Season 1: Episode 27 - The Converso Problem

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There are many ways to understand time and history, and we've been spending a lot of time talking about it. But one thing is for sure, time flows like a river. The past is behind us, and it's not coming back. And because of this, there are critical moments, points of no return, beyond which things will never be the same. And we are about to enter into such a point in the history of the Jews of Spain. I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Episode 27, The Converso Problem Reuven, the son of Reuben Nisim of Girona, the great commentator, a survivor of 1391, wrote the following in the margin of his father's Torah scroll. Wail holy and glorious Torah and put on black raiment, for the expounders of your lucid words perished in the flames.

For three months, the conflagrations spread throughout the holy congregations of the exile of Israel and Svarad. The fate of Sodom and Amorah overtook the holy communities of Castile, Toledo, Seville, Mallorca, Cordoba, Valencia, Barcelona, Tarega, Girona, and 60 neighboring cities and villages. The sword and slaughter, destruction, forced conversions, captivity and spoliation were the order of the day. Many were sold as slaves to the Ishmaelites. 140,000 were unable to resist those who so barbarously forced them and gave themselves up to impurity. A state of devastation reigns amongst the Jews of Christian Spain at the beginning of our story. Whole communities have disappeared, some converted, or some simply destroyed.

The survivors are wandering bewildered, wondering what has happened and what the future may hold. But, despite their pain, this confusion isn't limited to the Jews. Because the massive wave of conversions during and after the rise of 1391 may have seemed to be a huge victory for Christianity in its battle with the Jews, but it created a huge problem as well. And as early as 1393, only two years after the height of the massacres, King John of Aragon wrote to his representatives in a number of his most important cities with the concern that it had now become all but impossible to tell a Christian convert from a Jew. And he feared that many of these conversos, or new Christians, as they were now called, were Jews in all but name and Christians in nothing but form.

And you know, the very idea of calling these people new Christians tells us that the events of 1391 had created an unprecedented situation. Remember, throughout the most brutal phases of the struggle between Christianity and Judaism in the Middle Ages, the official Church policy has never been forced conversion. Since way back at the end of the 6th century, in the time of Pope Gregory I, who becomes known as the Great, the model has been conversion through persuasion, because the Church understood that the likelihood of producing good Christians through forced conversions was pretty low. But now we have thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps, as the Ron's son said, hundreds of thousands, whole neighborhoods and communities which virtually overnight have become Christian, or at least appear to have done so.

And the old Christians, as they begin to style themselves, are less interested in the nuances of canon law that indicate forced converts are nonetheless Christian, than in the lived reality of this foreign element, which is now no longer a stranger living with them side by side as they were when they were Jews but is actually an element in their own communal mix furthermore, let's not forget this question is not purely religious because everything that had made these new Christians valuable servants when they were still Jews still true many were wealthy especially considering how the processes that led to conversions that we spoke about last week affected the courtier class more than any other.

And, furthermore, all were still the loyal, talented, and diligent servants who've been so essential to the kings of Christian Spain up until now. Except, now they're Christians, and not Jews, and in theory, not as easily discarded. And, furthermore, there are no longer any legal constraints on their rise, as there had been when they were openly Jews, And trust me when I tell you that the new Christians began to rapidly ascend to the highest ranks of Spanish society, and in doing so, they became a competitive threat, basically to everyone except the most powerful of the old Christian world. And thus, the tide of conversions that began in 1391 planted a cultural time bomb within Christian society.

But there's going to be one more surge before the dam bursts. in general the beginning of the 15th century was an incredibly unsettled time frankly throughout all Europe but certainly in the Iberian Peninsula the papacy was struggling under what's known as the Western Schism that had set rival popes against each other since 1377 and here in Spain Benedict XIII is the antipope he'd retreated to his home country of Aragon in hopes of shoring up his fading power against his rival who claimed his legitimacy through his base in Rome. Castile was ruled by a boy king, John II, though in truth power really lay with his mother and his regent, older brother Don Fernando, while Aragon was actually in the hands of the aging king Martin I.

And this was the environment in which Vincent Ferrer, a popular preacher, and what we would really call in our day a revivalist, emerged. He began to go from town to town in Castile, followed by bands of flagellants who beat themselves into a frenzy during his sermons. Now, a word about flagellants, because this idea of self-mortification may seem pretty grotesque to modern ears, even though, by the way, it's still happening out there in certain worlds. If you've ever seen the Shiite ritual around the Kabla Stone, or actually not at the Kabla Stone itself, but around the Hajj, you can look into it. Nevertheless, the idea of beating oneself bloody as an act of piety or penance was a powerful phenomenon in the medieval world.

And though by this point, at the beginning of the 15th century, the Church had already begun to condemn the behavior as heresy and even burn some of its adherents at the stake, it was alive and well following Vincent Ferrer's sermons. And of course, his calls to Christians to repent were bound up with incitement against the Jews. And he went from town to town playing on Christians' fear, in particular their fear that was born of the confusion of identities that the converso problem had created. Many are thought to be the children of Jews but are actually Christians, he said. Many Christian men believe their wives' children to be their own when they are actually by Jewish fathers. The solution to this dilution of the purity of Christian blood was to purify the Christian faith through repentance, he said.

and, of course, by getting rid of the Jews and their Judaizing influence. And so, everywhere he went, he forced the Jews to attend his sermons. And several times, he actually went into the synagogue itself, and at the end of his frenzied preaching, dedicated anew as a church. Again, something which the hierarchy of the church condemned, but which, post facto, they recognized as effective. And wherever he went, the Jews were driven from their homes, and sometimes actually from the entire Jewish quarter, left to wander or find residents in the poor quarters of the city that had been abandoned. His goal was to draw an absolute line between the Christians and the Jews, and his methods undermined the 20 years of recovery the Castilian Jewry had achieved since the devastation of 1391.

The tide of conversions began to rise again. And it wasn't just a religious movement, because the government of Castile began to adopt his vision, passing laws which once again forbid the Jews from farming taxes from holding government posts dressing like Christians, pursuing professions living amongst Christians and underneath it all there is this fear of misanagiation the mingling of races an echo of the racial ideas that we're going to actually discuss toward the end of this episode and they began to be codified in the harsh penalties that were handed out for any sexual interaction between Christians and Jews It clear in the preamble of one of the printed versions of these laws that their primary goal wasn simply to crush the Jews It was to completely remove the old and new Christians from their influence in order that they live as better Christians.

Now, the total banishment of the Jews from Castile, which is a logical extension of that vision, was not mentioned. At least, not yet. Meanwhile, Martin I, of Aragon dies. And the complex web of family relationships between the kingdoms that make up Castile and Aragon did not allow for a smooth succession. And in 1412 what is known as the Compromise of Casper occurred. A group of nobles presided over by the church came together to choose a new king for Aragon. And of course the wheeling and dealing was intense. Everybody's got their interest. And of course it's good to be the king. And if it's good to be the king, it's good to choose. They were unable to reach his decision, and as they were in deadlock, the representatives finally settled on Don Fernando of Castile, and it was Vincent Ferrer who put him forward as a candidate.

And so overnight, Don Fernando became Fernando I, King of Aragon, and Vincent Ferrer went from penitent preacher to political powerhouse. Now, it was during his days as a wandering preacher that Ferrer meant Yehoshua Halorki, who we spoke about last week in his correspondence with Paul of Burgos, who had been his teacher, when we took apart all the reasons that the oppression of 1391 led to such mass conversion. What we didn't mention is that Halorki had gone on to become the Pope's own personal physician. And now, after 20 years of inner struggle that had really been sparked by his correspondence with Paul of Burgos, it was Ferrer who finally persuaded Halorki to embrace Christianity. And after he converted, he came out swinging.

He turned to his master, the Pope, who I'm sure was overjoyed to now have a Jewish doctor who actually took communion, and suggested that the time was finally ripe to deal a death blow to the remaining Jews of Aragon, and that the means to do so was the tried and true method of public disputation. Now, the record seems to indicate that the Pope was interested in a modest affair, either because he wasn't sure they win or I don't know what, but Halorki, who was now known as Geronimo de Santa Fe, pushed for something big. And in November of 1412, every Jewish community of Aragon and Catalonia received a written command from the Pope himself to send two or more scholars to the papal court at Tortosa to receive instruction in the Christian faith.

this became what's known today as the Disputation at Tortosa the official opening date of the dispute was January 15th, 1413 and its verbal and written phases actually lasted nearly two years that makes it the longest of any of the church mandated debates held during the Middle Ages though in truth to call it a debate is a bit of a misnomer because this wasn't like the Rambans stand back in Barcelona in 1263 which I hope you recall, when his free speech was protected and he spoke so well that at the end King John of Aragon declared he'd never heard a wrong cause so well defended. At Tortosa, every time the Jews would try to defend themselves and speak as if they stood on equal footing, they were shut down with charges of heresy, which by the way was punishable by death.

And the Pope's introductory words to the whole affair really made it clear that this wasn't an intellectual struggle whose goal was the revelation of truth. It was an opportunity, an opportunity to impress on the remaining leaders of Spanish Jewry the truth of Christianity. And the Pope had just the Jew to do it, the apostate Geronimo de Santa Fe, the one-time Yahushua Halorqui. Now, ranging against him, were the leading sages of Aragon. Many of them were students of Rav Hazekrescas, who we discussed in last week's episode. Among them were Zerachia Levi, Rabbi Moshe Ibn Abbe's Prophet Duran, and, perhaps best known, Rabbi Yosef Albo, whose book Sefer Ikarim, the Book of Principles, was actually written in the aftermath of the debate in an attempt to try to consolidate some of the philosophical and theological insights that came out.

Picture the scene. The Jews, in classic medieval fashion, hunched over, limped in, wearing their badges of shame. which were once again mandated by law, crippled from the devastation of 1391 and the ongoing wave of violence that followed Vincent Ferrer's preaching wherever he went, while the Pope and his entourage were dressed to impress. Don Vidal de Cavalleria, the Jew's chief spokesman, because he was the expert in court protocol, actually described the scene as such. And we found the whole large court arrayed in embroideries. And there were seventy seats for the dignitaries called cardinals and archbishops and bishops, all garbed in golden vestments, and all the great ones of Rome were there, and the men from the city and princes near unto a thousand people.

Awe-inspiring and terrifying. The apostate opened the battle with verses from the first chapter of Isaiah. Come, let us reason together, it says, says the Lord. Be your sins like crimson, they can turn snow white. Be they red as dyed wool, they can become like fleece. If then you agree and give heed, you will eat the good things of the earth. But if you refuse and disobey, you will be devoured by the sword. For it was the Lord who spoke. You hear the threat in there? You hear the assumption of sin and the need for repentance? which is equivalent to accepting the truth of Christianity. So, DeSanta Fe said that he'd come to prove that the prophecies of the Messiah that were written in Jewish scriptures were fulfilled in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and he offered 24 theses to which these rabbis must now reply.

Don't be nervous, I'm not going to go through them all. But you should know that the argument specifically over the Messiah raged for almost two months, focusing on rabbinic texts, real and forged. Why forge? Because for more than a century, the Church had been accumulating manuscripts of Midrashim, of rabbinic homilies, which they claimed proved that even the rabbis themselves felt that the Messiah had already come. These works were by the apostate Abner Burgos, who we spoke about briefly, the book Pugio Fidei, The Dagger of Faith, written by the Dominican friar Raymond Martini, and that was central to DeSanta Fe's arguments. He also quoted directly from manuscripts of the Midrash itself. But every time the Jews asked to see the manuscripts of their own sacred texts that he claimed prove Christianity's truth, the apostate refused, said that he didn't have them on him, that they were far away, he would send them, but not once were they produced.

Now the Jews struggled mightily to defend themselves, and to carry their points, all without endangering their lives through accusations of heresy. Nevertheless, occasionally they crossed the line. When Geronimo de Santa Fe cited the Midrash that teaches that the Messiah was born on the day that the temple was destroyed, he claimed that his opponents must agree that this referred to Jesus of Nazareth. The rabbis, of course, rejected this out of hand, and they replied that the Midrash meant that though the Messiah had indeed been born nearly 2,000 years ago, or from our perspective from there, 1,400, when the temple was destroyed, Nevertheless, he was alive and waiting to come in the time of redemption.

At this point, the Pope interrupted and expressed serious doubt about anyone's ability to live so long. And Astrak Halevi, one of the Jewish leaders, whose name is known to us really only from the transcripts of this debate, actually replied, Lord and Pope, you believe so many improbabilities about your Messiah. Let us believe this single one regarding ours. the verbal arguments of the first phase were summed up by the head of the Dominican order who claimed that the Jews had been defeated but in their obstinacy refused to concede now remember, why does it matter if they concede? because this is conversion through persuasion not compulsion although the boundary seems a little gray therefore, the whole debate had to begin again but this time, it was going to be as an exchange of written arguments in order as he said to put an end to the variation of the Jews His experience of trying to get five rabbis to argue the same point was probably a bit frustrating And so the downhill slide continued for nearly two years Now remember, this whole time all of the communities of Aragon were left leaderless.

Not just leaderless, but prey to Vincent Ferrer's preaching, the oppressive laws that had been passed, and the propaganda of the church. They were already claiming victory after the first month of argument, and that was crushing. And when finally the last round of argument over the heresy specifically of the Talmud came to an end, Pope Benedict declared an absolute victory, and together with the king, once again passed laws against the Jews identical to those that Vincent Ferrer had instigated back in Castile, except he added a whole new level of censorship to the Talmud itself. Now, even though, within a very short time, a matter of years, new and far more liberal kings, Alfonso V and John II, were going to take the thrones of Aragon and Castile and effectively repeal all of this anti-Jewish legislation.

And that the Pope in Rome, Martin IV, would actually revoke all of Benedict's edicts more than happy to take a swing at the anti-Pope. Nevertheless, the damage was done, and it was mostly to morale. because already in 1413, when the debate was ongoing, groups of Jews began to appear at Tortosa and declare that the feeble arguments of their leaders had led them to convert. And at the conclusion of the debate, legend has it that a significant number of the delegates themselves converted on mass to Christianity. So now, after 20 years of militant conversion between 1391 and the conclusion of the debate, at early 1414. The stage was set for the eruption of a converso problem that was going to threaten the very fabric of Christian Spain.

The issue came to the head around the mid-15th century, by which time, if you think about it, the converts of 1391 had given birth to children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, many of whom may have not even known that they came from Jewish stuff. Now, some of these conversos had become more Catholic than the Pope, as we say, and they tried to cover their tracks. Perhaps the best-known case is that of Pedro de Cagallera, baptized together with his father, actually, at the conclusion of the Tortosa Disputation. He went on to become an important jurist in Aragon and the author of the Defense of Christianity. And he went to great pains to prepare evidence, having it signed by important Christians, to prove that he actually came of pure Christian descent.

Some chose to live a double life, becoming what we know now as Crypto-Jews, Anusim. We'll talk about their story in the next and final episode when we discuss the Inquisition. And some abandon any allegiance to religion at all, preferring simply power, and perhaps a bit of philosophy, and mostly the good life. Now, this type of converso had abandoned a religion which couldn't protect him for a faith which he didn't believe. And the records of the Inquisition record a favorite saying of these types of men. In this world, you will not see me suffering, and in the other world, you will not see me in torment. They lacked any faith at all. and just to show you how unclear these identities were and how that unclarity of identity is so central to the converso problem and as we charge forward in the next series into early modernity I want you to keep in mind the important inside-outside element of this identity inside Christianity I'm a Christian, outside, but they call me a new Christian how important that dichotomy will be in the development of the role of Jew in modernity So now, I'll give you an example.

That the Cabeira, that we mentioned earlier, who actually tried to become a pure Christian by covering his tracks, may actually have belonged more to the confused camp than to any other. Because during the days of the Inquisition, which in our story right at this point is a good 40 years ahead, a Jewish weaver testified that at the time of a plague, Pedro fled his city of Sargoza for the countryside, and he took shelter with the weaver in his home. And according to his testimony, the Kaleira spoke with him in Hebrew, he responded to his blessings when they ate, and they discussed religious matters together. And when the weaver cried out to his guests, How, sir, being so learned in Torah, could you hasten to embrace Christianity?

He replied, Silent fool! Could I, as a Jew, ever have risen higher than a rabbinical post? But now, see, I am one of the chief counselors of the city. For the sake of the little man who was hanged, I am accorded every honor. Who hinders me, if I choose, from fasting on Yom Kippur, and keeping your festivals, and all the rest? When I was a Jew, I dared not walk even as far as this, but now I do as I please. So, you should know that independent of the religious struggles that we're going to speak about between the old, the new, and the Jews, The middle of the 15th century was marked throughout the Iberian Peninsula by rolling battles between the nobility and the king, and actually sometimes outright civil war.

But of course, these struggles were never really independent of one another. And we will discuss the rise of the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, and the role that the Jews and the conversos played in helping them to forge what in many ways is the first European state out of the various elements of Christian Spain. But for now, let's just look at one important instance, when the battle lines over money and power split right down between the old Christian and new Christian divide. King John II of Castile, like most medieval monarchs, was hard out for cash all the time. And in particular, in the middle of the 15th century, he wanted to resume the war against the Muslims, and he was feeling the French military pressure from the north and so he turned to his major cities for a little bit of financial aid.

And of course, all of his tax infrastructure was once again run by the Jews and conversos as well. In 1449, the king sent his all-powerful courtier, Alvao de Luna, himself a converso, to raise the astronomical sum of one million maravedis from the city of Toledo. Maredes are likely silver coins of the day. De Luna, in turn, entrusted a fellow converso, the wealthy merchant Alonso Cota, with the actual responsibility of collecting the money. Now, the people of Toledo chose to believe that this massive tax was actually De Luna's personal idea, instead of the king's, and they saw it as an example of converso greed and their abuse of power. Overnight, the old Christian community turned on its new Christian neighbors.

Anto Cota, the person who actually tried to collect the tax, did manage to escape with his life, though his house was burned to the ground. Another converso tax farmer, Juan de Ciudad, was not so fortunate. He was killed, his body dragged through the streets, and hung in a major city square. Meanwhile, a mob gathered at the Church of Santa Maria, itself a synagogue that was actually converted during the riots of 1391, and it spread out from there, burning and looting the converso neighborhoods of the city. Pedro Sarmiento was the commander of the fortress of Toledo, and as such, the king's representative in the city. And as the fires spread, Sarmiento seized the powers of the municipal administration, as you might expect him to do, but this was only in order to bring a new type of justice to Toledo.

New or very old, because he immediately arrested several prominent new Christians and held what was the first Inquisition-style trial in Toledo. And when the accused finally confessed under torture that despite their status as new Christians they had continued to live as Jews, they were sentenced to be burned at the stake. Not satisfied with a few show trials, Samiento then wrote and publicized a decree against all of the conversos. This sentencia estutato has several elements in it which are of importance to our story. Especially if we want to understand how it is that the conversion from a vibrant and powerful Jewish community into a vibrant and powerful converso Christian community didn save these Jews In fact on the contrary it became their undoing Now much of this decree is old news It based on standard practice of the Middle Ages and in particular on the decrees that we mentioned following the wake of Vincent Ferrer's attempts to reduce the Jews once again to total subjectation.

But, of course, these people were new Christians, not Jews. I quote, Therefore we find that we ought to declare and do declare that all the said conversos descended from the perverse line of the Jews in whatever situation they may be be held as incapable and unworthy to hold public or private office in the said city of Toledo and all of its lands by means of which they would be able to hold lordship over old Christians believing in the holy Catholic faith and cause damage, injury and to be incapable and unworthy of giving testimony and faith as witnesses Here we have it Conversos are prohibited from occupying public office or from bearing witness. Nothing new conceptually. Now, elsewhere in the statute it says, And inasmuch as said conversos lived and act without fear of God, and have shown and still show themselves to be enemies of the said city and of the old Christians living in it, as according to the old chronicles, when this city was surrounded by our enemies the Moors, under Tariq their leader, after the death of King Roderick, the Jews who lived in Toledo at the time also did, making a treaty and selling the city and its Christians and letting the Moors enter.

Now we see it. There's no difference in behavior between the new Christians and the Jews. Not in behavior and not in history. Now Roderick that he's referring to was the last Visigothic king of the Iberian Peninsula. You can go do some review in the previous episodes. And you'll recall, of course, he fell to the Muslims, the Moors in this letter. Now, you'll also recall, I hope, that the Visigoths saw homogeneity of religion as an absolute necessary precursor to a unified society, and that's why, at the end of their reign, they attempted to forcibly convert the Jews. And the Visigothic Code, which was their great legal compilation, and codifies the lowly status of the Jews. Furthermore, the 6th Council of Toledo, a church council in 638, reaffirmed this policy of forcibly baptizing all the Jews in the Iberian Peninsula and went so far as to declare that the king's right to rule was dependent on his working to eradicate Judaism.

I quote, Whoever in time to come shall attain the highest authority in the kingdom shall not ascend the royal throne until he hath sworn not to remit the Jews to violate the Catholic faith. Those words were written in the 7th century, but they're coming ripe in the 15th. Some things never change. Except, actually, the Toledo Statute of the 15th century contained a critical new point of which the Visigothic Code never dreamed. Now, this calls for a bit of review of the Jewish problem. Go way back to the Roman Empire, when the whole world, after having been beaten into submission, was enjoying the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. The Jews fought not one, not two, but three wars with the Romans. But the truth is, the Romans didn't have a Jewish problem.

They had a Judean problem. It was a national problem, therefore their solution was actually quite simple. Wipe out Judea. destroy the fabric of the national entity, rename Judea to Palestina, Palestine, and without any national home, a Judean becomes a Jew and a religion is born. National problem solved. That is, until under Christianity becomes a religious one. Because the Christians didn't see the Jews as an indigestible element of an empire, they saw them as obstinate rejectionists. First we denied their savior, and then we killed their god. now the solution to the Jewish problem when it's a religious one is also quite simple, conversion and throughout the middle ages the church and Catholics in general have taken harder or softer positions about how to go about this conversion, but everybody believes it is the solution to the Jewish problem and particularly in our story since 1391, Christian Spain has been on fire for this solution and most recently, when Vincent Pharaoh and his flagellant mobs were dragging Jews to the baptismal font, they thought they were solving the problem.

But in reality, they were making it worse. Because apparently, there's more to Jew than either nationhood or religion. This is the converso crisis. It's a political crisis, just as the Romans face, because the Jews, oh I'm sorry, the new Christians won't play by the rules. They're taking over, and the political constellation that's going to bring the Catholic monarchs of Ferdinand and Isabel to rise will be one that depends upon the Jews. It's a religious crisis, just as the early Christians identified it. Who is going to be right about redemption? The hermeneutic battle, that struggle in the text to tell the right story, rages on. And the tide of conversions might make it look like the Christians are winning.

But these converts are new Christians? Or are they just old Jews in new clothing? And now we have one added element. Something completely new. Something so awful that it's going to pursue Am Yisrael throughout history until it explodes in the horror of Auschwitz. Did you catch that line in the Toledo Statute? Conversos descended from the perverse line of the Jews. This isn't about their political leanings, though it's certain that's a factor in the ongoing civil strife. And war between old and new Christians, between the nobles and the crown, is going to continue until Spain is united under Ferdinand and Isabella. That won't go well either. It's not just about their religion. On the face of it, they're all Christians here.

This is about their perverse lineage. it's about Jewish blood. By declaring all converses of Jewish descent unfit for public office, Sarmiento was the first to make the Jewish problem a racial problem. And in the copycat declarations of other cities, which were very quick to follow his words, and especially in the satirical poetry of the times, a new concept emerges, limbieza de sangre, the purity of blood. The notion that the Jews are not solely a nation, or even a religion, but are actually a race. A race whose blood pollutes the pure blood of Spanish Christians when they mingle, despite baptism. Now this is a revolution slow in coming. Most of the world is totally ignorant of racial concepts at this point, and they aren't going to wake up to them until the post-Enlightenment era.

And furthermore, at first, the church was outraged, because this appears to be a theological attack on the ineffaceable nature of baptism. so much so by the way that in September of 1449 after the siege of Toledo had broken Pope Nicholas issued a bull condemning any effort to segregate or penalize converts from Judaism he excommunicated Sarmiento and his followers he deposed an ecclesiastical judge who had led the heresy trials in Toledo but history has shown us that the demon of racial hatred is not so easily put back in its box and so the conversion problem is not going to go away not through political power and not through conversion in fact it will become so pressing that the church and the monarchy religion and politics will employ the tools of inquisition and ultimately expulsion to solve it but that final dark chapter will have to wait until next week I just want to thank a few people I want to thank all those people who give their hard earned money to make this show happen.

If you want to be part of that, you can find my page on Facebook and you'll see a link there. Or you can send me an email, ralphmikefoyer at gmail or ralphmike at thelandofisrael.com. I also want to thank the Land of Israel Network for giving me this platform to reach so many people. I want to thank the Pardes Institute, pardes.org.il for giving me the opportunity to touch the hearts and minds of so many Jews. I want to thank Suil Miakov for being a home. And I want to thank you for listening. I'm Rav Mike Boyer and this is The Jewish Story.