Mulling The Millennium
tiap P r
The ME Problem
After 1000, Jews prospered then suffered.
STEVEN FINE
Special to the Jewish News
n ew
Yea r
-cc
and MAY
5760
be
wi4- 41 joy.
-Food -For
minci b2c)eling world"
Call 1-800-Bagel-Me for a location near you. www.einsteinbros.com
9/10
1999
12 Detroit Jewish News
IV pile many contemporary
Jews find meaning and
excitement in the advent
of the third Christian
millennium, our ancestors, a thousand
years ago, are not recorded to have
noticed this event. Like most other
things Christian, Jews in Islamic lands
were oblivious, and Jews in Christian
lands kept a cautious distance.
The year 1000 was a year of
great anticipation for
Christendom. In this year, it
was believed, Christ would
return in his glory, and his
eternal rule would begin.
0 - It
was believed that this "new
heaven, and new earth" would
be preceded by a period of
tribulation, during which sin-
ners and infidels (that is, Jews,
Muslims and others) would
become Christian, or be killed.
When none of this hap-
pened, Western Christendom
responded with a huge burst of
energy and expansion. Massive
Romanesque churches began to
appear throughout Western
Europe, business and trade
developed as never before, and
a new confidence set in.
Some of this was good for
the Jews, a despised minority
within the body of
Christendom, whose existence
was tolerated for both theological
and economic reasons. The theologi-
cal reason, as St. Augustine stated
centuries earlier, was that the pres-
ence of Jews living in a wretched
state was proof of the truth of
Christ. The economic reason was
that Jews filled an important niche
within the economies of medieval
Europe that, for Christian theologi-
cal reasons, Christians could not
themselves fill.
Jews were fully integrated within
many aspects of medieval society,
even as they carefully put together
their separate and highly indepen-
dent communal existence. In the
Steven Fine is associate prfessor of rab-
binic literature and history at Baltimore
Hebrew University.
10th and 11th centuries, the emerg-
ing Jewish communities of Western
Europe north of the Pyrenees formu-
lated social ideals that were based on
the ancient Jewish tradition but also
reflected the Jews' particular struc-
ture, society and relationships within
the Christian environment.
While the year 1000 may not have
caught the interest of Western
European Jewry, the years that fol-
lowed have never been forgotten. In
1012 the Jews of Mainz were
expelled from the city, and 1028
marked the death of Rabbenu
Gershom, "The Light of the Exile."
In the 12th century C.E., Rabbi
Shimon (Shlomo) Yitzchaki of
Troyes, France, also known as Rashi,
wrote his masterful commentaries on
much of the Talmud and the Bible.
The proclamation of the Crusades
in 1096 by Pope Urban II was a
trauma of major proportions for Jews
in the Rhineland, and for Jews all
along the path of the Crusading
hordes. As a newly energized
Christendom set out to conquer the
Holy Land, Jewish communities
along the route were butchered by
the mobs, often with clerical sup-
port. From Germany to
Constantinople, to the Holy Land
itself, Jews were murdered for the