An independent educational reference on the history and ideas of the Jewish tradition. This is not the website of the Moscow Jewish Religious Community, the Moscow Choral Synagogue or any other religious organization; we do not give religious advice.
Historical context
The texts and ideas of the Jewish tradition took shape over many centuries and in many countries. To understand them, it helps to know the era in which they arose. Below are six broad periods with short explanations. This is not a complete history but a point of orientation: where dates are reliable we give them, and where scholars disagree we say so plainly.
History is easy to retell as a chain of dates. It is harder, and more important, to see how each era read the texts it inherited in its own way.
How this section works: an era is included if it brought notable changes to the life of Jewish communities or to the body of texts. We give only dates confirmed by encyclopedic sources and offer no assessments of current political events.
Six periods that help place texts and ideas in time.
The earliest period, described in the books of the Tanakh: the traditions of the patriarchs, the Exodus, the life of ancient Israel and the building of the Temple in Jerusalem. Many events of this time are known chiefly from the biblical narrative, and historians differ on how it relates to the archaeological evidence.
How historians debate the date of the Exodus (in Russian)
The era that ended with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. That event marked a turning point: religious life came to centre increasingly on the study of texts, on communities and on places of assembly rather than on the Temple cult.
The Mishnah was compiled around 200 CE; its redaction is associated with Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi. Scholarly discussion of the Mishnah formed the basis of the Talmud: the Babylonian Talmud took shape by roughly the 5th–6th centuries CE.
The age of the great commentators and philosophers: Rashi (1040–1105) wrote commentaries on the Torah and Talmud, and Maimonides (1138–1204) wrote philosophical and legal works. In 1492 the Jews were expelled from Spain, which reshaped the geography of many communities.
The 18th century saw new movements emerge: Hasidism, whose founder is considered to be the Baal Shem Tov, and the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, associated with the name of Moses Mendelssohn. In the Russian Empire the Pale of Settlement was in force from 1791 to 1917.
The most tragic chapter of modern history is the Holocaust, the murder of about 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. On 14 May 1948 the State of Israel was proclaimed; we give this date in the timeline without political assessment.
A timeline of key dates, from the destruction of the Second Temple to 1948.
The body of texts (Tanakh, Mishnah, Talmud, Midrash, commentaries) and how to work with a source.
Historical figures: Rashi, Maimonides, the Baal Shem Tov and Moses Mendelssohn.
This guide draws on encyclopedic reference works. Dates for ancient and medieval events are often approximate, and scholars do not always agree; where that is the case, we say so in the text.