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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
The Hebrew chronicle written by Solomon b. Samson recounts the mass conversion of the Jews of Regensburg in 1096.’ The Jews were herded and forced into the local river where a ‘sign was made over the water, the sign of a cross’ and thus they were baptized, all together in the same river. The local German rivers play another role in the accounts of the turbulent events of the Crusade persecutions. They were also the place where Jews evaded conversion, drowning themselves in water, rather than being baptized by what the chronicles’ authors call the ‘stinking waters’ of Christianity. Reading these Hebrew chronicles, one is immediately struck by the tremendous revulsion expressed toward the waters of baptism. Indeed, in his analysis of the symbolic significance of the baptismal waters for medieval Jews, Ivan Marcus has suggested that baptism by force in the local rivers was so traumatic that they instituted a ritual response during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. One component of the medieval Jewish child initiation ceremony to Torah study was performed on the banks of the river, expressing Jewish aversion to baptism (see Fig. i).
I am grateful to Alexandra Walsham for inviting me to explore these themes. Judah Galinsky, Debra Kaplan and Julia Smith made important comments on this article and I thank them for their critique and suggestions. My research was supported by grant no. 420/10 of the Israel Science Foundation.
1 I have used the recent edition of the Hebrew Crusade chronicles: Eva, Haverkamp, ed., Hebräische Berichte über die Judenverfolgungen während des Ersten Kreuzzugs (Hanover, 2005), 481.Google Scholar
2 The expressions mei tsahanatam and mei tinufam, meaning ‘stinking waters’, recur regularly in the chronicles as terms for baptismal water: ibid. 263, 271, 277, 347, 373, 379, 385, 395, 447, 461.
3 See Ivan, Marcus, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (New Haven, CT, 1996), 106–8.Google Scholar Another instance of polemic concerning water is the Saturday night ritual related to Miriam’s well: see Ta-Shma, Israel M., Early Franco-German Ritual and Custom (Jerusalem, 1992), 201–20, esp. 214–6 (Hebrew)Google Scholar, and the study by my student Inbar Gabai-Zada that expands the discussion of this ritual: ‘Miriam’s Well in Ashkenaz in the Middle Ages’ (MA thesis, Bar-Ilan University, 2013). See also Ephraim, Shoham-Steiner, ‘The Virgin Mary, Miriam, and Jewish Reactions to Marian Devotion in the High Middle Ages’, Association for Jewish Studies Review 37 (2013), 75–91.Google Scholar
4 Kenneth, R. Stow used this term as the title of his book, which remains a standard work: Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe (Cambridge, MA, 1992)Google Scholar. A different attempt at outlining the history of these communities can be seen in Jonathan, Elukin, Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, 2007).Google Scholar
5 Magnusson, Roberta J., Water Technology in the Middle Ages: Cities, Monasteries, and Waterworks after the Roman Empire (Baltimore, MD, 2001)Google Scholar; Gouedo-Thomas, Catherine, ‘Les fontaines mediévales: Images et réalité’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen Âge, Temps modernes 104 (1992), 507–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 The term ‘entangled history’ is often used by those who propose the importance of the methodology of histoire croisée (‘connected history’): see Subrahmanyan, Sanjay, ‘Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia’, Modem Asian Studies 31 (1997), 735–62 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zimmerman, Bénédicte et al., eds, Le travail et le nation. Histoire croisée de la France at de l’Allemagne (Paris, 1999)Google Scholar, for a survey of these terms and methodologies. See also the recent somewhat different but complementary use of this term by Ruderman, David B., Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton, NJ, 2009), 12.Google Scholar
7 A note for readers unfamiliar with Jewish legal texts: one of the most basic and at the same time complex aspects of studying medieval Jewry, and especially the medieval Hebrew sources, is the need to constantly move from the Bible, the Mishnah and Talmud written in late antiquity to the medieval communities within which the Jews lived and their contemporaneous surroundings. This motion back and forth, to and from late antiquity, is essential not only because of the links medieval Jews saw between themselves and their ancestors but because the Mishnah and Talmud form the basis of the Jewish halakhah or legal literature and the medieval Hebrew texts were often organized around the themes and order of the late antique literature. As a result, in the interest of simplicity, the different examples I trace in this article will all follow the same pattern – moving from medieval practice to late antique Jewish ritual instructions back to the Christian urban centres within which medieval Jews lived.
8 Abrahams, Israel, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages (repr. London, 1932), 129.Google Scholar
9 For a discussion of these differences, see Ta-Shma, Israel M., Ritual, Custom and Reality in Franco-Germany 1000-1350 (Jerusalem, 1996), 16–19 Google Scholar (Hebrew); Malkiel, David J., Reconstructing Ashkenaz: The Human Face of Franco-German Jewry (Stanford, CA, 2009), 2–10 Google Scholar. The jews of medieval England saw themselves, and were seen, as belonging to the same Ashkenazic cultural milieu. However, due to the nature of the extant sources concerning the Jews of England, who were the first of the northern European Jewish communities to experience expulsion in 1290, many of the matters I will explore concerning their daily life are unrecorded.
10 See the classic studies by Grossman, Avraham, The Early Sages of Ashkenaz, 3rd edn (Jerusalem, 2001), 1–26 (Hebrew); idem, The Early Sages of France (Jerusalem, 1995), 13–45 (Hebrew).Google Scholar
11 For a recent survey of many of these genres, see Kanarfogel, Ephraim, The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz (Detroit, MI, 2012).Google Scholar
12 Toch, Michael, The Economic History of European Jews: Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2012), 65–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 See Soloveitchik, Haym, ‘Religious Law and Change: The Medieval Ashkenazic Example’, Association for Jewish Studies Review 12 (1987), 205–21;Google Scholar Marcus, Ivan, Piety and Society :The Jewish Pietists of Medieval Germany (Leiden, 1981);Google Scholar Kanarfogel, Ephraim, Peering Through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period (Detroit, MI, 2000);Google Scholar Yuval, Israel J., ‘Heilige Städte, heilige Gemeinden – Mainz als das Jerusalem Deutschlands’, in Jütte, Robert and Kustermann, Abraham P., eds, Jüdische Gemeinden und Organisationsformen von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Vienna, 1996), 91–101.Google Scholar
14 Swanson, Robert N., Religion and Devotion in Europe, 1215-1515 (Cambridge, 1985);Google Scholar Vauchez, André, The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, transl. Margaret J. Schneider (Notre Dame, IN, 1993).Google Scholar
15 Marcus, Rituals, and Elukin, Living Together, have both proposed ways to examine these tensions.
16 Recent scholarship has suggested the affinity between Jews and Christians within polemics as well: see Yuval, Israel J., Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley, CA, 2006).Google Scholar
17 See Bonfil’s, Robert work on the significance of the ghetto for the life of early modern Italian Jews and for their relations to Christians, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley, CA, 1994), 19–77.Google Scholar
18 On the layout of Jewish living quarters within medieval European cities, see, for example, from the early twentieth century, Pinthus, Alexander, Die Judensiedlungen der deutschen Städie. Eine stadtbiologische Stadie (Berlin, 1931);Google Scholar some more recent work is documented in Christoph Cluse, ed., The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries) (Turnhout, 2004), esp. the articles in section V.
19 Katz, Jacob, The ‘Shabbes Goy’: A Study in Halakhic Flexibility, transl. Lerner, Joel (Philadelphia, PA, 1989);Google Scholar Baumgarten, Elisheva, Mothers and Children:Jewish Family Life in Christian Europe (Princeton, NJ, 2004), 119–53.Google Scholar
20 Grayzel, Solomon, The Church and the Jews in the Thirteenth Century, 2nd edn (Philadelphia, PA, 1966), 23–6.Google Scholar
21 Jacobs, Louis, ‘Judaism’, in Berenbaum, Michael and Skolnik, Fred, eds, Encyclopedia Judaica, 2nd edn, vol. 11 (Detroit, MI, 2007), 511–24.Google Scholar
22 As noted at the outset, my focus is not on ritual artefacts that were specifically identified with Judaism, such as phylacteries (tefillin) or Torah scrolls that were distinctive Jewish objects, but rather on the way different everyday materials were ritualized, as is evident in discussion of daily blessings as well as in many other settings.
23 For a description of customs relating to the use of ritual baths, see the collection edited by Wasserfall, Rahel R., Women and Water: Menstruation in Jewish Law and Life (Hanover, 1999).Google Scholar
24 Soloveitchik, Haym, Wine in the Middle Ages (Jerusalem, 2008), 30–1, 75 (Hebrew);Google Scholar Baumgarten, Elisheva, ‘“Remember that Glorious Girl”: Jephthah’s Daughter in the Middle Ages’, Jewish Quarterly Review 97 (2007), 180–209;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Carlebach, Elisheva, ‘Water into Blood: Custom, Calendar and an Unknown Yiddish Book for Women’, in Moore, Deborah Dash and Kaplan, Marion, eds, Gender and Jewish History (Bloomington, IN, 2011), 59–71.Google Scholar
25 The expression used in this way originates in Ex. 34: 22; see also Stern, Sacha, Calendar and Community: A History of the Jewish Calendar Second Century BCE – Tenth Century CE (Oxford, 2001), 50–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26 See Aptowizer, Avigdor, ‘Issur shetiyat mayim be-she’ at ha-tekufah’, Ha-tsofe me-erets Hagar 2 (1912), 122–6;Google Scholar Klein, Abraham J., ‘Ha-sakanah lishtot mayim beshe’ at ha-tekufah veha-segulah le-hishamer mimenah be-sifrut ha-halakhah’, in Jubilee Volume in Honor of Prof. Bernhard Heller, ed. Scheiber, Alexander (Budapest, 1941), 86–100;Google Scholar Ta-Shma, Israel M., ‘The Danger of Drinking Water during the Tequfa – The History of an Idea’, Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 17 (1995), 21–32 Google Scholar (Hebrew); Baumgarten, ‘Remember’; Carlebach, ‘Water into Blood’.
27 Ta-shma, , ‘Danger’, 21–32.Google Scholar
28 For a list of medieval texts where this passage was repeated, see ibid.
29 See Carlebach, Elisheva, Palaces of Time: Jewish Time in Christian Paris (Cambridge, MA, 2011);Google Scholar and we await Justine Isserles’s study of medieval calendar manuscripts.
30 Klein, , ‘Ha-sakanah lishtot mayim’.Google Scholar
31 Baumgarten, , ‘Remember’, 205.Google Scholar
32 Ta-Shma, ‘Danger’, focuses on this season.
33 Mahzor Vitry, ed. Horowitz, Shimon (Nürnberg, 1898), Addendum, 14.Google Scholar
34 This is a topic I hope to develop more in future study. At the moment one can note the references in Hebrew texts to Christian holidays, e.g. in the Crusade chronicles: Hebräische Berichte, 407, 473.
35 The tekufah was a rare occasion in the calendar in that it had household consequences more than communal ones. While the tekufot were important for calendric computations, no prayers or fasts accompanied the days of the solstices and equinoxes.
36 Adamson, Melitta Weiss, Food in Medieval Times (Westport, CT, 2004), 1.Google Scholar
37 Lev. 11. This was further expanded in late antiquity: see Friedenreich, David, Foreigners and their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Law (Berkeley, CA, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
38 Babylonian Talmud [hereafter: BT] Shabbat, 17a.
39 Ibid.; see also BT Avodah Zarah, 36a–b.
40 See n. 13 above.
41 I have based my discussion on a Master’s thesis by David L. Strauss that remains the most exhaustive treatment of this subject to date, ‘Pat ‘Akum in Medieval France and Germany’ (Bernard Revel Graduate School, Yeshiva University, 1979); see also Woolf, Jeffrey, ‘The Prohibition of Gentile Bread during the Ten Days of Repentance: On the Genesis and Significance of a Custom’, in Studies on the History of the Jews of Ashkenaz: Presented to Eric Zimmer, ed. Bacon, Gershon et al. (Ramat Gan, 2008), 83–99.Google Scholar
42 Strauss, ‘Pat ‘Akum’, 3-5; Woolf, ‘Prohibition of Gentile Bread’, 88-91.
43 Strauss, ‘Pat ‘Akun’, xx.
44 Mahzor Vitry, nos 506-7.
45 Strauss, ‘Pat ‘Akum, 8-9; Woolf, ‘Prohibition of Gentile Bread’, 89-90.
46 Woolf’s article attempts to explain how this custom emerged: ibid. 92-9. In addition, some especially pious women when preparing for the Sabbath would be careful to prepare their own dough to bring to the furnum, so as to separate the dough as outlined in the Bible, a commandment that was considered a female responsibility: see Fram, Edward, My Dear Daughter: R. Benjamin Slonik and the Education of Jewish Women in Sixteenth-Century Poland (Portland, OR, 2007), 132.Google Scholar
47 The medieval rabbis demonstrated considerable concern regarding the proper way to go about the grace after meals if bread made by non-Jews was outlawed: Strauss,‘Pat ‘Akum’, 19, 31.
48 ‘Et quia in contemptum nostrum Judei aliquibus cibis nostris et potibus non utuntur firmiter inhibemus ne aliqui Christiani audeant uti suis’: Grayzel, Solomon, The Church and the Jews in the Thirteenth Century (New York, 1966), 336–7.Google Scholar
49 I have found no study of candles per se, but their use in daily life and ritual is evident in many texts. One example is provided by their use as part of the liturgy throughout the year, especially in connection to Marian rituals: see Gibson, Gail McMurray, ‘Blessing from Sun and Moon: Churching as Women’s Theater’, in Hanawalt, B. A. and Wallace, D., eds, Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in Fifteenth Century England (Minneapolis, MN, 1996), 139–57.Google Scholar
50 In medieval European codices this prohibition was repeated: see, for example, b. Joseph, R. Isaac of Corbeil, Semak (repr. Jerusalem, 1979), no. 59 Google Scholar, who discusses how one can use candles used by Christians; R. Eleazar b. Judah of Worms, Orario ad Pascam, ed. Emanuel, Simcha (Jerusalem, 2006), 25 Google Scholar and footnotes.
51 E. g. Finkelstein, Louis, Jewish Self Government in the Middle Ages (New York, 1924), 123 Google Scholar, where these candles are noted in community ordinances.
52 Ex. 35: 3.
53 Shabbat, Mishnah, Mishnayolh: Order Mo’ed, transl. Blackman, Philip (New York, 1963)Google Scholar, ch. 2, Mishnah 1.
54 Verdon, Jean, Night in the Middle Ages, transl. Holoch, G. (Notre Dame, IN, 2002), 76–7.Google Scholar
55 I have outlined this matter in greater detail in my article: ‘A Tale of a Christian Matron and Sabbath Candles: Religious Difference, Material Culture and Gender in Thirteenth-Century Germany’, Jewish Studies Quarterly 20 (2013), 83-99.
56 b. Moshe, R. Isaac, Sefer Or Zaru’a (Jerusalem, 2010), 2 Google Scholar (Laws of Sabbath Eve, no. 12, cf. nos 28, 34, 35). See also Mahzor Vitry, no. 114; Mahzor Vitry, ed. Aryeh Goldschmidt (Jerusalem, 2004), Hilkhot Shabbat, no. 68.
57 I have used the facsimile Sefer Hasidim Parma H 3280, intro. I. G. Marcus (Jerusalem, 1985), no. 623, and the earlier published Das Buch des Frommen, ed. Wistinetzki, J., intro. Freimann, J. (Frankfurt, 1924), no. 623 Google Scholar. References are to the Parma version [hereafter: SHP]. For variants I have utilized the Sefer Hasidim Database at Princeton University, online at: <https://etc.princeton.edu/sefer_hasidim>.
58 Mishnah shabbat, ch. 2, Mishnah 7. An eruv was a line delineating an area within which certain activities could be practised on the Sabbath.
59 On the history of the eruv as well as some of its gendered implications, see Fonrobert, Charlotte E., ‘Une cartographie symbolique: L’eruv en Diaspora’, Les cahiers du Judaïsme 25 (2009), 5–21;Google Scholar on the medieval eruv, see Perry, Micha, ‘Imaginary Space Meets Actual Space in Thirteenth-Century Cologne: Eliezer ben Joel and the Eruv’, Images 5 (2011), 26–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
60 This connection is already made in Mishnah Shabbat, ch. 2, Mishnah 6; see Fram, My Dear Daughter, 44, 294.
61 See for example, b. Joel, R. Eliezer, Safer Ra’aviah, ed. Aptowizer, V. (Berlin, 1913), Shabbat, no. 199;Google Scholar Sefer Hasidim, ed. Margaliyot, Mordechai (Jerusalem, 1960), no. 455.Google Scholar
62 b. Tzadok, R. Samson, Sefer Tashbetz (Jerusalem, 1974), no. 2.Google Scholar
63 Baumgarten, Mothers, 137.
64 Haverkamp, Hebmische Berichte, 483. This idea also comes across in b. Isaac, R. Barukh, Sefer ha Terumah (Warsaw, 1897), no. 63.Google Scholar
65 Lev. 19: 19; Deut. 22: 11.
66 b. Judah, R. Jacob of London, Sefer Etz Hayim, ed. Brodie, Israel, 2 vols (Jerusalem, 1962), 2: 119;Google Scholar Menahem b., R. Elijah Moses of London, Pemshci R. Eliyahu meLondrish (Jerusalem, 1956), 5, no. 1 Google Scholar (Hebrew numbers).
67 SHP, no. 1792; Paris, BN, MS Paris héb. 363, b. Judah, R. Eleazar, ‘Sefer Rokeah’, fol. 8b. Haim Sha’anan, ‘Piskei Rabenu R’ i MeCorbeil’, in idem, Sefer Ner LiShcmaya (B’nei Berak, 1998), 21, no. 41 Google Scholar, where he debates the extent to which one can wear clothes belonging to a non-Jew that are left as a pawn and also discusses the issue of sha’atnez. He stipulates that one can surely wear gentile clothes if one’s life is in danger.
68 SHP, nos 259, 261.
69 Baumgarten, ‘Remember’; Carlebach, ‘Water into Blood’.
70 Minty, Mary, ‘Judengasse into Christian Quarter: The Phenomenon of the Converted Synagogue in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Holy Roman Empire’, in Scribner, Robert and Johnson, Trevor, eds, Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe, 1400-1800 (Basingstoke, 1996), 56–86.Google Scholar
71 Shalev-Eyni, Sarit, Jews among Christians: Hebrew Book Illumination from Lake Constance (Turnhout, 2010).Google Scholar