SURVIVAL CHALLENGE LEVEL 11: THE CORDOBA CALIPHATE

Okay, survivors, if you’ve made it this far, you only have a little ways to go to survive until to the end of the course. The last two assignments will give you an opportunity to sprint across the finish line with a little help from your fellow survivors.

Firstly, note that this is one of two COLLABORATIVE ASSIGNMENTS. A big part of survival is learning how to coordinate and cooperate with your fellows, and so I will be arbitrarily dividing you into collaborative groups online (you will have different partners in the following, final collaborative assignment). One grade will be applied to everyone in the group–but I am expecting something really great from all of you. In other words, you now collectively have the brain-power of several people–and you will be judged as if you were several people.

So get creative. Make a video, a Prezi, record a song. Make your response really count. Submit something that the rest of the survivors will look at in wonder, and be amazed.

Respond to the question: How did the Jews of the Cordoba Caliphate survive, and what lessons does that hold for contemporary Jews?

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Your assignment is to learn everything you can about the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry, and specifically to look at the survival techniques developed in those halcyon days. It’s important that you bear in mind, however, that the Cordoba Caliphate ultimately degenerated into an intolerant Islamic fundamentalism that drove the Maimonides family, among others, out of the southern part of the peninsula, and a few hundred years later the Christian rulers rendered all of Spain and Portugal completely Judenrein–devoid of Jews. The parallels to the experience of Jews in the 20th and 21st centuries are frightening. In fact, if you sign up for HISN 156: Survive Jewish History II, you will be able to use this information to endure the ULTIMATE SURVIVAL CHALLENGE: America.