Скачать или смотреть As If The Jews Had No Lord, Benjamin Gampel, JDOV Talk

The most devastating attacks on the Jews of medieval Christian Europe took place in the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon during ten months from June 1391 to April 1392, and left a trail of deaths, forced conversions, and communal destruction. Many were the motives for these assaults, and diverse were the participants. While the rioters’ success cannot be easily explained, the intervention of those who pledged to protect the Jews was ineffective. While these rulers believed it their mandate to protect the Jews, they did not see the Jews’ safety as their highest priority. Aragonese royal authorities, when they looked back over the months of riots, bitterly conceded that it appeared “as if the Jews had no lord.” That the safety of a minority people cannot be assured is not simply a banality of Jewish history, but a truth about the fate of all people and of all groups whose security is dependent on others. However sincere the intentions of the majority society and the assurances of its leaders, to protect those who are reliant upon them, the security of a minority community is ultimately, for them, not a matter of paramount importance.