Limmud Michigan 2018

The Jews occupied a strange position in the Middle Ages and European Renaissance: they were neither a fully-assimilated people, nor did they exist completely separately from their non-Jewish neighbors. Some of this was due to their own preferences (as it is written in Leviticus 18:3-4, “Do not perform the practice of the land of Egypt in which you dwelled; and do not perform the practice of the land of Canaan to which I bring you, and do not follow their traditions.”) but much of it was due to external restrictions from their majority culture, either to keep the Jews impoverished or otherwise humiliate them.