Tigris, and beside the canals that crossed between the two rivers. The Jews were an agrarian society. Others worked in linen, flax, or silk, in live-stock, or vegetable gardening.
Jews maintained synagogues where they gathered on Sabbath mornings. Women had a subordinate role in public society. Most of the occupations of women were not different than in other ancient societies. Family structure was traditional. A young age for marriage was encouraged.
Jews encountered the Persian administration through the occasional billeting of soldiers or the presence of Persian nobles and overseers. Taxation also brought the Jews into direct contact with the administration. As inhabitants of a Persian empire, Jews in Babylonia came into regular contact with Persian language and culture, which left its mark on Jewish thought. The dominant religion in the Sasanian Empire was Zoroastrianism, and some of its more pronounced features were known to the Jews. Magical practice was known to all. The Talmud is brimming with material of a magical nature. The biblical legacy was of greatest importance for the identity of Babylonian Jews.
The Rabbis emerged as the major intellectual force, transforming not only the lives of Babylonian Jews, but Jewish religion and culture until today. The Rabbinic revolution was achieved through education. The Rabbis maintained the supreme value of the study of the Torah, and Rabbinic students were expected to subordinate themselves to a master and dedicate themselves to study.
There are signs of friction between Rabbis and other Jews. Leadership known as the resh galuta or Exilarch emerged, who professed to be the scion of the House of David. The Exilarchate could function as a source of immense prestige. As Babylonian Jewry grew in importance, a dynamic of regional rivalry developed between it and the Jews of Palestine. The Exilarch symbolically embodied Babylonia’s alleged ascendancy over the Jewish center in Palestine and the rest of the Jewish world.
5 Jews and/under Islam, 650–1000 CE
Dr. Phillip Lieberman of Vanderbilt University writes that with the rise of Islam in the early 7th century CE, Jews were concentrated in oases such as Yathrib (later called Medina) and Khaybar. Some, like their brethren in Babylonia and the Land of Israel, were involved in agriculture. Others were involved in trading and crafts. Islamic histories may have set up Jews as mighty imagined enemies even where the actual number of Jews may have been small. The Jewish population in North Africa is known from Roman history and the presence of Jews is well-attested across the southern Mediterranean.
The Pact of ʿUmar served as a contract between Muslim rulers and subject peoples. This agreement offered dhimmī peoples relative stability and security, even if its provisions might have hampered their upward mobility. Rabbinic academies of Babylonia and the Land of Israel provided succor to the Jews of the Mediterranean Basin and the Iberian Peninsula, offering legal opinions on all aspects of daily life. There was competition between the academies of Babylonia and the Land of Israel for the loyalty of communities in the Diaspora. Jewish courts adjudicated matters, although Jews also had the ability to seek recourse in Islamic courts.
The Cairo Genizah provides much detail about urban life in Fusṭāṭ and other cities. Genizah documents suggest a population well integrated socially and economically into Islamic society. There is evidence of prominent women who served at the hub of trading networks, yet much of women’s economic and social activity was centered on the home. In contrast with Christian Europe, the practice of polygyny persisted in the Jewish community.
A dispute concerning the succession of the Jewish Exilarch in 760 CE led to a schism by Anan b. David. The rejection of rabbanite exegesis and a scripturalist approach to the Bible of these »Karaites« was part of a long-standing internal dispute. Religious and communal life was organized around the synagogue. In Fusṭāṭ, there were distinct synagogues for those adhering to the rabbis’ Palestinian rite, the Babylonian rite, and the synagogue of the Karaites.
6 Judaism in the Middle Ages 1000–1500
Dr. Robert Chazan of New York University covers Judaism’s shift from its Mediterranean orbit to Europe. The small Jewish community in Northern Europe around the year 1000 became a vigorous branch of the Jewish people. Christian rulers perceived Jews as useful for economic improvement. Anti-Jewish animosity and violence was manifest. In 1095, Pope Urban II announced an undertaking to recapture the sites of Christianity in the Holy Land. Anti-Jewish crusading violence reflected popular resistance to Jewish settlement in northern Europe. Yet French Jewry produced the first major classics of literature to emerge in Europe.
The Church prohibited Christians taking interest from other Christians, so finance became a Jewish specialty. Allegations of Jewish murder of Christian youngsters began to spread during the twelfth century. King Philip Augustus of France instituted a new policy toward his Jews: confiscation of Jewish goods; a remission of debts owed to Jews; and finally, expulsion.
In the 1230’s, Pope Gregory IX sent letters to the authorities of Christendom with the allegation that the Talmud contained demeaning references to Christianity. King Louis IX of France convened a court where Rabbi Yehiel of Paris defended the Talmud, while scholars from the university of Paris constituted the jury. They found the Talmud guilty and its manuscripts were burned. The Jews expelled from northwestern Europe proceeded eastward to economically less developed areas.
By the end of the first Christian millennium, the Jewish communities of Southern Europe were well rooted, especially on the Iberian Peninsula. Jews immigrated to Christian Spain and southern France as a result of the twelfth century invasion of the Almohade Muslims of North Africa. Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, who was born and studied in Muslim Spain left as a result. He was one of the towering intellects of all Jewish history. Major stimuli for Jewish creativity across medieval southern Europe came from the Islamic sphere.
In the thirteenth century, inquisitorial courts played a significant role in the Roman Church. The claim of heresy among the New Christians was a major factor in the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. Jews made their way eastward into the Ottoman Empire.
7 Judaism During and After the Expulsions 1492–1750
Dr. Joseph Davis of Gratz College in Philadelphia writes that between 1492 and about 1750, when Moses Mendelssohn began the Jewish Enlightenment, Jews and Judaism remained in some ways »medieval,« while in other ways, they became cautiously and even precociously »modern.«
As expulsions of Jews from European countries continued, Jewish life in 1570 was at its lowest ebb in Western Europe. Recovery in the sixteenth century was remarkable. Ottoman authorities were eager to repopulate Istanbul, which eventually had a community of 40,000 Jews. The emigration of Jews from Western Europe also helped repopulate the Jewish communities of the land of Israel. In Istanbul, Salonika, Safed, and throughout the Mediterranean, the new Jewish communities were divided into ethnic subgroups of Jews.
In Poland, Jews also found policies of religious toleration. The Protestant Reformation, and the failure of Protestants and Catholics to convince one another, made Jewish »stubbornness« seem less exceptional. The expulsions from Western Europe ran their course, and about 1570 the tide of migration began to shift.
The sixteenth and early seventeenth century was an era of rabbis who adapted Jewish law to new circumstances, publishing responsa, commentaries, and codes of Jewish law. Poland and the Ottoman Empire stood out as major centers of Talmud study and halakhic creativity. Jewish mystics and Kabbalists immigrated to the land of Israel and settled in Safed. It and Jerusalem continued to attract great scholars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Alongside of halakhah and rabbinic literature, and sometimes in tension with it, kabbalah was the second great pillar of early modern Judaism.
Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov (»Master of the Good Name«) preached a new, spiritually democratic version of Judaism. He had a religious insight of enormous importance, »No place is empty of [God].« Besides its theology of radical Divine immanence, Hasidism introduced a variety of changes into Jewish life. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were a period of crisis in Jewish theology. However, the period was also one of increased political stability,