'God Wants It!': the Ideology of Martyrdom in the Hebrew Crusade Chronicles and its Jewish and Christian Background (review)

This book is extremely important and extremely off-putting. It shows erudition and it synthesizes a great body of secondary sources over the past two decades in regard to its topic, the way in which eleventh- and twelfth-century Jewish chronicles of the First Crusade record the collective martyrdom of Jewish communities in the Rhineland in the face of military and local pogroms, forced conversion, violation and breaking up of families. Integrating many important sources, both Christian and Jewish, the author presents new translations of the major texts in an Appendix that takes a third of the book, that should make it an invaluable teaching aid.

However, there are problems. The 'issues' do not arise in relation to what may superficially seem to be awkward aspects of the book, such as lapses in idiomatic English from a non-native speaker or the placement of the study in a series on church history; these are minor matters. Instead, the troubles are implicated in what is called 'the project' itself.

For one, despite her vast reading – she ranges through primary and secondary sources in many languages – and the guidance received by noted Israeli historians, the structure of Roos' argument is mechanical and simplistic. There are constant summaries, conclusions, and repetitions galore, as part of a statistical survey of the texts and their contexts, which allows the author to reach what she calls 'logical' conclusions, and to state what she 'believes' to be true, as opposed to the conclusions of other scholars in the field. Many times she fine-tunes existing explanations of the topic. But these mechanical reviews and restatements do not take the argument further than it has already gone.

It is as though, for all the careful scholarship, Roos were emotionally and intellectually disconnected from the people, events and ideas she is dealing with. In a sense, the author seems to be concerned to point out that 'modern readers' would not perceive the world, speak out or act in the way the Jews of the Rhineland did under these tragic and traumatic circumstances; although she also sets up the proviso that she is more – or only – concerned with the details of the texts, not with whether or not the chronicles represent either the real events they speak of or only the beliefs of the subsequent reporters who pass on, shape and seek to transform themselves, their communities and the world around them by the creation of these texts. She is only studying the 'messages' of 'a literary phenomenon'.

But in another sense, the author is cut off from the ongoing conversations, dialogues and debates that scholars have been engaged in for hundreds of years about Jewish and Christian relations; it is as though she comes upon the topic completely innocent of the values that are contested, the principles of erudition that are at stake, and the moral implications in the contemporary world where anti-Semitism remains alive and well – and daily posing existential threats to Jews in the Diaspora and in Israel. She seems unaware that what she is dealing with is still fraught with very real dangers, as was shown by Amiel Toaff's scandalous publication of The Passover of Blood (Pasque di Sangre). Early in 2007 he attempted to reveal Ashkenazi psychotic realities in the wake of the massacres and suicidal martyrdoms of the first and second crusades – and the book was properly castigated for its ideological abuse of sources, its failure to observe the basic protocols of historiography, and its utter disregard of gloating by Jew haters around the world. Toaff asserted that the Blood Libel was true. By no means is Roos guilty of such a criminal dereliction of professional duty, but she does display a political and cultural naiveté that is truly amazing.

The perspective through which the central topics...