The Eastern Orthodox Church
Europe and the Jews:Part 1
In the Shadow of the Church

When the Church split into Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, the Jews were caught in the middle of someone else’s religious war. Most Jews lived in the Middle East, so they fell under the rule of the more primitive Eastern/Byzantine Church. Centuries later, when the center of the exile moved from Western to Eastern Europe, the Jews found themselves facing Byzantium’s successor: the Russian Orthodox Church. Rabbi Wein traces the roots of the strange melding of paganism and Christianity in Eastern Orthodoxy, highlighting why Jewish life under its dominance spelled such disaster.

• the Manichean heresy
• how Jewish Law distinguishes between paganism and Christianity
• the origins of the modern calendar
• Rasputin, the womanizing monk