Robert Chazan

A comprehensive synthesis of medieval Jewish history between AD 1000 and 1500.

1000-1500

The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom

A collection of medieval European documents of the Church and state, including theological positions on the Jews; papal decrees and local and national charters granting rights to Jews; documents relating to protection of Jews; ecclesiastic limitations on Jews, relating particularly to usury and attacks on the Talmud; missionizing (e.g. forced sermons and disputations); and persecution by the state (e.g. confiscation of properties, bodily attacks, and expulsions).

Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages

Cambridge University Press

Adam Sutcliffe

Tony Michels

W. D. Davies

William David Davies

Louis Finkelstein

William Horbury

John Sturdy

Steven T. Katz

Jonathan Karp

Mitchell B. Hart

Phillip Isaac Ackerman-Lieberman

William Donald Davies

This volume opens with three introductory chapters to the work as a whole dealing with the geographical background, the chronology and the numismatic history of Judaism.

The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 1, Introduction: The Persian Period

This book traces the hardening of Christian attitudes to Jews, Judiasm and their history during the second half of the Middle Ages.

From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism

Robert Leon Chazan

Closely focused on the Hebrew First-Crusade narratives, this text examines the three surviving accounts of the crusaders assaults on the Rhineland Jewish communities in 1096. These accounts are compared with earlier Jewish history writing and with contemporary crusade historiography.

The Hebrew First Crusade Narratives

God, Humanity, and History

This book re-evaluates the prevailing notion that Jews in medieval Christian Europe lived under an appalling regime of ecclesiastical limitation, governmental exploitation and expropriation, and unceasing popular violence. Robert Chazan argues that, while Jewish life in medieval Western Christendom was indeed beset with grave difficulties, it was nevertheless an environment rich in opportunities; the Jews of medieval Europe overcame obstacles, grew in number, explored innovative economic options, and fashioned enduring new forms of Jewish living. His research also provides a reconsideration of the legacy of medieval Jewish life, which is often depicted as equally destructive and projected as the underpinning of the twentieth-century catastrophes of antisemitism and the Holocaust. Dr Chazan's research proves that, although Jewish life in the medieval West laid the foundation for much Jewish suffering in the post-medieval world, it also stimulated considerable Jewish ingenuity, which lies at the root of impressive Jewish successes in the modern West.

Reassessing Jewish Life in Medieval Europe

One of the unanticipated results of the First Crusade in 1095 was a series of violent assaults on major Jewish communities in the Rhineland. Robert Chazan offers the first detailed analysis of these events, illuminating the attitudes that triggered the assaults as well as the beliefs that informed Jewish reactions to them.

European Jewry and the First Crusade

The twelfth century in Europe, hailed by historians as a time of intellectual and spiritual vitality, had a dark side. As Robert Chazan points out, the marginalization of minorities emerged during the "twelfth-century renaissance" as part of a growing pattern of persecution, and among those stigmatized the Jews figured prominently. The migration of Jews to northern Europe in the late tenth century led to the development of a new set of Jewish communities. This northern Jewry prospered, only to decline sharply two centuries later. Chazan locates the cause of the decline primarily in the creation of new, negative images of Jews. He shows how these damaging twelfth-century stereotypes developed and goes on to chart the powerful, lasting role of the new anti-Jewish imagery in the historical development of antisemitism. This coupling of the twelfth century's notable intellectual bequests to the growth of Western civilization with its legacy of virulent anti-Jewish motifs offers an important new key to understanding modern antisemitism.

Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism

A leading historian argues that historically Jews were more often voluntary migrants than involuntary refugees†‹ For millennia, Jews and non-Jews alike have viewed forced population movement as a core aspect of the Jewish experience. This involuntary Jewish wandering has been explained as the result of divine punishment, or as a response to maltreatment of Jews by majority populations, or as the result of Jews’ acceptance of their minority status perpetuating the maltreatment and forced migration. In this absorbing book, Robert Chazan explores these various accounts, and argues that Jewish population movement was in most cases voluntary, the result of a Jewish sense that there were alternatives available for making a better life.

Pre-Modern Jewish Population Movement

Refugees or Migrants

Mitchell Bryan Hart

This is the second of four volumes covering the history of Judaism from the Persian period, roughly 539-322 BCE, to the Tannaitic period, which culminated in the codification of the Mishnah around 250 CE. The volume describes both the rejection and adoption of Hellenism by Judaism.

The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 2, The Hellenistic Age

William W. Hallo

Lawrence H. Schiffman

Baruch A. Levine

A huge festschrift comprising 41 essays exploring mainly textual perspectives on Ancient Near Eastern and Jewish history and religious practice.

Robert Chazan

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