 Where does Jewish history actually begin? I'll begin with Abraham, who lived about 2,000 years after the creation of the world. He lived about a thousand years after Noah. And he grew up in the area of the Qaldian nation, which is present day Iraq. And he's chosen by God to leave his land. He's asked by God to leave his birthplace to go to Kanaan, Canaan, which today we call the Land of Israel, and to start a family there that would eventually grow into a nation that would bring blessing to the world. That's what God actually tells Abraham. I'm not choosing you for any other mission than to be a blessing to the entire world. The world that we're living in is supposed to be a place where human beings can grow spiritually and get to know God. That was God's agenda in creating the world. There were no real other goals that God had in mind. He put people originally into the garden of Eden. Eden in Hebrew, Eden means pleasure. So God wanted a world where we could experience the ultimate pleasure, and that's not a delicious coffee that you buy somewhere. The ultimate pleasure from a Jewish perspective are spiritual pleasures. And so that was God's agenda to have a world that would be a paradise where people could live with each other in peace and people could pursue spiritual, pursue such as growing spiritually and coming to know God. We know that the first 2,000 years of history, the world was not very successful. And the Bible basically presents us with 2,000 years of decline. Ultimately, God decided to have a special nation who would be instrumental in bringing about the kind of world that he intended. The question is why Abraham? Why was Abraham chosen? Our sages teach us that Abraham grew up in an idolatrous world. His entire society worshiped idols, and yet he, through contemplating the world, came to the realization there must be a prime mover, there must be a God that created everything and sustains everything. The rabbis teach us the famous story that Abraham's father actually manufactured and sold idols for a living. He went away to an idol seller's convention once and left Abraham in charge of the store. Abraham takes out a big mallet, a big hammer, smashes all the idols, leaves the biggest one standing, puts the hammer in this idol's hand and his father comes back and sees all the idols smashed and he's furious because his son was supposed to watch the store. He says to Abraham, what happened? And Abraham said, well, you left me here, but they got into a big fight. Someone brought in some food to bring to them for sacrifices and they got into a big fight and the big one picked up the hammer, smashed everyone else and he is the only one left. And his father looked at him and said, what are you talking about? These are stone statues. They can't do anything. They can't fight. They can't argue. So Abraham says, why do you worship them? And Abraham got into a lot of trouble. He's ultimately thrown into a furnace by Nimrod, who's the ruler of the world back then, because of his refusal to acknowledge idolatry. He's also chosen, the Bible says, because God knows that he will be the kind of person to teach his descendants to follow in the ways of God. So it wasn't just that Abraham was great, but God knew that Abraham would be the kind of person who would pass on this legacy to his children. And finally, Abraham is chosen because he believed something special. There were other righteous people in the world that Noah was perfectly righteous. And yet, when Noah was told that the world was going to be destroyed, Noah didn't argue. Noah said, fine, God, you know what you're doing? You want me to build an ark? I'll go on the ark. I'll save my family. But Noah basically doesn't object. When God tells Abraham that he's going to destroy the major population centers of the world, Sodom and Amorah and Adam and Sivolim, Abraham is furious and says, shall the God of the whole world not do justice? And he says, how could you kill the righteous with the wicked? He says, what if there are 50 righteous people in the cities? And you would think that his next line would be, if there are 50 righteous people, take them out of the cities and kill all the bad ones. But Abraham says, no, if there are 50 righteous people living within the city, meaning not just in the city, but within the city. They're not cloistered away in a monastery where no one can see them. They're living amongst the people. Abraham says, you have to save the whole city. And God says, okay, fine. And what if there are 50, 45, 40, 30 bargains all the way down to 10? If there are 10 righteous people within the city, Abraham says you have to save the entire city because his thesis is that if there are these righteous people living as a model, modeling what it means to be righteous, they have the ability to transform the rest of the city. And that's why Abraham is chosen as the first Jew. Noah gave up on the idea that people could change. Noah saw people that were so wicked, he never could imagine that they would change. Noah lost touch with the idea that every human being is created in the image of God. And as such, they have free will and they can change. Abraham didn't lose touch with that. Abraham believed firmly that if people are shown a proper example, they can change. And God says, you're the man for the job. Because you believe that the world can change through the proper example, and that's who your nation is going to be. God makes a covenant with Abraham, promises him a land for his people that will be a base of operations for them to serve. As the Bible says, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, a light unto the nations, that is Abraham's manifest. Abraham and his wife Sarah have two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, but only Isaac would carry on his father's mission. Isaac marries Rebecca and they have twin sons, Asav and Jacob. Once again, God makes it clear that only one of the sons would carry on the mission. It would be Jacob who would be carrying on the mission of Abraham. Jacob marries two wives, Rachel and Leah. Takes an additional two co-wives. They've got four wives all of a sudden. They have 12 sons and a daughter. These 12 sons ultimately become the 12 tribes of Israel. Jacob's family is forced to go down to Egypt. There's a tremendous famine in Canaan and Canaan. And they're eventually enslaved in Egypt for over 200 years. Now the family came down with about 70 people, but over this 210 years they grew into a nation of over 2 million people. Moses is chosen by God to lead the people out of Egypt, and God demonstrates his absolute control over the natural forces of the world with 10 incredible supernatural events that take place over the course of a year. God ends up splitting the Red Sea for the Jewish people to flee from the Egyptian pursuers, and then once they cross in safety, God makes the waters return and drown the pursuing Egyptian army. Seven weeks later, this small nation comes to the foot of Mount Sinai where they hear God reveal the first two of the Ten Commandments. Moses stays there for 40 days to learn more laws from God. We all know that when Moses comes down, what he sees is not good, the people lost patience. They expected Moses to have returned already. They build a golden calf to serve as an intermediary. Moses smashes the tablets, has to go back up to Mount Sinai for 40 days to pray for forgiveness. He has to go another 40 days and comes down 40 days later with the second set of tablets. They stay in the vicinity of Mount Sinai for about a year where they construct a portable sanctuary that would serve as a spiritual center that would house the tablets of the Covenant. And then the plan was to go directly to Israel. Just before going into the land, the people decide that they need to send a reconnaissance mission. And they send 12 spies to check out the land to see if the people are powerful, how they're going to attack. 10 of the 12 spies come back with a very negative report. They'll never do it. The people are too strong. It's never going to happen. And the nation begins to weep out of fear and out of rejection and out of a lack of trust in God. So God decrees that these people are not worthy of going into the land. And he decrees that they will wander for 39 more years in the desert until that generation dies out. And where the new generation can spend those 39 years developing an intimate trust and knowledge of God. After wandering in the desert, they finally come into the land. They conquer almost all of it. What they don't conquer turns out to be a problem for them. The people that are living there are not easy to get along with, cause many problems. But they conquer most of the land. They divide it up amongst 11 of the 12 tribes. We know the tribe of Levi did not get land. The teachers and they had to circulate all over. They spend the next 360 years in the land basically being led by various judges. And during this period of the judges, they're not doing well. The Book of Judges tells story after story of spiritual and moral failure on the part of the people. Finally, the great leader emerges Samuel. And Samuel becomes an incredibly charismatic powerful leader. And the people demand a king. Samuel suspects it's not for the right reasons that people are saying, we want a king like all other nations have a king. And that's not why we should have a king. But God tells Samuel that they should have a king. It's okay, he gives permission. And they first choose Sha'ul, Saul to be the king of the Jewish people of Israel. He ultimately does not follow God's instructions properly. And he refuses to take responsibility for his mistakes. And so he's replaced by David. The prophet Samuel anoints David to be the king of Israel, who turns out to be a great leader both militarily and spiritually. He composed the Book of Psalms, which basically expresses his intimate relationship with God. David was upset that a permanent home was not built when the people came into the land of Israel hundreds of years earlier, that a permanent home for God's sanctuary, for the tablets of the covenant and for the worship of God, it was not constructed. They left it a portable sanctuary that went around, that moved around. And David was very upset that God didn't have a permanent home, a permanent temple. And he had a tremendous desire to build this temple, but God would not allow him. God said to David, because you had to spill so much blood in the wars that you fought, you are not going to be the person to build the temple. But your son Solomon, who will rule after you, he will build the temple. Now Solomon, in order to build the temple, had to tax the people, as you can imagine, this is quite a big project. And after Solomon, his son Rechovam takes over, and now the temple is built already, and the people come to Rechovam and they say, look, we need to have a tax break. We need lower taxes. And his advisors tell him, you know what? That would be a good idea. Give the people a break. But he feels he has to assert his authority, and he decides to show the people who was boss, and he raises the taxes. And if you say, Nish, Nishgit, it wasn't good at that point. The ten northern tribes, as we know, were not so close to the temple. They were living the furthest away from the temple. They had less access to the temple. They had enough of this. They broke away, and they seceded from the union, so to speak. And this is where you have in the year 796 the terrible tragedy of the splitting of the kingdom of Israel, basically into two separate kingdoms. In the south, you have the southern kingdom called the Kingdom of Judah. Basically, because there were two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, by far the larger tribe was Judah, so it becomes known as the Kingdom of Judah. And living there is not just Judah. In Benjamin, you obviously have Levites and priests, and you had a smattering, a sprinkling of people from the ten northern tribes who had come down to live there either for business or for marriage. But basically, you had two tribes in the south. The northern kingdom were the ten northern tribes, and they became known as the Kingdom of Israel or the Kingdom of Ephraim. Because the people living up north still had an attachment to the temple in the south, the leader of the northern kingdom, Yeruvim, didn't want them to be so attached to the south. And so he built two new temples up north and put golden calves in each of these two new temples. These two kingdoms of Judah and Israel were at odds with each other. In many ways, there was a civil war going on. And both the northern and southern kingdom had a series of kings. In the north, most of the kings were pretty evil. In the south, it was a mixed bag. But in the north, they basically plunged into idol worship and social injustice. That was what was happening up north. Now during this time, there were many great prophets who came to the Jewish people, both in the north and in the south, to warn them that they had to change their ways. Great prophets like Isaiah, like Jeremiah, like Ezekiel, and these are great men of God who came to tell the people, you have to change. You cannot go on living like this because ultimately, you're going to lose your land. You're going to lose everything. Unfortunately, the people are not really responsive to these prophets. After about 200 years, the northern kingdom is conquered by the new superpower in the world back then, Assyria. And in the year 555 BCE, the 10 northern tribes are expelled from the land, sent into exile, and they become known as the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel. Our prophets tell us that one day, they will re-emerge from their long exile and rejoin us. And so today, we actually have many people who are claiming to be from these 10 Lost Tribes. Simcha Yaakovovich, who lived here in Toronto for a while, made a famous film about the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel, and this is going to obviously be in the future, one of the future chapters of our history. The southern kingdom didn't fall apart as quickly. They lasted for about another 100 years, and they unfortunately resisted the warnings of the prophets to change. And so, the rabbis teach us that because of the tremendous crimes of murder, of idolatry, and of sexual immorality, the temple was destroyed in the year 422, before the common era. Just a note now for you. We know that there is a bit of a dispute between Jewish chronology and secular chronology over certain years of our history. Non-Jewish historians say that the first temple was destroyed in the year 586 BCE, but according to traditional Jewish historical sources, I think we probably know our history better than non-Jews. The temple was destroyed in the year 422 BCE. Temple was destroyed, and many of these people living in the southern kingdom are sent to Babylon. The Babylonians were the ones that destroyed the temple, and so many Jews go to Babylon into the first major exile after the Egyptian exile of our people. Now, because most of the people alive at that point, at least that were around, identifying as part of the people of Israel, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, most of them were from the tribe of Judah, that's the point in our history at which most of us became known as Yehudim or Jews. Prior to this, we were Israelites, but the 10 northern tribes, the kingdom of Israel, went missing, so at this point in our history, that's basically when all of us become known generically as Yehudim or Jews. Jeremiah predicted that the Babylonian exile would only last 70 years, 70 years, and that's what happened. After 70 years of being in exile in Babylon, the Babylonians are conquered by the new power in the world, the Persians, and the king of Persia, Cyrus, permits the Jews to go back to Israel and rebuild their temple. Unfortunately, very few Jewish people return to Israel. It's part of our story throughout our history. Every time we have a chance to return to our land, very few people take up the opportunity. And after a number of years, Cyrus actually stopped the construction of the temple. He wouldn't allow the construction to go on. It's during this time, when the Purim story happens, it's the time after which some of the Jews went back to Israel, there were many Jews still living in Persia, and there's a plot to commit genocide against all the Jewish people by Haman, and we know that Mordechai and Esther basically team up with God to save the day. Esther, unfortunately, has to marry the king, Ahashverosh. They have a son named Darius, and Darius ultimately is the one that allows the construction of the second temple to be recommenced, and it's completed, or at least around the year 352 before the common era. Now when you study Jewish history, they speak about these two periods of what they call the first temple period, by it Rishon, and the second temple period, by it Shani. The first temple lasted about 410 years. We had our first temple for 410 years. The second temple lasted for 420 years. Now at that point they knew that prophecy would soon be coming to an end, and so what they did was to finally canonize the scriptures. Around this time they wanted to gather all the books of the prophets and their writings together, complete the canon, finally have a unified Bible, and that's what our prophets and sages did at this time after the return to Israel from Babylon. Now this period of the second temple, this 420 years, was a very difficult period. The Persians were in control for about 35 years, and they were followed by the Greeks. Now the Greeks came in because a young man named Alexander decided he would conquer the entire world, which is basically what he did. We know that Alexander was a student of Aristotle, and they come from the line of Plato and Socrates, and he was an exponent or proponent of Hellenism. Hellenism was this Greek philosophy that was actually compared to the barbarians of the world very advanced, and he sought to spread Hellenistic culture throughout his kingdom. We know that many Jewish people were attracted to Hellenism. They were attracted to the Hellenistic focus on art, architecture, beauty, philosophy, poetry, athleticism. It was a very high culture, and we know that many, many Jews were drawn to it. Some went to the extent of medically reversing their circumcision because we know that in the Greek athletic events they played in the nude, and so Jews who wanted to participate fully in the Greek athletic events went to the extent some of them have even reversing their circumcision. There basically was a huge split among the people at that time between the Hellenistic Jews who were embracing Hellenism full force and the traditional Jews that really rejected Hellenism as a pagan philosophy. And these two groups were basically engaged in a civil war. The Syrian powers that were really in control of the land at that point, the Syrian Hellenists, decided to impose their rule and impose Hellenism upon the people, and at that point the traditional Jews, the loyal faithful Jews couldn't stand it anymore, and they launched a revolt, a very daring revolt against the Hellenistic rule and against the Hellenistic Jews. This was led by the Hashmonayim, the Hasmonians sometimes called the Maccabees, and after three years of fighting they're able to retake and rededicate the temple around the year 135 BCE. Unfortunately, the Hasmonians who began to rule the land were a disaster. It was really a match not made in heaven. First of all, they were Kohanim, they were priests, and priests were not supposed to be the rulers and kings of the people. The rulers and kings were supposed to be from the line of Judah, and the Hasmonians very quickly slid into Hellenism themselves, they became Hellenized, they fought the rabbinic leaders of the Jewish people, and they slipped into terrible immorality. Finally, even among these Hellenistic Hasmonian rulers, the power was divided up into two brothers who fought each other terribly, and they made the fatal error of calling in the new superpower of the world to mediate this dispute, and the new superpower at that time was Rome. Rome came in in about 63 BCE, and we know what happened, they very quickly took over, and initially Rome ruled from afar. They imposed upon Israel an Idomian king. The Idomians were a culture, a nation, that were forcibly converted by the Hasmonians. It was a terrible mistake to do that. And the Romans imposed Herod, who was an Idomian, to rule Israel as their king. Herod was a very, very sick individual. He was very paranoid, he ended up killing many people in his family because he was always afraid that people were going to rebel against him. He was also a megalomaniac and power-hungry, and in order to enhance his image, he embarked upon an incredible building project, including the rebuilding and refurbishing and enhancement of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. When they rebuilt that second temple, it was not really a beautiful, gorgeous, magnificent structure. It was very modest. And Herod totally revamped the temple and made it into a world-class building. Now, around this time, we had another development among our people, which was that the priesthood that was in charge of the temple became very corrupt. They were somewhat of an aristocratic class, and they essentially allied themselves with Rome in order to maintain their power. This Sadduceean, they became Sadducees. Sadducees were people who rejected the oral Torah. We know that at Mount Sinai, Moses not just received the written Torah that we have, Moses received oral teachings from God that explained what the written Torah is. So when the Bible speaks about not doing any melacha on the Sabbath, the Bible doesn't define what is melacha. The oral law explains what is prohibited on the Sabbath. When the Bible says that we're to afflict our souls on Yom Kippur, the Bible doesn't explain what does it mean to afflict your soul. The oral law explains what that means. When the Bible says if you want to eat meat, you have to slaughter the animals as God has commanded, there's no commandment in the Bible. That's part of the oral Torah. When the Bible says that we're supposed to put a sign upon our hand and frontlets between our eyes, what does that mean? The oral law explains that. The oral law explains thousands of details in the Bible that are simply not there. And the Sadducees came to reject this oral law and they developed this heretical view that put them at odds with the traditional Jews. Now it's important to remember at this point in our history not all of us were living in Israel. Israel was the center by far, but there were major Jewish communities living in the exile. There were communities in Rome, Alexandria. Some people estimate millions of Jews actually living outside the land. And we know that the Jewish population living in Israel was very irritated by Roman rule. And for good reasons, the Romans were brutal occupiers. You know, we think about which Jews were crucified. Most people only think about a Jewish boy named Jesus. But the Romans crucified over 100,000 Jews. They didn't tolerate any threat to their rule. And the Romans, aside from being brutal and cruel, were often very insensitive to Jewish religious sensitivities. They would often display pagan symbols, especially around Jerusalem. So with this increasingly brutal and obnoxious Roman occupation, the Jewish population grew more and more bitter and offended. They finally decided to rebel. In 66 of the common era, in the year 66, they launched a revolt. Now Rome had taken over the entire world. Rome was a superpower. And they finally had enough grief from this tiny little nation. So the emperor Nero sent the Spatians to crush the revolt. And over the course of a few years, they basically were about to destroy Jerusalem and burn it to the ground. But before the very, very end, the great rabbinic leader at that time was Yohanan Ben-Zakai. Yohanan Ben-Zakai saw the handwriting on the wall. And he realized that the Jewish community of Jerusalem had very little time left. And so they came up with a bit of a ruse. They circulated rumors that he was ill and was about to die. And finally they circulated rumors that he had passed away. And because they didn't want to bury people in Jerusalem proper, they smuggled him out of Jerusalem in a coffin. But he was still alive. After he came out of Jerusalem, he went to meet with the Spatian who was leading the siege against Jerusalem. And he greeted the Spatian as king. He greeted him as the king. The Spatian was a little bit irritated. He says, why are you calling me a king? I'm not the king. The king was Nero. But during the conversation, messengers came from Rome and announced the king had died and the Spatian was being made the new emperor. And out of gratitude and appreciation for Yohanan Ben-Zakai, the Spatian offered Yohanan Ben-Zakai anything that he wanted. Yohanan Ben-Zakai said, give me Yavneh, the coastal city of Yavneh, and its sages. And the great sages there, and Yohanan Ben-Zakai understood that if we had lost our prophets and if we were about to lose our temple and if we were about to lose Jerusalem, he felt that the only thing that would really keep us alive would be having a nation led by scholars, by Torah scholars. The Torah itself would become our home. The Torah itself would be our portable Jerusalem. And so he asked that the Spatians spare and not destroy the city of Yavneh, which is what happened. Soon after this, the Spatian went back to Rome to be the emperor. He sent his son Titus to finish the siege and in the year 69 of the common era, Titus destroys Jerusalem, the temple to the ground. Some estimates are that he killed about one million of the two million Jews living in the land of Israel. If you go to Rome today, you'll see the arch of Titus, where he had this huge mural built showing him bringing back the temple artifacts, the menorah, that he captured from the temple before it was burnt. Now if you could imagine any nation going through this, it almost looks like it's curtains. And we were down, but we were not out. Believe it or not, in the year 113, they rebelled again, which the Romans put down. And when Hadrian came to rule Israel at that point and tried to ban Judaism itself, Rabbi Akiva, who was the greatest sage of the time, backed a revolt by Barcochba against the Romans. And Barcochba, a great general, led a revolt around the years 132 to 135. And he actually had some incredible victories against the Romans. But finally Hadrian sent in a huge army to crush the revolt, and he literally destroyed everything. He killed many, many people, destroyed the land practically entirely. He changed the name of the land at that point to Palestine. It was never called Palestine. He named the land after one of our early enemies, the Pleshtim, and the community in Israel comes to an end, basically in the year 135. It wasn't until 1800 years later that we come back and reestablish independence in the land. Most of our center, the center of our nation moved, basically it shifted to Babylon, although some people did remain in Israel. And because of the great difficulties we had at that time, just existing and living, the rabbis felt that it would be impossible to maintain our oral Torah as oral. It had not been intended to be written down. It was supposed to remain oral and dynamic. But there was a feeling the rabbis had that unless they wrote it down at this point, it would be forgotten. So in the year 200 of the Common Era, Rabi'udah and Nussi, Judah the Prince, basically redacts, he edits what is known as the Mishnah. The Mishnah is basically the DNA of Jewish law. It's very terse, very concise, but it presents almost like notes that you would have to a lecture, enough of the oral law that a student who knew the body of the literature would be able to be reminded by these notes and reconstruct everything from these notes. It turned out that this was not enough. And so for the next several hundred years, great sages will continue writing elaborations of the oral law. In the year 400 approximately of the Common Era, the sages still living in Israel completed what is known today as the Jerusalem Talmud. And about 100 years later, where most of the Jewish sages were living, the Babylonian Talmud was completed around the year 500 of the Common Era. Now I need to insert here a little bit of a sidebar for us to continue. During the Roman occupation, before the destruction of the temple, there was tremendous messianic expectation and anticipation among Jews. That always happens in Jewish history. Whenever we are suffering tremendously at the hands of persecutors, there's always the hope that God would send the Messiah to redeem us and to bring us into a world of peace. And so before the temple is destroyed, there are a number of Jewish people who claim to be the Messiah in the early part of the first century. One of them is someone that we know today as Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth meets the exact same fate as all the other people who claim to be the Messiah. He is crucified by the Romans. Some of his followers were not able to accept this terrible end. And so they expected, they hoped, that he would come back one day to finish the mission. That small group of Jewish people who thought that Jesus was the Messiah and put their hope in his return, they did not last very long. Within about 150, 200 years, that group of Jews who thought that Jesus might have been the Messiah and were hoping for him to return basically come to an end. But while this is going on, there's a Jewish person named Paul of Tarsus, Sha'ul of Tarsus. And Sha'ul never met Jesus, but has a mystical vision. He claims he has a mystical vision where Jesus comes to him and says, you are to follow me. Paul initially tries to convince Jewish people living in Israel to accept Jesus, and they won't budge, they're not interested. As far as they were concerned, Jesus did not accomplish anything. He didn't fulfill anything the Messiah is supposed to do. So Paul in desperation and aggravation says, look, since the Jewish people are not interested in Jesus, I'm going to go to the Gentiles. And that's what Paul does. Paul now runs around the ancient Greco-Roman world, and he manages to convince many non-Jewish people to believe in Jesus. And this basically becomes the start of Christianity. It does not start off very quickly. It takes approximately 250 years, 300 years, until someone named Constantine, who just happened to be the emperor of the world, converts to Christianity. Around the year 325, Constantine sends Christianity into the big leagues by essentially making it the official state religion of the entire world. And this has a tremendous impact upon the history of the Jewish people, because since Christianity is now the official religion of the entire world, our history became entangled with them. And it was usually not very good for us. Now for about 500 years after the redaction of the Talmud, so from approximately the year 500 till approximately the year 1000, the leadership of the Jewish people are a group of sages, scholars that are called Gaonim. Gaon is a genius. I don't think they call themselves geniuses, but that's what they were referred to as the Gaonim. They were basically based in the academies of Babylonia in Surah and Pumbedita and they would make rulings on questions of Jewish law. They would interpret the law. They would adjudicate questions of law and people would send them inquiries from around the entire world. These were the people that you turned to about Judaism and so people wrote to them and they published their writings. We still have the writings of these Gaonim today. Now the next major development in world history which also had an impact upon the Jewish people was the birth of Islam in about the year 1610. At the same time that the Roman Empire was beginning to fray, Islam very quickly conquers a tremendous amount of land and in year 711 they conquer Spain which is in the heart of ancient Roman Europe. So what happens over the next several hundred years is that the Jewish world itself splits into two areas. You have many Jews that begin settling in a part of the world that we refer to as Ashkenaz which is Germany and France. They make their way up to England but you have the movement of Jews who travel on out from the Middle East and up in towards Northern Europe and Central Europe and then you have other Jewish communities that basically set themselves up in lands that we call Sfarad, the Spanish lands Iraq Yemen Portugal, Spain Morocco etc. These become the two major centers of Jewish life in the world. One of the movements was towards Spain and after Islam conquered Spain from the Christians Jews lived there actually in much better conditions than they lived under Christian lands. This is what they were referred to sometimes as a golden age in Spain where Jews were more or less left alone and were able to thrive. This ends approximately 300 years later however around the year 1000 when a more fundamentalist Islamic leadership takes over and Jews begin to become persecuted. After the period of the G'onim around the year 1000 the last of the G'onim was called Haig'on a period in Jewish history called the Rishonim Begin. The Rishonim were the first ones and these are the scholars that basically led the Jewish people from about the year 1000 to about the year 1650. Now even though at this point in our history our existence is very very tenuous. We're undergoing incredible persecution and hardship. In spite of this it was a period of great creativity and scholarship among our people. It's quite incredible if you just think about how much was produced by these sages called the Rishonim in the most trying of circumstances. Living through incredible persecution both physically being persecuted and economically being starved we had great sages and I can't even name, maybe I'll spend time going on three of them but there are hundreds of them. Rashi who lived in France near the border of Germany he's born in 1040, dies in 1905. Rashi who was a ran a vineyard wrote a commentary to the entire Bible. When I studied in Israel in 1979 with the Hamilevich she would always tell us if you want to understand how great Rashi is she said over 300 people wrote commentaries to Rashi's commentary on the Bible. Not only did he write a commentary basically to the entire Bible he wrote a commentary almost to the entire Talmud which is 63 tractates and numerous other books incredible productivity by someone without a word processor without a computer, without electricity and living under the threat of a sword all the time. This was a great man Rashi. Rambam Maimonides lived not in the Christian world he lived in Islamic Spain. He was forced to leave ultimately because of the persecutions to Egypt. Maimonides 1135 to 1204 was a doctor by profession he became the physician to the ruler of Egypt he was an incredibly prolific person who wrote works of philosophy a magnum opus on Jewish law. He was a great communal leader he helped communities survive as Jews by issuing rulings adjudicating these people are giants that we can't even begin to understand. Maimonides who also lived in Spain at the time after the Christian church reconquered it. Rambam Maimonides 1194 to 1270 also wrote a commentary to the Bible to the Talmud many works of philosophy these men are just impossible to imagine their greatness in spite of all the difficulties. Let me try to very briefly outline for you some of these difficulties in 1096 Pope Urban II launches the first crusade he wanted to liberate Jerusalem from the Islamic rule he felt that Jerusalem belonged to Christians. So St. Urban Pope Urban II tells Christians that if they die in this war of oppression they will go immediately to heaven there are many people volunteering for this job but they realize why travel all the way to Israel to kill infidels they have them living right in front of them and so on the way to Jerusalem they turn their wrath on many Jewish communities in Europe the crusades end up killing at least one third of European Jewry they're butchering literally communities as they go along now until the Enlightenment which we'll see later on living in Christian Europe was a nightmare for the Jewish people there weren't just one crusade there were several crusades there were blood libels where they would accuse Jews of killing Christian babies taking their blood and using the blood to make our matzah once that accusation went out it would be an excuse to exterminate the Jewish community they accused Jews of desecrating the host they would say that Jews would break into churches steal the communion wafers bring them back to their synagogues take out little swords and stick the swords into the communion wafers to torture the body of Jesus over and over again once that libel went out it was another excuse to destroy Jewish communities the black death that decimated large parts of the European continent was blamed on the Jews they accused Jews of poisoning the wells even the Jews drank from the same wells but that was the accusation that the Jews were responsible for the black death and over 300 Jewish communities were destroyed in the wake of the black death there were forced conversions there were many many expulsions there was economic privation just studying the torture and persecution of Jews in Christian Europe would be several hours to articulate in 1390 after the Christians totally reconquered Spain from the hands of Islam Jews were given a choice to either convert to Christianity or to die so many Jews decided to become Anusim forced converts who would externally pretend to be Christian but deep down inside maintained their allegiance to Judaism and because they were ostensibly Christian they were allowed to live in the society and they prospered and as they prospered the Christians in their midst became more and more jealous of them and so in 1480 the church launched the Inquisition to weed out these fake converts in their minds at the Autodefes where they would basically burn Jews at the stake they burned hundreds and hundreds of Jews at the stake and finally in 1492 the Jews were expelled from Spain in the year 1517 the first ghetto in Europe is built in Venice and Jews are forced in many places to be squeezed into ghettos where they could be watched and monitored and yet they could be taxed now again while all this is going on you have incredible bursts of creativity and productivity between approximately the years 1500 and 1690 in Svat in northern Israel you have an explosion of Kabbalistic teaching Kabbalah existed way before this Nakmanides himself was a Kabbalist but in Svat it explodes you have great people like the Ari like Rav Yosef Karo Moshe Alkebet many many great Kabbalists who contributed tremendously to the development of Jewish thought Rav Yosef Karo who is one of these Kabbalists becomes the author of the code of Jewish law in 1648 there is a peasant revolt by a Bogdan Chemelnitki and Bogdan Chemelnitki massacres about one fourth of Polish Jewry the Jewish population of Europe is shaking from this what do we do in the wake of tremendous massacres like this so at that time someone decides to do what sounds normal he says well you know what God has sent the Messiah and around 1648 Shaptaitzfi proclaims himself the Messiah his loyal follower Nathan of Gaza travels around with him and he attracts thousands and thousands of Jews to follow him there was tremendous hope that in the Shaptaitzfi who would redeem the Jewish people he was going to go to the leader the non-Jewish leader at the time take the crown off his head but he ultimately is thrown into prison himself and given a choice either to convert to Islam or to die and Shaptaitzfi puts on the turban and he becomes a Muslim in the wake of that many of his followers were baptized obviously he's not the Messiah but many of them couldn't accept this defeat and so many theories sprang up to explain how no the Messiah was supposed to convert to another religion and using a lot of Kabbalistic theory there were people who were able to somehow maintain their loyalty to Shaptaitzfi even in the wake of his conversion there is still a remainder of this sect today they're called Dunmeh and Dunmeh were basically the followers of Shaptaitzfi that ultimately became Muslim themselves in the 1700s in the wake of this debacle you have the rise of Hasidism in Europe the Hasidic movement was a revival movement among Jews to bring joy to Jewish people to be able to experience God in the simple things of life singing and praying it was not a way of critiquing scholarship, scholarship was still important the Hasidic masters were great Torah scholars but it was a way of bringing Torah and making it more accessible to simple common folk cheering them up because their exile was so difficult and painful the Hasidic movement caught on and spread like a wildfire throughout Russia, throughout Europe the next major challenge to the Jewish community was not through persecution it was the exact opposite the Enlightenment which began developing in Europe in 1650 to 1780 was a time when traditional religions were questioned the belief in a supernatural God was being questioned the focus was becoming on reason, human reason and this presented a tremendous challenge to traditional Judaism believe it or not even at this time when the power of the church was beginning to wane because of the Enlightenment and Jews were getting more and more freedom in the world ultimately, we see that the emancipation which takes place in around 1790 Jews are finally given full rights in Europe in spite of all this anti-Semitism and Jew hatred does not die down but now it becomes not religious anti-Semitism so much as racial anti-Semitism the Jews are trying to control the entire world and so we have documents like the protocols of the elders of Zion and there's a tremendous spreading of anti-Semitism and Jew hatred still throughout the world even after the Enlightenment and after the emancipation in 1894 there's the Dreyfus trial of France a person who was a soldier in the French army, he was brought up on charges for treason he was basically railroaded, he was convicted unfairly and it was very clear that the entire trial was a blast of anti-Semitism and because of events like this the early stirrings of the Zionist movement start to move we know that Theodore Herzl was tremendously impacted by the Dreyfus Affair and so you have at the end of the 1800s the stirrings of a movement to try to return to the land of Israel we know that in the middle of the 20th century we have the terrible holocaust that takes place and wipes out 6 million Jewish people but 3 years after the conclusion of the holocaust we return to our land in 1948 to re-establish the modern state of Israel 1800 and 13 years after we lost independence in the wake of the Bar-Kochpa Rebellion who would ever imagine that 1800 years later a people that was forced to leave their land would return they tell a story that when Napoleon once came upon a group of Jews mourning on Tisha Ba'av he saw Jews in a magnificent synagogue sitting on the floor and crying and weeping and he asked what are these people doing and they said they're mourning for their temple that was destroyed in the year 69 of the common era and Napoleon said if a people could still be mourning for their temple on their land so many years later Napoleon said I'm sure they will one day return to their land we saw a number of elements a number of themes of Jewish history these themes include elements such as chosenness covenant relationship to a land a revelation of God's Torah unfortunately periods of exile and tremendous suffering but ultimately a concept of returning and redemption one of the major themes of all of Judaism and actually all of world history is a theme that was picked up among other places in the book Hans Rosenzweig called the Star of Redemption speaks about the three major themes of creation revelation and redemption that the first great event in world history was the creation of the world God basically steps into history by creating a world and then many many years later God again enters history and reveals his will to the world he reveals the Torah and this is all for a purpose it's all to bring the world back to where it was supposed to be in the beginning which is the ultimate redemption the Jewish holidays of Passover Shavuot and Sukkot really focus on these three things Passover is the holiday which speaks about creation we were created as a people and Passover demonstrated that God created the world because it showed his control over nature Shavuot the next holiday is the holiday of redemption of revelation because Shavuot commemorates the receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai but then there is Sukkot the universal holiday where all 70 nations brought sacrifices where the prophet Zakhariah tells us that all the nations of the world will come to Jerusalem and celebrate Sukkot Sukkot is the holiday where all human beings will ultimately come into this great Sukkot of peace and so where is Jewish history heading it's only heading up from here we're sure we'll have our speed bumps but the re entering into our homeland the reemerging now of people who may actually be from the 10 lost tribes we're seeing the ingathering of the exiles we're seeing an explosion of Torah scholarship throughout the world and we know that ultimately what God promises is that one day all of humanity will be reunited all of us realizing that we are brothers and sisters all children of one God as the prophet Isaiah says in that day the knowledge of God will be as spread out throughout the world as the water covers the seas and the prophet Isaiah says that when that happens when we all realize we're all children of one God Isaiah promises that there will be peace that spreads throughout the world we'll beat our swords into plowshares our spears into pruning hooks nation will not learn war anymore and there'll be a world of peace and a chance for us to experience the kind of world that God intended for us which is a paradise on earth for people to be able to pursue what's really good in life which is to have a relationship with God