Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict

Four: The Jewish Community

Four The Jewish Community A fter five centuries of periodic conflict, tensions between Alexandrian Jews and Gentiles reached a violent climax in late 414/early 415. Beginning with a disturbance in the theater, a spiral, of threats and intimidation escalated until, one night, a group of Alexandrian Jews set upon their Christian neighbors in a street brawl, with bloody results. The next day, the patriarch Cyril set in motion a series of reprisals which led to the plunder of Jewish synagogues and the wholesale expulsion of the Jewish community.1 Regardless of how one wishes to interpret these events, the Alexandrian Jewish, community clearly emerges as one of the prin­ cipal players on the urban scene, of early fifth­century Alexandria. In gazing back over the previous three centuries, however, the Jews of Alexandria hardly appear at all in the extant historical sources. Surely the Alexandrian Jewish community did not spring up over night, or become an important factor in city politics in just a few short years. Where were the Jews before the events of 414/15? Is it possible to say something about the social and economic status of these Alexandrian Jews, as well as their political standing and group ideology, during the fourth and fifth centuries? The prominent role played by the Alexandrian Jewish eommu­ 91 Alexandria in Late Antiquity 92 nity in the events of 414/15 tends to focus our attention on this particular outbreak of violence in such a way that any other data concerning the Jews from this period are interpreted solely with reference to the stasis of 414/15, This approach subordinates the day­to­day life of the Jewish community to one atypical, albeit crucial, event. Granted, historical gleanings from the everyday exis­ tence of this community may contribute to a proper understanding of the violence in 414/15. Nevertheless, by recognizing the unusual nature of these riots, a better approach might be to argue in the opposite direction and employ the abundant data contained in accounts of the violence to fill out our understanding of the Alex­ andrianJewish community. In this manner, the focus of the investiga­ tion remains on the Jews themselves, and allows more basic ques­ tions concerning the community's composition to be addressed. As a corollary to this approach, our understanding of the violence of 414/15 also will be enhanced, by restoring it to its proper context within the long history of the Alexandrian Jewish community. Tracing an Elusive Presence At the outset of any study regarding the Jewish population of late Roman Alexandria a major obstacle presents itself: a scarcity of reliable sources, both literary and archaeological. The volume of Alexandrian source material is far less than that for the Diaspora communities in Syria or Palestine. There is no Egyptian equivalent to the Palestinian Talmud, John Chrysostoms sermons against the Judaizing Christians of Antioch, Libanius's letters to the Jewish patriarch, or the splendid fourth­century synagogues from Galilee. While the extant Jewish papyri somewhat redress this imbalance, they normally concern matters pertaining to the Thebaid or to the Fayyum., and only rarely mention Alexandria. Moreover, the deficiencies of the source materials are not simply quantitative but qualitative. The exegetical works of the fifth­ century patriarch Cyril, although vital for forming an estimation of his anti­Semitic biases, tell us very little about the social status or economic position of the Jews he so despises. Likewise, monastic sources or ecclesiastical historians seldom refer to the Jews of Alex­ ??? ?????? ????????? andria since they figure only peripherally in ascetic tales or in chronicles of the era's many doctrinal controversies. While legal texts are quite useful for analyzing the juridical position of the Jews during the later empire, they provide meager data for discussing the ??????????? ?? ?????????? ?????? ???????????? ??? ????????? ??? proves very little on turning to Jewish source material. Apart from the thorny problems of dating and provenance, tatmudic literature displays scant interest in broad historical issues. The nuggets mined from such sources (actually more like fine gold dust) have to be handled very carefully if they are to be used effectively in adorning our mosaic picture of the Alexandrian Jewish community recon­ structed from other fragmentary pieces of evidence. In the face of such source difficulties, it is necessary to utilize a variety of historiographical approaches if one wishes to do more than simply gather stray sherds of seemingly unrelated evidence strewn across the landscape of the primary sources...