Jews lived in ancient Middle East for many years after Biblical times ended. They then entered the land of Israel with the prophet Joshua. They lived there through two temple destructions. They lived in Israel even as the Greeks and Romans ruled over them, but the Babylonians and Persians took them out of the land and moved them to where they wanted them. Only after the time of the Book of Esther, did they let Jews move back to Israel and build the second temple. That is when they were exiled from Israel which began the Jews separation from their land. Also, the Hellenists were trying to mix their religion and culture into Judaism while the Maccabees were fighting the Greeks after Alexander the Great died.
After the Romans, the Arabs took over in the Middle East and the Jews and Muslims lived in general peace and harmony. Many Jews, who were no longer living in Israel, moved into Spain. This is then golden age of Jewish culture as Botnick says, “that Jewish achievements in the areas of literature, science, philosophy, and religion remain monuments to an age of greatness realized by virtue of the bygone spirit of the Islamic tolerance”.
All of Europe’s primary faith was Christianity which was good for them because if you weren’t Jewish or Muslim no one had a monotheistic religion to call their own, but it was bad for the Jews. Those weren’t the times they are now where you can live in America and not be persecuted for your religious beliefs; this was one of the worst times for Jews. The Crusades took place when the Christians and the Muslims were fighting each other for religious dominance. This would be one of the three times Jews were killed or oppressed: Slavery in Egypt, the Crusades, and the Holocaust.
There were different kinds of Christianity but all of them followed the orders of the religious or government leaders in Europe in killing Jews because they weren’t Christian. Many important Jewish leaders were being killed, and to ensure that all the knowledge was passed down and not lost it was all written down in what we all know now as the Oral Torah (Gemara & Mishna). They hated Jews because they claimed they denied that Jesus was the son of God. The devotion to the faith of the ancestors was constructed as a challenge and insult to Christianity. Many Jews were killed but many of them stood firmly to their religious beliefs and wouldn’t convert to Christianity. It was the mission of the soldiers to baptize all the Jews. If the Jews wouldn’t convert they were ordered to be killed. This is what real anti-Semitism is, when people hate someone for their religious beliefs.
With the rise of Jesus, it was a huge problem for Jews because they didn’t have a prophet in a very long time and if you look at Jewish history there were and have been many false prophets so the Jews didn’t believe in him. But there were some Jews who were lost and looking for any sign from God. Jesus had lots of followers which was a huge problem for the rest of the Jews. Some Jews were following his teachings and chronicling it as a new bible after he died. Also, because of Jesus kind of trying to start something under the Romans the Jews were afraid of starting a rebellion, the Romans wanted to crush it and kill followers and the false god. Which is a problem because many people think the Jews killed Jesus which of course was not true. This has become a source of hatred towards the Jews even till this day.
Also most of Europe had Christian Kings like in France, England and Spain, with Princes in Germany, while Italy had a policy of expulsion. The only way for Jews to stay was to convert, through many years of persecution and Crusades many did convert, but not the majority. There even were ghettos ways before the 1900s. But the Pope stated that Jews were worse than devils or witches. They came up with so many lies and spread them such that the Christians thought they were actually real. They made rules prohibiting Jews from doing things or going somewhere, not practicing law or medicine, not owning land or be in the government, and not intermarrying. Martin Luther was nice to the Jews until he realized they wouldn’t even convert to his new form of Christianity. He had synagogues destroyed, property taken, and people kicked out.
Things did get better later on as countries like Poland, Holland and England starting letting the Jews back in. The age of enlightenment changed the ways people saw things, and French philosophers thought the way people were treating the Jews was wrong. The French Revolution helped the Jews, with Napoleon and his army taking down ghettos and asking Jews to join the nobles so the French could win their loyalty.
So the Jews lived well depending on who was in charge of the area, where they were living, or whoever was just ruling the whole continent. At the same time it also depended on who was in power during that particular time when the killing and persecution amongst Jews took place.