Medieval Jews

Contrary to the popular stereotype there were times and places in the Middle Ages where Jews were an accepted part of society, had a certain measure of freedom to live as they chose, and fought at need as other people did.

This website is a guide to finding and learning more about those times and places, busting the myth that they did not exist and helping fill in the gaps left by what historian Salo Wittmayer Baron called the “lachrymose conception of Jewish history.”  Yes there were times of Jewish suffering, but there were other times as well.  Furthermore, events need to be placed in their wider historical context in order to be fully understood – events affecting Jews often had underlying causes that had nothing to do with Jews themselves.

Two important points:

First: Many websites or books on Jewish medieval history focus on the history of scholarship, responsa, or detailing the many places where Jews were massacred.  This is not one of those websites because those topics have already been done.  This website focuses on identifying where medieval Jews were free to live as they chose, including where they were able to fight (fighting being an opposite of being a passive victim).  Religious trends, writings, or scholars are mentioned in the Timeline when they are helpful in adding context or perspective to the Timeline’s events, but are not dwelled upon otherwise.

Second: My research, and this website, is very much a work in progress.  It is therefore not a Complete Final Truth, but a regularly updated effort to incrementally build as accurate a picture as possible.  This topic is not the usual focus for research on medieval Jewish life and to my knowledge no Complete Authoritative Book on the subject yet exists, so much effort has to be spent seeking out and assembling widely scattered pieces of the puzzle from many different sources in different languages, where commentators draw widely differing conclusions from the limited surviving data and even the primary sources are often deeply biased.  Much has been done already but much more remains.

All material on this website is copyrighted by me (Gideon ha-Khazar) except for material noted as others’ work.  All rights are reserved.