[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Dan Lusthaus]

> that the village in which they live, Vauvert in the South of France,
> used to be called Posquières and that there was an important Talmudic
> school (led by Abraham ben David of Posquieres known as Rabad)

Joy,

Rabad was indeed one of the intellectual luminaries of that period -- a
logician, philosopher, scientist, halachist, sharp critical thinker, and
best remembered for applying those disciplines to the methodology of
studying Talmud. His influence is still strong today. Along with Rashi, he
is one of those foundational figures from Provence, which, as you surely
know, was also the area in which some of the most important Bible and Talmud
commentaries were written, as well as where what is usually dubbed Kabbalah
proper (as opposed to the Jewish mysticism that preceded it) emerged (Rabad
played a role in that as well). He is known as an incisive anti-dogmatist.

For those who have never heard of Rabad, and don't resent posted links, see

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Ben_David.html

and

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=420&letter=A

>This is only a small exemple
> of something which took place in many places of Christian Europe.

Indeed. Provence was a major Jewish intellectual center that gained in
importance as the fortune of the Spanish Jews (another major center)
declined -- the ascension of Christianity led to various forms of
persecution, the Inquisition, culminating in the forced conversions and
expulsions from Spain and then Portugal. For instance, from 1066 to 1290,
Jews experienced increasing persecution in England (e.g., Oxford had a large
Jewish community, esp. in the western part [Fish St/St Aldates] -- Magdalen
College sits over part of the old Jewish cemetery, etc.), and were in 1290
expelled from Britain entirely, with no Jew allowed to set foot on British
soil until the 17th century, when Menasseh ben Israel (an acquaintance of
Spinoza) convinced the monarch that the Messiah couldn't come [again] until
Jews from the four corners of the world were ingathered to Israel -- and
since England was a corner, Jews had to be there to be gathered from -- a
fancy bit of effective upaya. No Jews were permitted in English universities
until the University of London broke that ban late in the 19th century.

It has struck me over the years that Buddhism seems particularly
ill-equipped to handle sustained persecution. Not only was it persecuted out
of existence in its homeland and Central Asia by the advent of Islam there,
but even the history of Buddhism in East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan) is
probably more definable by political and persecutional vicissitudes than by
doctrinal, practice, or institutional considerations in isolation from
that -- though in Japan the picture gets more complicated since the
persecutions (until the Tokugawa) were often perpetrated by one Buddhist
group upon another.

Has anyone give this much thought?

Dan Lusthaus