Between Cross and Crescent: Jewish Civilization from Mohammed to Spinoza

This opening lecture presents some preliminary observations about Jewish history—especially the landlessness that has applied for most of it—and the approach taken with material often laden with ideological presuppositions.

After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Babylonians—and the transfer of large numbers of Jews to Babylonia—the increasing complexity of life in the remaining community gives rise to new sectarian groups seeking to interpret Jewish life and promote their own claims to political and spiritual leadership. With the destruction of the second Temple by the Romans, Jewish life is eventually consolidated by the rabbinic leadership both in Palestine and especially in Babylonia.

With the rise of Mohammed's new religion in the 7th century, the cultural environment under which Jews lived in the Middle East, in North Africa, and in the Iberian Peninsula was transformed. But it is clear that early Islam was in dialogue with the Jewish tradition from its very inception.

This lecture examines the institutions that governed Jewish life in Baghdad, including the structure of—and threats to—rabbinic power and the complex system of Jewish communal autonomy existing outside of Baghdad and stretching throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond.

This lecture begins our examination of the life and career of an intellectual giant whose meteoric rise to power—along with the internal struggles in which he became entangled - offers a rich portrait of the community as a whole.

In writing a Jewish philosophy, Saadia Gaon sought to defend the integrity of the Jewish faith not only against his Muslim colleagues but against those rationalists who questioned its veracity and against the Karaites who undermined the rabbinic underpinnings of the Jewish tradition.

The Spanish Jewish community begins to assert its independence of the hegemony of Baghdadian Jewry. Writing in Hebrew verse to distinguish themselves from their Arab counterparts writing in Arabic, they initiate a remarkable efflorescence of literary creativity for several centuries.

We look at the work and impact of Judah ha-Levi, one of the most talented of Spain's Hebrew poets, whose writings denounce both the excessive integration of Spanish cultural values into the heart of Judaism and the fusion of philosophy and Judaism—a religious experience beyond the reach of rational discourse.

The lecture examines the work of Moses Maimonides, the dominant cultural figure within the Jewish world of his day and for centuries following his death, and whose masterpiece, The Guide to the Perplexed, originally composed in Arabic, achieved a revered status within the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian intellectual worlds.

This lecture examines the emergence of Jews in Christian Europe, from their first appearances along trade routes to the beginnings of a system of communal authority and interconnectedness that transcended the local level, reflecting the emergence of what came to be called Ashkenazic Jewry.

Beginning with the foundations of Church policy towards Jews in the Gospels themselves, this lecture looks at how Augustine's arguments shape the standard policy of the Church of antiquity and of the early Middle Ages.

The fears of European Jews as to what the Crusades against Muslim "infidels" might mean to them prove accurate. Five thousand Jews die during the first crusade, some massacred by Christians; many take their own lives as martyrs.

As Talmudic scholarship shifts geographically to northern France, the commentaries of a rabbi known to us as Rashi are an instant success and become indispensable guides to the study of biblical and rabbinic literature.

This lecture introduces us to Kabbalah, the collective traditions of Jewish mystical contemplation of the divine, and explores how its proliferation in the 13th century was, to a great extent, a negative reaction to the influence of rationalism and philosophy on the Jewish community.

In Germany, a small community of Jews introduces a unique social philosophy and set of religious practices that come to be known as German pietism, whose colorful folklore and moral literature leave a lasting imprint on Jewish culture in later ages.

The 12th and 13th centuries mark a re-evaluation of and departure from previous official Church policy regarding the Jews, with the prevalent Augustinian tolerance displaced by a more aggressive policy of vilifying Judaism and missionizing among Jews.

Historians have offered a variety of explanations for the decline in medieval Jewish life from the 12th century on. We see that the reasons go well beyond Church doctrines alone, encompassing wider and deeper social, economic, and political issues.

This lecture places a sharper focus on a once-neglected area of medieval Jewish history: the study of Jewish women and their families, in relation to both male Jews and non-Jewish women.

Until the end of the 14th century, the Jewish community remained secure despite Christian hostility toward Jews elsewhere in Europe. All this changed in 1391, with a never-seen-before reaction by Jewish victims.

By the end of the 15th century, new Jewish communities have emerged in Italy. Created in the context of significant social, political, and intellectual changes, they have a profound cultural impact—including the paradoxical results of ghettoization.

The Spanish emigration of 1492 infused new vitality into Jewish cultural and religious life in Ottoman lands, including an enormously influential interpretation of Kabbalah.

This lecture examines the explosion of millenarian fervor within the Jewish community that is focused on the frenzied behavior of a self-proclaimed messiah named Shabbetai Zevi, whose nihilistic ideology proves to have wide appeal.

Jews begin migrating to Poland in the 14th and 15th centuries. With few economic restrictions, they assume diversified economic roles for the Polish nobility and king, and Ashkenazic rabbinical scholarship reaches unsurpassed heights in the receptive political and social climate of Eastern Europe.

As Amsterdam invites former Jewish victims of Spanish persecution—forced by circumstance to convert—to settle within its borders, a vibrant new Jewish community is formed and becomes a significant incubator of modern Jewish consciousness.