S3E43: From Royalty of Persian Jews to Home Libraries of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews to A Medieval Jewish Kingdom Outside Israel

History Behind News Program

The Jewish Diaspora - A History.

It's a story that merits telling especially now. Now that we see many Jewish faces on our screens, Jews who came to Israel from all parts of the world, Jews who kept their Jewish identity for some 2,000 years - regardless of where they were in the world!

In this episode, I ask my guest, Dr. Howard Lupovitch, the following questions:

1. What’s the difference between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews?
2. So, why did the Jews of the diaspora not speak Hebrew?
3. What is the story of the Medieval Jewish Kingdom of Khazar?
4. What is this Jewish jurisdiction in Russia?
5. Why is the story of Jews in Spain the focus of so much attention?
6. How did Jews end up in Poland? And how did they thrive there (relatively speaking)?
7. What is so special about Persian Jews?
8. How important was conversion to the Jewish experience? How does one convert to Judaism anyway?
9. What did Jews call the countries in which they lived during the diaspora?
10. What are some legacies of the Jewish diaspora - aside from the horrific experiences of persecution and the Holocaust?
11. If you wanted our audience to remember just one point about “the Jewish diaspora”, what would it be?

Dr. Lupovitch is a professor of history and the director of the Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic Studies at Wayne State University. He specializes in modern Jewish History, specifically the Jews of Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy. He recently completed a history of the Jews of Budapest and is currently writing a history of the Neolog Movement, Hungarian Jewry's progressive wing.

He is the author of Transleithanian Paradise: A History of the Budapest Jewish Community, 1738-1938.

Is it Persia or Iran? In this episode, Dr. Lupovitch talks about Persian Jews and their long history in Persia and modern-day Iran. In a prior conversation, Dr. Khodadad Rezakhani answered the complicated question of whether they are Iranians or Persians. He also explained how the Sasanian Empire crumbled before the Arab Muslims, and, hence, opened the Middle East and Central Asia to Islam. His telling, however, is much different than what you may have heard before. Click here for my conversation with him.

I hope you enjoy these episodes.

Adel, host & producer

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3. Image description: Diaspora Museum, Tel Aviv. Exhibit showing "One culture: many facets. The growth of pluralism in modern Jewish spiritual life". Image by Sodabottle - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, on Wikimedia.