Season 1: Episode 22 - The Birth of Ashkenaz

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Maritim does not end something, said Indira Gandhi. It is only a beginning. And for me, each episode is a new beginning, because I'm telling a story of the past, set to build a present identity that's motivated to make the future of which we dream. I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Episode 22, The Birth of Ashkenaz. You know, the name Ashkenaz shows up three times in the Bible. And the first time way back in the 10th chapter of Genesis. And actually as a person and not a place. Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And unto them were born sons after the flood. Sons of Japheth, Gomer, etc., etc. And the sons of Gomer, Ashkenaz, and Riphoth, and Togarmah.

Now later, actually in the book of Jeremiah, Ashkenaz becomes a location. Though according to many scholars, the place to which it refers is somewhere in Asia Minor, and not anywhere near Western Europe. So how did the Rhine River Valley, that border area between present-day Germany and France, and ultimately really good parts of all of Western Europe, become known as Ashkenaz? Truth is, no one really knows. we spoke a few episodes ago at the beginning of the story of Spanish Jewry about the power of foundation myths about how the Spanish claimed to be the exiles of Jerusalem who were taken away to Svarad and how this spoke to their sense of being the nobility of the Jewish people and more importantly allowed them to incorporate the place where they found themselves in the story which they told of their path And the mythic origins of Ashkenaz seem to function in the exact same way.

When Rashi, of whom we'll speak at length later in the episode, translates words in his commentary into vernacular, he calls it the language of Ashkenaz. And this simple phrase grounds the readers of his commentary simultaneously in the text of the Torah that they're reading, and in the world around them. In fact, it draws a very powerful connection between the two. Because remember, there are no Germanic tribes in the Torah, nor any place called the Rhineland. But there is Ashkenaz. And of course, Esau, who becomes Edom, who becomes Rome and ultimately Christianity in the mind of the sages, is well known to the average reader. So the name Ashkenaz actually gives a mythic continuity, which allows the Jews of Europe to read the Torah and the world around them as one single story.

so meanwhile there is a tradition that says that there were Jewish communities in what would become France and Germany as far back as the time of Ezra and those who returned from exile stretch yourself back if you've been listening since then roundabout to episode 2 or 3 now according to legend it was their refusal to heed Ezra's call to return to Jerusalem back in the 6th century before the common era which ultimately brought on their destruction more than 1,500 years later at the hands of the Crusaders. And that's the story that lies ahead. But aside from legend, it's clear from archaeology and the historical record that there were Jewish merchants and suppliers who accompanied the Roman legions in Europe as they conquered Gaul in early antiquity.

And the communities which they built were left there when the legions dissolved with the fall of Rome, as we spoke about with Spanish Jewry, like driftwood after the high tide. Now today, there are ongoing scholarly debates about whether these communities actually dissolved in the early Middle Ages, or whether they continued on and reappear in our story. But for our purposes, we're going to pick up in the late 8th century. Now, we spoke several episodes ago about how the tide of Islam, which rose out of the Arabian Peninsula, swept away the post-Roman kingdoms of North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. I don't recall if we mentioned that the Muslim advance across the Iberian Peninsula was actually checked on the far side of the Pyrenees Mountains in the year 732 at the Battle of Tours by Charles Martel he is going to be characterized much later as the defender of Christianity against Islam who knows if that's how he saw himself at the time but for many historians and European nationalists this battle, the Battle of Tours marks the origins of the idea of Europe as a Christian continent, and Charles the Hammer, that's what Martel means, is their great savior.

You can hear the resonance to the struggle going on today, that the birth of Christian Europe is in the halting of the advance of Islam. Now, Charles Martel's son, Pepin the Short, founded what's known as the Carolingian dynasty in 751. This dynasty, at its height, would actually come close to reuniting Western Europe under one rule in a way which it hadn't been since the early Roman Empire. And it was under Pepin, it appears, that Jewish communities, which we can begin to document, actually begin to show up once again in the Rhineland. In the year 768, his son, Charles, soon to be known as the Great, or ultimately as Charlemagne, assumed the throne of the Carolingian Empire. And our story really starts with Charlemagne.

Because Charlemagne, both as King of the Francks, so that was his Germanic tribe, and ultimately as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, established a pattern that will be followed by feudal kings and lords throughout the Middle Ages. Oh, I used the F word, feudalism. We're going to have to have a quick word on what feudalism is before we plunge on, because it's going to be the context of the European chapter of the Jewish story for centuries to come. Feudalism is a land-based system for maintaining power relationships, or as I like to call it, a military agricultural complex. It evolved from the Roman caste system, which really itself evolved in late antiquity, from the process of latifundia, the concentration of ever larger amounts of land into ever fewer hands, and the rise of personal estates that were actually the size of modern day countries, and the infusion of the German heroic dynasty model of leadership in place of the Roman republican model.

And what emerged out of that were lords, vassals, and fiefs. How does feudalism work in a very simple sense? A vassal swears fealty to his lord, and in return receives a fief. Now most often this fief was a land grant, held in return for the promise by the vassal to muster armed force when his lord called upon him, and thus the military agricultural complex, right? if Christopher the noble swears to John the king and in return receives a barony. He becomes Baron Christopher. And then when John the king wants to go to war against his neighbor, he summons Christopher, and Christopher better show up right quick with a hundred armed knights at his own expense. Truth is, though, anything of value could be granted it as a fiefdom, including governmental offices, hunting fishing rights, monopolies in trade, tax farming, you name it.

And the nature of these sworn loyalties and the land and power which negotiate between them is going to be a key element in the struggle between nobility, monarchy, and church. Those are what are known as the three estates, which is going to make up the drama of the Middle Ages. If this is all a little much, don't worry, we'll return to it as our story goes on in coming episodes. The question for now is where does the Jew fit in this picture? In the beginning, the Jews were not entirely excluded from land or office, although this will come soon enough. But as I said, it's Charlemagne who really sets the model that will define the role of the Jews both politically and economically and therefore socially in the feudal era.

Because according to Jewish tradition, he actively recruited Jewish traders from Italy up into the Rhine region in order to develop the economy of his agricultural kingdom. It's important to remember that agricultural kingdoms are what are known as a natural economy. Everything is produced and bartered, or at least given out based on debt relationships. A monetary economy had largely disappeared with the fall of the Roman Empire, and one of the things that made the Carolingian Empire so significant was that they began the process of coinage once again, and the Jews will serve as the liquid element, as the mercantile element in what is otherwise a fairly stagnant economy. In return for this, he and his descendants will grant privileges is to first individual Jews, and then ultimately to whole communities.

And this direct relationship and its economic driver will make the Jews what are ultimately known as serfs of the king. That's how we're going to fit into the feudal economy. Our sworn fealty, our oath, is directly to the king. And that makes the Jews the personal property to, on one hand, be soaked for taxes, and there will be a lot of struggles in the coming Middle Ages of who gets to tax the Jews. But on the other hand, they're also to be directly protected. You can't have someone else killing the goose that laid the golden egg after all. And so the Jews will play a very particular role, a critical element in the mercantile economy, with direct access to the protection of the king. But insofar as the primary drama of the Middle Ages is the struggle between the king and the nobility, it's not always going to work out so well for the Jews.

Meanwhile, these traitors that Charlemagne invited into his kingdom were actually part of a larger phenomenon, were known as the Radonites. Now, these Jewish traitors, the Radonites, their name is a source of widespread scholarly debate. I'm not going to get into whether it comes from the Latin or the Persian, it doesn't matter. It's beyond dispute that they were one of the primary links between East and West after of the fall of the Roman Empire, and furthermore, during the rise of the conflict between Christianity and Islam, which split between the East and West. They had preserved the knowledge of geography and travel routes from the Far East to Europe, which were established in the Roman era.

Not only knowledge, but their culture neutrality, and their linguistic diversity, and the fact that there were Jews in both East and West who could trust each other, allowed these merchants to bridge the warring Christian and Muslim world, and therefore, at this period, dominate the spice and luxury trade between them. I want you to imagine, in a world where, if a map existed at all, its edges were labeled Darby dragons, what it must have been like when a Jew got on a donkey and rode off into the mountains, and people said, where are you going? And he said, China. And he came back laden with valuable spices. Another important innovation that the Radonites introduced, what are known as bills of credit.

Because, of course, if that Jew had ridden off into the mountains with a thousand gold coins with which to buy those spices, he wouldn't have gotten very far. But, if he rides off with a letter from his brother Shlomo in Spain to his cousin Yitzhak in Baghdad, and that letter says, give the bearer of this letter a thousand gold coins, and I in return will repay you at such and such a time, well then all he has is a letter, a letter of credit, which is useful to him, but useless to anyone else. And this financial innovation went a long way to creating what ultimately became modern banking. Now, back to our story. According to Jewish sources, Charlemagne is the one who invited Moshe Hazakin, Moshe the elder and his son Calanimus to cross the Alps from Loka Italy and settle in Mainz on the Rhine River This Kalanimous family is going to become the source of spiritual leadership in the Rhineland for hundreds of years to come.

And their name, which points toward their origins in Greek-speaking Italy, and ultimately from the land of Israel, will tell a bit of the story of how the Torah of the land of Israel had such an influence on the emerging Ashkenazi culture, a topic that we'll pick up again in the next episode. Now very shortly, after these Jews are invited in, one finds them playing key roles even in the royal court. They were even entrusted with diplomatic missions, such as the one carried out by Isaac the Jew on behalf of Charlemagne the emperor to the Abbasid Caliph over in Baghdad, Huron al-Rashid. The Jews were so present in his kingdom, that Charlemagne ultimately created a magister Judeorum, a master of the Jews, who was responsible for all questions concerning them.

We know very little about what this official actually did, but we do know that he existed. The other small piece of evidence, because remember, this point, early 9th century documentary evidence is sparse to say the least, that in 814, Charlemagne issued what was known as the Capitulary for the Jews. It took a firm stance against money lending and made it very clear that the Jews legally belonged to the emperor and were to be tried only by him. Again, the liquid economic element and serfs of the king. This will be the model, even though in the meantime there's also land ownership and crafts, etc. Now, there are a host of legends that surround the relationship between the emperor and the Jews, but not all of them are so positive.

For instance, in 795, Charlemagne established what was known as the Spanish March. It was an organized frontier, a sort of a defensive barrier zone against the Muslims of Al-Andalus down in the Iberian Peninsula along the Pyrenees Mountains. Legend has it that during the ongoing wars between his empire and the Muslims of Spain, the Jews of Charlemagne's time betrayed the city of Toulouse, which was a critical battleground. Now after the city was regained, the emperor in punishment ordered that every Good Friday, in the lead up to the Easter season, a Jew of the city was to present himself to be publicly slapped by some representative of the Christian rulers. It was sometimes even the count of the city himself who administered it.

And it's clear from the evidence that this custom continued down through the 11th century at least, as it's recorded in the Chronicon. It's a work of an early 11th century Benedictine monk. It says, at this time Hugo, the chaplain of Amaric, as Easter is always commemorated there, delivered a slap to a Jew, whose eyes and brains spilled out of his perfidious head onto the ground. The Jew died immediately. Must have been quite a slap. Anyway, in the year 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne, who at the time was just King of the Francks, Emperor of Rome. He thus creating the Holy Roman Empire. The motivations behind this revival of the Empire in the West are well beyond our story, but for now, it just needs to be noted that the Pope has become the kingmaker of Europe, and will now work to further the notion of a Christian continent, and that idea is going to follow us for many episodes to come.

So, enough of the early origins. Now, historians estimate that in the early 11th century, the entire Jewish population of what we now know as Germany compromised at most 20,000 people. And these communities were mostly small and scattered amongst the non-Jewish population. Largely due to the nature of their economic pursuits, there's only so many people who can be a merchant in one town. So much so that the early halachic legal literature of Ashkenaz is characterized by bans on settlement. They went out of their way to control the dispersion of the population throughout this region in order to protect their economic interests. And the first leader whose name stands out in the development of Ashkenazi Jewry is Rabbeinu Gershom Me'or Hagolah, our teacher Gershom, the light of the exile.

Rabbeinu Gershom ben Yehuda, born in 960 and died either in 1028 or 1040, which historian you ask, He was the foundation of a Torah that grew out of Ashkenaz, an organic product, rather than one imported from the Gaonim in Baghdad. So much so, that less than a century after Rebbeinu Gershom's death, Rashi would say that all the members of Galut Ashkenaz, of the Ashkenazi exile, are his students. And it was during his lifetime that the struggle between Christianity and Judaism in Europe began to heat up. and, furthermore, that the model of expulsion and persecution actually began. Strange incident. In the years somewhere between 1009 and 1012, the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim, based in Cairo, and known in Western literature as the Mad Caliph, ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, along with many of the churches and monasteries in the land of Israel.

Now, despite the fact that he was obviously a Muslim Caliph, and that the Jews were quite far away. Rumors spread across Europe that the Jews had a hand in these acts of desecration. And in 1012, the Holy Roman Emperor, descendant of Charlemagne, Henry II, was induced by the Church to forcibly convert some of the Jews of the city of Mainz and to expel the rest. Now you might think, one city, what's the big deal? Because this was the center point of Jewish community in the Rhineland. and in many ways this shows us that the primary battleground between Christianity and Judaism in the pre-Crusade era at least was conversion and though at this point the model of converting the Jews was still the one that had been established by Pope Gregory I known as the Great in the 6th century he advocated conversion through persuasion and not compulsion so tradition records the rabbinic Gershom actually had a son who willingly forsook his religion at the time of the expulsion of 1012.

When the son died, we have the first instance of spiritual mourning. Rabbeinu Gershom is said to have mourned for 14 days, one week for his physical death, and another for the death of his soul. That inner conflict of feeling had already been codified in his halachic stance. Because in approximately the year 1000, Rabbeinu Gershom called a synod, a meaning of all the rabbinic leadership of Ashkenazi Jewry. And while it was clear that many, many things were discussed, and for hundreds of years people would claim that their own rulings were actually a product of this synod, we know that there were four critical elements of what became known as the harem of Rabbeinu Gershom, the ban of Rabbeinu Gershom.

It's known as that because he made these four declarations, and then all of the leadership of Ashkenaz agreed that anyone who violated them would be under the ban of excommunication. Hence, the ban of Romain and Gershom. And these elements are, number one, the prohibition of polygamy, of marrying more than one wife. This is a hotly debated topic, why he would do such a thing. The Torah has plenty of stories and clearly permits polygamy. Rabbinic law permits up to four wives. The contemporary life of the Jews in Iberia under the Muslims, who were a polygamous society, they were practicing polygamy. But here, in Christian Europe, it seems that Rabbeinu Gershom either felt that the Jews could not be less moral than their surroundings, or he personally felt that the status of women was degraded by polygamy, or there are some people who claim he had experienced the difficulty of polygamy in his own family life.

Either way, he prohibited polygamy, something which became characteristic of Ashkenazi culture to this very day. Number two, he instituted the necessity of obtaining the consent of both the man and woman in divorce. Torah and Rabbinic law only requires the man's consent and that the woman actually receive the writ of divorce. But Rabbin of Gerashim said that if a woman does not agree to divorce, she cannot just be put away. This once again protected the status of women in marriage and furthermore closed a very obvious loophole that opened up with the prohibition of polygamy. I mean, if you can willy-nilly divorce one wife and marry another, then the prohibition of polygamy is a little bit weak. Third, he advocated, or mandated really, the automatic re-acceptance of Jews who had been forcibly converted to Christianity, as opposed to what had existed before.

People looked somewhat askance at these forced converts. And fourth, and seemingly strange, it was a prohibition against opening correspondence addressed to another. Now that one may seem odd, but the reality is, as I said, in an economy that was based on trust and mercantile dealings, the ability to have secret communications was critical, and thus the full force of his rabbinic authority made the contents private. So, aside from the details of the Cherem Rabbinic Yersham, the very act of calling a synod, an assembly of this nature, marks the birth of an independent Ashkenaz, at least in the rabbinic culture. Because these definitive ordinances were made despite the existence of a thriving Gaonic center in Babel.

Remember, Rav Hai Gaon, who was really the late glory of the Gaonic period, dies in 1038. The question is, why would Rabbeinu Gershom call together his own assembly and use his own authority instead of doing what much of the rest of the Jewish world was doing, which was sending a question to the Goenic centers. And the answer is that at this point we have an organic Torah of Ashkenaz. Now, as I mentioned, in a sense, all of Ashkenazi Jewry were the students of Rebbeinor Gershom. But, without doubt, the most famous of the inheritors of his Torah was actually a student of his direct students, Rav Shlomo Bar Yitzchak, better known as Rashi. Rashi was born in the year 1040 at Troyes in northern France, and would die there later in 1105.

And his commentaries on the Torah and on the Talmud actually made him famous already in his lifetime. Because if he claimed, as we said, that all of Ashkenaz Drury were the students of Rebbein Gershom, then today, who can even learn the Talmud of the Torah without Rashi? We're all his students, Ashkenaz or no. And that's why some people say that the acronym Rashi, rather than standing for his name, Rav Shlomo Bar Yitzchaki, means rather, Rabban Shel Yisrael, the teacher of all Israel. Of course, in traditional Rabbinic style, it's said that Rashi's birth was marked by both faith and miracle. According to the legend, his father came across a very valuable gem, which was highly desired by the Christians around him.

And in order to deny them any benefit from it, a great sacrifice to himself, he threw it into the sea. And when it hit the water, he heard a mysterious voice which announced the birth of a noble son. This sense of self-sacrifice, and how it was bound up with the conflict with Christianity, is going to return toward the end of Rashi's life. So at a young age, Rashi made his way to the Shivot in Mainz and Worms, two of the central communities of Rheinland-Juri. Now there were three major cities known as Gehilot Shum Spires Worms and Mainz that Shum the acronym in Hebrew and they were the heart of Ashkenazi Jewry There he absorbed the Torah of Ashkenaz from the students of Rabbeinu Gershon and quickly became a contributor in his own right.

At first through his Kuntrasim, his notebooks. Now remember, we're in an era hundreds of years before the printing press. Therefore, every student who arrived to the Shiva and Mainz where Rashi went, Their first task was to copy out the tractate of the Gemara, which they were going to be learning that year, that or if they were wealthy, to pay someone else to do it. And then, during the course of the year, each one would make marginal notes in that tractate, and sometimes compile their notes into a notebook, and thus the Kuntras, this idea of a Torah notebook, was born. Rashi, as the star student, had a lot of demand for his notebooks, which is why his commentaries were originally simply known as Perush HaKuntrus, the commentary of the notebooks.

After a decade or two of learning, Rashi returned to his home in northern France, and in about 1070 founded his own yeshiva. From this point on, the schools in northern France would first rival, and then completely replace those of the Rhineland. now both Rashi's commentary on the Talmud and on the Torah are foundational to our understanding of the text but in order to understand a little bit more about the nature of Jewish consciousness in his day and in truth throughout the whole Middle Ages I want to focus on what he has to say in the Torah his commentary on the Torah was written in his lifetime but it was first printed in 1475 and even though that's well ahead of where we are you just need to understand it is the oldest known Hebrew book printed.

And furthermore, its first appearance together with the text of the Torah as opposed to as a separate commentary was in 1482, the commentary being given along the margin of the Torah text. And that was the first time such a commentary had been printed in that fashion, just to show you how foundational Rashi is. No other commentary has had the impact of Rashi on the Torah, and certainly no other commentary has been the subject of so many super commentaries as Rashi's. And his foundational role in Ashkenazi culture is largely because he represents a very different approach to the Torah than that of his contemporaries who we discussed in Spain. Rashi's commentary on the Torah is focused in conversations about the Pshat.

The Pshat's a tough word to define, but right now we'll call it the literal sense. as he himself says in his comment to Genesis 3 verse 8 I only came really to explain the plain meaning of the text and for the the sort of narrative story portions of the rabbinic thought which settles the words of the text each according to its nature. Now, Rashi certainly viewed Pshat as the simplest meaning of the verse. But it's critical that whenever he couldn't find a simple explanation that fit the actual structure and grammar of the verse, he immediately looked to the sages' collection of Agadot, of Midrashim, of stories. Because Rashi felt that if an explanation of the sages fit with the grammar and the whole narrative context of the verse, then on some level it was Pshat, it was the plain meaning.

And furthermore, when we see in his commentary, he often will bring both a plain meaning sense, and then a Midrashic narrative sense. And that's because he saw something in the verse which needed to be explained beyond the structural. To Rashi, that's part of Pshat. What it comes down to is that the distinction which was made by the sages of Spain between the sort of analytical, literal and the narrative Midrashic, or between Law and Agatha, or as we've spoken about in previous episodes, between Mishnahh and Midrash. And this distinction is what pushed the sages of Spain toward the scientific, linguistic, philosophical analysis of Peshat was not really accepted as a hard and fast distinction by the Ashkenazi sages, and especially not by Rashi.

because Agadita the narrative storytelling is seen by the sages of Ashkenaz as an integral part of the Torah and as an important element even in the legal discussions you can see this already in the response of Rabbeinu Gershom or Agola you can see it amongst Rashi's students the Tosefists who we'll discuss in the next episode all over the place and the use of Midrashim and stories of the Bible in order to draw conclusions on questions of morality and human behavior was actually the backbone of one of the most formative books of Ashkenazi culture, Sefer Chassidim. We will discuss that in the next episode as well. But what I'm driving at is that the culture of Ashkenaz embraced the fact that law always has a story in which it's embedded.

And that story is what ultimately provides meaning beyond the technical details. and that further that meaning lies primarily in the reader's experience of themselves as part of the story not as something they're reading but rather as part of who they are this is how Rashi essentially created a new reality simply by labeling his place of exile Ashkenaz it wasn't just a question of where his readers were It was a question of what being there meant to them. That's Pshat, that's the plain meaning. Not just what the words mean, but what they mean to me. Meanwhile, as the literary and spiritual culture of Ashkenaz was beginning to blossom in the person of Rashi, the volcano on which they were standing began to awaken.

In the year 1095, the Byzantine emperor Alexius sent messengers to the Christian of kingdoms looking to recruit help against the Seljuk Turks who were invading his kingdom from the east. In response, Pope Urban II called the Council of Claremont in order to discuss the request amongst other religious matters that were pressing in his time. At the end, the Pope gave a speech which subsequently became known as his call for a crusade aimed at restoring Christian access to the holy places of Jerusalem which had been conquered by the infidel Muslims. Pulchal of Chartres, a priest present at the council who eventually joined the crusade recorded Pope Urban's speech obviously by hand in it we can hear that the goals were as much the consolidation of the Christian European identity as they were the defeat of the infidel let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels and end with victory this war which should have begun long ago.

Let those for whom a long time have been robbers now become knights. Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians. Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for small pay now obtain the eternal reward. I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. The response was quite astounding. Over the next century, hundreds of thousands of Christians would take the cross and march off to liberate the Holy Land.

Now, the first organized military expedition under the leadership of the high nobility of France, which actually eventually captured Jerusalem from the Muslims in 1099, took some time to organize. However, the People's Crusade began much more quickly, because inspired by Urban's preaching, and whipped into a religious frenzy by Peter the Hermit, who himself claimed to have been the first preacher of the Crusade, almost 20,000 people, mostly peasants, although with a significant noble arm contingent, set off on foot for the East. this motley crew was actually eventually slaughtered by a Turkish ambush outside of Nicaea from which only 3,000 people escaped but before they left Europe they committed the first major outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in European history when they arrived in the Rhineland and began to come close to the Jewish communities of the question arose between them why should they walk so far to fight the infidel when the Jews were right there among them.

In this, they were echoing the sentiments of the nobility as well. Godfrey of Boulon, who eventually actually became the first ruler of the crusader kingdom established in Jerusalem, he himself swore, and I quote, to go on this journey only after avenging the blood of the crucified one by shedding Jewish blood and completely eradicating any trace of those bearing the name Jew, thus assuaging his own burning wrath. and though the Emperor Henry IV issued a command prohibiting such behavior and the official church policy was to protect the Jews albeit in a degraded state and for their own ultimate theological aims what ensued is known in Jewish history as the destruction of the communities of the Rhineland if you want to know how many Jews actually died in the First Crusade you're going to end up stepping into a scholarly mud pit.

Contemporary Christian sources barely mention the destruction of these Jewish communities. Their focus is on the nobility of their divine mission to liberate the Holy Land. And the devastation of the Jewish communities if they're mentioned are really only a footnote in the larger Crusades. Though in fairness, is a footnote which often involves severe criticism as the bestial behavior unbecoming of the sanctity of their overarching mission. and there are no contemporary Jewish sources in the formal sense. And that's because, as I've said before so many times, we the Jews are not really interested in history as an account of what happened. We're interested in telling our story, and therefore the questions of why and wherefore, which play out on a theological level, will often trump a pedantic reporting of the facts.

What we do have from the Jews of the Rhineland are a set of writings known as the Hebrew Chronicles. the central works of which are attributed to Shlomo Bar Shemshon, Eliezer Bar Natan, and what's known as Mainz Anonymous, written by an unknown Jew of Mainz. Scholars believe that these chronicles were compiled and edited over a long period after the destruction of the communities of Shum, and reached their final form likely in the early to mid-12th century. And as I said, the numbers game is a messy one. You can find death tolls anywhere from 2,000 to 12,000. Recalling that the estimated Jewish population of the German lands at this time is in the order of 20,000, that means we're talking about the death of anywhere from one tenth to more than a third of the Jews.

Now, it seems clear, even in the academic world, that the core of the Hebrew Chronicles are eyewitness accounts. But again, their primary purpose is not historical in the sense of reporting events, it's theological in the sense of understanding them, and furthermore framing them. Because the Chronicles represent a process of poetic and liturgical commemoration of past trauma and its integration into present identity Because these weren poetry that were just meant to be read and left on the shelf By the second half of the 12th century, a truly Ashkenazi liturgy had come into being in the synagogue. And it was a liturgy loaded down with a wealth of martyrdom poetry and spiced with lists of the dead whose names were actually read out on the anniversary of their martyrdom every year.

And even today, the Ashkenazi liturgy retains the stamp of these events and the struggle to assimilate them. I mean, I don't know about you, but every week, I recall the holy communities of the Rhineland who gave their lives in sanctification of the name through the prayer we call Av Harachamim, the merciful father that's recited after the Torah reading service. And, in a powerful annual act of identification, the poetry of mourning we read on the 9th of Av. links the destruction of the First Temple, the destruction of the Second Temple, and Chorban Shun, the destruction of the communities of the Rhineland. Today, we also include the Holocaust, which draws a direct link from the origins of organized persecution by the Crusaders to its consummation in Auschwitz.

But what can this poetry of mourning and martyrdom teach us about the formation of Jewish consciousness in early Ashkenaz? because these martyrologies are as much an expression of how the trauma of the first crusade was assimilated into communal memory as they are an account of the events themselves if not more so as I've said many times though the content of memory is the events of the past its purpose is the creation of a present identity and the method of reconciling between who I am and how I came to be so is to tell a story. Healthy memory is one which can integrate the story of the past into the present in a way which leaves me empowered to build my future. And it's that last part which worries me in these songs of martyrdom.

Because the Jews of Ashkenaz, who had been prosperous and relatively peaceful for 200 years, saw the events of the crusade and they brought to light deep questions about divine justice and Jewish identity. As Shlomo Bar Shemsun cried out, I will speak out in the grief of my spirit before my small congregation. I'll wail and lament, for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me. Be silent. Hear my words in my prayer. If only he would hear me. The Crusaders massed the gateway to blot out the name of his remnant. Small children cried out to him, Shema Yisrael, hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. The question which haunts so many Jews today, where was God in the Holocaust, is not a new question.

And of course, there's an even more practical version of that question. Forget God. Where was man? How can we claim to be human as a species and act in such a bestial manner? But it wasn't just the slaughter of the innocent that the poet sought to understand and whose horror he wanted to impress on the generations to come, lest they weaken in their resolve to be who they were, there's a much darker and more complex theme that comes to light in many places in these poems. It was the 3rd of Sivan, the first week of May, Biminyanam, by their count, when the mob approached Mainz, the crown jewel of Jewish life in the Rhineland. The entire community had taken refuge in the bishop's palace, because as I said, the organized church opposed the murder and forced conversion of the Jews.

The attack on the palace was led by a German noble named Emiko, who struggled to take the gates of the palace in order to achieve his evil aims. But as Shlomo Bar-Shimshin tells us, I quote, The sins of the Jews brought it about that the enemy overcame them and took the gate. in light of what's about to ensue this sounds like an awful judgment but remember these Jews still live fully within the story of because of our sins we were exiled from our land and this is not a statement of Jewish guilt and an act of self-flagellation it is an assertion of historical agency nothing happens to us we are the agents, we are the authors of our own story. And that's critical to these people because if there is a just God, then it could only be that the horror which is about to follow was the consequence of their own actions and not a sign that the Christians were right or that God forbid, God had abandoned them altogether.

And so says the author, The women girded their loins with strength and slew their own sons and daughters and them themselves. Many men, too, plucked up courage and killed their wives, their sons, their infants. The tender and delicate mother slaughtered the babe she had played with. All of them, men and women, arose and slaughtered one another. The maidens and the young brides and grooms looked out of the windows, and a loud voice cried, Look and see, O our God, what we do for the sanctification of thy great name in order not to exchange you for a hanged and crucified one. The poet ends with a final demand. Wilt thou, despite this, still restrain thyself, O Lord? For thy sake it was that these numberless souls were killed.

Avenge quickly the blood of thy servants, which was spilt in our days and in our sight. Amen. This is just a drop, a taste of the mass of literature written to commemorate and reconstruct those terrible days. And though I personally do ascribe to a nuanced view of Jewish history, I refused to see the whole period of the Crusades to the Holocaust as simply a thousand years of tragedy. Nevertheless, it's clear to me that the smile went out of Ashkenazi in 1096, and that the cultivation of the martyr's memory was what helped to keep a grimace firmly in its place. Because these texts play a crucial role in constructing an Ashkenazi identity and in maintaining it under the pressure of Christian persecution in the centuries to come.

In the wake of this devastation, of the horror of Hurban Shum, the Jews of Ashkenaz faced a deep dilemma, one that actually was going to characterize much of Jewish history going forward. How could it be that the chosen people were in such a lowly state? And in particular, vis-à-vis the Christians, whose claim to have replaced the Jews as spiritual Israel seemed to be proven by their humiliation, persecution, and even death at the hands of their foes. Now, it's not a question of how to understand the Crusades. As Rashi taught us, logical analysis of the facts at hand is not enough. And furthermore, philosophy at this point had made no inroads in the faith of Ashkenaz. As we'll return to in the coming episode, it was the rabbis of northern France who banned philosophy altogether.

They knew that it's the story which is our ultimate guide. So what story could these Jews tell which would affirm their identity, which would allow them to maintain the incredible efforts which the life of the Torah would demand in the face of such tragedy? And these particular Jews of young Ashkenaz faced an even further problem. The institution of scholarly rabbinic leadership, which would ultimately define and defend their culture in the Middle Ages, was at a tender stage of development at this point. The seeming supremacy of Christianity, and the defection of people as central as the son of Urbain of Gershom, the light of the exile, was a real threat. How could they maintain authority and combat defection from their ranks?

Martyrdom, and the recitation in a public fashion of the martyrologies that extol it, addressed this problem. First of all, as we discussed many episodes ago in the story of Rebbe Akiva, martyrdom is the ultimate inversion of power relationships. In our case here, the righteous dead not only robbed their persecutors of the privilege of killing them, they took their place in the highest heaven. Meanwhile, their seemingly all-powerful enemies are left with nothing but cold corpses and the promise of imminent divine judgment. furthermore the heroic elements of the narrative in the Maralogies elevate these rabbinic class and the primary principle for which they died the refusal to abandon the Torah in doing so they were part of the effort to stem the tide of conversion and to strengthen the confidence to stiffen the backbone of a community under siege now there's one last piece for the Jews of Ashkenaz the poetry of martyrdom wasn't just a means to make sense of the traumatic events of the past or even just a tool to shore up identity in the present this poetry subtly but clearly transmits a vision of self-sacrifice which will be built into Jewish life for generations to come because religious persecution of which the crusade was only the opening volley will pose the dilemma for hundreds of years to come, that if the Jews give in, Judaism won't survive.

But if all the Jews choose to die for their faith, there'll be no one left to practice the Judaism for which they died. In other words, martyrdom is a poor long-term strategy for Jewish continuity. These martyrologies create heroes whose actions can be held up as the highest level of devotion and whose reward is complete. and for all those reciting these poems in the synagogue the message was clear if their heroes consider the Torah worth dying for then shouldn't they consider it worth living for? and now the model is set because thank God most of the Jews of Ashkenaz will not be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice in the centuries to come but they will be called upon to wake every day to the service of their creator and to maintain the momentum of that devotion day in and day out in the face of challenges mundane and extraordinary.

Because as they say in Yiddish, which will ultimately become the language that defines Ashkenazi culture, it's hard to be a Jew. And inspiration provided by the noble sacrifice of our ancestors is no small comfort. I just want to thank a few people. I want to thank you for listening. If you want to be part of the effort to keep this material free and syndicated and spread as widely as possible, please join me. Go to www.patreon.com and find my M. Foyer page and hit the donate button so you can support a little bit of her podcast action. I want to thank the folks at the Land of Israel Network. Amazing work they're doing. It gives me a platform where I can reach an incredible breadth of the world. I want to thank Pardes.

pardes.org.il for giving me the opportunity to touch the hearts and minds of so many Jews. And I want to thank sulamyaakov.com, well, because it's my home. You can reach me at Rav Mike Foyer on Facebook if you want to send me a message, because I'm Rav Mike Foyer and this is the Jewish Story.