Spanning space and time…

The history of Judaism has woven itself into more than one geographic region, into more than one culture, into more than one people, or language.

Our understandig of what Jewish history is,  must necessarily cast us out into understanding a range of times, people and places, of studying intertestamental literature ( such as Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament, Rabbinic literature) and of visiting time periods as far back as 1500 BC.

The Jewish diaspora began with the Assyrian conquest and continued on a much larger scale  with the Babylonian conquest. Jews were also widespread throughout the Roman Empire, and this carried on to a lesser extent in the period of Byzantine rule in the central and eastern Mediterranean.  In 638 CE the Byzantine Empire lost control of the Levant. The Arab Islamic Empire conquered Jerusalem and the lands of Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt.

The Golden Age of Jewish culture in Spain coincided with the Middle Ages in Europe, a period of Muslim rule throughout much of the Iberian Peninsula. During that time, Jews were generally accepted in society and Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life blossomed.