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Jewish Community News

March 2004

This Month in Jewish History: March

by Alexis Rubin

Mosque site chosen; first formal ghetto established; coming-of-age ceremony inaugurated

Jerusalem, March 638

Four years after Mohammed’s death in 632 C.E., his followers invaded Palestine, ending half a millennium of Byzantine Christian control. Marching on Jerusalem, they laid siege to the city for 18 months before forcing its surrender. Muslim tradition recounts that Caliph Omar, the second man to succeed Mohammed as leader of the Muslim world, arrived in the ancient city dressed as a humble peasant. After taking official possession of Jerusalem, he searched the Temple Mount for an appropriate site to build a small mosque honoring Islam’s victory over the non-believers.

In March 638, Omar asked one of his advisers, Kha ab al-Akhbar, where the mosque should be erected. Al-Akhbar, a Jewish convert to Islam, recommended a site that had been part of Herod’s enlarged Second Temple. From there worshippers could face both the Temple and Mecca as they prayed. The caliph, however, chose a spot above the Temple remnants where Muslims could pray solely toward Mecca. Several decades later, one of Omar’s successors replaced this shrine with the much more imposing el-Aksa Mosque.

Because of Omar’s choice, Muslims leaving el-Aksa can still look down upon Jews praying before the remnants of the Second Temple. And, from this location above the Western Wall, Muslims are able to show their contempt for the Jewish worshippers by pelting them with stones.

Venice, March 1516

Christians during the Middle Ages were forbidden to lend money at interest. As a result, Jews provided the only banking, loan and financial services available in Europe. In the 14th century, however, a group of Italians from Lombardy convinced the Catholic Church that Christians, too, should be permitted to charge interest on loans. When Christians needing to borrow money preferred to do business with Christian bankers, Jewish moneylenders soon found themselves eliminated from the business.

Venetian Jewry, similarly forced out of moneylending, tried to branch out into other trades, but the city’s powerful merchant class protested. They petitioned the city’s senate, demanding that their Jewish competitors be controlled and isolated.

In March 1516, the Venetian Senate, bowing to the merchants’ demands, ordered that “…all Jews …in this Our city …be obligated to proceed to dwell together in the kind of houses located in the geto next to the Church of St. Jerome.” The senate’s proclamation, western Europe’s first compulsory separation of Jews from Christians, forced the Jews to move to two of Venice’s islands, geto nuevo and geto vecchio. The word geto, meaning “iron foundry,” evolved into the term “ghetto,” a word that came to define European Jewry’s nearly three-hundred-year long isolation from the outside world.

New York City, March 1922

In biblical times, Jewish boys reaching the age of 13 received an elder’s blessing and were encouraged to observe the commandments and perform good deeds as responsible adults. This custom later developed into the bar mitzvah (son of the Commandment), with a set ritual followed by increasingly elaborate festivities. Girls were permitted no similar rite, although the Talmud contained no specific prohibition against it. Early in the 1800s, some French, Italian and German Jewish families began celebrating their daughters’ twelfth birthdays with a special meal to herald entrance into adulthood.

In March 1922, when Reconstructionist Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan called his 12-year-old daughter, Judith, to the Torah, she became this country’s first bat mitzvah. Today, except among some Orthodox congregations, Judith Kaplan’s experience is common for girls in the U.S. and Canada. In Europe, bat mitzvah may be a synagogue observance where the girl recites the haftarah and leads prayers or, just as commonly, her ceremony may be confined to her home. In Israel, girls are welcomed into the adult community by calling their fathers and brothers to the Torah in their honor.

Although a well-established custom for boys, it remains to be seen if a formalized bat mitzvah ceremony will become a universal Jewish practice.

Alexis Rubin is a Jewish history teacher, writer, researcher and syndicated columnist. Her articles, essays and book reviews have appeared in historical journals, Jewish women's magazines and community newspapers in the U.S. and in Canada.

This Month in Jewish History