Jews in the Middle Ages (565–1300)

Jewish Communities in the East

The people of Israel now possessed a Law, but no frontier or homeland of their own; they had a Book, but no country. Jerusalem remained a Christian city until 614, then came under Persian rule until 629, was again Christian until 637, and thereafter until 1099 served as the seat of a Muslim province. In that year the Crusaders besieged Jerusalem. The Jews united with the Muslims to defend the city; when it fell, those Jews who had survived the battle were driven into a synagogue and burned alive. After Jerusalem was recaptured by Saladin in 1187, the Jewish population of Palestine rapidly increased, and al-Malik al-Adil, Saladin’s brother, graciously received three hundred rabbis who had fled from England and France in 1211. Nevertheless, fifty-two years later Moses ben Nachman found only a small number of Jews in the city, for the majority of its inhabitants were Muslims.

Although some Jews converted to other faiths and were occasionally persecuted, their numbers remained large in Muslim Syria, Babylonia (Iraq), and Iran, and they created a vigorous cultural and economic life. In internal affairs, as the Sassanid kings had allowed, they continued to enjoy autonomy under their religious leader and the heads of their academies. The Caliphs recognized the Exilarch as the leader of all Jews in Babylonia, Armenia, Turkestan, Iran, and Yemen. According to the Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela, all subjects of the Caliph were required to rise before the Exilarch and show him the utmost respect. The office of Exilarch outside Palestine was hereditary in a family claiming descent from King David. Its power was more political than spiritual, and its attempts to control the rabbis led to its eventual decline. From 762 onward the heads of the academies elected the Exilarch and exercised authority over him.

The Jewish religious schools in Sura and Pumbedita trained scholars and religious leaders for the Jews of Islamic cities, and to a lesser extent for those of the Christian world. In 658 the Muslim Caliph Ali freed the academy of Sura from the jurisdiction of the Exilarch; consequently the Jewish religious leader Mar Isaac assumed the title of Gaon (Excellency) and inaugurated the “Gaonic” period, during which the Babylonian Talmud commentaries became known as the age of the Gaonim. As the academy of Pumbedita, owing to its proximity to Baghdad, gained greater revenue and prestige, its heads also took the title of Gaon. From the seventh to the eleventh century all Jews throughout the world, wherever they encountered difficulties in understanding or interpreting Talmudic law, sent their questions to these Gaonim; their responsa created new legal literature for Judaism.

The rise of the Gaonic age coincided with, and was partly caused by, an innovation that now disturbed and divided the Jews of the East. In 762, when Solomon the Exilarch died, Anan ben David, his nephew who had the right of succession, prepared to assume the office, but the heads of the academies of Sura and Pumbedita set aside the hereditary principle and appointed Anan’s younger brother Hananiah. Anan denounced the action of the academy heads, fled to Palestine, founded a synagogue there, and invited all Jews everywhere to reject the Talmud and follow only the Five Books of Moses. This was a return to Sadducean ideas, similar to the rejection of “tradition” and the elevation of the Quran among Shiites in Islam, and the abandonment of Catholic tradition in favor of the Gospels among Protestants. Anan went further and subjected the Pentateuch to a new analytical commentary that represented a bold advance in textual study. He protested against the changes that the Talmudic rabbis had introduced into the Law of Moses through their consensual interpretations, insisted on the literal observance of the Pentateuchal commandments, and for this reason his followers became known as Karaites (“adherents of the Text”). Anan spoke in praise of Jesus as a pious man whose purpose was only to reject the oral law of the scribes and Pharisees, not to abolish the written Law of Moses. In Anan’s view, Jesus aimed to purify and strengthen Judaism rather than establish a new religion. The Karaites gained many followers in Palestine, Egypt, and Spain. In the twelfth century their numbers began to decline, and today only a few remain in Turkey, southern Russia, and Arabia, on the verge of extinction. The Karaites of the ninth century, apparently influenced by Mu’tazilite ideas, abandoned Anan’s literalist rule of interpretation and suggested that the resurrection of the body and certain anthropomorphic descriptions of God in Scripture should be understood only as metaphors. The orthodox Jews who believed in tradition in turn returned to literal interpretation and, like orthodox Muslims, insisted that expressions such as “the hand of God” or “God sitting” must be accepted literally. Some commentators calculated the precise dimensions of God’s body, limbs, and beard. A few Jewish freethinkers, such as Hiwi al-Balkhi, even rejected the Pentateuch as a binding law. It was in this atmosphere of economic prosperity, religious freedom, and lively debate that Judaism produced its first notable medieval philosopher.

Saadia ben Joseph al-Fayyumi (Sa’id al-Fayyumi) was born in 892 in the village of Dilaz near Fayyum in Egypt. He grew up in Egypt and married there. In 915 he migrated to Palestine and then to Babylonia. He was undoubtedly a gifted student and learned teacher, otherwise it would be hard to imagine how a thirty-six-year-old youth could become Gaon, or head, of the academy of Sura. After perceiving the encroachments made upon orthodox Judaism by the Karaites and skeptics, he set himself the same task that the Muslim theologians had undertaken for Islam—to show that the ancient Jewish faith was entirely in harmony with reason and history. In his short life, which did not exceed fifty years, Saadia produced an enormous number of treatises, mostly in Arabic, unmatched in medieval Jewish intellectual history except by Moses Maimonides. His second book, the Agron, a lexicon of Hebrew terms in Aramaic, laid the foundation of Hebrew lexicography. Another work, Kitab al-Lugha, is the oldest Hebrew grammar. His Arabic translation of the Old Testament remained in use among Arabic-speaking Jews until modern times. With his numerous commentaries on the books of the Old Testament he may be considered “perhaps the greatest commentator on Scripture in all ages.” His Book of Beliefs and Opinions (933) is a systematic exposition of Jewish theology and a defense of the faith against other religions.

Saadia accepted both revelation and tradition, both the written Law of Moses and the oral Law of the Jews; yet at the same time he accepted reason and proposed that the validity of revelation and tradition should be proved by reason. Wherever Scripture clearly contradicted reason, it could be assumed that the text was not intended to be taken literally by mature minds. All anthropomorphic attributes ascribed to God are metaphorical. God is not like man. The order and law of the universe indicate the existence of an omniscient Creator. The idea that an omniscient God would leave virtue unrewarded is unreasonable, but it is obvious that virtue is not always rewarded in this world; therefore another world must exist in which the manifest injustice of this world is rectified. Perhaps the sufferings of the righteous in this world are punishments for occasional sins, so that when they leave this world they may immediately enter Paradise. Similarly, the material successes of the wicked are rewards for occasional good deeds, so that after death they may be sent straight to Hell. But even those who attain the highest virtues, pleasures, and happiness in this world feel in the depths of their hearts that against these uncertain possibilities and limited perfections a better world must exist. How could an omniscient Being who created such a wonderful world allow such desires to be conceived in the human mind without their realization being possible? Saadia imitated the methods of Muslim theologians and borrowed their interpretations of Scripture and even, at times, their arguments point by point. His works in turn spread throughout the Jewish world and influenced Maimonides, who later wrote: “But for Saadia, the Torah would almost have disappeared.”

It must be admitted that Saadia was a sharp-tongued man, and his controversy with David ben Zakkai, the Exilarch of the Jews outside Palestine, damaged Babylonian Jewry. In 930 David excommunicated Saadia, and Saadia declared David unfit. In 940 David died and Saadia appointed a new Exilarch, but the new leader was killed by Muslims for having insulted the Prophet Muhammad. Saadia appointed the son of the murdered man as his father’s successor, and this youth too was killed for the same reason. The Jews, in despair, resolved to appoint no one to the office; consequently, in 942, after seven centuries, the Babylonian Exilarchate came to an end. In the same year Saadia died. The fragmentation of the Baghdad Caliphate and the establishment of independent Muslim governments in Egypt, North Africa, and Spain weakened the ties between Asian, African, and European Jews. Babylonian Jewry shared in the economic decline of eastern Islam after the tenth century. The academy of Sura closed in 1034 and that of Pumbedita four years later, and in 1040 the Gaonic age ended. The Crusaders further severed the links between Babylonian, Egyptian, and European Jews; after Baghdad was sacked by the Mongols in 1258, the Babylonian Jewish community almost vanished from history.

Long before these disasters, many Jews of the East had migrated to more distant lands in Asia, Arabia, Egypt, North Africa, and Europe. In 1165 the Jewish population of Ceylon was 23,000. The numerous Jewish communities in Arabia survived despite the opposition of the Prophet of Islam. When Amr ibn al-As conquered Egypt in 641, he reported that “forty thousand tribute-paying Jews” lived in Alexandria. As the population of Cairo grew, so did the number of Jews there, both Rabbanite and Karaite. The Egyptian Jews, under their leader the Nagid or Prince, enjoyed internal autonomy, amassed great wealth in trade, and rose to high positions in the administration of that Islamic country. According to one account, in 960 four rabbis embarked at the port of Bari in Italy, but their ship was captured by a Spanish Muslim admiral and the four were sold into slavery: Rabbi Moses and his son Hanokh in Cordoba in Spain, Rabbi Shemariah in Alexandria, and Rabbi Hushiel in Kairouan. It is said that each of these rabbis was freed in the city where he was sold and there established an academy. It is usually assumed that these four men were themselves scholars from the academy of Sura, but this is not certain. In any case, these four brought the fruits of Eastern Jewish scholarship to the West, and Judaism, while declining in Asia, enjoyed a period of calm in Egypt and Spain.

Jews in Europe

In the Middle Ages Jews from Babylonia and Iran reached Russia via Transoxiana and the Caucasus, moved from Asia Minor toward Constantinople, and from there settled on the northern shore of the Black Sea. In Constantinople itself and in the Byzantine Empire, from the eighth to the twelfth century, the prosperity of the Jews was accompanied by persecution. In Greece, especially in the district of Thebes, the Jews had numerous important communities and their silk fabrics became widely famous. Jews migrated through Thessaly, Thrace, and Macedonia into the Balkan peninsula and followed the Danube to Hungary. A few Jewish merchants moved from Germany to Poland in the tenth century. Jews had been in Germany before the Christian era. In the ninth century there were major Jewish settlements in Metz, Speyer, Mainz, and Reims, Strasbourg, Frankfurt, and Cologne. These groups were so busy with trade and so mobile that their presence could not greatly affect the culture of the people. Nevertheless, Gershom ben Judah (960–1028) founded an academy in Mainz, wrote a Hebrew commentary on the Talmud, and acquired such influence among German Jews that people sent questions on Talmudic law to him instead of to the Babylonian Gaonim.

In 691 a group of Jews resided in England. A larger number came with William the Conqueror and at first enjoyed Norman protection, since the provision of capital and the collection of royal revenues were in their hands. Their communities in London, Norwich, York, and other English towns lay outside the jurisdiction of local authorities and were subject only to the king. This legal separation widened the gulf between Christians and Jews and played a major role in the massacres of the twelfth century.

In Gaul, Jewish petty traders had settled since the time of Julius Caesar. By the year 600 Jewish colonies had been formed in all the major cities of that region. The Merovingian kings persecuted them with savage intolerance; in 581 Chilperic ordered that whoever among them did not accept Christianity should have his eyes put out. Charlemagne, while enforcing discriminatory laws against them, protected them because they were useful farmers, craftsmen, merchants, financiers, and fearless physicians, and even employed one Jew as his personal doctor. In 787, according to a report whose authenticity is doubtful, he brought the Kalonymus family from Lucca to Mainz to encourage Jewish learning in the Frankish realm. In 797 Charlemagne sent a Jew as interpreter with his ambassador to Harun al-Rashid. Louis the Pious favored the Jews because he considered them promoters of trade, and he appointed an official to protect their rights. Despite hostile legends, legal disabilities, and occasional minor vexations, the Jews of France in the ninth and tenth centuries enjoyed a prosperity and tranquility that their European brethren would not see again until the French Revolution.

Throughout Italy, from Trani to Venice and Milan, small Jewish colonies existed. Especially in Padua the number of Jews was very large, and this may have helped the spread of Averroist ideas in its university. In Salerno, the site of the first medical school of the Latin Christian world in the Middle Ages, six hundred Jews resided, several of whom ranked among the most famous physicians of the world. At the court of Emperor Frederick II in Foggia there were several Jewish scholars, and Pope Alexander III (1159–1181) gave high positions to several Jews among his officials, but Frederick later joined Pope Gregory IX in taking harsh measures against the Jews of Italy.

The Spanish Jews called themselves Sephardim and traced their descent to the royal tribe of Judah. After King Reccared (586–601) of the Visigoths adopted orthodox Christianity, the powerful Spanish Church united with the government to make life harder for the Jewish communities. Jews were barred from public office, marriage with Christians, and ownership of Christian slaves. King Sisebut ordered all Jews either to become Christians or to emigrate (613); his successor revoked the edict, but in 633 the Council of Toledo ruled that Jews who had accepted baptism but later returned to Judaism should be separated from their children and sold into slavery. In 638 King Chintila revived Sisebut’s decree; in 693 another Visigothic king, Egica, deprived the Jews of the right to own land and forbade all commercial dealings between Jews and Christians. It was for this reason that when the Arabs and Moors invaded the Spanish peninsula in 711, the Jews everywhere assisted them.

The conquerors, wishing to increase the population of the peninsula, welcomed immigrants from everywhere. Fifty thousand Jews came from Asia and Africa; in some cities, such as Lucena, the entire population was Jewish. Since the Jews of Muslim Spain were freed from all economic restrictions, they entered every field—agriculture, industry, finance, and the various crafts; they adopted Arab dress, language, and customs so completely that it became very difficult to distinguish them from their Semitic cousins, the Arabs. Several Jews became court physicians, and one rose to the vizierate of the greatest Caliph of Cordoba.

Hasdai ibn Shaprut (915–970) attained in the court of Abd al-Rahman III the same position that Nizam al-Mulk would hold a century later before Malik Shah the Seljuk. Hasdai was born into the wealthy and cultured Ibn Ezra family. His father earned his living by teaching Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin. Hasdai studied medicine and the natural sciences in Cordoba, treated the Caliph’s illnesses, and displayed such skill and soundness of judgment in politics that he was apparently appointed to political service at the age of twenty-five. In addition, he was entrusted with increasingly important responsibilities in finance and commerce. He held no official title, for the Caliph did not wish to arouse popular hostility by formally granting him the vizierate; yet Hasdai performed his many duties with such wisdom that he won the friendship of Arabs, Jews, and Christians alike. He encouraged the study of sciences and literature, provided stipends and books for scholars, and gathered around him a circle of poets, scientists, and philosophers. When he died, the Muslims surpassed the Jews in honoring his name.

In other centers of Muslim Spain similar figures appeared who perhaps did not equal Hasdai in importance. In Seville (Ishbiliya) al-Mu’tamid invited the Jewish astronomer and scholar Isaac ibn Barukh to his court, gave him the title of Amir Ata, and made him chief rabbi of all the Jews of the city. In Granada, Samuel ha-Levi ibn Nagrela equaled Hasdai ibn Shaprut in power and wisdom, and far surpassed him in learning. This Jewish scholar, born in Cordoba in 993 and educated there, combined Talmudic studies with Arabic literature; at the same time he earned his living by selling spices. When Cordoba fell to the Berbers, he moved to Malaga and there supplemented his modest income by writing petitions for those who came to plead before King Habus of Granada. The king’s vizier, impressed by the style and composition of these petitions, sought out Samuel, brought him to Granada, and made him secretary of the diwan in the Alhambra. Before long Samuel became the vizier’s counselor, so much so that the vizier said: “When Samuel gives an opinion on a matter, it is as though the voice of God is heard.” In 1027, when the vizier died, Samuel succeeded him by the vizier’s will—and Samuel was the only Jew who openly held the title and office of vizier in an Islamic country. This was more possible in Granada, where in the eleventh century half the population was Jewish. Soon the Arabs came to admire this wise choice, for under Samuel’s vizierate the small realm advanced culturally, politically, and financially. He himself was a profound scholar, poet, astronomer, mathematician, and master of seven languages; he wrote twenty treatises (mostly in Hebrew) on grammar, composed several collections of poetry and wisdom, a preface to the Talmud, and an anthology of Hebrew literature. He shared all he had with other poets and rescued Ibn Gabirol from poverty; he provided for poor students and sent financial aid to Jewish communities in three continents. While serving as vizier to King Habus he also held the office of rabbi of the Jews and lectured on the Talmud. The Jews, in gratitude for all these services, gave him the title of Nagid, Prince of the Israelites. When Samuel died in 1055, his son Joseph ibn Nagrela was chosen to succeed him both as vizier and as leader of the Jewish community.

The tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries constituted the golden age of Spanish Jewry and the most fruitful and brilliant period in medieval Jewish history. When Moses ben Enoch (d. 965), one of the four rabbis who had embarked at Bari, was freed from slavery in Cordoba, he founded an academy there with Hasdai’s help that soon assumed intellectual leadership of the Jewish world. Similar academies were established in Lucena, Toledo, Barcelona, and Granada; and while the schools of Eastern Jewry devoted almost all their effort to religious teaching, these Spanish academies added literature, music, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and philosophy to their curriculum. Such education gave the upper classes of Spanish Jewry the same breadth and depth of knowledge and the same refinement that existed at that time only among Muslims, Byzantines, and contemporary Chinese. In those days ignorance of history, natural sciences, philosophy, and poetry was considered a disgrace for the wealthy or for holders of political office. A Jewish aristocracy emerged that took pride in beautiful women; perhaps its members were overly conscious of their superiority, but their belief that birth into a noble and prosperous family imposed an obligation of chivalry and virtue redeemed their pride.

The decline of Spanish Jewry may be dated from the murder of Joseph ibn Nagrela. Joseph’s administrative skill in the service of King Habus equaled his father’s, but he lacked Samuel’s tact combined with humility, which had enabled him to keep half the king’s subjects—the Muslim Arabs—under control. Joseph held all power in his hands. He dressed with the same splendor as the king and mocked the Quran. Rumors of his impiety spread. In 1066 the Arabs and Berbers rose in revolt, crucified Joseph, massacred four thousand Jews in Granada, and plundered their property. The remaining Jews were forced to sell their lands and emigrate. Twenty years later the Almoravids, aflame with orthodox zeal, crossed from Africa into Spain, and the long period of harmony between Spanish Muslims and Jews came to an end. One Muslim jurist declared that the Jews had promised Muhammad that if the Messiah expected by all Jews had not appeared five hundred years after the Hijra, they would all accept Islam. According to Muslim reckoning, these five centuries ended in 1107. Emir Yusuf ordered all Jews of Spain to embrace Islam, but exempted them upon payment of a heavy poll tax. When the Almohads succeeded the Almoravids in Morocco and Muslim Spain (1148), they offered Jews and Christians the same two alternatives that King Sisebut the Visigoth had given the Jews 535 years earlier: abandon their ancestral faith or emigrate. Many Jews accepted Islam outwardly and many followed the Christians to northern Spain.

In those northern regions the Jews at first enjoyed the tolerant protection of kings whose benevolence matched what they had seen for four centuries under Muslim rule. Alfonso VI and his successor Alfonso VII of Castile treated the Jews with great kindness and placed Christians and Jews on an equal legal footing; when an anti-Jewish riot broke out in Toledo, where 72,000 Jews lived (1107), they suppressed it with the utmost severity. In Aragon too a similar harmony between the two religions prevailed for a century, so that King James I invited Jews to settle in Majorca, Catalonia, and Valencia, and in many cases granted free land and houses to Jewish immigrants. In Barcelona in the twelfth century the Jews controlled commerce and owned one-third of the cultivated land. The Jews of Muslim Spain paid heavy taxes, but their life was prosperous and they were independent in internal affairs. Trade flowed freely between Christians, Jews, and Muslims. When their public festivals came, gifts were exchanged among the three communities. Occasionally a king would contribute from his own purse toward the building of a Jewish synagogue. From 1085 until even 1492, Jews in Christian Spain held high financial offices and political positions and sometimes the vizierate. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Christian clergy also shared in this amicable relationship.

The first outbreak of religious intolerance occurred among the Jews themselves. In 1149 Judah ben Ezra, steward of the palace of Alfonso VII, King of Leon and Castile, used his patron’s power to persecute the Karaite Jews of Toledo. The details of the incident are obscure, but from that date the Spanish Karaite sect, which had once been fairly numerous, was destroyed. In 1212 some Christian Crusaders entered Spain to wrest the land from the Moors. On the whole these new conquerors treated the Jews kindly. A mob attacked the Jews of Toledo and killed many, but the Christians of the city rose in defense of their fellow citizens and prevented further harm. Alfonso X of Castile included laws against anti-Jewish acts in the code he approved in 1265, though these laws were not enforced until 1348. Meanwhile Alfonso employed a Jewish physician and treasurer and handed over three mosques in Seville to the Jews to be converted into synagogues, and he himself benefited from the splendor that Jewish and Muslim scholars had created under his favorable reign. In 1276 the campaigns of Peter III of Aragon required very heavy taxation. The finance minister and several other officials were Jews. As a result of a revolt by the nobility and cities of Aragon against the monarchy, Peter was forced to dismiss his Jewish assistants and approve the decision of the Cortes (1283) that forbade the employment of Jews in government service. The age of intolerance ended when the Council of Zamora (1313) decreed that every Jew must wear a special badge, that Jews must be separated from Christians, and that Christians might not employ Jewish physicians nor Jews employ Christian servants.

Jewish Life in the Christian World

1 – Government

Except in Palermo and a few cities in Spain, in no city of medieval Christendom were the Jewish inhabitants required by law to live apart from the rest of the population; yet the Jews usually lived voluntarily separated from others for the sake of social ease, physical security, and religious unity. The synagogue was the geographical, social, and economic center of the Jewish quarter and attracted most Jewish homes. As a result, very large communities became concentrated in one spot, which was harmful to both public and private hygiene. In Spain the Jewish quarters included both magnificent palaces and slums and ruined houses, whereas the homes of Jews in the rest of Europe consisted of dirty, humble dwellings.

Accepting the fact that in every part of the world the rich have always had greater influence in elections and appointments, Jewish communities were semi-democratic settlements in a world full of monarchies. The members of a community who usually paid taxes to the synagogue elected the rabbis and its officials. A small group of elected elders formed the local Beth Din or court, whose duties included levying taxes, fixing prices, administering justice, and issuing regulations on food, dancing, morals, and dress—regulations not always observed. The court had the power to try any Jew who violated the law and to appoint officers to enforce its decrees. Its punishments ranged from fines to excommunication or exile. The death penalty was almost never imposed and lay outside the jurisdiction of the Beth Din; instead the Jewish court usually resorted to herem or excommunication, which meant that the offender was formally cursed in a solemn and awe-inspiring assembly, and the candles lit in the hall were extinguished one by one as a symbol of the spiritual death of the guilty person. Jews, like Christians, frequently appealed to excommunication; for this reason in both religions excommunication lost its terror and effect. The rabbis, like the Christian churches, persecuted heretics, deprived them of social rights, and in rare cases burned their books.

Usually the Jewish community was not subject to local authorities. Its only master was the king; in return for a charter that preserved their religious and economic rights, the community contributed money to his treasury at its own pleasure. Later the Jewish community applied the same contribution to free sections and groups to confirm their independence. Nevertheless, the Jews were subject to the laws of the realm and regarded obedience to the laws as a moral obligation. The Talmud said: “The law of the land is the law.” Another passage said: “Pray for the welfare of the government, for if it were not for fear of the government, men would swallow each other alive.”

The government levied a poll tax or capitation tax on every Jew, took taxes on property (up to 33 percent), meat, wine, jewels, exports, and imports. In addition, whenever war was prepared, or there was a coronation, or the king traveled from one place to another, the Jews were obliged to contribute “voluntary” sums from their own pockets for these expenses. The Jews of England, who in the twelfth century numbered only one-quarter of one percent of the total population, paid eight percent of the kingdom’s total taxes. The same community provided one-fourth of the levies needed for the Crusade of Richard I, the Lionheart. When Richard was captured by the Germans, they contributed 5,000 marks for his ransom—three times the amount given by the city of London. Every individual Jew was also required to pay taxes to his own community and at fixed times to contribute sums for the relief of the poor, for education, and for the support of the Jews of Palestine who were exposed to torment and persecution. At any moment the king might, for any reason or none, confiscate part or all of the property of “his Jews,” for according to feudal law all Jews were his serfs. When a king died, the contract he had made with his Jewish subjects for their protection was annulled. His successor would renew such a contract only in return for a handsome gift, sometimes amounting to one-third of the total property of all the Jews in the realm. In 1463 Albert III, Margrave of Brandenburg, declared that every new German ruler “may, according to ancient custom, either burn all the Jews or have mercy on them and spare their lives in return for one-third of their property.” Bracton, the great thirteenth-century English jurist, summarized this point in simple words: “A Jew cannot have anything of his own, for whatever he acquires is not for himself but belongs to the king.”

2 – Economy

Economic barriers added to these political hardships. Jews were not generally, or by law, forbidden to own land; indeed in the Middle Ages Jews occasionally owned extensive estates in Muslim or Christian Spain, Sicily, Silesia, Poland, England, and France. But circumstances made such ownership increasingly impracticable. Since Christian law forbade the hiring of Christian slaves and Jewish law forbade the employment of Jewish servants, a Jew who wished to exploit his land had to hire free laborers, who were difficult to find and expensive to keep. Jewish law forbade work on Saturday and Christian law forbade work on Sunday. These holidays created difficulties. Feudal law or custom made it impossible for a Jew to obtain any position in the feudal hierarchy, since such offices required a Christian oath of fealty and readiness for military service. But by the laws of almost all Christian countries Jews were forbidden to bear arms. Sisebut, king of the Visigothic Spaniards, during his reign canceled all the charters by which his predecessors had granted land to Jews. Egica, another king of that dynasty, declared all Jewish lands formerly held by Christians to be “public property,” and in 1293 the Cortes of Valladolid forbade the sale of land to Jews. After the ninth century, since Jews saw themselves constantly exposed to attack or expulsion, they avoided buying land or settling in rural districts. All these conditions discouraged Jews from agriculture and encouraged them toward urban life and occupations in crafts, commerce, and finance.

In the Near East and southern Europe Jews were active in industry and in fact in several cases transferred advanced handicraft techniques from the Islamic world and Byzantium to the West. Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveler, saw hundreds of Jewish glassmakers at work in Antioch and Tyre. Jews in Egypt and Greece were famous for the superiority of their colored fabrics and embroidery; even later in the thirteenth century Frederick II sought the help of Jews in managing his silk industry in Sicily. There and elsewhere Jews engaged in metal industries, especially goldsmithing and jewelry, and until 1290 they worked in the tin mines of Cornwall. In southern Europe Jewish craftsmen formed powerful guilds and competed successfully with European artisans. But in northern Europe many occupations fell under the monopoly of Christian guilds. One country after another prevented Jews from serving Christian employers as blacksmiths, carpenters, tailors, shoemakers, millers, bakers, or physicians, or from selling wine, flour, butter, or oil in the markets, or from buying a house outside the Jewish quarter.

Hemmed in on every side, the Jews turned to trade. Rab, the great Talmudic rabbi of Babylonian Jews, had given his followers a shrewd piece of advice: “Trade with one hundred dinars and you will be able to buy meat and wine; invest the same sum in agriculture and at best you will get bread and salt.” The Jewish peddler was a familiar figure in every town and village, and the Jewish merchant was well known in every fair. International commerce before the eleventh century was their specialty, almost their monopoly. Their caravans and ships crossed deserts, mountains, and seas, and in most cases they themselves traveled with their goods. Jewish communities served as links that bound the chain of trade between the Christian and Islamic worlds, between Europe and Asia, and between the Slavic countries and the West. Much of the slave trade was in their hands. Their patience and skill in learning languages, their knowledge of Hebrew, the similarity of customs and laws among completely scattered Jewish communities, and the hospitality of the Jewish quarter in every city toward any foreign Jew helped them. It was for this reason that Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish historian, traversed half the world and never felt like a stranger. Ibn Khordadbeh, who in 870 supervised the post and couriers for the Baghdad Caliphate, described in his Book of Routes and Kingdoms Jewish merchants who spoke Persian, Greek, Arabic, French, Spanish, and Slavic; he described their sea and land routes from Spain and Italy to Egypt, India, and China. These merchants carried eunuchs, slaves, brocades, furs, and swords to the Far East and brought back musk, aloes, camphor, spices, and silk. The capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders and the conquest of the Mediterranean by Venetian and Genoese ships gave Italian merchants an advantage over Jewish traders; Jewish leadership in world commerce ended with the eleventh century. The government of Venice, even before the Crusades, forbade the transport of Jewish merchandise in Venetian ships. Shortly afterward the Hanseatic League closed the ports of the North Sea and the Baltic to Jewish merchants. By the twelfth century Jewish commerce had become largely domestic and, even in this narrow sphere, was restricted on every side by laws that prevented Jews from selling various goods.

Thus the Jews turned to finance. In a hostile environment where popular violence might destroy their immovable property and royal greed might confiscate such holdings, Jews were forced to conclude that their savings must take a form that could be easily moved and converted into cash. At first they confined themselves to money-changing; later they accepted money from others for investment in commercial ventures; then they lent at interest. The Pentateuch and the Talmud had not permitted this practice among Jews, but the prohibition did not apply to transactions between Jew and non-Jew. As economic life became more complex and, with the growth of commerce and industry, the need for capital investment became more urgent, Jews, through a Christian intermediary, lent to one another or nominally made persons partners in an enterprise and formally shared in the profits. This device was permitted by Jewish rabbis and by some Christian theologians. Since usury was forbidden by both Islamic and Christian law, and Christian moneylenders were few before the thirteenth century, Muslim and Christian borrowers—including clerics, churches, and monasteries—sought loans from Jews. Aaron of Lincoln, one of the wealthy Jews of that city, provided the capital for the building of nine Cistercian monasteries and the great abbey of St. Albans. In the thirteenth century Christian bankers became interested in the business and adopted methods perfected by the Jews; before long they far surpassed the Jews in wealth and scale of operations. “The Christian usurer, though he did not have to guard his interests against accidents such as murder and pillage as the Jew did, was nevertheless hardly less rigorous.” Both pressed the debtor with Roman severity and persistence, and kings exploited them all.

All moneylenders were obliged to pay heavy taxes and, if they were Jews, their entire property might sometimes be confiscated. Kings permitted high interest on loans and then, from time to time, seized the profits from the capitalists. The cost of collecting debts was high, and in many cases the creditor had to bribe government officials to allow him to recover his due. In 1198 Pope Innocent III, in preparation for the Fourth Crusade, ordered all Christian princes to exempt Christians from paying any interest due to Jews on their debts. Louis IX of France, the pious king, “for the salvation of his soul and the souls of his ancestors,” exempted all subjects from paying one-third of what they owed the Jews. English kings sometimes canceled, by decree, the obligation of their subjects to pay principal or interest or both to Jewish creditors. Some kings sold such decrees and recorded in their accounts the sums they received for this vicarious charity. The English government required that a copy of every contract be delivered to a responsible official; a special treasurer of the Jews was appointed whose duty was to register and supervise such contracts and hear disputes concerning them. When a Jewish banker could not meet the taxes or levies imposed upon him, the government, by referring to his record of loans, confiscated all or part of them and informed the debtors that henceforth they should pay their debts to the government rather than to the creditor. When in 1187 Henry II levied a special tax on the English people, the Jews were required to pay one-fourth and the Christians one-tenth of their property. In this case the Jews paid almost half of the total tax levied. Sometimes “the Jews bore the burden of the realm.” In 1210 King John Lackland ordered all the Jews of the country, men, women, and children, to be imprisoned; he extracted 66,000 marks from them as a tallage; and those suspected of concealing the exact amount of their savings were tortured daily by having a tooth drawn until they confessed. In 1230 Henry III, on the charge that the Jews had clipped the coin of the realm (and apparently some had done so), confiscated one-third of all the movable property of the English Jews. Since this act yielded a large profit to the royal treasury, it was repeated in 1239. Two years later 20,000 marks of silver were taken from them by force, and in 1244 this sum was raised to 60,000 marks, equivalent to the king’s entire annual revenue. When Henry III borrowed 5,000 marks from the Earl of Cornwall, he pledged all the Jews of England as security. From 1252 to 1255, through a series of levies and tallages, the Jews were squeezed so hard that they begged permission to leave England en masse, but such leave was refused. In 1275 Edward I strictly forbade lending at interest, yet borrowing continued and, since it involved greater risk, the rate of interest rose. Edward ordered the arrest of all the Jews of England and the confiscation of their property. Some Christian moneylenders were also arrested and three of them were hanged. Of the Jewish community 280 were quartered and hanged in London; others were killed in the provinces; and the property of hundreds of Jews was confiscated for the royal treasury.

In the anxious intervals between these confiscations the Jewish bankers prospered greatly, and the wealth of some became openly visible. These rich Jews not only provided funds for the building of magnificent palaces, churches, and monasteries, but erected splendid homes for themselves. The houses of the English Jews were among the first built of stone. Despite the saying of Rabbi Eleazar that “all men—women, slaves, rich, and poor—are equal in the sight of God,” there were rich and poor among the Jews. The Jewish rabbis devised various economic systems to reduce poverty and prevent the excessive wealth that makes a man greedy. In their teachings they emphasized that every member of the people is responsible for the welfare of his fellows, and through arrangements for collecting charity and alms they strove to alleviate the hardships of poverty and misfortune. They never condemned the possession of wealth, but they succeeded in giving learning a prestige and honor equal to that of riches. They counted monopoly and profiteering rings among the sins. They did not allow a retailer to make more than one-sixth profit on the wholesale price. They exercised great care in weights and measures. They fixed maximum prices and minimum wages. Many of these regulations proved ineffective, because the Jewish rabbis could not separate Jewish economic life from that of their Muslim or Christian neighbors; moreover, the law of supply and demand found loopholes in all man-made statutes.

3 – Ethics

The rich, to atone for their accumulation of wealth, gave generously to the relief of the poor. They accepted the social obligations of wealth and perhaps feared the curses or the wrath of the destitute. It was never heard that any Jew living among the Jewish community died of hunger. Even from the second century, every so often the property of every member of a synagogue community, however poor, was assessed by official trustees so that a sum could be collected for the community chest, and it was this chest that provided for the maintenance of the aged, the poor, the sick, and the education and marriage of orphans. The doors of private homes were always open to the needy, especially to wandering scholars. In some communities special officers of the religious society housed new arrivals in private homes. In the Middle Ages the number of Jewish charitable associations greatly increased. Besides hospitals, orphanages, numerous almshouses, and homes for the aged, organizations arose to ransom captives, provide dowries for poor brides, visit the sick, care for indigent widows, and pay for the burial of the poor. Christians complained of Jewish greed toward non-Jews and tried, by citing the admirable generosity of Jews toward one another, to encourage their own coreligionists to help their fellow men.

Class differences manifested themselves in style of dress, manner of eating, manner of speech, and hundreds of other things. The poor Jew wore a long-sleeved robe or jacket with a girdle, usually black, as though in mourning for the ruined Temple and the ravaged land of Jewry. But in Spain wealthy Jews proclaimed their prosperity by wearing furs and silk, and the rabbis lamented in vain such displays that aroused enmity and discontent. When the king of Castile forbade the wearing of luxurious clothes, the Jewish men all obeyed the order, but then turned to adorning their wives with splendor; when the king asked for an explanation, they assured him that his royal generosity was too great to wish to subject the women to such restrictions. Throughout the Middle Ages the Jews continued to adorn their wives with fine clothes; yet they did not allow them to go out with uncovered heads. Uncovering the hair was an offense that justified divorce. One of the teachings of the Law was that a Jewish man should not pray in the presence of a woman whose hair is visible.

The hygienic rules of the Mosaic Law reduced the effects of the overcrowding of very large communities in one spot. Circumcision, weekly bathing, and the prohibition of spoiled meat and wine gave the Jews greater protection against the diseases prevalent in the Christian countries around them. Among the poorer Christian classes, who were accustomed to eating salted fish or meat, leprosy was common, whereas among the Jews the disease was rarely seen. Perhaps for the same reasons Jews suffered less than Christians from plague and similar diseases. In the slums of Rome, which sheltered swarms of mosquitoes from the surrounding marshes, Jew and Christian alike shivered with malaria.

The moral life of the medieval Jew was a mixture of Eastern heritage and European weaknesses. Since the Jew met discrimination at every step, was subject to plunder, massacre, and humiliation, and was accused of crimes he had never committed, he too, like any weak person anywhere, resorted to cunning in self-defense. The Jewish rabbis repeatedly warned that “cheating a non-Jew is far worse than deceiving a Jew.” Yet some Jews took such risks, and perhaps Christians too resorted to trickery as far as their intelligence allowed. Some bankers, whether Jewish or Christian, showed no mercy in pressing their claims, although undoubtedly in the Middle Ages as in the eighteenth century there were also moneylenders who matched the honesty and integrity of Mayer Anselm of the famous Rothschild family. Some Jews and Christians clipped coins or accepted stolen goods. The very fact that Jews repeatedly rose to high financial offices shows that Christian employers trusted their honesty. It was rare for Jews to commit heinous crimes such as murder, theft, or rape. Drunkenness among Jews in Christian lands was less common than in some Muslim territories.

Their sexual life, despite the practice of polygamy, was remarkably free from fault. Jews, compared with other Eastern peoples, were less addicted to sodomy. Their women were modest maidens, industrious wives, prolific mothers, and faithful. Since they married early, prostitution was reduced to a minimum. The number of men who remained unmarried was small. Rabbi Asher ben Yehiel ruled that a bachelor of twenty should be compelled by the religious court to marry unless he was engaged in the study of the Law. Matchmaking was performed by the parents of the children. According to a Jewish document of the eleventh century, “girls who are so impudent or bold as to express their own wishes or preferences” were few. But no marriage was considered fully legal without the consent of both parties. A father might give his minor daughter in marriage even at the age of six, but such wives were considered unconsummated until they reached maturity; and when the girl reached puberty she could, if she wished, annul the marriage contract. The betrothal or marriage ceremony consisted of a formal act that placed the girl, according to religious law, under the marital bond of a man. Thereafter husband and wife could not separate except by a decree of divorce. At the wedding a contract called the ketubah in Hebrew was signed to determine the dowry and the marriage settlement. The marriage settlement was a sum fixed from the husband’s property to belong to the wife in case of divorce or the husband’s death. If the marriage settlement did not amount to at least two hundred zuz (enough to buy a house for a family), marriage to a virgin was not valid.

In Muslim countries polygamy was practiced among wealthy Jews, but among Jews living in the Christian world it was rarely seen. In the writings of post-Talmudic Jewish rabbis the word “wife” occurs a thousand times, but never “wives.” About the year 1000 Rabbi Gershom ben Judah of Mainz, the great rabbi of the German Jews, ruled that any Jew who practiced polygamy should be excommunicated, and after that date polygamy and concubinage among Jews almost disappeared throughout Europe, except in Spain. Nevertheless, cases occurred in which, if a wife remained barren ten years after marriage, she would give her husband permission to take another wife or a concubine. Among Jews the preservation of lineage was very important. The same ruling of Gershom deprived the Jewish man of his ancient right to divorce his wife without fault or her consent. In medieval Jewry divorce probably occurred far less frequently than in modern America.

Although the marriage bond was relatively weak from a legal standpoint, the family hearth was the center of Jewish life’s salvation. External dangers produced internal unity; and the testimony of hostile witnesses indicates that “love and respect … consideration for others, and paternal and fraternal affection” were all characteristics of Jewish family life. The young husband shared work, joy, and sorrow with his wife, developed such deep attachment to her that the two seemed one soul in two bodies, and became a father whose children grew up around him, awakened the powers hidden in his nature, and won his most intimate loyalties. Before marriage the man probably had no sexual relations with any woman, and in so small and intimate a society there was little opportunity for such infidelity after marriage. The father, almost from the birth of his children, prepared dowries for his daughters and marriage settlements for his sons; moreover, he considered it a matter of course that in the early years of marriage he should support them. This practice seemed wiser than allowing his young people to spend ten years in sexual chaos until they prepared the prerequisites for monogamy. In many cases the son-in-law moved into the father-in-law’s house, and it rarely happened that this increased their happiness. The authority of the eldest father in the family was almost as absolute as that of the emperor in Rome. He had the right to excommunicate his children; he could beat his wife within reasonable limits, and if she was seriously injured the community fined him to the extent that his means allowed. Normally his power was exercised with such severity that it never hid his passionate love.

The position of woman was legally inferior but morally exalted. The Jewish man, like Plato, thanked God that he had not been born a woman, and the Jewish woman humbly replied: “Blessed be He who created me according to His will.” In the synagogue women had a separate place in the gallery or sat behind the men, which itself was a sign of their seductive beauty. When counting those present for a quorum, women were never included. Poems composed in praise of female beauty were considered improper, although the Talmud had permitted them. Flirtation and courtship between man and woman, if any, took place by correspondence. Open conversation between men and women, even between husband and wife, was forbidden by the rabbis. Dancing was permitted provided women danced with women and men with men. While the husband was legally the sole heir of his wife, upon the husband’s death nothing belonged to the widow except the equivalent of her dowry and marriage settlement. In such cases the sons, as natural heirs of the deceased, were expected to support their mother in a decent manner. Daughters inherited only if there was no son; otherwise they had to rely on the kindness of their brothers, and it rarely happened that a brother neglected his sisters. Girls were not sent to school; acquiring even a little learning was considered very dangerous for them. Nevertheless, private instruction for women was permitted. In Jewish history several women can be found who delivered public lectures on the Law of Moses—although in some cases the speaker had to address the audience from behind a curtain. Despite all material and legal obstacles, a capable Jewish woman after marriage attained full honors and received complete devotion from her husband. Judah ben Moses ibn Tibbon (1170) cited the words of a Muslim sage who said: “No one honors women except the honorable man, and no one despises them except the despicable man.”

The father-child relationship came closer to perfection than the husband-wife relationship. The Jewish man took vulgar pride in his procreative power and his children, and his most solemn oath was taken with his hand upon his own testicles. The English word “testimony” derives from the same root. One of the rabbinic rules was that every Jewish man must have at least two children. Usually the number of children in each family was more than two. The child was honored as a guest from God’s Paradise, or an angel clothed in flesh and skin. The father almost acted as God’s deputy and received a reverence worthy of that office. The son stood before his father until given permission to sit, and showed an eager obedience to his father that was entirely compatible with youthful pride. In the circumcision ceremony the son was offered to the presence of Yahweh according to the covenant of Abraham, and every family considered itself obliged to train one male child for the priesthood. When the boy reached thirteen he was counted among men and, after performing a series of special rites, was considered bound to observe all the commandments of the Mosaic Law. Religion gave every stage of growth its own solemn and sacred character and made the duties of father and mother easier.

4 – Religion

In the same way, religion acted as a spiritual police that watched over every stage of moral laws. Undoubtedly loopholes were found in the Mosaic Law and legal fictions were invented to restore the freedom of modification that was essential to the life of a courageous people. But apparently the medieval Jew accepted the Mosaic Law as a whole and regarded it as a refuge that not only saved the individual from eternal damnation but, more obviously, prevented the Jewish people from disintegration. At every step these religious laws oppressed him, yet the individual Jew honored those laws that were precisely his birthplace, his school of upbringing, and his essential bond with life.

In Judaism every home was a church, every school a temple, and every father a priest. The same prayers and religious rites performed in the synagogue, though in a more concise form, were carried out in the home. There the fast days and religious festivals were celebrated with instructive ceremonies that linked the present with the past and the living with the dead, and even with beings who had not yet entered the arena of life. Every Saturday night the father of the family called his wife, children, and servants around him, blessed them one by one, and led them in the reading of prayers, religious teachings, and sacred songs. On the doorpost of each large room of the house a small tube (mezuzah) was affixed; inside the tube was a scroll on which two passages from Deuteronomy (6:4–9 and 11:13–21) were written. These words reminded every Jew that their God is one and that He must be loved “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” As soon as the child reached the age of four he was taken to the synagogue and, in the early stages of growth, religion was imprinted on his mind.

The synagogue was not only a place of worship but also the social center of all Jews. The literal meaning of “synagogue,” like “church” or “ecclesiastical council” and “academy,” was a congregation or society of followers of one faith. In the period before the rise of Christianity the synagogue was primarily a school; Ashkenazi Jews still call it shul (school). In the age of the Dispersion the synagogue was assigned many strange and varied functions. In some synagogues it was customary on the Sabbath to publish the decisions taken by the Beth Din during the week; to collect taxes, announce details of lost articles, hear complaints of one member against another, and publicize an impending sale so that anyone with a claim or right to the property could object. The synagogue performed the work of a public charitable society and, in Asia, served as a hostel for pilgrims. The building of the synagogue itself was always the finest structure in the Jewish quarter. Sometimes, especially in Spain and Italy, the synagogue was an architectural masterpiece decorated at great expense and with deep affection. Christian authorities repeatedly forbade the building of synagogues that reached the height of the tallest church in the city. In 1221 Pope Honorius III ordered one such synagogue in Bourges to be demolished. The city of Seville in the fourteenth century had twenty-three synagogues; Toledo and Cordoba had almost as many; one of the synagogues built in Cordoba in 1315 is now preserved by the Spanish government as a historic monument.

Every synagogue had a school called in Hebrew beth ha-midrash (“house of study”). In addition there were many private tutors and private schools; perhaps the proportion of literate people among medieval Jews was higher than among Christians, although it did not reach the level of the literate population of the Islamic world. Teachers’ salaries were paid by the public or by the parents of the children, but all operated under communal supervision. Boys went to school very early, usually before sunrise in winter; after a few hours they returned home for breakfast; then they went back to school until eleven o’clock when they came home for lunch; at noon they returned to school and had time for recreation between two and three; they stayed in school until sunset; and then, finally released, they went home for supper, prayer, and sleep. Life for the Jewish boy was a serious matter.

Hebrew and the Five Books of Moses were the basic subjects of study. At the age of ten the pupil began the Mishnah and at thirteen the important tractates of the Talmud. Those students who wished to pursue religious studies continued from the age of thirteen, and even beyond, with the Mishnah and Gemara. Through the variety of Talmudic subjects the pupil acquired a little knowledge of ten or twelve sciences, but learned almost nothing of the history of the Jewish people. Most knowledge was acquired through repetition, and the collective chanting of the schoolboys was so loud that in some places people would not allow a school to be opened.

Students pursued higher education in the yeshiva or academy. One who graduated from such an academy was called a talmid hakham or student of the Law—although such a student was not necessarily a rabbi; nevertheless he was exempt from all community taxes and whenever he entered or left any assembly ordinary people had to rise before him.

The rabbi or religious jurist was at once teacher, lawyer, and priest. He was obliged to marry. For performing religious duties he received very little pay, or none at all, and usually earned his living by secular work. He rarely preached; this was left to itinerant preachers or maggidim who received the necessary training in voice and remarkable eloquence. Any member of the synagogue could, with a loud voice, lead the others in reading prayers or selections from the Jewish Scriptures, or preach, but usually this honor was delegated to a generous Jew or to a distinguished person. For an orthodox Hebrew the reading of the elaborate ritual prayers was complicated. Correct performance required the Jew to cover his head as a sign of respect, to bind on his arms and forehead phylacteries containing verses from Exodus (13:1–16) and Deuteronomy (6:4–9 and 11:13–21), and to sew fringes on the edges of his garment on which the basic commandments of God were written. The rabbis regarded these rites as necessary reminders of divine unity, presence, and law. Simple Jews gradually came to believe that these prayers were magical amulets with miraculous effect. The climax of the religious service was the reading of a selection from the scroll of the Law, which was always kept in an ark above the altar of the synagogue.

In the early days of the Dispersion the Jews considered the playing of musical instruments during religious services improper, because in their view musical melody was incompatible with the grief they felt for their lost homeland. But the connection between music and religion is as close as that between poetry and love. The deepest human emotions, to find their most adorned expression, require the most emotional arts. For the sake of poetry, music too returned to the synagogue. In the sixth century the paytanim, or “new Hebrew” poets, began to compose religious poems interwoven with verbal artistry, yet elevated by the majestic resonance of the Hebrew language and filled with that religious fervor that at that time served both to stimulate Jewish patriotism and to soothe religious feelings. The crude but powerful hymns of Eleazar ben Kallir (eighth century) still hold a place in the liturgy of some synagogues. The composition of similar poems spread among the Jews of Spain, Italy, France, and Germany. One of these hymns, still recited by many Jews on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), runs as follows:

When Your kingdom comes
The mountains will sing,
And the islands, filled with joy, will laugh
For they are all Yours, O Lord.
And all their congregations
Will sing Your praise so loudly
That when the most distant peoples hear it,
They will call You their crowned King.

When these piyyutim or sacred songs entered the synagogue liturgy, their recitation was entrusted to a cantor, and in this way music once more found its place in religious rites. Moreover, selections from Scripture and prayers were chanted in many synagogues by a cantor or the entire congregation in a melody that was often improvised, but sometimes followed the simple chant of Christian prayer. At some unknown date before the eleventh century a complex style of chanting for the famous Hebrew hymn Kol Nidre (“All Vows”) developed from the chant school of the monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland.

In the heart of the individual Jew the synagogue never took the place of the Temple. The hope of the day when, on Mount Zion, before the Holy of Holies, he would offer sacrifice to the God of Israel always burned in his mind and exposed him to deception by charlatans who repeatedly “appeared” and called themselves the expected Messiah. About the year 720 a certain Serene from Syria proclaimed himself the promised redeemer and gathered a following to wrest Palestine from the Muslims and formed an army. A group of Jews from Babylonia and Spain left their homes and marched under his banner. In the battle that followed Serene was captured and the Umayyad Caliph Yazid II declared him a deceiver and impostor and had him executed. About thirty years later Abu Isa ibn Ishaq al-Isfahani (Obadiah or Abdullah) attempted a similar revolt. Ten thousand Jews took up arms and fought bravely in his company, but they were defeated; Abu Isa was killed in battle, and all the Jews of Isfahan were severely punished. When the First Crusade stirred Europe, the illusion entered the minds of the Jewish people that if the Christians were victorious they would return Palestine to the Jews; a series of massacres dispelled this vain hope. In 1160 David al-Roi, who called himself the Messiah, stirred the Jews of Jerusalem and promised to restore Jerusalem and freedom to them. His father-in-law, fearing that such a revolt would bring disaster upon the Jews, killed David in his sleep. In 1225 another Messiah appeared in southern Arabia and aroused the unrestrained emotions of all Jews. Maimonides, in his famous “Letter to the South,” exposed the false claims of that impostor and reminded the Jews of Arabia how in the past such reckless actions had caused murder and destruction. Nevertheless, Moses Maimonides himself considered hope in the coming of the Messiah an essential support for the spirit of the dispersed Jews and made it one of the thirteen principles of the Jewish faith.

Anti-Semitism: 500–1306

What was the source of hostility between Jew and non-Jew?

The chief roots of this hostility were always economic, but religious differences intensified and at the same time concealed economic rivalries. Muslims, who owed their survival to Muhammad, were angry that the Jews did not accept their Prophet. Christians, who accepted the divinity of Jesus, were repelled that the people of Jesus himself did not acknowledge His divinity. To the believing Christian it seemed neither contrary to human feeling nor inconsistent with Christian principles to hold one people responsible, over several centuries, for acts committed by a very small number of Jews in Jerusalem in the last days of Jesus’ life. The Gospel of Luke related how “a great multitude” of Jews welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem (19:37); how when He carried His cross to the place of execution “there followed Him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented Him” (23:27); and how, after the Crucifixion, “all the people that came together to that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts, and returned” (23:48). But every year, in the week before Easter, when Christian preachers told the sorrowful story of the Crucifixion from a thousand pulpits, these evidences of Jewish sympathy for Jesus were forgotten and hatred blazed in Christian hearts; in those days the Jews, fearing that popular feeling might be so aroused as to lead to a massacre, did not leave their homes or their quarter.

Around that fundamental misunderstanding a thousand threads of suspicion and enmity were woven. Much of the hostility arose from the increase in interest rates, which itself was a sign of the insecurity of loans, and was directed against Jewish bankers. As the economy of the Christian world expanded and Christian merchants and bankers entered fields once held by Jews, economic competition became a motive for hatred, and some Christian moneylenders actively helped to intensify anti-Jewish feeling. Jews who held public office, especially those responsible for the financial departments of government, naturally became targets for people who hated both taxes and Jews. Once this economic and religious antagonism existed, everything Jewish seemed offensive to some Christians, and everything Christian seemed offensive to some Jews. The Christian reproached the Jew for considering himself a chosen people, without recognizing that this was a reaction to discrimination and occasional physical attacks. Jewish characteristics, language, customs, food, and religious rites all seemed strangely repellent to the individual Christian. When Jews ate, Christians fasted; and when the Jewish fast days came, Christians ate. Their day of rest and prayer, like the ancient periods, was Saturday, while the Christian day of rest and prayer had been changed to Sunday. The Jews celebrated the joyful event of their deliverance from Egypt at Passover, which fell very close to the Friday on which Christians mourned the Crucifixion of Jesus. By the command of their Law the Jews were not allowed to eat food cooked by a non-Jew, or drink wine handled by a non-Jew, or use vessels touched by a non-Jew, or marry anyone but a Jew. The Christian man’s interpretation of these laws, which had been established long before the rise of Christianity, was that everything Christian was unclean in Jewish eyes; therefore, in retaliation, it was claimed that Jews were not very different from others in cleanliness or neatness of dress. Mutual separation bequeathed baseless and tragic legends to both sides. The Romans had accused the Christians of killing pagan children to offer their blood in secret sacrificial rites to the God of Christianity; twelfth-century Christians claimed that the Jews kidnapped Christian children to sacrifice them to Yahweh or use their blood as medicine or in the unleavened bread of Passover. It was said that Jews poisoned the drinking wells of Christians and stole the sacred Host of the Christian Eucharist and pierced it to draw out the blood of Christ. When a few Jewish merchants displayed their wealth by wearing luxurious clothes, the entire Jewish people was accused of having seized all the wealth of the Christian world. Jewish women were suspected of witchcraft, and many Jews were believed to be in league with the Devil. In retaliation the Jews invented similar legends about Christians and fabricated defamatory stories about the birth and youth of Jesus. The Talmud advised Jews to extend charity to non-Jews. Bahya, a Jewish scholar, praised Christian monasticism, and Jesus ben Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher, wrote that “the teachings of Jesus and Muhammad lead mankind toward perfection.” But the ordinary Jew was incapable of understanding such tributes uttered by the wise, and in the face of the hatred he saw from the Christian he responded in kind.

Amid these foolish disputes there were occasional pauses. Often Christians and Jews, despite the laws of state and church, associated and sometimes intermarried in friendship, especially in Spain and southern France. Christian and Jewish scholars cooperated, as in the collaboration of Michael Scot with Jacob Anatoli and of Dante with Immanuel. Christians gave gifts to Jewish synagogues; in Worms a public park was administered from the endowment of a Christian woman for the Jews. In Lyon the Saturday market was moved to Sunday for the convenience of the Jews. Secular governments that found Jews useful in commerce and finance hesitantly placed them under their protection; in the few cases where a government restricted the movement of Jewish communities or expelled them, the reason was only that it could no longer protect them against the violence and religious intolerance of the people.

The policy of the Church in these matters varied according to time and place; in Italy it protected the Jews as “guardians of the Old Law” and living witnesses to the historical character of the Jewish Scriptures and to “divine punishment.” But from time to time church councils, often from good intentions and rarely from a desire for power, added to the sufferings of the Jews. The Theodosian Code (439), the Council of Clermont (535), and the Council of Toledo (589) forbade the appointment of Jews to offices that would enable them to impose punishments on Christians. The Council of Orléans (538) ordered the Jews, perhaps for their own safety, not to leave their homes during the week of mourning before the Resurrection of Christ, and prohibited their employment in government offices. The Third Lateran Council (1179) forbade Christian midwives and nurses to serve Jews, and the Council of Béziers (1246) condemned the employment of Jewish physicians by Christians. The Council of Avignon (1209), in retaliation for Jewish rules of purity, decreed that “Jews and prostitutes” should not touch bread or fruit offered for sale; this council revived church laws against the employment of Christian servants by Jews and warned Christian believers not only to refuse mutual service to individual Jews but to consider them unclean and avoid association with them. Several church councils declared marriage between a Christian and a Jew null and void. In 1222 a priest was burned alive for converting to Judaism and marrying a Jewish woman. In 1234 a Jewish widow refused to accept one-third of her deceased husband’s property on the ground that her husband had become a Christian during his lifetime and therefore their marriage had lost its validity. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215), on the ground that “sometimes, by mistake, Christians have had relations with Jewish or Saracen women and Jews and Saracens with Christian women,” decreed that henceforth “Jews and Muslims, whether men or women, in every Christian province and at all times must be distinguished from other people by a special style of dress.” Members of these two communities after the age of twelve were required to wear a special colored band—men on their hat or cloak, and women on their face veil. This decree was partly a retaliation for older and similar laws that Muslims had enacted against Christians and Jews. In each place the local government or provincial church councils determined the form of this sign; these marks usually consisted of a wheel or circle of yellow cloth about seven or eight centimeters in diameter sewn on the garment in a conspicuous place. The decree was enforced in England in 1218, in France in 1219, and in Hungary in 1279; before the fifteenth century—when two fanatics of that age, Nicholas of Cusa and St. Giovanni da Capistrano, demanded its observance throughout the Christian world by a series of measures—this decree was enforced only sporadically in Spain, Italy, and Germany. In 1219 the Jews of Castile threatened that if the decree were enforced they would leave the kingdom en masse, so the ecclesiastical authorities agreed to its repeal. Physicians, scholars, financiers, and travelers were often exempt from observing the decree. After the sixteenth century its observance declined, and it disappeared with the French Revolution.

On the whole, among the great churchmen of the Christian world the popes were the most tolerant. Gregory I, although zealous for the spread of the faith, forbade any Jew to be forced into accepting the religion of Jesus, and protected the rights of Jews as subjects of the Roman Empire in the lands under his command. When bishops in Tracina and Palermo seized Jewish synagogues for Christian use, Gregory ordered that the property of the Jews be fully restored to them. The same pope wrote to the bishop of Naples: “When the Jews are engaged in their religious rites, let no one disturb them. Let them have complete freedom to observe all their festivals and holy days, as they and their fathers have done for a long time.” Gregory VII urged Christian kings to obey the decrees of church councils against the appointment of Jews. When Pope Eugenius III entered Paris in 1145 and went with pomp to the cathedral, which at that time stood in the Jewish quarter, the Jews sent a delegation to offer him the Torah or scroll of the Law; the pope blessed them, the Jews returned happily to their homes, and Eugenius partook of the roasted lamb that the Jews had sacrificed according to the Passover custom with the king of France. Alexander III was friendly to the Jews and employed one of them to manage his finances. Innocent III took the lead at the Fourth Lateran Council in making the special badge obligatory for Jews and established the principle that since the Jews had crucified Jesus they were condemned to eternal servitude. But the same pope later adopted a milder policy, confirmed previous papal decrees forbidding the forced conversion of Jews to Christianity, and added to the decree: “No Christian shall do bodily harm to Jews … or deprive them of their property … or disturb them when they are engaged in the rites of their festivals … or extort money from them by threats or by desecrating their graves.” Gregory IX, founder of the Inquisition, exempted the Jews from the jurisdiction and operation of that tribunal except in cases where Jews tried to convert Christians to the Law of Moses, or when they reviled Christianity, or when they returned to Judaism after accepting Christianity. The same pope in 1235, in an official decree, condemned the violence of the common people against the Jews. Innocent IV in 1247 denied the legend that was circulating about the ritual murder of Christian children by Jews:

Some priests and princes, nobles and magnates … have falsely devised ungodly schemes against the Jews, have maliciously despoiled them by force, and have appropriated their goods; they have falsely accused the Jews of dividing among themselves the heart of a murdered Christian boy at Passover. … In fact, whenever opportunity offers, out of hatred they attribute every murder to the Jews. Because of these accusations and other slanders their existence is filled with anger against the Jews; they take their property; … they afflict them with hunger, imprisonment, torture, and other pains; and sometimes they even condemn them to death, so that the Jews, although they live under Christian princes, suffer a fate worse than that of their ancestors in the land of the Pharaohs. They have been forced in despair to leave the land that from the beginning of creation was the home of their ancestors. Since we wish that no one should oppress any member of this people, and this gives us pleasure, we decree that you should show them friendship and kindness. Wherever injustice has been done to them, and it seems right to you, redress those wrongs and do not allow them to suffer similar misfortunes in the future.

This honorable appeal was ignored by many. In 1272 Gregory X was forced to deny once more the legend of the murder of Christian children, and to emphasize his words he decreed that henceforth the testimony of one Christian against one Jew should not be accepted unless confirmed by another Jew. Similar official decrees were issued by later popes until 1763, which testifies both to the philanthropy of the popes and to the persistence of this evil. Proof of the popes’ sincerity in this matter is the relative safety and freedom from persecution enjoyed by the Jews in the papal states. A people that had been expelled from many countries at various times in history was never expelled from Rome or the papal territory of Avignon, and according to one learned Jewish historian: “But for the Catholic Church, the Jews would never have survived the Middle Ages in Christian Europe.”

Before the Crusades serious persecution of the Jews in medieval Europe occurred only sporadically. The Byzantine emperors continued for two centuries the tyrannical methods that Justinian had used against the Jews. Heraclius, in retaliation for the help the Jews had given to Persia, banished them from Jerusalem (628) and did all he could to destroy them. Leo III, emperor of the Eastern Romans and the first of the Isaurian dynasty, issued a decree in an attempt to deny the rumor that he was a Jew (723) and left the Jews of Byzantium the choice between exile and acceptance of Christianity. Some submitted and others preferred to burn themselves in their synagogues rather than accept such a thing. Basil I (867–886) resumed the struggle to impose Christianity on the Jews, and Constantine VII (912–959) compelled the Jews to take a humiliating oath—known as the “Jewish form”—in Christian courts that remained in use in Europe until the nineteenth century.

In 1095, when Pope Urban II proclaimed the Crusade, some Christians believed that before undertaking the hardships of a long journey to Jerusalem to fight the Turks, it would be better to kill the Jews of Europe. Godfrey of Bouillon, who accepted the leadership of the Crusader forces, declared that he would avenge the blood of Jesus on the Jews and would leave none of them alive on earth; and his companions openly said that they would kill all Jews who did not accept Christianity. A monk claimed that, according to a letter received from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the conversion of all Jews was a moral duty for all Christians, and this further inflamed the zeal of the faithful. The plan of the Crusaders was to move south along the Rhine, since the richest Jewish settlements of northern Europe were in that region. The Jews of Germany had played an important part in the development of Rhine commerce and, by their self-restraint and piety, had won the respect of both the Christian laity and the clergy. Rudiger, bishop of Speyer, had friendly relations with the Jews of his diocese and gave them a charter guaranteeing their autonomy and safety. In 1095 Emperor Henry IV issued a similar charter for all the Jews of his realm. When news of the Crusade, the route of the Crusaders, and the threats of their leaders reached the peaceful Jewish communities of the region, it filled them with such terror that it paralyzed all action. The Jewish rabbis ordered all individuals to spend several days in prayer.

As soon as the Crusaders reached Speyer, they dragged eleven Jews into a church and ordered them to accept baptism; when the eleven refused, they were all killed (May 3, 1096). The other Jews of the city took refuge with Bishop John; he not only protected them but caused the death of some of the Crusaders who had taken part in the church massacre. When some of the Crusaders approached Trier, the Jews took refuge with the bishop of that place, Egilbert. He offered to preserve their lives and property on condition that they accept baptism. Most of the Jews agreed, but several women killed their children and threw themselves into the Moselle (June 1, 1096). Rothard, archbishop of Mainz, hid thirteen hundred Jews in the cellars of his house, but the Crusaders forced their way in and killed 1,014 of them; the archbishop managed to save a few by hiding them in the city church (May 27, 1096). Four Jews of Mainz accepted baptism but soon afterward committed suicide. When the Crusaders approached Cologne, the Christians hid the Jews in their homes. The mob set fire to the Jewish quarter and killed those who fell into their hands. Bishop Hermann took a great risk and secretly moved the Jews from Christian homes in the city to houses in the villages. The Crusader pilgrims, hearing of this transfer, went in search of their prey and killed every Jew they found (June 1096). In two of these villages two hundred Jews were killed, and in four other villages besieged by the mob the Jews preferred to kill one another rather than accept baptism. Mothers who had given birth during these raids killed their infants. In Worms, Bishop Alberich hid as many Jews as he could in his palace and saved their lives. But the Crusaders treated the remaining Jews with such brutality that no name can describe it: they killed many and then plundered and burned the Jewish homes. In this city too many Jews preferred suicide to denying their faith. Altogether about 800 Jews died in the Worms massacre (August 20, 1096). Similar scenes occurred in Metz, Regensburg, and Prague.

It appeared that the Second Crusade (1147) would be more violent than the first. Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, advised Louis VII of France to begin the Crusade by attacking the Jews of France: “I do not ask you to kill these accursed beings … God does not wish their destruction, but, like Cain the fratricide, this people should be subjected to horrible tortures and preserved for a greater disgrace, that is, a life far more bitter than death.” Suger, abbot of St. Denis, protested against this interpretation of Christianity, and Louis VII limited himself to imposing a tax on the property of wealthy Jews. But in Germany confiscation of property was not enough. A French monk, Rudolf by name, left his monastery without permission and incited the people in Germany to massacre the Jews. In Cologne they killed Simon, known as “the Pious,” and cut his body to pieces. In Speyer a woman was tortured with sticks and flogging to force her to accept Christianity. Again the bishops of the free churches did all they could to protect Jewish lives and property. Arnold, archbishop of Cologne, placed a strong fortress at their disposal as a refuge and allowed them to arm themselves. The Crusaders refrained from attacking the fortress, but killed every Jew who fell into their hands and had not changed his religion. Henry, archbishop of Mainz, gave shelter in his own house to some Jews pursued by the mob, but the crowd forced its way in and killed all the Jews before the archbishop’s eyes. The archbishop appealed to Bernard of Clairvaux, the most influential Christian of his time. In reply Bernard severely rebuked Rudolf’s action and asked everyone to cease violence against the Jews. When Rudolf continued his campaign, Bernard himself came to Germany and forcibly returned the monk to his monastery. Shortly afterward the dismembered body of a Christian was found in Würzburg. The Christians accused the Jews of the crime and, despite the protests of Emicho the archbishop, attacked them and killed twenty; but another group of Christians cared for many wounded Jews (1147) and the archbishop buried the bodies of the slain in his own garden. The idea of beginning the Crusade at home spread from Germany back to France and Jews were massacred in Carentan, Ramru, and Sully. In Bohemia one hundred and fifty Jews were killed by the Crusaders. After the period of terror passed, the local Christian clergy helped the surviving Jews as much as they could; and those who had been forcibly baptized were allowed to return to Judaism without being punished for the act.

These Jewish massacres began a series of violent attacks that continued until our own time. In 1235, in the city of Baden, a murder committed by an unknown person was attributed to the Jews, and this led to a massacre. In 1243 all the Jewish inhabitants of Blitza near Berlin were burned alive on the charge that some of them had desecrated the consecrated Host of the Eucharist. In 1283 the accusation of murdering Christian children was raised again in Mainz, and despite all the efforts of Werner, archbishop of the region, to deny the charge, ten Jews were killed and the homes of all the Jews were plundered. In 1285 a similar rumor stirred the people of Munich. One hundred and eighty Jews took refuge in a synagogue, but the mob set fire to the building and burned all 180 to death. A year later in Oberwesel forty Jews were killed on the charge of taking the blood of a Christian. In 1298 every Jew in Rottingen was killed on the charge of desecrating a consecrated Host of the Eucharist. Rindfleisch, a pious baron, organized and armed a band of Christians and bound them by oath to kill all Jews. This group wiped out the Jews of Würzburg and killed 698 Jews in Nuremberg. The persecution of Jews spread to other places and in six months one hundred and forty Jewish religious communities were completely destroyed. The Jews of Germany, who after such massacres had repeatedly rebuilt their communities, became discouraged; and in 1286 many Jewish families left Mainz, Worms, Speyer, and other German cities and migrated to Palestine to live among the Muslims. Since Poland and Lithuania also invited immigrants, and there had been no previous massacres of Jews in those regions, a gradual migration of Jews from Germany toward Slavic lands began.

The Jews of England, who were barred from owning land and from membership in the guilds, turned to commerce and specialization in finance. Some became rich and universally hated through usury. English nobles and landowners equipped themselves for the Crusades with money borrowed from Jews and in return mortgaged the income of their estates to them. This greatly angered the Christian peasants, who believed that a handful of Jewish usurers grew fat on their labor. In 1144 William of Norwich was found murdered. The Jews were accused of killing him to obtain his blood, and as a result their quarter was plundered and given to the flames. Henry II, king of England, strove to protect the lives and property of the Jews; the policy of his successor Henry III was the same, but in seven years he took 422,000 pounds from them in property taxes and tallages. At the coronation of Richard I in London (1190), a minor dispute stirred up by nobles who wished to escape their debts to the Jews turned into a pre-planned massacre that spread to the cities of Lincoln, Stamford, and Lynn. In the same year in York a band led by Richard de Malabestia, “who was deeply in debt to the Jews,” killed three hundred and fifty of them. In addition, 150 Jews of York, led by their rabbi Yom Tov (d. 1190), committed suicide. In 1211 three hundred rabbis left England and France to resettle in Palestine. Seven years later, when Henry III enforced the decree requiring the special badge for Jews, many Jews left England intending to emigrate. In 1255 a rumor spread in Lincoln that the Jews had lured a boy named Hugh into their quarter by trickery, flogged him, crucified him in the presence of a crowd of rejoicing Jews, and pierced his body with a lance. Armed bands attacked the Jewish quarter and arrested the rabbi there, who according to the same rumors had supervised the ceremony; they tied him to the tail of a horse, dragged him through the streets, and finally hanged him. Ninety-one Jews were arrested, of whom eighteen were hanged, and many of the arrested were released through the intercession of the courageous Dominican friars. During the civil war that disrupted order in England between 1257 and 1267, control passed from the rulers to the masses, and a series of pre-planned massacres almost completely destroyed the Jewish communities in London, Canterbury, Northampton, Winchester, Worcester, Lincoln, and Cambridge. Homes were plundered and destroyed, deeds and promissory notes were burned, and the Jews who survived these ordeals were left almost penniless. Now the English kings borrowed money from Christian bankers in Florence or Cahors in France, so they no longer needed the Jews and found protecting them a troublesome business. In 1290 Edward I ordered the sixteen thousand Jews still living in England to abandon all their immovable property and all collectible debts by November 1 and leave the country. Many of the Jews who boarded small ships drowned while crossing the English Channel; some were robbed by the ships’ crews; and some finally reached France, but the French government warned them that they must leave that land by the beginning of Lent in 1291.

In France too, with the beginning of the Crusades against the Turks in Asia and the rise of the Albigensian heresy in Languedoc, the tolerance previously shown to the Jews disappeared. Bishops in their sermons stirred the people with anti-Jewish statements. In Béziers, attacking the Jewish quarter became one of the regular customs of the week of mourning for the Crucifixion. Finally in 1160 a Christian bishop forbade such sermons but decreed that the Jews should pay a special tax to the church every year on Palm Sunday. In Toulouse the Jews were required every year, on Good Friday, to send a representative to the cathedral where, as a mild reminder of the eternal guilt of the Jewish people, he was publicly slapped on the face. In the city of Blois in 1171 several Jews were burned alive on the charge of using Christian blood in the Passover rites. King Philip Augustus of France, thinking of finding honest money, ordered that in all his realm the Jews should be imprisoned on the charge of poisoning the wells of Christians, then freed them in return for a heavy ransom (1180). A year later he confiscated all Jewish property, banished them, and gave their synagogues to the Church. In 1190, by his order, eighty Jews of Orange were killed because the authorities of that city had hanged one of Philip’s officials for the murder of a Jew. In 1198 he recalled the Jews to France and regulated their money transactions so as to yield large profits to himself. In 1236 Christian Crusaders attacked the Jewish settlements of Anjou and Poitou—especially in Bordeaux and Angoulême—and ordered all Jews to accept baptism. When the Jews refused to obey such an order, the Crusaders trampled three thousand of them to death under the hooves of their horses. Pope Gregory IX condemned these massacres, but his words had no effect and the deed was done. St. Louis advised his followers not to discuss religion with the Jewish people. He told Joinville: “When a layman hears anyone speak evil of the Christian faith, he should not defend it with words but with his sword, and he should thrust it into the belly of the offender as far as it will go.”

In 1254 St. Louis expelled the Jews from France and confiscated their property and synagogues; but a few years later he allowed them to return and restored their synagogues. The Jews were in the process of rebuilding their communities when Philip IV of France, called the Fair, imprisoned them all, confiscated all their property, credits, and goods (1306), and left them nothing but the clothes they wore. Then he expelled one hundred thousand of them with only one day’s provisions. The profit that the king gained from this action was so enormous that he presented a church to his coachman.

Placing side by side all those bloody events that occurred over two hundred years gives an unfair picture of the treatment of the Jews. In Provence, Italy, Sicily, and the Byzantine Empire after the ninth century we find only a few cases of Jewish persecution. In Christian Spain the Jews found ways to protect themselves. Even in Germany, England, and France there were long periods of peace, and one generation after each catastrophe the Jewish population increased again, and some of them were even happy and prosperous. Nevertheless, their traditions preserved for future generations the bitter memory of those sorrowful intervals. In times of peace every Jew lived in constant fear of the ever-present danger of pre-planned massacres and had to memorize a prayer to be recited when tasting the cup of martyrdom. Since the profits of wealth were not safe from plunder, destruction, and ruin, the eagerness and restlessness in acquiring wealth increased. The sharp, rambling tongue of the vagabond was always ready to confront those who wore the yellow badge. The humiliation of a defenseless and isolated minority burned to the depths of the soul, destroyed individual pride and interracial friendship, and left in the eyes of the Jew of northern Europe a sad and sorrowful look that spoke of a thousand insults and persecutions.

A few crucifixions in payment for that one death on the cross!