Jewish Life In Medieval Spain

Jewish Life in Medieval Spain is a detailed exploration of the Jewish experience in medieval Spain from the dawn of Sephardic society in the ninth century to the expulsion of 1492. An important contribution of the book is the integration of the rise and fall of Jewish life in Muslim al-Andalus into the history of the Jews in medieval Christian Spain. It traces the collapse of Jewish life in Muslim Spain, the emigration of Andalusi Jewry to the lands of Christian Iberia, and the long and difficult confluence of these two distinct Jewish subcultures. Focusing on internal developments of Jewish society, it offers a narrative of Jewish history from the inside out, bringing to light the various divisions and rivalries within the Jewish community. This approach, in turn, allows for a deeper understanding of the complex relations between Spanish Jews and their Muslim and Christian neighbors. Jonathan Ray's original perspective on the Jewish experience is particularly instructive when considering the widescale anti-Jewish riots of 1391. The combination of violence and mass conversion of the Jews irrevocably shifted the dynamics of inter-religious relations as well as those within the Jewish community itself. Yet even in the wake of these tragic events, the Jews of Spain continued to flourish, fostering a culture that they would carry into exile and that would preserve the memory of Jewish Spain for centuries to come.

This classic work of scholarship illustrates the richness, complexity, and fullness of medieval Jewish life. Readers will discover how much was hidden from the inquisitive and often hostile gaze of Christian Europe. Israel Abrahams vividly details the customs, manners, and mores, and delves into the social culture of Jewish life at this time.

Negative and positive.

A Vigilant Society presents a provocative hypothesis that argues that Western society as we know it emerged from the soil of Jewish intellectual advances in the thirteenth century, especially those formulated on the Iberian Peninsula. A paradigmatic shift began to occur, one that abandoned the pre–Gothic Sephardic wisdom found in, for example, the writings of Maimonides in favor of what author Javier Roiz calls the "vigilant society." This model embraces a conception of politics that includes a radical privatization of an individual's interior life and—especially as adopted and adapted in later centuries by Roman Catholic and Calvinist thinkers—is marked by a style of politics that accepts the dominance of power and control as given. Vigilant society laid the foundation for the Western understanding of politics and its institutions and remains pervasive in today's world.

Jews settled in medieval Spain at least by the third century, and under the Christian Visigoths (sixth to eighth centuries) suffered increasing hostility and persecution, from which they were saved by the Muslim invasion (711). This book details the relations between Jews and the Visigoths, and then with the Muslims both in Muslim Spain proper (al-Andalus) and in later Christian Spain to the fifteenth century. It examines both the positive and negative aspects of those relations, drawing on a variety of sources many of which are here utilized for the first time. Political, socio-economic, scientific, cultural, literary and even sexual aspects of the history of the interaction between Jews and Visigoths, and Jews and Muslims, provide hopefully a new insight into a period of great importance in history.

Written to accompany an exhibition held at the Washington National Cathedral in 2003 (and in a more extensive version in Toledo, Spain previously), this catalogue provides a broad introduction to the lives of Jews in medieval Spain ("Sepharad" is the Hebrew word for Spain). Among the topics are aspects of daily life; the role of Jews in the arts and sciences; the political realities of life for Jews, Muslims, and Christians; a history of the Church's anti-Jewish policies, which result in the expulsion of the Jews in 1492; and the role of the Spanish Inquisition. All the chapters are well illustrated with good quality color plates. Distributed in North America by the U. of Washington Press for the State Corporation for Spanish Cultural Action Abroad.