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