Crash Course in Jewish History 1. Ancient Israel Dr. Henry Abramson

I guess the latest over just just to frame  things really want to just take a moment   because heels not gonna thank himself you want  to thank dr. Emerson for you take you next time   and this is this is not this is a generous time  talk to a person is the Dean of to two colleges   here's a full-time job and your eyes and it  gives lectures and and people come from all   over to get to him in Brooklyn well now we have  opportunity of having people come from all over   to hear it in the five challenges they're very  very gracious he takes his time his expertise   he's a humor and his perspective and adds it to  us because they're all four part series please   tell your friends please join us and please enjoy  thank you very much like that okay Thank You rabbi   Trump but let us get straight to the material  because we have really quite a large amount of   Jewish history to cover in a short period of time  rabbi Trump did offer a short word of introduction right thank you I'm a huge fan of Rabbi Trump  personally and of this gala where of course   I've been doubling for the last few years and  it's a tremendous school for me to be able to   give back to the community a little bit with some  of the knowledge that I've acquired over several   years of study I want to thank in particular the  people who have worked hard to put this together   we've had some tremendous support by our head of  the committee for Jewish history that's Olivia   Rothenberg and we have that fascinating and very  sophisticated poster by Ricky Adler that's in our   in our front lobby and I'm really grateful for  everyone we'll put this together okay let's go   right through the material here why this series  well rabbi Trump and I spent some time talking   about what would meet the needs of this Kayla we  thought it would be nice to give a vast overview   in a very short period of time so that people  would fill in the gaps in their own body of   knowledge of Jewish history so that's what we're  going to do in for blindingly fast lectures we're   gonna cover absolutely every moment in Jewish  history and hopefully you will remember all   of it we're trying to make it a little bit more  sophisticated so if you follow online you'll see   that there are some optional readings not quite  at the undergraduate level but nevertheless if   you want to augment your study a little bit you  can get access to about a hundred or so pages   of materials that will hopefully fill in some of  the lacunae in your knowledge okay let us begin   with one of the most difficult aspects of this  topic because we are doing a survey we have to   begin with a little bit of historiographical and  this is an area that most historians prefer to   avoid because it asks some really basic questions  which on the surface seem to be patently obvious   but when you actually dig down into them they  become incredibly difficult so let's start   with what is Jewish history now if this was an  undergraduate seminar I would probably invite   comments from the audience and we do a whiteboard  exercise and think about like well what is it but   because everyone seems to know what it is but in  reality Jewish history is something that does not   exist what I mean by that it already happened the  past by definite does not exist I study I spend   my life studying something which does not exist  and can you believe it they actually pay me to   do it so but nevertheless we all have a working  knowledge of this non-existent thing this thing   which stopped a second ago and then a second to go  after that and a second go after that what exactly   are we talking about so one of the ways I like  to think of Jewish history and I think will be a   guiding light for us is to think about the poetry  of Hannah Shemesh many of you I'm sure familiar   with her she's a very courageous Hungarian Jewish  woman who managed to leave her native Hungary and   make it to Israel in the interwar period and then  at a very young age in her 20s she volunteered to   parachute back into Nazi Germany to try and rescue  some of her doomed co-religionists in Hungary she   was unfortunately captured by the Nazis she  was tortured but she refused to divulge any of   her secrets and what she knew about the other  people on this mission and she was ultimately   executed one of her Hebrew poems is an incredibly  haunting testament to her life and her vision and   also gives us a lot of impetus for our own study  of Jewish history mine in particular I'll read in   Hebrew and will translate as well yesh Kok Aviv  I'm sure many of you are familiar with this poem   there are stars or Amagi ours Iraq Bashar hey  Matt's mom Abdul Vietnam well let me put the   English translation of here there are stars whose  light reaches the earth when they themselves are   gone and no more yesh Enoshima there are people  receives their America share hey Matt's mom in a   Miata Roberto hey know whose radiance illuminates  when they themselves are gone and no longer among   us meaning just like we can in the night sky  observe stars that have died eons ago and yet   their light is only now reaching us and we can  study their lives long after their lives our   past so - there are people who infuse our own  lives with meaning and significance even though   they are no longer among among us all wrote la  vie lights and it seriously referring to both   this the stars and two people a map Hakeem bhai  Chaka Palala Haim Shamari mal Adam at Aroha Dara   who brilliant in the dark of night they Kindle  for Humanity the lights along the path and so   therefore I'd like to suggest a very utilitarian  approach to Jewish history in that the you know   it's it's difficult to say that we have to study  like George Santayana said the lessons of history   or else we are doomed to repeat them that is very  true as I like to tell my undergraduates if you   do not study for history 220 you will be doomed  to repeat it next semester but for our purposes   we definitely can gather meaning and insight and  purpose by studying Jewish history that's where   I'd like to take us over the course of the next  four lectures now the periodization that we're   going to study is somewhat artificial we're going  to look at four distinct periods first we're going   to look at ancient history today it will be the  most challenging of all of the lectures because   we will be looking at some philosophically  very difficult material I hope to present it   in an intellectually authentic manner and yet  not offend our religious sensibilities at the   same time then we will go on to the medieval  period the the terminology medieval is realy   Christian and Origen it means between the eras  it means between the classical era of Rome and   Greece which was considered a golden age and then  the era of the Renaissance literally the rebirth   of that same civilization in ma in later Europe  those terms don't exactly fit with Jewish time   but nevertheless we'll use those rough markers  we'll look at the period from the close of the   Mishnah and the large depopulation of the Land  of Israel in the wake of the Bar Kokhba revolt   in the second century and we'll take it all the  way up to the cataclysmic Spanish expulsion which   was a huge devastating impact on world Jewry  comparable only to the way the Holocaust has   an impact on contemporary jewelry then we'll look  at modern Jewish history which basically extends   from the Spanish Inquisition and expulsion of late  15th century up until roughly the turn of the 20th   century and then we'll look at the last century  right up until our present day so I've spaced   them out here in four equal lectures in terms of  minutes but if you try to look at them in terms   of actual gaps of time you can see that they're  really quite uneven we're gonna spend a lot of   time today in 60 minutes and then we're going to  be looking at less and less time over the same   amount of actual lecturing time but that's at any  rate the format of the course historiographical   e we're going to go over these various periods  one other thought in terms of theory before we   get to the material itself we should understand  that history is a kind of an art in which the   understanding of the discipline depends very much  on the lens through which one observes it one of   the things that undergraduates often think is  you know why do we have to keep writing new   history textbooks the true answer is because the  textbook companies can then make money off selling   them to you that was a joke I know some of you  got it but the you know the reality is because   every historian frames the same facts in a very  different way again I don't have the luxury of   time to speak about this in detail but let's look  at three major encyclopedic historians and I'll   give you a sense of how historiography changes  depending on who is the historian we start with   one of the greatest of the encyclopedic historians  Hein direct threats many of you may have perhaps   even as like a bar-mitzvah president the sixth  volume English translation by Henrietta Szold of   the history of the Jews and I'd like to call his  historiography heroic Jewish history because the   model that he used to describe Jewish history  is one in which you know the Jews are such   wonderful DC's airlie intelligent good-looking  people and yet society keeps putting them down   and we're always subject to anti-semitism but  we nevertheless rise up against this horrible   persecution and once again we're put down again  but we nevertheless irrepressibly rise up once   again and this is a very kind of like you can see  why it's a great bar mitzvah gift right because   it's a feel-good kind of history it doesn't  talk about the nebe that we know in real life   it certainly doesn't talk about too many of the  Jewish criminals that unfortunately you read about   in the New York Times it's a kind of feel-good  Judaism which we should understand was extremely   appropriate for his time and place innate late  19th century Germany and he was taken heavily   to task by another historian behind that phone  tried sheikah who argued that this is exactly   why we have to get the Jews out of Germany and his  slogan the utens and engine and look the Jews are   our misfortune was coined largely as a response to  Heinrich retz somewhat sanitized version of Jewish   history but nevertheless a very strong working  model for generations Jews have worked with this   kind of model of Jewish history Shimon Dube no who  was martyred by the Nazis in 1941 his last words   to his students as he lay bleeding on a street  in Latvia was Schreiber moonfish Ribe write and   record he offered a chilling last imperative  to historians to say we must report the data   of Jewish history and even in that particular  phrase you hear the difference because chemin   de Mayo is much more of a social historian who  likes to take a more realistic approach to the   spectrum of Jewish realities to the fact that  there are neba Jewish criminals that there are   you know heterodox movements that there are all  kinds of things which we might not necessarily   be proud of but nevertheless that is part of  the grand story of jewish history his approach   Jewish history was extremely influential in  particular in the evolution of the so called   Federation movement here in America because he was  the architect of this idea of a Jewish community   without necessarily being bound by religious  affiliation and finally closer to our own times   the incredible salary Baron who criticized both  Dubno and the rats in particular Gretz because   he said that it wasn't really a heroic type of  Judaism he was describing Jewish history he was   describing a lachrymose Jewish history in other  words full of tears that the version of Judaism   that sal oberon criticized was this version in  which everything was you know completely run   through the washer and that everything came out  such as the Jews were always unjustly persecuted   and heroically triumphant so his was a much more  sophisticated university-based kind of curriculum   and almost totally unreadable to laypeople  his 18 volume history of the Jews social and   economic history the Jews it's a phenomenal book  social and religious history there's phenomenal it   takes up about you know this much real estate on  my shelf at out of the office but you really have   to be an expert in Jewish history to decipher  it so he has the least kind of accessible of   historians so we're gonna try and work through  these kinds of models as we understand our own   approach to Jewish history which I hope I'll be  able to make clear for you towards the end we're   almost done now with the theory part before  we get to the actual history I have to dip a   little bit into philosophy here as well and I  promise this will not take more than a couple   of minutes history is very much related believe it  or not to a philosophical double a sub-discipline   called epistemology epistemology comes from the  Greek word epistemic which means to know it's the   science of knowing and as you can see from Lester  grabs classic work ancient Israel the subtitle of   his book is what do we know and how do we know  it in reality one could say that what we know is   actually intimately related to how we know it so  for example if you were to look at ancient Jewish   history in particular which is our topic for today  and you were to say I am only going to look at it   through the lens of the Bible then you would find  a lot of difficulty with the archaeological record   and vice-versa if you tried to become be totally  archaeological about Israeli history ancient   Israel history you would find the Bible in some  places unintelligible and this brings us to the   concept of Biblical Archaeology which defines  two different basic positions on either end of   X spectrum there are a group of people who call  themselves maximalists this is really the the   term that was used most at the beginning of the  20th century as biblical archaeology really got   into its heyday maximalist means we're going to  use the Tanakh as a map for understanding ancient   israeli history and its archaeology and that's  great because we've got this fantastic document   which is unparalleled in its size and scope of  description of really times that happened a long   time ago and all we have to do is kind of like  go through the land of israel identify places   dig up the soil there and we'll find evidence of  what happened unfortunately when archaeologists   really start digging they found all kinds of  inconsistencies which I'm going to explore in   a couple of seconds the other later school of  archaeologists says wait a second wait a second   we're going at this all wrong we have to just put  aside the Bible and pretend it doesn't exist we're   going to ignore all of the historical data in the  Bible and just work with what's in the ground and   with what's in the ground we will reconstruct an  ancient Israeli history which may and it turns   out is rather distinct and different from the  biblical account that presents some theological   challenges to be sure and we're going to look  at a couple of them but only in a little bit of   detail in a way it's a little bit like creating  a puzzle right you see here you've got it someone   working on a puzzle and you say well this is a  really hard puzzle there's so many thousands of   pieces and they're all mixed up but Beru I have  the cover here right I have the box that tells   me all I gotta do is follow the box it's starry  night really easy so that's like having the Bible   the Tanakh is great we know what's supposed to  happen where now we just go look for it other   archaeologists they know if we ignore it then  all of a sudden we're gonna find that there are   a whole bunch of pieces that just don't seem to  make sense we found this in the ground it doesn't   look like it should be here it's not shaped right  at all and that's fundamentally the the crux of   the problem of Biblical Archaeology do you know  history because you know Tanakh or do you know   history because you know archaeology and whichever  way you work with the data you're going to have to   deal with the other side of the equation okay so  wow I'm going so fast I can't believe we made it   through one circle in 20 minutes but rabbi Trump  spoke for about two minutes so I'll take that out   of the end all right let us first begin with  what's called that long due day this is a term   that was created by the French and now school of  historiography that says that hey if we really   want to look at history properly you have to  look at larger factors than the immediate people   involved you have to look at things like topology  weather patterns the economics that are shaped by   the land itself so let's have a look at the long  due day issues going on in Israel this is a map of   what's called the Fertile Crescent and as you can  see it's shaped of course kind of like an upside   or sideways see that of course is the Fertile  Crescent and it describes the area of fertility   in the ancient Near East which is the basis of  civilization using basic Marxist theory you have   to have you know concentration of capital in order  to create culture and so culture tended to develop   along the river nile over here close to the  mediterranean coast and then down the two rivers   Euphrates and Tigris which together descend into  the Persian Gulf with the controlling of these   rivers and the fertile in the neighboring region  you could actually develop a culture everywhere   else you've got desert so this is really where  ancient civilization develops as a result of this   fertility look and the economic roots are directly  related to that fertility there are two roads that   we're especially concerned with this is Israel  of course over here the V Ahmadis or the dara   Higham which is a trade route that goes along the  coast that essentially connects the Nile to the   Euphrates and Tigris and also the Kings Highway  also known as Derrick Amalek which skirts the   outside of the mountain rage in the Judean Desert  these two roads make Judea and Israel incredibly   important because you've got to go through there  to get to anything meaningful it's a lot like the   Rockaway Turnpike if you could see these roads on  Friday afternoon coming down from Damascus it's   crazy you have to leave like so far in advance  okay here's the map looking at the that the   topology at looking at the various heights and you  can see the green here is lowland and it's it's   green of course it gives us the sense of fecundity  which is of course what happens there and the the   red parts are the mountain ranges which means  that the Land of Israel that's going to focus   our attention for this lecture it's really a very  small area of productivity here with a desert   that's quite a vertical desert right in the middle  it is not like Kansas it's not chernozem the black   earth of Ukraine I like that it's a very tiny  little spot the only major advantage is hazard   anomaly is that it's on these two trade routes the  derrick i''m and the derrick hemella here looking   at it sideways you can see I've translated this  this is the Dead Sea over here the Mediterranean   it's a tiny little barrier here and because of  the prevailing winds the moisture that blows in   with the winds from the mediterranean gets trapped  by the mountains and remains here in the coastal   plain the mountains are comparatively dry and of  course once you go past the Jordan the Dead Sea   it's very dry in the country of Jordan the this  map also shows the Hebrew but you can see the the   security risks of Israel are phenomenal it's only  15 kilometers from the edge of what is called the   Green Line what would be today called Qumran  or the upper part of the West Bank to the sea   and even from the Jordan River in the country of  Jordan it's 55 kilometers you know it's basically   a good walk from one end of the waist of the  country to the other but we will get to that   when we get through modern times now it one of  the slogans that was used in the Zionist period of   the 1880s was this idea that Israel was a people  without a land for a land without a people that's   not entirely true Israel was of course settled  before the first Jews lived there it's described   that way in the Bible there's no contradiction  there and there's some amazing archaeological   finds of pre Israelite civilizations these  Canaanites for example this is in the region   of Jericho seem to have a quite a sophisticated  culture that apparently involved a very deep   ritual life it's not certain whether these are  intended as decorative masks or perhaps the the   holes that are drilled in the sides are indicating  that they were should have been worn as masks   perhaps in theatrical productions of one type  or another the figure on the right is evocative   of a skull that apparently would have played some  role in their ritual functions but as you can see   they had quite a bit of activity there's a lot we  know about the Canaanite peoples as a result of   these archaeological digs we also know for example  that amazingly they practice trephination which is   a bizarre medical technique that we find in  several ancient civilizations including the   Incas for example to deal with mental illness and  various other illnesses particularly of the the   skull by drilling a hole in this skull to allow  the evil spirits to escape and things like that   some theorists believe that they may have dealt  with schizophrenia and other types of illnesses   by drilling holes in the skull I believe this  is where my grandmother alehsalaam used to get   the expression you need it like you need a hole in  the head but it's amazing people actually survive   trephination you can tell by the the way that  the wounds heal that apparently people did live   through this experience so basically according to  the biblical account that we have the the origins   of the Jewish people are in the Mesopotamian  region that's the southern part of where the   Tigris and the Euphrates flow into the Persian  Gulf Abraham is commanded to leave the land of   or he does not take a direct route because of  course that would mean going right across the   desert he takes a roundabout route right along  the part of the Fertile Crescent and lands in   Israel there as you know we'll be reading about  it just a few months they end up in Egypt and   then there's an amazing thing where God takes a  nation from the midst of another nation and this   is the Exodus which is a you know a tremendous  marker of Jewish identity and a defining moment of   the Jewish people where they return to Israel and  it is at that point that they settle in the Land   of Israel all three of these points are not well  confirmed by the archaeological record and in fact   some historians would say they're contradicted by  the archaeological record because for example if   there is no evidence found of the exodus which  is a rather large amazing event some historians   would say well that means it didn't happen other  historians would say you have to just keep looking   maybe you'll find something if you keep looking  and other things like you know how do you prove   a negative but this is the kind of area where  the you know it's so central to our identity I   know it on a very profound personal level that  my ancestors left Egypt I know it every Pesach   in particular I'm remember and it is something  that is part of my bones part of my personal   DNA the fact that we can't find archeological  data to support it yet doesn't really challenge   it it's kind of like if I went to the doctor and  I asked him you know I'm a let's say I'm having   trouble I'm lovesick I love my wife so much could  you please have a look at my love for my wife and   tell me what to do about a doctor what is he going  to do put it in a cat scan he's not going to find   that kind of data so this will take us further  into OSH copic territory I will leave that to   the historic experts like rabbi Trump but for the  time being it gets a little bit easier now Wow   I'm going so fast this is some fascinating new  information however one of the the associations   with the the Jewish settlement of Israel is the so  called four-roomed house which has been found all   over Israel and particularly because in many of  the settlements of these four-roomed houses there   are an absence of pig bones and so there's a lot  of historians who would point to this fact that   say you can see that the Jews are obviously living  in these formal analysis because their dietary   refuse shows it this is not convinced to all  historians but recently and this is breaking news   ladies and gentlemen I just heard this from some  colleagues at Hebrew University new archaeological   findings have suggested that perhaps there are  in fact some signs of oops wrong way there are in   fact some signs of Jewish settlement here because  they've been discovering a lot of these containers and although it's inconclusive it's not  impossible that right okay so that takes   us through kind of like the really hazy dark  part of Jewish issue that we don't have a lot   of data outside of tonight that's where Emunah  is a very important element in our knowledge of   the light that shines from far as described by  Hannah Senesh now the archaeological record does   say some amazing things though for example this  is the Merneptah stele II which is a find that   dates back to the 13th century before the Common  Era it is a kind of a boast obelisk very common   in the period in which various rulers in this  case it was the pharaoh Merneptah boasts about   his many many military achievements and the whole  thing is a long list of the various peoples that   he has conquered and laid waste to and so on and  on this Merneptah stele a we have the very first   reference in non jewish archaeological material  to israel and it reads israel is wasted it seed   is no more I mean it's just like the very first  thing has to be anti-semitic can you believe it   I mean but that is the first statement we have  outside of Jewish sources that talk about Israel   now what exactly does this phrase mean most  historians take it kind of at face value that   there is an entity called Israel we don't know  much about what it means is it an area is it a   people what exactly is it waisted seems to imply  a rather physical destruction that they're there   it's over with them and feed even if we take seed  literally to say they have no more grain it seems   to mean it figuratively that they will have no  more progeny that's it for the Jewish people   13th century before the Common Era we're done with  the Jewish people we have destroyed them once and   for all I just like to point out something just  little observations though Merneptah says Israel's   wasted its seed is no more this is what Israel's  see looks like alright it looks like this and by   the way with the stealing we also found my inept  ax this is what he looks like you know I'm just   saying right this is Israel's seed and this is  Merneptah so we know how to file this particular   piece of historical information but nevertheless  it does say a lot about the rest of the trend   of Jewish history now going through the Tanakh  you know you get a tremendous amount of history   with phenomenal details about various leaders and  rulers and sometimes secondary tertiary characters   phenomenal phenomenal lessons contained therein  on a moral level a spiritual level and so on and   and if we had more time I would love to delve  into those in greater detail but some of them   our goal today is to try and focus on the history  so one of the the trends of Tanakh in the first   three books after the Hamas it describes the  eventual formation of a United Monarchy that   is one Kingdom under Saul and then under David  under Solomon we do not have much archaeological   evidence of specific things happening in there but  there are a few fascinating tidbits so for example   this is the Tel Dan Steel II which was discovered  in the north of Israel it is about a hundred years   after the death of King David so it isn't actually  contemporaneous with his life but in the Steeley   itself you find this phrase which is written  in the paleo Hebrew the original or the the a   different version a different script of Hebrew  that was used at the time and of course Hebrew   is written from right to left so it says in these  letters here beat whitey DWD which is understood   by most scholars to mean beit dahveed the house of  David so here is some archaeological evidence that   specifically speaks about a house of David which  will be reinforced by other pieces in a moment   but there are still questions like for example in  this steely they use a little period like this to   separate words and there is no separation between  daveed even though grammatically that is required   that's not necessarily a distal qualification  Latin for example is written without such word   separations polish is written almost entirely  without vowels for example that was the joke I   thought you would like that but at anybody this is  the kind of evidence that we have outside of the   record of the literature of tonight and this other  document here this other steely the Mesha stele II   from about the same period of time 850 before the  Common Era the reason why it looks so strange is   because there's a whole fascinating story behind  it it was found in Jordan and the in the 19th   century some German explorers found it and made  efforts to secure it but the local villagers felt   that there was something wrong with these German  explorers taking away their archaeological finds   for centuries that had lain exposed in the desert  and everyone was paying in no mind but once the   Germans wanted it people started getting a lot of  interest in it what they did was they prepared to   make a squeeze which is a paper mache application  to the stone which is then later peeled off so   you can get a reverse image of it kind of like  a wax model of it however the the assistant who   was making the squeeze was attacked by the local  villagers who were upset that the steely was being   taken away he managed to rip it off but it was  partially damaged and then the villagers either   because according to one version of this story  they felt that the reason the Germans wanted   it was because it was gold inside it or according  to another version they felt that there were like   spirits inside it like a genie kind of thing they  smashed the steely to bits and most of it was lost   the squeeze that the assistant was making it just  barely managed to take away with his life was also   damaged but between the two pieces they're able  to reconstruct quite a bit of it and you can see   there are two references here to this same phrase  house of David Beit and then there's something   eligible WD and there's something else that looks  like dub weed and then a hey at the end scholars   believe these are other references daveed there's  another school of thought that says is this BT   star WD is actually the origins of a popular  lubricant wd-40 that is something I'm trying   to publish in a literature it's just not working  yet okay but anyways you can see that there are   little tiny bits and pieces like trying to put  together the puzzle you can get very little from   the archaeological record but it is fascinating  and perhaps if we have more leisure in another   series we'll have time to go over these in greater  detail they deserve the Dual Monarchy of course if   you're familiar with Tanakh it eventually falls  apart Israel and Judah are split the northern   section is attacked by the Assyrians and a good  portion of the population is carried away to the   region of Babylon again following that long due  day following the Fertile Crescent the various   settled areas the these things are described  primarily in kings and chronicles and we have   much more detail in the archaeological record to  support this primarily because the various peoples   who are at conquering Israel also leave Merneptah  like documents that attest to their achievements   like this one here which describes the obeisance  of Yahoo one of the Jewish kings here's a whole   bunch of Assyrians up here shall Manasseh of  course and here is Yahoo here clearly in an act   of obeisance that we can understand perfectly well  even the 21st century so there's no question that   a lot of these elements of Tanakh as special as  we get into the dual Kingdom are well established   by the archaeological record and fascinating and  definitely worth study in greater detail the the   northern kingdom is conquered in the 8th century  before the Common Era a good portion of the   population is carted away to the north and then  in the 6th century a much more devastating attack   on the southern kingdom and they are taken away  to Babylon Babylonia as well contrary to popular   belief the Land of Israel was not denuded of its  Jewish population significant amounts of Jews   room behind although the ruling classes tend to be  deported first and the leadership had gone largely   to these regions so this is basically the story of  the sixth century later as described in the Book   of Chronicles the end of the book of Chronicles  and the books of Ezra Nehemia the there's a new   regime in Babylonia and under the great King  Cyrus the Jews are allowed to return to Israel   and to rebuild the temple that was destroyed with  the the first invasion of the Babylonians this   cyrus cylinder does not specifically mention Jews  but it does have a fairly explicit description of   allowing a kind of religious freedom for people  to return to their temples rebuild them and so   that many feel is actually a reference to this  actual return to Israel in the later 6th century   surprisingly only a minority of Babylonian Jews  even though they've only been there for less than   a century only 20% of them by biblical estimates  leave Babylonia the other 80% like it in Iran   and Iraq and they choose to remain there ok so  the next thing that that's really important in   understanding Jewish history is the encounter  with Hellenism which you find some allusions   to in Tanakh but it primarily is post tunak  material and this is a result of Alexander   the Great Alexander of Macedon who launches this  amazing military crusade that conquers the entire   known world he starts out here in northern Greece  and he makes his way throughout the entire eastern   Mediterranean and pushes all the way through  the Fertile Crescent into Central Asia all the   way out to what would be today Afghanistan and  northern India and what's really special about   Alexander's conquests is that he brings Greek  culture with him across these many many different   territories with different languages different  legal systems different currencies and so on and   he unifies under a Greek sensibility all of these  laws now he dies a very young death possibly of   alcohol poisoning when he was in his third but  his legacy was incredibly important for leaving   behind a structure of communication and commerce  that included all of these peoples throughout the   the eastern region and in particular the Jews were  taken with it the Jews have an amazing love affair   with everything Greek the term Hellenism comes  from the term helis which means Greek or Greece   and the there's so much about it that it's so  different from Jewish culture and so useful and   powerful that the Jews take to it with phenomenal  enthusiasm what what is Greece again they're not   wanting to go past our time grease the Periclean  Age in particular 4th century 5th century before   the Common Era they're developing science our  committees they're develop their developing math   with they're developing art with Sophocles in East  khlyst they're they're developing dry cleaning   with you Ripa DS right you lipid DS you'll pay  for these sorry I was thinking that in the back   of my head anyways they have Aristotle they have  Plato Socrates philosophy art literature it is   so overwhelming and the Jews say they're like  blown away so Greek wisdom was so fascinating   to the Jews that we adopted it wholeheartedly and  this was our first major test as the people in my   humble opinion that since the Egyptian period  specifically because we are so taken with it   that we adopted wholesale and the halan eyes  errs in Israel argue that everything Jewish is   old-fashioned that is no longer the mode it's no  longer able to take us into modernity and they   argue for a complete adaptation of Judaism to  Greek values this is where we get the Maccabean   revolt of the second century before the Common  Era which must be understood properly not as   the Greeks attacking the Jews because in fact  the Greeks love the Jews that it is a civil war   between hellenizing Greeks and traditionalists  juice or hellenizing Jews and trade let's juice   I'm getting a little tired because I'm talking  sold so fast oh my god the Civil War I know that   when you when you send your kids to day school  they talk about Antiochus the wicked King he did   to the Jews a terrible thing and that is certainly  true talk about it in a second and they talk about   the the Syrian Greeks coming down and attacking  the Jews but in reality that was epiphenomena   that happened after the the revolt was really  well underway and it was Jews fighting Jews   during the entire time it was a fight between  the urban wealthy elites who wanted to adopt   Greek values and the traditionalist rural  we would call him today hair a dim although   that's not a really appropriate historical term  but they are like the old-school bible-thumping   Jews who finally said enough the kind of things  that are described in the the literature of the   day is in fact something I had to look up this  word epi spasm which is a primitive surgical   attempt to reconstruct circumcision in order to  reverse circumcision why because the Greeks loved   for example the worship of a human form and they  and the best way to observe the human form is in   hand-to-hand combat of course in the nude and so  all these Olympic Games and so on were performed   entirely in the nude and can you imagine what it  would be like for these Jewish hellenizing youth   coming into the stadium they're surrounded  by all these men watching the games and they   look at this Jew and they say to him oh look at  these Jews they take such a beautiful specimen   of humanity and they paczki him up like that so  there are Jews who are actually may fear bris   Avraham Avinu it's a reference in Pierre calvo's  as well which is during this time when Jews were   undergoing this primitive painful surgery so the  revolt was an attempt successful to overthrow the   hellenizing influences and to put a line in the  sand odd con until this point everything passed   this is too much Antiochus Epiphanes shown  here is kind of drawn in late in the game   the reason by the way they're called Syrians or  Syrian Greeks is because after Alex died they   had to divide up his territories and Antiochus  came from the north from the Syrian part of the   post Alexandrian government's here's by the way a  coin from his peerage you can see it says in the   topping in Greek basileus salad coy which means  the the king of the Salukis and there's a war   elephant on here the war elephant is extremely  important because when the Syrian armies were   eventually brought in to try and settle this civil  war they brought in these amazing vehicles of war   which must have been absolutely overwhelming and  never left through the courageous and cunning   efforts of these guerrilla warfare tactics used  by the the Maccabee ins they were able to drive   them out here is a medieval rendition of the the  death of Eleazar in the Maccabean revolt here it   is in the Maccabean revolt he of course heroic  Lee charges one of these elephants and he gets   under it and stabs it from below and manages  to kill it but he is crushed in the process the   reason why I particularly like this 14th century  European version is because obviously the artist   had never seen an elephant or even a picture  of an elephant and they were describing it to   him he says well it's kind of like a grey horse  so I'll make it like that so that's essentially   the the hanukkah revolt was extremely influential  because it basically said okay we love everything   Greek everybody knows the Greeks are really  good at building things and at writing things   and at describing things and thinking about  things but we have to set a line in the sand   we're beyond this Greece cannot pass and that  same challenge of determining how much of the   outside world is allowed to influence our Judaism  is a challenge that we still face today to this   day it is certainly beyond ironic that Hanukkah  always falls in the month of December which for   those of us who live in Christian countries it's  the same kind of fight going on even today okay   more to say about that in another class let's  just skip over this here but well yeah okay so   that takes us basically up until this second  century before the Common Era and then we get   to the Roman Jewish Wars so the cosmonium the the  Greek kings I'm sorry the the Maccabean Kings are   able to reestablish a Jewish dynasty that lasts  for a couple hundred years but pretty soon after   the death of the original Maccabees it begins to  enter a period of decline and they cannot hold   back the onrushing tides of Greek and later Roman  influence over the next few decades by the time   Pompeii of Rome enters in the year 63 before the  Common Era the Maccabean state is a just a shadow   of itself and they capitulate to the Romans and  they essentially maintain their monarchy but they   are client kings their puppet kings they pay their  tribute to the Romans who use their traditional   techniques of davido a tempura divide and rule  to give privileges to the Jewish aristocracy   to run the the land but basically they want to  collect taxes and maintain the Pax Romana the   Roman peace so it was during this period of time  that there is even further decline in the Jewish   status particularly because of Jewish infighting  if we look at Jewish society around the Year Zero   in the first century we see a tremendous amount of  internal debate vigorous debate sometimes violent   debate between various sects just looking at  four of those sects for now and by the way we   have excellent historical data on this because  we have many overlapping sources by the time we   get to the first century first and foremost is  the tremendous historian Josephus who recorded   a phenomenal amount of data for us to work with  the problem with Josephus is that we don't know   exactly who he was writing for he was a rebel for  it was long to salat to say about his life history   but the basic fact is he was originally a rebel  against the Romans fighting against them in the   first Roman Jewish war and then he was captured  and he surrendered to vest Bayesian the Emperor   and to Tito's his son who destroyed the temple and  he essentially he became a war correspondent for   the Romans he became their official historian of  the Roman Jewish war he apparently wrote a version   of his history in Aramaic which was intended  for Jews which might have said something very   different but we lost that version it's no longer  extant the Greek version that he wrote for Roman   audiences tends to be very fawning and tends  to be very approving of the Roman overlords   like for example he describes how Tito's himself  expressed regrets that the temple was destroyed   and it was really the Jews themselves in their  fighting with one another who actually set the   first fires in the temple itself so Josephus is  sometimes a problematic historian we don't know   really where he's coming from when he says what he  says but he describes for us things that are known   from multiple sources there are basically Jews  called the Sadducees in Hebrew that Sidhu Kim who   on a theological level have rejected what would  later become the Oral Torah known as the Oral   Torah I'll speak more about that God willing next  week they are essentially of the opinion that the   Roman Empire is here to stay and the best thing  for Jews to do is to go along to get along to seek   their own personal advantage in association with  the Romans and they tend to be in charge of the   temple they are in charge of the the urban elite  groups in large part and they are hated by the   other groups the second group the Pharisees that's  a Christian term we would call them in Hebrew the   pollution these are essentially what we would call  the good guys these are the rabbi's these are the   people of whom the later Jewish movements all  stem Hillel sha my Yossi Ben Yasser rabbi yehuda   rabbi meir all of the Great's of this time are  Pharisees and their political point of view is   they highly regret that the temple is controlled  by the Sadu qiyam that Sukumar highly corrupt and   essentially toadies to the but they do not feel  that they have the wherewithal to beat the Roman   Empire it's not really within their purview and  so therefore as their name implies Purusha means   to separate they step back from politics and they  focus on developing charismatic disciple circles   of followers kind of like if you will point  to the 18th 19th century kind of like Hasidic   rabbis who formed their own courts of people  who are devotees and this is essentially the   the Pharisees that that the rest of the rabbinic  world derives from then there are the zealots   the Kanoa of whom the most notorious were the  so-called sikh ree named for their curved daggers   and they practiced they believed that they should  in fact fight against the Romans the Romans had   to be getting rid of we have to you know take  this monkey off our back get rid of the entire   Roman Empire and it was a quixotic attempt but in  their efforts they even assassinated fellow Jews   who were political opponents and finally their  scenes these are people who practiced radical   exclusion from society they said none of this  is working and must be the Messiah Messiah is   around the corner so they went and they lived in  places like the Qumran caves outside the Dead Sea   practicing very you know ascetic kind of religious  activities waiting for any moment that the Messiah   would be there and in this context we should also  mention Jewish Christianity which is basically a   blip on the historical record certainly from  Jewish sources it only begins to really you   know people start taking notice of it towards  the end of the first century into the second   and especially the third century these are it but  the original Christians were all Jewish were all   followers of a Jewish leader who and a great large  number of them felt that in fact Christianity was   really Judaism Plus that four states uh everyone  would keep kosher everyone would keep Shabbos what   are you talking about we're it's the 613 mitzvahs  plus you know that it's an added bonus it was only   later on when we get to the turn of the second  century in particular that Christianity becomes   much more of a Gentile religion meaning more non  ethnic Jews are attracted to this new faith that   is based in the mother religion of Judaism and  it eventually becomes overwhelmingly powerful   the Roman Emperor Empire becomes Christian  and we'll talk more about that God willing   next week if you have the patience to put up  with me then but in the first century it's not   a very significant movement at all ultimately  of course Judea is captured as you can see in   one of the many coins that the Romans minted to  commemorate their victory it's ironic because   Judaism was Judea was not of course captured it  was taken already in the year 63 the Romans had   been there for well over a century by the time  they destroyed the temple in the year 70 but it   was such a bitter awful fight the Romans really  had to invest a tremendous amount of resources   into it and there were internal Roman political  reasons to celebrate a victory in order to firm   up the authority of a station as a new Empire  Emperor that they actually coin minted many of   these this is best patient here on the left he's  the Emperor his son destroys the temple and here   is the famous iconography Roman soldier with the  palm tree which was the defining iconic motif of   the land and the forlorn Jewish woman here who's  kind of saying talking on here with her head   in her hands lamenting the fate of a destroyed  Jerusalem okay there is another revolt again the   Jews fight actually they have three successive  revolts depending on whether you want to count   the middle one as a war the most significant  ones is the Bar Kochba revolt which I will talk   about God willing more next week but once again  these stubborn stubborn Jews just will not let   it go and they're constantly fighting against the  vastly superior forces of the Roman Empire taking   advantage of local topography by digging lots  of caves and tunnels this is actually my son   Boas who last summer was in the southern part of  Judea and they actually you know we're exploring   the same cave roots the Bar Kokhba fighters used  at the time an amazing thing you don't see Romans   doing that today but you do see Jews doing that  today and that's kind of like Maren eptas point a   little while ago so to bring us to a conclusion  one of the most important things that happens   at the end of the this period of Roman Jewish  Wars and we're talking between 70 and about 135   is that the rabbinic leadership the Pharisees in  particular under the patriarch rabbi yehuda nasi   say there is a dramatic political social economic  religious moment before us we are at the cusp of   a new era in Jewish history we must take action  and so against tremendous opposition by his peers   he says we're going to take this massive body of  oral teachings which we have not mentioned today   but God willing next week and we are going  to codify them in writing and we're going to   transform the way Judaism is communicated from  a teacher disciple teacher disciple relationship   to one in which a text is involved and how do you  preserve the special intimacy of a teacher and a   student if you're looking at a dry two-dimensional  text a phenomenal challenge and intellectual and   artistic challenge that was placed before review  at nasi but ultimately he did it and the Mishnah   and its massive commentary known as the Talmud  is really the foundation of Jewish study today   and it is what made Judaism ultimately portable  and allowed Jews to get through the tremendous   difficult challenges they're going to face in  the Diaspora of the second century onward I'm   going to skip over what's in it for now that in  a sense of time but we'll get back to it next   week closing off if we look at where the Jews  are by about the Year 200 you see that there   are large Jewish communities here in Israel and  also in Babylonia where the the Jews had been   exiled already from the sixth century before the  Common Era it is here the great Babylonian Talmud   of academies would rise up so these are the two  main centers of Jewish civilization at the time   you also have smaller centers in Egypt and in  Italy in Egypt there's actually a very ancient   Jewish civilization there that dates back before  the destruction of temple and in Italy because of   the tens of thousands of Jewish slaves who were  taken from Judea to join the already existing   Jewish community there that's probably the second  largest Jewish community outside of the two major   centers and then you've got smaller centers all  along the coast of North Africa here and in Spain   where we have archaeological data going all the  way back to the 1st century in the coast southern   coast of France where God willing I'm gonna lead a  tour up the Rhone River in just a couple of months   well I hope that brings you back some really  cool pictures of Jewish civilization there and of   course here in Greece and in Asia Minor you've got  much smaller communities here perhaps numbering in   tens or maybe hundreds of families at the most  but that gives us a picture of Jewish mobility   and demographic change by the time we get to the  second century so what's our main takeaway if we   look at this huge scope of Jewish history that we  have managed to cover in a rather phenomenal 60   minutes I can give myself a pat on the back for  that we see that if I can in my humble opinion   coat bring it down to one basic value and for my  kids who hopefully will watch this video one day   its resilience the Jewish people are awesomely  resilient we are an amazing people we have a   phenomenal thing to contribute to the world and  our continued survival in my humble opinion can   be nothing less than than divine in origin I  want to thank you very much for your attention

Channel: Henry Abramson

Views: 255,127

Keywords: Jewish, History, Judaism, Torah, Henry, Abramson, Hebrew

Id: K8XSvobwVzI

Length: 57min 44sec (3464 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 05 2019