Jews

Because they had been dispersed in the Middle East and the Mediterranean after the Romans had destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem by 70 A.D., and forming communities, because they questioned the Roman Catholic Church due to that they had not accepted Jesus-Christ like the Messiah Israel was waiting for, or because they were present at the Carolingian times like the main traders of the time, Jews are part of the history of the Carolingian Era

From Abraham to the Destruction of the Second Temple

Jews appeared in history with Abraham, the first man to preach the rejection of idolatry and the monotheism, about 1700 B.C. Moses was the second most important character in the Jewish history, as he led the Hebrews out of Egypt -about 1300 B.C., where they had became enslaved at the time of Jacob, Abraham's grandson. Once back in Canaan, the 'Promised Land,' the Hebrews eventually founded kingship among them about 1050 B.C., at the time of Saul. This kingdom was then shared, in 920, into two kingdoms -the one of Israel in the North, and the one of Judah in the South. Israel fell to the Assyrians by 721 B.C. as Judah to the Babylonians by 586. Both events led to a diaspora of the Hebrews, the second mainly. It is believed that the northern kingdom of Israel, with its capital Samaria, had been founded by ten tribes of Israel, as the southern kingdom of Juda, with its capital Jerusalem, had been by the tribes of Juda, Benjamin, and a part of the Levites only (and maybe some members of the tribe of Simeon). The first exile, the one caused by the Assyrians led mostly that none of the ten tribes ever returned to Judea as the Assyrians settled foreigners into Samaria, which became the Samaritans, a mix of Jewish men and foreign females. The Jews of Juda, as far as they are concerned, were the only tribes to come back in the ancient Promised Land with the Persian king Cyrus allowing Jews to go back to their country in about 539 B.C., completing the construction of a second temple in Jerusalem about 518, with Israel a subdistrict of a Persian satrapy. That period of the 6th century B.C. is called 'The Return to Zion.' Only some of the Jewish tribes came back into Israel, with the ones of Juda and Benjamin and too a part of that of Levi and even some members of the one of Simeon, which are the tribes which had founded the kingdom of Juda. The Torah had begun to be written down at the time of the exile in Babylon, a work based upon manuscripts which had been saved from the destruction of the First Temple. Some think that Judaism, at the time of the Jewish kingdoms, had remained stained with polytheism as the Exile turned it into the monotheism. Returned Jews always considered the Samaritans, albeit having maintained some Jewish customs, not to be real Jews and, since that time, on a other hand, that idea lasted that the ten tribes deported by the Assyrians had become lost. After Alexander the Great's conquest of the ancient Middle East empires, the Israelian, new kingdom passed from one to the other of the successors of Alexander in the region, the Syrian Seleucids or the Egyptian Ptolemies, with the Ptolemies hellenizing them. The distinction between tribes mostly disappeared at the time, with the Jewish people tending to unity. The common language of the Jews at the time had become the Aramean language, which was the lingua franca of the Middle East as Hebrew was now reserved for reading the Torah or prayers. The Hasmonean Kingdom (164-63 B.C.), founded by one of the Maccabee, just existed to see Palestine -or Judaea- falling into the hands of Rome, by about 63 B.C., that new power in the Mediterranean, coming, for the second time, and overrunning the powers in the Middle East. The next main step of the Jewish history was the case of Jesus-Christ, who, about 0 A.D., proclaimed he was the Messiah, long awaited by the Jews. The fight, on the other hand, against the Roman domination, led to that in 69-70 A.D. the Romans definitively occupied the region, and destroying the Second Temple on the very 656th anniversary day the First one had been in 587 B.C. A last revolt was crushed by Rome in 132 A.D. with the region being then known under the name of Palestine

The Evolution Of the Jewish Religion

The conquest of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah had brought a first diaspora among the Jews, that is that enslaved, or free, fleeing Jewish populations settled in various countries, or regions, like Iran, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, or Yemen, allowing for some sort of Jewish culture to develop there, with even some proselytism at the time of the Hellenistic period. The second destruction of the Temple, in 70 A.D. led to a second, and definitive diaspora, with some Jews enslaved in Rome, some fleeing to existing communities, and some remaining in Judaea. That was not without consequence onto the Jewish religion

The 'Tanakh' had been the sole source of the Jewish religion until the Second Diaspora. The Tanakh comprised the Torah, that is the written compilation of the laws which had been given to Moses on Mount Sinai, the texts of the Prophets, and other writings. It eventually came to be canonized -standardized that is- by between 200 and 100 B.C. A consequence of the first diaspora, mainly under the form of the hellenistic Judaism, had been that the Jews passed from their conception of that unique God, which is pecular to them, to that their religion contained universal truths

A rabbi, Yochanan ben Zakai, after Jerusalem's fall, was granted the right to settle, with the Sanhedrin, in Yavneh, as the Sanhedrin, until disbanded by the Romans in 420, became the Jews' main governing and religious body. The rabbis there elaborated the other major sources of the Jewish religion, the source of such sources being, this time, no more of direct, divine origin, but of a human one. Synagogues and Jewish schools ('midrash') had had their origin during the exile in Babylon, as they kept existing after the return to Israel. That what was called the 'Rabbinic Judaism.' Each exiled community, on the other hand, also had its rabbis like their religious chiefs. Judaism, hence, turned from the time it was centered on the Temple to that when it came to be on the rabbis. The rabbis, interestingly, are just the Pharisees! Pharisses emerged like one of the parties in Israel, after the return to the Holy Land from the Exile into Babylon. Sadducees became the party of priests and elites, who were ruling then, as their legitimity was contested due to that the return had been allowed by the Persians, a foreign power. It is at the time of the Maccabean monarchy, that several parties appeared, contesting the Sadducees. Pharisees originated into the scribes and wisemen who, at the time of the return to Jerusalem, began writing down the sacred texts and to be in charge of publicly reading the Torah. They were strongly conservative, opposing to any form of assimilation to a foreign culture. The Essenes, on the other hand, were opposing to both the Maccabean priests and the Seleucids-appointed ones, as they refused the Second Temple. It was the opposition between the Sadducees and the Pharisees which allowed the Roman conquest of Judaea. Under the Roman rule, the Pharisees and Saduccees kept opposing each other, as radicals -the 'Zealots'- brought up revolts, with the Pharisees eventually turning mostly to the study of the Law and getting nearer to the Essenes -especially about the lack of concern for the Second Temple, and Saduccees, as far as they are concerned, being evicted from the priesthood and power. It is ill-known whether Jesus really opposed to the Pharisees or if that was a reconstruction which was build a long time after Christianity broke off from Judaism or even that the Pharisses emerged like the dominant Jewish power. Once the Temple crushed by Titus in 70 A.D., the Sadducees came to none due to that their power was linked to the Temple. The Essenes did too, due to their teachings too far from the concerns of the times. Hence the Pharisees only remained, as they quickly became the rabbis, the teachings of whose became the central place for the Jewish religion, instead of the Temple

That impact of the diaspora onto the Jewish religion -under the form of the teachings of the rabbis- translated into the redaction of two further sources of the Jewish religion, the 'Mishna,' about 200 A.D., and the 'Gemara,' about 500, both constituting the 'Talmud.' The Mishna based upon that idea that, besides the Torah, the ancient Jewish times had known a oral tradition, managed by scholars and religious rulers and passed from one generation to another, which was interpretating Moses laws -more precisely the second law given by God to Moses at the Sinai. The Mishna eventually came to be a set of rules pertaining to various aspects of daily Jewish life, like agriculture, religious rites, marriage, or civil and criminal laws, as it was edited about 200 A.D. in Judaea. The Gemara took on, with it being the commentaries and analysis of the Mishna by the rabbis of the communities of Babylonia and Judaea. Its conclusions are presented under the form of disputative dialogs. Both texts, at last, the Mishna, and the Gemara, became encompassed into the 'Talmud.' The Talmud, a work in a number of volumes, came into two editions, one in Jerusalem, during the 4th century, the other in Babylonia by about 500 A.D., with the second one gaining preeminence among the Jews, due to the decline of the Jews in Palestine after those dates, and put into his final form by the Wise Men in Persia

The Talmud, at last, was commented, in turn, during the 'Geonim era' -about between 800-1000 A.D.- in Babylonia. The 'Geonim,' or 'Gaonim,' or 'talmudists,' are the two scholar and religious leaders there after the era of the Wise Men who had written down the Talmud. Pratically, the Geonim were the presidents of the two great rabbinical colleges of Babylonia. They kept the scholarly work which had preceded them, elaborating 'responsa,' first -answers to questions asked for more clarity from the neighbouring communities-, and essays, after the second half of the 9th century -due to the questions coming from Jews less acquainted with the Talmud. After that, the commentaries about the Talmud shifted to the West, just like the center of Judaism, by the early Middle Ages, progressively had shifted from the East to the West. At the time when the Geonim arose, its the 'Exilarch' -or 'Resh Galuta'- who was assuming the secular authority over the Jews living in Byzantine lands. Both the Geonim acquired their independence from the Exilarch, as the latter had power to nominate them, based on the incorporation of the schools of Babylonia into the sphere of influence of the Arabic world -the dynasty of the Abassides mainly. Its the bankers of the Abassid court which supported the independency of the Geonim. As far, further, their influence is concerned during their era, the Geonim mostly radiated over a large part of the Middle East, as the schools -and Talmud- of Palestine controled Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. The communities of North Africa and Spain, as far as they are concerned, did not had their own schools, as they relied for the scholarly authority upon both the Palestine, and Geonim schools -amplifying thus the conflict between those. It's the Geonim which eventually, by the 10th century, won over the Palestine school. The Geonim, marginally, played a role too, when a trend of the judaism -the 'Karaism'- strongly developped between the 8th and 11th centuries. The Karaism concerned then about 40 percent of the Jews as it opposed to the rabbinic judaism, mainly by refusing the authority of the Talmud. That opposition was mainly felt in Europe, as, in the Islamic world, albeit refusing the Talmud too, the supporters of the Karaism kept a practice mostly close -or identical- to the 'orthodox' judaism. In Spain, during the 10th century A.D., the Karaites there had become a force to be reckoned with. The Karaites, generally, owned their development to their high social positions, like tax collectors, doctors or clerks. Scholars now point to that the Karaism is related to the Alexandrian philosopher Philo. The Geonim era entered into its decline along the one of the Abbassid dynasty by the turn of the 11th century

The Status of Jews After the Second Diaspora, Generally

During the first centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple, the Jewish Diaspora mostly parted into those who settled in Mesopotamia, with a mild status and those who settled in the Roman Empire -joining there, for some locations, like Asia Minor or Egypt, converts to Judaism from the Hellenistic period- where they were, at first, ill-treated on the basis of the religion and their costums. Jewish communities even existed outside the borders of the Roman Empire, like in northern or eastern Europe, central Africa, and southwestern Asia. The day-to-day administration of the communities were left to the rabbis, under the general rule of the power of the concerned locations. Rome moved to a milder treatment however under emperor Antonius, about the year 150 A.D. It is estimated that the Jewish population, in the Roman Empire, at the dawn of Christianity, had come to as many as 10 percent of the population -5 millions that is for a total of a population of 50 millions- partly due to converts! Jews mostly were found in Asia Minor, Greece, Palestine and Egypt as the sole important community in the West was in Rome self. The question of the Jewish status took another aspect when Christianity progressively turned from tolerated to become the sole religion, in the Roman world. Christians and Jews really were at odds since the time of the predication of Jesus due to that the Jews ultimately had decided of the death of him and, further, had persecuted the first Christian communities. When Christians gained proeminency in Rome, one assisted to a strong developement of anti-judaistic writings, until the 7th century A.D., among the Fathers and other Church writers, passing then from a ethnic, to a purely theological refusal. A restrictive legislature, on the other hand, was enacted as soon as the rule of the emperor Constantine I, coming to a brief respite under the emperor Julian the Apostate, by 360. When the western part of the Roman empire fell under the invasions of the Germanic tribes, the Jewish status became more enjoyable -despite the overall conditions of disorders- due to that most of the Germans were belonging to the tolerant, Arian heretic version of Roman Catholicism. In the eastern part of the former Roman empire, the extensive presence of the Jews in the Roman Empire kept there -to a lesser extent however- under the Byzantine rule, in central and eastern Mediterranean, as their status and influence declined dramatically. It was the official policy to convert them, with an official prosecution eventually established by emperor Theodosius about the year 400. This policy of segregation kept on thereafter. Such a policy lead to that, at the time of the Muslim conquests, a great number of Jews fled to the territories occupied by the Arabs, prefering the benign discrimination there. Muhammad soon had opposed Jews who he believed he could have gained to his new religion and he developed a merciless hatred against them. That was continued by Caliph Umar (634-644 A.D.), the second caliph who succeeded Muhammad, under the name of 'Umar's laws.' Such a fanaticism, then, under the successors to Umar, turned swiftly enough however into tolerance. Jews could help to strenghten conquests. Jews' official, devalued status -there were 'dhimmi' like Christians- was to be felt only during the times of decline of Muslim kingdoms and empires. In the West, each time that the Roman Catholicism took on over the Arian heresy -with the Franks, the Burgonds or the Wisigoths- the persecution came back against the Jews, with the Spanish Jews, like the Byzantine ones, welcoming -and maybe helping to- the arrival of the Arabs in 711, which provided them with a milder status, albeit the Jews had been expelled by Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula. The Carolingian era overlaps with the Jewish Golden Age in the Moorish Spain, which lasted 900-1090, with Jewish poets, scholars, scientists, statesmen and philosophers flourishing, due to the Jewish community there being the richest, most populous, and most influential of the time. The Jews represented 8 percent of the population of Spain at the time of the invasion. Between 700 and 1250, Jews mostly lived in the Moorish Spain and the Arab world, from North Africa to Palestine, Iraq and Yemen, where they enjoyed tolerance, despite sporadic periods of persecution, as the Jews came to be known under two different branches, the 'Ashekenazim' -meaning 'German' in Hebrew- who had migrated from Palestine to Italy in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D., thence to southern Germany in the 7th-8th centuries, spreading then still to central and eastern Europe, and the 'Sephardim' -'Spanish' or 'Iberian' in Hebrew- or the Jews of Spain. Jews in the Arab world outside Spain, descended from the communities there, like in Egypt, Persia, Yemen, Syria or among the Berbers in North Africa. At the epoch of the Karait schism, Kazars, a steppic, Turkish tribe who dwelled by the mouth of the Volga River, converted to Judaism in the 7th and 8th centuries. They were foes to Persians and they took the Arab invasion to profit to settle down into Armenia and Crimea. They put Byzantium to tribute too and vassalized Bulgars and other peoples and imposing a tax to first Kievian Rus. Kazars also confronted against Arabs. Arab and Byzantine traders came to exchange furs with them and they had them know Islam and Eastern Christianity. As Jews were fleeing intolerance of Byzantine emperor Leo, by the early 8th century, they came to settle at the court of Kazars' ruler, the 'chagan.' They turned translators, merchants, physicians and counselors. One of the chagans decided to ban idolatry from his dominions as the Byzantine emperor and the Arab Caliph organized a debate, with a Jew, about the respective advantages of their religion. As the Kazar chagan noticed that arguments ot both Eastern Christians and Muslims called to Judaism, he decided he would convert to the latter. Kazars had Jewish scholars to come in their country and they practised a tolerant Judaism. Jews was considering them like issued from the tribes of Simeon and Manasse. The Kazar kingdom still existed by about 960 A.D. and they entered relation with Spanish Jewish philosopher Hasdai who, according to the views of that time, was afflicted that Jews did not had a kingdom of their own. Kazar kingdom eventually was destroyed by Kievian Rus in 969 A.D. On a other hand, there were 43 Jewish communities existing in Palestine. There were Jews too in central and southern Africa and Ethiopia, and Jewish traders in China at the time of the Tang dynasty

The Status of Jews in the Carolingian Empire

A first period, under the Carolingians, was characterized by a differentiation of the attitudes towards the Jews between the people, the clerics, and the rulers. It seems that, as far as the people is concerned, like in Spain, they did coexist with no real troubles as conversions occurred from both side -albeit the Jews themselves -or their rabbis- tended to refuse those. The Jews, compared to the previous period of the Merovingians, seemed more inserted into the daily life, with their names translated into Latin or local languages, them speaking the same tongue than the other peoples -even in the synagogue- and having various activities not necessarily linked to commerce. Church and the clerics were much more antijewish, for theological reasons, as they thought that Jews had to convert to assume their identity. Church was targeting the Jewish children and the pagan slaves of the Jews. Recurrent accusations of Christian children abducted and of Christians sold to the Arabs in Spain occurred. Agobard, the bishop of Lyons, was the most famous of those clerics hostile to Jews. Carolingians self, had a relatively benevolent attitude, which preserved the Jewish identity. It seems likely that the views of the rulers concerning their empire, which they were seeing like a juxtaposition of people under a same rule, with each retaining its pecular set of laws, led to that the Jews were eventually considered one people like any other. A dedicated Carolingian official -the 'magister judeorum'- was some kind of spokeman to the Jewish community, as he was first mentioned during the reign of Louis the Pious. The Jews, like the other communities, were attending the coronation of the Carolingian rulers, and participating to the ritual acclamations there, with other Eastern peoples present -in their case in Syriac and Hebrew. Jews however were not allowed to any official function in the Carolingian empire. In a second period, further, as the disorders and troubles plagued the Empire during the 9th century A.D., Jews now were considered with suspicion. Beginning about 840, the Jews were accused to have given cities to the Northmen or the Arabs, or that a physicain poisoned Charles the Fat in 877. A famous case, about 844 A.D. was the one of a Alaman man, named Bodo, a member of the palatial neigbourhoods, who converted to Judaism, criticized then the Church for its ill life and costums as he fled to Spain where he appealed the Arabs to convert the Christians by force to the Islam, or the Judaism. The case was showing, on the one hand, how the Jews had developed a influence near the highest spheres of the Carolingian empire as, on the other hand, it developed the animosity against the Jews further. Church councils were seen taking legislations against the Jews, like repressing proselytism, forbidding any neighbourhood relationships between Christians and Jews, keeping Jews from some jobs, from having Christian slaves -and to make the commerce of slaves, generally- forcing Jews to stay home during the Holy Week before Easter, or that no new synagogue being built, an so on. Such a renewed attitude was seen to take place in the various kingdoms which gradually have been born from the Carolingian troubles -with even a possible general expulsion of the Jews from Italy. The troubles in the Empire eventually allowed that it was the attitude of the Church and the clerics which became preeminent. Their attitude was of a 'theological' antijudaism, as the conflicts between Jesus and the Jews in his time were put forwards and that the Jews of the Carolingian times did make the Church angry as they didn't want to convert. Charles the Simple, about 900 A.D. was seen confiscating the wealth of the Jews in Narbonne, as he gave that to the Church. Jewish communities, in the Carolingian times, were found in Aachen, Bordeaux, Worms, Soissons, Augsburg, Pavia and Ravenna as they were the most numerous in the southwestern and southeastern Gaul and the Rhone valley (Lyons, Chalon, Macon, Vienna, Arles, Narbonne). About those diverging attitudes between the Carolingian rulers and the antijudaism as supported by the Church, it is still unclear however whether, as far as that latter attitude was concerned, 'Church' must be understood like the sole Frankish Church, or the Church generally, with the pope agreeing with those choices. It was likely that the dividing line was between a imperial, cesaropapist group -like Alcuin and then his disciple Rabanus Maurus- who were close to Hellenism, Neoplatonicism and a near-heretic Origenism, with such a closeness bringing them a long way into getting distant from their Roman Catholicism, then a part of high clerics, and even the Greats, who were Gallicans and that attitude led them to participate into the fights of the time of Louis the Pious and his sons and to choose that party -above all that of Lothair- which was opposed to the philojudaism of the court, and, at last, the Chuch self, under the form of popes who at that time were beginning to emancipate papacy from the Frankish proponents in Rome. For the Roman Catholich Church, generally, Jews had to be converted to complete Revelation. It is not of little interest, at last, that that question is, without doubt, to be linked to the one of the large trade merchants, or the Radhanites, who were Jews and were the soles who maintained routes between Carolingian Europe and abroad, like Byzantium, Arabs in Spain, the Middle East, etc. Even if the description of the Radhanites finds its origin in the antisionist, political views the Soviet Union was holding against the state of Israel, one however should not do not see that a bundle of indices is somehow bringing some credence to the concept. The philojudaist party which was extant at the Court is to be maybe linked with the commercial interests of the Radhanites. The take of the Avar Ring, for example, might have had like a target to allow the reopening of the Danube's route, then brought to the development of some Slavic states or even the settlement of the Carolingian capital city in Regensburg under Louis the Pious. The antijewish party would be the one of the Gallicans. The Jewish source at last, themselves are quoting those Radhanites