Answer:
Some historians have seen the Crusades as a watershed event in Jewish history, marking the beginning of the deterioration of Jewish life in Europe in the Middle Ages. Other historians are skeptical of this claim and see other factors at work in the change in Jewish status. An examination of Jewish anti-Christian polemical literature reveals that the Crusades had an impact on the debate in three contexts: 1) the lack of consensus omnium that Christianity is the only true religion; 2) the lack of world peace as perceived by constant Christian wars; and 3) the Jewish willingness to undergo martyrdom as proof of the truth of Judaism. Nevertheless, the Crusades do not play a major role in the Jewish-Christian debate. From this fact it is possible to conclude that contemporary Jews did not perceive the Crusades as a major factor in their lives, and that the Jewish-Christian debate transcends particular historical events. /// [Abstract in Hebrew].
Journal Information
The purpose of Jewish History, the sole English language publication devoted exclusively to history and the Jews, is to broaden the limits of historical writing on the Jews. Jewish History publishes contributions in the field of history, but also in the ancillary fields of art, literature, sociology, and anthropology, where these fields and history proper cross paths. The diverse personal and professional backgrounds of Jewish History's contributors, a truly international meeting of minds, have enriched the journal and offered readers innovative essays, as well as special issues on topics proposed by guest-editors: women and Jewish inheritance, the Jews of Latin America, and Jewish self-imaging, to name but a few in a long list.
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