What the Kalonymus Family Had to Endure Through the Roman Period To Start the Ashkenazi Line of Jews

Nadene Goldfoot                                               

Arch of Titus in Rome's Avenue where all can see it, a record for life, made by the culprits themselves, the Romans:  Showing Jews they had captured and forced to carry the spoils out of the Temple in Jerusalem from the destruction in 70 CE to Rome including the Menorah.  It's better than having had a movie made of it at the time, as this has lasted for over 2,000 years.  What this doesn't show is the death of thousands of Jews who died in the attack and starvation period before the day of burning the Temple and the city of Jerusalem.  

Jews have lived in Rome for over 2,000 years, longer than in any other European city. They originally went there from Alexandria, Egypt,  drawn by the lively commercial intercourse between those two cities.  From here they got to the Rhineland, Germany, and became the Ashkenazim; Jews that went in this direction and combined Hebrew with German to created a new language, Yiddish.  

The first record of Jews in Rome is in 161 BCE., when Jason b. Eleazar and Eupolemus b. Johanan are said to have gone there as envoys from Judah Maccabee.                                     

Image of Joshua from the 3rd-century wall paintings at the synagogue of Dura-Europos.  The Dura-Europos synagogue was an ancient synagogue uncovered at Dura-Europos, Syria, in 1932. The synagogue contains a forecourt and house of assembly with painted walls depicting people and animals, and a Torah shrine in the western wall facing Jerusalem.  

The history of the Jews in the Roman Empire (Latin: Iudaeorum Romanum) traces the interaction of Jews and Romans during the period of the Roman Empire (27 BCE – CE 476). A Jewish diaspora had migrated to Rome and to the territories of Roman Europe from the land of Israel, Anatolia, Babylon and Alexandria in response to economic hardship and incessant warfare over the land of Israel between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires from the 4th to the 1st centuries BCE. In Rome, Jewish communities thrived economically. Jews became a significant part of the Roman Empire's population in the first century CE, with some estimates as high as 7 million people., the population of Jewish Israel today.  

In the year 139 BCE, the pretor Hispanus issued a decree expelling all Jews who were not Roman citizens, so Jews had been there way before that. Praetor, also prætor and pretor, was the title granted by the government of Ancient Rome to a man acting in one of two official capacities: the commander of an army, and as an elected magistratus, assigned to discharge various duties...  Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Hispanus was the son of Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Hispallus. He was one of the decemviri stlitibus judicandis and military tribune before 150 BCE, and became quaestor around that date. He then became aedile, probably in 141 BCE. He was a praetor in 139 BCE. As praetor, he expelled the astrologers (Chaldaeans and Jews) from the city of Rome.( Jews should not have been included; astrology was a tabooed occupation in the Jewish religion, but upon investigation, they had been) Chaldea was a country that existed between the late 10th or early 9th and mid-6th centuries BCE, after which the country and its people were absorbed and assimilated into Babylonia. Semitic-speaking, it was located in the marshy land of the far southeastern corner of Mesopotamia and briefly came to rule Babylon.  Although the Jews of both Palestine and the Diaspora had steadily moved into the orbit of the Roman world in the course of the second century BCE, Rome did not develop a substantial body of laws regarding the Jews until the second half of the first century BCE. Only then, in the fifty-odd years from Caesar to Augustus, did Roman magistrates pass a number of decrees aimed at protecting the free exercise of Jewish religion. They decreed that Jews might gather freely in thiasoi, observe the Sabbath and the Jewish festivals, send money to the Temple in Jerusalem, and enjoy autonomy in their communal affairs. Jews were also absolved from compulsory enrollment in the Roman military.                                  

Rome's involvement in the Eastern Mediterranean dated from 63 BCE, following the end of the Third Mithridatic War, when Rome made Syria a province.  It was  at this date, in 63 BCE,  that the Romans occupied Jerusalem. 

The former Israelite king Hyrcanus II d: 33 BCE-eldest son of Alexander Yannai and Salome Alexandra,  was confirmed as ethnarch of the Jews by Julius Caesar in 48 BCE. 

The Roman Jews are said to have been conspicuous in the mourning for Julius Caesar in 44 BCE.                      

In 37 BCE, the Herodian Kingdom was established as a Roman client kingdom. Herod I, the Great (73 BCE-4 BCE) king of Judea, son of Antipater the Idumean (Edom) also Mt. Seir, mountainous land,   and the Nabatean, Arabs who occupied Edom in the 6th century, Cypros, his wife.  While a governor, appointed by his father, he showed an appetite for executing dissidents. 

In 6 CE parts became a province of the Roman Empire, named Iudaea/Judaea Province.

On the death of Herod in 4 BCE,  8,000 native Roman Jews are reported to have escorted the Jewish delegates from Judea who came to request the senate to abolish the Herodian monarchy. Evidently the Senate turned a deaf ear.   Herod of Chalcis died in 48 CE, son of Aristobulus, grandson of Herod, brother of Agrippa I, appointed king of Chaleis (Syria)  by the MAD Caligula in 41 CE, and received pretorian rank.  His 1st wife was Marianme, granddaughter of Herod, and their son, Aristobulus, was appointed by Nero to reign in Lesser Armenia.  Herod later married his niece, Berenice.  He deposed and appointed a succession of high priests.  He was succeeded by his nephew Agrippa II.  

At the same time, another narrative commencing in Bethlehem was born in about 4 BCE, Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary and Joseph, who would be the founder of Christianity and died in 29 CE or 30CE or 33CE according to various reports. According to the canonical gospels, Jesus was arrested and tried by the Sanhedrin (71 scholars like a supreme court and as legislature led by the Nasi, Hillel-the Elder of 1st century BCE who had originated the Golden Rule of what you do not like, don't do to others, who answered a scoffer to condense the whole of Torah in one sentence and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself;  or a descendant of him and would have met in the Temple chamber called the Hall of Hewn Stone, entered only by the priests/ Cohen's court and the Israelite's court)   Thousands of Jews were being condemned by the Romans and placed on crosses during this period and Jesus was but one of them.  

  and then sentenced by Pontius Pilate, a Roman Procurator- the governor of Judea under the Roman emperors, at this time residing in Herod's palace,  to be scourged, and finally crucified by the Romans. One of the earliest—and most scathing—accounts of Pilate comes from the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria. Writing around 50 CE., he castigated the prefect for his “briberies, insults, robberies, outrages and wanton injuries, executions without trial, constantly repeated, ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty.”

According to the traditional account of his life, Pilate was a Roman equestrian (knight) of the Samnite clan of the Pontii (hence his name Pontius). He was appointed prefect of Judaea through the intervention of Sejanus, a favourite of the Roman emperor Tiberius. (That his title was prefect is confirmed by an inscription from Caesarea in ancient Palestine.)  He was not a Jew as Christian literature has made him out to be from medieval times.  

Protected by Sejanus, Pilate incurred the enmity of Jews in Roman-occupied Palestine by insulting their religious sensibilities, as when he hung worship images of the emperor throughout Jerusalem and had coins bearing pagan religious symbols minted. After Sejanus’s fall (31 CE),   (John 19:12) tells tales that the previous writers did not, and he accuses Jews of being terrible people. This is the cause of much anti-Semitism in the world.  Lucius Aelius Seianus, commonly known as Sejanus, was a Roman soldier, friend and confidant of the Roman Emperor Tiberius. An equestrian by birth, Sejanus rose to power as prefect of the Roman imperial bodyguard, known as the Praetorian Guard, of which he was commander from AD 14 until his death in AD 31.

Two synagogues were seemingly founded by " Jewish freedmen" who had been slaves of Augustus (d. 14 c.e.) and Agrippa (d. 12 b.c.e.) respectively and bore their names.

There was also from an early date a Samaritan synagogue (Northern Israel mixed population)  in Rome which continued to exist for centuries.

                             
Although the position of the Roman Jews must have been adversely affected by the great Roman-Jewish wars in Judea in 66-73 and 132-135, the prisoners of war brought back as slaves ultimately gave a great impetus to the Jewish population.

A delegation of scholars from Eretz Israel in 95-96, led by the patriarch Gamaliel II, found as its religious head the enthusiastic but unlearned Theudas.

From the second half of the first century c.e. the Roman Jewish community seems to have been firmly established.  The total number of Jews in Rome has been estimated as high as 40,000, but was probably nearer 10,000. Besides the beggars and peddlers, there were physicians, actors, and poets, but the majority of the members of the community were shopkeepers and craftsmen (tailors, tentmakers, butchers, limeburners).                         

Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, first Christian, was in Jerusalem

With the adoption of Christianity by the Roman emperors the position of the Jews changed immediately for the worse. While Judaism remained officially a tolerated religion as before, its actual status deteriorated, and every pressure was brought on the Jews to adopt the now-dominant faith. Even Constantine reluctantly converted, though never really letting go of Olympus and his gods.   In 387-388, a Christian mob, after systematically destroying heathen temples, turned its attention to the synagogues and burned one of them to the ground.

The anti-Jewish legislation of the 4th  Lateran Council (1215) inspired by Pope Innocent III does not seem to have been strictly enforced in the Papal capital. There is some evidence that copies of the Talmud were burned here after its condemnation in Paris in 1245. The wearing of the Jewish badge was imposed in 1257 and the city statutes of 1360 ordered male Jews to wear a red tabard, and the women a red petticoat.

                                                        

Somehow, through all this history,  were the ancestors of the Kalonymus family, Jews of Rome. Kalonymos or Kalonymus (Hebrew: קָלוֹנִימוּס‎ Qālōnīmūs) is a prominent Jewish family who lived in Italy, which, after the settlement at Mainz and Speyer of several of its members, took during many generations a leading part in the development of Jewish learning in Germany. The family is according to many considered the foundation of Hachmei Provence and the Ashkenazi Hasidim.  They are an important family to many Jews because we find we are related by DNA testing to them.                                                         

       Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (20 May 1889–3 November 1943), was the Grand Rabbi of Piaseczno, Poland, who authored a number of works and was murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The family, through the ages, had spread out from Italy to Germany and then Poland, perhaps all parts of the Pale of Settlement.  

The name should technically be spelled "Kalonymos," as Kalonymus ben Kalonymus and Immanuel the Roman both rhyme it with words ending in "-mos". The name, which occurs in Greece, Italy, and Provence, is of Greek origin; Kalonymos (Ancient Greek: Kαλώνυμος) means "good name" and Wolf pointed that it is a translation of the Hebrew "Shem-Tov"; Zunz, that it represented the Latin "Cleonymus".

Traces of the family in Italy may be found as early as the second half of the eighth century. As to the date of the settlement of its members in Germany, the opinions of modern scholars are divided, owing to the conflicting statements of the Jewish sources.

Kalonymus Kalman Shapira was born in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, Poland to his father, the Imrei Elimelech of Grodzhisk. Named after his maternal great-grandfather, the renowned Maor VaShemesh, he was a scion of a distinguished family, which included Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk, the Chozeh of Lublin and the Maggid of Kozhnitz.

Kalonymos Ben Kalonymos, called Maestro Calo (1286-after 1328), was a French Hebrew author and translator.  He lived in various French centers and in Rome. Kalonymos translated many philosophical and scientific works from Arabic into Hebrew and Latin for King Robert of Naples.  His original works include a moral work in rhymed prose, and a satiric parody of a talmudic tractate. Quite often, I've seen Jewish scholarship copied and then claimed by Arabic writers.   

A replica of the capital of the pillar from Kalonymous house, Mainz (10th century)

Rapoport, Leopold Zunz, and many others place the settlement in 876, believing the King Charles, mentioned in the sources as having induced the Kalonymides to emigrate to Germany, to have been Charles the Bald, who was in Italy in that year; Luzzatto and others think that it took place under Charlemagne, in approximately 800 CE, alleging that the desire to attract scholars to the empire was more in keeping with the character of that monarch; still others assign it to the reign of Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor (973-983), whose life, according to the historian Thietmar von Merseburg, was saved in a battle with the Saracens by a Jew named Kalonymus. The following table, compiled from the accounts of Eleazar of Worms and Solomon Luria, gives the Italian and German heads of the family, which produced for nearly 5 centuries the most notable scholars of Germany and northern France, such as Samuel he-Hasid and his son Judah he-Hasid. Although all of them are mentioned as having been important scholars, the nature of the activity of only a few of them is known.

The 1st-known family members were liturgical poets that I found, 8 of them. 

Meshulam I was the first Kalonymus on the family tree from 780 CE in italy.  

Kalonymus ben Isaac the Elder

German halachist; lived at Speyer in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; father of Samuel he-Hasid, grandfather of Judah he-Hasid, and great-grandfather of Judah ben Kalonymus,  My family is related to someone of the Kalonymus family:  

Well-known members of the family are:

• Kalonymus ben Kalonymus
• David Kalonymus ben Jacob
• Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus
• Kalonymus ben Todros
• Eleazar ben Judah ben Kalonymus
• Judah ben Kalonymus

Resource:

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2021/11/philos-hellenization-after-attempts-to.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Roman_Empire

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Roman_Empire

https://dbs.anumuseum.org.il/skn/en/c6/e139424/Place/Rome?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=jews%20of%20rome&utm_campaign=g&device=c&gclid=CjwKCAiAm7OMBhAQEiwArvGi3KBIPUPv8EasNDrPe0A5GjxQVHC9gQ1Mg4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalonymos_family

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalonymus_Kalman_Shapira

https://www.livescience.com/65283-crucifixion-history.html

https://www.livescience.com/38014-physical-evidence-jesus-debated.html

https://porridgemagazine.com/2016/08/21/the-relationship-of-astrology-with-roman-state-religion-and-practices-kathryn-shaw/

First Greece, then Rome and the Treacherous Life in Judaea

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Alexander the Great in the Temple of Jerusalem. Sebastiano Conca, circa 1750.

Realize this;  before the   Romans  and their occupation were the Hellenizing Greek-Syrians  led by Antiochus IV Epiphanes (Antiochus IV Epiphanes was a Hellenistic king of the Seleucid Empire from 175 BCE until his death in 164 BCE. He was a son of King Antiochus III the Great. His original name was Mithradates; he assumed the name Antiochus after he ascended the throne.) who tried to stamp out Judaism, who had taken over the Temple and placed their idols in it.  They tried to force Jews to eat pork.  Finally Judas the Maccabee of the Hasmonean family took them on and rebelled.  We remember the period with the holiday of Hanukkah.  The history of Greeks in Syria traditionally begins with Alexander the Great's (336-323 BCE) conquest of the Persian Empire. In the aftermath of Alexander's death, his empire was divided into several successor states, and thus ushering in the beginning of the Hellenistic Age. For the Levant and Mesopotamia, it meant coming under the control of Seleucus I Nicator and the Seleucid Empire (The Seleucid Empire was a Hellenistic state in Western Asia that existed from 312 BCE to 63 BCE. It was founded by Seleucus I Nicator following the division of the Macedonian Empire established by Alexander the Great.). The Hellenistic period was characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization. and occupation in Jerusalem.                                         

 Jews had lived in Rome since the second century BCE. Jews, as part of the Jewish diaspora, migrated to Rome and Roman Europe from the Land of Israel, Asia Minor, Babylon and Alexandria in response to economic hardship and incessant warfare over the land of Israel between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires. In Rome, Jewish communities enjoyed privileges and thrived economically, becoming a significant part of the Empire's population (perhaps as much as ten percent).

 Julius Caesar and Augustus supported laws that allowed Jews protection to worship as they chose. Synagogues were classified as colleges to get around Roman laws banning secret societies and the temples were allowed to collect the yearly tax paid by all Jewish men for temple maintenance.                                                     

There had been upsets: Jews had been banished from Rome in 139 BCE, again in 19 CE and during the reign of Claudius. However, they were soon allowed to return and continue their independent existence under Roman law.                                                                          

The Roman general Pompey in his eastern campaign established Roman Syria in 64 BCE and conquered Jerusalem shortly after, in 63 BCE. Romans occupied Jerusalem for 134 years until they destroyed it in 70 CE.  Notice that the Romans were right on the heels of the Greek Syrians in occupying Jerusalem.  Jews had no relief from occupiers.  

Under Julius Caesar, Judaism was officially recognized as a legal religion, a policy followed by the first Roman emperor, Augustus. The ruling Hasmonean dynasty was deposed by the Romans after the Roman Senate declared Herod the Great "King of the Jews" in c. 40 BCE, the Roman province of Egypt was established in 30 BCE, and Judea proper, Samaria and Idumea (biblical Edom) became the Roman province of Iudaea in 6 CE. 

Jewish–Roman tensions resulted in several Jewish–Roman wars, 66–135 CE, which resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple and institution of the Jewish Tax in 70 and Hadrian's attempt to create a new Roman colony named Aelia Capitolina c. 130.  It was the Zealots who had started the Rebellion in 66.                                                            

Marching Jews to Rome with the spoils  of riches from the Temple shown                           on the  Arch of Titus in Rome

Jews have continued to live on in Italy  despite the fact that many were brought to Rome as slaves.  The Kalonymus family   is a prominent one that traces their line to the 8th century who moved to Germany by the 10th century of which my Goldfoot line connects.   Rather, they were of the beginning of the Ashkenazi Jews.   No doubt they were in Rome from the beginning of the Roman Empire in 27 BCE.                                       

                                                            Agrippa I, King of Judea

During  70 CE the Romans, occupiers of Jerusalem, burned down the 2nd Temple and with it, the city of Jerusalem.  The Jews had rebelled and there was the 1st Jewish-Roman War the started in the year 66 and continued until 73.  

 Before this had happened, Agrippa I, born in 11 BCE(Herod Agrippa I, alias Marcus Julius, was the King of Judea.  He was the son of ARISTOBULUS, and the grandson of King Herod who had done so much renovation on the 2nd Temple.  His father was one of 2 son, the heirs of Herod by Princess Mariamne I , Herod's 2nd wife, the Hasmonean , daughter of Alexander, son of Aristobulus II who died in 29 BCE. She had been married off to Herod at a very young age.  Herod had murdered her family.  Herod's sister was Salome who told Herod that Mariamne committed adultery, and for this she had been executed.   

 These 2 brothers had followed their mother to execution, and the murdered princes had become the subject of romance, so that Agrippa was able to use popular sympathy to help him in his rise to the Herodian throne, a position for which there were better candidates than he, which is usually the case. In this case it was he who had the pull, the clout, the popular coverage that got him the throne.   He had the well-known parents of the day and pull.  

Agrippa was educated at the court of the Roman Emperor, Tiberius, and was friendly with his son, DRUSUS.  After Drusus died, he became involved in some escapades with CALIGULA, the heir apparent who became emperor from 37 to 41 CE, and for that was imprisoned by Emperor Tiberius for suspected treachery.  It was Caligula himself who gave Agrippa the tetrarchy of NE Judea and the title of king.                                                                     

Caligula was a crazy man who insisted on being worshipped as a divinity (G-d)  which caused havoc with the Jews and this was the excuse for all the anti-Jewish disturbances in Alexandria on the occasion of Agrippa's visit in 38 CE.  It was Philo who headed the Jewish delegation sent to intercede with Caligula and has recorded a graphic impression of his court.  Caligula was assassinated  at age 28 by members of the Praetorian Guard, which prevented serious consequences in the Jewish world.                                                                            

Josephus, the Jewish general turned historian for the Romans pictured Agrippa as a reckless,, charming person who was as weak as the rest of the past Herods.  The 1st King Herod (73 BCE-4 BCE) of Judea was the son of an Idumean father, Aristobulus by his Nabatean wife, Cypros, so he was a converted Jew as the Idumeans (Edom) were from the SE part of Judea around Mt. Seir, a mountainous part of the country.  They were Semites, but descendants of Esau, the twin of Jacob, and lived by hunting.  The Edomites had become the traditional enemies of the Israelites and fought against Israel's first king, Saul but were defeated by David.  Now one of them has become king of Judea through the Romans, another enemy who is a puppet of Rome.  His mother, a Nabatean, were from people of Arab extraction who occupied Edom in the 6th century BCE and had their capital at Petra, found in today's Jordan.  Herod had no followers backing him of the Jewish people.  He gained points, though, by the restoration of the Temple when it needed it from them.          

Pontius Pilate was the 5th governor of the Roman province of Judaea, serving under Emperor Tiberius from the year 26/27 to 36/37 CE.  He is best known today for being the official who presided over the trial of Jesus of the Christians and later ordered his crucifixion. 

                                                                                     

Ecce Homo ("Behold the Man"), Antonio Ciseri's depiction of Pilate presenting a scourged Jesus to the people of Jerusalem

Pontius Pilate arrived in Judea from Rome at the same time that Agrippa Herod had arrived.  At this time, John, the Baptist was on the scene, preaching to the Essenes.  Pontius Pilate was a procurator, a governor of Judea under the Roman emperors. Governor ruled from 6 to 66 CE, almost up to the destruction of Jerusalem.  14 governors were ruling altogether in Judea, 7 who ruled between 6 to 41 CE and the other between 44 to 66 CE.  They administered as subordinates to the Syrian legate who had authority over the procurators if he was charged with abusing his office with being unduly extortionate in his treatment of the population, and especially in the event of rebellion.  Then the legate of Syria would act as final arbiter and either exonerate or punish the procurator.  Punishment could mean dismissal from the office theoretically.  In reality, they were independent governor armed with full administrate authority.  They enjoyed the "right of the sword," full powers to inflict punishment including the death penalty for those not Roman citizens.  Those people could demand the transfer of their trial to be heard before the Emperor in Rome.  These procurators in Judea usually lived in Caesarea, the administrative capital of Roman Judea.  If they were in Jerusalem for an occasion, they lived in Herod's palace.  

After the influences of the Greeks and then the Romans, it's a wonder that Judaism came down to us at all, and does explain much of the questions and seeking of the true nature of G-d and his expectations of us throughout the period of Sadducees, Pharisees and Essenes.  Jews had collided with differing philosophies of living and thinking.  It was a traumatic period for them.  For them, occupation had become the norm.  

With the Kalonymus family leading Jews to Germany, Judaism held on and transpired into Ashkenazic Judaism, actually mimicking what became the Sephardic Judaism and the Mizrachi Judaism  with only slight differences in food selections. those Jews who remained in Italy found themselves held in the world's 1st Jewish ghetto on March 29, 1516.   

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Barbara Thiering

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvbkjxph.20?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

https://www.history.com/news/7-things-you-may-not-know-about-caligula

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontius_Pilate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalonymos_family

Book:  FINDING OUR FATHERS by Dan Rottenberg 

https://www.worldjewishtravel.org/listing/remembering-the-worlds-first-jewish-ghetto/?gclid=Cj0KCQiA-aGCBhCwARIsAHDl5x_VGJP4y2QT2qVIdJLXfi_fTRb8dOCS1LjXgCGMzaqWgRw0kXOS7ZwaAkXzEALw_wcB