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Prince Henry of Portugal set up voyages to explore and discover new trade routes in order to compete with the Italians. He hired from a range of nationalities, including the Jews. The Jewish navigators, along with the other nationalities, created new maps which changed the way people at the time viewed the world.
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The result of Johan Guttenberg's invention of the printing press was transformative; literacy spread far and wide. People had access to far more literary works than they had at any time in history, so they became more intellectual and profound. Jewish learning also spread due to the printing press, as more works were distributed region-wide.
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The year 1492 brought change to the prosperous and comfortable lives of the Spanish Jews with the Edict of Expulsion, ordering the Jews to convert or leave Spain. This decree forced the Jews to quickly find welcoming and religously tolerant host nations, which were a neccesity. These abrupt turn of events forced the Jewish population to relaize that to survive, thy would need to become indispensable to their host country by taking up occupations such as mapmaker, accountant, and doctors.
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Rabbi Yosef Caro create the universal Code of Jewish Law, the Shulchan Aruch, which gave the Jews a previously unheard of written source which was undisputed and shed light on every unique scenario. Jews could live spread apart as they now had a source of Judaism to take with them.
