Really looking forward to meeting this community!

Lectures in Jewish History and Thought. No hard questions, please.




Public at 10am ET (44 minutes) Online Courses in Jewish History

This is one of the most bizarre periods of Jewish history, and that’s saying a lot.

New Lecture Series: The History of Sephardic Jewry

Stories of Personal Transformation for Elul Napoleon’s 1808 Imperial Decree on Jewish Names The History of Sephardic Jewry (Lecture, 75 minutes) Jews, Wine, and Bordeaux (7 minutes)

Jewish Resilience after the Bar Kochba Rebellion New Series! Cool Things I Read in the Encyclopedia Judaica YouTube Colleagues: Volume II of The Jewish People: A History now appearing online

Revised with several more videos, new online quizzes to test your knowledge of Biblical Jewish History! Napoleon’s 12 Questions and the Fateful Jewish Answers Depictions of Jewish Women in the Tripartite Mahzor

I can’t believe the audience stayed for almost two hours. Tisha B’Av lecture at Congregation Ahavat Torah in Englewood, New Jersey Tu B’Av in Jewish History Shabbaton in Washington, September 13-14

Fascinating look at a heroic Jewish woman of Bordeaux Who knew that Bilaam (Balaam) would have regional celebrity? Part III of Interview with Global Gambit (don’t judge by the thumbnail please)

An amazing encounter between two 18th century Jewish geniuses Not 100% accurate (e.g. I’m not a Rabbi) but I’m flattered by the attention Joanne Palmer devoted to my story. Can’t believe she included my Bar Mitzvah picture.

I am honored, and also humbled, by this promotion. Lander College for Men is a remarkable division of Touro University, ably led for 25 years by its founding Dean, Rabbi Dr. Moshe Sokol. (Courtesy of Touro University) Dr. Henry Abramson was named dean of Touro’s Lander College for Men, Touro President Dr. Alan Kadish announced. Most…


Photo: Aryeh Abramson looks out over Iroquois Falls, Ontario, Canada, where he spent the Sukkot vacation visiting his grandparents. Captured by the Roman General (and later Emperor) Vespasian while defending the Galilee, Josephus ultimately turned against his coreligionists and served as an advisor to the forces besieging Jerusalem during the first Roman-Jewish War. His first-hand…

Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) was one of the greatest minds the Jewish people ever produced: philosopher, jurist, physician, and an extremely prolific writer who left us classics like The Guide for the Perplexed and the Mishneh Torah. For several years I have been in the habit of reviewing his Laws of Repentance in the weeks leading up to the…

Pope Gregory I (“the Great”) was one of the most influential Church leaders of the medieval period. His policy on the treatment of Jews in Christian Europe, known by the Latin phrase “Sicut Judaeis,” instituted an official if ambivalent position that lasted from the sixth century to the beginnings of the modern era.

Reeling from the humiliating defeat of the Crimean War, the Russian Empire decides its policy of forcibly conscripting Jewish boys into military service is counterproductive, and finally abandons the cruel decades-old policy of taking underage children into thirty-one years of military training and service.

To view the Prezi associated with this lecture, please click here. Excerpt from “The Jewish Diaspora: A Brief History” Henry Abramson 3. The Roman-Jewish Wars Our sources for the Roman-Jewish wars of the first and second centuries are more substantial than those of earlier periods, primarily because the importance of developments in this tiny…

Born in turbulent times, Christianity emerged from its intensely Jewish roots to become the official religion of the Roman Empire within a remarkably brief period of time. As a daughter religion to Judaism, however, dissent between the two faiths slowly dominated the discourse as Christianity became less of a Jewish movement, and more of a…

The summer of 1321 was plagued with rumors that Jews had entered into a conspiracy with lepers (some versions also included Muslims) to poison the wells of Europe, resulting in mass hysteria and mob violence. King Philip V was eventually able to quell the movement, but it resurfaced twenty years later in a much more…

In August of 1778, the non-Jewish writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing wrote to his brother of a new literary project designed to further tolerance of Jews in German society. The result was Nathan the Wise, a sensation that was initially banned by the Church and heavily criticized by antisemites of the day.

Officially banned in 1479, no Jews lived in the Russian Empire until Tsarina Catherine II conquered a major portion of Polish territory, instantly inheriting the largest single concentration of Jews in the world. Under her rule the Pale of Settlement was established, determining the region where Jews were allowed to reside, however tenuously, until the…

To view the Prezi associated with this lecture, please click here. Excerpt from “The Jewish Diaspora: A Brief History” Henry Abramson 2. Jews and Judaism in the Year Zero Two Jews, three opinions. The year zero was not nearly as auspicious or significant for Jews as it would later be for Christians. Jews observe a…

Instructions: please watch the lecture, review the reading below, and kindly take the anonymous poll. Thank you! To view the Prezi associated with this lecture, please click here. Excerpt from The Jewish Diaspora: A Brief History Henry Abramson 1. What is Jewish History? “They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat.” So runs the…


