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H12 THE JEW IN THE MEDIEVAL WORLDJACOB R. MARCUSYEARS 1315-1791
GOOD CONDITION, SOFTCOVER, 504 PAGES, AN IMPORTANT BOOK IN THIS IMPORTANT ASPECT OF HISTORY.
This amazing book has 96 primary sources - excerpts from books and essays by and about pre-emancipation Jews, discussing topics as varied as Christian and Muslim oppression of Jews, Jewish religious law, Jewish false messiahs, and Jewish education.
Some of the more interesting things I learned:
*That Christian oppression of Jews began almost as soon as Christians took over the Roman Empire. Just a few years after Constantine (Rome's first Christian emperor) took power, he issued relatively mild decrees against Jews converting or intermarrying Christians. A Jew who converted and circumcised a non-Jewish slave could be subject to capital punishment. A century later, Theodosius actually prohibited Jews from erecting new synagogues.
On the other hand, as late as the 1750s Frederick II of Prussia prohibited Jews from establishing private synagogues, and sought to regulate exactly which prayers Jews could engage in.
*Just as Jews sought to distance themselves from Christians, Christians did the same. A 300 Spanish church council prohibited Christians from eating with Jews. And in 325, the Council of Nicaea changed the date of Easter to ensure that Easter's dating was not dependent on the dating of the Jewish Passover. (Some early Christian communities, by contrast, celebrated Easter on the first night of Passover).
*The sheer diversity of Jewish customs over the centuries. Some Jews today think that the most distinctively dressed groups (such as the Hasidim) are the most "traditional" or "authentic" Jews. But a 1748 essay describing Shearith Israel (a still-prospering New York synagogue) writes that "Both men and women were dressed entirely in the English fashion; the former had all of them their hats on." (I visited Shearith Israel a few years ago, and today, hats are still more popular than in other shuls!) . Another essay describes Shabbat dinner in Alexandria, Egypt in the 15th century: Jews drank cups of wine, alternating with fruit, and did not start eating meat, etc. until they had drained six or seven cups!
*In the past as today, Jews struggled with observance, especially while traveling. From a 1748 description of New York Jews: "They commonly eat no pork; yet I have been told by several men of credit, that many of them (especially among the young Jews) when traveling, did not make the least difficulty about eating this, or any other meat that was put before them..."
*The amount of internal self-government in some Jewish communities. In 1637, the Jewish leadership of Lithuania held that in order to prevent Jews from overspending on marriages and other festive occasions, a local rabbi should "consider the number of guests which it is suitable for every individual, in view of his wealth and the occasion, to invite to a festive meal."
*The backwardness of a few Jewish communities. For example, the memoirs of Solomon Maimon describes his elementary school in Mirz, Poland as follows: "[His teacher] was the terror of all young people, `the scourge of God'; he treated those in his charge with unheard of cruelty, flogged them till the blood came, even for the slightest offense ... When the parents of these unfortunates came to him, and took him to task, he struck them with stones and whatever else came to hand, and drove them with his stick out of the house . . . All under his discipline became either blockheads or good scholars." Of course, the book contains an ample selection of essays about Jewish leaders who ensured that better contains prevailed.
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