ABSTRACT
The presence of Jews in Byzantium is generally overlooked, or mentioned in the most cursory fashion. And yet, while not numerous, they were a definite presence in the population of the major towns, and in the literature of the Orthodox Christian majority they receive an attention that verges on the obsessive, for obscure theological reasons. They also receive attention in the legislation both of the state and of the church, and so in speaking of Jewish identity we are considering something that had a formal and publicly recognized aspect. However, in what follows I shall be mostly concerned with the Jews' own sense of their minority identity, rather than the identity that was inflicted on them by others, which is in some respects a different story.
