volume ii, division ii: jewish history in the mishnah and talmud period, in the middle ages and...

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World Union of Jewish Studies / האיגוד העולמי למדעי היהדות / האשה היהודיה במרטירולוגיה היהודית של ימי הבינייםTHE JEWISH WOMAN IN MEDIAEVAL MARTYROLOGY Author(s): S. Noble and 'נובל שSource: Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies / דברי הקונגרס העולמי למדעי כרך ההיהדות,, Volume II, DIVISION II: JEWISH HISTORY IN THE MISHNAH AND TALMUD PERIOD, IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN TIMES; THE JEWISH LABOUR MOVEMENT; CONTEMPORARY JEWISH HISTORY; THE HOLOCAUST / כרך ב, חטיבה ב: תולדות עם ישראל בתקופת המשנה והתלמוד, בימי הביניים ובעת החדשה; תולדות תנועת העבודה היהודית; יהדות זמננו; השואה196 / ... תשכ"טPublished by: World Union of Jewish Studies / האיגוד העולמי למדעי היהדותStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23515515 . Accessed: 18/06/2014 13:56 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . World Union of Jewish Studies / האיגוד העולמי למדעי היהדותis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies / דברי הקונגרס העולמי למדעי היהדותhttp://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 194.29.185.162 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 13:56:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Volume II, DIVISION II: JEWISH HISTORY IN THE MISHNAH AND TALMUD PERIOD, IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN TIMES; THE JEWISH LABOUR MOVEMENT; CONTEMPORARY JEWISH HISTORY; THE HOLOCAUST

World Union of Jewish Studies / האיגוד העולמי למדעי היהדות

/ האשה היהודיה במרטירולוגיה היהודית של ימי הביניים THE JEWISH WOMAN IN MEDIAEVAL MARTYROLOGYAuthor(s): S. Noble and נובל ש'Source: Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies / דברי הקונגרס העולמי למדעיVolume II, DIVISION II: JEWISH HISTORY IN THE MISHNAH AND TALMUD ,היהדות, כרך הPERIOD, IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN TIMES; THE JEWISH LABOUR MOVEMENT;CONTEMPORARY JEWISH HISTORY; THE HOLOCAUST / כרך ב, חטיבה ב: תולדות עם ישראלבתקופת המשנה והתלמוד, בימי הביניים ובעת החדשה; תולדות תנועת העבודה היהודית; יהדותזמננו; השואה... תשכ"ט / 196Published by: World Union of Jewish Studies / האיגוד העולמי למדעי היהדותStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23515515 .

Accessed: 18/06/2014 13:56

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

World Union of Jewish Studies / האיגוד העולמי למדעי היהדות is collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies /דברי הקונגרס העולמי למדעי היהדות

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.162 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 13:56:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Volume II, DIVISION II: JEWISH HISTORY IN THE MISHNAH AND TALMUD PERIOD, IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN TIMES; THE JEWISH LABOUR MOVEMENT; CONTEMPORARY JEWISH HISTORY; THE HOLOCAUST

THE JEWISH WOMAN IN MEDIAEVAL MARTYROLOGY

S. Noble

New York

In his discussion of the crusading movement, the eminent historian

Salo W. Baron states that 'its victimization of Jews... also affected

members of the weaker sex. In fact, women played a significant role...

in the self-sacrificing deeds of the martyrs.'1 Speaking of the massacres of

1096, Julius Aronius says '...As frequently in such cases, here too the

women excelled in readiness for sacrifice and steadfastness of faith.'2

I wanted to determine this role of the women and the degree of their

excellence of faith. To this end, I have analyzed the lists of victims in

Sigmund Salfeld's Das Martyrologium des Nürnberger Memorbuches

(Berlin, 1898). Salfeld's lists cover the period of 1096-1350. As he himself notes

in the introduction (p. XIX) there may be some repetition of names in

them. However, their major shortcoming, for my purpose, is the indeter

minateness of the sex of by far the largest part of the victims. The records

generally read: 'So and so and his wife and their children.' When more

specific, they state 'and their five children.' In very rare instances are

the children named. The large number of child victims thus remains

unidentifiable as to sex.

The total of identifiable male victims figuring in these lists is 2,664 and of females - 2,533. These figures are highly revealing. Enjoying the

shelter of their homes and less exposed to the perils of the roads,3 the

1. Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. IV, (New

York, 1957), p. 96.

2. Julius Aronius, Regesten zur Geschichte der Juden im fränkischen und deutschen

Reiche bis zum Jahre 1273 (Berlin, 1902), p. 81.

3. Although the role of the Jewish woman in the economic life of the period

seems to have been not insignificant. See Joseph Jacobs, The Jews of Angevin England

(New York, 1893), p. 86 and passim. Because of the limited area, the comparatively

short space of time two centuries with which the book deals and the availability of

ample materials, the study provides many details on Jewish economic activity in

England. The situation, in this respect, was in all likelihood not dissimilar in other

Western European and Mediterranean Jewish settlements. See also Robert Hoeniger,

Das Judenschreinbuch der Laurenzpfarre zu Köln (Berlin, 1888).

133

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134 S. NOBLE

women nevertheless account for practically the same number of victims

as the men. Also the factor or recognizability should be borne in mind.

The Jewish woman was far less identifiable as Jewish than the man;

distinguishing marks were introduced somewhat later in the period and

were not always scrupulously observed. If nevertheless the percentage of female victims was so high, clearly the vaunted mediaeval chivalry was a myth or did not apply to Jews.

In a sense, the cold martyrdom of the Jewish woman began with the

fall of the second commonwealth and the violent dispersion of the Jews.

'The mother of the seven'4 was cast in the dual tragic role of Jew and

woman, and the two were complementary in agony. The 'exceedingly beautiful' wife of R. Moses, of the famous four captives on the sea, who

valued her honour above life and who, upon assurance from her husband

that those who drowned would be 'brought back from the depths of the

sea,' leaped into the waters, was not unique.5 An earlier Talmudic

source speaks of four hundred young people who under similar circum

stances preferred death to dishonour.6 The story of the captive daughter of R. Ishmael the High Priest, 'peerless in her beauty in the whole world,' who was about to be mated to her brother and upon recognizing him

expired, became the subject of a mediaeval poem that found its way into

the Dirges for the Ninth of Av. Lamenting the anti-Jewish disorders in

Palestine, in 1012, the Spanish poet Joseph ibn Abitor stresses in elegiac strains the tragic plight of the Jewish woman... 'Weep for the chaste

matrons, scrupulously guarding their purity, who were made pregnant by the seed of Ham...'7 Paradoxically, hate destroyed the Jewish woman

in those years; love did no less. Some two centuries later, at the time

of the Second Crusade, the poet R. Joel, son of Isaac the Levite, denounc

es the lust of the adversary in biblical idiom: 'His soul did cleave unto

Dinah, daughter of Leah.'8 Similarly, the poet R. Joseph, son of Asher,

4. Pesikta Rabati, cited from B. Halper, Post-Biblical Hebrew Literature

(Philadelphia, 1921), p. 39. 5. Abraham ibn Daud, The Book of Tradition (ed. Gerson D. Cohen) (Philadel

phia, 1967), p. 64. 6. Git tin, 576. Not all Jewish women, however, were of such heroic cast. Zipiah,

daughter of Hai, meekly submitted to the embraces of Mohammed, after he put her

husband, the poet Cnana, to death on a trumped up charge (Shimeon Bernfeld, Muhamad [Warsaw, 1898], p. 127, n.)

7. Hayim Shirman, Hashira haivrit bisfarad uviprovans, vol. I, (Jerusalem, 1954),

p. 64.

8. A. M. Haberman, ed., Sefergezerot ashkenaz vezarfat (Jerusalem, 1945), p. 109.

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JEWISH WOMAN IN MEDIAEVAL MARTYROLOGY 135

who flourished in Chartres around 1190, declares plaintively: 'My enemies

have crushed the breasts of my sister.'9

The finest hour of the Jewish woman came in 1096 and the years

following, in the period of the Crusades, when kiddush hashem became

a social phenomenon and assumed community dimensions. As early as

1007 she gave a demonstration of her mettle. Robert the Pious, king of

France, gave the Jews of his realm the choice of conversion to Christian

ity or destruction by the sword. 'At that time there arose noble women

and took hold of one another's hands, saying: "Let us go to the river

and drown ourselves, so that the name of God be not desecrated through us, for the sacred is trodden down in the mire of the streets and our

treasures are burned in fire and altogether death is better for us than

life."10 Eighty-nine years later this scene was repeated in countless

communities of the Rhineland. The primacy goes to Speyer. 'And

there lived a prominent and pious woman, who killed herself for the

sanctification of the Name. She was the first in all of the communities

to slay herself.'11 Worms followed suit. 'A worthy woman lived there

and her name was Minna. She hid in the cellar of a house outside the

city. And there gathered unto her all the people of the city and said to

her: "Behold you are a woman of valour - know now that God no

longer wants to save you. The dead lie naked in the streets and there is

none to bury them. Defile yourself (a pejorative expression for baptism)!" And she answered and said: "Far be it from me to deny the God in

heaven. For His sake and for His sacred Torah slay me. Delay no more."

Thus was killed the renowned in the gates.'12 Mainz did not disgrace her sister communities in the Rhineland. 'There the women girt their

loins with strength and slew their sons and their daughters and then

themselves...The tender and delicate woman slaughtered her darling child...Maidens and brides peered through the windows and cried in

a loud voice: "See, O Lord, what we do for the sanctification of Your

great Name." 13י Events in other places are variations on the same

theme.

The above accounts of the woman's role are the works of the chroni

clers of the period. The liturgic poets do not lag hehind them in their

9. H. BrodY and M. Wiener, Mivehar hashira haivrit (Leipzig, 1922), p. 246.

10. Haberman, op. cit., p. 19.

11. A. Neubauer and M. Stern, Hebräische Berichte über die Judenverfolgungen

während der Kreuzzuge (Berlin, 1892) p. 2.

12. Ibid., p. 50-51. 13. Ibid., p. 7.

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136 S. NOBLE

exaltation of that role. The poet R. Abraham relates: *Compassionate women strangle their children... the brides bid farewell to their bride

grooms with a kiss and rush off to be slaughtered.'14 Eulogizing the thirty two martyrs of Blois, of 1171, the poet R. Hillel of Bonn, significantly

points out the number of women among them: 'As the women are led to

the stake/they urge one another to make haste/seventeen is their count

by the staff/with gladness and rejoicing they enter into the king's palace.'15 The poet R. Shlomo, son of Abraham, holds up as an example the

young woman who answered the crusaders' request for her conversion

by spitting on the cross.16

Not only are the women credited with taking the initiative in sanctify

ing the Name of God, they are also singled out for rare resourcefulness

and adroitness in attaining their ends. Knowing the greed of the adversa

ries, they would cast out to them through the windows money and silver

and other valuables to keep them busy with picking up the treasure so

they could finish slaying their children.17 Another delaying tactic of the

women was to hurl stones at the adversaries through the windows, which they would then hurl back at them till 'their bodies became one

bloody mess.'18 Dreading most the seizure and subsequent baptism of their children, the women would resort to all kinds of stratagems to

frustrate the plans of the adversaries.19 In some instances they would tie

their children to their bodies and thus be burned together with them.20 Several centuries later, on the threshold of the modern period, a Jewish

woman claims to possess magic powers of invulnerability and urges her

assailant to test them. He fires his harquebus, and she falls dead. It was also the women who were the first to perceive the nature and

true significance of the onslaught and to alarm their menfolk accordingly. Quite early it dawned upon them that the aim of the crusaders was to

extirpate Judaism rather than exterminate the Jew. The Augustinian

interpretation of the Psalmist's sentence (lix:12), 'slay them not...

bring them down,' gained acceptance in the Christian community.

14. Haberman, op. cit., p. 62.

15. Ibid., p. 138. 16. Ibid., p. 171. 17. Neubauer and Stern, op. cit., p. 9.

18. Loc. cit.

19. Leopold Zunz, Die synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters (Frankfurt am

Main, 1920), p. 41. 20. Haberman, op. cit., p. 224.

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JEWISH WOMAN IN MEDIAEVAL MARTYROLOGY 137

God himself, as it were, is made privy to this plan.21 'They oppress us and vex us, slay and hang... to make us forget the living God, to learn their Mass...'22 The dominant faith resolved to brook rivalry no

longer. It directed its blow at the fountain and source of Judaism.23 Some crusaders, the chronicler tells, found a Scroll of the Torah and tore it to shreds. The women broke out in a lament over the desecration of the Holy Torah, "the perfection of beauty, the delight of the eyes" and roused their husbands to such 'holy zeal for God and the Holy Torah' that they fell upon one of the crusaders and slew him.24

The role of the Jewish woman in this titanic struggle between two

unequal forces was not lost on the adversaries, either. Reluctantly they admitted the failure of their enterprise, but blamed it on the Jewish

women, who 'enticed their husbands to repudiate the crucified' and

proceeded to vent their rage on them.23 In general, the Jewish women were reputed to excel their men in contempt for Christian sanctities. The chronicler of Cologne tells of an alleged desecration of icons by some

Jews, in which the Jewish women took a leading part.26 Ecclesiastic

legislature took note of the role of the Jewish woman and singled her out for particularly harsh treatment. The infamous yellow badge imposed upon the Jews by Pope Innocent III fixed the minimum age for male wearers at thirteen and for females at eleven.27 The pointed hat was

obligatory for women long after men had been freed from it.28 The decree of the Council of Paris, of 1213, prohibiting Christian midwives from assisting at Jewish childbirths, at times jeopardized the life of the

Jewish woman.29 Similarly, the prohibition of nursing Jewish children was aimed mainly at the Jewish woman.30

There are also other indications of the extraordinary devotion of the

mediaeval Jewish woman to her faith. Her share in apostasy was most

likely much smaller than that of the Jewish male. There are no statistics

21. Historians and Historical Schools (Jerusalem, 1962), p. 47.

22. Zunz, op. cit., p. 16, also p. 32 and 204.

23. Haberman, p. 20.

24. Neubauer and Stern, op. cit., p. 10.

25. Ibid., p. 27. 26. Aronius, op. cit., p. 315.

27. Solomon Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the 13th Century (Phila

delphia, 1933), p. 69. 28. Loc. cit., n. 125.

29. Ibid., p. 307. 30. Ibid., p. 331.

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138 S. NOBLE

on the subject, but acquaintance with the literature of the period strongly

points to this conclusion. The case of a man who 'had been saved from

the error of Jewish blindness,' fending with his wife, who remained a

Jewess, over the possession of their four-year-old boy, which Pope

Gregory IX was called upon to adjudicate, may have been representative of many other cases of similar religious breaks.31 In speaking of the

paucity of Jewish conversions in mediaeval England, Joseph Jacobs

mentions only seven cases in a given period. Of these only one was a

Jewess.32 Attempting to explain why a number of Jews figure in the

official records of England under their mothers' names rather than their

fathers', he advances the possibility of apostasy of the fathers.33 That

number is fairly large. Significantly, when in 1096 the community of

Treves was forcibly converted, upon the cessation of the persecution the

converts immediately reverted to Judaism, exept for one person. This was

a male and, surprisingly, the rabbi.34 Caesarius of Heisterbach tells

the story of the spiritual adventures of a Jewess who converted and he

quite ingenuously places this story in his Dialogue on Miracles.35 Tow

ard the end of this tragic period, in reviewing the Jewish agony in Spain, R. Joseph Yaavez pays magnificent tribute to the Jewish women: they led the way of the santification of the Name followed by their husbands.36

Perusal of the pertinent literature of the period brings out a striking and curious fact. In no other comparable body of Jewish writing -

excluding of course the genrist love lyric - is there so much stress on the

physical charms of the Jewish women as in these writings. In this critical hour the Jewish men suddenly cast away their traditional reticence and

unabashedly celebrated not only the moral valour of their women, but

their physical beauty as well. This endowment of the Jewish woman is pointed up deliberately and with care. For the chronicler's purpose it would have sufficed merely to record the heroic deed of a certain woman

without the additional descriptive phrase, 'and she was of a beautiful

form and fair to look upon and very attractive to all beholders.'37 Such simple characterization abound in the chronicles and in the liturgic

31. Ibid., p. 181. 32. Joseph Jacobs, The Jews of Angevin England (New York, 1893), p. 339.

33. Ibid., p. 155. 34. Aronius, op. cit., p. 90.

35. The Dialogue on Miracles, quoted from Jacob R. Marcus, The Jew in the

Medieval World (New York, 1938), p. 142-144.

36. Joseph Yaavez, Or hahayim (Amsterdam, 1781), p. 12a.

37. Shimeon Bernfeld, Sefer hademaot, vol. I, (Berlin, 1929), p. 120.

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JEWISH WOMAN IN MEDIAEVAL MARTYROLOGY 139

poetry.38 There is even a suggestion of romance in the relations between the count of Blois, Thibaut V, and a Jewish woman, Pulcelina.39 In one

instance, we are told, the brutish crusaders were so overawed by the

exquisite beauty of a young woman that they refused to harm her.40

Time and again the Jewish women are described going to voluntary death as if going to their wedding canopy. In this ambience the rapture ravished idiom of the Song of Songs is a natural. In this chivalrous

tribute to the Jewish woman we may see an attempt at compensation for her supernumerary suffering qua woman.

Some of the poets individualize and sublimate these characterizations

to the rank of symbol. R. Moses, son of R. Elazar, speaks of the

victims as 'beautiful women, shaped like Keziah and Jemimah,' the

proverbially beautiful daughters of Job.41 R. Eliezer of Worms, author

of Rokeah, eulogizing his thirteen-year-old daughter, a victim of the

crusaders, and enumerating her virtues, suddenly apostrophises: 'Oh, maiden beautiful!'42 Great significance attaches to the aforementioned

poem by R. Joel of Bonn.43 The line 'his soul did cleave unto Dinah, the daughter of Leah' is entirely biblical, save for the words 'the daughter of Leah,' where the original was the daughter of Jacob. Quoting the

Bible, then what prompted our poet to make the change? Assuredly, we shall not be far from the truth if we say that he wanted thereby to

give recognition to the place and the new historic role of the Leahs - as

women and as Jews - in Jewish life.

The inspiration for the assumption of this role came to the Jewish

woman from both life and letters. For Jewish life in those centuries,

specifically the life of the woman, was on a high ideal plane. Even with

due allowance for exaggeration, the characterization of his martyred

wife, Dolca, by R. Eliezer of Worms provides an exalted image of

Jewish womanhood. She lived a life of good deeds, principally devoted to

the advancement of the study of the Torah. 'She mended the clothes of

students' and in her short life 'sewed together about forty Scrolls of the

Torah.'44 The wife of R. Eliezer saw the importance of the education of

38. Ibid., p. 169, 184, 202, 203; vol. II, p. 57, 73; Haberman, op. cit., p. 195;

Zunz, op. cit., p. 16.

39. Bernfeld, op. cit., vol. I, p. 223.

40. Ibid., p. 191. 41. Haberman, op. cit., p. 221.

42. Ibid., p. 166. 43. See n. 8.

44. Haberman, op. cit., p. 165-167.

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140 S. NOBLE

women and acted accordingly. And this education began at the tender age of four.

Literature provided a powerful stimulus to the heroic deed. The

story of the akedah, the sacrifice of Isaac, moved in those days to a

position of centrality and assumed a new meaning in Jewish life.45 And

although the principal characters in the drama are men, the role of the

women is not negligible either. 'The one hundred outcries which mother

Sarah cried out then' determined the number of tekiot, the notes of the

shophar sounded on Rosh Hashanah.46 Sarah's tent was designated as

the repository of the ashes of the son to be sacrificed.47 In the second half

of the tenth century appeared Yosiphon, a version of ancient Jewish

history in a sublimate key, which immediately came to enjoy an enormous

popularity.48 The image of the Jewish woman is exalted in this book; she is raised to the position of the heroine of Jewish history.49 She

manifests an aristocratic aloofness from the cares of workaday life, a

profound contempt for self-interest, a boundless devotion to her people and stoic defiance of death and suffering. Queen Esther expresses her

contempt for the royal crown on her head and for her royal garments 'so

long as her nation is in exile;'50 the wife of the treacherously slain Simon

the Hasmonean, urges her son to disregard her tortures and to avenge his slain father;51 Miriam, wife of Herod, walks calmly to her death

'as if to a house of mirth, despising death...and thereby manifesting the

glory of her family and the splendour of her ancestors;'52 Berenice,

sister of King Agrippa II, pleads pathetically with Procurator Felix for her people53 and the women of Jodephath ascend the walls of the fortress beside the men for a final stand against the foe54 — all these

provide shining examples for their sisters of a later generation. And these

outstripped their predecessors in number and in quality of deed.

45. Cf. Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial (Philadelphia, 1867). 46. Ibid., p. 75. 47. Ibid., p. 148. 48. Baron, op. cit., vol. VI, p. 195.

49. On the impact of Yosiphon on the following generations see Gerson D.

Cohen, 'Maase Hanah veshiveat baneha basifrut haivrit,' Sefer hayovel likhvod

Mordekhay Menahem Kaplan (New York, 1953), p. 109,118,121. 50. David Günzburg, ed. Josippon (Berdichev, 1896-1913), p. 31.

51. Ibid., p. 87.

52. Ibid., p. 150.

53. Ibid., p. 185. 54. Ibid., p. 204.

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