Season 1: Episode 25 - The Coming Storm

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Waiting is painful, forgetting is painful, but not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering. I know we need to wait, Lord, but I want to add remembering to the blessing of forgetting, because I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Episode 25, The Coming Storm. Now many people are familiar with the end of the 15th century in Spanish Jewish history, because the expulsion is really a turning point in Jewish existence altogether. But, if we're going to understand what lies at the end of our road in the Iberian Peninsula, then first we have to grasp what lies between the glory days of the 13th century and the tragedy of the end. Because the 14th century is a time of great transition for the Jews of Christian Spain.

And it too is going to culminate in fire and blood, and in mass conversion. And we're going to need to understand how it is that when faced with the choice to kiss the cross or take the sword, Ashkenazi Jewry of the Crusades and later held up the ideal of martyrdom. In fact, they built a culture out of it. While in Christian Spain of the late 14th century, and moving on into the 15th, so many lost their faith and took the cross. But we're not there yet. Now remember, the role of the Jews of Spain through most of the 13th century was bound up with war, and therefore they were secure. Secure despite the rising religious antagonism that we discussed in the burning of the Talmud at Paris and the Barcelona Disputation, that great debate between the Ramban and the apostate Pablo Christianity.

Secure despite the growing sense amongst the Christian merchant class that emerged at this time in Spain that the Jews are an unwanted element of competition, and secure even despite the constant intrigue amongst the nobles at court, who will always see the Jews as outsiders and tools of a king in his attempt to consolidate power. Now remember, wherever there's absolute power, the Jews will thrive. It's in places where there's competition from the nobility that we suffer, and that's a historical phenomenon that deserves some consideration unto itself. But either way, this security is based, as we said last week, on their being servants who are diligent, talented, loyal, and easily discarded. Now the energy of the Reconquista really comes to an end, if I'm going to put a date on it, I would say in 1265, when Alfonso X of Castile captures the city of Alicante.

There will continue to be border wars and little exchanges of land, But it's at this point that the Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula is essentially confined to the kingdom of Granada, at the southern extremity of the Iberian Peninsula, and the situation would remain so for over two centuries. And that is not good news for the Jews. Now, the Jewish courtier class that had risen during the Reconquista won't disappear entirely, because even without the full-scale energy of the crusade against the infidel, medieval kings will always have native servants like the Jews. But their position will be increasingly tenuous. And furthermore, culturally and financially, their wealth and philosophical views will create a profound gap between them and the artisans and peddlers who make up the bulk of Spanish Jewry.

Now in Aragon, one of the two major kingdoms of Christian Spain, The end of the 13th century will actually see the Jews driven wholesale from their positions of power by a combination of the nobility and the church. Remember, the nobility don't want the competition. The church believes it's forbidden for the Jews to have any authority over Christians. And therefore, the Jews won't play any significant role any longer in the colonization of conquered lands, as conquest is over for the time being, and though a handful of nobles will continue to play a crucial role all the way through, really through the explosion. From here on out, the Jews as a whole, as a community, will primarily be seen as a sponge to be squeezed dry for taxes.

Within Castile, the other major kingdom of the peninsula, the forecast was equally grim, but the turning point actually came slightly later. And in fact, toward the end of the 13th century, under the reign of Alfonso X, the Jews did quite well. Alfonso X was also known as Alfonso the Wise, due to his passionate support and love of science, culture, law, he was the monarch most openly surrounded by Jews in his day. That was perhaps because he was also the one who made the Toledo School of Translators into a semi-official institution. And the Jews flocked to him, scientists, translators, that took a prominent role in translating the philosophical and scientific works from Arabic, Greek, and Hebrew into Castilian.

And not only, by the way, did this bring a wealth of knowledge into his kingdom and into medieval Europe as a whole, it actually drove the development of what we know as the modern Spanish language. These Jews also helped Alfonso's kingdom to rest on a solid financial basis through organizing his taxes through tax arming, and therefore taking a leading role in setting up the royal treasury. He and his son, Sandra IV, ruled over Castile in the period that we spoke about in the last episode when the Zohar emerged. Now that period of mystical ferment, which if you recall was really stirred by the growing suffering of the Jewish masses under the oak of poverty and taxation, and by the defection of many of their intellectual class to philosophical skepticism, and of course the ever-present challenge of the Church, which taught that the suffering of the Jews in exile was self-imposed, that it was a product of their obstinate refusal to see the light.

So that ferment, which really came to a peak at the end of the 13th century, wasn't just mystical. It was downright messianic. It was messianic, and it needed to be dealt with. And fortunately, the Jews didn't lack for leadership. One of the most important religious leaders of Spanish Jewry at this stage was Rav Shlomo Ben Adderet, also known as the Rashba. Now, Rashba was born in Barcelona in the year 1235, and he led Spanish Jewry until his death in the year 1310. He was a student of the Ramban, Nachmanides, and Rabbeinu de Yona, the great pietist. Now, Rashba was also, in his own right, one of the most important and prolific legal scholars of his day. We have over 3,000 chuvot, responsa, that he wrote, and Lord only knows how many we don't have.

And in one of them, the Rashba describes the prophet of Avila. And even though this is a small incident in the scope of Jewish history, I believe it's a prime example of the overflow of messianic longing in his day, and it can teach us something about Jewish consciousness in his time. Now, before we go any further, it's worth pausing to consider for a moment what exactly messianism means. Because, remember, as we saw in the Barcelona disputation, The primary argument between Christianity and Judaism at this point is over whether the Messiah has already come. And, in the conversionary disaster that lies ahead in our story, the suffering of exile is going to become unbearable when the Jews begin to wonder whether they might not be wrong about this question.

Remember, pain is part of life. it becomes suffering when we lack a frame of meaning into which we can integrate it now if you've been following this story for some time then I hope you'll recall the apocalyptic literature which we spoke of at the end of the second temple period and that was so bound up with the birth of Christianity and also you might recall the story of Rabbi Akiva and the Bar Kokhla revolt and that explosion of fervent messianism which had such tremendous results perhaps disastrous might be a better word, but either way. If not, go back and check out episodes 9-11 for the earlier historical context in which Messianism rose in Am Yisrael. For now, let's think about how the Rambam formulates the Messianic belief in his 13 principles of faith that he composed in the late 12th century.

We believe and affirm that the Messiah will come. One should not think he is detained. rather, if he should tarry await him and that last part is a paraphrase of the line in the prophet Habakkuk If he tarries wait for him because he will surely come He will not delay. Can you feel the tension? He's not coming, but I know he will. No, surely he's not delayed, but I'm sure waiting. When will he be here? You know, Gersh M'shalom, the great scholar of Jewish mysticism, In fact, the scholar who created the field of the academic study of Jewish mysticism claims that there are essentially two types of messianism in Am Yisrael. What he calls restorative and utopian catastrophic. Fun word, right? The restorative model is the one that you're probably familiar with.

You know, that's what envisions the messianic age as a return to an older golden age, like the Davidic kingdom, for instance. Now, that's revolutionary, but it occurs within the confines of tradition. This is what my good friend Yishai Fleischer calls in our day progressive restorationism. We long to move forward into the opportunity to rebuild our past. But not in a passive sense, but rather actually to create a future that's worthy of the past, which we've inherited. But either way, we adopt our models from within tradition. That's the restorative model. The Etobian catastrophic, which he also actually calls apocalyptic, He envisions a rupture of tradition in the inauguration of an entirely new era.

And this, if you recall in our episode last week, when the great mystic Abel Abulafia brought out his prophetic Kabbalah, is when he introduced the deeply antinomian, the law-breaking side of the messianic hope. So, the former model, the restorative model, is basically how Am Yisrael retains hope in the face of the long suffering of exile. We're going to make it home. And even though you can't ever really go home, when we get back to our land, we will build a vision of the home which is worthy of the past that we've inherited. The latter, the apocalyptic, is the explosive turn of events that occurs when Am Yisrael decides that they have had enough. and so in a tshuva of the Rashba entitled concerning the prophet of Avila the Rashba addresses the messianic fervor that swept through Am Yisrael in the Iberian Peninsula in the year 1295 apparently the prophet, who was both ignorant and illiterate had visions and dreams in which an angel dictated to him the book of wondrous wisdom and then proceeded to guide him in writing an extensive commentary on his own work And though the work hasn't survived, the Rashpa says in this shuva that a correspondent had sent him a synopsis of its 50 chapters.

Now, before we get to the particularly Jewish element of that story, we should perhaps embed this behavior in the context of the general upwelling of mystics and prophets who claimed to tell the future at the turn of the 14th century. Yes, it's true, it was happening all over, especially amongst the Franciscan spiritualists, who were really attempting to lead even their church, much less their flock, back to a more pure conception of Christianity. Listen, in the Middle Ages, life was hard. We say Shverzina, it's hard to be a Jew, but the truth is, in the Middle Ages, it was just hard to be. And the utopian visions of religion seemed very distant within feudal society. And so these visions, these messianic aspirations, offered hope.

And without hope, there is no life. however as the Roshba says there the people of Israel heirs to the true faith the true seed of Jacob the man of truth would rather bear the yoke of Galut and its vicissitudes than believe in anything without proper and prolonged investigation in order to separate the dross from the sterling truth is he talking about the prophet of Avila or is he talking about Christianity did you catch how many times he used the word truth even when that which is told to them appears to be substantiated by signs and portents and reliable testimony for the people of the God of Avraham love the way of truth. Now, the prophet Avila might just be an interesting but insignificant incident in the flow of Jewish time, if we didn't have another source that speaks of him as well.

And that source is Abner of Burgos, a physician and communal leader of his day. Now, Avner reports that actually there were two prophets, not just one, who announced that the blast of the Messiah's horn would summon the Jews out of exile on the last day of the month of Tammuz in the year 5055. That's 1295 in the Christian calendar. And according to his count, the Jews believed wholeheartedly in their words and began to prepare themselves for the day, fasting, prayer, giving of tzedakah, of charity. and on the morning of the big day itself all of the Jews assembled early in their synagogues for prayer dressed in white as if it were Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and they began to actually chant penitential prayers when suddenly out of nowhere crosses appeared all over their clothing not just on the clothing which they were wearing but even on the clothing that they left behind in their chests at home pandemonium in the shul.

The people were so shaken that Abner reports that for the next week in his role as a physician, he was counseling people in their fear. Many thought it was a symptom of a mass insanity. Now, once this wave passed, he remained shaken, because Abner had long been plagued by a question which we'll really go into in depth in the coming episode, but it's a question which plagued many of the Jews of his day. And that question is this. Does one have an obligation to investigate the truth of their religion? Meaning, if one believes that God reveals his will to humanity, and one is then in the midst of a competitive market of revealed religions, one believes in God, one believes God reveals his will to humanity, one believes they've inherited the true will of God, but, hey, my neighbor says that he's inherited the true will of God.

if I'm a God-believer who believes that God reveals himself to people, then shouldn't I actually look into what my neighbor thinks? Not only shouldn't I, but is it my obligation? And like I said, we're going to look deeper at that question in the next episode, but for now we should know that Avner took that question quite seriously. And it took more than 25 years from the incident of the prophet of Avila and the crosses on the clothing, until he reports that the figure of the Messiah began to appear to him in his dreams, summoning him to abandon his faith, which indeed he did. And Avner became Alfonso of Valdolid and quickly joined the ranks of the apostate Jews who used their knowledge in an attempt to convert their former brothers.

It'll actually be Avner, or sorry, Alfonso, who in the year 1336 convinces Alfonso XI, that's the king, don't get confused, to ban the Aleinu prayer. This is a prayer which I hope you're familiar with. It comes at the end of more or less every Jewish service. And it was composed, according to our tradition, in the 3rd century by the Amora Rav. And Avner convinced the king to ban this prayer because he claimed that it was an anti-Christian polemic. As a result, there's a line in that prayer that says, they bend knee to emptiness and pray to a God who will not answer, which is cut out of many sidurim, many prayer books, to this very day. Now, we'll speak more about the inheritance that Avner left to the apostate Jews who would wage war against their brothers in the coming episode after the storm breaks.

But for now, Am Yisrael has not been abandoned. You should know that in addition to the Rashba, at the turn of the 14th century, he was joined in his leadership by Rabbeinu Asher ben Yechiel, who is also known simply as Rabbeinu Asher, or as Larosh. Larosh was born in the city of Cologne, which was then part of the Holy Roman Empire, and he was the student of the great Tosafist, Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, the Maram Mirothenburg. And really, Larosh is the culmination of the entire line of the Torah of the Tosafists. He held all of their knowledge which was good news for the Jews because life in classic Ashkenazi lands had gone from bad to worse I know you might think when you listen to that last episode that it couldn have gotten any worse but it does We'll discuss the decline of Jewry in the French and German lands and how their center shifts toward Poland in the coming series of the Jewish story.

A little plug there, that there's going to be a second series, which God willing will take us from that shift from Germany into Poland all the way to the rise of the modern state of Israel. but for now, just know that in the wake of the persecutions which culminated in the expulsion of perhaps as many as 100,000 Jews from France the Rosh made his way to Spain at the beginning of the 14th century and he brought the Torah of Ashkenaz with him now the Rosh was still alive and well when the Rosh arrived can you imagine what it was like when they met? and he recommended the Rosh to the post of the Rabbi of Toledo where he served the community there amidst great poverty until his death in 1328. And it was these two Torah giants who joined together to fight another of the factors which laid the groundwork for the tragedy of 1391.

We touched on political disempowerment and the social disruption that came with the end of the Reconquista, and we identified the rising impatience with exile that could undermine the faith in traditional promises of redemption, and now it's time to talk philosophy. Now the Roshpa was a student of the Ramban of Nachmanis and from the Ramban he'd inherited a pragmatic approach to philosophy. Meaning what? He personally saw no reason to look outside of the field of Torah for wisdom. But he knew that philosophy was deeply rooted in Spanish Jewish culture and there were many good holy people who were also philosophers. Therefore, he didn't take a stand of active opposition to its study. Not so the Rosh.

who was famous for thanking God for having been saved from the influence of Aristotle and even boasted of possessing no knowledge of anything outside of the Torah. So, the Rosh actually says clearly that philosophy, because it's based on critical research rather than religion, which rests on tradition, cannot coexist with the Torah. He says, in the words of Mishla and Proverbs, none that go to her may return. It's deadly. And this wasn't just a theoretical position. The Rosh was personally horrified on his arrival in Spain to see the inroads that philosophical skepticism had made in all but the most pious. Now, we mentioned in a previous episode when we spoke about the Rambam the impact of the thought which Ibn Rashid also known as Averos the Arabic commentaries on Aristotle had made on Jewish culture in Spain.

They brought Aristotle to an accessible form, but, well, it's not the time for an analysis of the merits of his philosophical approach, but you do need to understand the core of the issue. Ibn Rashid was famous for saying something which is actually a quote from Aristotle, which is, truth does not contradict truth. Speaking about the nature of philosophical truth and religious truth, unlike the Rosh, he felt they went together. and truth is we saw a religious model for this already, a Jewish religious model. It was Rav Sajid Gaon, if you recall. He adhered to the idea that there is only one truth, but that there are two ways to reach it, through philosophy and through religion, so much so that he did believe that the obligation of one who adhered to a revealed religion was to use their rational mind in order to clarify doctrine.

But Averroes was slightly different, because for him, philosophy must be the standard of any discourse. therefore any conflict when it came to understanding matters of religion would be resolved through the tools of rational philosophical demonstration meaning push comes to shove philosophy rules and by giving primacy to philosophy and by the way also denying basic doctrines like reward and punishment the eternality of the individual soul which is deeply bound up with the notion of reward and punishment the significance of filling commandments which is also bound up with the other two a less sophisticated and far more destructive version of his philosophy began to emerge amongst the cultural elite.

Basically, that man is born, destined to die, and that everything in between is vain and meaningless. Now I want you to just picture why this was so important to the courtier class. Life was hard, as it was. To try to fit in was never simple. but to be a Jew who can't eat the meat of his master or drink his wine or have this chivalrous dalliance with the ladies was a deep challenge now here you are sitting at the table and the woman next to you her perfume is oh so fine and the meat smells so good but no, as a Jew I resist and yet in our discourse yesterday we were speaking about the insignificance of actions and how a true adherence to the divine is really about conceptions and philosophical beliefs, and, hmm, that wine looks quite fine, and she is quite pretty, and I'm awfully hungry, and, well, you know, my friend told me that God doesn't care about my actions.

You see where this is going? It's a maelstrom of confusion. And you can imagine now why when a Jew steeped in this type of thought is going to be forced to choose death or apostasy, he might just take the easier route. now outside of the Jewish story you should know that Averis becomes the most widely condemned thinker in the medieval Christian world in fact Averisism is basically synonymous with atheism in medieval Christian thought and his thought will be largely preserved by the Jews now of course for the Jews of this period the controversy will focus on the philosophical works of the Rambam and so therefore once again in the beginning of the 14th century, a second round of the Rambam controversy will erupt.

We spoke about the first, let's just say a word about the second. Once again, letters and accusations will fly back and forth amongst leading scholars, defenders of philosophy, accusers that it's the spearhead for skepticism and atheism, and Israel is again divided into camps around the works of this great legal and philosophical master. So in hopes of stemming the tide of skepticism, and perhaps in healing the breaches amongst the Jews, the Rashba gave in to the Rosh's push and issued a ban, a cherem. This cherem was issued in 1305 against, I quote, any member of the community who, being under the age of 25, shall study the works of the Greeks on natural science or metaphysics, whether in the original language or in translation.

Now he left out the works of Jewish philosophers, specifically the Rambam, as well as the study of medicine. I mean, where would the Jews be today without doctors? and it seems that his hope was to prevent young men from turning away from the Torah which he saw to be, I quote, above these sciences how can any man dare to judge between human wisdom based on analogy, proof and thought and the wisdom of God between whom and us there is no relation nor similarity will man, says the Rashmah who is embodied in a vessel of clay judge God, his creator to say, God forbid, what is possible and what he cannot do Truly this sometimes leads to utter heresy. Now, it's worth it to just review in short, from our previous discussion of round one of the Rambam Controversy, why the traditionalists were opposed to the philosophers.

Now, there were three reasons, and they're going to be relevant as the pressure toward conversion ramps up at the end of the 14th century. First was theological. The philosophers denied miracles. They saw prophecy as a purely natural phenomenon. and they rejected traditional stories of redemption. That basically undermines the entire authority of the Torah. Number two, textual. The philosophers were engaged in indiscriminate allegorization of the Torah and they denied historicity of the biblical characters and their events. You know, there was a second band that was pronounced against all who, I quote, say about Avraham and Sarah that in reality they symbolize matter and form, that the twelve tribes of Israel are an allegory for the twelve planets, etc.

Some of them say that even everything in the Torah from Brashy to the beginning of the law is entirely allegorical. The last was practical and this is where I believe the oomph really lies that the philosophers were seen to be lax in the observance of the commandments But I want to add that at this stage of development for Spanish Jewry there was a fourth unstated concern and that's existential fear. But, like its predecessors, this Barcelona ban was ineffective because it was unenforceable. The rationalists carried the day in this controversy, at least until the crisis came. But we're going to get there later. For now, there's one more critical personality to discuss here in the midst of the 14th century.

The Rosh, thank God, had a number of sons. But certainly the best known amongst them was Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher, who is generally known simply as the Tur. Born in 1269, the Tur came to Spain with his father and remained the Rosh's chief student until the day he died. But rather than fulfilling his father's post as Rabbi of Toledo, Rabbi Yaakov focused his energies purely on Torah, all the while living in great poverty. Legend says that he couldn't even afford special clothes for Shabbat and the Holy Days. But his absolute devotion to Torah brought incredible wealth to Am Yisrael. His first work was a digest of his father of the Rosh's notes on the Gemara, which is known as Piskirosh, can be found in the back of your standard edition of the Gemara.

And then, using this as the basis, he brought together the Rambam's Mishneh Torah, that was his great legal code, and the works of the Rashva into one comprehensive legal code. Suddenly, the parallel tracks of halachic development that were driven by the works of the Spanish masters on one hand, and the Tosfis in Ashkenaz on the other, were reunited in what he called the Arba Turim, the four rows, which is a reference to the four rows of stones that were on the breastplate of the high priest when he went into the temple. And this Arba Turim, really known by most people as the Tur, remained the standard code for both Sephardim and Ashkenazim up to the appearance of the great Shukhan Aruch, the set table in the late 16th century.

And it's still studied by scholars and students this very day. I'm looking at it on my shelf right now. In fact, the first complete edition was printed in 1475, which is only a few decades after the invention of the printing press. And it remained the most popular Hebrew work, second only to the Bible, all the way through the 15th century. But what actually prompted Rabbi Yaakov Ben Asher to devote his life to such a monumental task? First, it's worth considering cultural momentum, or at least just momentum, personal and cultural. Meaning, perhaps he felt it was the hand of God that had brought he and his father to Spain and in their persons arranged an encounter which could reunite east and west, so to speak, Spain and Ashkenaz.

It's also important to know that codification was all the rage in Spain at the time. As the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile moved slowly toward consolidation and then ultimately unification into what we will know as Spain proper, their law codes became increasingly articulated and uniform. Alfonso X, who we mentioned at the beginning, was famous for publishing what's called the Seven-Part Code, which was the first uniform Castilian code of law, that in addition to legislation, like the Tour, addresses questions of philosophical, moral, and theological topics, although the Tour is pretty cut and dried. That code, by the way, was not too good for the Jews, but we'll leave it aside for now. Context and speculation aside, in his introduction, the Tour says that he undertook such an immense work in order to establish a code which was suited to the requirements of his time.

He says that the Rambam's Mishnahh Torah, which had been composed only 150 years or so before, was basically out of date. It was a compilation of all the laws contained in the entire Talmud, and therefore it contained too much material that was irrelevant to daily use. And that's why the four sections of the Torah deal purely with practical life as it is lived in his world. These four sections are, in brief, the Orchaim, the way of life, which deals with the laws of a Jew's daily life, basically from the moment you wake up all the way through when you go to bed, prayers and other requirements, and then it does an iteration through Shabbat and the holidays. The second section is called Yore Deah, the teacher of knowledge, and deals primarily with the laws of what's permitted and what's forbidden.

then there's Eben HaEzer, the stone of help and those are the laws of marriage, divorce and family life and finally, Choshen Mishpat the breastplate of judgment and that's a code of civil and criminal law these four sections you'll notice, completely leave out the issues of the temple the sacrifices, questions of ritual purity the laws governing agriculture in the land of Israel, things which Rambam's Mishnahh Torah were filled with the Tur is the law that one needs to survive and thrive in exile. And in order to make sure that the Jews could fulfill that law, the Torah was the first to break the wholeness of the Torah. Just a quick thumbnail sketch of the development. If you recall, the Mishnahh is the portable homeland.

This is the framework for the discussion of the oral law down through the ages, and it deals with everything. The Gemara is the first stage articulation of that discussion, and then subsequent codification into what we called a cultural matrix. It's not just a discussion anymore. It's a sort of freeze-dried Jewish life that you can drop down into any environment and it will spring into being. After this we had the Ge'onim, these great masters who saw the Gemara as a source of authority, but they themselves continued the process of question and answer, which made sure that the Lacha dealt with life as it was actually lived. the riff began in North Africa in the 10th century the process of boiling down the Gemara which was too big to seek out practical answers but he kept the structure of the Gemara if you recall he boiled out all the non-legal matter and brought things to their point but kept the structure the same it was the Rambam in the 12th century who broke up the Gemara and organized it into 14 clear conceptual categories and thus broke the structure but kept the wholeness.

It would wait for the Torah to lop off whole sections of the Torah in service of practical need. Now, that's tragic. And it lies amongst the tragedies and triumphs that fill out the rest of the 14th century for Am Yisrael. Now, we'll revisit the questions and issues and events that happen outside of Spain in the second series of the Jewish story, which merit to begin it soon, but for now, we're moving rapidly toward a dark period of struggle for Spanish Jewry, because the blood, fire, and apostasy of 1391 are right at our doorstep. And we've seen the contributing factors that will conspire to break the backs of so many suffering Jews. The crushing sociopolitical situation, the rising religious polemics, the corrosive influence of philosophical skepticism and yet we've also seen the bones of health peeking through this body as well that upwelling of mystical thought embodied in the Zohar has now been joined by a majestic work of legal guidance the tour and it will be these two lights lights of the law and the spirit that will guide us through the darkness ahead I just want to thank you people I want to thank all the supporters of this show it's an amazing thing that there are over 30 people out there who give their hard earned money to keep this material free and widely distributed if you want to join them go right now to www.patreon.com and you can find my M.

Foyer page and just hit donate for a little per podcast support or if that's too complicated you can find the page on my Rav Mike at Facebook I also want to thank the folks at the Land of Israel Network for getting this out to so many people I want to thank the people at the Pardes Institute that's pardes.org.il for the opportunity to reach so many wonderful Jews I want to thank Skolmyako, skolmyako.com for giving me a home and I want to thank you for listening I'm Rav Mike Foyer and this is The Jewish Story Thank you.