Jewish Heroism Project

The ruins of the Temple were still smoldering when Judea burst into the flames of rebellion once again. In this episode Rav Mike discusses the final two rounds of the Roman Jewish wars. Filled with brutal bloodshed and failed messiahs, this is the time period which convinced Rome that the Jews were the indigestible element of their Empire.

R' Yehudah HaNasi redacted the Mishna but he inherited its form and content from R' Akiva. In this episode, R' Mike explores the nature of the mishna and traces its development in the hands of R' Akiva's students.

It is the end of an era. In this episode Rav Mike explores rabbinic chronology, textual evolution and socio-political context in order to illustrate the shift between the time of the Tanaim and the time of the Amoraim.

Identity is always a battle. In this episode Rav Mike explores the struggle between Christianity and Judaism in late antiquity, as well the inner struggle of Am Yisrael to preserve its unique voice in the text of the gemara. These two together will fix the topic of our conversation for some time to come.

The rise of Islam will offer new opportunities and pose new challenges for the survival of Am Yisrael. On one hand, the struggle to claim the title of true Israel which dominates life in the Christian world will be absent. On the other, the ease of cultural fusion with Islam will cause confusion about where one leaves off and the other begins.

It as been quite a long while since R' Yochanan fled the Roman siege of Jerusalem, but now after seven hundred years the Jews have been united under what can be definitively called Judaism. But the birth of unified identity is itself what invites schism into the world.

There is a debate whether great individuals shape history or history shapes them, but there is no argument about the role which R' Saadia Gaon played in shaping the Jewish Middle Ages. A mastery of poetry, polemics, Bible and language R' Saadia revolutionized Jewish literature. Nevertheless. his quest to reconcile reason and revelation sowed the seeds of conflict to come.

Spanish Jewry viewed itself as the nobility of the Jewish people, whose roots were in the legendary past. This episode traces history of the community from the fall of Rome until the rise of the Muslim Kingdom of Al Andalus and the linguistic origins of the Golden Age of Spain.

The 10th and 11th centuries of Jewish life in Al Andalus were so rich and productive that they were known as the Golden Age. The Jews struck root deeply in the soil of Muslim culture, and produced warriors, philosophers and poets. In this time of passion, it was not clear what would define Am Yisrael - the call of the spirit or the call of the flesh.

Yehudah Halevi was the poet of a generation, and perhaps the most celebrated poet of medieval Spain. He also swam against the tide of philosophical rationalism and invited his readers to experience the Torah from the inside. But how did the national poet of Jewish Spain die outside the walls of Jerusalem?

The Rambam was the second famous Moses in Jewish History. His accomplishments in Jewish law and philosophy tower over his contemporaries, and are pillars of of the Torah to this very day. Nonetheless, he was the source of great controversy in his day, igniting a struggle which ended in excommunications and book burning.

The Jewish Story: 50th Jerusalem Day by Rav Mike

The Expulsion from Spain marks a turning point in Jewish history. In addition to a national trauma which evokes the memory of the Temple's destruction, it challenges the model of identity which has served the Jews for nearly 2000 years. In this epilogue, Rav Mike takes a look back at where we have been in order to raise some thoughts about where we are headed. Stay tuned for season two!

The Jewish Story: Independence Day by Rav Mike

The origins of Ashkenazi Jewry are bound up with the rise of Christian Europe. As the kingdoms of the Middle Ages began to take shape, teachers like Rashi gave form to a kingdom of the Torah which the Jews could inhabit while living among their neighbors. But the tranquility of the early years was shattered by the horrors of the First Crudsade, and Ashkenazi Jewry would never be the same again.

The twelfth century was a time of spiritual expansion as the Tosafists transformed the Talmud and the Pietists of Ashkenaz awakened new depths of the soul. Darkness grew as well, as the Crusades rolled through Europe and the terrible new accusation of the blood libel was born. But it was specifically out of this darkness that the depths emerged.

In the thirteenth centuries the stories of Ashkenaz and Spain begin to draw together. This is the great age of Christian expansion, which brings on book burning and religious disputation. It is also the age in which the kabbalah emerges as an answer to the challenge of evil.

When faced with the choice between the cross and the sword, the Ashkenazi communities of the middle ages chose martyrdom. Why was the decision of their Spanish contemporaries so different?

When the storm broke in 1391, thousands were dead and even more converted. A new model of identity was born in the century before the expulsion, and it poses challenges that are present down to our day.

The forced conversion of tens of thousands of Jews may have seemed like a great victory for Christianity, but in reality these conversos were a ticking bomb in the heart of Christian culture. In this episode Rav Mike speaks about the lead up to the great expulsion - the last great Christian/Jewish debate of the Middle Ages, the first historical appearance of racial Jew hatred and the civil war thr...

A lot more happened in 1492 than Columbus sailing the ocean blue. Upon their marriage, Ferdinand and Isabella are determined to make newborn Spain a unified country, which means that there is no place for Am Yisrael. The tools of Inquisition and war will earn them the title of the Catholic Monarchs, and will birth the means of oppression employed by totalitarian societies down through the ages.