Religion

By the seventh century most Jews lived outside the land of Israel, a situation experienced as galut (exile, alienation) and one that was to be ended only with the advent of the Messiah. In the meantime, they were to live by Torah, a term that in its narrowest sense refers to the first five books of the Bible but in its broadest sense to all authoritative teaching, and in particular by halakah, the practical part of Torah (similar to shari'a among Muslims). The main authority, apart from the Bible, was the Babylonian Talmud (completed about 700), a wide-ranging collection of laws, discussions, and commentary. The authority of the Talmud was rejected by the Karaites in the eighth century, and they became a minority sect, surviving in small numbers into modern times.

As dhimmis under Islamic rule, Jews sometimes suffered but often prospered, and many of them participated significantly in the high culture of the Islamic world. This participation included a notable philosophical movement whose greatest representative was Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides; 1135–1204), who was also physician to the vizier of Saladin, then ruler of Egypt. An esoteric mystical movement, the Kabbalah, was very influential from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Outbursts of messianic fervor occurred from time to time, of which the most tragic was that of Shabbetai Zvi (1626–1676), whose messianic pretensions ended with his conversion to Islam. By this time the cultural and religious leadership of Judaism had largely shifted to Europe.