Ancient History
From the Second Temple to the Christian Conquest of Spain
History/Part 1 - 400 BCE- 1000 CE
30 Lectures
MP3 Download MP3 on CD$190.00$104.50 for Members
View individual lectures in this series
- Beginning of the Second CommonwealthView
- The Men of the Great Assembly View
- The Coming of the Greeks View
- Hellenism and ChanukahView
- The HasmoneansView
- The Prushim and TzedukimView
- The End of HasmoneansView
- Herod the GreatView
- The Herodian EraView
- Agrippa and the Coming of Christianity View
- The Times of the Roman WarView
- The Destruction of Second TempleView
- Yavne and the Early TanaimView
- Bar Kochba and Rabbi Akiva View
- The Beginning of the Mishna View
- The MishnahView
- The Beginning of Babylonian Talmud View
- Rise of Christianity View
- The End of the Talmudic EraView
- The Rise of IslamView
- The Early Gaonic Period View
- Mid-Gaonic Period-Saadia Gaon View
- Beginnings of Ashkenazic & Sephardic JewryView
- End of the Gaonim to the Beginning of the Rishonim View
- Development of Spanish Jewry View
- The Age of Rabbi Yehuda HalevyView
- Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon / Part 1 View
- Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon / Part 2 View
- Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman View
- Christian Re-conquest of Spain View
Preview:
Noted Jewish historian Rabbi Berel Wein explores the Second Commonwealth and its aftermath in an in-depth, engaging account of the Second Temple's rise and fall. At the close of the Babylonian Exile, the Jewish people found themselves in a time of great internal development and external challenge. The Second Temple was being built and Rabbinic Judaism was being founded while Jewish culture confronted the cornerstones of Western civilization in the seductions of Greek and Roman society.
Later the destruction of the Second Temple gave rise to the beginnings of a written Talmud, while the Jewish community faced recriminations for rejecting the alternate montheistic religions of Christianity and Islam. In the last third of the series, Rabbi Wein takes you into the Sephardic culture of the golden Spanish exile. At first it was a synthesis of Moslem and Jewish ideas where Jewish life flourished. Later Moslem/Christian fanaticism destroyed the marriage of cultures. Rabbi Wein ends the series with discussions of the Gaonim and Rishonim, especially the Rambam (Maimonides) and Ramban (Nachmonides) and their historical context.
