In the Year 1096: The First Crusade and the Jews

V. 1096 in Jewish Historical Consciousness

Chapter V 1096 InJewish Historical Consciousness The events of 1096 have occupied a shifting place in jewish historical consciousness over the last nine centuries. At times, jews have been profoundly conscious of the crusaderelated assaults and the remarkable jewish responses, seeing in them events of epic proportion; at times, jews have perceived these assaults as one set among many that have afflicted thejewish people; at times,jews have been oblivious to the Rhineland massacres. More important, Jewish observers have inevitably interpreted the events of 1096 in light of their own particular circumstances. Views of 1096 over the ages thus offer us a prism through which to examine the vagaries of Jewish experience in the intervening centuries. 108 In the }~~a1' 1096: The First Crusade and theJews For Rhineland Jewry and its immediate Jewish neighbors , the events of 1096 obviously constituted a major tragedy. While early Ashkenazic Jewry seems to have recovered physical1y in fairly short order, recollection of the catastrophe was not easily emaced. Elegiac poems 'were composed in the wake of the disaster, many immediately thereafter , and lists of martyred Jews were fashioned, although when they were compiled is not clear. Prayers highlighting the enmity of the non:Jewish world and the heroism ofJews were added to the liturgy. The great French:Jewish exegete Rashi, who had studied in the Rhineland but had returned to his native Champagne before the outbreak of the First Crusade, included recurrent reference to disaster and slaughter in his cOIrunentaries, written within a decade of 1096 at most. As a one-time student in the affected area, he was deeply moved by the calamity that had befallen the Jewish community he had earlier come to know. The remarkable narratives that have been utilized so heavily were themsdves part of the process of memOlialization . Although we do not know predsdy when the Mainz Anonymous was 'written, I am inclined to see it as fairly early. It seems highly unlikely that a latcr Jewish narrator would have been so wen informed as to the early development of the crusading movement. The other principle narrative, the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle, includes a sentence in the Cologne segment indicating that this portion of the narrative was written in 1140; other segments may well have been written somewhat earlier. The poetic reworking of the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle by an Eliezer bar Nathan-who may have been the halakhic authority of that name-is, in all likelihood , a product of the middle decades of the twelfth century . As we have seen, memories were kept alive and reinfon:ed for some time, at least in the Rllineland area. 1'he Solomon bar Simson Chronicle is preserved in a collectioll of materials that stern from the late twelfth century Jewish community of Speyec This diverse collection ends with recollections of the founding of Speyer Jewry in 1084, the assaults of 1096 and the eleven Jews who perished 1096InJewish Historical Consciousness 109 in these assaults, and the rededication of the synagogue of Speyer in 1104. Clearly, the events of 1096 were still very much alive in Speyer almost a century later. Not surprisingly, renewed crusading in the twelfth century readily reawakened memories of 1096. In recounting the threatening events of late 1146 and early 1147, set in motion by the call to the Second Crusade, theJewish chronicler Ephraim ben Jacob of Bonn showed the endangered Jews crying in the following terms to their deity. "Woe 0 Lord God! Not yet fifty years have elapsed, approximately a jubilee, since our blood was spilled for the unity of your exalted Name, on the day of the great massacre. Will you desert us forever, 0 Lord? Will you extend your anger through the generations? Let the tragedy not be enacted twice." The behaviors of the Christian authorities, both ecclesiastical and secular, and the actions of the Jews themselves indicate that recollections of 1096 were still very much in the air all across northern Europe fifty years later. Christians and Jews knew that crusading ardor might be deflected against the Jews of western Christendom, that crusader zeal might inspire the burghers to express their own grievances, thatJews had to be carefully protected, and that certain techniques-espedally removal of theJews from major urban centers--had proven most efficacious and represented the wisest course in the face of renewed threat. Yet it would be misleading to think of subsequent medieval AshkenazicJewry as obsessed with the...