Page:Jewish Encyclopedia Volume 2.pdf/46

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Apostasy and Apostates from Judaism

(Jer. iii. 22)— all except Aher " Still the relabetween the Apostates and the faithful observers of the Law remained tolerably good, as may.be inferred from R. Mei'r's continual intercourse with Aher, who honored the apostate as a man of learning, even after his death. However, from the time when the Church rose to power and directed the

dings

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tions

zeal of her eonverts against their former brethren, these conditions changed. This may be learned from the decree of Constantine in 315, to the effect that " all that dare assail the apostates with stones, or in any other manner, shall be consigned to the

While the Synagogue was prohibited from all possible honors were conferred by the Roman empire upon Jews that joined the Church. The rabbis refer the verse, " My mother's children are angry with me " (Song of Songs,

flames. "

admitting proselytes,

6), to the Christians, complaining that " those that emanate from my own midst hurt me most " (Midr. R. and Zutta ad loc. also Tobiah b. Eliezer quoted by Zunz, " S. P. " p. 13, and " Tanna debe Eliyahu R." xxix.). An apostate, Joseph by name, a former member of the Sanhedrin of Tiberias, raised to the dignity of a comes by Constantine the emperor, in reward for his Apostasy, is described by Epiphanius in his "Panarium," xxx. 4-11 (ed. Dindorf, pp. 93-105). He claimed, while an envoy of the Sanhedrin, to have been cast into the river by the Jews of Cilicia for having been caught reading New Testament books, and to have escaped drowning only by a miracle. He must have done much harm to the Joseph, of Jews of Palestine, since the emperor Tiberias, had, in the year 336, to issue, on the one i.

of a typical Jewish impostor told by the Church historian Socrates (Jost, "Gesch. der Israeliten,"iv. 225).

The great persecution by Cyril, in 415, of the Jews of Alexandria induced only one Jew to accept baptism as a means of safety Adamantius, teacher of medicine the rest left the city (Gratz, " Gesch.



der Juden, "iv. 392). The stronger the power of the Church became, the more systematic were her efforts at winning the Jews over to her creed, whether by promises, threats, As a rule but few yielded to peror actual force. suasion or to worldly considerations, but more numerous were those that embraced Christianity through the threats and violence of enraged mobs. Such was the case with the Jews in southern France and in the Spanish In Here a new term was Christian peninsula. Spain. coined for the Jews that allowed them-

hand, a decree prohibiting Christian converts from insulting the patriarchs, destroying the synagogues, and disturbing the worship of the Jews and, on the other hand, a decree protecting the Apostates against the wrath of the Jews (Cassel, in Ersch and Gruber, " Allg. Encyklopadie, " iv. 23 and 49, note 59; Gratz, "Gesch. der Juden," iv. 335, The very fact that he built the first churches 485). in Galilee at Tiberias, Sepphoris, Nazareth, and

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Capernaum towns richly populated by Jews and soon afterward the centers of a Jewish revolt against Rome justifies Gratz in assuming that the dignity of comes conferred upon Joseph covered a multitude of sins committed against his former coreligionists

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The rabbinical sources allude only to the fact that Christian Rome, in accordance with Deut. xiii. 6 "the son of thy mother shall entice thee " said to the Jews, " Come to us and we will make you dukes, governors, and generals" (Pesik. R. 15a, 21 [ed. Friedmann], pp. lib, decree of the emperor Theodosius shows 1066]). that up to 380 the patriarchs exercised the right of excommunicating those that had espoused the Christian religion which right, disputed by the Christian Church, was recognized by the emperor as a matter in those critical times.

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A



synagogue

of the Jews,"

ii.

discipline (Graetz, "History

612, iv. 385).

That many joined the Church only to escape the penalty of the Jewish law is evidenced by a decree of the emperor Arcadius demanding an investigation of each applicant for admission into the Church, as to his moral and social standing, and by the story

through fear—

selves to be baptized



of internal

14

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

observe that the Council of Agde was compelled to take measures against the Jews " whose faithlessness often returneth to its vomit" (compare Prov. xxvi. 11, and the rabbinical It is interesting to

Antisim.

expression "|TlD^ "inn Kid. lib; Gen. R. lxxiv. Jost, "Gesch. der Israeliten," v. 64 et seq.). The same measures were taken by the Council of Toledo in the year 633. Every single case of Apostasy under the influence of the powerful Church provoked the indignation of the Jewish community, where some inconsiderate act of a Jewish fanatic often led to riots, which always ended disastrously for the Jews, number of such either in baptism or expulsion. instances are recorded by Gregory of Tours (Jost, "Neuere Gesch. der Israeliten," v. 66 In France, et seq., 87 etseq. Cassel, I.e. pp. 57-62; Gratz," Gesch. der Juden," v. GOetseq. compare also the edicts against the baptized Jews, in Gratz, "Die Westgothische Gesetzgebung, 1858"). In the Byzantine empire, also, forced conversion of the Jews took place under Leo the Isaurian in 723 many Jews becoming outwardly Christians while secretly observing the Jewish rites (Gratz, " Gesch. der



A





Juden,"

iii.

123, v. 188; Cassel,

I.e.

p. 52).

To none of

the term " apostate, " in its strict sense, applicable. When, at the first persecution of the Jews in Germany under Henry II., in 1012, many had been baptized and afterward returned to the fold, R. Gershom of Mayence insisted on their being treated with brotherly kindliness and sympathy and when his own son, who had become a convert to Christianity, died, he mourned him as his son, just as if he had not apostatized (Gratz, "Gesch. der Juden," v. 410). Again, after the first Crusade, when many Jews, yielding to the threats of the mob, had been baptized, but with the permission of the emperor, Henry IV., had returned to their ancestral faith despite the protests of Pope Clenient III. Rashi in his responsa (" Pardes," p. 23) protested against their being shunned as Apostates by their brethren, and declared them to be full Jews (Gratz, "Gesch. der Juden," vi. 111-114; Berliner, in "Kaufmann-Gedenkbuch,'' pp. 271 et seq.). Nor is it correct to enumerate in the list of Apostates those Jews of Spain, France, and other countries, who, under the influence of the teaching of the pseudo-Messiah Serene (or Soria?), these

is



,