves past the mundane to seek the divine presence in all of creation. (Personal communi- cation)
Mysticism is the spiritual within, a faith in Godliness as the essence of religious experience. Mysticism and law might seem to be contradictory, one ethereal and the other concrete, but on the contrary they are inextricably linked. Jewish mysti- cism starts as an interpretation of the Scriptures to find truths intuitively by lifting the formal meanings of the text to reach the true meaning hidden beneath. Allegorical and esoteric in- terpretations of Biblical texts have the aim of finding what has not been previously visible.
The Zohar, the Book of Radiance, is the most widely known text of Jewish mysticism. It is a commentary on the To- rah, written as a mystical novel, featuring Rabbi Shim’on Bar Yohai, a tzadik (holy person) from the second century in Isra- el. He and his friends wander through the hills of the Galilee discovering meanings in the Torah through their discussions. In thirteenth century Spain Moses de Le.n wrote out the Zo-
har and made it available to the public. It is the most import- ant work that interprets Torah in hidden, mystical terms, and it is the basis of Kabbalah.
From Nachmanides (1195-1270) to Joseph Caro (1488- 1575) and Isaac Luria (1534-1572) we have teachings about mysticism and Kabbalah. In late Medieval times Jewish mys- ticism was sometimes seen in contra-position to the Talmud, but that was based on the Aristotelian idea that knowledge could only come through reason, which always left God as unknowable. In contrast, mysticism was based on the idea that God is knowable by transcendental experience, an idea parallel to the neo-Platonic theories of emanation. There was something spiritual that could be experienced beyond the limitations of the five physical senses. Solomon ibn Gabirol (1021-1070) interpreted the Oneness of God as an absolute Unity in which form and substance are identical.
Luria interpreted the mystical idea of the “over-Soul” and used it as the spiritual essence of Shabbat associated with ec- static joyousness. The “over-Soul” gave the individual a person- al connecting line between heaven and earth. The followers of Luria have sometimes been accused of excessive emotionalism and mystic hysteria, leading some to think that an emotional interpretation of the Law can lead to breaking the Law.
Among the Ashkenazim it was the Baal Shem Tov and the hasidic movement that ultimately brought the mystical spiri- tual experience to the forefront in Russia and Eastern Europe. As in Spain, there was stiff opposition from traditional reli- gious scholars from luminaries, such as the Vilna Gaon, who had hasidic followers punished publicly for their practices. An extension of Jewish mysticism is the belief in the life of the soul after death, the spiritual idea of immortality.
Maimonides viewed life after death as completely spiritu-
al, the perfect spiritual union with God. He saw the world to come as a state of being rather than a physical place. The belief in a physical resurrection also exists reflecting the hopes in Ezekiel’s vision of the re-animation of Israel’s dry bones. Me- dieval poets found this idea attractive and imagined elaborate details of the divine banquets and other physical pleasures. The belief in the Resurrection says that it will be Jerusalem, leading to a desire among many to be buried there on the Mount of Olives. Some of the rabbinic burial and mourning customs are based on the belief in a bodily Resurrection.
The Jewish populations of Spanish heritage are Sephardic Jews, and Jewish populations native to Middle Eastern coun- tries are known as Mizrahi Jews. In modern Israel these two groups have been grouped together generically under the term “Sephardic”. Most immigrants to Israel from Muslim countries were in fact Sephardic Jews, who were the largest Jewish pop- ulations in the North Africa countries, Syria, and Turkey. The non-Sephardic, Arabic speaking Jews from the Middle East are Mizrahi, and they are a smaller group primarily from Iraq and Yemen. Iraqi Jews centered in Baghdad had one of the richest scholarly traditions in Judaism.
The Iranian Jews have formed another distinctive group of Jews from a Muslim land. As Iranians, they spoke Farsi, not Arabic, and they are heirs to one of the oldest continuous Jew- ish communities in the world, going back to the time of Queen Esther and the Persian Empire.
In the centuries following the Muslim conquest of Spain
in 711, the Jewish population became the largest in Europe with an estimated 80 percent of European Jews living there. Spanish Jews were important philosophers and writers, held powerful government positions, and were wealthy business people. Among the Jewish communities were leading medical doctors and scientists, philosophers and theologians, finan- ciers and merchants, and government officials and diplomats. Many Jewish families became essentially dynasties as son after son continued the family traditions in philosophy and literature, science, or public administration. For example, the ben Ezra family produced outstanding public administrators that worked for both Muslim and Christian kingdoms. The Ha- Levi family included the greatest Jewish poet and song- writer of Spain, Yehudah ha-Levi, as well as public administra-
tors, financiers, and other scholars.
Spanish Jewish thought was broad and inclusive. The Cordoba talmudic school was the best in Europe, and it is recognized as one of the most productive centers of Hebrew scholarship of the last 2,000 years. This made the Expulsion of 1492 so much more tragic because it destroyed this important center of Jewish religious scholarship and culture.
During the Cordoba and Seville periods of Muslim rule in al-Andaluz, Jewish populations flourished. There were dozens of synagogues and libraries. Over the cen- turies the Christians gradually defeated the Muslims and pushed them further into southern Spain, and the Jew- ish centers of learning declined. But, Spain still contin- ued to be an important center of Jewish life. (Gerber 1992) Jews suffered pogroms under both the Muslims and Christians, but much of the time they were able to live in peace with both communities until their expulsion. Under Ferdi- nand and Isabella non-Christian religions were forbidden. In
the Edict of Expulsion in 1492, Jews were forced to convert or leave the country. It is estimated that over 150,000 Jews left Spain although a somewhat lesser number stayed and convert- ed to Christianity. As Jews fled Spain, they migrated to France, Italy, Morocco, and eastward to the Ottoman Empire, carrying with them Sephardic foods, music, and language which have been preserved up to the present.
By this time Jewish populations had already been in many Middle Eastern and North African countries for two thousand years, having arrived long before the Muslims. The forced mi- gration of Sephardic Jews into Muslim countries strengthened their presence there. The Ottoman Empire was new and ex- panding at that point and was in need of people who were skilled in international relations and trade, and a number of Jews of Spanish background assumed important positions in the imperial hierarchy. The Jews of the Muslim countries adopted the language, music, dress, and architecture of the countries where they lived, and they are known as the Mizrahi Jews, those who are culturally Middle Eastern.
Maimonides (1135-1204), Moses ben Maimon, known as Rambam, was the most important Jewish rationalist scholar of the medieval period, and many say that he has been the most important of all time. He had to flee his home in Cor- doba, Spain with his family to avoid persecution from the Muslim rulers, who had become increasingly strident. After leaving Spain, Maimonides went with his family to Morocco and eventually settled in Egypt where he became the physi- cian to the sultan Salah al-Din. He wrote important medical treatises, which were valued later in Europe for their scientific information.
Today Maimonides is more known for his rationalist phil- osophical writings, especially The Guide for the Perplexed,
which is one of the most important works of religious phi- losophy in Judaism. Maimonides said that people should not interpret the anthropomorphic language of the Bible as literal. The expression, “the figure of God”, did not literally mean that God was like a human with hands and fingers, it was to be interpreted metaphorically.
He thought that religious truth should stand the test of human logic, and for this he is considered the Jewish Aris- totelian thinker. Maimonides was also an important Torah scholar, and his Mishneh Torah is one of the most consulted Bible commentaries in Judaism. In addition to his scholarly work and being the physician to the sultan, he maintained an open clinic for all comers, working late into the evenings after completing his court obligations. He was also the leader of the Jewish community of Cairo.
Among the Jews, mystical studies became important in Provence and northern Spain, reaching a culmination in the thirteenth century in the work of Nahmanides and the Gerona Circle of kabbalistic thinkers, such as Rabbi Ezra ben Solo- mon and Rabbi Azriel de Girona. As anti-Semitism grew in Europe from 1250 to 1650, interest in otherworldly, mystical experiences also grew. Jewish mysticism was strong in the late Medieval period, especially in Gerona in Catalunya in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Rabbi Moses ben Nah- man (Nahmanides), who lived from 1195 to 1270, was an im- portant leader in the early years of this movement. The two most important writers whose works have come down to us today were Rabbi Ezra ben Solomon and Rabbi Azriel. Their concepts have been a major influence in Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah up to the present day.
Although many in the Gerona School limited their writ- ings to traditional commentaries on Torah, Talmud, and Mid- rash, Rabbi Azriel wrote extensively on kabbalistic symbolism and ethics in Jewish life. He had a background in philosophy, which enriched his analysis and commentary. His writings on the formation of the world made a unique synthesis of mysti- cism and philosophy that enriched Sephardic Jewish thought and laid the basis for the Zohar, the masterpiece of Jewish mysticism. Other Sephardic religious scholars who contribut- ed to early mystical thought included Rabbis Jacob and Isaac ha- Kohen, who were influenced by Gnostic beliefs. Rabbi Abraham Abulafia focused on reaching mysticism by freeing the spirit through a state of prayerfulness, which could lead to spiritual insight and prophecy. Through this mystical ex- perience the believer could approach the true spirituality and oneness that is God.
Rabbi Isaac the Blind denounced the writing of books
about Kabbalah because many thought that mysticism would misguide people who were younger and not intel- lectually ready for the complexities of mystical experience. They thought that mysticism could give way to inappro- priate speculations about spirituality and the Divine, so only intellectually mature adults should study Kabbal- ah under the guidance of an established religious scholar.
During the period of Muslim rule in Spain from 711 to 1492, Jews had important roles in the various governments, including many Jewish prime ministers and finance ministers, even a minister of the military. When Pope Urban II called for a crusade in 1095 to drive the Muslims out of the Holy Land, it also led to crusades to drive them out of Spain. The larger
process of the “Reconquest” of Spain by Christian forces lasted for centuries and produced such heroic and mythical figures such as El Cid. As the fervor grew to drive Muslims out of Spain, the growing anti-Semitism meant that Jews should also be driven out of Spain, which could then be a purely Christian land. Although there had been outbreaks of anti-Semitism during some Muslim periods in Spain, anti- Jewish sentiment in Christian Spain grew to extremes not seen before.
In towns throughout Spain, Christians celebrated Easter festivities by attacking Jewish quarters. For example, for Eas- ter in Girona catapults were used to lob giant stones from the steps of the Cathedral into the Jewish quarter just down the hill. In 1391 became even more deadly with thousands of Jews being killed throughout the country in assaults urged on by priests, such as Vicente Ferrer, who was later canonized by the Church for having produced the conversions of so many Jews. Entire Jewish communities were wiped out in the 1391 assaults.
The crescendo of anti-Semitism was growing after 1250, when the first of a series of Disputations or Debates were held in which Christians tried to proselytize Jews by the logic of debate. The first was in Paris in 1240 with a second smaller Paris debate in 1270. The two most famous Dis- putations were held in Spain, which had the largest Jewish population. The first was in Barcelona in 1263 and the second in Tortosa, 1413-1414. Both were focused on similar theolog- ical arguments, the political and economic ramifications of the two were quite different. The 150 years that separated the Barcelona and Tortosa debates marked a critical time period in Spanish Jewish life, and the latter debate was ultimately
more about the survival of the Jewish community in Spain than theological issues.
The Disputation of Barcelona (1263) was a true debate, even though restrictions imposed on the Jewish scholars pre- vented an equal and free inquiry into Christian beliefs. The interpretation of texts of the Talmud were at the center of the dispute. The Christian disputants were led by Pablo Cristiani, a convert from Judaism, who knew and used the talmudic texts to argue the truth of Christianity. Moses ben Nahman (Nahmanides), the talmudic and kabbalistic scholar, repre- sented the Jewish community.
The debate centered on whether the Messiah had ap- peared or not, whether the Messiah was human or divine, and whether the Jews or Christians held the correct faith. It was still a time when Nahmanides could challenge Christian be- liefs and openly state that he did not accept them, even though his comments generated hostility.
The threat of violence was so strong that the Disputation was terminated on the fourth day by King James I, who had overseen the debate. He admitted that he could no longer guar- antee the safety of Nahmanides, who in fact had to leave Spain after the debate and live in the Holy Land for the remainder of his life. The hostile intolerance of Christians had reached the point that a renowned scholar, such as Nahmanides, could no longer live in safety in Christendom.
In contrast, the Disputation of Tortosa (1413-1414), which was 150 years later, was more of a forum to aggressively evan- gelize Jewish leaders than a debate. It was the most flamboyant of all of the Disputations because it was chaired by schismatic Pope Benedict XIII, and he was using it to authenticate his claim to the papacy. It was the longest of all of the disputa- tions (twentytwo months), and included the largest number of
participants, including twenty-two rabbis and Jewish scholars and the court of cardinals loyal to the Pope. The debate took place in an environment of growing anti-Judaism stimulated by Dominican friars, such as Vincent Ferrer.
The Pope called this Disputation with the hope of putting so much pressure on the Jews that they would convert, which was seen as a way of affirming the validity of his position. Af- ter sixty-nine sessions of admonishing the Jewish leaders who were present, the Disputation was ended with little visible re- sult. The inability of Pope Benedict XIII to produce the con- versions was one of the elements that led to his being deposed shortly afterwards. The Disputation of Tortosa was different from that of Barcelona because it was more of a campaign of anti-Judaism than a debate. It marked a new height in overt Church pressure on the Jewish community to convert, and it was a portent of the Expulsion to come in 1492.
Ferrer’s first historical appearance was an evangelical tour
of Castille in 1391 that coincided with the 1391 massacres there and in other parts of Spain. Tens of thousands of Jews were killed during the massacres of that year, and many others were forced to convert to avoid dying. The Jewish quarters of some towns, such as Barcelona, were completely destroyed never to be revived. The massacres of 1391 were a turning point in Spanish history. The Jewish communities were dispersed into small towns and rural areas, and they never again had the in- fluence in Spain that they previously had. During the century between the massacres of 1391 and the expulsion in 1492, an- ti-Semitism grew rapidly in Spain. By the early 1400’s, Ferrer had gained influence with Queen Catalina of Castile and King Fernand I of Aragon, and he used that influence to pass re- strictive sets of laws against Jews in both kingdoms.
These laws had a number of provisions such as: • Jews were to be restricted to living only in the juderia, or Jewish ghetto. • Jews (doctors, pharmacists, surgeons, tailors, black- smiths, etc) could no longer provide services to Christian cli- ents. • Jews were no longer allowed to work in governmental or judicial offices. • Jews had to wear distinctive clothing. • Jews could not hire Christians nor be in supervisory positions over Christians. • Improvements to synagogue buildings could no longer be made.
The economic restrictions on Jews eliminated most of their traditional occupations and reduced them to poverty. Jews were allowed to continue in international commerce al- though their travel outside of the country was restricted for fear that they would not return and thus be lost as potential converts. Interestingly, some Jews were exempted from these provisions and continued to be employed by kings as advisers and envoys.
On the 7 of Av (5252) or July 31, 1492 in the Western cal- endar, the Jews were expelled from Spain, which is remem- bered on the Jewish holiday Tisha B’Av (9 of Av), the saddest day in the Jewish calendar. On January 1, 1492, al- Andaluz, the last Muslim kingdom in Spain, was defeated by the Chris- tian Kings Ferdinand and Isabella, which brought the country completely under Christian rule. They already controlled Cas- tile and Aragon, the two largest of the Iberian kingdoms, and they pushed to unify Spain under one crown and one religion. After al-Andaluz was defeated, the Muslim leaders, nobility, and clergy fled to North Africa. (Beinart, 2002)
With Islam defeated, the Christian kings turned their at- tention to the Jews as the only other non-Christian group in the country. The Edict of Expulsion of the Jews was signed on March 31 of that year, and the Jews were given four months to dispose of their properties and leave the country. Jewish com- munal wealth was confiscated by the Crown, including hos- pitals, schools, and other buildings, and synagogue buildings were given to the Church. Most were converted into churches, some of which still exist. The forced sale of houses and busi- nesses meant that Christians bought Jewish properties at a fraction of their cost.
Many families expected the Expulsion to be only tempo- rary, as it had been in France, and they left their properties in the care of Christian friends or neighbors. Of course, since they were never able to return, those properties were lost. Peo- ple were not allowed to take gold with them as they left the country which further complicated the exodus. The first stage of leaving Spain usually was to the neighboring countries of Italy, France, Portugal, or North Africa. The second stage of migration for many people led to Amsterdam and the interior of Europe and to the newly emerging Ottoman Empire in the
east.
Some people converted rather than leaving Spain, and these who converted under pressure are known as anusim in Hebrew, the forced ones. Like those who left their properties thinking that the Expulsion would be temporary, many who did the perfunctory conversions thought that it was only tem- porary. They were the ones who were persecuted by the In- quisition later. The anusim in Spain and Portugal readily left for the Americas and other overseas areas opened up by the Spanish and Portuguese explorations over the next century. When Jews were expelled from Spain, the prima-
ry routes to leave the country were to neighboring Portugal, which did not yet have an Inquisition, other Christian Europe- an countries that did not have an Inquisition, especially France and Italy, or to Morocco and North Africa. Spanish speaking Jews divided into Western and Eastern Sephardim (Sephardic Jews). The former, who went to Christian countries, and the latter, who went to Muslim countries.
The Inquisition, Conversos, Anusim and Crypto-Jews The Jewish population of Spain was dramatically diminished in 1391 through death, conversion, and emigration. Of the 80,000 Jews still left in Spain in 1492, as many as half convert- ed to Christianity in the three months between the Edict of Expulsion and the effective date when Jews had to leave Spain. (Kamen 1997:23-24) In the early decades following the Expul- sion, the vast majority of cases before the various Offices of the Inquisition were for Judaizing. Between 1480 and 1530, Kamen estimates that as much as 90 percent of the 2,000 peo- ple executed were convicted of being Judaizers. (Ibid., 60)
Many of the conversos or New Christians, who did not leave Spain or Portugal to live openly as Jews in other coun- tries, choose to migrate to the Americas, where initially there
seemed to be less control from the Holy Office of the Inquisi- tion. There is evidence of communities of Jewish descent peo- ple from Lima to Cartagena and Mexico in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. From 1645 to 1650 the Inquisition in these three cities had showcase trials of Judaizers in which a dozen or so people were arrested in each city. In the largest Auto da Fe in the Americas, thirteen people convicted of Ju- daizing were burned at the stake in Mexico in 1649. In Lima and Cartagena a comparable number of Judaizers were either permanently exiled from the Americas or reconciled with the Church. After 1650 the Inquisition prosecuted fewer and few- er people for Judaizing and focused more on witchcraft, blas- phemy, bigamy, sodomy, Protestantism and freemasonry.
The few cases that are documented, such the one of Dona Teresa de Aquilera y Roche, seem to have been motivated more by political intrigue than true Judaizing. The power of Spain was decline in the late 1600s and that affected the In- quisition. As the House of Bourbon replaced the Hapsburgs on the Spanish throne in 1700, the Bourbon kings instituted a series of reforms in Latin America, permitting more free- doms. Since the Bourbons were French, they brought influ- ences from the Age of Enlightenment, which was by then well established in England and France.
The power of the Church was in question, and the Inqui- sition was constrained. With the arrival of the Bourbons and the Enlightenment, many people argued for the abolition of the Office of the Inquisition, and in the first half of the 1700’s the number of people in Spain to be condemned to burn at the stake fell to all time lows, and in the Americas the Inquisition concluded that Judaizers were no longer a threat and essential- ly stopped looking for them.
By the late 1500s and early 1600s most conversos, who
wanted to return to the practice of Judaism, had found a way to leave Spain and Portugal, and the conversos, who had chosen to stay in Spanish territories, had accepted to live as Christians. By 1650 to 1700 there is little indication of peo- ple practicing as hidden or crypto-Jews. After eight to ten generations without any formal connection to Judaism, no Torahs, no rabbis, no teachers, no synagogues, the religious and cultural disconnect was too great. The memory of hav- ing been Jewish might have survived in a family, and some Jewish practices, such as lighting candles, might have been synthesized with similar Christian practices, but the Jewish meaning of these practices had been forgotten. By 1700, two hundred years after the expulsion, the evidence of active cryp- to-Jewish communities in Spain or the Americas is ephemeral.
In 1492 and over the next century, increasing numbers of Sephardim moved to Muslim countries, which were tol- erant toward Jews, where they could openly live and practice as Jews. Most went to Morocco and later others went to the Ottoman Empire, which openly welcomed Jews to help de- velop commerce and industry. In the Ottoman Empire most Sephardim settled in an arc from Greece through Turkey to Aleppo, Damascus and Israel. Two of the three largest, openly practicing Sephardic communities in the world were in Mus- lim lands, Morocco and the Ottoman Empire. The third large Sephardic community formed in the Netherlands, especially Amsterdam.
As Sephardic Jews arrived to Muslim lands, they estab- lished their own synagogues, separate from those of the his- torically Middle Eastern Jews, the Mizrahi. Although some fu- sion between the two traditions did occur over the centuries,
in the twentieth century, it was still common that Sephardic synagogues were separate from Mizrahi tradition synagogues in much of the Middle Eastern world.
From 1580 to 1640 Portugal was under the rule of the Spanish Crown, which during those years, simultaneous- ly ruled the Netherlands. During that time the anusim, the descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews, who had been forced to convert, could move to the Netherlands. In 1648 the Netherlands officially gained independence from the Spanish, and as a Protestant nation began establishing more tolerant policies toward Jews. By 1675 the Jewish community in Am- sterdam numbered in the thousands, and they had completed the Portuguese Synagogue, which became the model for Sep- hardic synagogues in the Western world from London (Bevis Marks, 1701) to New York (Shearith Israel, 1730) and Cura.ao (1730) among others.
North America. The first Jews to arrive to North Amer- ica were a group of twenty-three Dutch Sephardic Jews, ex- pelled from Recife, Brazil, who came to New Amsterdam in 1654. For the next 200 years most Jews in North America were Sephardim. The original synagogues in New York (Shearith Israel), Newport (Touro Synagogue), Philadelphia (Mikveh Israel), Charleston (Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim), Savannah (Mikve Israel), and New Orleans (Touro Synagogue) were Sephardic synagogues. With the anti-Jewish pogroms in Rus- sia during the late 1800’s two million Ashkenazim migrated to North America, changing the face of Jewish America from Sephardic to Ashkenazi.
Latin America. Although it was illegal to be Jewish in the American territories during the Spanish colonial period, Jewish communities existed since the early colonial period as
documented in Martin Cohen’s study of the Carvajal family in Mexico and other sources. (Cohen, 2001) They were eventu- ally suppressed by the Inquisition, which lasted until the in- dependence from Spain. One of the actions of the new Latin American republics was to eliminate the Inquisition and per- mit the immigration of Jews, but it was decades before signifi- cant Jewish communities were settled in Latin America.
Religious pluralism was slow to come to Latin America, even after independence. German and French Jews were the first to migrate to Latin America in the modern period, and they chose to leave Europe during the conservative aftermath of the Napoleonic wars when the rights of Jews were restrict- ed. As the industrial revolution and agricultural crisis of the mid-eighteen hundreds disrupted the European economy, more Jews migrated, more Ashkenazi Jews to North America and more Sephardic Jews to Latin America, where they pri- marily went to Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.
As had occurred during the Colonial period, Jews in Latin America tended to be merchants or medical doctors, but other professions such as mining and engineering were also com- mon. With the political turmoil in Europe with the two World Wars, the Nazi persecution, and the Holocaust, Jews migrated to Latin America by the tens of thousands during the early and middle twentieth century. Argentina was to develop the largest Jewish community with over 250,000 residents. Jews in the Americas still suffered persecution from the Christian majority, and it was not unusual for the front wall of a Jewish house to be painted with a swastika or the word judio during the night. Jewish children were taunted in schools and made to suffer indignities. In the second half of the twentieth centu- ry, many Jews eventually left their Latin American homes for the tolerance and safety of the United States or for the Israeli
homeland. In the latter twentieth century the Jewish popula- tion of Latin America had reached 500,000 people, but in re- cent decades that number has dropped.
Large Latin American Jewish populations can now be found in Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Israel. The Enlight- enment ideals of the founders of the Latin American repub- lics included religious pluralism, and they envisioned more diverse societies. The slight opening toward pluralism that did occur permitted a small minority of Protestants to estab- lish themselves, but non-Christian groups such as Jews have not been so fortunate. Latin America today remains the most solidly Christian bloc in the world, more so than Europe or North America.
As the Age of Exploration began, the European mercantile system grew, and Jewish merchants played a critical role, espe- cially in Holland and Portugal. Although Jewish populations were divided between European and Ottoman domains, Eu- rope gradually emerged as the new center of Jewish life. Jewish merchants played a central role in the development of inter- national trade for the newly commercial powers of Europe, and in doing so Jews spread out around the world. They could be found in the port cities from Europe (Amsterdam) to the Americas (Recife, Cartagena and Lima) and throughout Asia (Goa, Macao, Manila).
By the late eleventh century Jewish populations were growing in many areas of Europe from the Rhine Valley in Germany to France and England. The home and the synagogue were the centers of Jewish communities. Much of the religious
practice was focused on the family, such as the Friday night Shabbat meal and the Passover Seder. Women were the center of the homes, and men were the center of the synagogue. The religious practice of women was through prayer and serving their families, but the religious practice of men was centered on study and debate about the scriptures. The expectations of the Jewish woman were domestic, as shown in this prayer for a new born daughter, “May she sew, spin, weave and be brought up to a life of good deeds.”
As German crusaders were leaving for the Holy Land, they attacked the Jewish quarters in several towns demand- ing that they convert or be killed. As communities resisted these forced attempts at conversion, thousands of Jews were killed. Over the next century the power of the Church grew as Europe became increasingly Christian. In that homogeneous environment, there was little tolerance for those defined as non-believers.
Even with anti-Semitism, the Jewish communities in Eu- rope grew because many had the cross-cultural and linguistic skills needed in international trade, skills that the more insular European Christians did not have. Kingdoms frequently en- acted legislation to limit or control the entrepreneurial efforts of Jews, such as prohibiting them from owning land. Loaning money was an important thing that Jews did during this pe-
riod, providing the capital to start business enterprises in the new money-based society that was emerging in Europe.
Jews were welcomed settlers in the developing urban, commercial centers of northern and eastern Europe, and they tended to settle near other Jews and usually near a synagogue and butcher shop. Later, in some countries these neighbor- hoods were turned into ghettos, and Jews were obligated to live there. Jews became an essential part of the urban econ- omies of Europe during this time, especially in trade and fi- nance. Jews helped finance the major events of the day from the wars of kings to the cathedrals of the Church, as well as common business ventures.
During the thirteenth century anti-Semitism grew quickly midst accusations of sacrilege against Christianity, ritual mur- ders, and usury. As early as 1215, the Fourth Lateran Coun- cil prohibited Jews from holding public offices or engaging in certain financial practices, and they were required to wear clothing that would identify them. By the end of that century in 1290, Jews were expelled from England and shortly after in 1302 from France although they were allowed to return to France within a short period of time. In both the cases of En- gland and France the kings were richly rewarded for expelling the Jews because of confiscated properties and other financial gain.
Bubonic Plague and Anti-Semitism. In the mid-1300’s the Bubonic plague ravished Europe leading to another rash of an- ti-Semitism. The most serious outbreak occurred from 1348 to 1351, but there were repetitions in the 1360’s and 1370’s. The plague had started in Chinese cities and was carried across the Euro-Asian landmass by trade and travel facilitated by the wide Mongol conquests during this period. Fifty to sixty per- cent of all victims in European cities died. The cause of the
Plague could not be detected, and Jews were accused of poi- soning the wells causing this Black Death. Jewish communi- ties were attacked throughout the Rhine Valley. In Strasbourg, it was reported that 16,000 Jews were killed, and others con- verted rather than being burned. The money of those killed was confiscated and distributed among the population. The Jewish victims of the attacks during the Bubonic plague ep- idemic may have been killed as much for money as the Black Death itself.
Religious intolerance, xenophobia, greed, and ignorance all contributed to the emergence of anti-Semitism during this period. When Jews were expelled from Spain, many migrat- ed to France, Holland, and the Germanic kingdoms. In those migrations came doctors, businessmen, and scholars who en- hanced the economic and cultural levels of their new coun- tries. Gradually, Jews moved beyond the Rhine Valley into Poland and eastern Russia which became a vast homeland for rural Jews, and others returned to England under the religious tolerance put into effect during Cromwell’s rule.
er than a religious rights decision.
Rabbi Ben Israel’s role, as a Sephardic rabbi, might have been to assist the already existing Sephardic business com- munity in England, but it had the effect of opening England to Jewish life. We do not know when religious services were first allowed, but Samuel Pepys makes reference to attending Simchat Torah in 1663 in a synagogue on Creechurch Lane, which is the location of Bevis Marks, the Sephardic synagogue in London. It is the only synagogue in Europe that has held services continuously for the last 300 years. Western Europe. With the French Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789 freedom of religion and the free exercise of worship were recognized. That freedom to the Jews gradually spread across other European countries. By the early 1800’s the position of Jews in France, Italy, Prussia, and England had improved. Then, in 1807 Napoleon recognized Judaism as an official religion of France, and he gave Jews equal citizenship rights in France and the Italian territories under French rule. As the liberator of the Jews, “Napoleon” became a popular name for Jewish boys after that.
The growing secularism in Europe after the Enlighten-
ment also led to the acceptance and assimilation of Jews into the larger society. In secularism many Jews saw a way out of the historic limitations imposed by anti-Semitism, and in in- creasing numbers Jewish young people turned to philosophy, literature, and science as avenues out of the ghetto or shtetl. Throughout the nineteenth century and into the early twen- tieth century Western European Jews experienced success in many areas of life from business to academia and sports, but these achievements were muted by the continuing presence of anti-Semitism, as seen in the Dreyfus Affair in 1894 in France. False information was used to convict Dreyfus, a military of-
ficer, of treason and strip him of his rank. He was sentenced to life in prison, and for the next ten years he was imprisoned on Devil’s Island in French Guiana before his conviction was overturned in 1906. This incident revealed the anti-Semitism that was just under the surface of Western European society and that would erupt onto the world stage with the Nazis in the 1930s.
Thousands of families were left destitute. The Tsar blamed
the Jews for the riots and imposed harsh restrictions on Jewish communities. In the next wave of pogroms from 1903 to 1906 thousands of Jews were killed and many more injured. It is es- timated that 2,500 people were killed in one pogrom alone in
Odessa in 1905. As in the 1880s, massacres were planned for Easter, and some were led by priests. In many places the army did not intervene to control the riots. During the revolutionary period from 1917 to 1922 tens of thousands of Jews were killed in the chaos and fighting. As the Bolsheviks gradually gained control of Russia, the killing of Jews diminished. Although the international and atheist ideology of the Bolsheviks was more accepting of Jews, who tended to be poor workers, Judaism was denounced as were all religions.
The harsh conditions under which Russian Jewry lived led to people trying to escape those conditions through migra- tion, assimilation, secularism, or withdrawing into self-con- tained religious communities. Between 1880 and 1920 two million Jews left Russia, mostly migrating to the United States, Europe, and South America. The pogroms and poverty of shtetl life combined with the repressive anti- Semitism of the Church and the Tsarist governments led to the largest Jewish migration in history. As much as 80 percent of the Jewish pop- ulation in the United States today can trace its family origins to these Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian territories.
Still others changed their names, converted to Christianity in their attempt to assimilate into Russian life. Some chose the path of secularism, and many of those joined the revolution- ary movements to change Russian life. Jews had an important role in the revolts of 1917, and some, such as Trotsky, became leaders of the Bolshevik movement. Other Jews turned inward, focusing on religious tradition and practice. Starting in the late 1700’s and throughout the nineteenth century the hasidic movement was growing, as tens of thousands of people found the re-assurance of Jewish identity and life in self-contained religious communities. Most Hasidim lived largely ghettoized lives within the confines of closed religious communities.
His later book, Ethics, went even further in questioning the Jewish and Christian concept of God. Spinoza argued that God is not so much a being in Heaven but rather a supernat- ural substance that is infinite. He thought that everything that existed was a part of God, and nothing existed separately from God. Both human thought and material things were expres- sions of God.
This concept of God was rejected by most Jews, but it opened the door for thought that went beyond traditional views of the supernatural. Spinoza’s questioning of the concept of God led to his alienation from the Jewish community in Amsterdam. The split between religious and secular thought was growing more marked. The Jewish Enlightenment (Has- kalah) was led in Germany by Moses Mendelssohn (1729- 1786) who facilitated the transition of European Jewry from the isolation of the ghetto to stand in the mainstream of Euro- pean thought.
Mendelssohn confronted the problem of how to maintain the historic religious traditions of Judaism in keeping with the
rational and scientific thought that was common at the time. Although Mendelssohn remained a traditional and observant Jew his entire life, he believed that Jews and Christians shared the basic principles of a common faith and that they should be able to live together in peace and tolerance. When Men- delssohn was attacked by Christian theologians for his posi- tions, he declined to engage in polemics against Christianity. He would not talk about the Jews as being the chosen peo- ple and urged Jews to interact more with the society around them. Mendelssohn’s writings laid the basis for the Reform movement in Judaism with its emphasis on interaction with the larger society and the belief that every person reaches re- ligious fulfillment through his or her own righteous behavior. That he was as much a product of the Enlightenment as of the Talmud is reflected in his belief that religion is a matter of nature and of reason.
The French Revolution occurred shortly after Mendels-
sohn’s death, and it provided the civic and cultural freedom for Jewish communities that the great thinker had advocated. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, the first “Reform” congregations were established in Germany where the move- ment was most widely accepted. As German Jews migrated to the United States in the mid and late 1800’s, they carried the teachings of the new liberal Judaism with them.
Although the French Revolution broke the constraints on Jews built during the Medieval period in Western Europe, the social impact of these revolutionary times did not arrive to Eastern Europe where Jewish communities continued to live in traditional ways. A new form of Judaism emerged partly in reaction to the rational modernism of the Enlightenment, and this new movement, called Hasidism, was rooted in the kabbalistic mysticism of the past and led by a non-rabbi, Israel
Baal Shem Tov. Hasidism focused on the continual presence of God and emphasized the emotive experience of that presence, as well as intensive Torah study and strict observance of the mishnahic and talmudic teachings.
Coming out of these experiences of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe, there are three primary streams of Ashkenazi Judaism today, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform. • Orthodox or Traditional. Orthodox or Tra- ditional Jews follow the levitical laws of the Bible, especially keeping kosher and observing Shabbat. This includes a wide range of communities from Eastern European Orthodox Jews living in separate communities to Traditional Sephardic Jews living in contemporary urban societies. • Reform. The Reform movement, which developed primarily in Germany, England, and the United States, is an attempt to adapt religious thinking and practice to the post-Enlightenment experience of living in predominantly Protestant societies. • Conservative. The Con- servatives are more traditional in religious practice, but they do make adaptations in ritual and life to the contemporary world. • Renewal. Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a former Chabad rabbi, broke away from that group to develop Aleph, a movement that is more inclusive of religious expressions. Women have more prominent roles in ritual in the Renewal Movement. • Reconstructionist. Rabbi Modecai Kaplan devel- oped this movement around the view of Judaism as a continu- ously evolving civilization. With an emphasis on modernism, it says that Jewish religious laws should be followed, but they are not binding but are a variable cultural expression of Ju- daism. These divisions did not develop in Sephardic Judaism, which identifies itself as observant and traditional. Sephardic practice includes observing Shabbat, keeping kosher, and oth-
er practices considered to be Orthodox in the European world. Most Sephardim wear Western style dress unlike the Haredi or Hasidim among Ashkenazi, who continue Russian style dress from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
European Jewish migrants had gone to the United States,
but in 1921 that changed as the United States drastically re- stricted migration, and European Jewish migration increas- ingly turned toward Israel.
Jews in Germany were prominent in academia, the pro- fessions, literature, science and medicine, and the arts. More than one-third of the Nobel prize winners in Germany were Jewish, but anti-Semitism was ever present. When the Nazis came to power in 1933 with Adolf Hitler, the anti-Jewish rhet- oric increased sharply. Gradually over the next few years the
German government tightened the controls on Jews. In as se- ries of restrictive measures that could have been taken from fifteenth century Spain, the Nazis restricted the Jews from par- ticipating in professions; their businesses were attacked; and they were forced to move into ghettos and to wear identifying clothing. Germans under the Nazis carried anti-Semitic vio- lence to one of the highest levels in history. Restrictions were imposed on Jews early after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933. At first, Jews were prohibited from working in the government and from working in many professions. Then, Jewish children were expelled from public schools, and Jews were prohibit- ed from owning certain kinds of wealth. A shift in the level of overt violence came on “Kristallnacht”, November 9, 1938 when Nazi sympathizers rampaged through Jewish commu- nities burning synagogues and vandalizing Jewish businesses, homes and schools. They broke windows of Jewish stores and looted them. One hundred Jews were killed, and 30,000 men were arrested and sent to concentration camps that had al- ready been built. Jewish properties were confiscated from cash to gold and silver, businesses, houses, and personal items such as art and other valuables, a process that intensified in 1942 with the “final solution” as Jews were arrested and shipped to concentration camps. It is estimated that confiscated Jewish wealth, perhaps twenty billion dollars in today’s value, paid for 30 percent of the Nazi war costs.
The systematic killing of Jews from 1942-45 was the most
dramatic example of state sponsored genocide in the twentieth century. By the time of the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945, Germans and their accomplices in other European countries had killed six million Jews, half of the world’s Jewish popula- tion, a monument to human savagery and they did it in the short time of three years. The atrocity of a state systematically
killing its citizens introduced a new horror into human his- tory. Earlier in the century the Turks and the Russians had killed millions of their own citizens, but it was the horror of the German atrocities that defined the meaning of Holocaust.
At the end of the War, the millions of Jews displaced by the German terror were scattered around Europe, and over the next few years, they were slowly relocated in Is- rael and in various countries in the Americas. Acting out the centuries old intolerance of European Christen- dom toward Judaism, the culturally sophisticated Ger- mans had launched the never to be forgotten genocide. The Re-establishment of Israel. Soon after the United Na- tions was founded at the end of World War II, the call for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the British protector- ate in the Middle East was made. After failed negotiations with the Palestinians, the United Nations voted to re-create the state of Israel, and in May, 1948, it came into being. Since the declaration of the state of Israel, it experienced opposition from its Muslim neighbors. Originally this opposition came from the Palestinians and all the neighboring Muslim states, but that has declined over the years as first Egypt and then Jordan made peace with the new Jewish state. As the conflict eased with the neighboring countries, it increased with the Palestinians after the 1967 war. The Muslim states could not defeat Israel through battlefield warfare, but the Palestinians shifted to the strategy of urban guerrilla warfare. Israel is a mixture of Ashkenazim, who are German and Eastern Euro- pean in their culture, language, foods, and family names, and the Sephardim, who are Mediterranean and Middle Eastern in culture. In addition to Hebrew the Ashkenazim speak Yiddish, which is a Germanic based language with Hebrew and Slavic elements, and the Sephardim speak a series of Judeo-Spanish
languages based on medieval Spanish and Hebrew, most com- monly known as Ladino or Haketia. The term “Sephardim” has been broadly used to include other Middle Eastern Jews, the Mizrahi Jews, from Iraq, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries. Their languages have been Arabic and versions of Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian.
Judaism is the oldest of the great religions of the world, and it continues to be a vibrant religion in spite of a millenni- um long campaign of anti-Semitism by European Christians that included repeated examples of expulsions from countries and genocidal attacks on communities. Judaism is one of the few world religions that is also identified with an ethnic group, the Jewish people. The people and the religion have been inte- grally linked throughout history.
Jews have lived continuously in the Middle East since the time of Abraham. The destruction of the second Temple and the Jewish Diaspora under the Romans created Jewish com- munities throughout the known world from Morocco to In- dia. During the Byzantine Empire much of the Middle East was Christian but later converted to Islam. Throughout that history of change Jewish communities have been a part of the Middle East. Jews in Arab Lands Jews have lived in Muslim lands from the beginning of the rule of Muhammad in Medi- na, 1,300 years ago. Jews have lived in most of the forty-nine contemporary nation states that are predominately Muslim. Throughout most of that history of living side by side, Mus- lims and Jews have lived peacefully, but there have been peri- ods of conflict.
Sura 9:29 of the Qur-ān says that Muslims should fight against non-believers until they are subdued and pay tribute. This was also in keeping with the practice that Muhammad showed in his own lifetime. During the first few years of con- quest, there were different interpretations of what subduing and paying tribute implied, and the treatment of Jews usually depended on the nature of their reaction to the invading Mus- lims and to the details of their surrender. In some places they were required to pay a poll tax (jizya) and in others a land tax (kharaj). (Stillman 1979:24-25)
The relationship between Judaism and Islam has varied between acceptance and conflict. Islam gives protection to the People of the Book, i.e. Bible, and Christians and Jews have lived with few problems in Muslims lands for most of the time. In fact, Jews have been persecuted less in Muslim countries than in Christian countries. For centuries Jews lived through- out the Middle East, sharing knowledge with Muslims, in- termarrying, and carrying on business. In moments of fun- damentalist Muslim resurgence anti-Jewish activities could flame up, and Jewish people could be attacked as non-Mus- lims, but mostly Jews could live in peace with their Muslim neighbors.
After the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, a number of Arab countries expelled their Jewish populations or created such hostile environments that they were forced to leave, including Egypt, Iraq, Libya, and others. These expul- sions on short notice meant that Jewish families lost business- es, homes, and other properties. Many were jailed before being expelled. This began a diaspora from Arab lands that led peo- ple to re-settle in Israel and a number of European and Ameri- can countries. One million Jews were displaced in this process. Some Muslim countries did not expel Jews and main-
tained a degree of plurality, namely Morocco, Turkey, Iran, and Yemen. Those countries still have Jewish populations to- day, even though they are a fraction of what they once were. Jews in Morocco. The Jewish population of Morocco is one of the oldest in the world after Israel. There are indications that Jews arrived with Phoenician traders some time after 1000 B.C.E. when settlements were established in present day Larache, Tangier, Asilah, and as far south as Essaouira. Other Jews seem to have arrived after the fall of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E. Although many Jews were taken captive to Baby- lon at that point, others seem to have fled the destruction first to Egypt and then across the western desert finally stopping in the Atlas Mountains of present day Morocco. Other Jews arrived after the fall of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. By the time of the Arab conquest of Morocco in 702 C.E. there were Jewish communities, and the Ibn Khaldun reports that there were Jewish tribal groups in the Maghreb alongside Amazigh groups. The Moroccan government officially recognizes to- day that Jews and Amazigh were founding populations of the country along with the Arabs. The Amazigh are also known as Berbers (Barbarians), the name given to them by the Ro- mans, and that name has continued to the present. Jews have lived closely with Muslims over the centuries in Morocco, and that tradition is honored in the celebration of the Mimouna. As Passover is approaching, Jews traditionally have “sold” their chametz (all products containing wheat) to their Muslim neighbors for safekeeping. At the end of the Passover week, Jewish families invite their Muslim neighbors and others to celebrate the end of that special week with them, The Mus- lim neighbors bring back the chametz, and the Jewish fami- lies prepare an elaborate table filled with sweets and pastries that they were not able to eat during Passover. The Mimouna
symbolizes the Muslim/ Jewish co-existence and the plurality of which Moroccans pride themselves. In recent years young Muslim professionals and university students have organized the Mimouna Club, which is dedicated to studying and honor- ing Jewish-Moroccan traditions. It is not unusual for the Mi- mouna Club to organize events with Jewish groups in honor of Jewish holidays in Rabat or other cities. At the end of Passover, Mimouna parties are organized with Jewish and Muslim at- tendees. When Jews and Muslims have fast days that coincide, they can have joint break-the-fast meals. The government of Morocco shows support for this activity, which reflect the so- cial and religious plurality of the country.
century following Muhammad’s death, Jews welcomed the Ar- abs and aided their take over in some places but opposed them in others. In North Africa Jews fought the Arab armies and stalled their advance for a generation, but in Spain Jews readily received and collaborated with their new Muslim overlords. Damia al-Kahina was the Jewish Queen of a Berber tribe, and she became the leader of the resistance against the Arab inva- sion of North Africa in the late seventh century C.E. Before the Muslims arrived, some of the Berber tribes practiced Ju- daism and some Christianity. Arab sources say that the root of her name is the Arabic word kahin, meaning sorcerer, but the comparable word in Hebrew is kohen, or priest, which has also led to the suggestion that she might have been from a priestly Jewish family. By calling her kahinah, the Arab writers were saying that she was not a Muslim, and they suspected her of super human powers. (Roth 1982:122-125; Hannoum 2001) Initially, Damia al-Kahina’s authority was limited to her local tribe, but as the Arabs advanced from Egypt, they killed her predecessor, which led to her life-long fight against them.
She rallied the various Amazigh tribes in opposition to the
Arab invasion, and it was this leadership that projected her into history. The first Arabs arrived to Tunisia in 647, and by the 670’s there were Muslim converts and a Muslim military presence. As al-Kahina’s power grew, she suspended the prac- tice of Muslim law within her domains, and Arab writers said that she oppressed Muslim residents. The Arab forces accused her of being cruel to her people, and they threatened to invade and establish Muslim rule. That conflict was peacefully re- solved at that point, and the threatened invasion never mate- rialized. The Amazigh and Arabs agreed to a peace treaty with the Amazigh paying an annual tribute. By soon the conflict resurfaced, and within a decade, there was renewed resistance
from the Amazigh. The Caliph again sent an army, but after a fierce battle the Amazigh defeated the Arabs and inflicted suffered severe losses. After that defeat the Arabs withdrew for several years.
At the beginning of the eighth century, the Arabs sent yet another army, and this time they came in overwhelming force. The final battle took place in 701 or 702. The Amazigh were defeated, and Damia al-Kahina was captured and killed, but her death did not end the confrontation. Although most Ber- ber tribes did convert to Islam over time, they continued to reject Arabization. Damia al- Kahina united the Amazigh in a way that no other leader has been able to do since that time, and the story of her life has become the stuff of legend. Jew- ish and Muslims in the Middle Ages. Norman Stillman gives a survey of the Jewish experience under Muslim rule over the next few centuries.
Jewish culture itself developed and flourished during the Islamic High Middle Ages (ca. 850-1250). This was the peri- od that saw the veritable crystallization and formulation of Judaism as we know it today. During this time, the Babylo- nian Talmud gradually became the constitutional foundation of Diaspora Judaism, the synagogue service and the prayer- book text took on their familiar form, Jewish theology was systematized, Jewish law codified, and Hebrew language and literature underwent its greatest revival prior to its rebirth in modern times.
By the end of the thirteenth century, however, the cen- ter of historical gravity had shifted northward and westward to Europe. So too had the major centers of Jewish population and creativity. Most of the countries of the Arab world came under the rule of non-Arab military dynasties that imposed a Middle Eastern brand of feudalism upon their domains. The
general cultural level and the socioeconomic conditions of Arabicspeaking Jewry stagnated and declined... (1979:xv-xvi) During most of the 800 years of Muslim presence in Spain, Jews flourished under their rule, and the Jewish population in that country was the largest in Europe, and it is estimated that as much as 80 percent of all European Jews lived in Spain.
In the late 1800’s the Austrian Jewish journalist Theodore Herzl (1860-1904) started a movement encouraging Jews to migrate to their traditional homeland. Anti-Semitic events such as the Dreyfus Affair in France in the 1890’s and a new round of anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia fueled the conviction that Jews would only be safe in their own land. For decades most European Jewish migrants had gone to the United States, but in 1921 that changed as the United States drastically re- stricted migration. Within a few years the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis began forcing large numbers to migrate, and many chose the British Mandate of Palestine.
His Majesty’s Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish People, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing
non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status by Jews in any other country.
During the debate in the United Nations on the formation of the state of Israel after World War II, the British were ruling the territories of present day Israel, Palestinian territories, and Jordan, and they supported dividing the land between Jews and Arabs. In 1946 there were 543,000 Jews in the three ad-
ministrative districts that were carved out of the Ottoman Em- pire to create Palestine. As large numbers of Jews, who were Displaced Persons after World War II, began arriving, the Jew- ish population grew to 716,000.
Jews bought agricultural land and established a new col- lective farm organization known as the kibbutz in which men and women shared tasks equally. Urban Jews established Tel Aviv as a focus of commerce and cultural activities. Hebrew was revived as the language of the Zionists. The traumatic ex- perience of the Holocaust sealed the commitment of the inter- national community to create the independent state of Israel, which was approved in 1948 by the United Nations. After cen- turies of living in peace, the struggle over land in the newly re-established Israel led to a decades long conflict.
Since the creation of the modern state of Israel, interna- tional relations between the Muslim world and the West have focused on its existence. The creation of Israel occurred short- ly after the creation of the modern Muslim nation-states in the region, and it became the major battleground as the new nation-states defined themselves in relation to the West. The British supported the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of ethnic based nation states in its place, name- ly Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Israel. Al- though Arab nationalists supported the establishment of their own individual countries, most were opposed to a separate country for Israel saying that Jews had always lived with Arabs in a pluralistic society, and there was no need for a separate Jewish homeland.
Life in Israel between Arabs and Israelis has been one of intermittent collaboration and conflict. Perhaps in no other place is the sharp divide between Westernstyle technology and capitalism and Muslim-style family economy more apparent.
That clash contributes to conflict. Equity in lifestyle is import- ant to have political and cultural integrity.
In the current situation, the sense of conflict with Israel varies throughout the Muslim world with non-Arab Muslims generally being less identified with it. However, the young- er generation in some parts of the Middle East today is be- ing taught that Israel is an illegitimate nation-state occupy- ing Arab lands in an affront to Arab sovereignty. Jews lived throughout the Middle East and North Africa under Muslim rulers for 1300 years, generally in better terms than held true in Europe under Christian rulers.
Two events contributed to changing that dynamic that had been relatively stable. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the rise of Zionism led to increased migration of Jews into the homeland of Israel. Then, in 1917 the Balfour Decla- ration by the British said that Jews should have their tradition- al homeland. In April, 1920 the World War I winning Allies (Britain, France, Italy, Greece, Japan, and Belgium) met in San Remo, Italy to discuss a peace treaty with Turkey. The Allies agreed to grant Great Britain the mandate over what is today Israel and Jordan and authorized them to implement the Bal- four Declaration. The League of Nations confirmed the British Mandate for Palestine.
Within days of the San Remo conference Arab protests began in Jerusalem. Throughout the next two decades Pales- tinians, led by Haj Amin el-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusa- lem and others, fought against Jews. In 1921, 1924, and 1926- 28 a series of violent confrontations left hundreds dead. In the Hebron Massacre of 1929 Jewish/Palestinian tensions reached a boiling point as Arabs attacked Jewish homes, synagogues, and businesses, killing sixty-seven and driving the rest of the
Jews out of Hebron, leaving the city without Jews for the first time in centuries. In 1936-38 a major Palestinian revolt left thousands of Arabs and Jews dead in three years of intense fighting.
After the Nazis came into power in Germany, some Arab leaders wanted the anti-Jewish programs of the Nazis to be extended to the Middle East. Haj Amin al-Husseini traveled to Germany and met with Adolf Hitler in a bid for Nazi assis- tance against the Jews in Palestine. Hitler refused. Israel 1948- 1978 The political and theological problem was heightened in 1948 when the United Nations voted to create the state of Is- rael, partitioning the area with the Jewish state along the coast and the Arab state along the West Bank of the Jordan River. However, the Arab groups refused to accept the partition, and war broke out when the British withdrew, starting the conflict still unresolved decades later.
Although much of this time the conflict has been a stale- mate, a turning point came in the third Arab-Israeli War in 1967. Leading up to the war, Egypt expelled the United Na- tions Emergency Force that separated Egypt from Israel and prepared an invasion by amassing 1000 tanks and 100,000 soldiers on the border, threatening a deathblow to the Jewish state. Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Algeria also contributed troops and arms for the planned attack.
Faced with a seemingly overwhelming Arab army and a life or death moment, Israel launched a preemptive strike destroying the Egyptian air force and began its own tank led assault on the Egyptian forces, driving them out of the Sinai Peninsula and across the Red Sea back into Egypt proper. As the Jordanians and Syrians attacked from the east and north, Israeli forces also drove them back into their own lands. As the invading armies fell back, Israel gained control of the Gaza
Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.
This led to the current situation with Israel in control of lands that were previously occupied by their Arab neighbors. In the Camp David Accords of 1978 Israel agreed to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and to begin working immediately toward the creation of a Palestinian state with negotiations to be completed within one year.
Later, Jordan also agreed to peace and supported the cre- ation of an independent Palestinian state. Israel was caught in the position of occupying Arab lands that their former rulers did not want to re-claim, and it agreed that the Palestinian people could immediately form a state. Thirty years of stale- mate have followed that agreement with the two sides unable to agree how to implement it. On both sides there are peo- ple who want to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the con- flict, but there are others who refuse. Muslim Countries and Positions on Israel The Muslim world is divided into distinct cultural zones, and identity with the conflict in Israel varies widely from one zone to the other. Many Muslim governments now hold moderate positions toward Israel, but the opposition to the Jewish state is led by Iran and its allies, Hezbollah and Hamas, with the acquiesce of Syria and Lebanon. Most Arab countries do not recognize Israel diplomatically and often vote as a block against Israel in international forums such as the United Nations.
At the same time many of the same countries quietly
work with the Jewish state at different levels. Some of the di- visions within the Muslim world are: Arab. Although public- ly opposed, the governments of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan have in some instanc- es taken moderate stances toward Israel although there are
clerics and citizen groups opposed to it. Arabized. These in- clude countries that are not completely Arab ethnically, but that have been acculturated to Arab traditions. They are Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Some of these governments have a mixed “realist” policy toward Is- rael, but there are pockets of citizenry completely opposed to it. Non-Arab Middle East. Turkey and Iran are not Arab coun- tries. Turkey has had a relatively moderate position in relation to Israel, but Iran is strongly opposed.
to adequately provide for their citizens. After living for cen- turies under the colonialism of the Ottoman Turks and then the Europeans, the Arab lands (i.e. the Middle East and North Africa) are now independent nations and creating their own futures.
Much of the Muslim world does not accept the existence of the Israeli state, and some governments actively oppose it. But, there is a division in the Muslim world, and other gov- ernments work quietly with Israel on matters of security, health, and economic investment among others. The Arab fight against the Jewish presence in the Middle East has been going on for the last century, and it is still not resolved. As Sunni and Shi’ite movements fight with each other and Jihadi Salafists fight the established governments, the ideological and religious struggles have taken dominance in the Middle East and made the issue of Israel’s existence a less urgent question for some Arab groups.
Jewish communities in Israel and the United States are thriving. Since World War II the fastest growing Jewish identi- ty group in the United States has been secular, and the second fastest growing group has been Orthodox Judaism, led by the hasidic Chabad Lubavitch movement. In the early twentieth century in the United States, Reform and Conservative con- gregations were the strongest, but in recent decades American Jews are tending to divide between secularism and Orthodoxy. The global population of Jews has been gradually increasing, following the devastating losses in the Holocaust.
The world-wide population of Jews today is 14 million, still less than the 16.6 million in 1939. Most Jews live in Is-
rael (6 million) and the United States (5.7 million), with 1.4 million in Europe and smaller populations in Latin America, Africa, and East Asia. The largest change has been in Europe where 9.5 million (57 percent) of the world’s Jews lived until 1939, but only 1.4 million, 10 percent of the world’s Jews, live there today, and that number continues to fall as Jews leave Europe. Anti-Semitism and the threat of violence in European countries against Jewish communities is fueling emigration to Israel and the Americas.
A bright spot in the Jewish experience of the last century has been the founding of the modern state of Israel. Starting from almost no economic or technological infrastructure, Is- rael has grown to be thirty-seventh in the world in Gross Do- mestic Product per capita, $36,200. That is in the top 20 per- cent of world economies. Israel is a leader in innovation and new technologies. It continues to have security problems giv- en the political and ideological changes that are affecting the world around it. After dramatic changes in recent centuries, Jews are very much a part of the twenty-first century, and Jews have a major role in medical, scientific, technological, cultur- al, political, and spiritual contributions to make the world a better place.
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