One thing leads to another and ...

 

I received an email that linked to a Web site called "Armageddon Online" (http://www.armageddononline.org/disasters_list.php.

The site lists disasters from prehistoric times (how can that be if we have a history of them?). Fascinating stuff.

I worked my way down to "Medieval disasters" and clicked on the "The Black Death first appears in Europe in 1347." That link brought me to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death.

The link to the Wikipedia page (ibid.) was a tad misleading since the Black Death spread beyond Europe; it was known in Islamic states and central Asia as well - "The Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world Plague epidemics kept returning to the Islamic world up to the 19th century. The cities of North Africa were especially hard hit by the disease. 30,000–50,000 died in Algiers in 1620–21, 1654–57, 1665, 1691, and 1740–42. Plague remained a major event in Ottoman society until the second quarter of the 19th century. Between 1701 and 1750, 37 larger and smaller plague epidemics were recorded in Istanbul, and 31 between 1751 and 1800. Baghdad has suffered severely from visitations of the plague, and sometimes two-thirds of its population has been wiped out."

The Wikipedia entry includes several graphic, including the one here.

Which caused me to wonder. Of all the Black Death victims, how many were Jews who were healthy - or at least free of the disease - but were murdered at the hands of their neighbors, often at the urging of the dominant religious group. We know the Paulists' reaction - burn the Jews at the stake as the graphic illustrates.

The article fails to comment on the murders and offers nothing on life for us in Islamic dominated lands; were we also the scapegoats for the Moslems? We know there are pogroms in Islamic countries and the Shoah was not limited to the Paulists in Europe.

Jews allegedly escaped the full wrath of the plagues in large part because of the mikveh. I wonder if the mikveh may not be credited over much, however.

Let's "assume" that the men visited the mikveh on a weekly basis; before Shabat. But the average woman probably went once-a-month, and unmarried girls not at all. That would constitute a large portion of the Jewish population.

Perhaps the lower infection rate has to do with isolation, "ghettoization," and sanitary practices; in most Jewish communities, the streets and alleyways were neither latrines not garbage dumps. From the time of the giving of the Law we have kept excrement and filth away from our quarters, be they tents, hovels, or mansions.

The basic question remains - how many Jews dies as a direct result of the plague and how many Jews died as an indirect result of the plague; murdered by their neighbors.

Might be an interesting challenge for someone with a historical interest and resources.

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Yohanon Glenn
Yohanon.Glenn at gmail dot com