Medieval Jewry

Britain’s Masada Alan Shaw, Jewish Chronicle. This week in 1190, 150 Jews were besieged in York Castle by a local mob—and, at the bidding of their rabbi, chose to take their own lives rather than die at the hands of their enemies.

Jewish Armenia Anna Borschevskaya, Jerusalem Post. Only in 1996 did the discovery of a cemetery provide evidence of Jews in pre-modern Armenia.  But new research shows that Armenia was a safe haven for Jews during the Mongol invasion.

Education, Not Persecution Jonathan B. Krasner, Forward. Literacy explains the Jews’ scattered settlement in scores of small communities throughout Christian Europe, where the demand for skilled occupations was limited.