ONE FORM of internal conflict in all traditional communities arises when the behaviour of the people, or certain categories of the people, or specific individuals, fails to meet the standards required by their religious leaders. To be sure, such tensions are all but guaranteed by the structure of the relationship between clergy and laity. Religious leaders are rarely content with the devotion of their flock, and there will almost invariably be shortcomings for which they judge rebuke to be in order. In some cases, these criticisms will be stylized and conventional; in others, they expose significant ideological or social fault-lines that divide a community against itself. From at least the high Middle Ages, one of the most respected media for expressing such criticism by Jewish leaders has been the sermon, which often expressed the consensus of a congregation, but occasionally articulated its divisions.

Medieval Spanish Jews understood one of the central roles of the preacher to be expressed by a verse from Isaiah: ‘Cry with full throat, without restraint, raise your voice like a ram's horn, declare to my people their transgression, to the House of Jacob their sin’ (Isa. 58: 1). Yet few extant sermons from the thirteenth century are devoted primarily to the task of condemning the religious and ethical shortcomings of the audience and calling upon listeners to change their behaviour.

During the 1230s a French talmudic scholar, Moses ben Jacob of Coucy, in response (so he claimed) to a heavenly command, undertook to visit the Jewish communities of the Iberian peninsula to preach repentance. The Hebrew text of a sermon dated 1236/37 calling for repentance that may have been written by Moses of Coucy has been published. Further information about his campaign is based on references in his legal compendium, known as Sefer mitsvot gadol. There he informs his readers that he focused on various problems: sexual relations with Gentile women living in Jewish homes, failure to set aside time for religious study, and laxity regarding the requirements to put on ritual phylacteries (tefilin), to affix a parchment with specified biblical verses to the doorposts of the house (mezuzah), and to wear fringes upon the garment (tsitsit).