-
1 week ago | 
harryfreedman.substack.com | Harry Freedman
The story of the crypto Jews, or anusim, in Spain is well-known. Forced to convert to Christianity in the 15th century, they carried on practising Judaism in secret. Far less known than their story is that of the Jews of Mashhad, in Iran, who had a very similar, but much more recent experience. Jews have lived in Persia, or Iran for 3,000 years. They first arrived in the 8th century BCE, though some suggest it was a couple of hundred years later.
-
2 weeks ago | 
harryfreedman.substack.com | Harry Freedman
Legends generally are not history, but the stories behind them often are. And although the legend of Saul Wahl Katzenellenbogen sounds fanciful, there is some truth and history behind it. The legend is that, in the 16th century, Saul Wahl Katzenellenbogen became King of Poland, for just one day. There are various accounts of how this came to be.
-
3 weeks ago | 
harryfreedman.substack.com | Harry Freedman
As the world moved into the modern age, during the period known as the Enlightenment, the old certainties began giving way. This was particularly evident in the way people understood the world, with reason and science becoming their guiding principles, rather than the fixed dogmas of religious belief. Jews were late to these developments, the Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment didn’t really begin until the mid-18th century.
-
1 month ago | 
harryfreedman.substack.com | Harry Freedman
My latest book, Bob Dylan, Jewish Roots American Soil is published in the UK this week and will be out in the States on June 10th. Here are a few extracts. If you read Chronicles, the first and only published volume of Bob Dylan’s autobiography, you will learn that he came from a small town. You might deduce that his surname was Zimmerman. However, you would not know that he was Jewish. The word Jew only occurs once in the autobiography, and even that is only in a reference to the Pope.
-
1 month ago | 
harryfreedman.substack.com | Harry Freedman
A few weeks ago, in a post for paid subscribers, I mentioned that several of the legends told by, or about, the 2nd century Rabbi Akiva bear a similarity to Aesop’s fables. Several readers have asked me to explain. In ancient times, preachers and teachers often used parables or fables to illustrate a moral lesson or to explain a particular belief or way of understanding the world. This method is believed to have originated 4,000 years ago in Sumer, in Southern Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq.
-
1 month ago | 
harryfreedman.substack.com | Harry Freedman
In 1602, the Mayse Bukh or Book of Tales was published in Basel. A collection of 255 stories and folk tales, it was one of the most popular Yiddish books of its age, reprinted several times and with many of its tales appearing in anthologies published during the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the most intriguing stories in the book is The Jewish Pope. Although a work of fiction, the story weaves together several historical events, including the strange story of a real life, allegedly Jewish, Pope.
-
1 month ago | 
harryfreedman.substack.com | Harry Freedman
Today is Israel’s Independence Day. It is easy to forget, nearly 80 years later, just how significant the creation of the new state felt at the time. Not just because the 2,000 year wait for a Jewish homeland had come to an end. More immediately because, only three years after the destruction of European Jewry, the Jews of the world now had their own place of safety. Many people considered the creation of the State of Israel to be a miracle.
-
2 months ago | 
harryfreedman.substack.com | Harry Freedman
Jewish folklore has never had the same degree of exposure as the legends of Greece and Rome, or even the mythologies of China and Scandinavia. Perhaps this is because of the way in which Jewish legends were told. In most cultures, stories were passed on by word of mouth, by storytellers addressing audiences, travellers swapping tales, parents telling stories to their children. This all happened in the Jewish world too, but it wasn’t the main way in which folklore was disseminated.
-
2 months ago | 
harryfreedman.substack.com | Harry Freedman
In 1907 the American philanthropist, Jacob Schiff, wrote to the author and playwright, Israel Zangwill, in London. He told him that the previous day he’d had a conference with several other Jewish leaders, at which they had discussed how to divert the flow of Russian, Jewish immigrants away from the overcrowded cities on the East Coast. They proposed to open a facility, either in New Orleans or at the port at Galveston, Texas, where boats carrying Russian immigrants would arrive.
-
2 months ago | 
harryfreedman.substack.com | Harry Freedman
One of the most puzzling aspects of the Passover seder is the inclusion, right at the end, of several folk songs. They do not seem to be connected with the themes of freedom and national identity that underlie the seder. They do have a religious element but, with one exception, they are undoubtedly folk songs that might be sung at any time, and perhaps once were.