Heritage: Civilization and the Jews #104; No. 104; The Crucible of Europe

<v Speaker>Major funding for this program has been provided by the Charles H. <v Speaker>Revson Foundation, Petrie Stores Corp. <v Speaker>and the National Endowment for the Humanities. <v Speaker>Additional funding has been provided by the following contributors. <v Speaker>A complete donor list is available at WNET. <v Speaker>For me, there is a sense of wonder in this place.

<v Speaker>One can almost hear within it reflected by its vaulted ceilings, <v Speaker>the sound of Jewish prayer. <v Speaker>For this was once the Great Synagogue of Toledo. <v Speaker>And it's memory of a flourishing Jewish life in Spain persists. <v Speaker>That time is gone, but it's bittersweet legacy lives on. <v Speaker>By the ninth century, North Africa and Spain were in the hands of Muslim <v Speaker>rulers. <v Speaker>The Jews had followed the conquest of Islam across North Africa and into <v Speaker>Spain. <v Speaker>To the north, Christian Europe was beginning to awaken and was on the verge <v Speaker>of profound changes. <v Speaker>The cultures of three great faiths would meet on the continent of Europe. <v Speaker>The Jews would join in the transformation of that continent and would themselves

<v Speaker>be transformed. <v Speaker>We who are of the remnant of Israelites, are dwelling peacefully in this land of Spain, <v Speaker>which is called in our sacred tongue safarov. <v Speaker>The land is rich, abounding in rivers, springs and aqueducts. <v Speaker>A land of corn oil and wine and all manner of delicacies. <v Speaker>It has pleasure gardens and orchards and fruitful trees of every <v Speaker>kind. <v Speaker>Grace, serenity, delicacy, artistry. <v Speaker>Those are the words evoked by this patio of the Alhambra, the great <v Speaker>Moorish Palace of Granada, built in the 13th century. <v Speaker>In these precincts, as in all of Andalusia, the southern part of Spain, for <v Speaker>more than two centuries, Arabs and Jews lived together side by side,

<v Speaker>bound to each other, despite other differences by a common love of beauty <v Speaker>and knowledge. Poetry and music, art and philosophy. <v Speaker>In Jewish history despite intermittent waves of persecution and <v Speaker>violence, that Spanish era is known as a golden age. <v Speaker>The great wave of Muslim conquest that swept across North Africa had <v Speaker>broken up on the shores of Europe, leaving Spain in the hands of Moorish <v Speaker>rulers. <v Speaker>Jews had followed in the wake of the Muslim conquests, joining in the development <v Speaker>of new lands and sharing in the first great fluorescence of culture <v Speaker>since the days of the Roman Empire. <v Speaker>Arab civilization built upon a foundation made by other cultures before <v Speaker>it, among them that of the Jews.

<v Speaker>And in reaching outward to Greece and India and Rome, the Arab renaissance <v Speaker>synthesized a luminous vision of the world <v Speaker>in delicate patterns. <v Speaker>The words of the Koran, the Holy Book of Islam, were carved upon the <v Speaker>walls of Muslim palaces. <v Speaker>Everywhere in a lot of detail and faith were intertwined. <v Speaker>In their search for order and beauty, the Arabs left a profound legacy for <v Speaker>all time. <v Speaker>The Arabs delved into the sciences and into mathematics. <v Speaker>It was they who developed a system called in Arabic al-jarba <v Speaker>algebra. They read the works of classical Greece and were enthralled,

<v Speaker>exploring in their own minds the paths and byways of philosophy. <v Speaker>And in their age of greatest creativity, they did and respected <v Speaker>the ideas and beliefs of other peoples. <v Speaker>By the ninth century, the vast majority of all Jews lived in Arab <v Speaker>lands. <v Speaker>They could hardly escape the influence of this new and in cultures <v Speaker>of the lands of Islam, an ideal would emerge among the Jews of <v Speaker>living and sharing in the larger society. <v Speaker>Nowhere was this ideal more fully realized than in the Muslim lands of Spain. <v Speaker>Here in the Great Mosque of Cordoba early in the 10th century, Abdul

<v Speaker>Rahman, a third, established the independent caliphate of Muslim Spain <v Speaker>and invited to his Israel Arab poets and scientists, scholars and philosophers. <v Speaker>Here, the Jewish linguist and statesman, hostile, even sharp, rude, <v Speaker>served in the court of Abdel Rahman and founded a Jewish court of his own. <v Speaker>In so doing, he created a center of Jewish culture unique in the world of his <v Speaker>time. <v Speaker>A new world of Judaism would be born in this land. <v Speaker>The world of the Sephardim, the Spanish Jews. <v Speaker>Over the years, they would play a conspicuous part in the government, in statecraft <v Speaker>and in the scholarship of Moorish Spain. <v Speaker>Here in Granada, as elsewhere in Spain, these Sephardim rose

<v Speaker>to positions of great power. <v Speaker>Here, Samuel, but not Grella, a Jew could become prime minister and <v Speaker>commander in chief of the Moorish armies. <v Speaker>His son Joseph would succeed him and plan it, he said. <v Speaker>The construction of the great Red Palace, the Alhambra. <v Speaker>It was a land of abundance, rich in opportunity, rich <v Speaker>in possibilities. <v Speaker>From the fruitfulness of Spain, the modish and the Jewish cultures drew sustenance <v Speaker>growing side by side and learning from one another. <v Speaker>Despite moments of conflict, Jews across this land were free to work <v Speaker>as farmers and physicians, artisans and statesmen, astronomers <v Speaker>and diplomats. <v Speaker>The Jews took inspiration from Arab literature and revitalized

<v Speaker>their ancient language Hebrew. <v Speaker>For centuries, it had been a language of worship only. <v Speaker>In Spain, Hebrew was reborn in poetry and in song. <v Speaker>The golden age of Muslim Spain would come to an end as the land <v Speaker>broke into separate and warring kingdoms. <v Speaker>But even in its final days, it's remarkable vitality would find new <v Speaker>expression. <v Speaker>Three centuries of the golden age resonate in the work of a single man, <v Speaker>the greatest Jewish scholar of his time, Moses Ben, my man <v Speaker>better known to history as my Monitise, back to his people <v Speaker>who revered him. He was and is known by other names. <v Speaker>Rambam the great eagle to signify his soaring intellect

<v Speaker>and most simply, the second Moses. <v Speaker>Forced to flee from the turmoil of Spain, eventually he found refuge <v Speaker>in Egypt, intolerant, bustling Cairo. <v Speaker>My monitors, who would be remembered as a scholar, philosopher and moralist <v Speaker>but came first a mathematician, an astronomer, a physician. <v Speaker>As one of the greatest physicians of his century, he was appointed to attend <v Speaker>to the Sultan Saladin in the year he left in ninety nine. <v Speaker>He wrote to a friend and fellow scholar of his daily routine. <v Speaker>I'd well, it follows that the sultan's residence is in Cairo <v Speaker>early each morning. <v Speaker>I am obliged to visit him. <v Speaker>When the sultan does not feel well or when one of his children or waves of zeal, he

<v Speaker>cannot leave Cairo if they are well, I <v Speaker>return to my home in the afternoon, but never earlier. <v Speaker>All the rooms are crowded with people. <v Speaker>They treat them when dispense prescriptions coming and going <v Speaker>of patients lasts until evening, when night falls. <v Speaker>I cannot speak for exhaustion. <v Speaker>Within this routine, my monitor is managed somehow to write continuously <v Speaker>10 books on medicine alone. <v Speaker>But it is not for his scientific works that he is best remembered. <v Speaker>It is as the sage, the commentator, the wise man. <v Speaker>In the synagogue of Ben Ezra, his synagogue, the mind and spirit <v Speaker>of the second Moses are alive today. <v Speaker>My Monitise searched out the heart of Jewish tradition and codified it <v Speaker>in the missioner Torah.

<v Speaker>His contribution has defied the centuries and entered into the thought and <v Speaker>life of all of Western civilization. <v Speaker>I wish to help the one where the man out of his perplexity <v Speaker>to show him a way out of his confusion so that he may <v Speaker>attain perfection and peace <v Speaker>in the greatest of my monitise works. <v Speaker>The Guide for the Perplexed. He set out to examine Jewish religious beliefs <v Speaker>in the light of philosophy, to reconcile faith and reason. <v Speaker>Let us say that whenever anything in the world seems absurd, ridiculous <v Speaker>or evil, it is because we have but a partial knowledge <v Speaker>and we want things arranged according to our taste and reason. <v Speaker>But when we look at life and the world from the aspect of the eternal scheme <v Speaker>of things, we will find that what seems to us bad and shocking

<v Speaker>does so only because of our lack of knowledge and wisdom. <v Speaker>The Guide for the Perplexed was one of the few books written by a Jew since biblical <v Speaker>times to become part of world literature. <v Speaker>In the closing days of the golden age, it was a beacon light that would illuminate <v Speaker>the work of scholars of other faiths. <v Speaker>For centuries to come. <v Speaker>But the age which had produced my monitise was soon to vanish. <v Speaker>Moorish Spain fell apart in the 11th and 12th centuries, and Christian <v Speaker>armies from the north of the Iberian Peninsula launched a campaign <v Speaker>of reconquest in Spanish, the Reconquista. <v Speaker>Over the next 400 years, they will drive inexorably southward and westward <v Speaker>into Muslim Spain until the Moors were forced to yield every piece <v Speaker>of territory they had ever possessed.

<v Speaker>And the era was ending for the Sephardic Jews. <v Speaker>Muslim Spain was dying and in its place they would now be <v Speaker>a Christian land joined to the Christian lands of northern Europe. <v Speaker>Europe, in the areas that are now Germany and France, was for centuries <v Speaker>a region of vast forests, a wilderness with villages <v Speaker>huddled for protection near the walls of wooden fortresses. <v Speaker>While the renaissance of Arab culture reached its heights, northern Europe <v Speaker>remained little more than a fragile outpost of civilization. <v Speaker>It was a primitive land with a population barely clinging to the remnants <v Speaker>of a culture brought to them by Rome centuries before. <v Speaker>There were no nations, no national boundaries.

<v Speaker>The only bond between the people was their Christian faith. <v Speaker>The first Jews to penetrate to this land were traitors, bringing goods from <v Speaker>the Mediterranean. <v Speaker>But in time, as stability and peace were ensured by feudal lords, <v Speaker>Europe would become a home for the Jews. <v Speaker>By the 11th century, this wilderness began to undergo a transformation. <v Speaker>Everywhere, new lands were cleared as peasants who lived and farmed under <v Speaker>the protection of feudal lords. <v Speaker>Vintages grew into towns and where once stockades and wooden huts had <v Speaker>served, Stonewall's now rose. <v Speaker>In the streets and alleys of these new towns, amidst the bustle of carts <v Speaker>and wagons of pack mules and human porters, it was Jews who were

<v Speaker>the merchants. They who offered goods for sale from the great manufacturing and trading <v Speaker>centers of the Mediterranean and the East. <v Speaker>The Jews were the connective link between this frontier society and the sophisticated <v Speaker>world of the Muslim lands. <v Speaker>Eager to develop commerce in their domains, feudal lords in northern Europe <v Speaker>sought to attract Jews to their towns with offers of special charters and privileges. <v Speaker>It was the charters granted by feudal rulers that permitted the Jews to <v Speaker>settle in the land. <v Speaker>The terms might vary, but without exception, Jews were allowed to practice <v Speaker>their faith and live according to their own laws as written in the Talmud. <v Speaker>From the 10th and 11th century on, they were established Jewish communities <v Speaker>in most of the major cities of Germany and France.

<v Speaker>The Jews excelled in commerce and their relations with their neighbors were relatively <v Speaker>tranquil. The great Talmudic all academies in Germany and France <v Speaker>were able to develop an intense intellectual activity. <v Speaker>The most conspicuous figure is arushi, the great commentator <v Speaker>on the Bible and Talmud who lived in Trie in northern France, <v Speaker>Rashi and other scholars of Europe, devoted themselves to the study of <v Speaker>Jewish laws, answering letters from rabbis who needed help in judging <v Speaker>difficult cases among their people. <v Speaker>And difficulties did arise in this new environment, forcing the scholars <v Speaker>to modify the laws of the Talmud to accommodate life within a Christian world. <v Speaker>Because they were isolated from the large Jewish communities of the East. <v Speaker>The Jews of northern Europe developed an identity that was uniquely theirs <v Speaker>in time. They came to view themselves as a distinct branch of Judaism.

<v Speaker>They called themselves Ashkenazim after land in the distant north, <v Speaker>mentioned by the Bible. <v Speaker>In many ways, the Jews were but one people among the peoples of Europe. <v Speaker>In one way, however, they were unique. <v Speaker>In matters of furnishing, Jews were the only strangers. <v Speaker>In a world where every event of nature was a mystery, a man's religion <v Speaker>provided the only path of understanding and where men <v Speaker>disagreed about religion. <v Speaker>They disagreed about the world. <v Speaker>For centuries, there had been a competition between the faiths <v Speaker>in the statuary of medieval churches. <v Speaker>Judaism was often portrayed as a beautiful woman wearing a blindfold

<v Speaker>because she refused to see that Jesus had been the Messiah. <v Speaker>Across from her, Christianity was shown triumphant. <v Speaker>The noble possessor of the truth, the church <v Speaker>accused the Jews of having lost the way, and worse than that, <v Speaker>it accused them of having caused the death of the Messiah. <v Speaker>These accusations, repeated in sermons throughout Europe, were meant <v Speaker>primarily to keep Christians from listening to Jewish ideas. <v Speaker>But in the minds of the poor and the uneducated, they planted the seeds of <v Speaker>hatred. <v Speaker>When I, Rudiger Bishop of Spier, changed the town of Spier <v Speaker>into a city. I thought I would increase the importance of the place a thousand <v Speaker>fold by bringing in Jews. <v Speaker>Accordingly, I located them outside of the community and habitation of the other <v Speaker>citizens, and I surrounded them with a wall so that they might not

<v Speaker>be disturbed by the insulin's of the populace. <v Speaker>The incidents of the populace. <v Speaker>These words of a German charter written in the year 10 84 are the first <v Speaker>evidence that the common people of Europe were turning against the Jews. <v Speaker>Envy of Jewish prosperity was one motive, but religion was the <v Speaker>critical ingredient. <v Speaker>It would be the fervor of religion that in only a few years would launch a war. <v Speaker>In November of ten ninety five at Clermont in the south of France, Pope <v Speaker>Urban, the second delivered a speech to a gathering of churchmen and nobles. <v Speaker>A horrible tale has gone forth that an accursed Moslem race has invaded <v Speaker>the lands of the east. <v Speaker>You, who are endowed with the badge of knighthood and are arrogant with great pride, <v Speaker>advance both soldiers of Christ. <v Speaker>Be mindful of your soul's rush to free the Holy Land

<v Speaker>from its oppressors. <v Speaker>Every corner of Europe. Christian nobles for what would come to be <v Speaker>called the First Crusade. <v Speaker>Before the nobles could organize their armies, however, masses of paupers <v Speaker>symbol for these the poor of Europe, the crusade seemed <v Speaker>a great adventure, a chance to escape the misery of their lives. <v Speaker>Most of them hardly knew where the Holy Land was, nor indeed who exactly their enemies <v Speaker>might be. Their ignorance at this moment of zealous enthusiasm could <v Speaker>lead only to disaster. <v Speaker>The porpoise now engaged in a war that Pope Urban had never intended. <v Speaker>At the end of April 10 96 in the Rhine Valley, groups of Rabel <v Speaker>Crusaders assembled into armies.

<v Speaker>On the morning of a Jewish Sabbath in the beginning of May, they attacked the great <v Speaker>Jewish community of Spier. <v Speaker>The Jews fled to the bishop who used his own troops to fight off the Crusaders. <v Speaker>The rebel armies now turned against the Jews of other towns. <v Speaker>Jews were threatened with death unless they would abandon their Judaism and convert <v Speaker>to Christianity. <v Speaker>Whole communities were surrounded and attacked. <v Speaker>Jews were murdered in the streets. <v Speaker>A few agreed to be baptized, but most refused. <v Speaker>They chose instead to demonstrate that their own belief in God meant more <v Speaker>to them than life itself. <v Speaker>Entire communities, hundreds of Jews committed mass suicide. <v Speaker>It was called Kiddush Hashem, the sanctification of the Lord's

<v Speaker>name. <v Speaker>For the time being, the enemy will slay us. <v Speaker>And yet we shall live happy will everyone <v Speaker>be who dies for the sanctification of his name for such a one, <v Speaker>the world of darkness is transformed into a world of light <v Speaker>and the fleeting world into one that shall exist for ever and ever. <v Speaker>The tragedy of the first crusade was not only in the lives that were lost <v Speaker>and what was profoundly tragic was the growth of hostility among the common people <v Speaker>towards the Jews. <v Speaker>For this hostility born of religious differences would never disappear. <v Speaker>In some ways, the first crusade was like a nightmare. <v Speaker>It passed and seemed to leave the world unchanged. <v Speaker>The Jewish communities around land recovered and reestablished themselves.

<v Speaker>But the memory of those events would not die even in the prosperous days <v Speaker>that followed. <v Speaker>The 12th century that now began ushered in a period of expansion <v Speaker>and development for the Christian lands of Europe. <v Speaker>Townsend grew as men left the countryside, <v Speaker>Merc and Craftsman. <v Speaker>In these walled towns, Bergs, they were called in German. <v Speaker>A new class emerged for burgers in French. <v Speaker>The bourgeois. <v Speaker>For each of the trades in a town, there was an association or a guild <v Speaker>with its insignia and its meeting hall. <v Speaker>There were guilds for merchants, for Tana's vintners, weavers,

<v Speaker>glaziers for every imaginable occupation. <v Speaker>The craftsmen of the gills were of humble origin, peasants from the countryside <v Speaker>or simple villagers. <v Speaker>They feared to include in their ranks any men of different background. <v Speaker>Almost without exception, the guilds were closed to Jews, excluding <v Speaker>them from most aspects of the new economic order. <v Speaker>But the growth of trade and commerce also offered new opportunities. <v Speaker>And as shipments of goods swelled and laborers had to be paid, one <v Speaker>thing came to be needed in great quantity. <v Speaker>Money. <v Speaker>Currency was necessary for economic growth. <v Speaker>And coins became such a valuable commodity that men paid interest of <v Speaker>more than 30 percent to borrow them. <v Speaker>Christians were forbidden by the Catholic Church to lend money to other Christians for

<v Speaker>profit. And as the demand for money increased, Jews <v Speaker>responded by providing the needed loans. <v Speaker>It was a natural economic move for them as merchants. <v Speaker>They had had experience in keeping accounts and managing credit. <v Speaker>And although in time, Italian money lenders would displace them. <v Speaker>For the moment, Jews became the source of money for investments. <v Speaker>Nowhere in Europe where Jewish moneylenders more prosperous and useful than in 12th <v Speaker>century England. <v Speaker>From his home in Lincoln, a man known to history only as Aaron <v Speaker>of Lincoln controlled a network of investments that extended to 25 <v Speaker>counties. <v Speaker>He and other Jews helped finance the construction of buildings across all of England, <v Speaker>including dozens of Abbies and monasteries and at least two cathedrals.

<v Speaker>The role of Jews in financing the new economy was a productive one. <v Speaker>Everyone. <v Speaker>The Jews flocked to France from diverse parts of the world. <v Speaker>Because peace abroad among the French and the kings of that land were merciful <v Speaker>toward their subjects. <v Speaker>They made a long sojourn in Paris, but they've prospered so that they claimed as their <v Speaker>own. Almost half of the city and employed Christians in their houses as many servants <v Speaker>and maid servants. <v Speaker>In many of the German towns, Jews were accepted as citizens <v Speaker>and in some places they were even granted public office. <v Speaker>The Ashkenazim, once almost insignificant in number, now expanded

<v Speaker>more rapidly than any other Jewish community in the world. <v Speaker>The heart of their settlement was in Germany. <v Speaker>And German became the everyday language for most of the Ashkenazi Jews. <v Speaker>They mixed with it elements of their ancient language, Hebrew to create a dialect <v Speaker>that would come to be known as Yiddish. <v Speaker>In the spirit and vitality of their customs, in their separateness as a community, <v Speaker>they found fulfillment. <v Speaker>Jews everywhere share DNN stimulated the growth of Christian Europe. <v Speaker>In Spain, Christian armies continued to reconquer the land from its Muslim rulers.

<v Speaker>By the middle of the 12th century, thousands of Spanish Jews had been brought under <v Speaker>Christian rule. <v Speaker>In Toledo alone, a Christian city in the north. <v Speaker>The Jewish population was said to number 70000. <v Speaker>While Barba rulers brought intolerance to Muslim Spain, Jewish refugees <v Speaker>were welcomed in Toledo. <v Speaker>They arrived carrying precious manuscripts of philosophy, poetry and science. <v Speaker>Their knowledge would help to save the heritage of Moorish Spain from the <v Speaker>flames of destruction. <v Speaker>Their golden age would now be kept alive in the lands of Christian Spain, <v Speaker>in the synagogues of Christian Toledo.

<v Speaker>The patterns and motifs upon the walls demonstrate the debt of the Jews <v Speaker>to their Moorish past. <v Speaker>Jewish scholars from Muslim Spain were welcomed to this city and <v Speaker>they made it a gateway of knowledge for Europe to the north. <v Speaker>They became the great translators of the works of Arab philosophy and science <v Speaker>into Hebrew and Latin. <v Speaker>Christians from all of Europe came to Toledo to study from Jewish scholars. <v Speaker>From this process of exchange, northern Europe first learned the decimal <v Speaker>system of numbers. <v Speaker>With the help of Jews, the works of Hippocrates, Euclid and Aristotle <v Speaker>were translated from Arabic and made available to Christian scholars. <v Speaker>A world of knowledge that the Europeans had hardly known to exist was suddenly

<v Speaker>opened before their eyes. <v Speaker>It was the age of the great cathedrals of Shafron and Notre Dame. <v Speaker>An age of technological advances of mechanical clocks. <v Speaker>Water bills and spinning wheels. <v Speaker>The 12th and 13th centuries exploded with creativity <v Speaker>and a spirit of exploration. <v Speaker>Marco Polo set off for China. <v Speaker>Universities were born and avid students read the works <v Speaker>of Arab and Jewish scholars. <v Speaker>Works of science, mathematics, medicine and philosophy. <v Speaker>New knowledge broke upon Christian Europe with the force of revelation.

<v Speaker>The church had to face the probes and questions of philosophy and respond <v Speaker>to them. <v Speaker>Not out of faith alone, but with reasoned and philosophical argument. <v Speaker>Church scholars turned to Arab and Greek and Jewish philosophy, <v Speaker>searching eagerly to infuse the doctrines of the church with a new spirit <v Speaker>of rationalism. <v Speaker>Thomas Aquinas, the most luminous mind among the church, Scholastic's <v Speaker>found in the works of my Monitise, the great Jewish philosopher, a means <v Speaker>of reconciling faith with reason. <v Speaker>And he set about constructing a philosophical stronghold for the medieval <v Speaker>Christian faith. <v Speaker>Man has a natural desire to know the causes of whatever he sees. <v Speaker>Through wondering at what they saw, men first began to philosophize.

<v Speaker>But God is the first cause of all. <v Speaker>Therefore, man's last end is to know God. <v Speaker>It was a time of charity and humanity within the church. <v Speaker>A time when the monastic orders sought to renew the ideal of poverty and simplicity <v Speaker>in the service of faith. <v Speaker>The time of Saint Bernard and of Saint Francis of Assisi. <v Speaker>Of quiet dedication to nature and human kindness. <v Speaker>But in this complex era, the church was sometimes threatened with movements <v Speaker>of revolt. <v Speaker>When reason and persuasion could not prevail over those who questioned its doctrines, <v Speaker>the church began to respond with force. <v Speaker>It established commissions of inquiry to seek out heretics.

<v Speaker>Thousands of dissenters lost their lives. <v Speaker>Feeling its position threatened on many sides, the church hardened its policy <v Speaker>also toward the Jews. <v Speaker>The church sought to isolate them, lest Jewish beliefs draw Christians <v Speaker>away from the church. <v Speaker>For the competition between the faith had never really stopped. <v Speaker>In the year 2015, a church council at the Lateran Palace in Rome <v Speaker>issued a decree in certain provinces. <v Speaker>Such a confusion has arisen that Jews and Christians cannot be distinguished. <v Speaker>We hereby order that the Jews in every Christian province shall be marked <v Speaker>off in the eyes of the public through the character of their dress. <v Speaker>In many places, Jews were required to wear yellow badges and pointed <v Speaker>hats. The purpose was to separate them from Christians.

<v Speaker>A quarter century later, Pope Gregory the Ninth, took a step that would strike <v Speaker>at the heart of the Jewish heritage. <v Speaker>Since the Talmud is said to be the main reason the Jews remain obstinate <v Speaker>and they are mistaken faith. <v Speaker>We here with order that on the first Saturday of the Lent to come in the morning <v Speaker>while the Jews are gathered in the synagogues, you shall seize all the books of <v Speaker>the Jews who live in your districts. <v Speaker>Jews felt themselves threatened as never before. <v Speaker>Threatened in their very identity, for it was the Talmud that held the Jewish <v Speaker>people together from generation to generation and through all the lands of <v Speaker>their dispersion. <v Speaker>In Paris, the Talmud was subjected to a public trial and judged <v Speaker>guilty of defaming Christians. <v Speaker>As Jewish onlookers wept, 24 cartloads of handwritten manuscripts <v Speaker>were burned.

<v Speaker>But the laws and edicts of the church could not be enforced without the approval <v Speaker>of the local rulers. <v Speaker>And while some rule is applied, the anti-Jewish regulations, most did not, <v Speaker>their interests lay in the well-being of the Jews and the prosperity <v Speaker>they brought to their realms. <v Speaker>Life in the castles of the Middle Ages would grow more luxurious as time went <v Speaker>by and more costly. <v Speaker>It was a life sustained at first by lands and holdings and the peasants who <v Speaker>worked those lands. <v Speaker>But does the need for money grew?

<v Speaker>The nobles turned to taxation. <v Speaker>Taxation of the money lenders and taxation of the people through the money <v Speaker>lenders, the people who were taxed in this manner, <v Speaker>were often those who could least afford to pay a person who needed <v Speaker>money to tide him over a bad harvest, ordered <v Speaker>aristocrat who had to mortgage his lands to pay off his debts. <v Speaker>The Jews who provided loans found themselves forced by rulers to charge <v Speaker>ever increasing rates. <v Speaker>It was an impossible situation. <v Speaker>The first signs of conflict began to appear as early as the 12th century. <v Speaker>In England, the Kings had been taxing the profits of Jewish moneylenders since <v Speaker>the days of the Norman conquest. <v Speaker>The Jews have come to serve as tools of the Royal Treasury in raising money <v Speaker>from local aristocrats.

<v Speaker>By the late 12th century, many laws were unable to repay their debts to the Jews. <v Speaker>In eleven eighty nine, a group of nobles instigated riots against <v Speaker>the Jews. <v Speaker>The first was in London, but soon the riots broke out in other towns as well. <v Speaker>In March of eleven ninety local battens in the town of York plotted <v Speaker>to murder their Jewish creditors. <v Speaker>The Jews fled for protection to Clifford's tower. <v Speaker>A mob gathered and the batons incited them to attack the fortress. <v Speaker>The whole of the workpeople, the youth of the town and a large number of country <v Speaker>folk joined in the core business as if each man was seeking his own gain. <v Speaker>The attackers rejoiced in the certainty of their approaching victory. <v Speaker>On the morning when the mob finally forced its way into the tower, it found

<v Speaker>many of the Jews dead by their own hands. <v Speaker>Those who were still alive were slaughtered on the spot. <v Speaker>The violence that erupted in England was a somber warning. <v Speaker>Where economic resentment was added to religious animosity, <v Speaker>the hatred that resulted could not be contained. <v Speaker>All across Europe, in varying degrees, Jews acted as intermediaries for <v Speaker>rulers in exacting money from their subjects. <v Speaker>This then was the sequence Kings and nobles protected the Jews for a time <v Speaker>and borrowed heavily from them in order to be able to govern. <v Speaker>They then taxed the Jews heavily in order to recoup a part of their expenses. <v Speaker>The burden of this tax was passed on to the people. <v Speaker>As taxation grew heavy, the bourgeois of the cities and the peasants of the countryside <v Speaker>began to rebel against both the nobles and the Jews.

<v Speaker>Juries were ransacked and nobles assaulted. <v Speaker>At this moment of crisis, with rebellion, threatening rulers across Europe <v Speaker>began to see the Jews as a political liability. <v Speaker>In order to appease their subjects, the rule has now ended their relationship <v Speaker>with the Jews. <v Speaker>We charge the second for the honor of God and preferring to provide <v Speaker>for the peace of our subject rather than to fill our coffers. <v Speaker>Although we enjoy extensive temporal benefit from the Jews do expelled <v Speaker>from our counties, all Jews not only for the present, but for all <v Speaker>times. <v Speaker>In what can only be termed an epidemic of expulsions, nobles everywhere began <v Speaker>to rid their domains of Jewish communities. <v Speaker>In 12 90, Edward, the first, banished the Jews of England, 16000 <v Speaker>in number and confiscated their property.

<v Speaker>They would not be allowed to return for almost four centuries. <v Speaker>Sixteen years later, Philip the Fair expelled the Jews of France and <v Speaker>seized their goods. <v Speaker>Later, they would be readmitted when it seemed profitable to the king and expelled <v Speaker>again when he had gotten from them. <v Speaker>Or he could. <v Speaker>Only in Germany, where the land was broken into countless territories <v Speaker>and where town governments shared in the profits of money lending. <v Speaker>Did Jews remain but in great insecurity? <v Speaker>The 14th century world in which thousands of Jews now found themselves <v Speaker>adrift, still retained many elements of the Dark Ages. <v Speaker>For the and learned it was still a world ruled by magic and miracles.

<v Speaker>People thought fireflies were the souls of infants who had died before they <v Speaker>could be baptized, and at heart attacks were the work of demons <v Speaker>phenomena not otherwise accounted for were attributed to the influence <v Speaker>of the planets. Or finally, to the will of God. <v Speaker>But in 13 47, there occurred an event so terrifying, <v Speaker>so devastating that no explanation. <v Speaker>Not even the will of God seemed adequate. <v Speaker>In October of that year, a genuis trading ship drifted into harbor <v Speaker>at Massina in Sicily. <v Speaker>Its sailors were slumped over their oars, all of them dead <v Speaker>or dying. <v Speaker>Onboard was a terror known as the Black Death. <v Speaker>The bubonic plague. <v Speaker>In January of 13, Forty-Eight infected sailors carried the plague

<v Speaker>to France via Marseilles and then to North Africa via Tunis. <v Speaker>It spread westward from Marseilles to Spain and then northward up the road. <v Speaker>It spread to Rome and Florence, to Paris and Normandy, <v Speaker>and then across the channel to southern England. <v Speaker>No country escaped its ravages, <v Speaker>the contemporary descriptions are shocking. <v Speaker>The common people fell sick daily by the thousands. <v Speaker>A great many breathed their last in the public streets day and night <v Speaker>everywhere. <v Speaker>The city was teeming with corpses. <v Speaker>People would drag them out of their homes and pile of in front of the doors. <v Speaker>It was not uncommon to see a single beer carrying husband and wife, two <v Speaker>or three brothers, father and son and others besides.

<v Speaker>The disease began as swellings in the arm pits her groin that sometimes <v Speaker>grew to be the size of eggs. <v Speaker>The swellings quickly spread over the entire body and turned to black and live in <v Speaker>blotches. <v Speaker>In two years, the bubonic plague claimed some 24 million <v Speaker>lives, one third of Europe's population. <v Speaker>It shredded every legal and human bond that held medieval society <v Speaker>together. <v Speaker>In despair, people looked everywhere for an explanation. <v Speaker>Looked everywhere for a way to halt the plague before it killed them all. <v Speaker>A rumor spread from city to city that Jews had poisoned the wells. <v Speaker>Pope Clement, the sixth, came to their defense. <v Speaker>Recently we have heard that certain Christians seduced by the devil <v Speaker>are blaming the Jews for the pestilence which God is affecting upon the Christian people.

<v Speaker>But this pestilence is all but universal. <v Speaker>It afflicts both the Jews themselves and many other people that have no contact with <v Speaker>the Jews. The accusation against the Jews is absurd. <v Speaker>In vain. Pope Clement argued for reason. <v Speaker>Throughout Europe, communities were attacked. <v Speaker>Two thousand Jews were burned in Strasbourg. <v Speaker>Thousands more in meit's. <v Speaker>Social order disintegrated and the number of Jews murdered by the mob <v Speaker>grew steadily. <v Speaker>It is a dangerous platitude to say that the Jews of Europe were made a scapegoat. <v Speaker>It is dangerous because it explains nothing. <v Speaker>It does not explain the anger felt everywhere against the Jews that led not only <v Speaker>to the killings of this period, but also to the anti-Jewish attitude among Europeans. <v Speaker>That was to survive for the next 500 years.

<v Speaker>In the course of the Middle Ages, the Jews had come to be resented by the <v Speaker>common people for complex religious and economic reasons. <v Speaker>Religious resentment was born of the unfortunate competition between the Jewish and <v Speaker>the Christian faiths, but it started more than a thousand years before. <v Speaker>That competition had resulted in formal action by the church that had further <v Speaker>alienated the Christians from the Jews. <v Speaker>But the economic resentment of this period was new. <v Speaker>And when combined with religious and social differences, it proved to be the most <v Speaker>destructive of all. <v Speaker>The Jewish communities are medieval, France would never recover, <v Speaker>those in Germany continued subject to constant attacks and expulsions <v Speaker>until they were decimated and impoverished. <v Speaker>Only in the east of Europe, in Lithuania and in Poland could the Jews find lands <v Speaker>where they were protected, lands where the future offered hope.

<v Speaker>The east was still a frontier and settlers were needed to develop <v Speaker>its trade and commerce. <v Speaker>It was here that the Ashkenazim would find a home to shelter them once again. <v Speaker>Out of this East European Jewish tradition and its rich sense of identity. <v Speaker>Much of the foundation of modern Judaism would be built. <v Speaker>Spain had not been immune to the horrors of the Black Death.

<v Speaker>Nor was it immune in the aftermath of the play to the turmoil of social upheaval. <v Speaker>Toward the end of the 14th century, the virus of anti-Jewish attitudes <v Speaker>born in northern Europe began to make its way into the mainstream of Spanish <v Speaker>culture. <v Speaker>There were outbursts of popular violence against the Jews. <v Speaker>Under militant, zealous religious leaders, an energetic effort was made to <v Speaker>convert every Jew and every Muslim who lived in Spain to Christianity. <v Speaker>In some places, Jews were forbidden to eat, drink or even talk <v Speaker>with Christians. <v Speaker>They kept us from trades, farming and crafts <v Speaker>instead of silken apparel. We were obliged to wear wretched clothes. <v Speaker>Starvation stared everyone in the face, <v Speaker>breaking into this synagogue off to Lento zealous Christians declared it a church

<v Speaker>Santa madly. I love London. <v Speaker>The pressure and violence became so intense that thousands of Jews <v Speaker>converted to Christianity. <v Speaker>Here and throughout Spain, it was a tidal wave of conversion. <v Speaker>And when it receded, it left behind as many as 100000 converts <v Speaker>from the Spanish called the new Christians. <v Speaker>This proud community thus far seem so integrated into Spanish <v Speaker>life was suddenly torn apart. <v Speaker>Many converted in public but continue to observe their own faith in private. <v Speaker>Resentment appeared against those Jewish converts who held to their ancient customs. <v Speaker>Angry Christians called them Mariano's from a Spanish word for Swayne. <v Speaker>When the kingdoms of Christian Spain were at last united under the rule of Ferdinand

<v Speaker>and Isabella, the two monarchs set out to purify the faith <v Speaker>of their Christian subjects. <v Speaker>On the first day of the year, a fourteen eighty one, the Spanish Inquisition began <v Speaker>its a ruthless task to a British rate, any and all vestiges of <v Speaker>Jewish practice among the new Christians. <v Speaker>To destroy totally any relationship between the converted <v Speaker>and the remaining Jews of Spain. <v Speaker>Thousands were tried and tortured. <v Speaker>Thousands were burned at the stake. <v Speaker>But eleven years of terror and torture were unable to destroy the bonds between <v Speaker>the converts and their Jewish heritage. <v Speaker>The Spanish Inquisition now demanded a further and more radical action. <v Speaker>In this majestic hall of the ambassadors in the Alhambra on the <v Speaker>thirty first of March, fourteen hundred and ninety two. <v Speaker>The long and illustrious history of the Jews of Spain came to a tragic

<v Speaker>and fateful end. <v Speaker>It was here that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella responding to the <v Speaker>pressure of Thomas to talk quemada. <v Speaker>The Grand Inquisitor issued the edict of expulsion <v Speaker>requiring all the Jews of Spain to convert to Catholicism or to leave <v Speaker>the country by the end of midsummer. <v Speaker>According to the report of the inquisitors, there has come to light. <v Speaker>The great harm to new Christians due to their contact with Jews. <v Speaker>Therefore, we have decided to warn all Jewish men and women to leave <v Speaker>our kingdom and they should not dare to come back, neither to reside, <v Speaker>to pass through, nor for any reason whatsoever. <v Speaker>Throughout the spring and early summer of that year, more than 150000 <v Speaker>refugees clogged the roads of Spain, leaving behind their homes <v Speaker>and vineyards. Their workshops, their synagogues, their places

<v Speaker>of learning, their memories of triumph and of trial in the unforgettable <v Speaker>centuries they have lived under Arab and Christian rule. <v Speaker>This was the most massive of the many expulsions in Europe. <v Speaker>But it was not merely an expulsion. <v Speaker>It was the sad end of five centuries during which Jewish life and Jewish <v Speaker>thought had reached great heights in Western Europe. <v Speaker>In Spain, particularly, Jewish life had been imbued with a new ideal. <v Speaker>It was the ideal of living fully and creatively within the larger society <v Speaker>while remaining faithful to the ancient values and traditions of the Jewish people. <v Speaker>And so on a certain summer day in August, in the very month that Christopher <v Speaker>Columbus embarked on his voyage of discovery, the last Jewish <v Speaker>refugees set sail from Spain.

<v Speaker>The memory of that tragic moment persists. <v Speaker>But even in that moment of despair, there were the seeds of hope. <v Speaker>For they carried with them a legacy of faith that would sustain the Jews of Spain <v Speaker>and of all Europe in other lands and in new worlds. <v Speaker>Yet to be discovered. <v Speaker>In the five centuries that ended in 1492, two great traditions <v Speaker>of Jewish culture had been born in Europe for the Ashkenazim <v Speaker>and the Sephardim. Now, as then, the words of the sweet syngas <v Speaker>of the golden age carry still upon the wind. <v Speaker>The sun and moon, these minister forever. <v Speaker>The laws of day and night come never to an end. <v Speaker>Given are they as signs to Jacobs seed that they shall ever <v Speaker>be.

<v Speaker>Let them not say we are desperate. <v Speaker>Even at the time of their ruin. <v Speaker>Let them believe only they are eternal and that they shall not cease <v Speaker>until there be no night or day. <v Speaker>Major funding for this program has been provided by the Charles H.

<v Speaker>Revson Foundation, Petrie Stores Corp. <v Speaker>and the National Endowment for the Humanities. <v Speaker>Additional funding has been provided by the following contributors. <v Speaker>A complete donor list is available at W NE T. <v Speaker>Abba Eban has written a companion book to this series, which is published by Summit <v Speaker>Books and is available in bookstores and libraries.