Chapter 7: The Great Mingling

The first centuries in the Common Era were a tumultuous period in the history of Europe and the Near and Middle East. The Romans conquered large parts of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East (including what is now considered the Middle East). Additionally, Judea was conquered (by Rome), then rebelled, lost, and the Jews were exiled. Christianity, too, was making its debut, and Britain was conquered by Emperor Tiberius Claudius. As we will see in this chapter, the exile of the Jews and their dispersion throughout Europe are tightly connected to the evolution of desires...

The defeat of the Jewish revolt against the Romans (66-73 CE) caused the ruin of the Second Temple and the dispersion of Judea. (The First Temple was built by King Solomon in the 10th century BCE, and was ruined by the Babylonians in 586 BCE.) This dispersion signified something far more important than the conquest of one nation by another. It reflected the extent of the Israeli nation’s spiritual decline. The Hebrew word Yehudi (Jew) derives from the word Yechudi (“united,” or “unique”), referring to the state of the Israeli nation of the time: perceiving (and adhering to) the unique force of bestowal that governs all of life...

The Middle Ages is a very peculiar period in history. Views on when it began and when it ended seem to range from 2nd-5th century to 15th-18th century respectively, depending on the researcher’s field of expertise. Some mark the fall of the Western Roman Empire as its beginning and the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire as its end. Others see the beginning of the Middle Ages as the time when Emperor Constantine the Great summoned the First Council of Nicaea, in 325 CE, and its end as the time when Martin Luther was excommunicated (1521) and the Protestant Church was established...