Cantors, as a rule, are not ordained, but are invested or authorized by the same seminaries that ordain rabbis

Shabbetai Zevi battled with what might now be diagnosed as severe bipolar disorder. He understood his condition in religious terms, experiencing his manic phases as moments of “illumination” and his times of depression as periods of “fall,” when God’s face was hidden from him.

Popular anti-Jewish sentiment also fueled expulsions. In addition to the anti-Jewish witness theory, outlined above, rumors circulated regarding, for example, Jews killing Christians in mockery of the crucifixion (ritual murder), Jews desecrating the host (communal wafer), and Jews poisoning wells. (None of these rumors were true.)

John’s death in 1495 brought temporary relief to the Jewish community in Portugal. Manuel, his successor, freed the enslaved Jews but decided, upon his marriage to Ferdinand and Isabella’s daughter, to expel the Jews in 1496. Manuel ordered that the Jews could only depart from the port at Lisbon, on a certain day in 1497. When the Jews arrived in Lisbon on the appointed day, they were met not with boats but with priests who baptized the Jews en masse.]

These chronicles report Jewish parents killing their children in a manner similar to Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac and Jews examining knives to ensure that the killing of their brethren was done according to the laws of kashrut.

These anti-Jewish attacks reveal an interesting trend in medieval Jewry: the willingness of the Jews to die for their faith. This act, known as kiddush ha-shem (sanctification of the Divine Name), was quite common, according to the three extant Hebrew chronicles of the First Crusade.

The local clergy were usually as illiterate as the laypeople, and sermons were rarely preached. These facts must serve as a corrective to any false notions that medieval Christians “blamed” Jews for the crucifixion. Sources indicate that even in the High Middle Ages supposedly educated nobles often had little or no knowledge of the basic gospel stories, and much less did the peasant or working class.

Maimonides’ third principle is that God has no body. Although a universal premise today, it was not necessarily so in 12th-century Judaism.

Christians were virtually barred form Islamic waters;

The Jewry of Muslim Spain flourished during this period, which 19th-century European Jewish scholars looked back upon as a golden age of political and cultural distinction (with short-term setbacks), until the Berber Almohad conquest and persecutions of the 1140s. In that decade, many thousands of Jews were killed or forced to convert to Islam; others fled to safer Islamic lands or to the steadily advancing Christian sector of Spain or to southern France.

In addition, the tannaim enacted laws designed to further separate the Jewish Christians from the community by prohibiting commerce and certain interrelationships with them.

When the master died, they often dissolved, with the students going to other masters, unless a senior student had attained enough status and learning to carry on as the new master. In such cases, some disciples would remain with the new master.

These teachers were interested in bringing greater harmonization between biblical and rabbinic traditions, largely by providing proof-texts for known laws and explaining differences between the biblical and rabbinic versions of laws. This is the origin of the Gemara.

Over a roughly 20-year period between 200 and 220 C.E., Judah Ha-Nasi created a veritable constitution, an authoritative guide to Jew­ish law for judges and teachers to use. By doing so, he and the rabbis with whom he worked were asserting the continuing uniqueness of the Jewish people. At the same time, they were creating an authoritative version that would be the center of discussion, classification, and interpretation for generations to come.

the Tannaim are the Palestinian teachers of the first two centuries and the Amoraim the Palestinian and Babylonian teachers from the third to the fifth centuries CE. In the discussions of the Babylonian Talmud, for example, where two different teachers are referred to in the Mishnah, the first is called the Tanna Kama (‘the first Tanna’).

Each community produced its own Gemara which have been preserved as two different multi-volume sets: the Talmud Yerushalmi includes the Mishnah and the Gemara Gemara <audio src="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/gemara.mp3" controls> Your browser does not support the &lt;code&gt;audio&lt;/code&gt; element. </audio> Pronounced: guh-MAHR-uh, Origin: Aramaic, a compendium of rabbinic writings and discussions from the first few centuries of the Common Era. The Talmud comprises Gemara and the Mishnah, a code of law on which the Gemara elaborates. produced by the sages of the Land of Israel, and the Talmud Bavli includes the Mishnah and the Gemara of the Babylonian Jewish sages.

Due to its spare and laconic style, the Talmud is studied, not read. The difficulty of the intergenerational text has necessitated and fostered the development of an institutional and communal structure that supported the learning of Talmud and the establishment of special schools where each generation is apprenticed into its study by the previous generation.

This is because the Mishnah is not a code of Jewish law; it is a study book of law. As the Mishnah itself describes, in a rare self-reflective comment: Why are the opinions of the minority included with the opinions of the majority even though the law is not like them? So that a later court can examine their words and rely upon them? (Mishnah Eduyot 1:3). While one could determine law based upon the Mishnah, its intention was to train the sages in thinking through the legal issues that inform the halacha halacha <audio src="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/halacha.mp3" controls> Your browser does not support the &lt;code&gt;audio&lt;/code&gt; element. </audio> Pronounced: hah-lah-KHAH or huh-LUKH-uh, Origin: Hebrew, Jewish law. (Jewish law).

This idyllic world of the Mishnah, however, is not a world of uniformity; far from it. Most passages in the Mishnah contain a dispute between different rabbinic sages.

the Mishnah itself ignores the events of the Roman occupation of the land of Israel. In this way, the Mishnah is a document that describes a life of sanctification, in which the rituals of the Temple are adapted for communal participation in a world that has no Temple, which escapes the ups and downs of history.

the Mishnah Mishnah <audio src="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/mishnah.mp3" controls> Your browser does not support the &lt;code&gt;audio&lt;/code&gt; element. </audio> Pronounced: MISH-nuh, Origin: Hebrew, code of Jewish law compiled in the first centuries of the Common Era. Together with the Gemara, it makes up the Talmud. is an edited record of the complex body of material known as oral Torah Torah <audio src="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/torah.mp3" controls> Your browser does not support the &lt;code&gt;audio&lt;/code&gt; element. </audio> Pronunced: TORE-uh, Origin: Hebrew, the Five Books of Moses. that was transmitted in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.

For instance, when it is said of him, Hillel, and Akiva that each lived for 120 years, it is as clear as can be that this is simply a device for calling attention to the significance of the teacher for later Judaism. Each lived for the lifespan of Moses, the first great leader and lawgiver. AdChoices

Hillel has a prominent place in the Passover seder with the institution of the so-called “Hillel sandwich,” known in Hebrew as korech. The last ritual prior to the eating of the festive meal, korech involves the joining together of matzah, bitter herbs and the sweet paste known as haroset into a kind of sandwich, which is done in commemoration of Hillel’s practice of eating those three together.

The majority of the Jews refused to quit. One element in this community reacted with overwhelming despair. The Talmud Talmud <audio src="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/talmud.mp3" controls> Your browser does not support the &lt;code&gt;audio&lt;/code&gt; element. </audio> Pronounced: TALL-mud, Origin: Hebrew, the set of teachings and commentaries on the Torah that form the basis for Jewish law. Comprised of the Mishnah and the Gemara, it contains the opinions of thousands of rabbis from different periods in Jewish history. speaks of “mourners of Zion”who would neither eat meat nor drink wine. They rejected any possibility of normal life and chose not to marry or have children. Simple human activities–having a child, getting married, doing acts of kindness in a community–are sustained only by enormous levels of faith and life affirmation, and trust in ultimate meaning. Considering the tragedy and the threat that still hung over the Jewish community, these people felt they simply could not go on with life as usual. Yet by refusing to live normally, they harnessed despair into a force for action: to make an all-out effort to restore the Temple. Only rebuilding the sanctuary could reduce the terrible angst and restore life to normal.

Without such forgiveness, the sinner was condemned to alienation from God, which is equivalent to estrangement from valid existence. But the channel of sacrifice was now cut off.

On the ninth day of Av: “One would have thought that the hill itself, on which the Temple stood, was seething hot from its base, it was so full of fire on every side; and yet the blood was larger in quantity than the fire, and those that were slain were more in number than those that slew them. For the ground was nowhere visible for the dead bodies that lay on it.”

Many died of starvation, others by fire and crucifixion. So many Jews were sold into slavery and given over to the gladiatorial arenas and circuses that the price of slaves dropped precipitously, fulfilling the ancient curse: “There you will be offered for sale as slaves, and there will be no one willing to buy” (Deuteronomy 28:68). The destruction was preceded by events so devastating that they read like scenes out of the Holocaust.

In the blackened remains of the sanctuary lay more than the ruins of the great Jewish revolt for political independence. To many Jews, it appeared that Judaism itself was shattered beyond repair.

Jerusalem was soon in the hands of the rebels. This led, in turn, to uprisings throughout the country, where Jews battled their non‑Jewish neighbors for the upper hand

, Herod over Galilee and Phasael over Jerusalem, sowed the seeds of the Herodian dy­nasty.

The tannaitic texts, particularly the Mishnah but to a significant extent the baraitot as well, form the basis of later rabbinic legal deliberations.

The tannaim were the sages of rabbinic tradition who lived immediately before, and then during the century and a half following, the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (70 ce).