Ross Shepard Kraemer | Penn State University Press | 2020

Reviewed by Rabbi Dr. Stu Halpern

---

In 2006, a Turkish archeologist discovered a column fragment from a synagogue with a menorah depicted on it in ruins near modern-day Pamukkale. Strikingly, superimposed on the upper portion of the menorah was a cross. The scholar dated the menorah to before the fourth century and the cross to sometime after Constantine. As YU's Dr. Steven Fine has argued, what was discovered was likely an instance of Christian anti-Jewish violence. And as Ross Shepard Kraemer documents in her The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity: What Christianity Cost the Jews, there is tragically little that remains of the Jewish material from the centuries following Constantine's conversion to Christianity. Invoking today's contemporary laments over ancient religious shrines destroyed by radical Islamic fundamentalists, Kraemer reminds her readers that "rampaging monks and Christian mobs destroyed and burned temples, shrines, and synagogues; stole the precious silver and gold cult items they contained; and terrorized the persons who worshipped there." Her comprehensive volume seeks to parse what few documents and artifacts remain from this period to recreate what can be known of the Jewish community's struggles within an ascendant Christian empire. As her learned study shows, from the fourth century and on, Jews faced increasing pressure to convert to Christianity. Prompted by zealous bishops, local imperial officials issued numerous legal restrictions on Jews and levied economic hardships. They were, she writes, "progressively excluded from remunerative, prestigious professions, such as teaching and the law, and from the upper echelons of government and the military, including those that put them in positions of authority over Christians." Many of these policies, Kraemer notes, were not Jew-specific. Similar policies and pressures were exerted on other communities who clung to their traditional practices, as well as on Christian sects whose practices and beliefs differed from the majority. Due to a lack of Jewish sources from this era, Kraemer gleans what she can from Christian sources, which were often polemic and unreliable. As she summarizes, some Jews succumbed to the pressure to convert, others emigrated to areas with less harsh policies to Jews, some fought back, and others tried to leverage whatever social and political networks they had at their disposal to survive. Not surprisingly, many expressed hope that the arrival of the Jewish messiah would mark God's salvific intervention. Though conceived by Christianity as a triumphant period, as her findings demonstrate, the Christianization of the ancient Mediterranean came at a tremendous cost to many other peoples. Property was confiscated, temples were closed, and religious violence was rife. Readers of her volume will gain an essential understanding of an often overlooked historical period and be grateful that our own era has been defined by a historic and still-developing reconciliation between the Christian and Jewish communities. To read more Straus Center book reviews, click here. You can learn more about the Straus Center and sign up for our newsletter here. Be sure to also like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram and connect with us on LinkedIn.