Season 1: Episode 23 - Depths Out of Darkness

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Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. Now I'm looking to strengthen the soul, and I'm certainly inspired by ambition, and I believe that we will achieve success. I'm Rav Mike Feuer, and this is The Jewish Story. Episode 23, Depths Out of Darkness Now, if I asked you what happened in the 12th century, I'm willing to bet that most people don't have any idea. But in fact, the 12th century is going to set many patterns for Am Yisrael's life in Europe. The rise of the learning of the Gemara has an end unto itself, which will become characteristic of Ashkenazi Jewry to this day.

the emergence of cycles of oppression that include massacres, expulsions, and the awful blood libel, and the emergence of money lending as a major economic driver for the Jews in Europe. I'd rather start with the positive here. So we'll talk about the Tosophists. Now if you recall, for Spanish Jewry, down in the Iberian Peninsula, the 12th century was a time of tremendous philosophical development. all the creative energies of Am Yisrael and the Iberian Peninsula were focused on questions of meaning, rationalism, being, essence and therefore the Gemara maintained its status among them as a source of halakha, of practical law and because of this, they were more than happy to follow the trend of codification that was a rising tide in the non-Jewish elements of Spain and as we discussed, the Rambam, Maimani's great legal work the Mishneh Torah, was premised on the idea that the Talmud could be grasped in its wholeness, its legal conclusions reduced to a detailed code.

The momentum among the Jews of Germany and northern France could not have been more different. In the course of the 12th century, they transformed the Talmud from a static to an expanding universe. In their eyes, the Gemara could never be mastered as the Rambam dreamed it might. Because now, Through the tool of dialectic study, it could only be endlessly probed and elaborate and spun out into ever greater structures. And this expansive process has continued down to our day. Beginning in Spire, that oh so important city, part of the Kilat Shum, the communities of Spire, Worms and Mainz that we spoke about in the last episode, beginning there with Rav Yitzchak ben Asher, the Reba, even as the First Crusade was sweeping through.

In the coming generations, the dialectic method spread to Mainz, Regensburg, and soon dominated Ashkenaz. And the tools of coalition, contradiction, and distinction, which were the primary methods of these students, who soon to be known in history as the Tosafists for reasons we'll speak about in a moment, they were what they brought to bear on the Talmud. Now you have to understand that dialectic study had actually been the essence of rabbinic Jerusalem, and it's what gave birth to the Gemara, to the Amorayim, the people who spoke out the Gemara. Every Mishnahh had to be understood in the context of all other relevant Tanaitic sources. And they understood this by bringing them all together, that's correlation, identifying their problems, that's contradiction, and solving the problems by differentiating between the sources in ways which could often be extremely far from a simple reading of the text.

Distinction. If you've learned Enikimara, this should sound very familiar. But somehow, this dynamic approach to learning seems to have fallen out of use in the centuries following the final redaction of the Talmud. Because the commentaries which emerged in the Gaonik era are focused on straightforward explanation of difficulties in the text. If you look back at last episode, you'll see that Rashi was really the pinnacle of this process. But now, at the turn of the 12th century, the Tosavists picked up where the Omorayim had left off. They determined that any given Talmudic passage, any of the words of the Omorayim, must be understood only in light of the entire Gemara, and thus did the same thing for the Gemara that the Gemara had done for the Mishnahh.

now this is an amazing turn of events because the Goonim, if you recall had taken a live conversation that was going on amongst the Amorim about life, the universe, and everything and essentially made it into a canonical text which could provide the answers to these questions but now the Tosavists transformed the Gemara from a text to be learned into a problem to be solved and in place of understanding and application they brought out questions and resolutions and this new approach to knowing was far more creative and infinitely more time consuming and together with this textual transformation a subtle social revolution actually began because not only did they manage to kill their teachers so to speak with the brilliance of their minds and their teachers who were stuck in a static past but suddenly Torah learning had the capacity to absorb the totality of the creative endeavors of all the Jews and the act of learning slowly but surely began to be uncoupled from the application of law.

And that's something that we'll chase down in episodes to come but I want you to think about it. Up until now, learning and the application of law went hand to hand in the Gemara but they're slowly drifting apart because this intellectual cut and thrust of dialectic argument often involved moving the text far from its plain meaning as it could be actualized in law. and soon, even in Ashkenaz the great law codes will begin to emerge separate from the Gemara and even further free the mind of the acrobatic pursuit of the dialectic which is well known to anyone who's ever spent time with what we call lamdas, especially in Yeshivish achronashe lamdas but it all began with the Tosfot now, it's difficult from our position to imagine how this new phenomenon and in particular, the expression of chidush of true innovation and thought in a text which had seemed to be canonized and therefore closed, how intoxicating it would be to the intellects that tasted it.

For 500 years, our focus as a people was on conserving, explaining, and applying what was already known. And suddenly, there was a sense of being part of the great age of exploration in Torah, which animated all of Ashkenaz. And it's at this point when personal authorship also comes into being. we speak about the Tosvot of the Riva of the Rashpam, of Rabbeinu Tam these are individual projects and the pride that comes in the wake of all its excitement is going to be a primary concern of the Pietist movement that arises alongside the Tosvists that we'll discuss at the end of the episode but for now, it's important to note that this great age of intellectual exploration wasn't limited to Am Yisrael actually it seems to have been part of a much larger trend because the early 12th century actually saw the rise of the first universities in Europe the University of Bologna is seen as the first true university founded in 1088 and was followed within a century by the University of Paris the University of Oxford and these universities were the outgrowth of the near monopoly on higher education and knowledge that had been held by the monastic orders and the confederals throughout Europe and within them a cultivated approach to text that might sound quite familiar.

It was called scholasticism. And listen to this. Scholastic thought often takes the form of explicit disputation. A topic is drawn from the tradition, posed in the form of a question, responses are given, counter-responses argued out. Once the sources and points of disagreement have been laid out through a series of, you guessed it, dialectics, The two sides were made whole, so they could be found to be in agreement, or rejected in favor of a new position. The dialectic was shared by both the scholastics and the Tosafists, and scholastic thought was a cornerstone of the intellectual revival in Europe, which was later labeled as the Renaissance of the 12th century. Now for our story, it's simply important to note that the intellectual ferment, which the Tosifists represent and which was driven by this old new approach of dialectic was part of a wider shift apparently in human intellectual horizons.

And the Jewish story actually has an even more direct crossover with the rise of Scholasticism. We spoke about it a few episodes ago because it was through the translation by Jewish and Muslim translators in Spain that the works of Aristotle, the great Greek thinker came back to Europe and indeed drove the thought of many of the Scholastics and that not even to mention the writings of the Rambam on Aristotle which also had their influence and works like Ibn Kabirul Fons Vitao which they thought actually came from within the church itself. On some level, it seemed that there was a universal intellectual and spiritual awakening, which occurred in the 12th century. But unfortunately, it wasn't all sweetness and light.

Because the 12th century also saw the ignorance and mythic superstition of the Middle Ages, combined with ancient Christian hatred of the Jews as killers of their God, into one of the primary psychodramas that Jews and Christians were going to play out for the coming centuries of the Middle Ages, and really even into modernity. It's called the blood libel. It's the notion that the Jews somehow reenact the suffering of Jesus through the torture and death of a Christian, particularly a child, and then that they use the blood extracted in this manner for evil purposes. Now, I think that in certain ways you can see this as a perverse inversion of a critical sacrament of Catholicism which had actually found a fresh articulation at this point in the Middle Ages.

The idea that communion is actually transubstantiation. This means that the substance of the communion offering of bread and wine is actually transformed into the body and blood of the Christian savor before it's eaten. It's worth reflecting on the fact that it's exactly at this point in the Middle Ages when the term transubstantiation actually emerges. Not the doctrine, mind you, but the term. So just as the Church is clarifying its ability to teach its faithful that they're eating the actual body and blood, the accusation that the Jews are doing the same thing but in an illicit fashion arises, and it's a very bloody accusation. Now I have to tell you, this accusation has a personal dimension for me because it touches my family history.

My great-great-great-grandfather, and I heard this story from my great-aunt, who's a Holocaust survivor, was actually dragged to death behind a wagon because of a blood libel riot that broke out on Easter Day. Meanwhile, the first recorded instance of what would be a long-standing tradition was the death of William of Norwich in England in 1144. The actual events surrounding his death are far from clear, and so I'm not going to drag us through them, because they're largely based on an account by Thomas Amonoff, a monk in the Norwich Cathedral Priory, who was instrumental in publicizing the story in real time. But what we do know is that in March 1144, the body of William, young boy, was discovered in a heath in Norwich, bloodied and mutilated, seemingly torture.

It was quickly reported around town that it was the Jews of Norwich who had ritually murdered William in the home of a Jew named Eliezer just days before Passover. The motive was claimed to be the need to acquire his blood in order to celebrate Passover. Now fortunately in this incident, the local officials refused to bring charges against the Jews because of the simple fact that there was a complete lack of evidence. And this is a barrier that wouldn't stand in the way of a lot of horrible acts of violence in the centuries to come. But in this case, despite the lack of proof, William actually came quickly to be viewed as a martyr and was venerated for centuries to come. Modern historians suspect that the saint cult that appeared in and around Norwich following William's death might have been at least partially economically motivated.

It's important to understand that at this point in the Middle Ages, the graves of saints and the homes of relics were an important economic driver as pilgrims came from across Europe to see them. And in fact, we do know that William's uncle and cousin, the ones who discovered his body, soon became officials at the monastery after his death. Now, though this blood libel was a sensation, and the beginning of a pattern that would repeat itself throughout European history, at the end of the day was essentially local news. And international events are about to knock it right out of the headlines in England and on the continent. because in 1146, word reached Europe that the first crusader kingdom that had been established, the county of Edessa, had fallen to a Turkish army, and this triggered the call for a second crusade.

As this was going on, at this point in the mid-12th century, the schools of the Tosafists were thriving. They were the intellectual inheritors of Rashi, adding on to his understanding of the Gemara, hence their name Tosavis, which means the ones who add. And they were actually, oftentimes, his lineal descendants as well. Though frankly, if you believe the Janic studies, all of Ashkenazi Jewry, one way or another, descend from Rashi. In this case, I want to speak about his actual grandson. Rabbeinu Yaakov ben Meir, or, as he became known, Rabbeinu Tam, was born in France in the year 1100, while his famous grandfather Rashi was actually still alive. His mother was Rashi's daughter Yochebed, because Rashi famously had no sons, giving rise to many legends of his daughter's prowess in Torah learning.

But Rebbein and Tam's primary teachers were not his mother. They were his father, Rebbein Meir, and his older brother, Rebbein of Shmuel Ben-Meir, a.k.a. the Rashmah, whose fame actually rivaled that of his younger brother. Early in his life, Rebbein and Tam's master of the Torah and his extraordinary character earned him the Hebrew suffix tam, which means perfect, innocent, straightforward and was originally associated with his biblical namesake Yaakov and it's fair to say that it was the power of his intellect and spirit that drove the dialectic study of the Gemara from the margins of Torah study right into the center of the Beit Midrash he was an authority on Talmud, on Tanakh Hebrew grammar, a poet and unfortunately his personal commentary to the Talmud was lost to us His words really only survive in what's called Sefer HaYashar, according to many scholars he wrote, although there's a bit of dispute, and in the comments of other Tosfites.

But his brilliance, and the sense of, let's just call it confidence, which went with it, is legendary. A quick story to demonstrate. Now it's well known that Rabbeinu Tam had a major dispute with his grandfather Rashi, involving the order in which the parchments were placed in the tefillin. Now, Tefillin are the phylacteries, the very important boxes that the Torah commands that a Jew place upon their arm and on his head. And Rabbeinu Tam said that the parchments were placed in a certain order, and what was written on them, therefore, would be read in a certain order, if it were read. And Rashi said another. Now, legend says that one night, Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses, actually came to Rabbeinu Tam in a dream and told him that his grandfather Rashi's opinion was indeed correct.

And his response says it all. He looked at Moshe and said, Moshe our teacher, this time you've made a mistake. Now Rabbeinu Tam was the highest fruit of the flowering of the Tosfas. But life in his day wasn't all Torah. Because as I mentioned, in the year 1146, the Crusader armies began massing to take their leave for the Holy Land. And on the second day of Shavuot, a group of Crusaders forced their way into his town, began to pillage and kill. and they actually broke into Rebemutam's house, plundering all his wealth, and dragged him out in a field where they wounded him five times, they claimed in return for the wounds received by Jesus before its crucifixion. The story goes that the leader of this band was a French nobleman who had borrowed money from Rebemutam, and just as the Crusaders had decided to finish their reenactment with an actual crucifixion, he rescued the rabbi from their hands.

and how the story plays out says a lot about the times. This nobleman told his fellow crusaders that one more dead Jew wasn't much of an accomplishment but a conversion would be. He promised to bring Rebain and Tom to the true faith if the others would leave him in his hands which indeed they did. Needless to say the Holy Toast Fist quickly purchased his safety and his soul at the price of the debts that he held. And it says a lot about the patterns which the crusades established. Now, it is important to note that despite Rabbeinu Tom's personal experience, for the Jews as a whole, the Second Crusade was fundamentally different than the first. We spoke in the last episode about the destruction of the Jewish communities of the Rhineland at the hands of the so-called People's Crusade, and how it was not the work of the Church, or even of the kings.

On the contrary, the mob violence was condemned by both authorities. and now as the Second Crusade gathered force at least one church voice took a far more proactive stance in heading off potential violence and this was Bernard of Clairvoy a Cisternian monk an abbot of a monastery in France and he may be better known to many of our listeners as Saint Bernard he was one of the most influential voices of the 12th century church so much so that when a schism threatened to split the church and for a brief period Europe witnessed the spectacle of two warring popes, it was St. Bernard who labeled to heal it. Now he has a deep story of his own within Christian history but he enters the Jewish story after the Christian defeat at Edessa when the Pope commissioned him to preach the Second Crusade In his attempts to rouse the masses Bernard was well aware of what had happened to the Jews at the outset of the previous crusade.

And indeed, when a fellow monk began to work the people of the Rhineland up against the Jews, once again rallying them under the cry of, why travel to fight the heathen when you can kill them right here at home? Bernard sent letters across Europe condemning the past crusader attacks on Jews and demanding protection for the Jewish communities in the present efforts. He reminded the would-be crusaders of the Augustinian principle. It's worth it for us to review it as well because it was the response of Augustine to the theological problem posed by the survival of the Jews. Remember, early Christianity claimed to be spiritual Israel and therefore carnal Israel, the physical manifestation of the Jewish people, ought have disappeared.

And what Augustine taught was that the Jews were not meant to be destroyed, but rather protected as a suffering remnant, living in a degraded state, but scattered and preserved in order to bear witness to the truth of Christianity and ultimately to be redeemed. This is from a letter that St. Bernard sent to eastern France in Bavaria in the year 1146. We have heard and rejoice that the zeal of God abounds in you, but it behooves no mind to be wanting in wisdom. The Jews must not be persecuted, slaughtered, nor even driven out. Inquire of the pages of the Holy Writ. I know it is written in the Psalms as prophecy about the Jews. God hath commanded me, says the Church, slay them not, lest my people forget.

He goes on, they are living signs to use representing the Lord's passion. For this reason they are dispersed into all regions, and now they may pay the just penalty of so great a crime, and that they may be witnesses of our redemption. They have been dispersed, cast down, they undergo a hard captivity under Christian princes, yet they shall be converted at even time, and remembrance of them shall be made in due season. so in addition to this somewhat difficult theological argument which Bernard mustered to defend with Jews he brought a more practical side to the equation as well he says later on I do not enlarge on the lamentable fact that where there are no Jews there Christian men Judei is even worse than they in extorting usury if indeed we may call them Christians and not rather baptized Jews Notice that the term that he uses for usury is actually to Judeaize.

Now you have to understand, crusading was expensive business. To get to Jerusalem, the vast majority of the crusaders needed to borrow money, probably something like three or four times their annual revenue if they wanted to travel there and back in any sort of style, which, being old men, of course they did. In the first crusade, it was the monasteries that were the primary source of credit. But not every crusader had a link with a monastery that would help him secure loans. Nor did most crusaders have enough land to offer the monasteries up in mortgage. At this point, by the way, the monasteries began to be major landholders in Europe. Most crusaders had to borrow what they could by pledging what they had, and hoped to make up the rest of their costs through charity and plunder.

And that had a lot to do with what happened in 1096, because at the end of the 11th century, the Jews were not yet a significant source of credit that what they would become by the end of the 12th. But, as targets of extortion and plunder, they made some significant contributions to the cost of Crusades. And although St. Bernard rejected the calls to kill Jews, he didn't object to the notion of extorting protection money. Now, though his efforts were successful, a new paradigm rose throughout Europe during the Second and Third Crusade which takes place around 1190 as money lending became more central to the Jewish economy the Jews had a special responsibility in the minds of the Crusaders to pay for the cost of their travel because their participation in the death of Jesus of Nazareth is what had caused all the problems in the first place so they ought to at least pay for it And furthermore, from this, a dangerous identification between crusader and nobleman indebtedness and Jewish money lending emerged.

Now this explosive mix of theology, war, and economics reached a bursting point in the massacre of the Jewish community of York in 1190. How did it come about? Well, England's new king, Richard I, known as the Lionhearted, actually set off on crusade immediately following his coronation in 1189. But unfortunately, he left a chaotic situation behind him. What had happened? He had refused entry to prominent Jews who wanted to be part of his coronation banquet in hopes to gain his favor. And in response to their beating at the door, rioting had spread throughout England because the people took this sign of rejection as a general rejection of the Jews, who were largely hated as usurers. Now remember, Jews were officially protected as the feudal possessions of the king.

And in York, during the rioting, they took shelter in the wooden keep of the royal castle, and it was on Shabbat before Passover, what's known as Shabbat HaGadol. However, they were completely surrounded, and seeing no way of escaping the angry mob, and refusing to submit to the baptism, which could have saved their lives, the Jews chose to commit suicide there in the keep. And Ephraim of Bon left behind a Hebrew account of the massacre at York, in which he describes how Rabbi Yomtov stood and slaughtered 60 souls, and others also slaughtered. Some there were who commanded that they should slaughter their only sons, whose foot could not tread upon the ground from their delicacy and tender breeding.

It's an awful indication of how the Jews of the Third Crusade learned the lessons of those of the First. But it's really Willem of Newburgh, a 12th century English historian, who gives us the real analysis of the events. He says, The authors of this daring plan to kill Jews were certain nobles indebted to these impious usurers for great sums, some of whom, having handed over their property to them for loans, were now oppressed by great want. while others who had taken the sign of the cross meaning they were crusaders were now readying themselves for their journey to Jerusalem and could be all the more easily impelled to meet the expenses of a journey undertaken for God out of plunder taken from God's enemies especially as they had little fear of being questioned for the deed once they'd started on their journey.

Now it will take another hundred years until the Jews are expelled on mass from England in 1290 but the masquerade York marks a turning point in the role of the Jew in feudal Christian society. Because the Jew is no longer simply the serf of the king, his personal possession, like Charlemagne had made it, as we discussed in the last episode, within the agricultural military complex, or even just the mobile mercantile element in a static agrarian economy who played a particularly important role. now, as the Jew is forced by economic circumstance into the role of money lending he's increasingly seen as a source of spiritual pollution one who embodies Christianity's deeply ambivalent relationship to money and the spiritual economic enemy within the Tosfis had unwittingly crafted one response to this new precarious situation in which Am Yisrael found itself in the Middle Ages Their engagement of the tool of the dialectic empowered their students to build the Beit Midrash into a palace of the mind.

The best and the brightest took refuge in their constructs of Torah. They waged what's called Milchamda de Torah, the battles of the Torah, while the battles of the world raged outside the Beit Midrash. And I have to tell you, I've had this experience myself. I'll never forget during the second intifada here, one morning after 12 teenagers had died in a bomb in Zion Square I came into the Beit Midrash and I said to my Rabbi how are we supposed to learn when there's blood flowing in the streets and he looked at me and he said what do you mean? this is what we do but there was another spiritual path born at this time one which sought God not only in the house of study but actually in the entire world and these were the Hasidei Ashkenaz the Pious of Ashkenaz.

Rabbi Yehuda HaHassid, who is seen as the founder of the movement, was born in Spire in 1150, and he was a descendant of the Kolonis family mentioned in the last episode, the spiritual nobility of Ashkenaz. His father Shmuel was known as a man of such extraordinary learning and holiness that he was known as HaHassid, the Pious, or HaKadosh, the Holy. And after youth, which legend says was spent winning bow and arrow contacts with the nobility of the Rhineland Yehudah became a faithful follower of his father but the real turning point in his impact on Am Yisrael came in the year 1195 when he and his family left Spire for Regensburg. The reason why may sound familiar, because in that year, Yitzchak ben Asher HaLevi and the daughter of Spire's rabbi were accused of ritual murder, killed, and their bodies were hung in the marketplace.

the rabbi was subsequently killed trying to recover his daughter's body and when rioting broke out homes were plundered and burned the synagogue was destroyed and it's likely due to this that Rabbi Yehuda settled in Regensburg in the very same year there to establish his own yeshiva and it's here that his teachings gave form to the movement which became known as the Hasidei Ashkenaz the Pius of Ashkenaz now many people are familiar with Hasidutin and Hasidism from the 18th 19th century, but here we're talking about the mid-12th, or late 12th, early 13th. The essential idea, which Rabbi Yehuda taught, was that the Ratzon Aboreh, the will of God as creator manifest in the world, as opposed to his transcendent glory of God, found expression in every aspect of creation, within humanity and without.

And remember, the Renaissance of the 12th century had led to a discovery of whole new horizons of human experience. The world was opening up, and for certain strands of Christianity, this intellectual and emotional expansion actually led to the rise of humanism. Man began to place God at the center of creation. But what happened for Hasidic Ashkenaz couldn't be further from that, because they saw these fresh spaces of human experience and potential, as an invitation, a summons really, to an infinitely more comprehensive yoke of heaven to be accepted upon themselves. Their challenge was that the traditional corpus of halacha and agada, or midrash and mishnah as we've defined it, law and narrative, was no longer adequate to define the divine will in these new spaces.

Because Rabbi Yehuda and his chassidim, in a sense took the first fresh look that Am Yisrael had taken at human nature since the time of the sages. And just as the Tosafis were mobilizing new forces of the mind in their pursuit of the infinite potential within the Gemara, the Hasidei Ashkenaz mobilized the spirit in pursuit of the infinite potential for serving God in the world. As Rabbi Yehuda says in the introduction to his Sefer Hasidim, his most important work, this book is written for those who fear God and are mindful of his name there is a chasid whose heart desires out of love for his creator to do his will but is unaware of all the demands which things to avoid and how to to deeply act and fulfill the wish of the creator for this reason Sefer Chasidim was written so that all who fear God with an undivided heart may read it and know and understand what is incumbent upon them to do.

The Seyed Chassidim introduced a whole new way of serving God, deeply rooted in tradition, but engaging the world in fantastically new ways. And in a sense, Seyed Chassidim, and in particular what is often a very radical commentary on the Torah from Rabbi Yudah Chassid, is a medieval German Midrash. It is once again an attempt to delve into ancient texts in order to anchor present experience in a sense of unchanging divine will. Now Rabbi Yehuda had many students. The two most important were actually Rabbi Eleazar HaRokeach, who continued his path of mysticism and piety, in addition to being a Talmudic scholar of significance, and Rabbi Yitzchak ben Moshe of Vienna, better known as the author of the Or Zerua.

his book, the Orzeruah, would become a primary basis for the halachic development of Ashkenaz for generations to come. And that's important to emphasize, because though to some degree the Hasidai Ashkenaz were a reaction against what they perceived to be the over-intellectualization of the Torah by the Tosafists, they worked hand-in-hand with them in upholding the law. Yehudah condemned any learning which rested on argument for argument's sake, because he saw this as a danger in the dialectic and asserted that the main purpose of learning is always action and holy conduct. And the Hasidai Ashkenaz also warned against the pride that came with extraordinary individual scholarship, but nonetheless, their league was critical to the legal and spiritual development of Am Yisrael Ashkenazi Jewry in their day.

Because if the dialectic provided a creative outlet for the intellect through learning of Torah, then Hasidat Ashkenaz actually evolved a systematic policy of stringency, of humrah, and of building fences around the law, which would characterize the legal stance of Ashkenaz to this very day. To them, the purpose of expanded learning was not simply the solution of logical difficulties, but rather discovery of new demands which were being made by God upon them. one thinks in order to submit more fully to Ratzon H'Bore to the will of the creator so as the horizon of humanity expanded through the renaissance of the 12th century and the depth of the Gemara was uncovered as infinite in the hands of the Tosavists Rabbi Yehuda was exploring vast tracts of human feeling and behavior of which he felt the divine will to be profoundly aware but for which no guidance was to be found in the classic pages of the law.

As he says in Sefer Chassidim, For one must know and probe. For in the presence of the ruler you cannot acquit yourself by saying it was a sin committed out of ignorance. For this reason I set myself to writing a book for the God-fearing, lest they be punished and think it for no reason. Far be it from God to do such a thing. Therefore I have set forth this book of fear so that those who fear the word of God can take heed. You know, I always think about the Crusades as the time the smile went out of Ashkenaz. And indeed, it's a difficult and dark period to think about the rise of the blood libel, to think about the emergence of money lending and the awful unsavory role it plays in European history.

But I want to end with one word about Emunah, about faithfulness. And in truth, it's really about our day. Because when I look back at the depth of the commitment of these men who led Am Yisrael, and the people who followed them, indeed the daily life of a Jew, in the midst of what is truly one of the darkest periods of history, I'm simply struck with awe. And then I'm challenged by the struggles of faith I see around me, I see within me in our day, and I say, how could it be that we who really live in the light could lack faith in the way that they who walk through such darkness had? But, you know, I'll give you a metaphor that's very much helped me in understanding it. I think of the Tosfis as basically sitting on a raft, floating down a river.

And that river is history. And they know at one point or another they're going to get off the raft, which is exile, back onto the solid land of redemption. How's it going to happen? When's it going to happen? What will it look like when it happens? They don't have any idea. There they are on the raft, building life in exile. confident that life will go on and will eventually arrive. And therefore their faith was one of simply holding fast. But if you've ever actually been on a boat, especially a small boat like a canoe, you know that listen, in the water you're steady, on the land it's natural. But the moment of greatest danger is actually when you have one foot in the boat and one foot on shore. Even though you're halfway to your destination, you have a foot in redemption.

That moment of instability makes every ripple of the water, every breath of wind, every twitch of your leg, a life or death moment. And that's how I see us in the world today. One foot in the water, one foot on land. May we be blessed with a bit of their faithfulness. I just want to thank a few people. First of all, I want to thank you all for listening, and in particular those of you whose hard-earned money goes to support the show. If you want to be part of that, please go right now to www.patreon.com. You can find my MFoyer page, and you can hit the donate button for a little per-podcast support. Or you can just go to Rav Mike on Facebook and find the information there. I also want to thank the Land of Israel Network, amazing people who've created a platform that lets me reach so many wonderful folks.

I want to thank Pardes, that's pardes.org.il, for giving me the opportunity to touch so many hearts and minds of young Jews out there. I want to thank Suom Yaakov, suomyaakov.com, because it's my home. And I want to thank you for listening. I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story.