62. Jewish Life in the Dark Ages (Jewish History Lab) 

read "the phsician" by noah gordon. a young english doctor assumes a jewish identity, joins jewish trading cravans to persia, to learn medicine there. it touches on all aspects of this lecture. terrific book

Abramson (All): Great series. FYI: Origin of European legal oddities is the first principle of European civilizational law: individual sovereignty. Meaning these are outlets to circumvent the problem of the absence of discretionary authority, where the exercise of any authority violates the first principle of the law and produces an incentive for retaliation against the authority. Unlike the river valley civilizations, where production, defense, policing, taxation and administration could be concentrated, Europeans couldn't produce equal political efficiency given the territory. So it took Mediterranean trade, Lotharingian trade routes, north sea trade, and Atlantic trade to pay the higher cost of political organization. Conversely, Jewish homogeneity and interdependence for survival made possible by the absence of responsibility for territorial conquest, domestication, and defense allowed the formation of collective and judicial authority without undermining the production of internal order. So, Europeans had the opposite organizing problem that originated in the west Indo-European development of a universal militia funded by families. In simplistic terms, the origin of European civilization is that of entrepreneurial warriors who merged horse, bronze, and wheel on the steppe, then used the superiority of that social and military order to conquer most of Eurasia despite the absence of centralized productivity made possible by the river valleys of the flood river civilizations. We see this in the universal consistency of the means by which pirates organize: democratic government, a division of power, and the 'corporation' of warriors. Or in trivial terms "conquerors and colonizers require different organizing principles to domesticate territory and people prior to the organization of production and trade. The 'entrepreneurship of violence' necessary for such conquest, colonization, and domestication produces a different shareholder agreement from that of the traders that follow them. We can see the limit of the hierarchy of these organizations failing in the steppe, desert, and arctic for the same reason. An analogy to the three bears. Only certain territories favor certain organizing principles. And it explains why the steppe and desert produced the waves of the conquest of river civilizations that caused the low trust civilization of the middle east by the constant rotation of power. And conversely the higher trust Indians, next higher trust of east Asians, and the highest trust of north europeans. In other words, we are all the product of our geography combined with path dependency of our founding people's organizing principles. It's kind of beautiful in retrospect.

Great lecture.

Just Google dark ages and Islam.. You'll see what we don't know before. During dark ages Islam flourishes with knowledge which becomes foundation to our modern world. I was surprised myself how this fact was hidden or untold to the public. Jews translated a lot of knowledge from Arabic into Hebrew during this era.

POSSIBLE ERROR? On the map behind you, Ragusa is across from Bari. I have been to Ragusa in Sicily, near Siracusa (Syracuse in English). I am unaware of a Ragusa on the location shown on the map behind you. Is it a city with the same name or is it a map error?

So glad for this education.

Not only the Jews had their own legal system, but other communities and cities had that too.

Happy to live in the XXI century, but curious about the Dark Ages.

T. H. White pointed out that trial by combat in which litigants could hire champions is about as fair as contemporary systems in which litigants hire lawyers. Either way, wealth has an unfair advantage. Fascinating lecture as always!

This is fantastic 👍

Thank you, Rabbi Abramson

This ones for Mrs. Tessier

thank you

Concisely informative and reliably objective.

Rhone river begins in Switzerland ...

Very interesting! Any theories as to why or when Jews left Italy/elsewhere and settled in Rhine/Germany?

Did Jews influence Law changes in Europe?

Exactly what I wanted.

From what I know so far, this was the hardest period for the Jewish people before the Holocaust.

Ok, but seperating jewish history from that of a main civilization seems pointless. There is no rivalry. European history has a Middle Ages section, only because there was enlightment beforehand, then the oustanding Renaissance awterwards, a High never reached by any other Civilization. In all spheres : Science, Arts, Philosophy, Literature. Jews took a part, rather minor at the beginning. The Rabbinic culture, however great and advaced, wasn't competing. Besides, not all of European Civilization was backward at the time. Lawlessness or primitive law defined some parts of Europe, but was was not mainstream or lasting. The Church generally opposed Barbarity.

What is it you who dislike his videos dislike in them? The one common denominator is his and our existence. That’s the height of antisemitism 😞

It was “dark” to them cause the Moors ruled Europe and civilized it.

Today I learned when we started in the schmatta trade 😎

THE COUNTRY NAME ARABIA HAS ANY TO DO WITH THE NAME RABBI?!!AY...MIGHT////