A plodding study of the background, dynamics, and historical
treatments of the Rhineland massacre of Jews in the First Crusade.
Chazan (Hebrew and Judaic Studies/New York Univ.) turns a
potentially compelling article into an overly long book, with
needless repetition and analysis, and too many awkward sentences
like the following: "The foregoing survey of the destruction of the
Jewish communities of Worms, Mainz, and Cologne has served to
concretize this sense of an unanticipated crisis seemingly erupting
overnight." What does emerge are some insights into a uniquely gory
and (possibly) glorious chapter of diaspora Jewish history from
nine hundred years ago. We learn that the pope-inspired crusade was
taken over by out-of-control German peasant mobs, aided by local
burghers who wanted Jews eliminated as competitors rather than
killed in Christ's honor. To avoid torture and forcible conversion
by the towns' bloodthirsty mob, almost the entire Jewish population
of 3,000 opted for suicide. While the sketchy records of this
unique bloodbath are liturgical in style, elegiac in tone, and
written 36 years after the fact, Chazan analyzes them as though
they were scripture. He quotes Maimonides in pointing out the
problems of Jewish law involved with parents slaughtering their
children, but there are other occasions where Chazan seems to have
little grasp of basic Jewish theology. He does not, for instance,
see antimaterial and antisexual passages as aberrant. As Chazan
views the events of 1096 in historical perspective, he sees the
political struggle of Masada eclipsing the religious conflict of
the Rhineland as the modern paradigm of extreme Jewish resistance
in the face of imminent destruction. Given its limitations, the
book will chiefly be of interest to students of medieval Jewish
history. (Kirkus Reviews)
In 1996 the world commemorated the 900th anniversary of the First
Crusade or, more precisely, of the pogroms unleashed by the crusade
upon the Jews of the Rhineland. In the Year 1096...presents a
clear, highly readable chronicle of the events of 1096. Noted
teacher and historian Robert Chazan brings readers to critical
moments in Jewish history, illuminating the events themselves,
their antecedents the significance of the events of 1096 within the
larger framework of Jewish history, including both the scope of
persecution and the record of Jewish resistance.
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