Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade 9780812201635

Citation preview

Sanctifying the Name of God

JEWISH

CULTURE

AND

CONTEXTS

Published in association with the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania David B. Ruderman) Series Editor

Advisory Board Richard I. Cohen Moshe Idel Deborah Dash Moore Ada Rapoport-Albert David Stern

A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

Sanctifying the Name

of God Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade

Jeremy Cohen

PENN University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia

Copyright © 2004 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States ofAmerica on acid-free paper 10

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First paperback edition 2006 Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cohen, Jeremy, 1953Santifying the name of God: Jewish martyrs and Jewish memories of the First Crusade / Jeremy Cohen. p. cm. - (Jewish culture and contexts) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8122-3780-1 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8122-3780-3 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8122-1956-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8122-1956-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Jews-Germany-HistorY-1096-1147. 2. Jews-Persecutions-Germany. 3. Crusades-First, 1096-1099. 4. Germany-Ethnic relations. I. Title. II. Series. DS135. G31C64 2004 943'.004924-dc22 2003069063

Contents

Preface

Vll

List of Abbreviations for Primary Sources Introduction: The Persecutions of 1096 PART I

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

1

To Sanctify the Name of God

2

The First Crusade and Its Historians

3

Points of Departure

PART II

MARTYRS OF 1096

4

Last Supper at Xanten

5

Master Isaac the Parnas

6

Mistress Rachel of Mainz

7

Kalonymos in Limbo

8

The Rape of Sarit Afterword Notes

Index

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13 31

55

73 91 106

130 142

159 165

Bibliography of Secondary Sources 201

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Preface

Students of literature, anthropology, and psychology have long taken for granted that a ((historical" story does not reflect the world of the (historical) characters who function within it but the world of the people who tell it. Some consider this truth so self-evident that they refer to it as a ((banal fact."! Yet, for some reason, we continue to expect more from the field of history and from the historian. We naively hope and assume that they can penetrate the impenetrable, break through the stories recording the past, and accurately reconstruct the events of their narrativesobjectively, as it were, free of all editorial interpretation and distortion. Paraphrasing one of the doyens of historical research during the heyday of nineteenth-century positivism, we expect historians and their craft to tell us how it actually happened, not much more, and certainly nothing less. Most nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians promoted this notion of their mission, and they confidently turned their energies toward pursuing it. Historians of the last generations, .however, have gradually acknowledged the futility of attempting to isolate the events of history from the many layers of their subsequent memories, especially as we realize the magnitude of our investment in the past. Paradoxically, the more we need to reconstruct our history, the more the goal of filtering facts out of their interpretation eludes us. Human nature does not allow for transmitting information entirely objectively, and it never did. A reported event by its very nature has always been an interpreted event. No matter how close to an event historical sources might be, they still convey human memories of what transpired, memories that derive from very much more than that past event itself. One can never travel the entire distance between text and event, a distance compounded at every stage of the transmission of historical information, for its transmitters inevitably reinterpret as they convey it onward. With such considerations in mind, this book struggles with tales of Jewish martyrdom from the First Crusade, when Jews of northern Europe,

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attacked by bands of crusaders, met a violent death to avoid conversion to Christianity. These anti-Jewish persecutions of 1096-or Gezerot Tatnu as Jews remember them in Hebrew2-have long been enshrined in Jewish historical memory, and, during the past two decades, they have stimulated intense, often highly charged debate among Jewish historians. Surprisingly, only one historian has previously devoted a book-length study entirely to Gezerot Tatnu,3 and the present investigation will seek to make this critical chapter in medieval Jewish history more accessible to a broader readership, at the same time as it offers a different perspective on the events and their memories. In the first instance, this book will investigate the reactions of the Jews attacked by the crusaders in 1096 and, most directly, the memories of those reactions that lived on among the survivors. Our interest lies primarily with stories told by the survivors and with the role, the significance, of these stories in the Jewish society that produced them. How did Jews in twelfthcentury Germany remember and memorialize those who preferred death as a Jew to life as a Christian? What historical and cultural circumstances gave rise to these memories of martyrdom, as opposed to the events that they narrate? Additionally, this book will read tales of medieval Jewish martyrdom in a manner that few have tried and developed. As the opening years of the twenty-first century have reinforced upon us, communities remember their martyrs-and choose to identify them as martyrs in their memoriesbecause they died for ideals that these communities of the living cherish. When we label past victims of violence and persecution martyrs, we give expression to heavy emotional baggage that we presently carry with us. While tales of martyrdom, then, perhaps can teach us something about the martyrs themselves, their ideas, and their deaths, they communicate considerably more about the martyrologists, those who remember the martyrs and tell their stories because they find them meaningful. Applying these principles to the extant Hebrew narratives of the 1096 persecutions, we shall see how the martyrs' stories teach us above all else about the survivors who told them. These twelfth-century accounts of the violence and victims of 1096 demonstrate how those living made sense of the self-sacrifice of the dead, and how their memories gave expression to the needs and circumstances of European Jews during the decades that followed. During the years I have worked on this book, many have found its ideas unsettling; some have even responded to them out of fear or anger. As we shall see, the example of the Jewish martyrs of 1096 nourished the

Preface

IX

idealism of Ashkenazic Jews ever since) and the greatest of twentieth-century Jewish historians drew direct connections between Jewish martyrdom during the Crusades and the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust. Cherished memories surely heighten the sensitivity and zeal with which we react to Holocaust deniers) particularly after historians have justly triumphed over deniers in courts of law. Suggesting that tales of martyrdom in our Crusade chronicles might not amount to totally accurate) factual reporting) that they express an ideology of martyrdom that belonged to the living survivor) not the slain martyr) I have appeared to some as treading dangerously close to the borders of «revisionism." Let me) then) clarify my stance in this book) as succinctly as I can: Revisionist in the traditional) scholarly sense of proposing a fundamentally new interpretation? Invoking Yale historian Donald Kagan)s statement that by revisionist «we refer to a writer who tries to change the reader's mind about events in the past in a major way)"4 I readily confess my revisionist aspirations. Must our conclusions and our method undermine the historical truth of the events of martyrdom) during the Crusades) the Holocaust) or at any other time? Absolutely not. Nevertheless) they demonstrate that the historian must recognize and struggle with the complex relationship between event and text. The attacks of terrorist «martyrs" on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon just several years ago-suicides who died resisting what many Muslims identify as a new) modern-day Western crusade-underscore the critical importance of the historian)s task: to understand how cultures endow events with their meaning. Watching the news media daily) particularly in the Middle Eastern setting where I have written my book) we see how one person)s martyr is another person)s villain. Now more than ever) we must distinguish between martyrs and their memories as responsibly as we can. Donald Kagan has suggested that the very first revisionist among historians was Thucydides) author of the monumental Peloponnesian War) which recounts that fateful conflict between classical Athens and Sparta. 5 Although they may never have heard of Thucydides) the Jews who survived the First Crusade and told of the martyrs of 1096 emulated aspects of his historiographical method. Thucydides explained that in reporting the speeches of his historical characters) he recorded what he believed they should have said in their particular situations) not necessarily what they did say. So) too) the voices in the extant Hebrew narratives of Gezerot Tatnu portrayed Jews sanctifying the name of God in a manner that made sense to them. In so doing) they might well have looked favorably on the rationale

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that Thucydides offered for his method: ((Whoever shall wish to have a clear view both of the events which have happened and of those which will some day, in all human probability, happen again in the same or similar way-for these to adjudge my history profitable will be enough for me." Perhaps those who compiled our sources would even have shared in Thucydides' ultimate hope: ((My history ... has been composed, not as a prizeessay to be heard for the moment, but as a possession for all times."6 Ashkenazic Jewry's narratives of the First Crusade never enjoyed the popularity of the Peloponnesian War; for centuries, at least two of the three surviving prose texts remained virtually unknown. Still, memories of persecutions of 1096 have persistently touched the hearts and souls of Jews concerned with their past, from medieval times until our own. As the ideas presented in this book took shape over the course of the last decade, I drew from the reactions, suggestions, and criticisms that members of my family, colleagues, students, and friends kindly shared with me. Robert Chazan, Deborah Cohen, Joseph Hacker, Jan Willem van Henten, Ivan Marcus, Michael Signer, Gabrielle Spiegel, and Israel Yuval generously gave of their time in conversation, in correspondence, and in reading all or part of various drafts of the book; to them, among others too numerous to single out, I remain deeply indebted. Among the various institutions and organizations that invited me to air my ideas, I am especially grateful to the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies for the opportunity to deliver the Louis Jacobs Lectures in 1996, when I presented several chapters of the book in an earlier form and benefited considerably from the responses to them. The Divinity School of the University of Chicago, where I served as Regenstein Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies in 1999, provided me the supportive framework where I completed the bulk of my research and also where I tested my ideas in a graduate seminar on Jewish history and Jewish memory in the Middle Ages. I finished the first draft of the entire book in 2000-2001 while a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the congeniality of whose staff and supportive atmosphere proved second to none. The College of Humanities of The Ohio State University and the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center of Tel Aviv University helped to subvent the costs of my research over the many years that it ensued; and a grant from the Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies of Tel Aviv University offset the costs of preparing the manuscript for publication.

Abbreviations for Primary Sources

ACW ANF

Ancient Christian Writers. New York. Ante-Nicene Fathers. Ed. Alexander Roberts et al. 8 vols. Buffalo, N.Y., 1886-88. ARN Aboth de Rabbi Nathan (in Hebrew). Ed. Solomon Schechter. Corr. ed. New York, 1967. Aronius Julius Aronius, ed. Regesten zur Geschichte der Juden im friinkischen und deutschen Reiche bis zum Jahre 1273. Berlin, 1902. 'Avodat Yisra'el Seder 'Avodat Yisra'el. Ed. Seligman Baer. Rev. ed. Berlin, 1937· Benton John F. Benton, ed. Self and Society in Medieval France: The Memoirs ofAbbot Guibert ofNogent. New York, 1970. Bernard of Clairvaux. Opera. Ed. Jean Leclercq et al. Bernard Rome, 1957-77. Bet ha-Midrash Adolph Jellinek, ed. Beth ha-Midrash (in Hebrew). 3rd ed. 6 pts. in 2 vols. Jerusalem, 1967. Bible more 2554 Bible moralisee: Codex Vindobonensis 2554. Ed. Gerald B. Guest. London, 1995. Carmi T. Carmi, ed. The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse. Harmondsworth, Eng., 1981. Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio mediaevalis. TurnCCCM hout, Belgium. Corpus Christianorum, Series latina. Turnhout, Belgium. CCSL Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum. Vienna. CSEL Benzion Dinur, ed. Israel in the Diaspora (in Hebrew). 2 Dinur vols. in 10 pts. Tel Aviv, 1958-72. Shlomo Eidelberg, ed. The Jews and the Crusaders. MadiEidelberg son, 1977. Eliyahu Rabbah Seder Eliahu Rabba und Seder Eliahu Zuta (in Hebrew). Ed. M. Friedmann (Ish-Shalom). Vienna, 1902. Eusebius. Ecclesiastical History. Ed. Kirsopp Lake et al. Eusebius Loeb Classical Library. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass., 1926-32.

xu

Abbreviations for Primary Sources

Exodus Rabbah Midrash Shemot Rabbah: Chapters I-XIV (in Hebrew). Ed. FC GCS Gellis

Avigdor Shinan. Jerusalem, 1984. Fathers of the Church. New York and Washington. Die griechische christlichen Schriftsteller. Jacob Gellis, ed. Sefer Tosafot Hashalem: Commentary on the Bible (in Hebrew). 9 vols. Jerusalem, 1982-93.

Genesis Rabbah Midrash Bereshit Rabba: Critical Edition with Notes and Commentary (in Hebrew). Ed. J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck. 3 vols. 1903-36; repr., Jerusalem, 1965.

Glossa Guibert

H

Hermann

Ibn Daud Ibn Ezra Josephus

Josippon Judah, Diwan

Kinot Lam. Rabbah Lev. Rabbah MGH McGinn

Biblia Latina cum glossa ordinaria: Facsimile Reprint of the Editio Princeps. 4 vols. Turnhout, 1992. Guibert of Nogent. Autobiographie. Ed. Edmond-Rene Labande. Les Classiques de l'histoire de France au Moyen Age 34. Paris, 1981. A. M. Habermann, ed. Sefer Gezerot Ashkenaz ve- Tzarefat. Jerusalem, 1945. Hermann of Cologne. Opusculum de conversione sua. Ed. Gerlinde Niemeyer. MGH Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 4. Weimar, 1963. Abraham ibn Daud. Sefer ha-Qabbalah: The Book of Tradition. Ed. Gerson D. Cohen. Philadelphia, 1967. Abraham ibn Ezra. The Religious Poems (in Hebrew). Ed. Israel Levine. 2 vols. Jerusalem, 1975. Josephus. Works. Ed. and tr. H. St. J. Thackeray et al. Loeb Classical Library. 9 vols. Cambridge, Mass., 1926-65. The Josippon (in Hebrew). Ed. David Flusser. 2 vols. Jerusalem, 1978-80. Judah ben Samuel ha-Levi. Diwan. Ed. A. M. Habermann. 4 vols. Farnborough, Eng., 1971. Seder ha-Kinot le-Tish'ah be-Avo Ed. E. D. Goldschmidt. Jerusalem, 1968. Midrasch Echah Rabbati (in Hebrew). Ed. Salomon Buber. Vilna, 1899. Midrash Wayyikra Rabbah (in Hebrew). Ed. Mordecai Margulies. 5 vols. Jerusalem, 1953-60. Monumenta Germaniae historica. Bernard McGinn, ed. Apocalyptic Spirituality. London, 1979·

Abbreviations for Primary Sources

Xltt

Meir b. Baruch Meir ben Baruch of Rothenburg. She'elot u-Teshuvot: Defus Prag. Ed. M. Bloch. Budapest, 1895. Mekh. Rashbi Mechilta de-Rabbi Simon b. ]ochai (in Hebrew). Ed. D. Hoffmann. Frankfurt am Main, 1905. Mekhilta Mechilta d'Rabbi Ismael (in Hebrew). Ed. H. S. Horowitz and I. A. Rabin. 2nd ed. Jerusalem, 1960. Melito Melito of Sardis. On Pascha and Fragments. Ed. and tr. Stuart George Hall. Oxford, 1979. Memorbuch Siegmund Salfeld, ed. Das Martyrologium des Nurnberger Memorbuches. Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland 3. Berlin, 1898. Mid. Mishle Midrash Mishle. Ed. Burton L. Visotzky. New York, 1990. Mid. Shemu'el Midrasch Samuel (in Hebrew). Ed. Salomon Buber. Krakow, 1893. Mid. Tana'im Midrasch Tannai'm zum Deuteronomium (in Hebrew). Ed. D. Hoffmann. 2 vols. Berlin, 1909. Mid. Tehillim Midrash Tehillim. Ed. Salomon Buber. 1891; repr., Jerusalem, 1966.

Mid. Zuta

Midrash Suta: Hagadische Abhandlungen uber Schir haSchirim, Ruth, Echah, und Koheleth (in Hebrew). Ed. Salo-

Musurillo

Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Ed. Herbert Musurillo. Ox-

N/S

ford, 1972. Adolf Neubauer and Moritz Stern, eds. Hebriiische Be-

mon Buber. Berlin, 1894.

richte uber die fudenverfolgungen wiihrend der Kreuzzuge.

OTP Otzar Mid.

Oz, 'Ad Mavet Oz, Crusade

Quellen der Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland 2. Berlin, 1892. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Ed. James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Garden City, N.Y., 1983-85. J. D. Eisenstein, ed. Ozar Midrashim: A Library of Two Hundred Minor Midrashim (in Hebrew). 2 vols. New York, 1915. Oz, Amos. 'Ad Mavet. Tel Aviv, 1971. Oz, Amos. Unto Death. Tr. Nicholas de Lange. London, 1975·

PDRE

"Pirke de-Rabbi Eli'ezer." Ed. Michael Higger. Horeb 8

Pesikta Rab.

Pesikta Rabbati: Midrasch fur ein Fest-Cyclus und die aus-

(1944): 82-119; 9 (1946): 94-166; 10 (1948): 185-294·

xiv

Abbreviations for Primary Sources gezeichneten Sabbathe (in Hebrew). Ed. M. Friedmann (Ish-Shalom). 1880; repr., Tel Aviv, 1963.

Pesikta Rav K.

Pesikta de-Rav Kahana. Ed. Bernard Mandelbaum. 2 vols.

New York, 1962. Peter, Letters Peter the Venerable. Letters. Ed. Giles Constable. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass., 1967. Peter, Sermons Peter the Venerable. "Sermones tres." Ed. Giles Constable. Revue Benedictine 64 (1954): 224-72. Peters Edward Peters, ed. The First Crusade: The Chronicle ofFulcher of Chartres and Other Source Materials. Philadelphia, 1971. Philo Philo. Works. Ed. F. H. Colson et al. 10 vols. and 2 suppl. vols. Cambridge, Mass., 1929-53. PL Patrologia latina. Ed. J. P. Migne et al. 221 vols. Paris, 1861-64· Poetics Aristotle. Poetics. Ed. Stephen Halliwell. Cambridge, Mass., 1995. Raymond/Hill Raymond of Aguilers. Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem. Tr. John Hugh Hill and Laurita L. Hill. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 71. Philadelphia, 1968.

RHC Rosenfeld

Ruth Rabbah

Sefer lfasidim

She'iltot Sifre Deut. Sifre Num.

Soferim

Recueil des historiens des croisades: Historiens occidentaux. 5 vols. Paris, 1844-95. Abraham Rosenfeld, ed. The Authorised Kinot for the Ninth ofAv. London, 1965. Myron Bialik Lerner. "The Book of Ruth in Aggadic Literature and Midrash Ruth Rabba" (in Hebrew). Ph.D. dissertation. 3 vols. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1971. Judah ben Samuel the Pious. Seser lfasidim: Das Buch der Frommen (in Hebrew). Ed. Jehuda Wistinetzki and J. Freimann. 2nd ed. Frankfurt am Main, 1924. Sheeltot de Rab Ahai Gaon (in Hebrew). Ed. Samuel K. Mirsky. 5 vols. Jerusalem, 1959-77. Sifre on Deuteronomy (in Hebrew). Ed. Louis Finkelstein. Corpus tannaiticum 3,3,2. 1939; repr., New York, 1969. Siphre ad Numeros adjecto Siphre zutta (in Hebrew). Ed. H. S. Horowitz. Corpus tannaiticum 3,3,1. 1917; repr., Jerusalem, 1966. Masekhet Soferim. Ed. Michael Higger. New York, 1937.

Abbreviations for Primary Sources Song Rabbah

xv

Midrash Rabbah: Shir ha-Shirim. Ed. Shimshon Dunski. Jerusalem, 1980.

Tanakh

Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures according to the Traditional Hebrew Text. Philadelphia, 1985.

TB Babylonian Talmud. Tchernichowsky Saul Tchernichowsky. Shirim. 5th ed. Jerusalem, 1947. Thucydides Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Loeb Classical Library. Ed. and tr. Charles Forster Smith. 4 vols. Rev. ed. Cambridge, Mass., 1928-33. Palestinian (Jerusalem) Talmud. TJ The Tosefta (in Hebrew). Ed. Saul Lieberman. 5 vols. New Tosefta York, 1955-88.