Whereas jews and non-jews have generally portrayed Jewish material circumstances in medieval western Christendom in exceedingly somber terms, Jews and others have regularly depicted Jewish spiritual circumstances rather glowingly. We recall Heinrich Graetz's double-sided portrait of exilic Jewry as, on the one hand, mired in degradation and pain – “subjugated Judah with the pilgrim staff in hand, the pilgrim pack upon the back, with a mournful eye addressed toward heaven, surrounded by prison walls, implements of torture, and red-hot branding irons” – and on the other hand, rising above its suffering with a commitment to the life of the mind – “the same figure with the earnestness of the thinker upon his placid brow, with the air of a scholar in his bright features, seated in a hall of learning.”

While most observers have not gone to quite the extremes of Graetz, there has been a substantial consensus that the Jews of medieval Christian Europe led lives that were by and large spiritually unruffled or were at least relatively unfazed by challenges from the surrounding environment. The assumptions are that the cohesive Jewish communal organizational structure provided effectively for the educational and spiritual needs of its constituents and that these constituents were profoundly committed to their community and faith, in no way challenged by what is often projected as a backward medieval Christian society and civilization.