ews in the Middle Ages were considered by themselves, their few
friends, and their many enemies, as a twice separated nation--a people
separated from those among whom they dwelt and separated from the
land in which they originated. They were governed by their own
law--the Lex Judaeorum--which was recognized by the authorities of the
land in which they lived as peculiar and proper to them;[4] they dwelt
in communal groups which were bound together by common interests; they
observed their own customs and nourished their own culture; they were
held to be foreigners, and in a comparison of their own with the
Christian civilization, they readily acknowledged this status. The
force of persecution without and the religious conviction of
superiority, separateness, and nationality within, preserved and
constantly increased this solidarity.[5]

That the existence of a separate, recalcitrant, and even obnoxious
nation within a nation did not constitute a problem for the medievals
may be attributable to two reasons: (1) the medieval theory of life
accentuated a hierarchical order of existence--a theory that found
expression in feudalism, in Church organization, and in guild and
craft life; in pursuance of this theory, the Jews were accorded a
recognized and distinct status; (2) furthermore, the Jews were an
economic necessity in the times when a ban was laid on money-lending,
and they constituted an important economic facility at a little later
period when capital could indeed be worked but when rivalry and
hatreds rendered communication uncertain.[6] To the maintenance of
Jewish solidarity and the preservation of things Jewish _qua_ Jewish,
sacrifices culminating in the surrender of life bequeathed to the race
a comprehensive martyrology.[7]

Ernest Renan defines a nation as "a great solidarity constituted by
the sentiment of the sacrifices that its citizens have made and those
they feel prepared to make once more. It implies a past, but is summed
up in the present by a tangible fact--the clearly expressed desire to
live a common life." In sum, the Jews throughout the Middle Ages,
which was prolonged for them until a little less than two hundred
years ago, comprised a nation as virtual in point of their own claim
and its recognition by other nations as in the days when they were
established in Palestine. Renaissance, Reformation, and the
rediscovery of the world by science failed to make an impression on
the thick ghetto walls;