Jewish History - Philosemitism

From Wikipedia,

Philo-Semitism

Philo-Semitism (also spelled philosemitism) or Judeophilia is an interest in, respect for and an appreciation of Jewish people, their history, and the influence of Judaism, particularly on the part of a gentile. Within the Jewish community, Philo-Semitism includes an interest in Jewish culture and a love of things that are considered Jewish.

The controversial term "philosemitism" arose as a pejorative in Germany to describe the positive prejudice towards Jews, in other words a philosemite is a "Jew-lover" or "Jew-friend."[1]

Concept

The concept of Philo-Semitism is not new, and it was arguably avowed by such thinkers as the 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who described himself as an "anti-anti-Semite."[2] 

Philo-Semitism is an expression of the larger phenomenon of allophilia, admiration for foreign cultures as embodied in the more widely known Anglophilia and Francophilia. The rise of Philo-Semitism has also prompted some to reconsider Jewish history, and they argue that while antisemitism must be acknowledged, it is wrong to reduce the history of the Jewish people to one merely of suffering (as has been fostered by well-meaning gentile Philo-Semites).

The case of the myths created around the supposed special relationship between Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the founding father of Czechoslovakia, and influential Jews from the US or elsewhere, myths created by Masaryk and adopted in amended forms by Czechoslovak Jews, let cultural historian Martin Wein quote Zygmunt Bauman's and Artur Sandauer's concept of an "allosemitic" worldview, in which, in Wein's words, "antisemitism and philosemitism overlap and share stereotypes, producing exaggerated disregard or admiration for Jews or Judaism."[3] In this sense, Wein quotes Masaryk's statements about a decisive Jewish influence over the press, and him mentioning Jews and freemasons in the same breath, when it came to lobbies he allegedly managed to win over.[3]

Medieval Poland

From history, one notable example of Philo-Semitism is that of the Polish king Casimir III the Great (r. 1333–1370). While the Jewish emancipation wouldn't begin in other countries until towards the end of the 1700s, in Poland Jews had been granted the freedom of worship, trade and travel in 1264 by Bolesław the Pious. In 1334 Jews persecuted across Europe were invited to Poland by Casimir the Great, who, in particular, vowed to protect them as "people of the king".[4] By the 15th century more than half of all diaspora Jews were living in Poland, which kept its status as the main center of Ashkenazi Jewry until the Holocaust.[5]

Asia

Very few Jews live in East Asian countries, but Jews are viewed in an especially positive light in some of them, partly owing to their shared wartime experiences during the Second World War. Examples include South Korea [6] and China.[7] In general, Jews are positively stereotyped as intelligent, business savvy and committed to family values and responsibility, while in the Western world, the first of the two aforementioned stereotypes more often have the negatively interpreted equivalents of guile and greed. In South Korean primary schools, the Talmud is mandatory reading.[6] During World War II, Japan made efforts to help Jews escape their demise at the hands of the Nazis, despite the fact that the country was then a member of the Axis alliance. The Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara facilitated the escape of more than 6,000 Jewish refugees to Japanese territory, risking his career and the lives of his family members; in 1985, he was honored by the State of Israel as Righteous Among the Nations. Annual surveys of a large number of countries conducted by the ADL have consistently shown very low levels of antisemitism in Southeast Asia, persisting only at permyriad levels (hundredths of a per cent, i.e. 0.02 per cent in 2014) in Laos. These surveys, others, and polling and analysis about Israel have shown that India has low levels of antisemitism[8] and relatively strong support for Israel, at the 55–65 per cent level, now surpassing the United States in the last respect.[9]

References

1.    With Friends Like These Review of Philosemitism in History in the New Republic by Adam Karp

2.    The Encyclopedia of Christianity, Volume 4 by Erwin Fahlbusch, Geoffrey William Bromiley

3.    Wein, Martin (2015). "Masaeyk and the Jews". A History of Czechs and Jews: A Slavic Jerusalem. Routledge. pp. 44–50. 

4.    "In Poland, a Jewish Revival Thrives—Minus Jews". New York Times. 12 July 2007. Probably about 70 percent of the world's European Jews, or Ashkenazim, can trace their ancestry back to Poland—thanks to a 14th-century king, Casimir III, the Great, who drew Jewish settlers from across Europe with his vow to protect them as "people of the king"

5.    Schoenberg, Shira. "Ashkenazim". Jewish Virtual Library.

6.    Alper, Tim. "Why South Koreans are in love with Judaism". The Jewish Chronicle. May 12, 2011. Retrieved February 8, 2014.

7.    Nagler-Cohen, Liron. "Chinese: 'Jews make money'". Ynetnews.

8.    ADL 2014 Annual Report,

9.    https://global100.adl.org/#country/india/2014

10. "Madonna Says She's an 'Ambassador for Judaism'". The New York Sun. Associated Press. September 17, 2007. Retrieved 2 July 2019.

11. Madonna's son has bar mitzvah in NY, Times of Israel,

Sources

·       Alan Edelstein. An Unacknowledged Harmony: Philo-Semitism and the Survival of European Jewry. (Contributions in Ethnic Studies). 

·       David S. Katz. Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England, 1603–1655.

·       Hilary L. Rubinstein & William D. Rubinstein. Philosemitism: Admiration and Support in the English-Speaking World for Jews, 1840–1939. (Studies in Modern History). 

·       Frank Stern. The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge: Antisemitism and Philosemitism in Postwar Germany. (Studies in Antisemitism) 

·       Marion Mushkat. Philo-Semitic and Anti-Jewish Attitudes in Post-Holocaust Poland. (Symposium Series, Vol 33).

·       Frank Stern. Im Anfang war Auschwitz: Antisemitismus und Philosemitismus im deutschen Nachkrieg. 

·       Gertrude Himmelfarb. The People of the Book: Philosemitism in England, From Cromwell to Churchill. 

·       Washington Post, January 8, 2006; page A01.

·       "On Philo-Semitism", by Jacques Berlinerblau, Georgetown University's Program for Jewish Civilization

Towards a History of “Philosemitic” Europe Since 1945

“Worse than/ hate which/ can offend: friendship/against which/ I cannot/ defend”: in this short poem entitled “Philosemite” and published in 1967, the Dutch Holocaust survivor Saul van Messel (the pseudonym used by historian Jaap Meijer) did not mince words against expressions of supposed sympathy towards Jews, which in the Netherlands of the 1950s and 1960s predominantly originated from the ranks of the Reformed clergy.[i] Doubting the motivations, authenticity or even the necessity of “philosemitism” was however not a new phenomenon among Jewish intellectuals in post-Holocaust Western Europe. In “Sartre, Portrait of a Philosemite” published in 1947 in Esprit, the French jurist and philosopher Wladimir Rabi offered cautious support for the views defended by the existentialist thinker in his famous Réflexions sur la question juive (1946), the most resounding “philosemite” manifesto of the postwar years. In this radical reformulation of the “Jewish question,” Sartre uniquely examined the Jewish condition from the point of view of the aggressor, the (French) anti-Semite and his distorted projections of fears and inadequacies on the figure of the Jew. Yet Rabi, and with him a long list of critical readers of Réflexions, ultimately felt unease with Sartre’s empathy: “Here we are under the microscope, ‘objects’ of Sartre’s generosity, yet ‘objects’ all the same.”[ii] In Being Jewish (1947), Emmanuel Levinas similarly praised Sartre’s path-breaking intervention but regretted that his exclusive concern with the anti-Semite’s gaze “creating the Jew” ignored the “facticity” of a Jewish existence not simply determined by antisemitism.

Despite their reservations, however, Levinas, Rabi and Meijer (a representative sample of Jewish writers who both embraced and challenged this newfound “love”) acknowledged the rise of a “philosemitic” discourse after the war, paradoxically at a time when mainstream “Holocaust consciousness” still remained a fairly distant prospect. “What is truly awful about the destruction of the Jews,” wrote the late Tony Judt, “is not that it mattered so much but that it mattered so little.” Although historians have now nuanced this diagnosis of indifference, Judt’s remark reminds us of the overall invisibility of the Holocaust, conceived as a singular Jewish experience, in postwar European societies until the late 1970s. This occultation, however, took place while multiple forms of philosophical, theological, and political “philosemitism” – the unsatisfactory term connoting support for Jews or identification with them – entered, with various degrees of intensity, the realm of public discourse in France, the Low Countries, Italy and England after 1945. In West Germany, where foreign visitors during the Adenauer era witnessed a strange “philosemitic fashion,” positive pronouncements on Jews by politicians contrasted with the silence – if not antagonism – on Jewish victims among a German public still “unable to mourn.” Manifestations of “philosemitism” in the early Federal Republic functioned primarily as a “whitewashing” device designed to secure Germany’s acceptance in the West while erasing wartime guilt and accountability. [iii] Yet coded or not, iterations of “philosemitism” are part and parcel of the history of Western Europe from 1945 to 1989, and even more so, of the European Union since its inception. And while “philosemitism” never hindered the persistence or renewal of antisemitism – as Samuel Moyn showed in a study of early Holocaust memory in France, philosemitism could also closely flirt with the taboo of antisemitism[iv] – the positive reevaluation of Jewishness in Western Europe since 1945 marks a profound caesura in the course of both Jewish and European history.

Yet if books on “old” and “new” forms of antisemitism abound, there is to this day no interpretative account of European “philosemitism” in the postwar era, a phenomenon significantly distinct from its North American counterpart. To be sure, a vast and still growing literature has explored the process of “coming to terms with the past” in each European country occupied by Nazi Germany during the war.  It is indeed under the prism of Holocaust repression, guilt and at a later phase, atonement, that evolution in European attitudes towards Jews or the Jewish question is traditionally measured. “Guilt and complicity,” wrote in 1968 a British Jewish observer skeptical of a “French vogue for Jewish subjects,” formed “the shaky foundations on which that ill-famed phenomenon, Philo-Semitism, rests.”[v] Since the 1970s, the rise to prominence of Holocaust-centric memories of the Second World War certainly contributed to a “philosemitic” turn in West European public discourse, at the risk of creating an “imaginary Jew” devoid of any historicity other than that of Auschwitz. But the trajectory of “philosemitic” Europe after 1945 does not systematically replicate the evolution of Holocaust memory and its belated explosion in the later part of the twentieth century. To the dismay of his most recent readers, Sartre’s provocative “anti-antisemitic” Réflexions did not make any mention of the Final Solution or the collaborationist Vichy regime – a silence which did not torment an earlier generation of Sartre’s commentators. The denunciation of antisemitism was also the main motivation behind Catholic doctrinal revisions. Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”), the declaration promulgated in 1965 at the end of the Second Vatican Council, exonerated Jews from the killing of Christ and decried “displays of antisemitism… at any time and by anyone” but carefully avoided the path of Holocaust introspection, despite the important role played in this evolution by Central European Jewish converts personally affected by the genocide.[vi] In postwar Western Europe until the late 1960s, Christian, existentialist or humanist “philosemitism” did not engage with the question of Holocaust accountability: identification with Jewish suffering, including homages to Jewish martyrdom such as François Mauriac’s moving forward to the first edition of Elie Wiesel’s Night (1958), did not seek to confront the past. By famously comparing the young Auschwitz survivor to “Lazarus rising from the dead” and then to Jesus himself, Mauriac’s “philosemitism” offered a Christological view of the Holocaust. Overwhelmed by Wiesel’s “angelic sadness,” Mauriac could only “embrace him and weep.” Ultimately, however, Mauriac’s Wiesel perfectly embodied “the connection between the cross and human suffering.” While Auschwitz was Wiesel’s “stumbling block for his faith” (a reference to Wiesel’s rejection of God in Night), it became, to the contrary, the “cornerstone” of Mauriac’s own Catholic faith.

Mauriac’s “philosemitism,” like “philosemitism” itself, is thus best understood not just as a morality tale of contrition but also as an act of legitimation “serving as evidence for the truth of non-Jewish beliefs.” [vii]  Writing the history of European “philosemitism” after 1945, therefore, does not merely amount to collecting favorable pronouncements on Jews, Jewishness, Judaism or the state of Israel. It also requires the deciphering and contextualization of this discourse across decades and geographies. Like anti-Semitism, “philosemitism” is indeed inscribed in specific national or religious cultures. Expressions of British tolerance or admiration for Jews from Cromwell to Churchill, for instance, drew from the vocabulary of early modern Christian polemic and Victorian morals. In post-revolutionary France, however, the positive figure of the Jew was a touchstone of French Republican universalism. In Imperial Germany, where the word “philosemitism” was first coined, it meant above all the defense of Jews against the rising popularity of antisemitism.[viii] These national differences were not entirely erased in the post-Holocaust period but the language of “philosemitism” Europeanized itself in the postwar decades, culminating with the identification of “Europe” with Jewish cosmopolitanism and the moral legacies of the Shoah in polite declarations by European Union officials; or more recently, in the rhetoric of populist or far-right movements for whom Jews suddenly became the symbols of “European” values undermined by Islam.

The point of departure of “philosemitic” Europe, however, remains the end of the Second World War and the return of a dramatically small number of Jewish survivors to their country of origin. Jewish returnees from concentration camps were generally met with public indifference in French, Dutch, Belgian and Italian societies where the singularity of Jewish suffering did not easily find a space of expression. Amidst this silence, however, the appearance of a new humanitarian sentimentality is traceable in multiple reactions to the plight of Jewish refugees and survivors in occupied Germany or in “illegal” transit to Palestine, in France and Italy in particular. In these two countries, Jewish statelessness between 1945 and 1948 served as a potent human rights trope much before prisoners of conscience and dissidents became galvanizing emblems of human rights violations in Cold War Europe. In occupied Germany, where the temporary but haunting presence of Holocaust survivors and displaced persons stirred up unease and antagonism, public figures did not voice empathy. But another type of Jewish refugee, the intellectual hounded out by Nazism and now returning permanently or temporarily from exile, shaped the “philosemitic” sensitivities of an emerging cohort of German thinkers and writers, including the young and promising members of the literary association known as “Gruppe 47.”As Jürgen Habermas recently recalled, his generation learned from Jewish emigrants “how to distinguish the traditions that are worthy of being continued from a corrupt intellectual heritage.”

The 1950s also witnessed the blossoming rhetoric of Judeo-Christian “morality,” “tradition,” and “civilization” in the writings of Catholic and Protestant clergymen and theologians after the war. The archives of the World Council of Churches (Geneva) offer in this regard a unique window into the European singularities of the Judeo-Christian movement. Although advocated, as in the United States, as a sacred union against Nazi and Communist “paganism,” Judeo-Christianity was not merely a weapon in the cultural Cold War. It also inaugurated a new partnership between Christians and the People of the Book based on equality and spiritual affinities. Yet Jewishness also took a positive function in secular postwar thought. Jews occupied indeed a particular place in humanist philosophy, particularly so in France in the decade following the Liberation. The writings of Albert Camus, Jacques Maritain and Jean Paul Sartre are indicative of their paradigmatic place in this moral framework. In several essays, Camus depicts Holocaust survivors as the epitome of powerlessness. Yet the Jewish prism served another purpose in Camus’s reaction to the Algerian war. Longing for a Mediterranean identity at equidistance between French colonialism and Algerian independence, Camus extolled North African Jewishness as a native bridge between European settlers and Arabs. The Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain, for his part, sought to restore the original kinship between Christians and Jews by integrating Judaism into his doctrine of “integral humanism” and the dignity of the human person. This radical shift in Christian-Jewish relations, he argued, amounted to no less than a “reorientation of history.” As Jonathan Judaken has shown, Jean-Paul Sartre used the image of the Jew very differently: as a conduit to political resistance, Existentialist Marxism, and the redefinition of the role of the intellectual in the postwar era. [ix] In Western Europe as in the United States, bias and enmity did not magically disappear to make room for Judeophilia. But the post-1945 discourse of dignity, human rights, inter-subjectivity, and emancipation became increasingly infused with Jewish frames of references.

The relationship between the European non-communist Left and Zionism between 1948 and 1967 offers another insight into the history of postwar “philosemitism.” As revealed in the impressions recorded by politicians, intellectuals and trade unionists touring Israel from 1948 to the mid-1960s, the new Israeli Jew fascinated European socialists and left-of-center Christian Democrats. In their eyes, the Jewish state represented the fulfillment of socialism, self-determination, and historical agency. The writings and personal papers of François Mitterand, Willy Brandt, Olof Palme, Harold Wilson as well as the archives of the Socialist International amply reveal the appeal of Israel as an oasis of utopian socialism and an inspiring model for the welfarist reconstruction of war-torn nations. Even future radical left-wing theorists such as the Italian “autonomist” Marxist Toni Negri, who spent time in a kibbutz in 1954, fell under the spell of the new state. “Israel was my luck, my chance and my symbol”, the anti-Zionist Negri nonetheless reminisced from prison in 1981. [x] During the 1950s and in the midst of decolonization, Europe’s first social-democratic moment neatly meshed, culturally and politically, with socialist Zionism. For non-communist progressives until the June 1967 war, “philosemitism”, even in its minimal form of “anti-antisemitism”, entailed a strong identification with Israeli Jews. Writing on the eve of the war, Sartre offered a candid explanation for this phenomenon:

For many of us, there is (…) an affective dimension which is not the passing effect of our subjectivity but rather the result of historical and perfectly objective circumstances that we cannot soon forget. Thus, we are allergic to anything that could in the least resemble anti-Semitism. To which many Arabs would respond: “We are not anti-Semitic but anti-Israeli.” Doubtless they would be right, but can they change the fact that for us, the Israelis are also Jews? [xi]

The 1968 student revolts, however, changed that. Although Parisian demonstrators defiantly claimed the identity of “German Jews” in support of their arrested leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the protest movements in France and Germany (much different from each other in their appropriation and rejection of Holocaust memory) marked the end of the foundational period of European “philosemitism.” The humanist identification with Jewishness lost much of its appeal as humanism itself fell in intellectual disrepute. The anti-imperialist New Left, for its part, grew disillusioned with Zionism in the wake of the 1967 June War. Yet the 1968 counter-culture did not bring the clock of European “philosemitism” back to 1945. In fact, it stimulated new forms of empathy. Thanks to humanitarian activists stemming from the 1968 movement, the Holocaust became in the 1970s the archetypal metanarrative of trauma in the north Atlantic world. Undeniably, the explosion of human rights and militant humanitarianism in the 1970s coincided with a new brand of “therapeutic” philosemitism informed by Holocaust memories. This shift is detectable, for instance, in the language of Amnesty International campaigns: completely absent in its first decade of existence (1961-1971), references to the Holocaust started then to justify Amnesty’s activism in favor of victims of torture. Similarly, invocations of the Holocaust were prominent in the language and ideology embraced by the founding generation of Doctors without Borders.

The impact of the radical sixties on European “philosemitism” is not however limited to new perceptions of traumatic victimhood among humanitarians and human rights activists. In Germany, the personal trajectory of the Green politician Joshka Fischer, who in the early 1980s abruptly turned against the violent anti-Zionism and antisemitism of some of his former revolutionary comrades in favor of a foundational politics of Holocaust accountability, shows that if seen through a longer periodization, “1968” did much to enshrine “philosemitism” as a marker of European identity. Heirs of the 1968 Prague Spring also played an important part in the elevation of Jews as symbols of European culture. Upon receiving the Jerusalem Prize in 1985 – at a time when the idea of Central Europe was being rediscovered in the West –Milan Kundera not only praised Jews for “keeping faith in European cosmopolitanism” despite the horrors of the Holocaust. He also viewed Israel itself “as the true heart of Europe, a peculiar heart located outside the body.” The image of “Israel as Europe” or that of Israeli Jews unveiling the true nature of European identity remained an important metaphor after the end of the Cold War. “Having thus departed from Europe,” wrote the French political theorist Pierre Manent in 2006, “the Jewish people invite Europe to utter its own name. They ask Europe its name.” [xii]

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, “philosemitism” has migrated closer to the mainstream of European societies, even in some cases in post-communist countries. Like antisemitism, “philosemitism” can indeed operate without Jews – the current “klezmerization” of the Jewish past in Poland, a “Jewish turn” whose possible purpose is to “reclaim the pluralistic society eradicated after World War Two”, illustrates such a possibility.[xiii] But concomitant with the rise of the “new antisemitism” in the early 2000s, a backlash against what the dissident Israeli writer Yitzhak Laor called a “new European philosemitism” complicit with the oppression of Palestinians, or the denunciation of a neo-conservative and Judeo-Christian “philosemitic reaction” only committed to the “defense of the West” tested the legitimacy accrued to “philosemitism” since 1945.[xiv]  The critique of “philosemitism” by the intellectual radical left, as well as it manipulative embrace by the xenophobic far-right or Islamophobic populists such as Geert Wilders demonstrate however how a marginal mode of thought in 1945 evolved into a mainstream feature, albeit hotly contested, of European culture and politics. Public expressions of solidarity with Jews are now too numerous to stand out as exceptional, even when the former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls boldly warned, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, that “without French Jews, France will no longer be France.” Similarly, the word “philosemite” has become a profession of faith. “I am a Philo-Semite,” recently declared the conservative historian Niall Ferguson in reaction to antisemitic incidents in Great Britain. From the left, the French-Spanish writer Jorge Semprun, the former communist Buchenwald inmate and anti-Francoist exile, similarly explained towards the end of his long political and literary life how he “became a philosemite.”[xv] But whereas Ferguson predictably rationalized his love for Jews by invoking a “disproportionate Jewish contribution to civilization”, Semprun, in his last public words uttered after a final visit at Buchenwald, entrusted Jewish memory with a future task, that of preserving the memory of non-Jewish political deportees and anti-Nazi resisters who like him survived “expérience concentrationnaire.” While in 1945 Holocaust survivors across continental Western Europe were subsumed within the hegemonic memory of “déportation” and national suffering, the Shoah now remarkably encapsulated all the “disappeared, the wrecked and the rescued, the Jews and the goys, men and women.” Haunted all his life by his eighteen months spent at Buchenwald, this prospect gave Semprun solace and joy, leading him to conclude his existence confident in his own “Jewish” memorialization: “Long life to the Jewish memory of our death!”

Daniel Cohen is Associate Professor of History at Rice University, Houston Texas. He is the author of In War’s Wake. Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar World (Oxford UP 2012) and multiple publications on the history of refugees and humanitarianism in Twentieth Century Europe. He is currently at work on a book project entitled Second Emancipation. “Philosemitism” in Postwar Europe, 1945 to the Present. The book examines multiple forms of “philosemitic” discourse (philosophical, theological, and political) in Western Europe until 1989 and the European Union since its inception.

[i] Saul van Messel, “Filosemiet” in Zeer zeker en zeker zeer. Joodse gedichten (“Very Certain and Certainly Very. Jewish Poems)”, Haagse Cahiers 10 (Rijswick Z.H: De Oude Degel, 1967). On van Messel/Meijer, see also Evelien Gans, “Philosemitism? Ambivalences Regarding Israel” in Remco Ensel et al., The Holocaust, Israel and The “Jew” (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016), pp. 153-154.

[ii] Wladimir Rabi, “Portrait d’un philosemite” in Esprit (October 1947), pp.532-546, here p. 537.

[iii] See for instance Frank Stern, The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge: Antisemitism and Philosemitism in Postwar Germany (London: Heinemann, 1991).

[iv] Samuel Moyn, A Holocaust Controversy. The Treblinka Affair in Postwar France (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005.)

[v] Renée Winegarten, cited in Moyn, The Treblinka Affair, pp. 24-25.

[vi] John Connelly, From Enemy to Brother. The Revolution in Catholic Teachings on the Jews 1933-1965 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).

[vii] David Wertheim (ed.), The Jew as Legitimation: Jewish Gentiles Relations Beyond Antisemitism and Philosemitism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), p. 7.

[viii] Gertrude Himmelfarb, The People of the Book. Philosemitism in England from Cromwell to Churchill (Encounter Books: New York, NY, 2004); Maurice Samuels, The Right to Difference. French Universalism and the Jews (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL, 2016); Alan T. Levenson, Between Philosemitism and Antisemitism. Defenses of Jews and Judaism, 1871-1932 (Nebraska University Press: Lincoln, NB, 2004)

[ix] Jonathan Judaken, Jean-Paul Sartre, and the Jewish Question. Anti-Antisemitism and the Politics of the French Intellectual (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 2006).

[x] Antonio Negri, Pipeline. Letters from Prison (Polity Press: Malden, MA, 2014), p. 35.

[xi] Cited in Alain Gresh, “Reflections on the Meaning of Palestine”, Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. XLI, No 1 (Autumn 2011), 67-81.

[xii] Pierre Manent, Democracy Without Nations? The Fate of Self-Government in Europe (ISI Books: Wilmington: DE, 2007), p. 68.

[xiii] Geneviève Zubrzycki, “Nationalism, “Philosemitism” and Symbolic Boundary-Making in Contemporary Poland” in Contemporary Studies in Society and History 2016;(58) 1: 66-98.

[xiv] Yitzhak Laor, The Myths of Liberal Zionism (Verso, New York, NY, 2010); Ivan Segré, La réaction philosémite ou la trahison des clercs (Nouvelles Lignes, Paris, 2009).

[xv] Niall Ferguson, “The Resurfacing of Antisemitism in Britain”, The Boston Globe, May 2, 2016, Jorge Semprun, “Pourquoi  je suis devenu philosémite”, available at  and “Mon dernier voyage à Buchenwald”, Le Monde, March 3, 2010.

Jewish History

From Wikipedia

Jewish history is the history of the Jews, and their nation, religion and culture, as it developed and interacted with other peoples, religions and cultures. Although Judaism as a religion first appears in Greek records during the Hellenistic period (323–31 BCE) and the earliest mention of Israel is inscribed on the Merneptah Stele dated 1213–1203 BCE, religious literature tells the story of Israelites going back at least as far as c. 1500 BCE. The Jewish diaspora began with the Assyrian captivity and continued on a much larger scale with the Babylonian captivity. Jews were also widespread throughout the Roman Empire, and this carried on to a lesser extent in the period of Byzantine rule in the central and eastern Mediterranean. In 638 CE the Byzantine Empire lost control of the Levant. The Arab Islamic Empire under Caliph Omar conquered Jerusalem and the lands of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt. The Golden Age of Jewish culture in Spain coincided with the Middle Ages in Europe, a period of Muslim rule throughout much of the Iberian Peninsula. During that time, Jews were generally accepted in society and Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life blossomed. Between the 12th and 15th centuries, Ashkenazi Jews experienced extreme persecution in Central Europe, which prompted their massive emigration to Poland.[1][2]

During the Classical Ottoman period (1300–1600), the Jews, together with most other communities of the empire, enjoyed a certain level of prosperity. In the 17th century, there were many significant Jewish populations in Western Europe. During the period of the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, significant changes occurred within the Jewish community. Jews began in the 18th century to campaign for Jewish emancipation from restrictive laws and integration into the wider European society. While Jews in Western Europe were increasingly granted equality before the law, they faced growing persecution and legal restrictions in the Pale of Settlement, including widespread pogroms, which caused a mass exodus of more than two million Jews to the United States between 1881 and 1924.[3] During the 1870s and 1880s the Jewish population in Europe began to discuss emigration back more actively to Israel and the re-establishment of the Jewish Nation in its national homeland. The Zionist movement was founded officially in 1897. Meanwhile, the Jews of Europe and the United States gained success in the fields of science, culture, and the economy. Among those generally considered the most famous were scientist Albert Einstein and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Many Nobel Prize winners at this time were Jewish, as is still the case.[4]

In 1933, with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in Germany, the Jewish situation became more severe. Economic crises, racial anti-Semitic laws, and a fear of an upcoming war led many Jews to flee from Europe to Palestine, to the United States and to the Soviet Union. In 1939 World War II began and until 1941 Hitler occupied almost all of Europe, including Poland—where millions of Jews were living at that time—and France. In 1941, following the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Final Solution began, an extensive organized operation on an unprecedented scale, aimed at the annihilation of the Jewish people, and resulting in the persecution and murder of Jews in political Europe, inclusive of European North Africa (pro-Nazi Vichy-North Africa and Italian Libya). This genocide, in which approximately six million Jews were methodically exterminated, is known as the Holocaust or the Shoah (Hebrew term). In Nazi occupied Poland, three million Jews were killed in gas chambers in all concentration camps combined, with one million at the Auschwitz camp complex alone.

Palestine, which had been under a British mandate since 1920, saw large waves of Jewish migration before and during the Holocaust. After the mandate expired in 1948, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed on May 14 the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel to be known as the State of Israel. Immediately afterwards all neighboring Arab states attacked, yet the newly formed IDF resisted. In 1949 the war ended and the state of Israel started building the state and absorbing massive waves of hundreds of thousands of Jews from all over the world. As of 2020, Israel is a parliamentary democracy with a population of 9.2 million people, of whom 6.7 million are Jewish. The largest Jewish communities are in Israel and the United States, with major communities in France, Canada, Argentina, Russia, United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany. For statistics related to modern Jewish demographics see Jewish population.

Time Periods in Jewish History

The history of the Jews and Judaism can be divided into five periods: (1) ancient Israel before Judaism, from the beginnings to 586 BCE; (2) the beginning of Judaism in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE; (3) the formation of rabbinic rabbinic Judaism after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE; (4) the age of rabbinic Judaism, from the ascension of Christianity to political power under the emperor Constantine the Great in 312 CE to the end of the political hegemony of Christianity in the 18th century; and (5), the age of diverse Judaisms, from the French and American Revolutions to the present.[5]

Ancient Jewish History (c. 1500–63 BCE)

Main article: Origins of Judaism

Ancient Israelites (until c. 586 BCE) 

Main article: History of ancient Israel and Judah

The history of the early Jews, and their neighbors, centers on the Fertile Crescent and east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It begins among those people who occupied the area lying between the river Nile and Mesopotamia. Surrounded by ancient seats of culture in Egypt and Babylonia, by the deserts of Arabia, and by the highlands of Asia Minor, the land of Canaan (roughly corresponding to modern Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan and Lebanon) was a meeting place of civilizations.

The traditional religious view of Jews and Judaism of their own history was based on the narrative of the ancient Hebrew Bible. In this view Abraham is regarded as the first Hebrew/Israelite/Jew and the one who therefore starts Jewish history as the founder and originator of the Jewish people. Later Moses liberates the Children of Israel from ancient Egypt and after the Exodus the nation of Israel is born as it heads to the promised land of the Land of Israel. However, the consensus of modern scholars support the academic view that the archaeological evidence showing largely indigenous origins of Israel in Canaan, not Egypt, is "overwhelming" and leaves "no room for an Exodus from Egypt or a 40-year pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness".[6] Many archaeologists have abandoned the archaeological investigation of Moses and the Exodus as "a fruitless pursuit".[6] A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has arguably found no evidence that can be directly related to the Exodus narrative of an Egyptian captivity and the escape and travels through the wilderness, leading to the suggestion that Iron Age Israel—the kingdoms of Judah and Israel—has its origins in Canaan, not in Egypt:[7][8] The culture of the earliest Israelite settlements is Canaanite, their cult-objects are those of the Canaanite god El, the pottery remains in the local Canaanite tradition, and the alphabet used is early Canaanite. Almost the sole marker distinguishing the "Israelite" villages from Canaanite sites is an absence of pig bones, although whether this can be taken as an ethnic marker or is due to other factors remains a matter of dispute.[9]

For several hundred years, the Land of Israel was organized into a confederacy of twelve tribes ruled by a series of Judges. After that came the Israelite monarchy, established in 1037 BCE under Saul, and continued under King David and his son, Solomon. During the reign of David, the already existing city of Jerusalem became the national and spiritual capital of the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah. Solomon built the First Temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem.

However, the tribes were fracturing politically. Upon his death, a civil war erupted between the ten northern Israelite tribes, and the tribes of Judah (Simeon was absorbed into Judah) and Benjamin in the south in 930 BC. The nation split into the Kingdom of Israel in the north, and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. The Assyrian ruler Tiglath-Pileser III conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 720 BCE. No commonly accepted historical record accounts for the ultimate fate of the ten northern tribes, sometimes referred to as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, although speculation abounds.

Babylonian captivity (c. 587–538 BCE)

After revolting against the new dominant power and an ensuing siege, the Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonian army in 587 BCE and the First Temple was destroyed. The elite of the kingdom and many of their people were exiled to Babylon, where the religion developed outside their traditional temple. Others fled to Egypt. After the fall of Jerusalem, Babylonia (modern day Iraq), would become the focus of Judaism for some fourteen-hundred years.[10] The first Judahite communities in Babylonia started with the exile of the Tribe of Judah to Babylon by Jehoiachin in 597 BCE as well as after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE.[11] Babylonia, where some of the largest and most prominent Jewish cities and communities were established, became the center of Jewish life. A short time after this under the reign of Xerxes I of Persia, the events of the Book of Esther took place. Babylon remained as a hub of Jewish life all the way up to the 11th century, when the cultural and scholarship centrality began to move to Europe, as anti-Jewish waves initiated a rapid decline, not in numbers, but in centrality.[12] It continued to be a major Jewish center until the 13th century.[13] By the first century, Babylonia already held a speedily growing[11] population of an estimated 1,000,000 Judahites which increased to an estimated 2 million between the years 200 CE and 500 CE,[14] both by natural growth and by immigration of more Jews from the Land of Israel, making up about one sixth of the world Jewish population at that era.[14] It was there that they would write the Babylonian Talmud in the languages used by the Jews of ancient Babylonia—Hebrew and Aramaic.

The Jews established Talmudic Academies in Babylonia, also known as the Geonic Academies, which became the center for Jewish scholarship and the development of Jewish law in Babylonia from roughly 500 CE to 1038 CE. The two most famous academies were the Pumbedita Academy and the Sura Academy. Major yeshivot were also located at Nehardea and Mahuza.[15]

After a few generations and with the conquest of Babylonia in 540 BC by the Persian Empire, some adherents led by prophets Ezra and Nehemiah, returned to their homeland and traditional practices. Other Judeans[16] did not return.

Post-exilic period (c. 538–332 BCE)

Second Temple Judaism

Following their return to Jerusalem after the return from the exile, and with Persian approval and financing, construction of the Second Temple was completed in 516 BCE under the leadership of the last three Jewish Prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. 

After the death of the last Jewish prophet and while still under Persian rule, the leadership of the Jewish people passed into the hands of five successive generations of zugot ("pairs of") leaders. They flourished first under the Persians and then under the Greeks. As a result, the Pharisees and Sadducees were formed. Under the Persians then under the Greeks, Jewish coins were minted in Judea as Yehud coinage.

Hellenistic period (c. 332–110 BCE)

Hellenistic Judaism 

In 332 BCE, Alexander the Great of Macedon defeated the Persians. After Alexander's death and the division of his empire among his generals, the Seleucid Kingdom was formed.

The Alexandrian conquests spread Greek culture to the Levant. During this time, currents of Judaism were influenced by Hellenistic philosophy developed from the 3rd century BCE, notably the Jewish diaspora in Alexandria, culminating in the compilation of the Septuagint. An important advocate of the symbiosis of Jewish theology and Hellenistic thought is Philo.

The Hasmonean Kingdom (110–63 BCE) 

Hasmonean dynasty 

A deterioration of relations between Hellenized Jews and other Jews led the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes to issue decrees banning certain Jewish religious rites and traditions. Subsequently, some of the non Hellenized Jews revolted under the leadership of the Hasmonean family (also known as the Maccabees). This revolt eventually led to the formation of an independent Jewish kingdom, known as the Hasmonaean Dynasty, which lasted from 165 BCE to 63 BCE.[17] The Hasmonean Dynasty eventually disintegrated as a result of civil war between the sons of Salome Alexandra; Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II. The people, who did not want to be governed by a king but by theocratic clergy, made appeals in this spirit to the Roman authorities. A Roman campaign of conquest and annexation, led by Pompey, soon followed.[18]

Roman Rule in the Land of Israel (63 BCE – 324 CE)

Main articles: Judaea (Roman province) and History of the Jews in the Roman Empire

Judea had been an independent Jewish kingdom under the Hasmoneans, but was conquered by the Roman general Pompey in 63 BCE and reorganized as a client state. Roman expansion was going on in other areas as well and would continue for more than a hundred and fifty years. Later, Herod the Great was appointed "King of the Jews" by the Roman Senate, supplanting the Hasmonean dynasty. Some of his offspring held various positions after him, known as the Herodian dynasty. Briefly, from 4 BCE to 6 CE, Herod Archelaus ruled the tetrarchy of Judea as ethnarch, the Romans denying him the title of King. After the Census of Quirinius in 6 CE, the Roman province of Judaea was formed as a satellite of Roman Syria under the rule of a prefect (as was Roman Egypt) until 41 CE, then procurators after 44 CE. The empire was often callous and brutal in its treatment of its Jewish subjects, (see Anti-Judaism in the pre-Christian Roman Empire). In 30 CE (or 33 CE), Jesus of Nazareth, an itinerant rabbi from Galilee, and the central figure of Christianity, was put to death by crucifixion in Jerusalem under the Roman prefect of Judaea, Pontius Pilate.[19] In 66 CE, the Jews began to revolt against the Roman rulers of Judea. The future Roman emperors Vespasian and Titus defeated the revolt. In the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and, according to some accounts, plundered artifacts from the temple, such as the Menorah. Jews continued to live in their land in significant numbers, the Kitos War of 115–117 CE notwithstanding, until Julius Severus ravaged Judea while putting down the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–136 CE. Nine hundred eighty-five villages were destroyed and most of the Jewish population of central Judaea was essentially wiped out, killed, sold into slavery, or forced to flee.[20] Banished from Jerusalem, except for the day of Tisha B'Av, the Jewish population now centered on Galilee and initially in Yavne. Jerusalem was renamed Aelia Capitolina, and Judea was renamed Syria Palestina, to spite the Jews by naming it after their ancient enemies, the Philistines.

The diaspora

Jewish diaspora 

The Jewish diaspora began during the Assyrian conquest, and it continued on a much larger scale during the Babylonian conquest, during which the Tribe of Judah was exiled to Babylonia along with the dethroned King of Judah, Jehoiachin, in the 6th century BCE, and taken into captivity in 597 BCE. The exile continued after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE.[11] Many more Jews migrated to Babylon in 135 CE after the Bar Kokhba revolt and in the centuries after.[11]

Many of the Judaean Jews were sold into slavery while others became citizens of other parts of the Roman Empire. The book of Acts in the New Testament, as well as other Pauline texts, make frequent reference to the large populations of Hellenized Jews in the cities of the Roman world. These Hellenized Jews were affected by the diaspora only in its spiritual sense, absorbing the feeling of loss and homelessness that became a cornerstone of the Jewish creed, much supported by persecutions in various parts of the world. The policy encouraging proselytism and conversion to Judaism, which spread the Jewish religion throughout the Hellenistic civilization, seems to have subsided with the wars against the Romans.

Of critical importance to the reshaping of Jewish tradition from the Temple-based religion to the rabbinic traditions of the Diaspora, was the development of the interpretations of the Torah found in the Mishnah and Talmud.

Late Roman period in the Land of Israel 

The relations of the Jews with the Roman Empire in the region continued to be complicated. Constantine I allowed Jews to mourn their defeat and humiliation once a year on Tisha B'Av at the Western Wall. In 351–352 CE, the Jews of Galilee launched yet another revolt, provoking heavy retribution.[22] The Gallus revolt came during the rising influence of early Christians in the Eastern Roman Empire, under the Constantinian dynasty. In 355, however, the relations with the Roman rulers improved, upon the rise of Emperor Julian, the last of the Constantinian dynasty, who unlike his predecessors defied Christianity. In 363, not long before Julian left Antioch to launch his campaign against Sasanian Persia, in keeping with his effort to foster religions other than Christianity, he ordered the Jewish Temple rebuilt.[23] The failure to rebuild the Temple has mostly been ascribed to the dramatic Galilee earthquake of 363 and traditionally also to the Jews' ambivalence about the project. Sabotage is a possibility, as is an accidental fire. Divine intervention was the common view among Christian historians of the time.[24] Julian's support of Jews caused Jews to call him "Julian the Hellene".[25] Julian's fatal wound in the Persian campaign and his consequent death had put an end to Jewish aspirations, and Julian's successors embraced Christianity through the entire timeline of Byzantine rule of Jerusalem, preventing any Jewish claims.

In 438 CE, when the Empress Eudocia removed the ban on Jews' praying at the Temple site, the heads of the Community in Galilee issued a call "to the great and mighty people of the Jews" which began: "Know that the end of the exile of our people has come!" However, the Christian population of the city, who saw this as a threat to their primacy, did not allow it and a riot erupted after which they chased away the Jews from the city.[26][27]

During the 5th and the 6th centuries, a series of Samaritan insurrections broke out across the Palaestina Prima province. Especially violent were the third and the fourth revolts, which resulted in almost the entire annihilation of the Samaritan community. It is likely that the Samaritan Revolt of 556 was joined by the Jewish community, which had also suffered a brutal suppression of Israelite religion.

In the belief of restoration to come, in the early 7th century the Jews made an alliance with the Persians, who invaded Palaestina Prima in 614, fought at their side, overwhelmed the Byzantine garrison in Jerusalem, and were given Jerusalem to be governed as an autonomy.[28] However, their autonomy was brief: the Jewish leader in Jerusalem was shortly assassinated during a Christian revolt and though Jerusalem was reconquered by Persians and Jews within 3 weeks, it fell into anarchy. With the consequent withdrawal of Persian forces, Jews surrendered to Byzantines in 625 or 628 CE, but were massacred by Christian radicals in 629 CE, with the survivors fleeing to Egypt. The Byzantine (Eastern Roman Empire) control of the region was finally lost to the Muslim Arab armies in 637 CE, when Umar ibn al-Khattab completed the conquest of Akko.

Middle Ages

Jews of pre-Muslim Babylonia (219–638 CE)

History of the Jews in Iraq

After the fall of Jerusalem, Babylonia (modern day Iraq) would become the focus of Judaism for more than a thousand years. The first Jewish communities in Babylonia started with the exile of the Tribe of Judah to Babylon by Jehoiachin in 597 BCE as well as after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE.[11] Many more Jews migrated to Babylon in 135 CE after the Bar Kokhba revolt and in the centuries after.[11] Babylonia, where some of the largest and most prominent Jewish cities and communities were established, became the center of Jewish life all the way up to the 13th century. By the first century, Babylonia already held a speedily growing[11] population of an estimated 1,000,000 Jews, which increased to an estimated 2 million[14] between the years 200 CE and 500 CE, both by natural growth and by immigration of more Jews from the Land of Israel, making up about 1/6 of the world Jewish population at that era.[14] It was there that they would write the Babylonian Talmud in the languages used by the Jews of ancient Babylonia: Hebrew and Aramaic. The Jews established Talmudic Academies in Babylonia, also known as the Geonic Academies ("Geonim" meaning "splendour" in Biblical Hebrew or "geniuses"), which became the center for Jewish scholarship and the development of Jewish law in Babylonia from roughly 500 CE to 1038 CE. The two most famous academies were the Pumbedita Academy and the Sura Academy. Major yeshivot were also located at Nehardea and Mahuza. The Talmudic Yeshiva Academies became a main part of Jewish culture and education, and Jews continued establishing Yeshiva Academies in Western and Eastern Europe, North Africa, and in later centuries, in America and other countries around the world where Jews lived in the Diaspora. Talmudic study in Yeshiva academies, most of them located in The United States and Israel, continues today.

These Talmudic Yeshiva academies of Babylonia followed the era of the Amoraim ("expounders")—the sages of the Talmud who were active (both in the Land of Israel and in Babylon) during the end of the era of the sealing of the Mishnah and until the times of the sealing of the Talmud (220CE – 500CE), and following the Savoraim ("reasoners")—the sages of beth midrash (Torah study places) in Babylon from the end of the era of the Amoraim (5th century) and until the beginning of the era of the Geonim. The Geonim (Hebrew: גאונים) were the presidents of the two great rabbinical colleges of Sura and Pumbedita, and were the generally accepted spiritual leaders of the worldwide Jewish community in the early medieval era, in contrast to the Resh Galuta (Exilarch) who wielded secular authority over the Jews in Islamic lands. According to traditions, the Resh Galuta were descendants of Judean kings, which is why the kings of Parthia would treat them with much honor.[29]

For the Jews of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the yeshivot of Babylonia served much the same function as the ancient Sanhedrin—that is, as a council of Jewish religious authorities. The academies were founded in pre-Islamic Babylonia under the Zoroastrian Sassanid dynasty and were located not far from the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon, which at that time was the largest city in the world. After the conquest of Persia in the 7th century, the academies subsequently operated for four hundred years under the Islamic caliphate. The first gaon of Sura, according to Sherira Gaon, was Mar bar Rab Chanan, who assumed office in 609. The last gaon of Sura was Samuel ben Hofni, who died in 1034; the last gaon of Pumbedita was Hezekiah Gaon, who was tortured to death in 1040; hence the activity of the Geonim covers a period of nearly 450 years.

One of principal seats of Babylonian Judaism was Nehardea, which was then a very large city made up mostly of Jews.[11] A very ancient synagogue, built, it was believed, by King Jehoiachin, existed in Nehardea. At Huzal, near Nehardea, there was another synagogue, near to which could be seen the ruins of Ezra's academy. In the period before Hadrian, Akiba, on his arrival at Nehardea on a mission from the Sanhedrin, entered into a discussion with a resident scholar on a point of matrimonial law (Mishnah Yeb., end). At the same time there was at Nisibis (northern Mesopotamia), an excellent Jewish college, at the head of which stood Judah ben Bathyra, and in which many Judean scholars found refuge at the time of the persecutions. A certain temporary importance was also attained by a school at Nehar-Pekod, founded by the Judean immigrant Hananiah, nephew of Joshua ben Hananiah, which school might have been the cause of a schism between the Jews of Babylonia and those of Judea-Israel, had not the Judean authorities promptly checked Hananiah's ambition.

Byzantine period (324–638 CE)

History of the Jews in the Byzantine Empire 

Jews were also widespread throughout the Roman Empire, and this carried on to a lesser extent in the period of Byzantine rule in the central and eastern Mediterranean. The militant and exclusive Christianity and caesaropapism of the Byzantine Empire did not treat Jews well, and the condition and influence of diaspora Jews in the Empire declined dramatically.

It was official Christian policy to convert Jews to Christianity, and the Christian leadership used the official power of Rome in their attempts. In 351 CE the Jews revolted against the added pressures of their Governor, Constantius Gallus. Gallus put down the revolt and destroyed the major cities in the Galilee area where the revolt had started. Tzippori and Lydda (site of two of the major legal academies) never recovered.

In this period, the Nasi in Tiberias, Hillel II, created an official calendar, which needed no monthly sightings of the moon. The months were set, and the calendar needed no further authority from Judea. At about the same time, the Jewish academy at Tiberius began to collate the combined Mishnah, braitot, explanations, and interpretations developed by generations of scholars who studied after the death of Judah HaNasi. The text was organized according to the order of the Mishna: each paragraph of Mishnah was followed by a compilation of all of the interpretations, stories, and responses associated with that Mishnah. This text is called the Jerusalem Talmud.

The Jews of Judea received a brief respite from official persecution during the rule of the Emperor Julian the Apostate. Julian's policy was to return the Roman Empire to Hellenism, and he encouraged the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem. As Julian's rule lasted only from 361 to 363, the Jews could not rebuild sufficiently before Roman Christian rule was restored over the Empire. Beginning in 398 with the consecration of St. John Chrysostom as Patriarch, Christian rhetoric against Jews grew sharper; he preached sermons with titles such as "Against the Jews" and "On the Statues, Homily 17," in which John preaches against "the Jewish sickness".[30] Such heated language contributed to a climate of Christian distrust and hate toward the large Jewish settlements, such as those in Antioch and Constantinople.

In the beginning of the 5th century, the Emperor Theodosius issued a set of decrees establishing official persecution of Jews. Jews were not allowed to own slaves, build new synagogues, hold public office or try cases between a Jew and a non-Jew. Intermarriage between Jew and non-Jew was made a capital offence, as was the conversion of Christians to Judaism. Theodosius did away with the Sanhedrin and abolished the post of Nasi. Under the Emperor Justinian, the authorities further restricted the civil rights of Jews,[31] and threatened their religious privileges.[32] The emperor interfered in the internal affairs of the synagogue,[33] and forbade, for instance, the use of the Hebrew language in divine worship. Those who disobeyed the restrictions were threatened with corporal penalties, exile, and loss of property. The Jews at Borium, not far from Syrtis Major, who resisted the Byzantine General Belisarius in his campaign against the Vandals, were forced to embrace Christianity, and their synagogue was converted to a church.[34]

Justinian and his successors had concerns outside the province of Judea, and he had insufficient troops to enforce these regulations. As a result, the 5th century was a period when a wave of new synagogues were built, many with beautiful mosaic floors. Jews adopted the rich art forms of the Byzantine culture. Jewish mosaics of the period portray people, animals, menorahs, zodiacs, and Biblical characters. Excellent examples of these synagogue floors have been found at Beit Alpha (which includes the scene of Abraham sacrificing a ram instead of his son Isaac along with a zodiac), Tiberius, Beit Shean, and Tzippori.

The precarious existence of Jews under Byzantine rule did not long endure, largely due to the explosion of the Muslim religion out of the remote Arabian peninsula (where large populations of Jews resided, see History of the Jews under Muslim Rule for more). The Muslim Caliphate ejected the Byzantines from the Holy Land (or the Levant, defined as modern Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) within a few years of their victory at the Battle of Yarmouk in 636. Numerous Jews fled the remaining Byzantine territories in favor of residence in the Caliphate over the subsequent centuries.

The size of the Jewish community in the Byzantine Empire was not affected by attempts by some emperors (most notably Justinian) to forcibly convert the Jews of Anatolia to Christianity, as these attempts met with very little success.[35] Historians continue to research the status of the Jews in Asia Minor under Byzantine rule. (for a sample of views, see, for instance, J. Starr The Jews in the Byzantine Empire, 641–1204; S. Bowman, The Jews of Byzantium; R. Jenkins Byzantium; Averil Cameron, "Byzantines and Jews: Recent Work on Early Byzantium", Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 20 (1996)). No systematic persecution of the type of endemic at that time in Western Europe (pogroms, the stake, mass expulsions, etc.) has been recorded in Byzantium.[36] Much of the Jewish population of Constantinople remained in place after the conquest of the city by Mehmet II.

Perhaps in the 4th century, the Kingdom of Semien, a Jewish nation in modern Ethiopia was established, lasting until the 17th century.

Islamic period (638–1099)

History of the Jews under Muslim Rule

In 638 CE the Byzantine Empire lost control of the Levant. The Arab Islamic Empire under Caliph Omar conquered Jerusalem and the lands of Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. As a political system, Islam created radically new conditions for Jewish economic, social, and intellectual development.[37] Caliph Omar permitted the Jews to reestablish their presence in Jerusalem–after a lapse of 500 years.[38] Jewish tradition regards Caliph Omar as a benevolent ruler and the Midrash (Nistarot de-Rav Shimon bar Yoḥai) refers to him as a "friend of Israel."[38]

According to the Arab geographer Al-Muqaddasi, the Jews worked as "the assayers of coins, the dyers, the tanners and the bankers in the community".[39] During the Fatimid period, many Jewish officials served in the regime.[39] Professor Moshe Gil believes that at the time of the Arab conquest in the 7th century CE, the majority of the population was Christian and Jewish.[40]

During this time Jews lived in thriving communities all across ancient Babylonia. In the Geonic period (650–1250 CE), the Babylonian Yeshiva Academies were the chief centers of Jewish learning; the Geonim (meaning either "Splendor" or "Geniuses"), who were the heads of these schools, were recognized as the highest authorities in Jewish law.

In the 7th century, the new Muslim rulers institute the kharaj land tax, which led to mass migration of Babylonian Jews from the countryside to cities like Baghdad. This in turn led to greater wealth and international influence, as well as a more cosmopolitan outlook from Jewish thinkers such as Saadiah Gaon, who now deeply engaged with Western philosophy for the first time. When the Abbasid Caliphate and the city of Baghdad declined in the 10th century, many Babylonian Jews migrated to the Mediterranean region, contributing to the spread of Babylonian Jewish customs throughout the Jewish world.[41]

Jewish Golden Age in Early Muslim Spain (711–1031) 

Golden Age of Jewish Culture in Spain

The golden age of Jewish culture in Spain coincided with the Middle Ages in Europe, a period of Muslim rule throughout much of the Iberian Peninsula. During that time, Jews were generally accepted in society and Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life blossomed.

A period of tolerance thus dawned for the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula, whose number was considerably augmented by immigration from Africa in the wake of the Muslim conquest. Especially after 912, during the reign of Abd-ar-Rahman III and his son, Al-Hakam II, the Jews prospered, devoting themselves to the service of the Caliphate of Cordoba, to the study of the sciences, and to commerce and industry, especially to trading in silk and slaves, in this way promoting the prosperity of the country. Jewish economic expansion was unparalleled. In Toledo, Jews were involved in translating Arabic texts to the Romance languages, as well as translating Greek and Hebrew texts into Arabic. Jews also contributed to botany, geography, medicine, mathematics, poetry, and philosophy.[42]

Generally, the Jewish people were allowed to practice their religion and live according to the laws and scriptures of their community. Furthermore, the restrictions to which they were subject were social and symbolic rather than tangible and practical in character. That is to say, these regulations served to define the relationship between the two communities, and not to oppress the Jewish population.[43]

'Abd al-Rahman's court physician and minister was Hasdai ben Isaac ibn Shaprut, the patron of Menahem ben Saruq, Dunash ben Labrat, and other Jewish scholars and poets. Jewish thought during this period flourished under famous figures such as Samuel Ha-Nagid, Moses ibn Ezra, Solomon ibn Gabirol Judah Halevi and Moses Maimonides.[42] During 'Abd al-Rahman's term of power, the scholar Moses ben Enoch was appointed rabbi of Córdoba, and as a consequence al-Andalus became the center of Talmudic study, and Córdoba the meeting-place of Jewish savants.

The Golden Age ended with the invasion of al-Andalus by the Almohades, a conservative dynasty originating in North Africa, who were highly intolerant of religious minorities.

Crusaders period (1099–1260)

History of the Jews and the Crusades

Sermonical messages to avenge the death of Jesus encouraged Christians to participate in the Crusades. The twelfth century Jewish narration from R. Solomon ben Samson records that crusaders en route to the Holy Land decided that before combating the Ishmaelites they would massacre the Jews residing in their midst to avenge the crucifixion of Christ. The massacres began at Rouen and Jewish communities in Rhine Valley were seriously affected.[44]

Crusading attacks were made upon Jews in the territory around Heidelberg. A huge loss of Jewish life took place. Many were forcibly converted to Christianity and many committed suicide to avoid baptism. A major driving factor behind the choice to commit suicide was the Jewish realisation that upon being killed their children could be taken to be raised as Christians. The Jews were living in the middle of Christian lands and felt this danger acutely.[45] This massacre is seen as the first in a sequence of anti-Semitic events which culminated in the Holocaust.[46] Jewish populations felt that they had been abandoned by their Christian neighbors and rulers during the massacres and lost faith in all promises and charters.[47]

Many Jews chose self-defense. But their means of self-defence were limited and their casualties only increased. Most of the forced conversions proved ineffective. Many Jews reverted to their original faith later. The pope protested this but Emperor Henry IV agreed to permitting these reversions.[44] The massacres began a new epoch for Jewry in Christendom. The Jews had preserved their faith from social pressure, now they had to preserve it at sword point. The massacres during the crusades strengthened Jewry from within spiritually. The Jewish perspective was that their struggle was Israel's struggle to hallow the name of God.[48]

In 1099, Jews helped the Arabs to defend Jerusalem against the Crusaders. When the city fell, the Crusaders gathered many Jews in a synagogue and set it on fire.[44] In Haifa, the Jews almost single-handedly defended the town against the Crusaders, holding out for a month, (June–July 1099).[39] At this time there were Jewish communities scattered all over the country, including Jerusalem, Tiberias, Ramleh, Ashkelon, Caesarea, and Gaza. As Jews were not allowed to hold land during the Crusader period, they worked at trades and commerce in the coastal towns during times of quiescence. Most were artisans: glassblowers in Sidon, furriers and dyers in Jerusalem.[39]

During this period, the Masoretes of Tiberias established the niqqud, a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Numerous piyutim and midrashim were recorded in Palestine at this time.[39]

Maimonides wrote that in 1165 he visited Jerusalem and went to the Temple Mount, where he prayed in the "great, holy house".[49] Maimonides established a yearly holiday for himself and his sons, the 6th of Cheshvan, commemorating the day he went up to pray on the Temple Mount, and another, the 9th of Cheshvan, commemorating the day he merited to pray at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

In 1141 Yehuda Halevi issued a call to Jews to emigrate to the land of Israel and took on the long journey himself. After a stormy passage from Córdoba, he arrived in Egyptian Alexandria, where he was enthusiastically greeted by friends and admirers. At Damietta, he had to struggle against his heart, and the pleadings of his friend Ḥalfon ha-Levi, that he remain in Egypt, where he would be free from intolerant oppression. He started on the rough route overland. He was met along the way by Jews in Tyre and Damascus. Jewish legend relates that as he came near Jerusalem, overpowered by the sight of the Holy City, he sang his most beautiful elegy, the celebrated "Zionide" (Zion ha-lo Tish'ali). At that instant, an Arab had galloped out of a gate and rode him down; he was killed in the accident.

Mamluk period (1260–1517)  

In the years 1260–1516, the land of Israel was part of the Empire of the Mamluks, who ruled first from Turkey, then from Egypt. The period was characterized by war, uprisings, bloodshed, and destruction. Jews suffered persecution and humiliation, but the surviving records note at least 30 Jewish urban and rural communities at the opening of the 16th century.

Nahmanides is recorded as settling in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1267. He moved to Acre, where he was active in spreading Jewish learning, which was at that time neglected in the Holy Land. He gathered a circle of pupils around him, and people came in crowds, even from the district of the Euphrates, to hear him. Karaites were said to have attended his lectures, among them Aaron ben Joseph the Elder. He later became one of the greatest Karaite authorities. Shortly after Nahmanides' arrival in Jerusalem, he addressed a letter to his son Nahman, in which he described the desolation of the Holy City. At the time, it had only two Jewish inhabitants—two brothers, dyers by trade. In a later letter from Acre, Nahmanides counsels his son to cultivate humility, which he considers to be the first of virtues. In another, addressed to his second son, who occupied an official position at the Castilian court, Nahmanides recommends the recitation of the daily prayers and warns above all against immorality. Nahmanides died after reaching seventy-six, and his remains were interred at Haifa, by the grave of Yechiel of Paris.

Yechiel had emigrated to Acre in 1260, along with his son and a large group of followers.[50][51] There he established the Talmudic academy Midrash haGadol d'Paris.[52] He is believed to have died there between 1265 and 1268. In 1488 Obadiah ben Abraham, commentator on the Mishnah, arrived in Jerusalem; this marked a new period of return for the Jewish community in the land.

Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East

Main article: History of the Jews in Spain

Islam and Judaism, Mizrahi Jew, and History of the Jews under Muslim rule

During the Middle Ages, Jews were better treated by Islamic rulers than Christian ones. Despite second-class citizenship, Jews played prominent roles in Muslim courts, and experienced a "Golden Age" in Moorish Spain about 900–1100, though the situation deteriorated after that time. Riots resulting in the deaths of Jews did however occur in North Africa through the centuries and especially in Morocco, Libya, and Algeria, where eventually Jews were forced to live in ghettos.[53]

During the 11th century, Muslims in Spain conducted pogroms against the Jews; those occurred in Cordoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066.[54] During the Middle Ages, the governments of Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen enacted decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues. At certain times, Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face death in some parts of Yemen, Morocco, and Baghdad.[55] The Almohads, who had taken control of much of Islamic Iberia by 1172, surpassed the Almoravides in fundamentalist outlook. They treated the dhimmis harshly. They expelled both Jews and Christians from Morocco and Islamic Spain. Faced with the choice of death or conversion, many Jews emigrated.[56] Some, such as the family of Maimonides, fled south and east to more tolerant Muslim lands, while others went northward to settle in the growing Christian kingdoms.[57][58]

Europe 

History of European Jews in the Middle Ages

According to the American writer James Carroll, "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million."[59]

Jewish populations have existed in Europe, especially in the area of the former Roman Empire, from early times. As Jewish males had emigrated, some sometimes took wives from local populations, as is shown by the various MT DNA, compared to Y-DNA among Jewish populations.[60] These groups were joined by traders and later on by members of the diaspora. Records of Jewish communities in France (see History of the Jews in France) and Germany (see History of the Jews in Germany) date from the fourth century, and substantial Jewish communities in Spain were noted even earlier.

20th-century scholars dispute the tradition that the Middle Ages was a uniformly difficult time for Jews. Before the Church became fully organized as an institution with an increasing array of rules, early medieval society was tolerant. Between 800 and 1100, an estimated 1.5 million Jews lived in Christian Europe. As they were not Christians, they were not included as a division of the feudal system of clergy, knights and serfs. This means that they did not have to satisfy the oppressive demands for labor and military conscription that Christian commoners suffered. In relations with the Christian society, the Jews were protected by kings, princes and bishops, because of the crucial services they provided in three areas: finance, administration and medicine.[61] The lack of political strengths did leave Jews vulnerable to exploitation through extreme taxation.[62]

Christian scholars interested in the Bible consulted with Talmudic rabbis. As the Roman Catholic Church strengthened as an institution, the Franciscan and Dominican preaching orders were founded, and there was a rise of competitive middle-class, town-dwelling Christians. By 1300, the friars and local priests staged the Passion Plays during Holy Week, which depicted Jews (in contemporary dress) killing Christ, according to Gospel accounts. From this period, persecution of Jews and deportations became endemic. Around 1500, Jews found relative security and a renewal of prosperity in present-day Poland.[61]

After 1300, Jews suffered more discrimination and persecution in Christian Europe. Europe's Jewry was urban and literate. The Christians were inclined to regard Jews as obstinate deniers of the truth because in their view the Jews were expected to know of the truth of the Christian doctrines from their knowledge of the Jewish scriptures. Jews were aware of the pressure to accept Christianity.[63] As Catholics were forbidden by the church to loan money for interest, some Jews became prominent moneylenders. Christian rulers gradually saw the advantage of having such a class of people who could supply capital for their use without being liable to excommunication. As a result, the money trade of western Europe became a specialty of the Jews. But, in almost every instance when Jews acquired large amounts through banking transactions, during their lives or upon their deaths, the king would take it over.[64] Jews became imperial "servi cameræ", the property of the King, who might present them and their possessions to princes or cities.

Jews were frequently massacred and exiled from various European countries. The persecution hit its first peak during the Crusades. In the People's Crusade (1096) flourishing Jewish communities on the Rhine and the Danube were utterly destroyed. In the Second Crusade (1147) the Jews in France were subject to frequent massacres. They were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320. The Crusades were followed by massive expulsions, including the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290;[65] in 1396 100,000 Jews were expelled from France; and in 1421, thousands were expelled from Austria. Over this time many Jews in Europe, either fleeing or being expelled, migrated to Poland, where they prospered into another Golden Age.

Early Modern period

Historians who study modern Jewry have identified four different paths by which European Jews were "modernized" and thus integrated into the mainstream of European society. A common approach has been to view the process through the lens of the European Enlightenment as Jews faced the promise and the challenges posed by political emancipation. Scholars that use this approach have focused on two social types as paradigms for the decline of Jewish tradition and as agents of the sea changes in Jewish culture that led to the collapse of the ghetto. The first of these two social types is the Court Jew who is portrayed as a forerunner of the modern Jew, having achieved integration with and participation in the proto-capitalist economy and court society of central European states such as the Habsburg Empire. In contrast to the cosmopolitan Court Jew, the second social type presented by historians of modern Jewry is the maskil, (learned person), a proponent of the Haskalah (Enlightenment). This narrative sees the maskil's pursuit of secular scholarship and his rationalistic critiques of rabbinic tradition as laying a durable intellectual foundation for the secularization of Jewish society and culture. The established paradigm has been one in which Ashkenazic Jews entered modernity through a self-conscious process of westernization led by "highly atypical, Germanized Jewish intellectuals". Haskalah gave birth to the Reform and Conservative movements and planted the seeds of Zionism while at the same time encouraging cultural assimilation into the countries in which Jews resided.[66] At around the same time that Haskalah was developing, Hasidic Judaism was spreading as a movement that preached a world view almost opposed to the Haskalah.

In the 1990s, the concept of the "Port Jew" has been suggested as an "alternate path to modernity" that was distinct from the European Haskalah. In contrast to the focus on Ashkenazic Germanized Jews, the concept of the Port Jew focused on the Sephardi conversos who fled the Inquisition and resettled in European port towns on the coast of the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Eastern seaboard of the United States.[67]

Court Jew

Court Jews were Jewish bankers or businessmen who lent money and handled the finances of some of the Christian European noble houses. Corresponding historical terms are Jewish bailiff and shtadlan.

Examples of what would be later called court Jews emerged when local rulers used services of Jewish bankers for short-term loans. They lent money to nobles and in the process gained social influence. Noble patrons of court Jews employed them as financiers, suppliers, diplomats, and trade delegates. Court Jews could use their family connections, and connections between each other, to provision their sponsors with, among other things, food, arms, ammunition, and precious metals. In return for their services, court Jews gained social privileges, including up to noble status for themselves, and could live outside the Jewish ghettos. Some nobles wanted to keep their bankers in their own courts. And because they were under noble protection, they were exempted from rabbinical jurisdiction.

From medieval times, court Jews could amass personal fortunes and gained political and social influence. Sometimes they were also prominent people in the local Jewish community and could use their influence to protect and influence their brethren. Sometimes they were the only Jews who could interact with the local high society and present petitions of the Jews to the ruler. However, the court Jew had social connections and influence in the Christian world mainly through his Christian patrons. Due to the precarious position of Jews, some nobles could just ignore their debts. If the sponsoring noble died, his Jewish financier could face exile or execution.

Spain and Portugal 

Significant repression of Spain's numerous communities occurred during the 14th century, notably a major pogrom in 1391 which resulted in the majority of Spain's 300,000 Jews converting to Catholicism. With the conquest of the Muslim Kingdom of Granada in 1492, the Catholic monarchs issued the Alhambra Decree whereby Spain's remaining 100,000 Jews were forced to choose between conversion and exile. As a result, an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 Jews left Spain, the remainder joining Spain's already numerous Converso community. A quarter of a million Conversos thus were gradually absorbed by the dominant Catholic culture, although those among them who secretly practiced Judaism were subject to 40 years of intense repression by the Spanish Inquisition. This was particularly the case up until 1530, after which the trials of Conversos by the Inquisition dropped to 3% of the total. Similar expulsions of Sephardic Jews occurred 1493 in Sicily (37,000 Jews) and Portugal in 1496. The expelled Spanish Jews fled mainly to the Ottoman Empire and North Africa and Portugal. A small number also settled in Holland and England.

Port Jew

The Port Jew describes Jews who were involved in the seafaring and maritime economy of Europe, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries. Helen Fry suggests that they could be considered to have been "the earliest modern Jews". According to Fry, Port Jews often arrived as "refugees from the Inquisition" and the expulsion of Jews from Iberia. They were allowed to settle in port cities as merchants granted permission to trade in ports such as Amsterdam, London, Trieste and Hamburg. Fry notes that their connections with the Jewish Diaspora and their expertise in maritime trade made them of particular interest to the mercantilist governments of Europe.[67]  Port Jews as Jewish merchants were "valued for their engagement in the international maritime trade upon which such cities thrived".[68] Sorkin and others have characterized the socio-cultural profile of these men as marked by a flexibility towards religion and a "reluctant cosmopolitanism that was alien to both traditional and 'enlightened' Jewish identities".

From the 16th to the 18th century, Jewish merchants dominated the chocolate and vanilla trade, exporting to Jewish centers across Europe, mainly Amsterdam, Bayonne, Bordeaux, Hamburg and Livorno.[69]

Ottoman Empire

History of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire 

During the Classical Ottoman period (1300–1600), the Jews, together with most other communities of the empire, enjoyed a certain level of prosperity. Compared with other Ottoman subjects, they were the predominant power in commerce and trade as well in diplomacy and other high offices. In the 16th century especially, the Jews were the most prominent under the millets, the apogee of Jewish influence could be the appointment of Joseph Nasi to Sanjak-bey (governor, a rank usually only bestowed upon Muslims) of the island of Naxos.[70]

At the time of the Battle of Yarmuk when the Levant passed under Muslim Rule, thirty Jewish communities existed in Haifa, Sh’chem, Hebron, Ramleh, Gaza, Jerusalem, and many in the north. Safed became a spiritual centre for the Jews and the Shulchan Aruch was compiled there as well as many Kabbalistic texts. The first Hebrew printing press, and the first printing in Western Asia began in 1577.

Jews lived in the geographic area of Asia Minor (modern Turkey, but more geographically either Anatolia or Asia Minor) for more than 2,400 years. Initial prosperity in Hellenistic times had faded under Christian Byzantine rule but recovered somewhat under the rule of the various Muslim governments that displaced and succeeded rule from Constantinople. For much of the Ottoman period, Turkey was a safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution, and it continues to have a small Jewish population today. The situation where Jews both enjoyed cultural and economic prosperity at times but were widely persecuted at other times was summarized by G.E. Von Grunebaum:

It would not be difficult to put together the names of a very sizeable number of Jewish subjects or citizens of the Islamic area who have attained to high rank, to power, to great financial influence, to significant and recognized intellectual attainment; and the same could be done for Christians. But it would again not be difficult to compile a lengthy list of persecutions, arbitrary confiscations, attempted forced conversions, or pogroms.[71]

Poland

Further information: History of the Jews in Poland

In the 17th century, there were many significant Jewish populations in Western and Central Europe. The tolerant Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe that dated back to 13th century and enjoyed relative prosperity and freedom for nearly four hundred years. However, the calm situation ended when Polish and Lithuanian Jews of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth were slaughtered in the hundreds of thousands by Ukrainian Cossacks during the Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648) and by the Swedish wars (1655). Driven by these and other persecutions, some Jews moved back to Western Europe in the 17th century, notably to Amsterdam. The last ban on Jewish residency in a European nation was revoked in 1654, but periodic expulsions from individual cities still occurred, and Jews were often restricted from land ownership, or forced to live in ghettos.

With the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, the Polish-Jewish population was split between the Russian Empire, Austria-Hungary, and German Prussia, which divided Poland among themselves.

The European Enlightenment and Haskalah (18th century)  

During the period of the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, significant changes occurred within the Jewish community. The Haskalah movement paralleled the wider Enlightenment, as Jews in the 18th century began to campaign for emancipation from restrictive laws and integration into the wider European society. Secular and scientific education was added to the traditional religious instruction received by students, and interest in a national Jewish identity, including a revival in the study of Jewish history and Hebrew, started to grow. Haskalah gave birth to the Reform and Conservative movements and planted the seeds of Zionism while at the same time encouraging cultural assimilation into the countries in which Jews resided. At around the same time another movement was born, one preaching almost the opposite of Haskalah, Hasidic Judaism. Hasidic Judaism began in the 18th century by Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, and quickly gained a following with its more exuberant, mystical approach to religion. These two movements, and the traditional orthodox approach to Judaism from which they spring, formed the basis for the modern divisions within Jewish observance.

At the same time, the outside world was changing, and debates began over the potential emancipation of the Jews (granting them equal rights). The first country to do so was France, during the French Revolution in 1789. Even so, Jews were expected to assimilate, not continue their traditions. This ambivalence is demonstrated in the famous speech of Clermont-Tonnerre before the National Assembly in 1789:

We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individuals. We must withdraw recognition from their judges; they should only have our judges. We must refuse legal protection to the maintenance of the so-called laws of their Judaic organization; they should not be allowed to form in the state either a political body or an order. They must be citizens individually. But some will say to me, they do not want to be citizens. Well then! If they do not want to be citizens, they should say so, and then, we should banish them. It is repugnant to have in the state an association of non-citizens, and a nation within the nation...

Hasidic Judaism

See also: Mitnagdim

Hasidic Judaism is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and joy through the popularisation and internalization of Jewish mysticism as the fundamental aspects of the Jewish faith. Hasidism comprises part of contemporary Ultra-Orthodox Judaism, alongside the previous Talmudic Lithuanian-Yeshiva approach and the Oriental Sephardi tradition. 

It was founded in 18th-century Eastern Europe by Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov as a reaction against overly legalistic Judaism. Opposite to this, Hasidic teachings cherished the sincerity and concealed holiness of the unlettered common folk, and their equality with the scholarly elite. The emphasis on the Immanent Divine presence in everything gave new value to prayer and deeds of kindness, alongside Rabbinic supremacy of study, and replaced historical mystical (kabbalistic) and ethical (musar) asceticism and admonishment with optimism, encouragement, and daily fervor. This populist emotional revival accompanied the elite ideal of nullification to paradoxical Divine Panentheism, through intellectual articulation of inner dimensions of mystical thought. The adjustment of Jewish values sought to add to required standards of ritual observance, while relaxing others where inspiration predominated. Its communal gatherings celebrate soulful song and storytelling as forms of mystical devotion.

19th Century

Though persecution still existed, emancipation spread throughout Europe in the 19th century. Napoleon invited Jews to leave the Jewish ghettos in Europe and seek refuge in the newly created tolerant political regimes that offered equality under Napoleonic Law (see Napoleon and the Jews). By 1871, with Germany's emancipation of Jews, every European country except Russia had emancipated its Jews.

Despite increasing integration of the Jews with secular society, a new form of antisemitism emerged, based on the ideas of race and nationhood rather than the religious hatred of the Middle Ages. This form of antisemitism held that Jews were a separate and inferior race from the Aryan people of Western Europe, and led to the emergence of political parties in France, Germany, and Austria-Hungary that campaigned on a platform of rolling back emancipation. This form of antisemitism emerged frequently in European culture, most famously in the Dreyfus Trial in France. These persecutions, along with state-sponsored pogroms in Russia in the late 19th century, led a number of Jews to believe that they would only be safe in their own nation. See Theodor Herzl and History of Zionism.

During this period, Jewish migration to the United States (see American Jews) created a large new community mostly freed of the restrictions of Europe. Over 2 million Jews arrived in the United States between 1890 and 1924, most from Russia and Eastern Europe. A similar case occurred in the southern tip of the continent, specifically in the countries of Argentina and Uruguay.

20th century

Modern Zionism

Main article: History of Zionism

During the 1870s and 1880s the Jewish population in Europe began to more actively discuss immigration back to Israel and the re-establishment of the Jewish Nation in its national homeland, fulfilling the biblical prophecies relating to Shivat Tzion. In 1882 the first Zionist settlement—Rishon LeZion—was founded by immigrants who belonged to the "Hovevei Zion" movement. Later on, the "Bilu" movement established many other settlements in the land of Israel.

The Zionist movement was founded officially after the Kattowitz convention (1884) and the World Zionist Congress (1897), and it was Theodor Herzl who began the struggle to establish a state for the Jews.

After the First World War, it seemed that the conditions to establish such a state had arrived: The United Kingdom captured Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, and the Jews received the promise of a "National Home" from the British in the form of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, given to Chaim Weizmann.

In 1920 the British Mandate of Palestine began and the pro-Jewish Herbert Samuel was appointed High Commissioner in Palestine, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was established and several big Jewish immigration waves to Palestine occurred. The Arab co-inhabitants of Palestine were hostile to increasing Jewish immigration however and began to oppose Jewish settlement and the pro-Jewish policy of the British government by violent means.

Arab gangs began performing violent acts and murders on convoys and on the Jewish population. After the 1920 Arab riots and 1921 Jaffa riots, the Jewish leadership in Palestine believed that the British had no desire to confront local Arab gangs over their attacks on Palestinian Jews. Believing that they could not rely on the British administration for protection from these gangs, the Jewish leadership created the Haganah organization to protect their farms and Kibbutzim.

Major riots occurred during the 1929 Palestine riots and the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.

Due to the increasing violence the United Kingdom gradually started to backtrack from the original idea of a Jewish state and to speculate on a binational solution or an Arab state that would have a Jewish minority.

Meanwhile, the Jews of Europe and the United States gained success in the fields of the science, culture and the economy. Among those considered the most famous were scientist Albert Einstein and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. A disproportionate number of Nobel Prize winners at this time were Jewish, as is still the case.[4] In Russia, many Jews were involved in the October Revolution and belonged to the Communist Party.

The Holocaust

History of the Jews during World War II and The Holocaust

In 1933, with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany, the Jewish situation became more severe. Economic crises, racial Anti-Jewish laws, and a fear of an upcoming war led many Jews to flee from Europe to Palestine, to the United States and to the Soviet Union.

In 1939 World War II began and until 1941 Hitler occupied almost all of Europe, including Poland—where millions of Jews were living at that time—and France. In 1941, following the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Final Solution began, an extensive organized operation on an unprecedented scale, aimed at the annihilation of the Jewish people, and resulting in the persecution and murder of Jews in political Europe, inclusive of European North Africa (pro-Nazi Vichy-North Africa and Italian Libya). This genocide, in which approximately six million Jews were murdered methodically and with horrifying cruelty, is known as The Holocaust or Shoah (Hebrew term). In Poland, one million Jews were murdered in gas chambers at the Auschwitz camp complex alone.

The massive scale of the Holocaust, and the horrors that happened during it, heavily affected the Jewish nation and world public opinion, which only understood the dimensions of the Holocaust after the war. Efforts were then increased to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.

The establishment of the State of Israel 

Main article: History of Israel

In 1945 the Jewish resistance organizations in Palestine unified and established the Jewish Resistance Movement. The movement began guerilla attacks against Arab paramilitaries and the British authorities.[72] Following the King David Hotel bombing, Chaim Weizmann, president of the WZO appealed to the movement to cease all further military activity until a decision would be reached by the Jewish Agency. The Jewish Agency backed Weizmann's recommendation to cease activities, a decision reluctantly accepted by the Haganah, but not by the Irgun and Lehi. The JRM was dismantled and each of the founding groups continued operating according to their own policy.[73]

The Jewish leadership decided to center the struggle in the illegal immigration to Palestine and began organizing a massive number of Jewish war refugees from Europe, without the approval of the British authorities. This immigration contributed a great deal to the Jewish settlements in Israel in the world public opinion and the British authorities decided to let the United Nations decide upon the fate of Palestine.

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181(II) recommending partitioning Palestine into an Arab state, a Jewish state and the City of Jerusalem. The Jewish leadership accepted the decision, but the Arab League and the leadership of Palestinian Arabs opposed it. Following a period of civil war the 1948 Arab–Israeli War started.

In the middle of the war, after the last British soldiers of left the Palestine Mandate, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed on May 14, 1948, the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel to be known as the State of Israel. In 1949 the war ended and the state of Israel started building the state and absorbing massive waves of hundreds of thousands of Jews from all over the world.

Since 1948, Israel has been involved in a series of major military conflicts, including the 1956 Suez Crisis, 1967 Six-Day War, 1973 Yom Kippur War, 1982 Lebanon War, and 2006 Lebanon War, as well as a nearly constant series of ongoing minor conflicts.

Since 1977, an ongoing and largely unsuccessful series of diplomatic efforts have been initiated by Israel, Palestinian organizations, their neighbors, and other parties, including the United States and the European Union, to bring about a peace process to resolve conflicts between Israel and its neighbors, mostly over the fate of the Palestinian people.

21st Century

Israel is a parliamentary democracy with a population of over 8 million people, of whom about 6 million are Jewish. The largest Jewish communities are in Israel and the United States, with major communities in France, Argentina, Russia, England, and Canada. For statistics related to modern Jewish demographics see Jewish population.

The Jewish Autonomous Oblast, created during the Soviet period, continues to be an autonomous oblast of the Russian state.[74] 

The number of people who identified as Jews in England and Wales rose slightly between 2001 and 2011, with the growth being attributed to the higher birth rate of the Haredi community.[78] The estimated British Jewish population in England as of 2011 stands at 263,346.[79]

Jewish History by Country or Region

Main article: Jewish ethnic divisions

For historical and contemporary Jewish populations by country, see Jews by country.

See also Timeline of Jewish history 

Notes

1.    Mosk (2013), p. 143. "Encouraged to move out of the Holy Roman Empire as persecution of their communities intensified during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Ashkenazi community increasingly gravitated toward Poland."

2.    Harshav, Benjamin (1999). The Meaning of Yiddish. Stanford: Stanford University Press. p. 6. "From the fourteenth and certainly by the sixteenth century, the center of European Jewry had shifted to Poland, then ... comprising the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (including today's Byelorussia), Crown Poland, Galicia, the Ukraine and stretching, at times, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, from the approaches to Berlin to a short distance from Moscow."

3.    Lewin, Rhoda G. (1979). "Stereotype and reality in the Jewish immigrant experience in Minneapolis" (PDF). Minnesota History. 46 (7): 259.

4.    "Jewish Nobel Prize Winners". jinfo.org.

5.    Neusner 1992, p. 4.

6.    Dever, William G. (2002). What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.  p. 99

7.    Finkelstein, Israel and Nadav Naaman, eds. (1994). From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel. Israel Exploration Society.

8.    Compare: Ian Shaw; Robert Jameson (May 6, 2002). Ian Shaw (ed.). A Dictionary of Archaeology (New edition (17 Feb 2002) ed.). Wiley Blackwell. p. 313.  The Biblical account of the origins of the people of Israel (principally recounted in Numbers, Joshua and Judges) often conflicts with non-Biblical textual sources and with the archaeological evidence for the settlement of Canaan in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age. [...] Israel is first textually attested as a political entity in Egyptian texts of the late 13th century BC and the Egyptologist Donald Redford argues that the Israelites must have been emerging as a distinct group within the Canaanite culture during the century or so prior to this. It has been suggested that the early Israelites were an oppressed rural group of Canaanites who rebelled against the more urbanized coastal Canaanites (Gottwald 1979). Alternatively, it has been argued that the Israelites were survivors of the decline in the fortunes of Canaan who established themselves in the highlands at the end of the late Bronze Age (Ahlstrom 1986: 27). Redford, however, makes a good case for equating the very earliest Israelites with a semi-nomadic people in the highlands of central Palestine whom the Egyptians called Shasu (Redford 1992:2689-80; although see Stager 1985 for strong arguments against the identification with the Shasu). These Shasu were a persistent thorn in the side of the Ramessid pharaohs' empire in Syria-Palestine, well-attested in Egyptian texts, but their pastoral lifestyle has left scant traces in the archaeological record. By the end of the 13th century BC, however, the Shasu/Israelites were beginning to establish small settlements in the uplands, the architecture of which closely resembles contemporary Canaanite villages.

9.    Killebrew, Ann E. (2005). Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and Early Israel, 1300–1100 B.C.E. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. p. 176.  Retrieved August 12, 2012. Much has been made of the scarcity of pig bones at highland sites. Since small quantities of pig bones do appear in Late Bronze Age assemblages, some archaeologists have interpreted this to indicate that the ethnic identity of the highland inhabitants was distinct from Late Bronze Age indigenous peoples (see Finkelstein 1997, 227–230). Brian Hesse and Paula Wapnish (1997) advise caution, however, since the lack of pig bones at Iron I highland settlements could be a result of other factors that have little to do with ethnicity.

10. Codex Judaica, Kantor, Zichron Press, NY 2005.

11. (Translation: Mordechai Vermebrand and Betzalel S. Ruth – "The People of Israel – the history of 4000 years – from the days of the Forefathers to the Peace Treaty", 1981, p. 95)

12. Codex Judaica, pp. 175–176, Kantor, Zichron Press, NY 2005.

13. Biblical History and Israel's Past: The Changing Study of the Bible and History. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 357–358.

14. Dr. Solomon Gryazel, History of the Jews: From the destruction of Judah in 586 BC to the present Arab Israeli conflict, p. 137.

15. Codex Judaica, pp. 161–174, Kantor, Zichron Press, NY 2005.

16. Jonathan Stökl, Caroline Waerzegger (2015). Exile and Return: The Babylonian Context. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. pp. 7–11, 30, 226.

17. See:

§  William David Davies. The Hellenistic Age. Volume 2 of Cambridge History of Judaism. Cambridge University Press, 1989. . pp. 292–312.

§  Jeff S. Anderson. The Internal Diversification of Second Temple Judaism: An Introduction to the Second Temple Period. University Press of America, 2002. pp. 37–38.

§  Howard N. Lupovitch. Jews and Judaism in World History. Taylor & Francis. 2009.  pp. 26–30.

18. Hooker, Richard. "The Hebrews: The Diaspora". World Civilizations Learning Modules. Washington State University, 1999.

19. Charlesworth, James H. (2008). The Historical Jesus: An Essential Guide. 

20. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, p. 142.

21. Nathan Katz, Who Are the Jews of India?, University of California Press, 2000  pp.13–14, 17–18

22. Bernard Lazare and Robert Wistrich, Antisemitism: Its History and Causes, University of Nebraska Press, 1995, I, pp. 46–47.

23. Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae, 23.1.2–3.

24. See "Julian and the Jews 361–363 CE" (Fordham University, The Jesuit University of New York) and "Julian the Apostate and the Holy Temple".

25. A Psychoanalytic History of the Jews, Avner Falk

26. Avraham Yaari, Igrot Eretz Yisrael (Tel Aviv, 1943), p. 46.

27. Andrew S. Jacobs (2004). Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity. Stanford University Press. pp. 157–.

28. Edward Lipiński (2004). Itineraria Phoenicia. Peeters Publishers. pp. 542–543.

29.  [מרדכי וורמברנד ובצלאל ס. רותת "עם ישראל – תולדות 4000 שנה – מימי האבות ועד חוזה השלום", ע"מ 97. (Translation: Mordechai Vermebrand and Betzalel S. Ruth The People of Israel: The History of 4,000 Years, from the Days of the Forefathers to the Peace Treaty, 1981, p. 97)

30. Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen, John Chrysostom: The Early Church Fathers (London, 2000), pp. 113, 146.

31. Cod., I., v. 12

32. Procopius, Historia Arcana, 28

33. Nov., cxlvi., Feb. 8, 553

34. Procopius, De Aedificiis, vi. 2

35. G. Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State

36. The Oxford History of Byzantium, C. Mango (Ed) (2002)

37. Ehrlich, Mark. Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture, Volume 1. ABC-CLIO, 2009, p. 152.)

38. Bashan, Eliezer (2007). Berenbaum, Michael; Skolnik, Fred (eds.). Encyclopaedia Judaica. 15 (2nd ed.). Detroit: Macmillan Reference. p. 419.

39. Joseph E. Katz (2001). "Continuous Jewish Presence in the Holy Land". EretzYisroel.Org.

40. Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine: 634–1099 pp. 170, 220-221.

41. Marina Rustow, Baghdad in the West: Migration and the Making of Medieval Jewish Traditions

42.  Sephardim by Rebecca Weiner.

43. Lewis, Bernard W (1984). The Jews of Islam

44. Malamat (1976). A History of the Jewish People. Harvard University Press. pp. 413

45. Abraham Malamat (1976). A History of the Jewish People. Harvard University Press. pp. 416–.

46. David Nirenberg (2002). Gerd Althoff (ed.). Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography. Johannes Fried. Cambridge University Press. pp. 279–.

47. Abraham Malamat (1976). A History of the Jewish People. Harvard University Press. pp. 419–.

48. Abraham Malamat (1976). A History of the Jewish People. Harvard University Press. pp. 414–.

49. Sefer HaCharedim Mitzvat Tshuva Chapter 3

50. "Jewish Zionist Education". Jafi.org.il. May 15, 2005.

51. "Archived copy" (PDF).

52. Benjamin J. Segal. "Section III: The Biblical Age: Chapter Seventeen: Awaiting the Messiah". Returning, the Land of Israel as a Focus in Jewish History. JewishHistory.com.

53. Maurice Roumani, The Case of the Jews from Arab Countries: A Neglected Issue, 1977, pp. 26–27.

54. "Granada". Jewish Encyclopedia. 1906.

55. Mitchell Bard (2012). "The Treatment of Jews in Arab/Islamic Countries". Jewish Virtual Library.

56. The Forgotten Refugees Archived September 28, 2007,

57. Rebecca Weiner. "Sephardim". Jewish Virtual Library.

58. Kraemer, Joel L., "Moses Maimonides: An Intellectual Portrait," The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides, pp. 16–17 (2005)

59. Carroll, James. Constantine's Sword (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) p. 26

60. Wade, Nicholas (May 14, 2002). "In DNA, New Clues to Jewish Roots". The New York Times. Retrieved June 16, 2013.

61. Norman F. Cantor, The Last Knight: The Twilight of the Middle Ages and the Birth of the Modern Era, Free Press, 2004. pp. 28–29

62. Ebenhard Isenmann (1999). Richard Bonney (ed.). The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe c. 1200–1815. Clarendon Press. pp. 259–.

63. Abraham Malamat (1976). A History of the Jewish People. Harvard University Press. pp. 412–.

64. "England" Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)

65. Robin R. Mundill (2002). England's Jewish Solution: Experiment and Expulsion, 1262–1290. Cambridge University Press.

66. "Reframing Jewish History".

67. Fry, Helen P. (2002). "Port Jews: Jewish Communities in Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centres, 1550–1950". European Judaism. Frank Cass Publishers. 36.  Port Jews were a social type, usually those who were involved in seafaring and maritime trade, who (like Court Jews) could be seen as the earliest modern Jews. Often arriving as refugees from the Inquisition, they were permitted to settle as merchants and allowed to trade openly in places such as Amsterdam, London, Trieste and Hamburg. 'Their Diaspora connections and accumulated expertise lay in exactly the areas of overseas expansion that were then of interest to mercantilist governments.'

68. Dubin, The port Jews of Habsburg Trieste: absolutist politics and enlightenment culture, Stanford University Press, 1999, p. 47

69. Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, Gil Marks, HMH, 17 Nov 2010

70. Charles Issawi & Dmitri Gondicas; Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism, Princeton, (1999)

71. G.E. Von Grunebaum, Eastern Jewry Under Islam, 1971, p. 369.

72. "The Jewish Resistance Movement". Jewish Virtual Library.

73. Horne, Edward (1982). A Job Well Done (Being a History of The Palestine Police Force 1920–1948). The Anchor Press. . pp. 272, 299. States that Haganah withdrew on July 1, 1946. But remained permanently uncooperative.

74. Fishkoff, Sue (October 8, 2008). "A Jewish revival in Birobidzhan?"  Jewish News of Greater Phoenix. Accessed on June 8, 2008.

75. Paxton, Robin (June 1, 2007). "From Tractors to Torah in Russia's Jewish Land" Federation of Jewish Communities.

76. "Governor Voices Support for Growing Far East Jewish Community"Archived 

77. "Far East Community Prepares for 70th Anniversary of Jewish Autonomous Republic" 

78. "Jewish population on the increase". May 21, 2008. Retrieved March 18, 2020.

79. "2011 Census: KS209EW Religion, local authorities in England and Wales". ons.gov.uk.

Further reading

·       Allegro, John. The chosen people: A study of Jewish history from the time of the exile until the revolt of Bar Kocheba (Andrews UK, 2015).

·       Alpher, Joseph. Encyclopedia of Jewish history: events and eras of the Jewish people (1986) 

·       Cohn-Sherbok, Dan. Atlas of Jewish history (Routledge, 2013).

·       Fireberg, H., Glöckner, O., & Menachem Zoufalá, M. (Eds.). (2020). Being Jewish in 21st Century Central Europe. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg.

·       Friesel, Evyatar. Atlas of modern Jewish history (1990) 

·       Gilbert, Martin. Atlas of Jewish History (1993) 

·       Kobrin, Rebecca and Adam Teller, eds. Purchasing Power: The Economics of Modern Jewish History. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. viii, 355 pp. Essays by scholars focused on Europe.

·       Neusner, Jacob (1992). A Short History of Judaism. Fortress Press.

·       Sachar, Howard M. The course of modern Jewish history (2nd ed. 2013). 

·       Schloss, Chaim. 2000 Years of Jewish History (2002), Heavily illustrated popular history.

·       Scheindlin, Raymond P. A short history of the Jewish people from legendary times to modern statehood (1998) 

France

·       Benbassa, Esther. The Jews of France: A History from Antiquity to the Present (2001) 

·       Birnbaum, Pierre, and Jane Todd. The Jews of the Republic: A Political History of State Jews in France from Gambetta to Vichy (1996).

·       Birnbaum, Pierre; Kochan, Miriam. Anti-Semitism in France: A Political History from Léon Blum to the Present (1992) 317p.

·       Cahm, Eric. The Dreyfus affair in French society and politics (Routledge, 2014).

·       Debré, Simon. "The Jews of France." Jewish Quarterly Review 3.3 (1891): 367–435. long scholarly description. 

·       Graetz, Michael, and Jane Todd. The Jews in Nineteenth-Century France: From the French Revolution to the Alliance Israelite Universelle (1996)

·       Hyman, Paula E. The Jews of Modern France (1998) 

·       Hyman, Paula. From Dreyfus to Vichy: The Remaking of French Jewry, 1906–1939 (Columbia UP, 1979). 

·       Schechter, Ronald. Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815 (Univ of California Press, 2003)

·       Taitz, Emily. The Jews of Medieval France: The Community of Champagne (1994) 

Russia and Eastern Europe

·       Gitelman, Zvi. A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (2001)

·       Klier, John, and Shlomo Lambroza. Pogroms: anti-Jewish violence in modern Russian history (1992) 

·       Polonsky, Antony. The Jews in Poland and Russia: A Short History (2013)

·       Weiner, Miriam; Polish State Archives (in cooperation with) (1997). Jewish Roots in Poland: Pages from the Past and Archival Inventories. Secaucus, NJ: Miriam Weiner Routes to Roots Foundation.

·       Weiner, Miriam; Ukrainian State Archives (in cooperation with); Moldovan National Archives (in cooperation with) (1999). Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova: Pages from the Past and Archival Inventories. Secaucus, NJ: Miriam Weiner Routes to Roots Foundation.

United States

·       Fischel, Jack, and Sanford Pinsker, eds. Jewish-American history and culture : an encyclopedia (1992) 

External links 

·       Jewish History and Culture Encyclopedia Official Site of the 22-volume Encyclopaedia Judaica

·       Barnavi, Eli (Ed.). A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1992.

Updated November 26, 2021