JH David Yastrab Podcast

Jewish leadership in 7th century Babylonia was divided into two spheres. The Exilarch held political and economic power while the Gaonim, the heads of the yeshivas, controlled all religious matters. But because these is so much overlap between them, this division was a recipe for disaster. Rabbi Wein narrates the power struggle that gave rise to the deviant movement of the Karaites and details the works of Torah scholarship that arose to combat it.• competing yeshivas meant competing Gaonim• the Sherira Gaon and his famous letter• the "culture of corruption" and how it affected the Jews• Anan - how one man's petty conflict nearly destroyed the Jewish people

In the 7th century, Islam spread like wildfire, taking down both the Byzantine and Persian Empires. With a thorough analysis of the tenets of Islamic theology, including the historical origins of the anti-Semitism of the Koran, Rabbi Wein uncovers the massive influence Islam held over the world in religion, technology, culture, and war.• Mohammed's failed to attract and convert the Jews• Conversion by the sword - a Moslem invention• The march from Mecca to Medina and the original jihad• The Biblical distortions, especially of the Akeida

With the fall of Rome, the non-Jewish world plunged into the Dark Ages, but for the Jews of Babylonia, these were times of enlightened scholarship. While war raged on in the world at large, the Talmudic scholars put the finishing touches on the monumental work which has sustained the Jews through the long centuries of exile.• how Christian theology brought on the Dark Ages• the strange theory of the "witness people"• the Eastern Orthodox versus Roman Catholic Church• how the end of Jewish autonomy in Babylonia meant the end of the Talmudic Era• the mind-boggling accomplishment of writing the Talmud in the age before pen and paper