Free A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism by Phyllis Goldstein Page A

blown on some Jewish holidays) and an ark used to store the Torah, indicate it was made by or for Jews.
     
    Byzantine rulers issued laws aimed at eliminating “the madness of Jewish impiety,” “all heresies, all perfidies, and schisms,” and “the error and insanity of stupid paganism.” But many of these laws, though harsh, were not always enforced. In an empire that by the sixth century stretched from what is now Iraq in the east to Egypt and beyond in the west, there was always a gap between the written law and its enforcement.
    However, when laws were enforced, punishments were swift and without mercy. For example, after riots broke out in Constantinople in 532, the emperor Justinian sent in troops to massacre all those involved—more than 30,000 people in all. Little is known about these riots or the people who participated in them. However, we do know how the emperor felt about the massacre. Procopius, a historian of the time, wrote that “Justinian did not see [the massacre] as murder if the victims did not share his own beliefs.”
    In the seventh century, similar riots took place within the Byzantine Empire; they provided the Persians with an opportunity to expand their own empire at the expense of their neighbor. In 611, the Persian armypoured into what is now Syria and Palestine. In that year, they conquered Antioch; in 613, Damascus; and by 614, they were threatening Palestine. Throughout the region, the soldiers devastated cities and burned churches.
    Many Jews in the Byzantine Empire welcomed the Persians. Some saw their arrival as an opportunity to win independence or even just a little more freedom. The official religion of the Persian Empire was Zoroastrianism (Zoroastrians are followers of the Iranian prophet Spitaman Zarathushtra, who lived and preached near the Aral Sea about 3,500 years ago). But the empire was home to many Jews, Christians, and Buddhists as well as Zoroastrians and pagans. So many Jews served in the Persian army that Persian commanders avoided going into battle on Jewish holy days. As a result, an Armenian historian named Sebeos observed, “As the Persians approached Palestine, the remnants of the Jewish nation rose against the Christians, joined the Persians and made common cause with them.” 1
    In Jerusalem, the Persians, with the help of their Jewish allies, murdered about 60,000 Christians and sold 35,000 into slavery. It was a horrible massacre, one that Christians throughout the region vowed never to forget. They were also outraged by the outcome of the battle: the Persians handed over the city to the Jews. The Jews, in turn, expelled all Christians from Jerusalem. But Jewish rule lasted just three years. In 617, the Persians made peace with the Christians and agreed to return Palestine to Byzantine rule. When Jews in Palestine refused to accept the peace agreement, the Persians attacked them.
    By 629, the Byzantines were in control of Jerusalem again. Although Jews scrambled to make peace with the authorities, Christian religious leaders demanded that the Jews be punished for their earlier disloyalty. Some were put to death, while others fled to the desert or to Persian territory. As the Byzantines launched campaigns to convert the Jews by force, many more Jews fled the empire.
OASES IN THE DESERT
    In this age of empires, Jews’ insistence on maintaining their own religion and their own cultural traditions made them outsiders in both the Persian and the Byzantine Empires. Where could Jews find a place to freely practice their religion? A few found a haven beyond the borders of the great empires in the harsh desert of the Arabian Peninsula. Little is known about when the first Jews arrived in the region, but certainly some Jewish families were living there before the destruction of the second Temple in 70 CE . Their numbers increased during the various struggles for powerunder Roman rule. Over the centuries, they were also joined by Arabs who had converted to