jewish life in the dark ages we have to understand what do we mean by this term the dark ages so it
is uh a term that comes largely out of western european historiography which for a long time
like let's say 18th century onward tended to view the flow of western history as kind of like being
a really high point with greco-roman civilization and then with the collapse of rome and especially
its sacking by the vandals in the fifth century it hits a real low where you have kind of conan the
barbarian ages and there's not much happening and no one's reading and no one's writing and people
are very superstitious about all kinds of things and it kind of sits there until it goes back up
again it with the renaissance which literally means the rebirth uh there are definitely some
kind of ladder-like steps up from the dark ages the gothic period and so on the high middle ages
which kind of goes from about 1 000 to about the year 1300s when you start seeing the beginnings of
the renaissance and some really exciting things happening that leads ultimately to the early
modern era the modern era and so on but the the key element of this is it's very eurocentric it's
as if the most important thing that's going on in history is whatever is happening in europe but
in reality when you look at world history uh most of the universe most of the world was not dark at
all and i think you can say that about the jews as well who are at this point not especially wrapped
up in most of northwestern european history in particular so uh let's look at what jews were
doing in the dark ages we've seen this map before from the beautiful barnavi historical atlas and as
you can see there are two really big centers of jewish activity during the dark ages again we're
going to kind of uh taking the traditional view of the dark ages which goes from the fall of rome and
like let's say 405 476 are major dates so fifth century dates all the way up to about 950
1 000 you get about 500 years that are really dark for northwestern europe in particular not
much happening and it is the collapse of roman civilization that leads to that although roman
civilization is largely taken over by byzantine civilization the same kind of christian culture
although many very significant differences not catholic for example would be become later called
orthodox the more formal split wouldn't happen until the 11th century but definitely heading a
different direction but it's kind of like the second rome based in constantinople which you
can see at the top of this map but i got off on a little bit of a tangent there what are jews doing
uh during the dark ages so we've got two really huge areas of jewish activity which are quite
intense during the dark ages you have that large brown circle which is the region around
israel where you've got lots of activity you've got lots of uh hallucic activity uh
intellectual activity being of the jerusalem talmud with the activity of the patriarchs they're
organizing themselves they are you know sort of negotiating their relationship with the
romans which is not always so easy and then later with the byzantine overloads but there's
still quite a bit of historical data emerging from uh the middle east uh during the dark ages
and then perhaps more significantly and i wish the the the actual circle was bigger because
it would give more of an impact but baghdad oh my gosh there's so much going on there with the
uh transplanted yeshivat of pumbadita and surah with the great intellectual centers of the talmud
that are just pumping away all kinds of stuff during this period right up until the seventh
century when you get the muslim advance and when the muslims take it over then they have an even
greater explosion under the geoneem which we spoke about a few lectures ago in fact that's where we
use this map and the uh the the baghdadi culture the uh mesopotamian culture kind of like radiates
all the way out through the mediterranean basin and has its impact felt all the way out to cordoba
in spain where you see there's major jewish communities and it is during this period that
you know it's true we have a lot of the visigoths and so on but we also get into the beginnings of
the spanish golden age they have their roots during the period known as the dark ages so
these two areas represent the the light that was coming out of the jewish community in particular
uh and uh really has a very different kind of picture than what you think of uh with northern
europe in the same period of time but neither of these areas of course the middle east and
the uh the mesopotamian region are in europe so what is happening in europe in particular
so the most important areas to be sure are in italy uh there are just not that many jews living
in the rest of europe we have tiny tiny little settlements in the rhone river for example uh
infinitesimally small ones in the the rhine river region and like just little outposts
as it were but in rome in particular and in the south in barrie and oria you have some phenomenal
centers of jewish population where they are deeply involved in all kinds of
talmudic work and all kinds of historical work poetic work we have some beautiful uh
remains of jewish catacombs in rome in particular that give us a sense of the extent
of their civilization and they're really doing a lot in many ways as we saw earlier with the
tracing of ashkenazi culture from israel proper through the italian peninsula and then into
northern europe this is the period where there is a lot of culture going on in this area here
i think some of my favorite expressions of roman jewish culture extending towards the end of this
period of the dark ages is the remarkable work the aruh which was written by natan of rome and
this is essentially the first dictionary of the talmud ever and it was a brilliant dictionary
because of course don't forget jews are working in many different vernaculars they're working in
latin they're working in greek but the texts are in aramaic and also in hebrew and you know you
need secondary materials to be able to negotiate these texts so natan of rome who had a family name
anav meaning the humble ones he composed the first dictionary of the talmud and it's it's
beautiful it's brilliant not only because it's it's not simply a word for word translation of
the the words that occur in the talmud it provides examples of how those words are used in the talmud
and ends up becoming an incredibly important finding aid such that you know for uh millennia
well a millennium since it was written towards the end of the first millennium many talmudic scholars
use the dictionary not so much to understand the translation of a given aramaic word
but to know where it's used elsewhere in the talmud because it is essentially kind of like a
um what's the word the concordance as well as atomics great really amazing work so there's
lots of scholars who are here in rome and in southern italy many of them would later be
transplanted to northern europe to ashkenaz where they would essentially become the the nucleus of
the jewish community there and we'll speak about them god willing a lot more next week but that's
really hardly dark at all for jews jews are doing amazing things in this region in terms of poetry
and scholarship and so on and uh you know the whole concept of the dark ages doesn't make that
much sense when you're thinking about jewish history also we have you know not a tremendous
amount of historical data about what jews were up to in the dark ages uh especially when you move
outside of muslim-controlled lands into european lands but one really interesting glimpse is a
reference that occurs in muslim historiography to the so-called radonite merchants now it's
clear from the context of the discussion of the radhanites that they are jewish and they are
clearly roaming the world and involved in multiple areas of trade the term radonite is up to a lot of
scholarly discussion there's a huge debate as to why they are called the radnites by the medieval
muslim historian who described their activity my favorite understanding of this term is that
it comes from the ron river which is in central para central france you can see here it basically
uh bisects france here ends up in marseilles and this roan river is a very important uh
waterway that you know begins in central uh france and then you know comes out to the mediterranean
and as you can see with this map here the dark line indicates the uh specific routes that the
uh muslim historiography describes as part of the destinations of these rada trail travelers and
they're selling stuff by the way they're buying and selling all over and the sort of dotted lines
indicate uh the extended trade routes that we know would meet up with most of those places
so it's not at all out of the question to assume that there were jews who were traveling literally
all over the world uh engaged in a whole variety of trade as they were active throughout the region
before i leave that map let me also mention that uh the uh the the jews are are deeply involved
in one of the most important trade routes which as you can see right in the center there it goes
from antioch through the euphrates river down to the persian gulf this is one of the most important
trade routes for the silk trade jews were heavily involved in the early silk trade which was a major
reason for the dispersion of jewish ideas uh the spread of judaism predated the spread of
christianity in some ways actually prepared many of these territories for a monotheistic faith
because of these jewish merchants going on one of the things i happened to read just today which
fascinated me is that um the silk trade especially when rome was active the the jews of the
euphrates and tigris rivers were especially involved in re-weaving silk meaning the chinese
who were the people who were making silk out of the uh you know this the uh cocoons of uh
of uh certain types of silkworms that grow in mulberry trees they were those chinese like to
make their silk into um more thick durable cloth for their clothing the romans on the other hand
said no no no we don't like that we want it sheer and filmy and uh you know something that you drape
over yourself and and something quite a bit uh more racy and so the jews were actually involved
in re-weaving that they often took the silk cloth from china and then they re-weaved it they
actually pulled out the thread and then remade it into a much more diaphanous cloth that would be
sold at a much higher price in rome just a funny little detail there i thought oh okay anyway so
let the the jews are definitely heavily involved in this international travel now why the jews
well it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy or a self-affirming cycle because the jews do have a
common language uh hebrew they have a common legal system such that you know they're all bound by
the rulings of the talmud and they can rely on a neutral you know body of judges who will not judge
them by the capricious laws of a specific reason i'm going to get more into that in just a second
they also have a strong co-religionist bond such that it is not at all uncommon and in fact it was
widely common right up into the 20th century in eastern europe where a stranger could show up in
a synagogue on friday night and say simply hey you know i i need a place to stay for shabbat
and he'd be taken in for meals i have a place to sleep and then once the shabbat was over then he
would say okay here i am i'm selling wine or silk or whatever it is have you got anyone who wants
to trade with me and of course the the business was self-affirming so the diaspora of the jews
was actually the foundation of the international commerce that they would be engaged in
right up until contemporary times there is a long historical tradition for this we will
explore the economic aspects of this god willing in a lecture later this summer or later this
spring i guess um so hang on there's lots more to say about that but let's go to uh the roots
of ashkenaz so i i referred to the jewish legal tradition which is extremely important when you
consider the kind of situation that was going on in real dark ages northern europe now i'm
talking about the region of what would be today france and germany and so on so
we're talking a really weird backward pre-christian kind of environment where they uh
they adjudicate trials for example by ordeals like this is a drawing of the so-called ordeal by water
in which you had a person suspected of some kind of criminal activity and so the best way to see
how well they did is if you tie them up and throw them in the lake and if they don't drown
then they're innocent because the gods protected them or even as it slowly begins to morph into
christianity god protected them singular god so that's definitely not kosher by talmudic standards
another version of the ordeal was you know two people are are uh are in a legal fight and one
of them claims he's totally innocent so the judge can say all right we're going to boil up this vat
of oil and we're going to drop an iron ring in it and you reach into that boiling pot of oil if
you can take the ring out without being harmed that will mean that you are obviously innocent
and if you are not willing to do it it must mean that you are guilty like yikes i would not want
to be anywhere near this kind of legal system give me the talmud any day you know rules of evidence
and testimony and things like that please so and one last thing of course which uh i'm not sure
how much how jews felt about this but there was the trial by conduct or ordeal by combat where
you could defend your innocence by simply going hand to hand with your uh litigant and this
is probably not historically accurate from the period i'm talking about but i kind of liked it
um and uh this is also something that has no basis in talmudic jurisprudence so luckily
jews were largely exempt in ashkenaz from any of these trials by ordeal and they were able
even in these kind of really backward conan the barbarian kind of environments able to
have their affairs judicated according to talmudic law this was an arrangement that benefited
the jews and also benefited the region because they were the traders they were the people who
brought goods in and of course they're in a tiny minority traveling up and down these river ways
you know with valuable goods but if if the society cannot support people engaged in this
kind of trade then it'll simply stop and people will not have the goods that they want to buy
so there is kind of an investment in giving the jews that level of legal autonomy and
we see in the dark ages that jews are granted this in the few number of uh communities that
we see them appearing in northern europe that's quite fascinating at this point we begin to see
the nucleus of something we will i'm afraid i have to discuss in much greater detail later
but the nucleus of the formation of the kahila structure this is the formal municipal
self-government of the jews that they developed very strongly in northern europe
although it definitely has similarities to what was going in muslim regions as well the
jews essentially formed for themselves a small state within a state at least at the municipal
level later on when we get to about the 16th century we'll see that it expands really
to a massive level in poland and lithuania where the municipalities are individually connected with
one another but essentially the jews in these tiny little struggling communities were talking about
less than a thousand people in any of them are granted the right to govern themselves they're
granted certain protections uh in order to largely benefit the trade and later as we shall see
benefit the tax structure and the tax revenue of the crown uh again i'm sorry to be talking about
this now because we're going to spend at least uh you know one of these videos talking about
jews in the medieval economy and this is crucial but what it gives us for now is the possibility
of jewish social independence that they are through the kehillah structure and through their
legal autonomy able to run their own affairs and create their own social safety net with education
with you know support for the elderly support for orphans and widows support for poor brides
all kinds of things to ensure that the jews are self-sufficient as a community
and contribute to their ongoing survival despite the relative barbarity of the dark ages in europe
so that's just by way of introduction i want to give you that kind of background coloring
as we go on to speak now about the rishonim and i think the contrast is going to be absolutely stark
you