On this day in 1095, Pope Urban II opened the Council of Clermont, summoned to plan the First Crusade, Host to more than two hundred bishops, the Council decreed that a pilgrimage to Jerusalem made every other penance superfluous, igniting one of the darkest periods in European Jewish history. Though the Jews of France supplied food and funds for the Crusaders’ journey, by the time they reached Germany, many Crusaders decided to spread the “Kingdom of God” at home before proceeding to the “Holy Land,” striking at four Jewish communities along the Rhine—Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and Cologne. While the Jews of Europe had suffered from anti-Jewish legislation, even violence, prior to the Crusades, the sheer ferocity of the attacks represented a new development, one that widened the gulf separating the Jewish and Christian communities for most of the next millennia and opened the door to several of the most tragic [...]

In the year 284 C.E., the soldiers serving under Diocletian proclaimed him Emperor of Rome. As emperor, Diocletian was notable for his friendliness toward the Jewish community. When he ordered all of his subjects to accept his divinity and to offer sacrifices to his cult, he excused his Jewish subjects from the decree, acknowledging their right to worship their God. The sages even memorialized him in a remarkable tale found in the midrash. According to the legend, as a child, Diocletian, a swineherd in northern Palestine [1], suffers constant ridicule and even beatings at the hands of local Jewish students. Once he becomes emperor, he demands that the Jewish leaders answer for the crimes of his youth. The rabbis concede that they had acted insolently towards Diocletian the swineherd, but they always showed respect towards Diocletian, the emperor. The Emperor, for his part, accepts their apology, but cautions them against [...]

“We recognize in the Bible the record of the consecration of the Jewish people to its mission as the priest of the one God, and value it as the most potent instrument of religious and moral instruction. We hold that the modern discoveries of scientific researches in the domain of nature and history are not antagonistic to the doctrines of Judaism, the Bible reflecting the primitive ideas of its own age, and at times clothing its conception of divine Providence and Justice dealing with men in miraculous narratives.”  — Pittsburgh Platform, 1885. On this day in 1885, the National Rabbinic Convention, a precursor to the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) convened at the Concordia Club in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. By the time their convention completed, they had drafted the Pittsburgh Platform—a striking, sometimes controversial set of principles meant to guide the future of North American Judaism. With its outright [...]