Judaism

Judaism also holds the Oral Torah, recorded in the Mishnah and the Talmud. Rabbis teach and judge by halakha, Jewish law, and worship centres on the synagogue. There is no single hierarchy, only the texts and the scholars who read them, such as Maimonides, whose Mishneh Torah codified the law.

In 1337 Jews lived as a heavily taxed minority in Christian and Muslim lands. After the Black Death of 1348, violence swept Jewish communities from Barcelona to Strasbourg, and many fled east to Poland, where Casimir III gave them protection. Spain expelled its Jews in 1492. At Safed in Ottoman Palestine, Joseph Karo wrote the Shulchan Aruch in 1563, and the messianic movement of Sabbatai Zevi ended with his conversion to Islam in 1666.