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Noted Jewish historian Rabbi Berel Wein continues his series on Jewish history in an in-depth, engaging account of European life. Seven hundred years of European Jewry saw towering intellectual achievements, spiritual devastations, and physical disasters.

The rise of Ashkenazic Jewry in Germany and France and the fall of Sephardic Jewry in Spain marked cultural uypheavals that split the Jewish world. In the 17th century, just as the Jews became religiously unified through the Code of Jewish Law, they were being crushed by pogroms. The Northern European exile, once a great hope for a wounded Jewish community, was becoming unbearable. To make matters worse, the false messianism of Shabsai Tzvi spiritually devastated the Jewish comminity, leaving them vulnerable to secularism and new religious movements: Reform Judaism, Chassidus, and the Yeshiva movement. Rabbi Wein takes you through the spiritual highs and lows of European Jewry before the modern era in 30 spellbinding lectures.