"Abba Eban:" "For me, there is a sense of wonder in this place." "One can almost hear within it, reflected by its vaulted ceilings, the sound of Jewish prayer..." "For this was once the great synagogue of Toledo, and its memory of a flourishing Jewish life in Spain persists." "That time is gone, but its bittersweet legacy lives on." "By the ninth century," "North Africa and Spain were in the hands of Moslem rulers." "The Jews had followed the conquest of Islam across North Africa and into Spain." "To the North, Christian Europe was beginning to awaken and was on the verge of profound changes." "The cultures of 3 great faiths would meet on the continent of Europe." "The Jews would join in the transformation of that continent and would themselves be transformed." "Man:" "We who are of the remnant of Israelites are dwelling peacefully in this land of Spain, which is called, in our sacred tongue, Sefarad." "The land is rich, abounding in rivers, springs, and aqueducts- a land of corn, oil, and wine, and all manner of delicacies." "It has pleasure gardens and orchards and fruitful trees of every kind." "Eban:" "Grace, serenity, delicacy, artistry- those are the words evoked by this patio of the Alhambra, the Great Moorish palace of Granada built in the 13th century." "In these precincts, as in all of Andalusia, the southern part of Spain, for more than two centuries," "Arabs and Jews lived together, side by side, bound to each other despite other differences by a common love of beauty and knowledge, poetry and music, art and philosophy." "In Jewish history, despite intermittent waves of persecution and violence, that Spanish era is known as a Golden Age." "The great wave of Moslem conquest that swept across North Africa had broken upon the shores of Europe, leaving Spain in the hands of Moorish rulers." "Jews had followed in the wake of the Moslem conquests, joining in the development of new lands and sharing in the first great florescence of culture since the days of the Roman Empire." "Arab civilization had built upon a foundation laid by other cultures before it, among them that of the Jews, and in reaching outward to Greece and India and Rome, the Arab renaissance synthesized a luminous vision of the world." "In delicate patterns, the words of the Koran, the holy book of Islam, were carved upon the walls of Moslem palaces." "Everywhere, in a profusion of detail, beauty and faith were intertwined." "In their search for order and beauty, the Arabs left a profound legacy for all time." "The Arabs delved into the sciences and into mathematics." "It was they who developed a system called, in Arabic, "al-jabr"-algebra." "They read the works of classical Greece and were enthralled, exploring in their own minds the paths and byways of philosophy..." "And in their age of greatest creativity, they tolerated and respected the ideas and beliefs of other peoples." "By the ninth century, the vast majority of all Jews lived in Arab lands." "They could hardly escape the influence of this new and energetic culture." "In many of the lands of Islam, an ideal would emerge among the Jews of living and sharing in the larger society." "Nowhere was this ideal more fully realized than in the Moslem lands of Spain." "Here in the great mosque of Cordoba, early in the tenth century," "Abd ar-Rahman III established the independent caliphate of Moslem Spain, and invited to his realm Arab poets and scientists, scholars and philosophers." "Here the Jewish linguist and statesman Hasdai Ibn Shaprut served in the court of Abd ar-Rahman and founded a Jewish court of his own." "In so doing, he created a center of Jewish culture unique in the world of his time." "A new world of Judaism would be born in this land- the world of the Sephardim, the Spanish Jews." "Over the years, they would play a conspicuous part in the government, in the statecraft, and in the scholarship of Moorish Spain." "Here in Granada, as elsewhere in Spain, the Sephardim rose to positions of great power." "Here, Samuel Ibn Nagrela, a Jew, could become prime minister and commander in chief of the Moorish armies." "His son Joseph would succeed him and plan, it is said, the construction of the great red palace-the Alhambra." "It was a land of abundance- rich in opportunity, rich in possibilities." "From the fruitfulness of Spain, the Moorish and the Jewish cultures drew sustenance, growing side by side and learning from one another." "Despite moments of conflict," "Jews across this land were free to work as farmers and physicians, artisans and statesmen, astronomers and diplomats." "The Jews took inspiration from Arab literature and revitalized their ancient language, Hebrew." "For centuries, it had been a language of worship only." "In Spain, Hebrew was reborn in poetry and in song." "The Golden Age of Moslem Spain would come to an end as the land broke into separate and warring kingdoms, but even in its final days, its remarkable vitality would find new expression." "3 centuries of the Golden Age resonate in the work of a single man- the greatest Jewish scholar of his time," "Moses Ben Maimon, better known to history as Maimonides." "But to his people, who revered him, he was, and is known, by other names" "Rambam, the Great Eagle, to signify his soaring intellect, and most simply, the Second Moses." "Forced to flee from the turmoil of Spain, eventually he found refuge in Egypt." "In tolerant, bustling Cairo," "Maimonides, who would be remembered as a scholar, philosopher, and moralist, became first a mathematician, an astronomer, a physician." "As one of the greatest physicians of his century, he was appointed to attend the sultan Saladin." "In the year 1199, he wrote to a friend and fellow scholar of his daily routine." "Man:" "I dwell at Fostat." "The sultan's residence is in Cairo." "Early each morning, I am obliged to visit him." "When the sultan does not feel well or when one of his children or wives is ill," "I cannot leave Cairo." "If they are well, I return to my home in the afternoon, but never earlier." "All the rooms are crowded with people." "I treat them and dispense prescriptions." "The coming and going of patients lasts until evening." "When night falls, I cannot speak for exhaustion." "Eban:" "Within this routine," "Maimonides managed, somehow, to write continuously- 10 books on medicine alone, but it is not for his scientific works that he is best remembered." "It is as the sage, the commentator, the wise man." "In the synagogue of Ben Ezra- his synagogue- the mind and spirit of the second Moses are alive today." "Maimonides searched out the heart of Jewish tradition and codified it in the Mishneh Torah." "His contribution has defied the centuries and entered into the thought and life of all of western civilization." "Man:" "I wish to help the one worthy man out of his perplexity, to show him a way out of his confusion so that he may attain perfection and peace." "Eban:" "In the greatest of Maimonides' works, the guide for the perplexed, he set out to examine Jewish religious beliefs in the light of philosophy- to reconcile faith and reason." "Man:" "Let us say that whenever anything in the world seems absurd, ridiculous, or evil, it is because we have but a partial knowledge, and we want things arranged according to our taste and reason, but when we look at life and the world" "from the aspect of the eternal scheme of things, we will find that what seems to us bad and shocking does so only because of our lack of knowledge and wisdom." "Eban:" "The guide for the perplexed was one of the few books written by a Jew since biblical times to become part of world literature." "In the closing days of the Golden Age, it was a beacon light that would illuminate the work of scholars of other faiths for centuries to come." "But the age which had produced Maimonides was soon to vanish." "Moorish Spain fell apart in the 11th and 12th centuries, and Christian armies from the north of the Iberian peninsula launched a campaign of reconquest- in Spanish, the "reconquista."" "Over the next 400 years, they would drive inexorably southward and westward into Moslem Spain until the moors were forced to yield every piece of territory they had ever possessed." "An era was ending for the Sephardic Jews." "Moslem Spain was dying, and in its place, there would now be a Christian land, joined to the Christian lands of Northern Europe." "Europe in the areas that are now Germany and France was, for centuries, a region of vast forests- a wilderness with villages huddled for protection near the walls of wooden fortresses." "While the renaissance of Arab culture reached its heights," "Northern Europe remained little more than a fragile outpost of civilization." "It was a primitive land, with a population barely clinging to the remnants of a culture brought to them by Rome centuries before." "There were no nations, no national boundaries." "The only bond between the people was their Christian faith." "The first Jews to penetrate to this land were traders bringing goods from the Mediterranean." "But in time, as stability and peace were ensured by feudal lords," "Europe would become a home for the Jews." "By the 11th century, this wilderness began to undergo a transformation." "everywhere new lands were cleared as peasants lived and farmed under the protection of feudal lords." "Villages grew into towns, and where once stockades and wooden huts had served, stone walls now rose." "In the streets and alleys of these new towns, amidst the bustle of carts and wagons, of pack mules and human porters, it was Jews who were the merchants, they who offered goods for sale from the great manufacturing and trading centers" "of the Mediterranean and the East." "The Jews were the connective link between this frontier society and the sophisticated world of the Moslem lands." "Eager to develop commerce in their domains feudal lords in Northern Europe sought to attract Jews to their towns with offers of special charters and privileges." "It was the charters granted by feudal rulers that permitted the Jews to settle in the land." "The terms might vary, but, without exception, Jews were allowed to practice their faith and live according to their own laws as written in the Talmud." "From the 10th and 11th century on, there were established Jewish communities in most of the major cities of Germany and France." "The Jews excelled in commerce, and their relations with their neighbors were relatively tranquil." "The great talmudical academies in Germany and France were able to develop an intense intellectual activity." "The most conspicuous figure is Rashi, the great commentator on the Bible and Talmud who lived in Troyes in northern France." "Rashi and other scholars of Europe devoted themselves to the study of Jewish laws, answering letters from rabbis who needed help in judging difficult cases among their people." "And difficulties did arise in this new environment, forcing the scholars to modify the laws of the Talmud to accommodate life within a Christian world." "Because they were isolated from the large Jewish communities of the East, the Jews of Northern Europe developed an identity that was uniquely theirs." "In time, they came to view themselves as a distinct branch of Judaism." "They called themselves Ashkenazim after a land in the distant north mentioned by the Bible." "In many ways, the Jews were but one people among the peoples of Europe." "In one way, however, they were unique." "In matters of religion, Jews were the only strangers." "In a world where every event of nature was a mystery, a man's religion provided the only path of understanding." "And where men disagreed about religion, they disagreed about the world." "For centuries there had been a competition between the faiths." "In the statuary of medieval churches," "Judaism was often portrayed as a beautiful woman wearing a blindfold because she refused to see that Jesus had been the Messiah." "Across from her, Christianity was shown triumphant- the noble possessor of the truth." "The church accused the Jews of having lost the way, and, worse than that, it accused them of having caused the death of the Messiah." "These accusations, repeated in sermons throughout Europe, were meant primarily to keep Christians from listening to Jewish ideas, but in the minds of the poor and the uneducated, they planted the seeds of hatred." "Man:" "When I, Rudiger, bishop of Speyer changed the town of Speyer into a city," "I thought I would increase the importance of the place a thousandfold by bringing in Jews." "Accordingly, I located them outside of the community and habitation of the other citizens, and I surrounded them with a wall so that they might not be disturbed by the insolence of the populace." "Eban: "The insolence of the populace..."" "these words of a German charter written in the year 1084 are the first evidence that the common people of Europe were turning against the Jews." "Envy of Jewish prosperity was one motive, but religion was the critical ingredient." "It would be the fervor of religion that, in only a few years, would launch a war." "In November of 1095 at Clermont, in the south of France, pope Urban II delivered a speech to a gathering of churchmen and nobles." "Man:" "A horrible tale has gone forth that an accursed Moslem race has invaded the lands of the East." "You who are endowed with the badge of knighthood and are arrogant with great pride advance boldly as soldiers of Christ." "Be mindful of your souls." "Rush to free the holy land from its oppressors." "Eban:" "In every corner of Europe," "Christian nobles prepared for what would come to be called" ""the first crusade."" "Before the nobles could organize their armies, however, masses of paupers began to assemble." "For these, the poor of Europe, the crusade seemed a great adventure- a chance to escape the misery of their lives." "Most of them hardly knew where the Holy Land was nor indeed who exactly their enemies might be." "Their ignorance at this moment of zealous enthusiasm could lead only to disaster." "The paupers now engaged in a war that pope Urban had never intended." "At the end of April 1096, in the Rhine valley, groups of rabble crusaders assembled into armies." "On the morning of a Jewish Sabbath in the beginning of may, they attacked the great Jewish community of Speyer." "The Jews fled to the bishop, who used his own troops to fight off the crusaders." "The rabble armies now turned against the Jews of other towns." "Jews were threatened with death unless they would abandon their Judaism and convert to Christianity." "Whole communities were surrounded and attacked." "Jews were murdered in the streets." "A few agreed to be baptized, but most refused." "They chose instead to demonstrate that their own belief in God meant more to them than life itself." "Entire communities- hundreds of Jews- committed mass suicide." "It was called "Kiddush hashem,"" "the sanctification of the Lord's name." "Woman:" "For the time being, the enemy will slay us, and yet we shall live." "Happy will everyone be who dies for the sanctification of his name." "For such a one, the world of darkness is transformed into a world of light, and the fleeting world into one that shall exist for ever and ever." "Eban:" "The tragedy of the first crusade was not only in the lives that were lost, but what was profoundly tragic was the growth of hostility among the common people towards the Jews, for this hostility, born of religious differences," "would never disappear." "In some ways, the first crusade was like a nightmare." "It passed and seemed to leave the world unchanged." "The Jewish communities of the Rhineland recovered and reestablished themselves, but the memory of those events would not die, even in the prosperous days that followed." "The 12th century that now began ushered in a period of expansion and development for the Christian lands of Europe." "Towns and cities grew as men left the countryside to become merchants and craftsmen." "In these walled towns" ""burgs" they were called in German- a new class emerged, the burghers- in French, the bourgeois." "For each of the trades in a town, there was an association, or a guild, with its insignia and its meeting hall." "There were guilds for merchants, for tanners, vintners, weavers, glaziers... for every imaginable occupation." "The craftsmen of the guilds were of humble origin- peasants from the countryside or simple villagers." "They feared to include in their ranks any men of different background." "Almost without exception, the guilds were closed to Jews, excluding them from most aspects of the new economic order." "But the growth of trade and commerce also offered new opportunities." "And as shipments of goods swelled and laborers had to be paid, one thing came to be needed in great quantity - money." "Currency was necessary for economic growth, and coins became such a valuable commodity that men paid interest of more than 30% to borrow them." "Christians were forbidden by the catholic church to lend money to other Christians for profit." "And as the demand for money increased," "Jews responded by providing the needed loans." "It was a natural economic move for them." "as merchants, they had had experience in keeping accounts and managing credit, and although in time, Italian moneylenders would displace them, for the moment Jews became the source of money for investments." "Nowhere in Europe were Jewish moneylenders more prosperous and useful than in 12th-century England." "From his home in Lincoln, a man known to history only as Aaron of Lincoln controlled a network of investments that extended to 25 counties." "He and other Jews helped finance the construction of buildings across all of England, including dozens of abbeys and monasteries and at least two cathedrals." "The role of Jews in financing the new economy was a productive one everywhere." "Man:" "The Jews flocked to France from diverse parts of the world because peace abode among the French, and the kings of that land were merciful toward their subjects." "They made a long sojourn in Paris, where they prospered so that they claimed as their own almost half of the city and employed Christians in their houses as menservants and maidservants." "Eban:" "In many of the German towns, Jews were accepted as citizens and in some places they were even granted public office." "The Ashkenazim, once almost insignificant in number, now expanded more rapidly than any other Jewish community in the world." "The heart of their settlement was in Germany, and German became the everyday language for most of the Ashkenazic Jews." "They mixed with it elements of their ancient language, Hebrew, to create a dialect that would come to be known as Yiddish." "In the spirit and vitality of their customs, in their separateness as a community, they found fulfillment." "Jews everywhere shared in and stimulated the growth of Christian Europe." "In Spain, Christian armies continued to reconquer the land from its Moslem rulers." "By the middle of the 12th century, thousands of Spanish Jews had been brought under Christian rule." "In Toledo alone, a Christian city in the north, the Jewish population was said to number 70,000." "While Berber rulers brought intolerance to Moslem Spain," "Jewish refugees were welcomed in Toledo." "They arrived carrying precious manuscripts of philosophy, poetry, and science." "Their knowledge would help to save the heritage of Moorish Spain from the flames of destruction." "Their Golden Age would now be kept alive in the lands of Christian Spain." "[men singing in Hebrew]" "In the synagogues of Christian Toledo, the patterns and motifs upon the walls demonstrate the debt of the Jews to their Moorish past." "Jewish scholars from Moslem Spain were welcome to this city and they made it a gateway of knowledge for Europe to the North." "They became the great translators of the works of Arab philosophy and science into Hebrew and Latin." "Christians from all of Europe came to Toledo to study from Jewish scholars." "From this process of exchange," "Northern Europe first learned the decimal system of numbers." "With the help of Jews, the works of Hippocrates, Euclid, and Aristotle were translated from Arabic and made available to Christian scholars." "A world of knowledge that the Europeans had hardly known to exist was suddenly opened before their eyes." "[men singing]" "Eban:" "It was the age of the great cathedrals, of Chartres and Notre Dame..." "An age of technological advances, of mechanical clocks, water mills, and spinning wheels." "The 12th and 13th centuries exploded with creativity and a spirit of exploration." "Marco Polo set off for China." "Universities were born, and avid students read the works of Arab and Jewish scholars- works of science, mathematics, medicine, and philosophy." "New knowledge broke upon Christian Europe with the force of revelation." "The church had to face the probes and questions of philosophy and respond to them not out of faith alone, but with reasoned and philosophical argument." "Church scholars turned to Arab and Greek and Jewish philosophy, searching eagerly to infuse the doctrines of the church with the new spirit of rationalism." "Thomas Aquinas, the most luminous mind among the church scholastics, found in the works of Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher, a means of reconciling faith with reason, and he set about constructing a philosophical stronghold to the medieval Christian faith." "Man:" "Man has a natural desire to know the causes of whatever he sees." "Through wondering at what they saw, men first began to philosophize, but God is the first cause of all." "Therefore, man's last end is to know God." "Eban:" "It was a time of charity and humanity within the church, a time when the monastic orders sought to renew the ideal of poverty and simplicity in the service of faith..." "The time of Saint Bernard and of Saint Francis of Assisi, of quiet dedication to nature and human kindness." "[church bell ringing]" "But in this complex era, the church was sometimes threatened with movements of revolt." "When reason and persuasion could not prevail over those who questioned its doctrines, the church began to respond with force." "It established commissions of inquiry to seek out heretics." "Thousands of dissenters lost their lives." "Feeling its position threatened on many sides, the church hardened its policy also toward the Jews." "The church sought to isolate them, lest Jewish beliefs draw Christians away from the church, for the competition between the faiths had never really stopped." "In the year 1215, a church council at the Lateran palace in Rome issued a decree." "Man:" "In certain provinces, such a confusion has arisen that Jews and Christians cannot be distinguished." "We hereby order that the Jews in every Christian province shall be marked off in the eyes of the public through the character of their dress." "In many places Jews were required to wear yellow badges and pointed hats." "The purpose was to separate them from Christians." "A quarter century later, pope Gregory IX took a step that would strike at the heart of the Jewish heritage." "Man:" "Since the Talmud is said to be the main reason the Jews remain obstinate in their mistaken faith, we herewith order that on the first Saturday of the lent to come, in the morning, while the Jews are gathered in the synagogues," "you shall seize all the books of the Jews who live in your districts." "Jews felt themselves threaten as never before, threaten in their very identity, for it was the Talmud that held the Jewish people together from generation to generation and through all the lands of their dispersion." "In Paris, the Talmud was subjected to a public trial and judged guilty of defaming Christians." "As Jewish onlookers wept, 24 cartloads of handwritten manuscripts were burned." "But the laws and edicts of the church could not be enforced without the approval of the local rulers, and while some rulers applied the anti-Jewish regulations, most did not." "Their interests lay in the well-being of the Jews and the prosperity they brought to their realms." "Life in the castles of the middle ages would grow more luxurious as time went by and more costly." "It was a life sustained, at first, by lands and holdings and the peasants who worked those lands..." "But as the need for money grew, the nobles turned to taxation- taxation of the moneylenders and taxation of the people through the moneylenders." "The people who were taxed in this manner were often those who could least afford to pay- a peasant who needed money to tide him over a bad harvest or an aristocrat who had to mortgage his lands to pay off his debts." "The Jews who provided loans found themselves forced by rulers to charge ever-increasing rates." "It was an impossible situation." "The first signs of conflict began to appear as early as the 12th century." "In England, the kings had been taxing the profits of Jewish moneylenders since the days of the Norman conquest." "The Jews had come to serve as tools of the royal treasury in raising money from local aristocrats." "By the late 12th century, many lords were unable to repay their debts to the Jews." "In 1189, a group of nobles instigated riots against the Jews." "The first was in London, but soon, riots broke out in other towns, as well." "[people yelling]" "In march of 1190, local barons in the town of York plotted to murder their Jewish creditors." "The Jews fled for protection to Clifford's tower." "A mob gathered, and the barons incited them to attack the fortress." "Man:" "The whole of the work people, the youth of the town, and a large number of country folk joined in the cruel business as if each man was seeking his own gain." "The attackers rejoiced in the certainty of their approaching victory." "Eban:" "On the morning when the mob finally forced its way into the tower, it found many of the Jews dead by their own hands." "Those who were still alive were slaughtered on the spot." "The violence that erupted in England was a somber warning." "Where economic resentment was added to religious animosity, the hatred that resulted could not be contained." "All across Europe, in varying degrees," "Jews acted as intermediaries for rulers in exacting money from their subjects." "This, then, was the sequence." "Kings and nobles protected the Jews for a time and borrowed heavily from them in order to be able to govern." "They then taxed the Jews heavily in order to recoup a part of their expenses." "The burden of this tax was passed on to the people." "As taxation grew heavy, the bourgeois of the cities and the peasants of the countryside began to rebel against both the nobles and the Jews." "Jewries were ransacked and nobles assaulted." "At this moment of crisis, with rebellion threatening, rulers across Europe began to see the Jews as a political liability." "In order to appease their subjects, the rulers now ended their relationship with the Jews." "Man:" "We, Charles II, for the honor of God and preferring to provide for the peace of our subjects rather than to fill our coffers, although we enjoy extensive temporal benefit from the Jews, do expel from our counties all Jews," "not only for the present, but for all times." "Eban:" "In what can only be termed an epidemic of expulsions, nobles everywhere began to rid their domains of Jewish communities." "In 1290, Edward I banished the Jews of England, 16,000 in number, and confiscated their property." "They would not be allowed to return for almost 4 centuries." "16 years later, Philip the fair expelled the Jews of France and seized their goods." "Later, they would be readmitted when it seemed profitable to the king and expelled again when he had gotten from them all he could." "Only in Germany, where the land was broken into countless territories, and where town governments shared in the profits of money lending, did Jews remain, but in great insecurity." "The 14th century world in which thousands of Jews now found themselves adrift still retained many elements of the dark ages." "For the unlearned, it was still a world ruled by magic and miracles." "People thought fireflies were the souls of infants who had died before they could be baptized and that heart attacks were the work of demons." "Phenomena not otherwise accounted for were attributed to the influence of the planets or finally, to the will of God." "But in 1347, there occurred an event so terrifying, so devastating, that no explanation, not even the will of God, seemed adequate." "In October of that year, a Genoese trading ship drifted into harbor at Messina in Sicily." "Its sailors were slumped over their oars, all of them dead or dying." "On board was a terror known as the black death, the bubonic plague." "In January of 1348, infected sailors carried the plague to France via Marseilles and then to North Africa via Tunis." "It spread westward from Marseilles to Spain and then northward up the Rhone." "it spread to Rome and Florence, to Paris and Normandy, and then across the channel to southern England." "No country escaped its ravages." "The contemporary descriptions are shocking." "Man:" "The common people fell sick daily by the thousands." "A great many breathed their last in the public streets, day and night." "Everywhere, the city was teeming with corpses." "People would drag them out of their homes and pile them in front of the doors." "It was not uncommon to see a single bier carrying husband and wife, 2 or 3 brothers, father and son, and others besides." "The disease began as swellings in the armpits or groin that sometimes grew to be the size of eggs." "The swellings quickly spread over the entire body and turned to black and livid blotches." "Eban:" "In two years, the bubonic plague claim some 24 million lives, 1/3 of Europe's population." "It shredded every legal and human bond that held medieval society together." "In despair, people looked everywhere for an explanation, looked everywhere for a way to halt the plague, before it killed them all." "A rumor spread from city to city that Jews had poisoned the wells." "Pope Clement VI came to their defense." "Man:" "Recently, we have heard that certain Christians, seduced by the devil, are blaming the Jews for the pestilence which God is afflicting upon the Christian people, but this pestilence is all but universal." "It afflicts both the Jews themselves and many other people that have no contact with the Jews." "The accusation against the Jews is absurd." "Eban:" "In vain, pope Clement argued for reason." "Throughout Europe, communities were attacked." "2,000 Jews were burned in Strasbourg, thousands more in Mainz." "Social order disintegrated, and the number of Jews murdered by the mob grew steadily." "It is a dangerous platitude to say that the Jews of Europe were made a scapegoat." "It is dangerous because it explains nothing." "It does not explain the anger felt everywhere against the Jews that led not only to the killings of this period, but also to the anti-Jewish attitude among Europeans that was to survive for the next 500 years." "In the course of the middle ages, the Jews had come to be resented by the common people for complex religious and economic reasons." "Religious resentment was born of the unfortunate competition between the Jewish and the Christian faiths that had started more than a thousand years before." "That competition had resulted in formal action by the church that had further alienated the Christians from the Jews, but the economic resentment of this period was new, and when combined with religious and social differences, it proved to be the most destructive of all." "The Jewish communities of medieval France would never recover." "Those in Germany continued, subject to constant attacks and expulsions until they were decimated and impoverished." "Only in the east of Europe, in Lithuania and in Poland, could the Jews find lands where they were protected, lands where the future offered hope." "The east was still a frontier, and settlers were needed to develop its trade and commerce." "It was here that the Ashkenazim would find a home to shelter them once again." "Out of this east European Jewish tradition and its rich sense of identity, much of the foundation of modern Judaism would be built." "Spain." "Spain had not been immune to the horrors of the black death, nor was it immune, in the aftermath of the plague, to the turmoil of social upheaval." "Toward the end of the 14th century, the virus of anti-Jewish attitudes born in Northern Europe began to make its way into the mainstream of Spanish culture." "There were outbursts of popular violence against the Jews." "Under militant, zealous religious leaders, an energetic effort was made to convert every Jew and every Moslem who lived in Spain to Christianity." "In some places, Jews were forbidden to eat, drink, or even talk with Christians." "Man:" "They kept us from trades, farming, and crafts." "Instead of silken apparel, we were obliged to wear wretched clothes." "Starvation stared everyone in the face." "Eban:" "Breaking into this synagogue of Toledo, zealous Christians declared it a church" " Santa Maria la Blanca." "The pressure and violence became so intense that thousands of Jews converted to Christianity." "Here and throughout Spain, it was a tidal wave of conversion, and when it receded, it left behind as many as 100,000 converts whom the Spanish called "the new Christians."" "This proud community, the Sephardim, so integrated into Spanish life, was suddenly torn apart." "Many converted in public but continued to observe their own faith in private." "Resentment appeared against those Jewish converts who held to their ancient customs." "Angry Christians called them "marranos"" "from the Spanish word for swine." "When the kingdoms of Christian Spain were at last united under the rule of Ferdinand and Isabella, the two monarchs set out to purify the faith of their Christian subjects." "On the first day of the year of 1481, the Spanish inquisition began its ruthless task- to obliterate any and all vestiges of Jewish practice among the new Christians, to destroy totally any relationship between the converted and the remaining Jews of Spain." "Thousands were tried and tortured." "Thousands were burned at the stake, but 11 years of terror and torture were unable to destroy the bonds between the converts and their Jewish heritage." "The Spanish inquisition now demanded a further and more radical action." "In this majestic hall of the ambassadors in the Alhambra on the 31st of march 1492, the long and illustrious history of the Jews of Spain came to a tragic and fateful end." "It was here that king Ferdinand and queen Isabella, responding to the pressure of Tomas de Torquemada, the grand inquisitor, issued the edict of expulsion requiring all the Jews of Spain to convert to Catholicism or to leave the country by the end of midsummer." "Man:" "According to the report of the inquisitors, there has come to light the great harm to new Christians due to their contact with Jews." "Therefore, we have decided to order..." "Woman:" "All Jewish men and women to leave our kingdom, and they should not dare to come back neither to reside, to pass through, nor for any reason whatsoever." "Eban:" "Throughout the spring and early summer of that year, more than 150,000 refugees clogged the roads of Spain, leaving behind their homes and vineyards, their workshops, their synagogues, their places of learning, their memories of triumph and of trial" "in the unforgettable centuries they had lived under Arab and Christian rule." "This was the most massive of the many expulsions in Europe..." "But it was not merely an expulsion." "It was the sad end of 5 centuries during which Jewish life and Jewish thought had reached great heights in western Europe." "In Spain particularly," "Jewish life had been imbued with a new ideal." "it was the ideal of living fully and creatively within the larger society while remaining faithful to the ancient values and traditions of the Jewish people." "And so on a certain summer day in august, in the very month that Christopher Columbus embarked on his voyage of discovery, the last Jewish refugees set sail from Spain." "The memory of that tragic moment persists, but even in that moment of despair, there were the seeds of hope, for they carried with them a legacy of faith that would sustain the Jews of Spain and of all Europe in other lands" "and in new worlds yet to be discovered." "In the 5 centuries that ended in 1492, two great traditions of Jewish culture had been born in Europe." "For the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim, now is then." "The words of the sweet singers of the Golden Age carry still upon the wind." ""The sun and moon, these minister forever." ""The laws of day and night come never to an end." ""Given are they as signs to Jacob's seed that they shall ever be." ""Let them not say we are desperate, even at the time of their ruin." ""Let them believe only they are eternal and that they shall not cease until there be no night or day.""