God, Humanity, and History: The Hebrew First Crusade Narrative (review)

In the year 1095 Pope Urban II proclaimed a military expedition against the Muslims to recover Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulcher. The following year, in the spring of 1096, bands of burghers, adventurers, run-away serfs, and criminals, led by zealous monks and soldiers, ravaged the historic Jewish communities of Speyer, Worms, Mainz, Trier, and Cologne on their way to Jerusalem. A Hebrew account of the tragic devastation and pillaging of the Rhineland Jewish communities has been unearthed in the discovery of three manuscripts—Mainz Anonymous, Slomon bar Simson Chronicle, Eliezar bar Nathan Chronicle—first written about in 1892 and commented on since. ¹

This well crafted volume by Robert Chazan (New York University) is similar in goal and methodology to his earlier European Jewry and The First Crusade (University of California Press, 1987; reprinted 1996) and In the Year 1096: The First Crusade and the Jews (Jewish Publication Society, 1996). His presentation is in the style of a seasoned historian: primary texts and secondary sources consulted; words, sentences, lemma commented upon; explanation and reasons for; harmonization with and innovation from biblical, talmudic, post-talmudic, liturgical, and Christian sources; variants and what others have said about the textual narratives. Specifically, Chazan continues his study of the violent events that challenged and endangered the body and soul of Rhineland Jewry during the First Crusade, and additionally analyzes Jewish religious and theological reactions to them.

Chazan’s work consists of a prologue and three parts. The prefatory matter critically surveys three letters responding to the Blois tragedy of 1171, two letters by the leadership of Paris and Troyes Jewry, and a private letter by Nathan ben Meshullan. Here Chazan raises important exegetical, historical, religious, and sociological questions relevant to the book’s main objective: (a) How do we explain the status of God’s Chosen People in exile, suffering, and weakness? and (b) How do we counter “the truth of Christianity and the nullity of Judaism”? (p. 2). Chazan proposes a “time-bound and timeless” methodology, that is, seeing the text in the setting of the people of the time and sensing its religious and theological message beyond the Zeitgeist of contemporary crusade historiography.

In the first part of the book (Chapters 1–6), Chazan examines closely the previous scholarship on the three Hebrew manuscripts mentioned above in order to resolve questions of structure, authorship, dating, and objectives. He opines that the Mainz Anonymous is the work of a singular mind penned subsequent to 1096; the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle a mix of earlier (Mainz Anonymous, Trier unit) and later material (Cologne unit) composed in 1140; and the slightly later Eliezer bar Nathan Chronicle, a prose-poetry composition which draws from the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle and adds additional lamentations to memorialize the Jews of Cologne, Mainz, Speyer, and Worms. For the most part, Chazan concludes that the Hebrew narratives reflect histor ical accuracy of the events of the First Crusade and are the independent compilation of four or five different authors.

In the second part of the book (Chapters 7–10), the author discusses the historicity of the Hebrew First Crusade narratives in terms of time-bound and timeless objectives —the former in terms of cause and effect data and lessons learned and the latter incor porating a radical departure from classical Jewish thinking and writing on God, humanity, and history. How so? In portraying the Jewish victims of 1096 as pure and chaste in doing the commandments of God and in death-exacting themes from the Bible and rabbinic literature, namely, Abraham and the Akedah, Daniel in the den, Hannah and her seven children, Rabbi Akiba and his associates, the narrators eclipse biblical monotheism (“choose life”) and revise rabbinic law (“be killed and kill not”).

Take the Mainz Anonymous, for example. “After all it is not right to criticize the acts of God who has given to us His Torah and a command to put ourselves to death, to kill...