Anthonius Margaritha and the Jewish Faith: Jewish Life and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Germany

1 The Margoleses of Bavaria

1 1 The Margoleses of Bavaria Anthonius Margaritha was born into a family of rabbinic scholars. The family’s rabbinic tradition may have extended to his great-grandfather and beyond, but can be solidly dated to his grandfather, Jacob (c. 1430–1501). Jacob Margoles [Margolith] spent most of his life in Germany—Schwabia, Württemberg, and Bavaria. He is remembered as an expert on Jewish divorce and as the last chief rabbi of Nürnberg before its expulsion of the Jews in 1499. Jacob’s place of birth and education are not certain. His parents were probably Moses and Margoles (a feminine name); his surname derives from his mother’s name, a common practice.1 Jacob’s early life and education may have been connected with the city of Worms, which had been a center of Jewish life and learning for centuries. His siblings and stepsiblings lived in the Bavarian town of Nördlingen. Perhaps he spent youthful days there. Although he was born and raised in Germany, as a Jew, Jacob could not be a German citizen of any city or principality. He lived and worked as a teacher and rabbinic judge in enclaves permitted to Jews. He, his children, and his grandchildren were members of a tolerated minority, subject to civic sanctions and expulsions by the German Christian majority , who believed that they as Christians had replaced the Messiah-killing Jews as God’s chosen people. 2 Chapter 1 I Jewish communities were often quite small, restricted in part by the Christian cities and states limiting or forbidding Jewish immigration. The organization of the Jewish community, when possible, consisted of a council, at least one rabbi, a synagogue, a school, a cemetery, and a ritual bath. The “Memory Books” of various communities reveal not only the deaths and births in the community but also the customs and the social structures that formed Jewish life. (Anthonius Margaritha mentions memory books in Der gantz Jüdisch glaub [1530], iiiT.) Customs, which varied from place to place, bound the members of individual communities together. The rabbis and prosperous men were the leaders of the community.2 Larger communities employed several rabbis as teachers and judges. Jacob Margoles appears in records as a teacher of students in cheder, or elementary schools, and in yeshivas, or secondary schools. More advanced yeshivas produced rabbis. Jacob taught and gave rabbinic judgments in Ulm, Württemberg, before 1460.3 The city of Ulm had granted civic rights to some Jews in the fourteenth century, but in the fifteenth century, the Jewish community suffered from increased taxation and restrictions on money lending. When the community hired Jacob as a rabbi, he was allowed to live in the city under an exception. In 1457 the city expelled those Jews who had not been granted civic rights,4 and Jacob likely left at that time, for his name appears in the records of Giengen, north of Ulm, around 1460.5 In 1499, Ulm gave the Jews still resident in the city five months’ notice to leave, after which the city was legally Judenrein, Jewfree. Because of its proximity to Ulm, Giengen became a place of refuge for at least some of the 1457 expellees. It was also a stop on the life journey of Jacob Margoles. By 1465 he was in Schwäbish Gmünd, northeast of Giengen . He moved from there to Luchau and finally to Nürnberg in 1480. After the expulsion of Jews from Nürnberg, he became the rabbi of Regensburg in 1499.6 During his frequent moves, Jacob seems to have spent time with relatives in the town of Nördlingen, a short distance from Nürnberg. His brothers, David, Jesse, Elias, and Noe, and his sister lived in Nördlingen, along with his stepbrothers, Jacob the Elder, Samuel, Jesse, and his stepsisters .7 Nördlingen was significant also because when Jacob’s first wife died, he returned there to marry again in 1475. His second wife was the widow of Aaron of Neresheim. Both of Jacob’s wives had children from previous marriages. In some documents, Jacob is called the son-in-law of Joseph of Nördlingen, who was also known as Joseph of Donauwörth.8 Because Joseph lived in Ulm in 1453, he was probably the father of Jacob’s first wife.9 The Margoleses of Bavaria 3 Jacob’s stepbrothers, David and Samuel, moved from Nördlingen...