Podcast: Cynthia Ozick on “The Conversion of the Jews”

Podcast: Cynthia Ozick

In July of the year 1263, the Dominican friar Pablo Christiani met to debate the rabbi Moses ben Naḥman, sometimes known as Naḥmanides, to discuss whether Jesus was the Messiah, and thus whether Christianity or Judaism had a greater claim to truth. They conducted this debate in the court of King James of Aragon, who famously guaranteed the rabbi’s freedom of speech, allowing Naḥmanides to advance even arguments that, being regarded as heretical by Christian clergy, would have otherwise caused him to be imprisoned or worse. These proceedings are known, famously, in history as the Disputation of Barcelona.

To understand fully the context of this debate, one has to know something more about the Dominican friar Pablo Christiani: he was not born Pablo Christiani. In fact, he was born as a Sephardi Jew with the birth name of Saul. Only later in life, having lived as a Jewish man and having been exposed to some Jewish learning, did he convert to Catholicism. Joining the Dominican order as a friar, Saul—newly dubbed Pablo—dedicated his life to converting the Jews, possibly with argument and persuasion—he liked to use statements from Talmudic writing as evidence for Christian theology—but also through the threat of violence and force.