"BETWEEN CROSS AND CRESCENT"

Jewish Civilization from Mohammed to Spinoza

How a landless people, without a common language, with an ancient rabbinic tradition developed a civilization as a tiny minority under the new religious empires of East and West

Covering a span of 1000 years we will explore Jewish culture and society from the rabbinic foundations in late antiquity to the dawn of modernity in the18th century. We are especially interested in the creative encounter between a rabbinic civilization shaped centuries earlier in the ancient Near East with the new social, economic, political and intellectual environments of medieval Islam and Christendom.

 LECTURE 1

"On Th Study of Jewish History"

Professor David Ruderman University of Pennsylvania