The Talmud by Harry Freedman

Author:Harry Freedman [Freedman, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Banned, Censored and Burned. The book they couldn’t suppress
Publisher: BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING
Published: 2013-09-18T23:00:00+00:00

10

Printers and polemics

R. Hanina said: Everything comes from heaven. Except for cold draughts.1

Forced, and not so forced, conversions

By the fourteenth century the southward march of Christian armies into Islamic territory in Spain, was all but over. Granada was the only area to remain in Muslim hands. The victory of the Cross over the Crescent led to an outpouring of religious triumphalism.2 Actions to convert the Jews to Christianity increased dramatically, They were seen as not just the enemies of God and Christendom, they’d been exposed as heretics; forsaking the Bible and placing themselves under the jurisdiction of the Talmud.3

The conversion drive was not without success. At first a trickle of converts made their way towards Christianity, some out of genuine belief, others from expediency. The trend accelerated as the century wore on until, in 1391, an outbreak of riots and pogroms directed against the Jews led to a bursting of the flood gates. Suddenly the conversos, as they were called, were numbered not in their tens, hundreds or thousands, but in their myriads. About half of the Jewish population is thought to have converted.4

But the conversion policy backfired. Mainstream Spanish society was wholly unprepared for an event of such magnitude. Instead of just Jews and Christians (the Muslims had long been forced out), the population now comprised three distinct groups. Old Christians, Jews and conversos or New Christians. It didn’t bode well for the conversos.

The Old Christians resented the sudden influx of people who, almost overnight, had moved from the fringes of society to its heart and now demanded the same rights and privileges as those who had always been loyal to the Cross. What did it matter, argued the Old Christians, if these people had changed their religion? They still had Jewish blood in their veins. And wasn’t it the case, they added, that most of them still kept up their Jewish practices, as if they had never converted?

The conversos’ dilemma was that it’s one thing to submit to pressure to convert to avoid persecution and oppression. It is quite another to give up the habits, practices and beliefs of a lifetime. Many conversos started to live a dual life. They were Christians in public. But in secret, in a clandestine, underground existence they were still Jews. Stories began to circulate of converso women sweeping their houses on a Friday, when surely Saturday was the time for Sabbath preparations. When these women had finished sweeping they were seen placing pots of food in the embers of their fires, to keep it warm for the following day. And when sun set on a Friday evening, they lit candles. Some were said even to be holding secret prayer services in their homes.5

If these practices, which were nothing more than traditional Jewish Sabbath preparations, had been ordained by the Bible, there’d have been no problem. They may not have been what native born Christians did, but nor would they have intimated a rejection of Christianity. But they weren’t Bible practices. The Bible commands the Sabbath.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.