okay so what happened in ashkenaz after this brief but powerful punctuation of violence that erupted
in 1096 there are a couple of really important uh cultural socioeconomic and religious responses
that you see over the next century or so and i think they kind of charted a vector
for ashkenazic jewry to follow that we still see the impact of them today the first is
a movement called the khasid ashkenaz the term khasid of course is used with regards the hasidim
of the 18th century and onward like the chabad khasidam and you know vishnuts and satmar and
so on these are not the same qasidam they use the same term but it's a completely separate movement
the um haside ashkenaz are the word khasid means pious one the khasidi ashkenaz were a movement
that gained strength in the 50 years following the crusades primarily in minds one of the most
important literary figures is yehuda khasid it's a multi-generational family commitment to this
particular movement and he wrote the book shown on the left here called safer hasidim what is
fascinating about this brief lived movement in jewish intellectual history is that unlike
anything since we saw in the dead sea scrolls community and maybe some elements we'll see later
when we get to spot and the kabbalists there but they emphasized uh seeing themes of self-denial
uh lots of fasting uh literal you know rolling in snow to repent for things uh a uh an elevation of
the concept of martyrdom you know not surprising when you're talking about a community that's
only a few decades away from this explosion of violence in the uh in the end of the 11th century
but the movement simply did not catch on after a couple hundred years and it it sort of died
out naturally with the big exception of this particular book says which is an amazing book it's
kind of complicated it's probably put together from different pieces maybe not all by yehudah
hassan but i will mention one passage that you may be familiar with it is widely reprinted i have a
modern printing in my own home today um yehuda hassan left a fairly extensive will an ethical
will for his descendants that lists all kinds of very special practices that they are to engage in
one of my favorite ones which you've probably heard of is rabbi hassan says famously
to his sons that none of them should marry a woman who has the same name as their mother right and
this is something that you know for whatever reason is so widespread in the jewish world
that uh you know if a man meets a young woman and his mother's name is khanna and her name is khanna
so she will add a name like hanasara she'll she'll change her name so it's not exactly the same as
his mother's same thing with with women marrying men who have the same name as their fathers
and one of the ironic things is that there's no source for this idea anywhere in the torah
nowhere in the talmud nowhere in midrash it's like it the only source for this is in his particular
will from the 12th century and the famous kutsker rebbie a a hasidic rabbi in the 19th century with
an incredibly assertive wit he once said that if yehuda khasid had known how strictly people would
adhere to the instructions in his will he would have included the ten commandments in there too
yeah i think that's really funny so kasiri ashkenaz picks up this strong element of
self-mortification with all kinds of strange practices like for example
after a person dies you know putting in their will that they want their coffin dragged along
the ground not carried to the cemetery to atone for their sins and you know strange measures
of fasting to atone for sins calculating the value of a sin in terms of literally caloric
value and then paying for it with calories it's kind of like an unpopular diet but this is a
all told it was really influential for about 150 years but it kind of like flourishes right after
the crusades uh another thing we should recall is that you know the the major violence was 20 1096
but the incidence of violence would continue uh for various reasons over the next few hundred
years we are going to explore shortly medieval anti-semitism which is not something that we've
talked about extensively before and it was getting pretty nasty uh it was shortly after the crusades
that you have the first charge of ritual murder this bizarre idea that jews need to reenact the
crucifixion of jesus by god forbid killing a small child that occurs in england in 1144 and
then added to that you have this strange concept that the jews somehow need to consume human blood
a total absurdity and a lie but nevertheless these kinds of things simply keep developing
and developing and i believe that the crusades mark a turning point in ashkenazic culture
in which jews begin to become much more insular they begin to regard the outside world as far
more toxic as the uh they regard the possibility of reasonable cultural exchange with non-jews as
less and less of a possibility and they start to fold their culture inwards looking inside
at each other much less than looking to the outside world hopefully over the next few weeks
we'll have the opportunity to explore this thesis and see if it makes sense especially when contrast
with the sephardic experience in which they did not have this same kind of like sharp break
until you get to uh the expulsion of 1492 you know half a millennium later i think one of the ways in
which we see this and you'll forgive me because this is kind of a new idea for me and i have not
fleshed it out totally but you see it somewhat in the generational shift between the era of rashi
rashi was a very old man when the crusades occurred it's very near the end of his life
and his grandchildren and the larger school that developed around them known as tosafot rashi is
typically printed on the inside binding of every talmudic page and his grandchildren and their
schools commentary on the outside of the talmudic page and one of the big differences is that rashi
is a stylist tends to be much more straightforward holding your hand explaining things one word at a
time one concept at a time and he seems to be much more open to the simple translation of the text
toast vote on the other hand you see there is a much more inward looking perspective
as the entire world of reality revolves around the text in uh various places in
the talmud whereas rashi says what does it say in this page i'm going to explain to you
this here this means this here this means this and so on toso says
hey how can what it says here be true when 500 pages later in the talmud we see something that
implies the opposite and tying together these big analytical links throughout the entire document
sort of creates like an internal web of meaning that is entirely self-dependent on the text
it does not necessarily reach for scientific evidence or geographic evidence or anything
like that but the arguments are all kind of like internal and and self-reinforcing and i would like
to argue that the european tosophode represent a literary example an intellectual example of that
turn inwards that we see in ashkenazi culture that would ultimately have kind of like an explosion
when they finally do release themselves to the outside world in the 18th and 19th century in
particular but that brings me to the end of my presentation i want to thank you very much
for your attention and for those of you who who need to leave of course zoom class dismissed and
for those of you want to hang around for questions i'm really happy to talk a little further
you