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The history of the Jews and the Crusades is part of the history of antisemitism toward Jews in the Middle Ages. The call for the First Crusade intensified the persecutions of the Jews, and they continued to be targets of Crusaders' violence and hatred throughout the Crusades.
The dispersion of the Jewish community occurred following the Destruction of the Second Temple, with many Jews settling in different regions across Europe and the Middle East. During this time, several Jewish communities coalesced across the Levant in approximately fifty known locations, including Jerusalem, Tiberias, Ramleh, Ashkelon and Caesarea. [1] [2] Many of these communities fell into the path of the Crusader forces on their mission to capture the Holy Land.
Christians sources justify attacking Jewish communities as a means of seizing wealth and supplies. One Christian priest, commenting on the behavior of the Crusaders in the Balkans, wrote: [3]
"This is believed to be the hand of the Lord working against the pilgrims, who sinned in his sight with their great impurity and intercourse with prostitutes and slaughtered the wandering Jews, who admittedly were contrary to Christ, more from avarice for money than for the justice of God."
In the First Crusade, Jewish communities on the Rhine and the Danube were attacked by Crusaders, while others were spared due to the efforts of the Papacy (see the Rhineland massacres). In the Second Crusade (1147), the Jews in France suffered especially. The severity of the massacres was such that word reached Jewish communities in the Middle East, inspiring Messianic fervor. [3] Philip II of France treated them with exceptional severity during the Third Crusade (1188). The Jews were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320.
The attacks were opposed by the local bishops and widely condemned at the time as a violation of the crusades' aims, which were not directed against the Jews. [4] [5] However, the perpetrators mostly escaped legal punishment. The social position of the Jews in western Europe worsened, and legal restrictions increased during and after the crusades. This led to the anti-Jewish legislation of Pope Innocent III. The crusades resulted in centuries of resentment on both sides and constitute a turning point in the relationship between Jews and Christians.
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The Muslims and Jews allied to defend Haifa against the crusaders, holding out in the besieged town for a month (June–July 1099). When the Crusaders breached the citadel, they killed everyone they found, both Jews and Muslims. [6]
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Jews again fought together with Muslim soldiers to defend Jerusalem against the Crusaders. Saint Louis University Professor Thomas F. Madden, author of A Concise History of the Crusades, claims the "Jewish Defenders" of the city knew the rules of warfare and retreated to their synagogue to "prepare for death" since the Crusaders had breached the outer walls. [7] According to the Muslim chronicle of Ibn al-Qalanisi, "The Jews assembled in their synagogue, and the Franks burned it over their heads." [8] One modern-day source even claims the Crusaders "[circled] the screaming, flame-tortured humanity, singing 'Christ We Adore Thee!' with their Crusader crosses held high." [9] However, a contemporary Jewish communication does not corroborate the report that Jews were actually inside of the Synagogue when it was set fire. [10] This letter was discovered among the Cairo Geniza collection in 1975 by historian Shelomo Dov Goitein. [11] Historians believe that it was written just two weeks after the siege, making it "the earliest account on the conquest in any language." [11] However, sources agree that a synagogue was burned during the siege.[ citation needed ]
Following the siege, Jews captured from the Dome of the Rock, along with native Christians, were made to clean the city of the slain. [12] Tancred took some Jews as prisoners of war and deported them to Apulia in southern Italy. Several of these Jews did not make it to their final destination, as "Many of them were […] thrown into the sea or beheaded on the way." [12] Numerous Jews and their holy books (including the Aleppo Codex) were held ransom by Raymond of Toulouse. [13] The Karaite Jewish community of Ashkelon (Ascalon) reached out to their coreligionists in Alexandria to first pay for the holy books and thereafter rescued pockets of Jews over several months. [12] All of those that could be ransomed were liberated by the summer of 1100, with the few who could not either converted to Christianity or killed. [14]
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Prior to the First Crusade, there are multiple accounts of cooperation between Christians and Jews. Not only was there economic collaboration, with Jews being involved in several industries such as trade, minting, and financial advising, but Jews and Christians were also social with one another, even attending each other's weddings and funerals. [15]
As the Crusades spread and reached different towns and cities, Christians stood up and attempted to protect Jewish people. In the German city of Trier, the local bishop attempted to protect the Jews. [16] The bishop was still new to the city, however, and did not have the political power necessary to band the town together. In the face of the crusaders' attack, the local bishop abandoned his attempt to save the Jews and told them that "You cannot be saved—your God does not wish to save you now as he did in earlier day. "Behold this large crowd that stands before the gateway of the palace", as well as forcing them to choose between conversion and removal from his palace. [16]
Other German cities had similar experiences, with some towns, such as Mainz, having the local burghers fight against the incoming crusaders. [16] Another German town, Cologne, hid all the local Jews among their Christian neighbors during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, spending the remainder of the holiday with the Christian acquaintances. [16]
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The end of the crusades brought with it many narratives coming from both Jewish and Christian sources. Among the better-known Jewish narratives are the chronicles of Solomon Bar Simson Rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan, The Narrative of the Old Persecutions by Mainz Anonymous, and Sefer Zekhirah, or The Book of Remembrance, by Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn.[ citation needed ]
The Chronicle of Solomon Bar Simson (1140) is mostly a record of what happened during the period of the First Crusade. Bar Simson accurately discusses the martyrdom of the communities more than the rare conversion of individuals.
The Chronicle of Rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan (mid-12th century) is known to be written by a person named Rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan, who was very popular in his time due to his writings. He is thought to have borrowed much of his information from Bar Simson, since much of the information is the same. His writing here is emotional, taking on a more apocatic tone in a sense. There is a definite sense of personal experience coming out of this chronicle, experience with death and suffering within his community and others. This chronicle was extremely popular at the time, as several manuscripts were written about it in a myriad of places.
The Narrative of the Old Persecutions (14th century), as the lack of the author's name implies, is from an unknown author. The main focus of this narrative is on Mainz, and takes a very realistic stance on the crusades. It tells of the complacency of Rhenish Jews, of the reactions that Mainz Jews had to news of other communities falling to the crusaders, and of their turn towards the Church to protect them, only to find more despair there. It also brings in some information coming from the late Middle Ages, of Jews being associated with well poisoning. Robert Chazan's God, Humanity, and History and Shlomo Eidelberg's The Jews and the Crusades, each of which gives background to the narratives and discusses their effects on European Jewry and Christianity.
Robert Chazan's In the Year 1096: The First Crusade and the Jews provides details as to the changes made in Jewish/Christian relations resulting from the First Crusade. He focuses on whether or not the crusades really had a salient impact on the Jews of the time and in the future, pointing out that persecution was nothing new to them, yet also talking about the importance of their being made extremely distinct within the European community by the crusades. They were no longer part of it to any great extent but were made out to be part of the "others" as many in Europe already had been, such as atheists and pagans.
Christian sources for information on general feelings after the First Crusade all focus on their acquisition of Jerusalem. William of Tyre, Fulcher of Chartres, the Venetian Treaty, the Travels of Saewulf, and John of Wurzburg's Pilgrim Guide all detail Jerusalem but have little, if anything, to say of Europe and the Jews. However, amidst the Crusade there were several Christian documents on the crusaders' attacks on Jewish communities and the basis of those attacks. One such document is Albert of Aachen on the People's Crusade, which focuses on the unsanctioned, disorganized peasant crusades that occurred along with the organized crusader campaigns on Jerusalem. It provides the personal experiences of Aachen, who was in one of these peasant crusades, and provides accounts of the slaughter of several groups of Jews. He describes it as being either "judgment of the Lord" or "some error of mind," and the killings as not only being indiscriminate with no exception. His account also shows the Church being able to achieve little in its attempts to prevent these massacres.
Much of the focus of Christian writings of the time, however, was on the efforts to get to Jerusalem, though some accounts talk of the crusaders' distrust of the Byzantine Empire, accounts that show some of the reasoning for the Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople. The Deeds of the Franks, which has an unknown author, is such an account, and has a clear bias against the Byzantines. Many of the writings on later crusades continue to also focus on Jerusalem until the end of the crusades when Jerusalem stops being their focus and the return to stability in Europe does.
Many of the secondary sources on this time period question how important the impact of the crusades was on both the Jewish and Christian communities. Robert Chazan believes in the end – both cultures were, in many ways, used to the persecution that was being enacted, and that this was just another step. R. I. Moore, within his book The Formation of a Persecuting Society, argues that the effect on Christians was huge, with their entire society gaining feelings of the need for separation from their Jewish neighbors, which allowed them to persecute further in the future. Ivan G. Marcus in his article The Culture of the Early Ashkenaz argues that the Jews pulled away from the Christian community physically, mentally, and spiritually due to the sheer ferocity and shocking nature of the crusades. All of these and more provide differing opinions on the results of the crusades, but all agree that the crusades caused a separation between the two religions.
This is a list of notable events in the development of Jewish history. All dates are given according to the Common Era, not the Hebrew calendar.
Eliezer ben Nathan of Mainz (1090–1170), or Ra'avan, was a halakist and liturgical poet. As an early Rishon, he was a contemporary of the Rashbam and Rabbeinu Tam, and one of the earliest of the Tosafists. He was the son-in-law of Rabbi Eliakim b. Joseph of Mainz, a fellow student of Rashi. Through his four daughters Eliezer became the ancestor of several learned families which exerted a great influence upon religious life in the subsequent centuries. One of his great-grandsons was Asher b. Jehiel (ROSH), father of R. Jacob, author of the Ṭurim.
Iyar is the eighth month of the civil year and the second month of the Jewish religious year on the Hebrew calendar. The name is Babylonian in origin. It is a month of 29 days. Iyar usually falls in April–May on the Gregorian calendar.
Emicho was a count in the Rhineland in the late 11th century. He is also commonly referred to as Emicho of Leiningen or Emich of Flonheim, and not to be confused with Bishop Emicho of Leiningen. In 1096, he was the leader of the Rhineland massacres which were a series of mass murders of Jews that took place during the People's Crusade.
Jewish history is the history of the Jews, their nation, religion, and culture, as it developed and interacted with other peoples, religions, and cultures.
Religious antisemitism is aversion to or discrimination against Jews as a whole based on religious doctrines of supersession, which expect or demand the disappearance of Judaism and the conversion of Jews to other faiths. This form of antisemitism has frequently served as the basis for false claims and religious antisemitic tropes against Judaism. Sometimes, it is called theological antisemitism.
The siege of Jerusalem during the First Crusade lasted for one month and eight days, from 7 June 1099 to 15 July 1099. It was carried out by the Crusader army, which successfully captured Jerusalem from the Fatimid Caliphate and subsequently founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Having returned the city and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to Christian rule, the siege was the final major armed engagement of the First Crusade, which had been proclaimed in 1095 to recover the Holy Land for the Christians in the context of the Muslim conquest. A number of eyewitness accounts of the battle were recorded, with the most quoted events being derived from the anonymous Latin-language chronicle Gesta Francorum.
The persecution of Jews has been a major event in Jewish history, prompting shifting waves of refugees and the formation of diaspora communities. As early as 605 BCE, Jews who lived in the Neo-Babylonian Empire were persecuted and deported. Antisemitism was also practiced by the governments of many different empires and the adherents of many different religions (Christianity), and it was also widespread in many different regions of the world.
History of European Jews in the Middle Ages covers Jewish history in the period from the 5th to the 15th century. During the course of this period, the Jewish population gradually started shifting from the Levant to Europe, primarily Central Europe dominated by the Holy Roman Empire or Southern Europe dominated by the Iberian kingdoms. As with Christianity, the Middle Ages were the period when Judaism became mostly insignificant in the Middle East, and a front-of-mind part of Europe.
The Rhineland massacres, also known as the German Crusade of 1096 or Gzerot Tatnó, were a series of mass murders of Jews perpetrated by mobs of French and German Christians of the People's Crusade in the year 1096, or 4856 according to the Hebrew calendar. These massacres are often seen as the first in a sequence of antisemitic events in Europe which culminated in the Holocaust.
The Mainz Anonymous is an account of the First Crusade of 1096 written soon thereafter by an anonymous Jewish author. The work is written in Hebrew. Its author is unknown, and it deals primarily with the Crusaders' actions in Mainz; hence the name commonly applied to it. However, it also deals with the ShUM-cities in the Rhineland, specifically Speyer and Worms. It is not entirely accurate: it has a definite Jewish point of view and fictionalizes anecdotes occasionally to make a point. It also includes occasional anguished supplications to God.
Syrian Jews had predominantly two origins: those who inhabited Syria from early times and the Sephardim who fled to Syria after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 CE. There were large Jewish communities in Aleppo, Damascus, and Qamishli for centuries. In the early 20th century, a large percentage of Syrian Jews immigrated to Palestine, the U.S. and Latin America. The largest Syrian-Jewish community is now located in Israel and is estimated to number 80,000.
The history of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel begins in the 2nd millennium BCE, when Israelites emerged as an outgrowth of southern Canaanites. During biblical times, a postulated United Kingdom of Israel existed but then split into two Israelite kingdoms occupying the highland zone: the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) in the north, and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. The Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and the Kingdom of Judah by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Initially exiled to Babylon, upon the defeat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire by the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great, many of the Jewish exiles returned to Jerusalem, building the Second Temple.
This timeline of antisemitism chronicles events in the history of antisemitism, hostile actions or discrimination against Jews as members of a religious and/or ethnic group. It includes events in Jewish history and the history of antisemitic thought, actions which were undertaken in order to counter antisemitism or alleviate its effects, and events that affected the prevalence of antisemitism in later years. The history of antisemitism can be traced from ancient times to the present day.
The Old Yishuv were the Jewish communities of the region of Palestine during the Ottoman period, up to the onset of Zionist aliyah and the consolidation of the New Yishuv by the end of World War I. In the late 19th century, the Old Yishuv comprised 0.3% of the world's Jews, representing 2–5% of the population of the Palestine region.
Martyrdom in Judaism is one of the main examples of Jews doing a kiddush Hashem, a Hebrew term which means "sanctification of [the] name". An example of this is public self-sacrifice in accordance with Jewish practice and identity, with the possibility of being killed for no other reason than being Jewish. There are specific conditions in Jewish law that deal with the details of self-sacrifice, be it willing or unwilling.
The history of the Jews in Speyer reaches back over 1,000 years. In the Middle Ages, the city of Speyer, Germany, was home to one of the most significant Jewish communities in the Holy Roman Empire. Its significance is attested to by the frequency of the Ashkenazi Jewish surname Shapiro/Shapira and its variants Szpira/Spiro/Speyer. After many ups and downs throughout history, the community was totally wiped out in 1940 during the Holocaust. With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 Jews again settled in Speyer and a first assembly took place in 1996.
The Solomon bar Simson Chronicle is an anonymous Hebrew narrative history produced in the mid-12th century (1140). Like the Eliezer bar Nathan Chronicle and the Mainz Anonymous, it is concerned with the persecutions of Jewish communities in the Rhineland area, notably Speyer, Worms, Mainz and Trier, during the First Crusade (1095-1099).
The 1834 looting of Safed was a prolonged attack against the Jewish community of Safed, Ottoman Empire, during the 1834 Peasants' Revolt. It began on Sunday June 15, the day after the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, and lasted for the next 33 days. Most contemporary accounts suggest it was a spontaneous attack which took advantage of a defenseless population in the midst of the armed uprising against Egyptian rule. The district governor tried to quell the violent outbreak, but failed to do so and fled. The event took place during a power vacuum, whilst Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt was fighting to quell the wider revolt in Jerusalem.
The history of Jerusalem during the Early Muslim period covers the period between the capture of the city from the Byzantines by the Arab Muslim armies of the nascent Caliphate in 637–638 CE, and its conquest by the European Catholic armies of the First Crusade in 1099. Throughout this period, Jerusalem remained a largely Christian city with smaller Muslim and Jewish communities. It was successively part of several Muslim states, beginning with the Rashidun caliphs of Medina, the Umayyads of Syria, the Abbasids of Baghdad and their nominal Turkish vassals in Egypt, and the Fatimid caliphs of Cairo, who struggled over it with the Turkic Seljuks and different other regional powers, only to finally lose it to the Crusaders.
