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Page 4 of 8 The Plague or Black Death
1348 - Black Death Jewish massacres. During the bubonic plagues across Europe it was obvious that the Jews were hardly affected. Christians soon began to believe that this horrible disease was caused by Jews to get their own back against the Christians. The real reason for the plague by-passing the Jewish households was.
- The Jews were not allowed and therefore did not mix with the local population.
- Generally Jewish homes and particularly their food preparation was much cleaner than Christian families because of the strict Jewish religious rules of cleanliness. Indeed Jews had a much longer life expectancy than non Jews.
Spain and Egypt
1138-1204 Maimonides
Rabbi Moses ben Maimon alias Maimonides was born in Cordova in southern Spain into a family who had been Rabbis for five generations during the Golden Period. He is said to be the greatest Jewish scholar of the middle ages, well in advance of his time. Most noted for his work equating faith with reason and many papers notably “a guide to the perplexed”, also books on resurrection and astrology. As was typical amongst Jewish families for years before and since, he was financially supported by his younger brother, a Jeweller who traded between the Mediterranean and Java Indonesia.
Maimonides along with many other Jews living in southern Spain during this period was forced to flee to France to evade the hostile Berber invasion. Maimonides ended up in Cairo by way of the Holy Land where he became the foremost medical expert normally working for the Arabic Islamic royal family. It is said that English Norman King Richard the Lion Heart tried to hire him when crusading in the Middle East.
500 YEARS AGO
- Eastern Europe, Asia Minor and the Middle East
- Poland gains the largest population of Jews in the world
- The Christian Reformation begins in Germany under Luther as a result of criminal activities by the Church of Rome
- The new Protestant or non Catholic countries of Holland and England welcome Jews back home
- The Islamic Ottomans also welcome the persecuted Jews into Istanbul and Thessalonica.
Ottomans
1453 After some 300 years of steady expansion from Anatolia in central (modern day) Turkey into Greece and the Balkans, the Islamic Ottomans capture Thessalonica in 1430 then Constantinople in 1453. Thessalonica had the largest Jewish population of the old Byzantium region. In Constantinople, soon to be renamed Istanbul, there were three Jewish sub areas, those originally there having migrated from Jerusalem, and recent persecuted refugees from Venice and Genoa. After the Spanish Inquisition, Jews from Spain soon added to this centre of Jewish culture in an Islamic world.
Jews, during the whole of the Islamic Turkish Ottoman rule over the Middle East, Asia Minor and the Balkans are treated with some dignity and respect compared with the appalling treatment by Christians in Western Europe. Their status was a legal, unpersecuted minority, as were the Christians in this Muslim world, both groups allowed to practise their separate religions so long as they pay their extra taxes. Indeed Jews were made very welcome by the Islamic Ottoman rulers as they knew how their culture and economy would benefit from Jewish academics and traders. (Many Christians joined the elite Ottoman Islamic armies, the Janissaries)
Spain
1478 - King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella won their battle against the Muslim Arab/Berbers in the south and proclaim that any non Christian who stayed must convert to Christianity. The Spanish Inquisition commenced. Jews flee to Holland and Istanbul.
1492 - All Jews told to leave Spain.
Italy
1492 - All Jews told to leave Sicily, many flee to Ottoman territories.
Ottomans
1492 - Many Jews that have been expelled from Spain, Portugal, Sicily, Venice and Genoa, go to Jewish centres in the Islamic Ottoman Empire particularly Constantinople and Thessalonica where the Muslim leaders welcome them with open arms because of the Jewish reputation for enhancing trade. Some say the explorer from Genoa, Columbus who discovered America was a Jew. He certainly had a Jewish map maker on board.
Holland (Protestant Netherlands)
1590 - Jews from Spain who have been pretending to be Christians (called Marranos) finally decide to leave Spain and settle in Protestant Holland where they are welcomed, based on their reputation for finance, trading and world navigational maps.
Note: Jews were not automatically welcome in Protestant countries as Luther was highly ant-Semitic which later the Nazis continuously quoted.
Luther listed eight actions to be taken against Jews:
- Burn all synagogues
- Destroy Jewish dwellings
- Confiscate Jewish holy books
- Forbid rabbis to teach
- Forbid Jews to travel
- Forbid Jews to charge interest on loans and confiscate Jewish property
- Force Jews to do physical labour
- Expel Jews from areas where Christians live.
England
1656 - Oliver Cromwell seeing how the Jews are helping Holland to become a world maritime power and empire builder agrees with a delegation of Jews from Holland that they can once again settle in England but this time as free agents. However Jews not fully welcomed back until the reign of Charles 2nd as Cromwell could not persuade parliament to give Jews this freedom.
Poland
The background to the existence of so many Jews in Poland.
1772 - Poland was overrun by the Russians and the huge population of local Jews were confined to a “Pale” or enclosure, to avoid “contaminating” the Russians.
Where had this huge population of Jews come from?
1224 - Poland was laid flat by the invasion of the Mongol armies, the Golden Horde, under Genghis Khan. 1241, the Mongols withdrew and the remaining Polish leaders invited many Germans into Poland to repopulate their devastated land. The German settlers were accompanied by a large number of German Jews who were fleeing permanent Christian persecution at the time of the Crusades.
Life in Poland was somewhat better as the Jews soon proved their worth in improving the Polish economy through finance and trade with the Jewish network particularly in the early Ottoman regions. Their status, as in many European countries was as ethnic minorities under special protection of the King (servi camerae regis). Local Christians were, as elsewhere jealous of the position of the Jews (and their successes) and gave them a hard time. Local Christians Burgers asked for Jews to be eliminated but the Kings and the nobles needed the Jews who were, for the first time in Europe, managing huge estates of land on behalf of the nobles. Generally as elsewhere Jews kept to themselves to the extent of running a totally separate economy within Poland.
The 1648 Massacre.
The picture changed drastically for the worse with the Cossack revolt against Polish rule. A local 30 year war commenced which devastated Poland and enabled Czarist Russians to take over the majority of the country. Thousands of Jews were massacred which commenced the movement West and Jews in considerable numbers settled in the safe havens of England and soon the new English colonies in North America.
1762 - Catharine the Great ruled Russia and Poland and determined to modernise her country by inviting in foreign settlers but the decree stated “with the exception of Jews.” Jews remained in the “Pale” of Poland and the Russians found themselves ruling a country with the largest population of Jews in the world. (In some towns the Jews were actually a majority)
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