Jews and Their Neighbors

Popular history often imagines Jews as living lives isolated from their non-Jewish neighbors through the ages, and Jewish practices such as kashrut (dietary laws) seem to indicate that Jews were meant to be separated from others. But the evidence preserved in Jewish books produced over the centuries suggests otherwise. In Hebrew manuscripts, we see over and over again that Jews dressed just like their neighbors. They spoke the languages of their neighbors. The scribal methods and artistic styles they employed are generally identical to those of their neighbors, from whom they learned these crafts in the first place. 

These many similarities force us to recognize that Jews did not live in splendid (or not-so-splendid) isolation. They participated in the societies in which they made their homes, sometimes subject to hardships but often with relative freedom and comfort. When you witness the beauties of our surviving works, you will realize how Jews have often flourished through the ages, in ways we rarely remember.