This chapter surveys medieval works of art made, commissioned, and consumed by Jews in the Middle East and Europe. Instead of presenting the material along a timeline, it approaches the material thematically and discusses synagogues and liturgical works within communal contexts, works of art (such as Passover haggadot) used within the private sphere, illuminated Bible used by scholars. It concludes with a section about scribes and artists. The main focus of the chapter is on the observation that Jews shared the visual cultures of the societies they dwelled within and, at the same time, established a variety of patterns to cope with these cultures, to partake in them, to avoid their religious messages and to create their own pictorial idioms. It discusses issues of patronage, religious mentality, reception, the manifold functions of works of art, and cultural interaction. The remains of the art and architecture of the Jewish minorities are embedded in the social and cultural history of those who produced and used them and brings to life aspects of their religious identities of which the written word offers but a partial image.

The history of the Jews in southern Italy and Sicily reaches back to antiquity. In the early Middle Ages the two territories diverged as one area remained under Byzantine rule while the other was conquered by Muslims. In both regions Jews formed a significant element in the urban population alongside a variety of other ethnic and religious groups. Such diversity was source of protection. Christian conquest by the Normans, who united the two regions, also brought protection, as the new rulers were keen to exercise authority, mainly fiscal, over the Jews. Later rulers, the Angevins in Naples and the Aragonese in Sicily, perpetuated this regime, although a severe persecution took place in southern Italy around 1290. A re-established community enjoyed strong royal protection until the end of the fifteenth century, although the Jews were expelled from Sicily in 1493 and from southern Italy during the sixteenth century. Thereupon the focus of Jewish life became northern Italy.

Jews in Hungary and Poland arrived from western Europe, especially German lands. They played an important role in trade, money minting and financial life. The traditionally invoked explanation for tolerance, economic necessity in backward countries, has been exaggerated. Rather, Jews played a significant part in the building of royal power. Royal protection and legal systems in societies that incorporated many different groups with their own privileges were the basis of Jewish status. Their comparatively better position, however, should not be mistaken for harmonious coexistence. Indeed, royal protection raised ecclesiastical, noble, and eventually urban resistance; royal privileges and synodal legislation could be in conflict, and towns in the later Middle Ages endeavoured to restrict the sphere of Jewish activities. Violence was not unknown, and from the fourteenth century violence on a mass scale linked to anti-Jewish accusations spread. The community (kehilla) organization took firmer shape in the late Middle Ages. Jews adopted many features of the life of majority society, including architectural devices and names. Sheelot u-teshuvot show that the behaviour of Central European Jews ranged from scrupulous insistence on religious observance to complete disregard for the rules.

The development of Jewish law in Christian Europe between 1000-1500 CE was driven by the confluence of a number of factors: (1) scholars’ interpretations of literary sources, (2) living Jewish practice (as that is represented in texts authored by legal scholars), (3) adjustments to the law made by both legal scholars and other Jews in response to economic, social, and political changes, and (4) changes in intellectual ambiance and legal thought. Following a brief overview of “early beginnings” in the older areas of Jewish settlement in Italy, southern France, and Spain, this chapter will proceed systematically through the Jewish communities of northern France and Germany, Italy, southern France, and then Spain, highlighting the major legalists, their principal works, and the most influential developments in Jewish legal thought and method.

As it is impossible to isolate the subject of the book production among the Jews of the medieval Christian world from the history and typology of the book production among the Jews in the Muslim world, the essay encompasses the subject in the entire dispersed Jewish communities in the Middle Ages. The singular circumstances of the production of books by the Jews in Hebrew script is manifested by the entirely individualist nature of the initiating the copying of books as well as the consumption of them. The fact that no communal or educational instigated the production of books or assembled them had an immense impact on the transmition of the texts. Books were produced and consumed as private enterprise, and were not selected and controlled by any intellectual establishment. Furthermore, at least half of them were produced by their owners, and not by hired professional scribes. The variety of types of script and their modes and their geo-cultural are presented, as well as the corresponding different codicological traditions. The affinities between the script and the materiality of the books to the scribal traditions of their host civilizations are discussed. Separate part is dedicate to the creative role of scribes and copyists in making the structure of the copied texts more transparent, lisible and usable

Opening with a discussion of the available sources, the myths of success, and the meager place for women, this essay traces the structure, goals and location of Jewish education in Christian Europe. Elementary and higher education in Spain appears to have been relatively organized and supported, even as it did not always lead to the desired results. Some communities aimed to strengthen the impact of their educational systems by organizing collectives (havurot) that would manage the funds available for education. Heads of more advanced academies in Spain often received generous stipends and mature scholars were supported as well, perhaps as a legacy from the Geonic period. Indeed, there was extensive discussion about the parameters of the support that should be made available for accomplished scholars (with Maimonides, among others, taking a somewhat dim view of certain practices). Nonetheless, all major communities boasted a significant higher academy, that often appeared to have large numbers of students and these institutions were supported by their host communities. The situation was similar in southern France in terms of formal educational structures, stipends and communal involvement. The loyalties of Provencal rabbinic scholarship to the south (Sefarad) and to the north (Ashkenaz) have been discussed quite a bit in recent scholarship, and it is difficult to establish hard and fast patterns. This issue impacted both the curriculum and the methods of the academies. Although the basic contours of elementary education in Ashkenaz were similar to the other areas, the lack of formal structures and supervision is apparent. Sefer Hasidim, among other works, sought to deal with this less than ideal situation on both the elementary and more advanced levels. And yet, despite the relative lack of organization and support, the advanced academies in Ashkenaz, which were much smaller than their counterparts to the south, produced quite a number of prominent students who ultimately became involved in the writing of Tosafot and related materials. The advanced academies in northern France and Germany (including those dedicated to producing the Tosafist oeuvre) were small, but they were academically quite powerful. Here too, mature students were not funded in the way that they were in Spain and Provence; it would seem that the lack of organization and support within the Ashkenazic orbit remained as it did precisely because at the end of the day, the results in terms of productive scholarship were outstanding. A unique document that talks about a system of elite schools from the elementary through advanced levels, Sefer Huqqei ha-Torah, perhaps reflects a utopian situation that was never actually in existence. Scholars have debated its provenance, with southern France and Germany emerging as the two most likely locales. Part of this result is due to the fact that the document does reflect a system that is marked by asceticism, which may reflect Provencal mystical conventicles or the circle of the German Pietists (if not some kind of monastic influence more broadly), but it is quite difficult to ascertain whether any of its provisions were ever in effect. Nonetheless, this text can be used to probe the nature of the Jewish educational institutions, and educational theory more broadly, within Christian Europe.

The four canons of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 regarding Jewish matters drew heavily on earlier ecclesiastical material and touched on fundamental issues concerning Christian-Jewish relations. Subsequently they were included in Gregory IX’s definitive collection of canonical material, the so-called Decretals, of 1234. As such they constitute an excellent platform from which to embark on an in-depth examination of medieval Christian policies and doctrines concerning Jews and Judaism. The topics covered by the canons included the complexities surrounding Jewish conversion to Christianity, the vexed problem of Jews having any kind of authority over Christians, Christian concerns about Jews and Judaism contaminating Christian society and mocking the Christian faith and as well as the fraught issue of Jewish usury (in the medieval sense of charging interest) and Jewish liability for tithes. The analysis of ecclesiastical rulings on these issues demonstrates how ambiguous ecclesiastical policies and doctrines on Jews were. Jews were excruciated for their lack of Christian belief; at the same time they were protected because they were deemed to play a theological role in Christian society by being Jewish. For lay rulers Jewish usefulness in providing linguistic, medical and administrative services and taxation on their economic activities often weighed more heavily than ambiguous theological considerations.

This essay begins by noting and dismissing the standard perception of Jewish economic activity as limited to banking and moneylending, including the perception that Jews have somehow or other been inherently limited to such economic activities and incapable of pursuing a more normal distribution of economic pursuits. The essay then addresses a range of Jewish economic activities, beginning with agricultural activity stimulated by Jewish ritual needs. The essay continues by amassing evidence of Jewish craftsmen and Jewish physicians, and Jews in trade. There is full consideration of the field of Jewish moneylending. This consideration begins with evidence of the efflorescence of Jewish moneylending during the twelfth century. The essay notes the range of Christian borrowers from Jewish lenders, emphasizing the differences between the wealthy class of borrowers who used the funds for profit and the poorer class of borrower who used the funds for subsistence. The essay also notes the role of governments in supporting the Jewish lending activities and the ambivalent stance of the Church.

The article emphasizes the great variety of Jewish historical writings of the Middle Ages. Based on the explicit perceptions expressed by medieval authors and copyists about their own work, a definition of Jewish historical writings is provided. Already a short survey of important works shows the existence of distinctive traditions in the writing of history: In southern Italy the early works were oriented towards the Second Temple period, local family traditions and the relationship to the Byzantine Empire and the East. The prevailing topics of Ashkenazic historiography were persecution, the Jewish reaction and local history; in southern France, the interest focused on shalshelet ha-qabbalah ( “chain of tradition”), the succession of rabbinic scholars. In Sepharad, both models -- persecution accounts as well as shashelet ha-qabbalah -- were written and merged together. These different traditions have developed in long reception histories and are also visible through the common use of model texts and intertextual relationships. Acknowledgment of agency of Jews, even while applying biblical foils, and interest in the causality of events are obvious in these texts. Further characteristics are inter alia their ethical function, their use as counter-narratives against Christian claims as well as their diverse geographical and chronological scope.

In comparison with the Hebrew literature of the medieval Islamic world, the Hebrew literature of the Christian Mediterranean—comprising Christian Iberia, southern France, and the Italian Peninsula—has received little scholarly attention. This essay provides an overview of Hebrew poetry and prose from the region from social and literary perspectives and notes both continuities and points of distinctiveness across the region. The essay offers special treatments of poetics, translation, and inter-religious polemics as well as a revision of the scholarly consensus, which has typically judged literary production in comparison with earlier, especially Andalusian, Hebrew poetry.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Jewish life in the Diaspora was synonymous with the Jewish Community (qehillah). The qehillah regularized Jewish legal status within both the Christian and Muslim orbits, and provided Jews with a significant degree of self-government. In addition, it provided a framework wherein the members of the community were able to carve out psychological for themselves. This space provided them with a defensive buffer, a refuge in the face of the ongoing deterioration of Jewish legal and economic status over the course of the High and Late Middle Ages. More importantly, the community facilitated the development of a rich religious and cultural life. Autonomy, perforce, stimulated the development of Jewish Law. Scholars who pursued the study and application of the Law developed theories of rabbinic and communal authority; while creating mechanisms for the study, application and implementation of that Jewish Law in unparalleled circumstances. Spiritual life in all communities was centered upon the synagogue (Bet Knesset). An all-encompassing regimen of prayer, study and labor fostered a sense of communal élan and unique purpose, which was frequently characterized as rendering the transforming the Jewish community into a ‘Sacred Community’ (qehillah qedosha). Over all, patterns of communal life created for its members a profound sense of psychological separateness that strengthened Jewish self-awareness in an often-hostile environment.

Although often taken for granted, the family was the most basic mode of organization of medieval Jewish society. This article focuses on the families that comprised the Jewish communities of Northern Europe in the High Middle Ages. The family was the primary unit within which most Jews lived and through which one received permission to reside in specific locations. It was also central in legal, economic and personal negotiations, playing an important role in the determination of marriage, education, professional choices and other opportunities. The essay discusses the role the family played in multiple areas of medieval Jewish life and points to areas for further study that will enhance our knowledge of medieval Jewish family life.

Byzantine Jewry occupied a central place in the medieval Jewish world. It served as a commercial and cultural conduit between east and west, north and south. It developed a rich culture of its own, building on ancient foundations in Hellenistic Judaism and the Roman empire. The Karaite schism and the Venetian and Genoese conquests during the Fourth Crusade introduced divisions, but these did not profoundly affect the commercial or cultural life of the communities. Byzantium was the meeting place between Judaism and Greek Orthodox Christianity, which had some fruitful consequences on both religions, despite the theological hatred of Jews promoted by the Church.

This essay begins by tracing broad patterns of Jewish demography in medieval Europe from late antiquity down into the early centuries of the Middle Ages, projecting decline down through the ninth century and the onset of growth thereafter. This growth is then traced in detailed treatment of sectors of Europe during the second half of the Middle Ages, beginning in the older centers of Jewish settlement in the Mediterranean sectors of Europe and then proceeding to the newer sites of Jewish population in the north. The essay ends by noting the impact of forcible relocation on the one hand and the evidence of voluntary Jewish population movement on the other.