Beyond the Rabbinic Paradigm

Beyond the Rabbinic Paradigm Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, Elisabeth Hollender Jewish Quarterly Review, Volume 111, Number 2, Spring 2021, pp. 236-264 (Article) Published by University of Pennsylvania Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/794592 [ Access provided for user 'shohamst' at 6 Jun 2021 07:19 GMT from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev ] T H E J E W I S H Q U A R T E R L Y R E V I E W , Vol. 111, No. 2 (Spring 2021) 236–264 Beyond the Rabbinic Paradigm EPHRAIM SHOHAM-STEINER AND ELISABETH HOLLENDER INTRODUCTION L AY L E A D E R S H I P H A S P L AY E D a role in nearly every Jewish community across time; medieval Ashkenaz was no exception. By “leadership,” we mean people—usually a group but sometimes individuals—who were entitled to make decisions that influenced the lives of others and who performed communal functions such as intercommunal arbitration, validation of legal transactions, representation of the community to outside authorities, division of taxes and financial burdens, and more. The term “lay,” in this context, refers to people who, although informed about religious norms, were not primarily known for their scholarly erudition and did not compose normative or legal texts. In medieval times, leadership positions were mostly entrusted to the financially successful and the learned male elite. While the role of rabbinic scholars in the organization and leadership of medieval Ashkenazic communities has been thoroughly researched in the past,1 information regarding the lay leadership is limited and usually appears in passing in rabbinic writing. Unlike the rabbinic scholars who gradually moved from an oral to a written culture, explaining the norms 1. See Avraham Grossman, The Early Sages of Ashkenaz: Their Lives, Leadership, and Works (900–1096) (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1989). A brief English summary of this seminal study can be found in Grossman, “Summary of the Early Sages of Ashkenaz,” Immanuel 15 (1983): 73–81. See also Israel M. Ta-Shma, “Ashkenazi Jewry in the Eleventh Century,” in Creativity and Tradition: Studies in Medieval Rabbinic Scholarship Literature and Thought, ed. I. M. Ta-Shma (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), 1–36; Haym Soloveitchik, “Can Halakhic Texts Talk History?” in his Collected Essays, vol. 1, ed. H. Soloveitchik (Oxford, 2013), 169–223. Even recent publications emphasize the rabbinic leadership and the notion of the holy community, very present in rabbinic sources. See Jeffrey R. Woolf, The Fabric of Religious Life in Medieval Ashkenaz (1000–1300): Creating Sacred Communities (Leiden, 2015), 22–80; Joseph Isaac Lifshitz, Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg and the Foundation of Jewish Political Thought (Cambridge, 2016). The Jewish Quarterly Review (Spring 2021) Copyright © 2021 Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved. SHOHAM-STEINER AND HOLLENDER 237 of individual and communal life, lay leadership tended not to leave much of a paper trail, to the best of our knowledge.2 Even though written forms were accepted for many legal procedures in the Jewish tradition, everyday leadership activities were usually not recorded in writing and were not systematically archived until a much later period.3 Yet even in communities with strong rabbinic academies and a strong rabbinic presence, a lay leadership existed, organized into a body of elect leaders, or parnasim, similar to the Christian city council.4 From the information available to us, this body comprised scholars and laymen alike.5 2. On the transition from oral to written culture, see Nachman (Neil) Danzig, “Mi-Talmud ‘al peh le-Talmud bi-ktav: ‘Al derech mesirat ha-Talmud ha-bavli velimudo bi-yeme ha-benaim,” Bar-Ilan 30–31 (2006): 49–112; Talya Fishman, Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Philadelphia, 2011); Haym Soloveitchik, “The Third Yeshiva of Bavel and the Cultural Origins of Ashkenaz: A Proposal,” in Collected Essays, vol. 2, ed. H. Soloveitchik (Oxford, 2014), 150–201. On communal regulations in Ashkenaz, see Rainer Josef Barzen, Taqqanot Qehillot Šum: Die Rechtssatzungen der jüdischen Gemeinden von Mainz, Worms und Speyer im hohen und späten Mittelalter (Wiesbaden, 2019). The Ashkenazic takanot are formulated in rabbinic language but represent decisions made by both lay and rabbinic leadership. 3. No Jewish archive from medieval Ashkenaz is extant. There are, however, Christian archival records from the twelfth century onward, which also transmit references to Jewish parties, such as the Cologne Schreinsbücher, one of which was dedicated to documenting sales of assets in the Jewish quarter; see Robert Hoeniger, ed., Das Judenschreinsbuch der Laurenzpfarre zu Köln (Berlin, 1888). A collection of all legal documents referring to Jews in the realm of the late medieval Roman-German Empire is currently being composed, within the framework of the project “Medieval Ashkenaz: Corpus der Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden im spätmittelalterlichen Reich,” http://www.medieval-ashkenaz.org. In general, these legal documents do not describe leadership in medieval Ashkenaz. 4. Yitzhak F. Baer, “The Origins of Jewish Communal Organization in the Middle Ages,” Binah; Studies in Jewish History, Thought and Culture 1 (1989): 59–82; Aryeh Grabois, “The Leadership of the Parnasim in the Communities of Northern France in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries: The ‘Bon Viri’ and the ‘Elders of the City,’ ” in Culture and Society in Medieval Jewry: Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, ed. M. Ben-Sasson et al. (Jerusalem, 1989), 303–14. For a description of this process, see Kenneth Stow, Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 157–95, esp. 162–63. Christian sources that viewed the Jews as an organized community used terms such as universitas Judeorum, gemeynde van den iuden, gemeynde der ioitschaf, gemeine ioitzschaf, gemeine iuetscheit, Juden und Judischhait; see, e.g., Leonard Ennen and Gottfried Eckerz, eds., Quellen der Geschichte der Stadt Köln (Cologne, 1860–79), 3:278; 4:90, 153, 120; 5:317. 5. Two examples will have to suffice: among the signatories of Hebrew documents attached to the Cologne Judenschreinsbuch, who obviously belonged to the Jewish council, we find scholars such as Yakar b. Samuel ha-Levi and Haym b. Yeḥiel Hefets Zahav; among the parnasim from Worms were such people as 238 JQR 111.2 (2021) In this essay, we collected and analyzed evidence from Cologne, where there was no strong rabbinic academy during the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, in order to show some features that we associate with lay leadership and the differences between lay leadership and rabbinic scholars who led communities. This will be achieved by contrasting the lay leadership with the more prominent form of decision making in medieval Ashkenaz—namely, the scholarly leadership documented in halakhic literature, which is our main, and often only, source of information. Texts composed by the rabbinic elite have been scrutinized for information on those “beyond the elite,” such as women, the poor, and the sick; thus we seek to extract from rabbinic texts traces of a lay leadership, a presence that, since it did not actively contribute texts, has remain silenced behind the literate culture associated with the rabbinic academies of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz (collectively referred to by the acronym ShUM).6 OR GA NIZED JEWISH COMMUNITIES IN EARLY ASHKENAZ The practice of Judaism implicitly and explicitly assumes that worship was but one of several communal functions. Thus, even Jews who lived at a remove from the major Jewish centers had some basic level of collective organization.7 This communal piece of Jewish life was reinforced by the Yekutiel b. Jacob ha-Levi (d. April 29, 1261), who most likely was not a scholar but is remembered as a parnas on his tombstone (epidat Worms 862; http:// www.steinheim-institut.de/cgi-bin/epidat?id=wrm-862&lang=de). 6. The fact that no Hebrew sources from Ashkenazic communities or groups outside the rabbinic elite are extant does not rule out their existence: recent scholarship has successfully uncovered traces of other groups in the literature of the elites. See Grossman, Early Sages of Ashkenaz, 9–19; for traces of the non-elite groups, see the methodological guidelines set by Ivan Marcus, “History, Story, and Collective Memory: Narrativity in Early Ashkenazic Culture,” Prooftexts 10.3 (1990): 365–88; Ivan Marcus, “The Historical Meaning of Hasidei Ashkenaz: Fact, Fiction or Cultural Self-Image,” in Jewish Culture and Society in Medieval France and Germany, ed. I. Marcus (Surrey, 2014), 103–14. These guidelines were implemented by Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton, N.J., 2004); and by Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, On the Margins of a Minority: Leprosy, Madness, and Disability among the Jews of Medieval Europe (Detroit, 2014), esp. 7–20. See also Ivan Marcus, “Israeli Medieval Jewish Historiography: From Nationalist Positivism to New Cultural and Social Histories,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 17.3 (2010): 244–85. 7. Not much has been published on Jewish communal organization in the Latin West before the twelfth century; see Yitzhak F. Baer, “The Origins of the Organization of the Jewish Community of the Middle Ages” (Hebrew), Zion 15 (1950): 1–41; Michael Toch, “The Formation of a Diaspora: The Settlement of Jews in the Medieval German ‘Reich,’ ” Ashkenaz: Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kul- SHOHAM-STEINER AND HOLLENDER 239 expectation of the ruling authorities in almost every corner of the oikumene that religious minorities would create organizational structures mediating between local Jews and the regime, as well as for implementing internal communal tasks.8 The need for some form of communal organization was not limited to communities that could rely on local rabbinic scholars to guide them in the application of Jewish law to their everyday life. In the early medieval period, peripheral Jewish communities in areas may not have had an abundance of rabbinic knowledge available but could well have had a communal infrastructure.9 Leadership in these communities would have been assumed by a lay elite—financially successful men or those individuals who had special contacts with the non-Jewish figures of power. In organized communities with a strong rabbinic presence, a substantial part of the parnasim would be recruited from among this group as well.10 We suggest that the stories told by the Ashkenazic authors, compilers, and disseminators of Talmud-based rabbinic knowledge who wished to promote their understanding of Judaism do not do justice to what were possibly competing structures of lay leadership. Although their understanding of a textually driven Jewish life eventually gained hegemony in Ashkenazic communities, the narrative of the rabbinic elite in Mainz, Worms, and, later, Speyer does not necessarily provide a full picture of Jewish communal life in the earlier periods in Ashkenaz. tur der Juden 7.1 (1997): 55–78; Avraham Grossman, “The Jewish Community in Germany in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries” (Hebrew), in Kahal Yisra’el: Hashilton ha-atsmi ha-yehudi le-dorotav, vol. 2, ed. A. Grossman and Y. Kaplan (Jerusalem, 2004), 57–74. The rabbinically structured and sanctioned communal ordinances are from a later period; see Guido Kisch, The Jews in Medieval Germany: A Study of Their Legal and Social Status (New York, 1970), 171–73; Louis Finkelstein, Jewish Self-Government in the Middle Ages (New York, 1964), 6–95. 8. See Yair Furstenberg, ed., Jewish and Christian Communal Identities in the Roman World (Leiden, 2016), 1–20. 9. On the nature of Jewish knowledge in the early northern European Jewish communities, see Robert Bonfil, “Cultural and Religious Traditions in NinthCentury French Jewry,” Binah: Studies in Jewish History, Thought and Culture 3 (1994): 1–17; Haym Soloveitchik, “Agobard of Lyons, Megilat Aḥima‘ats, and the Babylonian Orientation of Early Ashkenaz,” in Collected Essays, vol. 2, ed. H. Soloveitchik (Oxford, 2014), 5–22. 10. On the etymology of the term parnasim and its use in medieval Ashkenaz, see Avraham (Rami) Reiner, “ ‘A Tombstone Inscribed’: Titles Used to Describe the Deceased in Tombstones from Würzburg between 1147–1148 and 1346” (Hebrew), Tarbiz 78.1 (2009): 123–52, esp. 137–40 and n. 69. The necessary detailed analysis of the function of this office in administration and jurisdiction in medieval communities cannot take place within this study. 240 JQR 111.2 (2021) The overlap between what seems to be the beginning of rabbinic activity in Ashkenaz and the emergence of written rabbinic literary culture is significant. For centuries, rabbinic tradition had struggled with the complex tension between orality and textuality.11 It is only in the early Middle Ages that we see evidence of wider textual attestation to the contents of rabbinic learning.12 While the rabbinic scholars adopted textuality, a lay leadership that conducted its affairs orally would easily be forgotten, especially if overwritten by a textual culture. Even if documents related to individual cases had been produced, the eventual expulsion and breakdown of medieval Ashkenazic urban communities from the mid-fourteenth century and the dispersion of these communities would have damaged, and even destroyed, any extant archive. On the other hand, medieval responsa and halakhic texts were preserved because they, by definition, transcended the individual cases and were intended to address general halakhic questions and serve as a repository of inner Jewish legal procedure. THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF COLOGNE: A TEST CASE We have chosen Cologne as our test case because it is one of the few centers in the transalpine region with a long-standing Jewish presence but little record in the development of early Ashkenazic talmudic scholarship.13 11. Cana Werman, “Oral Torah vs. Written Torah(s): Competing Claims to Authority,” in Rabbinic Perspectives: Rabbinic Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. S. Fraade et al. (Leiden, 2006), 175–97. Note that Werman places the Jewish move from oral teachings to authoritative texts much earlier than Danzig and others. See also Steven Fraade, “Concepts of Scripture in Rabbinic Judaism: ‘Oral Torah’ and ‘Written Torah,’ ” in Jewish Concepts of Scripture: A Comparative Introduction, ed. B. D. Sommer (New York, 2012), 31–46. 12. In the fascinating “Legend of Rabbi Meshullam” discussed extensively by Sara Zfatman in her The Jewish Tale in the Middle Ages and in her later books, Meshullam’s scholarly abilities are revealed while he is in a servile condition in the house of the Babylonian nasi (the Jewish prince or exilarch), as he secretly emended texts that were on the great master’s desktop; see Zfatman, The Jewish Tale in the Middle Ages: Between Ashkenaz and Sefarad (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1993), 83–86, esp. 85; Sara Zfatman, From Talmudic Times to the Middle Ages: The Establishment of Leadership in Jewish Literature (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2010), 436–56. 13. For the 12th and 13th centuries, intercommunal contacts based on individual scholars are well documented, often including periods of study at Mainz for scholars who later lived in Cologne and the participation of Cologne-based scholars in courts that decided Mainz and Worms cases. One early example is the 12thc. scholar Samuel ben Natronai, who was born in Bari (southern Italy), migrated north, studied in Mainz, and married into the highly respected and influential Mainz rabbinic family of the famous scholar Eliezer ben Nathan. Later, he moved from Mainz to Cologne. Responsa in his father-in-law’s collection Sefer Ra’avan, which includes copies of deeds he signed in Cologne, place ben Natronai in this SHOHAM-STEINER AND HOLLENDER 241 It is also relatively large and close enough to the scholars of the ShUM cities, who produced textual sources we can work with. We believe that Cologne may be representative, as well, of communities with similar internal structures but that would not necessarily have been treated in the same way in responsa and halakhic literature because they were less visible and less bothersome to halakhic scholars. We think that studying Cologne may be a gateway into an evaluation of the role of the lay authority in Jewish communities—drawing more on behavioral norms of Jewish life and common knowledge than rabbinic erudition. A Jewish presence in Cologne is documented as early as the fourth century.14 There is also evidence that Jews lived in Cologne in the late Carolingian and Ottonian periods, even though their presence in the Roman and early medieval periods may not have been continuous.15 It was city in the 1130s. See Simcha Emanuel, Fragments of the Tablets: Lost Books of the Tosaphists (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2006), 60–80. Later examples are Joel ha-Levi and his son Eliezer ben Joel ha-Levi (Ra’avya) in the second half of the 12th c.: Avigdor Aptowitzer, Mavo’ le-Sefer Ra’avya (Jerusalem, 1938), 1–35, 252–57. From the mid-13th c., the most renowned scholar is Asher ben Yeḥiel; see Avraham H. Freimann, Ha-Rosh—Rabbenu Asher bar Yeḥiel ve-tse’etsa’av: Ḥayehem u-po‘alam, trans. M. Adler (Jerusalem, 1986), 21–30. 14. As gleaned from imperial decrees dating from 321 and 331 C.E. See Werner Eck, “The Jewish Community in Cologne from Roman Times to the Early Middle Ages,” in Judaea-Palaestina, Babylon and Rome: Jews in Antiquity, ed. B. Isaac and Y. Shahar (Tübingen, 2012), 249–59. 15. A theory of continuity has been championed by archaeologist Sven Schütte, who claims a continuous Jewish presence in Cologne from Roman times into the medieval period; see Sven Schütte, “Continuity Problems and Authority Structures in Cologne,” in Empire: Towards an Ethnology of Europe’s Barbarians, ed. G. Ausenda (Woodbidge, 1995), 163–75; Sven Schütte and Marianne Gechter, eds., Von der Ausgrabung zum Museum: Kölner Archäologie zwischen Rathaus und Praetorium: Ergebnisse und Materialien 2006–2012 (Cologne, 2012), 163–71 (the mikvah) and 99–105 (the synagogue). Arguments for an intermittent presence were presented by Eck, “Jewish Community in Cologne”; Michael Toch, The Economic History of European Jews: Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2013), app. 3 (“Places of Jewish Settlement in France and Germany”), 289–310; Sebastian Ristow, “Judentum und Christentum in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter im deutschsprachigen Raum aus archäologischer Sicht,” Das Altertum 59 (2014): 241–62. Given the current state of published archaeological findings, it is unlikely that a direct connection can be drawn between the documented Jewish presence in Cologne in the late Roman period and the Jewish community that seems to have settled there in the Carolingian period. See also the cogent arguments by Matthias Schmandt, Judei, cives et incole: Studien zur jüdischen Geschichte Kölns im Mittelalter (Gesellschaft zur Erforschung der Geschichte der Juden e.V., Arye-Maimon Institut für Geschichte der Juden 11) (Hannover, 2002), 9–12; Matthias Schmandt, “Cologne: Jewish Center of the Lower Rhine,” in The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries): Proceedings of the International 242 JQR 111.2 (2021) an important cathedral city whose medieval Jewish community was wealthy enough to build a splendid synagogue and monumental mikvah (ritual bath),16 but unlike the ShUM communities, Cologne did not boast a renowned rabbinical academy (yeshiva), and no founding or immigration narratives mythologized it. Lacking a dominant rabbinic presence, we therefore suggest that vestiges of lay leadership were more likely to have survived longer and perhaps more robustly in Cologne than elsewhere. As noted in several scholarly works, as of the early eleventh century, in the ShUM communities, rabbinic scholars were involved in governance, jurisdiction, and arbitration of the kahal (organized community).17 The situation in Cologne seems to have been somewhat different. Examination of rabbinic writings from tenth- and eleventh-century Ashkenaz reveals hardly any rabbinic figures who hail from Cologne. Only in later periods—especially from the twelfth century on—do we hear of Cologne-based rabbis.18 Therefore, we may deduce that governance and arbitration were in the hands of people with little or no rabbinic training. Similar concepts were at work in city leadership, where the Schöffen, whose office originated in the delegation of community jurisdiction to elected individuals, participated in urban governance, especially, but not exclusively, in the Rhenish cities.19 Symposium Held at Speyer 20–25 October 2002, ed. C. Cluse (Turnhout, 2004), 367–68. Recent scholarship, however, has begun to accept the notion that although the vicissitudes of time and change left their mark on the city, it was never completely abandoned and had continuously served as one of the most important urban centers in the Lower Rhine area. See Joseph P. Huffman, The Imperial City of Cologne: From Roman Colony to Medieval Metropolis (19 B.C.–1125 A.D.) (Amsterdam, 2018). 16. The mikvah and the synagogue are both documented and were excavated twice. For a report on the first excavation, see Otto Doppelfeld, “Die Ausgrabungen im Kölner Judenviertel,” in Die Juden in Köln von den ältesten Zeiten bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Z. Asaria (Cologne, 1959), 71–145. Preliminary analysis of the findings and computerized reconstructions of the synagogue and mikvah, especially the 13th- and 14th-c. lavish finds, have been published in Schütte and Gechter, Von der Ausgrabung zum Museum, 93–137. While their analysis of early periods has been criticized, most of the description of high medieval finds remains unchallenged. On the mikvah, see also Michael Wiehen, “Zur Baugeschichte der Grundwassermikwe der jüdischen Gemeinde Kölns,” Archäologie im Rheinland 2012 (2013): 199–201. 17. Avraham Grossman, “The Attitude of the Early Scholars of Ashkenaz toward the Authority of the Kahal” (Hebrew), Annual of the Institute for Research in Jewish Law 2 (1974–75): 175–99; Stow, Alienated Minority, 162–63. 18. Another aspect of this is the fact that sources from the ShUM communities at times underscore the importance of Bonn, the smaller and less significant city in the Lower Rhine area, as a hub of rabbinic knowledge, maintaining diverse ties with Mainz. 19. On the Schöffen in Cologne, see Huffman, The Imperial City of Cologne, 197– 200. See the more detailed analysis by Eberhard Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt im SHOHAM-STEINER AND HOLLENDER 243 We are hypothesizing that the Cologne Jewish community had a system of mainly lay leadership during the eleventh and early twelfth century. Only by the mid-twelfth century does rabbinical influence become more prominent: then we find figures such as the twelfth-century sages Samuel ben Natronai (ca. 1110–ca. 1170) and Joel ha-Levi of Bonn (ca. 1115– 1200) mentioned in halakhic literature voicing their opinion in Cologne. Some sources mentioning Cologne and local decision making are dated later than the twelfth century; but because of the nature of rabbinic knowledge in Ashkenaz, many of the later sources actually quote from earlier sources and thus serve as a cornucopia of information regarding earlier knowledge. Books such as Sefer Ra’avan (Even ha-Ezer), Or zarua‘, Sefer Mordekhai, and Sefer Ra’avya contain quotations from texts produced decades, and sometimes centuries, earlier. Though the earlier texts are today inaccessible to us, traces of their content are extant in the later compilations and compendiums. The rivalry between Mainz (ShUM) and Cologne was informed in part by lay versus scholarly decision making, and the nature of the evidence means that this topos could well have carried over into later sources. We therefore refer to later material as well when discussing earlier eras, though the leadership structure in Cologne had changed by the late twelfth century and scholars had become more involved. We would like to present a number of extant sources that describe how decisions were made before the ascendance of predominantly rabbinic communal leadership, as well as how the community in Cologne conducted its affairs, by way of a few key themes and examples. KNOWN LAY LEADERS The 1096 Persecution and the Figure of Mar Judah ben Abraham ha-Parnas The twelfth-century Hebrew chronicles recounting the story of the events during the 1096 crusader riots are among the earliest sources that describe Jewish life in Cologne.20 The events of 1096 in and around Cologne are recorded in two of the three extant accounts of this period: the chronicle of Solomon bar Samson, an amalgamation of preexisting sources and interviews with survivors, which was apparently compiled around Mittelalter 1150–1550: Stadtgestalt, Recht, Verfassung, Stadtregiment, Kirche, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft (Vienna, 2012), chap. 4.7 (esp. 4.7.2, 4.7.4.2, and p. 487) but also on the influence on the Schöffenbrüder (p. 222) and—albeit indirect—chap. 4.4.2 on the Ratsjuristen. It should be noted that Isenmann, who uses many examples from Cologne, speaks about the “city court,” not the “Schöffen court.” We would like to thank Jörn Christophersen for discussing the role of the Schöffen with us. 20. See Eva Haverkamp, Hebräische Berichte über die Judenverfolgungen während des Ersten Kreuzzugs (Hannover, 2005). 244 JQR 111.2 (2021) 1140;21 and a shorter version describing the events in Cologne and the Lower Rhine, which appears in the slightly more edited chronicle of Eliezer ben Nathan (Ra’avan, ca. 1090–1170). This chronicle also had a paraliturgical function, and liturgical poetry was woven into the narrative.22 The third account, known as “the anonymous of Mainz,” barely mentions Cologne. All three Hebrew narratives of events, as well as the poems inserted into Ra’avan’s chronicle, focus on the ShUM communities, especially Worms and Mainz, where the devastation was much greater than in Speyer. Told from their perspective, their story highlights the martyrdom of the Jews in those cities. Yet one of the surviving sections consists of a rather detailed account of the events that took place in the Lower Rhine region in the summer of 1096.23 Much can be learned from the manner in which Cologne and its surrounding communities are depicted in this narrative.24 At the beginning of his description of the 1096 events in Cologne, Solomon bar Samson remarks: “Cologne, the pleasant city where the assembled flock was gathered—and Heaven brings merit through meritorious individuals— from there emanated life, sustenance and established law [‫ ]דין קבוע‬to our brothers so widely dispersed.”25 21. See Robert Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade (Berkeley, Calif., 1987), 40–49. In this account, the references to the Lower Rhine Jewry are split between the accounts of events in Cologne itself and those occurring in the surrounding localities. Cologne Jews fled or were evacuated to these localities at the advice and aid of the Cologne archbishop Herman III (1089–99). 22. See Gerson D. Cohen, “The Hebrew Crusade Chronicles and the Ashkenazic Tradition,” in Minḥah le-Nahum: Biblical and Other Studies Presented to Nahum M. Sarna, ed. M. Brettler and M. Fishbane (Sheffield, 1983), 36–53. 23. See Robert Chazan, “The Facticity of Medieval Narrative: A Case Study of the Hebrew First Crusade Narratives,” AJS Review 16.2 (1991): 31–56; Robert Chazan, “The Deeds of the Jewish Community of Cologne,” Journal of Jewish Studies 35.2 (1984): 185–95. 24. The historical reliability of the Hebrew chronicles that describe events in 1096 has been a subject of intense scholarly discussion and debate. See Marcus, “History, Story and Collective Memory,” 365–88; Jeremy R. Cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade (Philadelphia, 2004), 31–54. Unlike Marcus and Cohen, who view the chronicles as governed by literary conventions, Chazan and Gross think that the chronicles contain reliable historical testimony, based on the testimony of survivors and other early sources. See Chazan, “Facticity of Medieval Narrative”; Chazan, “The Deeds of the Jewish Community of Cologne,” 185–95; Avraham Gross, Struggling with Tradition: Reservations about Active Martyrdom in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 2004). However, even Marcus agrees that their intended medieval audience found the chronicles credible in that they reflected the norms and customs of medieval Ashkenazic society. 25. See the Hebrew text in Haverkamp, Hebräische Berichte, 401. This translation is based on Eidelberg’s rendering of Solomon ben Samson’s 1096 chronicle: Solomon ben Samson, The Jews and the Crusaders: The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and SHOHAM-STEINER AND HOLLENDER 245 In characterizing Cologne Jewry, the text mentions life, sustenance, and the administration of justice but makes no mention of rabbis, scholarship, or Torah. It is quite clear that the absence of rabbis or a yeshiva in Cologne did not discourage arbitration or the administration of justice, but rather the opposite. The sequence of nouns in this description is also significant: livelihood is mentioned first and legal arbitration last; commerce and trade supplied livelihoods for Colognians and Jews from other towns in the region and beyond. We learn from the text that Cologne is a place with fixed, rather than ad hoc, institutions of justice, and no reference is made to the Jewish learned background of those entrusted with the dispensation of justice. Later, we encounter what is probably a portion of a eulogy for an eleventh-century parnas (lay leader) from Cologne, who perished in the riots: The parnas there, chief spokesman, the nadiv of the nedivim,26 and leader of them all was master27 Judah ben Rabbi Abraham, a wise, distinguished counselor. When all the communities would gather in Cologne for the markets, three times a year, he would address them all in the synagogue; the assembly would be silent in his presence and appreciate what he had to say. When the leaders of the communities would begin to speak, others would all rebuke them and chide them to listen to his words. “What he says is true, sincere and correct.” He was of the tribe of Dan, a man of good faith and the exemplar of his generation, one who would sacrifice himself were someone else in distress. Throughout his life, no harm ever came to anyone on his account. He was loved by God and kind to all souls; concerning him did David recite his entire Psalm, “Lord, who may reside in Your tent?” (Psalm 15).28 Second Crusades, trans. and ed. S. Eidelberg (Madison, Wisc., 1977), 49. We have made several minor stylistic modifications and added the word “established” to describe the law. The Hebrew expression ‫“( דין קבוע‬established law”) stresses the enduring nature of the Jewish juridical system in Cologne. 26. The Hebrew word nedivim is the plural form of nadiv (lit., “charitable,” “generous”; but also “noble”). On the meaning of this title and the possibility that it stems from Cologne in specific reference to Jewish lay leadership, see Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, “Towers and Lions: Identifying the Patron of an Illuminated Mahzor from Cologne,” Jewish History 33.2 (2020): 245–73. 27. The Hebrew term here is mar, which would translate into the modern term “mister” (Mr.). It communicates that the person is not a rabbi and assumes no rabbinic scholarship. On the meaning of the titles in medieval Ashkenaz, see Avraham (Rami) Reiner, “A Tombstone Inscribed,” 123–52, esp. 137–39 (parnas) and 146 (mar). 28. The translation here is based on the text in Haverkamp, Hebräische Berichte, 573. A comparison of the version preserved by Solomon bar Samson and that preserved by Eliezer ben Nathan (Ra’avan) is found there on pp. 429–31. 246 JQR 111.2 (2021) Judah ben Abraham the parnas was martyred in a walled compound called Ilna, a site to which some of the Cologne Jews were evacuated by the local archbishop Herman III during the second wave of persecutions in the summer of 1096.29 From the eulogy, it is evident that not only was Mar Judah ben Abraham an accepted leader of the Cologne community; he apparently also laid claim to leadership on the regional level. Cologne’s economic prominence, as well as the vibrant regional fairs that epitomize its commercial importance, fostered his aspiration that its communal leadership would set the tone for the other Jewish communities in the Rhine Valley. The praise accorded to Mar Judah in the text showcases the Cologne synagogue, where he presided over the assemblies. All those present at the regional assembly in the synagogue seem to have accepted Mar Judah’s authority during the gatherings, which corresponded with the triannual fairs in Cologne.30 Mar Judah may even have had authority matching that of the assembly’s official chairperson. It is quite probable that the chronicle portrayed Mar Judah in an idealized, somewhat hagiographic, manner, because the man died a martyr’s death. But even taking this into account, what emerges is a portrait of a charismatic lay leader described with the titles nadiv and mar (not “rabbi,” a term reserved for scholars during this period), a local following, and prominent involvement in arbitration processes that took place in the Cologne synagogue. As these processes probably took place during the fairs, we may deduce that Mar Judah participated in arbitrations settling commercial or financial disputes.31 A Fictional Parnas from Cologne In a late medieval Ashkenazic manuscript published by Eli Yassif (MS Jerusalem 8o3182), we find a host of folktales, along with tales of a hagio29. On the identification of Ilna, see Haverkamp, Hebräische Berichte, 37–38n13. 30. As early as 967, we know of fairs taking place in Cologne. See Franz Irsigler, “Markt und Messeprivilegien auf Reichsgebiet im Mittelalter,” in Das Privileg im europäischen Vergleich 2, ed. B. Dölemeyer (Frankfurt am Main, 1999), 193n31; Joseph P. Huffman, Family, Commerce, and Religion in London and Cologne: AngloGerman Emigrants, c. 1000–c. 1300 (Cambridge, 1998), 9–13. 31. As is evident from as early as the first cases in Ashkenazic responsa, both by Gershom ben Judah of Mainz (d. 1028) and Judah ben Menahem ha-Kohen of Mainz (d. ca. 1060), many Jews from the Middle Rhine area conducted business in Cologne and ferried goods and commodities to and from this city. The question of where to settle the disputes arising from the commercial activity in Cologne therefore already existed in 11th-c. Ashkenaz. On a similar unwritten code of mercantile law that existed parallel to halakhah, see Mark F. Cohen, Maimonides and the Merchants: Jewish Law and Society in the Medieval Islamic World (Philadelphia, 2017), 25–36. SHOHAM-STEINER AND HOLLENDER 247 graphical nature highlighting the actions of revered personae.32 Although the folktales were penned in the sixteenth century, Yassif argues convincingly that some of the stories in this collection reflect events, experiences, and communal concerns that seem to date from a much earlier period in medieval Ashkenaz—long before the stories were committed to writing. One of these stories details a conflict between an anonymous parnas from Cologne and the twelfth-century rabbi Eliezer ben Nathan of Mainz.33 The conflict seems to have revolved around the recitation of the liturgical poetry (piyyutim) known as kerovot (in the Ashkenazic “phonetic” spelling, krovets, recited in the synagogue on holidays to poetically embellish the Amidah prayer). Although not mandatory, these liturgical poems were considered in many Ashkenazic communities as essential; they were also a component of local collective identity. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, most Ashkenazic piyyutim were composed in Mainz, and some in Worms.34 In the story, a very rich, powerful parnas from Cologne decides to eliminate the recitation of the krovets from the synagogue service and uses his authority to change the local liturgy. The storyteller, obviously from Mainz, first notes that the Cologne parnas was the son of a rabbi; he then adds that there were converts to Judaism in his lineage, an innuendo clearly aimed at tarnishing the Cologne parnas, if not the entire community.35 The tale relates that this parnas had a special vault-like room in which he would sleep. One day, while the parnas was sleeping, a rooster entered the sealed room and lacerated his face. Having been defaced, the parnas consulted a certain magician (ba‘al shem; lit., “master of holy names”)36 about this painful matter, and learned that the 32. Eli Yassif, Ninety-Nine Tales: The Jerusalem Manuscript Cycle of Legends in Medieval Jewish Folklore (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 2013). 33. Eliezer ben Nathan (Ra’avan) was not unknown after the 12th c., but he most certainly was not a Jewish household name. 34. Only in a later layer of Ashkenazic liturgy do we find local poets in other Ashkenazic communities and, in some cases, a tendency to prefer their poetry. On the history of piyyutim in Ashkenazic poetry, see Elisabeth Hollender, Liturgie und Geschichte: Der aschkenasische Machsor und jüdische Mobilität im Mittelalter—Ein methodologischer Versuch (Trier, 2015). On local poets, see Elisabeth Hollender, “Poets (Almost) without Audience? Ashkenazic Piyyuṭim in Local Manuscripts,” in The Poet and the World, ed. J. J. M. S. Yeshaya, E. Hollender, and N. Katsumata (Berlin, 2019), 117–33. 35. Avraham Grossman, “Family Lineage and Its Place in Early Ashkenazic Jewish Society” (Hebrew), in Studies in the History of Jewish Society in the Middle Ages and in the Modern Period: Presented to Professor Jacob Katz on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday by His Students and Friends, ed. E. Etkes and Y. Salmon (Jerusalem, 1980), 9–23. 36. While the term ba‘al shem came into use relatively late, the knowledge regarding the use of the divine name (shem) is ancient and well known among the Jews of medieval Europe. 248 JQR 111.2 (2021) rooster was none other than Rabbi Eliezer ben Nathan of Mainz. The parnas then traveled to Mainz and confronted Rabbi Eliezer, who explained that he had been compelled to act thusly by his ancestors, the very same ancestors who had composed and introduced the krovets into the liturgical rite. The story ends with the parnas capitulating to Rabbi Eliezer and reinstating the krovets into the Cologne synagogue’s rites.37 Although the folktale lacks historical specificity, it clearly reflects a struggle between two worldviews in medieval Ashkenaz. First, it should be noted that the Cologne parnas is depicted in the story as not being opposed or challenged from within his community by any rabbinic authority, probably due to a lack of a figure of equal standing to his leadership position as the communal parnas. It is only a rabbinic figure from Mainz who can oppose him, overcoming his local power only by employing magical means. Second, countering his prestigious rabbinic lineage, the tale ultimately taints the Cologne parnas as being descended from converts (gerim). In this, he pales before the rabbi from Mainz, who, in addition to his own impeccable liturgy-founding ancestors, is portrayed as possessing mystical powers. Scholars studying proselytism in medieval Europe have shown that in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when converts to Judaism in Franco-Germany were not harshly persecuted by Christian authorities, these converts were usually individuals who wished to improve their social status. Thus, the innuendo referring to the parnas’s convert ancestors is not only religious but also social, suggesting that he is nouveau riche. In medieval times, lineage was always significant, and even more so within the small, tight-knit Ashkenazic communities. Commenting on lineage and suggesting an illustrious one (from Mainz), as opposed to a dubious one (from Cologne), has the scent of the haughtiness of scholars versus lay leaders. It adds to our argument that the Cologne community was seen by others as not only being led by a powerful lay leadership but lacking rabbinic leadership.38 37. On the Cologne synagogue rite, see Ezra Fleischer, “Prayer and Liturgical Poetry in the Great Amsterdam Mahzor,” in The Amsterdam Mahzor: History, Liturgy, Illumination, ed. A. Van der Heide and E. Van Voolen (Leiden, 1989), 26–43; Wouter Jacques van Bekkum, “List of Piyyutim Occurring in the Amsterdam Mahzor,” in The Amsterdam Mahzor, 44–55. 38. One of the better-known Ashkenazic converts to Christianity, Judah-Herman of Cologne, originated from Cologne; see Jean-Claude Schmitt, The Conversion of Herman the Jew: Autobiography, History, and Fiction in the Twelfth Century, trans. A. J. Novikoff (Philadelphia, 2012). The Mainz scholars may have opposed the greater permeability between the communities in Cologne marked by such converts. SHOHAM-STEINER AND HOLLENDER 249 As portrayed in the story, the rabbi from Mainz (Eliezer ben Nathan) had the upper hand in all respects. Although admitting that he indeed had committed the violent act of disfiguring the parnas, disguised as a rooster, Rabbi Eliezer confesses that he was compelled to do so by his ancestors. He also acknowledges that the purpose of his actions was to make the Cologne parnas realize his error and retract his request to remove the krovets from the congregation’s prayers. This story should be read as praise literature (sifrut shevaḥim), glorifying its hero and his lineage.39 The Cologne leader is portrayed as a rich man (the emphasis on his vaulted room is telling, in this regard) with local authority, similar to the authority wielded by Mar Judah ben Abraham. A lack of rabbinic credentials, on the one hand, and the presence of economic affluence, on the other, is a recurring theme in the descriptions of Cologne leaders. The suggestion that some members of the Cologne community possessed dubious lineage is found in another late source that seems to reflect earlier traditions. As late as the fifteenth century, we sense such a bias in the writing of the famous ShUM codifier Jacob ben Moshe ha-Levi Molin (Maharil; d. 1427). Maharil, a resident of Worms and later Mainz,40 makes an interesting remark about the difference in the genealogical status of the Jews of the Upper and Lower Rhine. In his discussion of marriage laws and customs, found in his Book of Customs (Sefer ha-minhagim, compiled by his student-secretary Zalman of St. Goar), we find: “And Maharil said: Regarding the fact that in Cologne the sum allocated to the ketubah [marriage contract] of a virgin is 200 and in Mainz [and in the other ShUM communities—as the evidence in some of the MS suggests] it is 600: This is because the Jewish inhabitants of the Upper [Rhine] province are genealogically superior to the Jewish inhabitants of the Lower Rhine province, 39. Piyyutim served to anchor hagiographic stories in the medieval world, and poets served as heroes; see Lucia Raspe, “Payyetanim as Heroes of Medieval Folk Narrative: The Case of R. Shimʿon b. Yishaq of Mainz,” in Jewish Studies between the Disciplines: Papers in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. K. Hermann, M. Schlüter, and G. Veltri (Leiden, 2003), 354–69; Lucia Raspe, Jüdische Hagiographie im mittelalterlichen Aschkenas (Tübingen, 2006), 189–98, 279–91. On the distinction between “praise literature” and hagiography, see Sara Zfatman, In Praise of Rabbi Shmuel and Rabbi Judah the Pious: The Beginnings of Praise Literature in Ashkenazi Jewry (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2020). We wish to thank Sara Zfatman for sharing the unpublished manuscript of her book with us. 40. During his long career, Maharil also spent time in Cologne. While studying in Austria under Shalom of Neustadt (Wiener-Neustadt), Maharil traveled to the Lower Rhine area and studied briefly with Susskind of Cologne in the last decade of the fourteenth century (1395–1400); see Israel Mordechai Peles and Shlomo Spitzer, eds., Introduction and Additions to the Books of Maharil (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2016), 68–73. 250 JQR 111.2 (2021) who are genealogically inferior. And to those with superior lineage we allocate a larger sum in the ketubah.”41 Both examples discussed above reflect the Mainz and Middle Rhine Jewry’s argument against the Cologne and Lower Rhine community by discrediting their lineage and the importance of their lay leadership over a rabbinic one, components that at once reflect, reinforce, and transcend the existing geopolitical tensions between the inhabitants of the two regions. PIOUS LAITY The lack of a significant presence of rabbinic scholars in Cologne posed a challenge to the authors of the Hebrew Chronicles of the 1096 persecutions: because the martyred Cologne Jews were not members of the rabbinic elite but had, in fact, performed the ultimate sacrifice, a laudatory term had to be found for them. A relatively large number of references in the Hebrew Chronicles contain the word ḥasid or ḥasidah (masculine and feminine adjectives for pious and pietistic behavior), especially in the chronicle compiled by Eliezer ben Nathan and the religious poetry found therein. In light of the absence of a meaningful rabbinic presence in Cologne, the title “rabbi” could hardly be used,42 and references to the Torah and the study of Torah were less frequent than we find referring to the ShUM martyrs, while “piety” could be associated with a “lay” community. In fact, in the (longer) descriptions of the Mainz martyrs, the words ḥasid and ḥasidah appear four times; in contrast, in the discussion of Cologne and the surrounding area, the words ḥasid (masc. sing.), ḥasidah (fem. sing.), ḥasidim (masc./collective pl.), and tsadikim (“righteous”; masc./collective pl.) appear seventeen times. It seems that the account, with the Mainz editing, chooses to depict the Cologne Jewish community with a precise set of adjectives: not scholarly or learned but pious and charitable.43 Their portrayal as charitable implies financial prowess and mercantile abilities underlying their lauded generosity. The frequent use of the term “piety” (ḥasidut) points to the Cologne Jews’ formidable resistance against the attempts to coerce them into forced baptism, analogous to the resistance of the ShUM communities. The term “piety,” in this context, likely does not refer to the popular meaning found 41. Jacob ben Moshe ha-Levi Molin, The Book of Customs, ed. S. Spitzer (Jerusalem, 1989), 472, Laws of Marriage §13: ‫אמר מהר“י סג“ל מה שנוהגין במדינת קלוני“א‬ ‫ היינו משם שבני גליל העליון יותר מיוחסים מבגליל‬,‫ ובמדינת מגנצא שש מאות‬,‫כתובת בתולה מאתים‬ ‫התחתון ולמיוחסים מעלין כתובה כדאיתא בריש מסכת כתובות‬. 42. It is only later that rav becomes the main form of address for any male Jew, so that rabenu (=our rabbi), morenu (=our teacher/master), and similar terms are used to identify the learned. 43. Haverkamp, Hebräische Berichte, 401–65. SHOHAM-STEINER AND HOLLENDER 251 in the literature of the late twelfth-/early thirteenth-century Ashkenazic pietists.44 Rather, it refers to the fact that while the Jews of Cologne and the Lower Rhine lacked scholarly rabbinic knowledge, they did not lose their religious commitment, even when threatened with forced baptism or death. ECONOMIC HALAKHAH: THE POSITION OF LAY LEADERSHIP As we have seen above, although external observers depicted them also as making decisions on liturgical matters, the lay leadership was mainly concerned with economic matters. It is no surprise that the meetings of the supracommunal gatherings in the Cologne synagogue, presided over by Mar Judah and described above in the chronicles, took place during the Cologne mercantile fairs. The commercial gatherings in Cologne were spaces in which to showcase a lay leader’s ability to administer justice and successfully arbitrate disputes. It is logical that the lay leadership, composed of the affluent financial elite, were savvy about and invested in the preservation of material value and the clarification of material issues. While the sources at our disposal stem from the ShUM communities, early rabbinic responsa literature from the late tenth and early eleventh centuries refers to Cologne almost exclusively in commercial contexts, while the references to the ShUM communities concern scholar-merchants. According to the merchants who approached the ShUM rabbis regarding commercial disputes (which eventually registered in responsa literature), Cologne was a marketplace, a bustling hub of the wool and wine trade, and a locus to which one would go with a considerable amount of money, either from private sources or sums raised by seeking credit for business purposes.45 44. On the broader meaning of piety in medieval Ashkenaz, see Elisheva Baumgarten, Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz: Men, Women and Everyday Religious Observance (Philadelphia, 2014), 5–19; Baumgarten, “Who Was a Ḥasid or Ḥasidah in Medieval Ashkenaz? A Reexamination of the Social Implications of a Term,” Jewish History 34.1 (forthcoming, 2021). A possible use of the word ḥasid (pl., ḥaside) in this same manner is found in Eliezer ben Nathan’s halakhic discussion of the extreme stringency exhibited by the pious residents of Regensburg with regard to Passover customs. See Eliezer ben Nathan, Sefer Ra’avan, ed. D. Deblitzski (Bnei Brak, 2008), 196, §299: “And I heard that the pious of Regensburg demand the use of a new cauldron to cook the tar they use to seal the wine barrels for Passover and I wonder. [. . .] And the Sages of the Rhine were never so strict in this matter.” This account depicts the pious Jews of Regensburg in the mid-12th c. as not erudite in the fine print of halakhah (unlike the Rhineland sages), yet exceptionally pious in their upholding of the law, even to extremes not sanctioned by talmudic learning and erudition. 45. Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, “Making a Living in Medieval Ashkenaz,” in Jüdische Kultur in den SchUM-Städten, ed. K. E. Grözinger (Wiesbaden, 2014), 64–82. For sources, see the responsum by Judah ha-Kohen of Mainz (author of Sefer 252 JQR 111.2 (2021) In the more than 100 references to Cologne in the large range of rabbinic genres represented in the Bar-Ilan University Responsa Project, the city is mentioned in commercial and mercantile contexts almost forty times but does not appear even once as a place where one would seek ritual, rabbinic, or Jewish religious knowledge of any kind.46 These texts do not refer to Jewish life in Cologne beyond the cases in question, nor do they indicate that commerce-related ethics or laws differed from those of other Jewish communities. They do indicate, however, that commerce and the preservation of wealth were important topics in the Cologne community. One example demonstrating the system of arbitration practiced in Cologne can be found in an eleventh-century responsum written by Judah ben Menachem ha-Kohen (d. ca. 1060), a member of the Mainz Jewish court and author of Sefer ha-dinim. The case, preserved in a later manuscript (MS Prague Jewish Museum 20, §186), tells of three Jews from Mainz who bought wool that had been stolen by gentiles from Cologne Jewish wool merchants. The case was litigated in the Jewish court in Mainz, and that is how it came to be discussed in Rabbi Judah’s compendium that drew on the court cases. Apparently, the Cologne wool traders realized that their stolen wool was headed to Mainz, and they contacted the local non-Jewish Mainz magistrates in an attempt to reclaim their stolen property.47 The Cologne merchants’ spontaneous reaction, turning to local magisterial arbitrational authorities, probably reflects the norm of conduct in their home- ha-dinim; d. ca. 1060) from the Prague edition of Meir of Rothenburg’s responsa (based on MS Prague Jewish Museum 20, §186). The situation described there is indicative of the early 11th c. Regarding loans given to ShUM traders in the Cologne fairs, see Rashi’s comment on a sum of money taken to the Cologne fair as a loan with interest. The original text of Rashi’s responsum survived only in a much later responsum from the 16th c., by R. Binyamin ben Matitya (of Greece), She’elot u-teshuvot Binyamin Ze’ev (Jerusalem, 1989), 2:487r, §364. Binyamin hailed from an Ashkenazic family in Italy (probably Venice), granting him access to extensive early Ashkenazic material. Meir Benayahu, Prolegomenon to the Responsa “Benjamin Ze’eb” Venice 5299/1539 (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1989), 9–52. 46. A search for the name “Colonia” in the Bar-Ilan University Responsa Project (version 22, 2015) results in 105 entries. The entries can be divided into topical categories: (1) liturgy, (2) marital matters, (3) commercial issues and local customs, (4) halakhic matters concerning Sabbath and the festivals, and (5) ritual slaughter and Jewish dietary laws. More than a third (37) can be defined as commercial/ contract/financial or discussing matters of loans, pledges, and interest-related contexts. Jewish dietary laws form the second-largest group (17), while the remaining topics have fewer entries. 47. For a more elaborate treatment of this case, see Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe (Detroit, 2020), 63–65. SHOHAM-STEINER AND HOLLENDER 253 town.48 It should be noted that the two juridical systems (magistrates and religious courts) conducted some dialogue, and similar behavior is recorded in later sources, as well.49 Controversies about Ritual Slaughter and Baking One of the major aspects of Jewish communal and economic life is the observance of the dietary laws, which require the ritual slaughter of meat. This was not simply a Jewish custom but served as a positive Jewish identity marker. Adiel Schremer was able to reconstruct an obscure yet famous halakhic incident from the 1070s involving Jewish ritual slaughter in Cologne, the Middle Rhine Jewish academies of Worms and Mainz, and the northern French halakhic luminary Rashi (Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes, 1040–1105).50 Known in the history of Jewish law as the “controversy about the lung” (plugat ha-re’ah), it was discussed by some of the most important late eleventh-century Jewish legal authorities in Ashkenaz. It also reflects the impact of respective jurisdictional choices made between the Cologne and ShUM leaderships and the difference between their decisions. The case focuses on whether a ritually slaughtered kid goat could be declared fit for Jewish consumption after the carcass had been tampered with—supposedly by Christians—in the absence of Jewish supervision. According to Jewish custom practiced in Mainz and Worms, it was imperative that after the animal was slaughtered, its lungs would be manually examined while still in the carcass, in order to ascertain that they were intact prior to the slaughter. If the lungs were found to have been punctured antemortem, the animal would be declared unfit for Jewish consumption and its meat would be sold to a non-Jew. In the case from Cologne, Rabbi Asher ben David ha-Levi (probably residing in Cologne) was approached in the case when a Jewish butcher had not checked the lungs and had left the carcass untended for a while. When he returned, he saw 48. But even in the 13th c., when the talmudic directives seemed to have settled in Cologne and rabbinic presence was on the rise, there were still times when rabbinic figures felt that there was some sort of irreverence among Cologne Jews; see Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, “ ‘And in Most of Their Business Transactions They Rely on This’: Some Reflections on Jews and Oaths in the Commercial Arena of Medieval Europe,” in On the Word of a Jew: Religion, Reliability, and the Dynamics of Trust, ed. M. B. Hart and N. Caputo (Bloomington, Ind., 2019), 36–61. 49. Aptowitzer, Mavo’ le-Sefer Ra’avya, 172–74, records a case from the mid-12th c. 50. Adiel Schremer, “Realism in Halakhic Decision-Making: The Medieval Controversy concerning Examination of Lungs (Pelugat ha-Re’a) as a Test Case” (Hebrew), Dine Israel 28 (2011): 97–143 (Hebrew sec.). 254 JQR 111.2 (2021) that the carcass had been tampered with. Rabbi Asher ordered the butcher to meticulously check the lungs and inflate them to see whether they were punctured. If they were intact, regardless of the previous occurrences, he would rule that the meat was fit for Jewish consumption. According to Schremer, the Jews living in northern France and probably the Lower Rhine area wished to conceal the fact that the meat had been subject to Jewish slaughter so that Christians would be willing to buy it. Therefore, they involved a Christian in the slaughtering process. Schremer claimed that Jews feared vitriolic Christian criticism, such as that voiced by ninth-century archbishop Agobard of Lyon, who explicitly mentioned that the Jewish practice of selling meat unfit for Jewish consumption was theologically unacceptable. Thus the “Jewish” origins of the meat needed to be masked. The practice of stabbing the carcass postmortem (with the danger of puncturing the lungs) was devised by Jewish and Christian slaughterers and butchers so that everyone would be able to live with the situation. Schremer suggested that this Christian opposition is the key to understanding this case. Cooperation with a Christian butcher was also easier under these conditions because he could sell the hind parts of the animal to Christian consumers, without the laborious treatment of these parts needed for Jewish consumption.51 The economic consequences of this Judeo-Christian cooperation in circumventing the theological criticism resonate throughout Rashi’s contribution to this debate, in which he introduced a novel concept to the discussion, ruling that “the Torah spared the money of the Israelites,” meaning that financial considerations and the potential financial loss if a slaughtered animal was found unfit for Jewish consumption should be factored into the halakhic discussion. 51. For a brief introduction to Jews in the Carolingian empire, see Johannes Heil, “Goldenes Zeitalter? Juden und Judentum in der Karolingerzeit,” in “Wie schön sind deine Zelte, Jakob, deine Wohnungen, Israel!” (Num 24,5): Beiträge zur Geschichte jüdisch-europäischer Kultur, ed. R. Kampling (Frankfurt am Main, 2009), 99–114; Johannes Heil, “Friendly Barbarians? The Jews under Christian Rule in Northern Europe,” in Barbarians and Jews: Jews and Judaism in the Early Medieval West, ed. Y. Hen and T. F. X. Noble (Turnhout, 2018), 203–30. On Agobard and the Jews, see Anna Beth Langenwalter, “Agobard of Lyon: An Exploration of Carolingian Jewish-Christian Relations” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2009); Bonfil, “Cultural and Religious Traditions”; Soloveitchik, “Agobard of Lyon.” One of the accusations made by Agobard was that the Jewish diligence in observing dietary laws caused them to disqualify some of their slaughtered meat for Jewish consumption and then sell it to Christians, calling such nonkosher slaughtered animals christiana pecora (“livestock fit for Christians”). Apparently, Agobard, as well as other Christians, felt that this innately disrespectful behavior toward the regnant religion of the land and the designation could not be overlooked. SHOHAM-STEINER AND HOLLENDER 255 The situation in the ShUM communities regarding meat found ritually unfit for Jewish consumption after the slaughter indeed differed markedly, as we may learn from the concessions granted to the ShUM-based Jews, such as the famous privilege of Bishop Rüdiger Houzman of Speyer (1084). In a novel privilege, Rüdiger stipulated that Jews were allowed to sell to Christians the meat of animals that, after Jewish ritual slaughter, were deemed unfit for Jewish consumption.52 This clause in the privilege opposed Agobard’s criticism and was seen as a substantial achievement with considerable ramifications for Jewish-Christian relations, enabling a strictly Jewish slaughter of meat while making it superfluous to mask the original ritual slaughter in case the animal was deemed unsuitable for Jewish consumption and had to be sold to Christians.53 This was apparently not the case in Cologne, which followed the practices of the French and Lower Rhine communities. Until the fourteenth century, Jewish households in Cologne bought their ritually slaughtered meat packaged in a markedly identifiable manner, in order to clearly differentiate it from nonkosher meat.54 This suggests that the same slaughterers catered to both non-Jews and Jews in medieval Cologne. The Jewish community of Cologne was rich and well connected to the local archbishops, yet they did not negotiate a privilege for their ritual slaughtering similar to that awarded the ShUM communities. We may speculate that the communal leaders, who were not rabbinic scholars, did not consider it necessary to intervene in an existing tradition of Jewish-Christian collaboration in the butchers’ market. This example reflects the manner in which a nonrabbinic leadership may choose to emphasize certain aspects of Jewish life in their dealings with the non-Jewish environment. A short entry found in the large halakhic compendium Or zarua‘, written by the thirteenth-century sage Isaac ben Moses of Vienna, describes an episode from twelfth-century Cologne in which someone baked a pie on the 52. See Julius Aronius, Regesten zur Geschichte der Juden im fränkischen und deutschen Reiche bis zum Jahre 1273 (Berlin, 1902), 69–77. 53. On this, see chiefly Robert Chazan, In the Year 1096: The First Crusade and the Jews (Philadelphia, 1996), 3–27. 54. Deer, sheep, and goat legs were delivered with attached hooves to differentiate them from swine legs, suggesting that the same butchers catered to Jews and non-Jews alike. See Hubert Berke, “Koschere Küche: Tierknochen aus der Kloake unter der Synagoge,” in Von der Ausgrabung zum Museum, 152–59. Although the finds in the cesspits of the Cologne Jewish quarter date mainly to the 13th and 14th c., the fact that they also attest to a meat-based diet that does not include hindquarters shows that there was a need to sell those parts to non-Jewish consumers. 256 JQR 111.2 (2021) first of two consecutive festival days.55 Describing the case, Or zarua‘ records that from the outset the pie was baked with the intention of serving it on the second day of the festival, since the regulation forbidding this had been forgotten.56 The passage tells that some unnamed “people of Cologne” (bne Colonia) decided that although there may have been a violation of halakhah, the pie was nevertheless fit for consumption. The passage associates this with a talmudic decision (bMK 17b) determining that if one unintentionally cooks on the Sabbath, both he and others may eat the cooked dish once the Sabbath is ended. Since this argument is not explicitly marked as being a factor for the (lay) Colognians who made the decision, it is possible that it was added by the scholars transmitting the case, or by R. Joel ha-Levi of Bonn, who opposed it. Thus, the Colognians obviously knew that food accidentally cooked on Sabbath was fit for consumption, and deduced that if this was true for the Sabbath, when cooking is strictly forbidden, the same would also be true for festival days, when cooking for the festival is permitted (the only halakhic concern is that one not cook on one day of the festival for the other day). R. Joel ha-Levi of Bonn thought differently and opposed the Colognian ruling. He forbade eating the pie, voicing the concern that while on the Sabbath, there is no fear of disrespect for its sanctity, festival days are more prone to such disrespect, and thus it should be forbidden to eat the dish. For him, respect for the holiday and the laws governing it was more important than any possible financial loss. Apart from the fact that the post-factum leniency in the halakhic interpretation of circumstances involving financial loss is similar to the one exhibited by Rashi in the controversy over slaughter, it is important to note 55. The case appears in Isaac ben Moshe, Sefer or zarua‘, ed. J. Farbstein (Jerusalem, 2010), 2:402, §342. See also the Or zarua‘ MS Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Amsterdam, MS Rosenthaliana 3, fol. 202v, §404 (printed ed., §342). This case was quoted in a late 14th-c. collection of legal rulings compiled by students of Avigdor Katz (MS Vatican ebr. 45, fol. 92d; on this collection, see Simcha Emanuel, Fragments of the Tablets [Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2006], 178–80), and has also been published in Mordechai ben Hillel, Sefer Mordechai ha-shalem: Tractate Betsah, ed. I. Kleinman and J. Horowitz (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1983), 67–68, §675. 56. In the Jewish diaspora, every biblical pilgrimage festival (Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot) was normally celebrated over two days. On the Sabbath, all the food has to be prepared in advance; but according to rabbinic law, cooking and baking for the festival are permitted on the day of the festival itself. The license to prepare food is, however, restricted to each festival day. Cooking or baking on the first day with the preparatory intent of serving the food on the second day is forbidden. This is based on the rabbinic exegesis of Ex 12.16: “no work at all shall be done on them [the days of the festival], only what every person is to eat that alone may be prepared for you.” SHOHAM-STEINER AND HOLLENDER 257 that the decision was made by unnamed laypeople from Cologne, not by a rabbi.57 The scholar Joel ha-Levi, who opposed their opinion, was not the only person asked in the case of a halakhic question, and his ruling competed with others whom the scholars transmitting his teaching did not consider to have sufficient rabbinic legal training. It is possible that the leniency attributed to the Cologne leaders both here and in the “case of the lung” reflects an economically informed stance of the interpretation of the laws of kashrut; but it is also possible that the reference to Cologne as the place where this decision took place was triggered by a preconception that places where laypeople participated prominently in leading the community tended to make wrong, overly lenient decisions.58 From these cases, we conclude that up until the twelfth century, the Cologne Jewish community possessed a system of norms that was not governed by the principles of talmudic scholarship alone. Instead, their decisions were often based on behavioral traditions and common knowledge about the norms of Jewish life, and they were guided by additional principles, such as avoiding financial loss, that a rabbinical decisor may have discounted. They may also have had different ideas about JewishChristian relations and self-instigated anti-Christian animosity. These norms were probably shared by other Jewish communities at first, slowly changing as talmudic scholarship and its influence on all aspects of Jewish life spread more widely. 57. Both the oldest Or zarua‘ manuscript, MS Amsterdam Rosenthaliana 3.2 (https://web.nli.org.il/sites/nli/english/digitallibrary/pages/viewer.aspx?presentorid =MANUSCRIPTS&docid=PNX_MANUSCRIPTS990001711550205171 -1#|FL26089206), and the transmission in MS Vatican ebr. 45 (fol. 92d) read ‫בני‬ ‫קולוניא‬. However, the printed edition of Or zarua‘ from 1862 Zhytomyr amended the text and reads “the Rabbis of Colonia,” presenting both the original reading ‫בני‬ in parentheses and the amended reading, ‫רבני‬, in square brackets, marking it as an amendment. Obviously, the 19th-c. printers could not imagine laypeople deciding on issues of kashrut. 58. Interestingly, in the case described in Or zarua‘ just before the case of the pie, the same Joel ha-Levi of Bonn permits the baking of pretzels on a holiday in order to send them out to celebrate a circumcision on the following day. In this case, it is impossible to bake a sufficient quantity on the day, which happens to be a Christian holiday. Obviously, in this case the scholar considered the local custom of celebrating circumcisions in a specific way to be more important than the holiday. Here, no mention of the place is made; the lenient position is taken by the scholar. See Isaac ben Moshe, Sefer or zarua‘, 2:402, §342. On the other hand, Asher b. David ha-Levi, the Cologne rabbi at the time of the “case of the lung,” another instance of lenience in Cologne, is not considered to be important at all. He is mentioned in only one of the transmissions of the complicated case, and all other transmissions omit his name; see Schremer, Realism in Halakhic DecisionMaking, 102. 258 JQR 111.2 (2021) By the mid-thirteenth century, the norms had also begun to change in Cologne. The number of rabbinic scholars in the city had grown, and a strong rabbinic presence was felt, with Asher ben Yeḥiel (Rosh; ca. 1250– 1327) being the most prominent example.59 Nevertheless, it seems that even during this period, as in the late twelfth century, Cologne had yet to establish itself as a center of rabbinic teaching. Cologne men wishing to immerse themselves in the study of Torah traveled to northern France, the Middle Rhine area (as did Asher ben Yeḥiel), and even as far east as Regensburg on the Danube, seeking high-level rabbinic training in the more established centers of learning.60 THE BEAUTY OF JEWISH LIFE: LAY LEADERSHIP AND THE VISUAL ARTS The Dispute over Decorative Elements in the Cologne Synagogue As has been discussed extensively above, the Cologne lay leadership was probably quite attuned to commercial, mercantile, and material matters. Another aspect in which this tendency manifested itself was the appreciation of material beauty and the need to showcase financial status via material goods. This characteristic of the rising bourgeoisie in the ever-growing northern European urban surroundings was shared by Jews and non-Jews alike. One of the ways to demonstrate material wealth and social status was by commissioning works of art in liturgical and public arenas. This could turn into a point of contention between rabbinic authorities and lay leaders, as is demonstrated by a rather early occurrence known as the “incident in Cologne.” At the behest of a Cologne lay leader or leaders, decorative stone reliefs of lions and serpents were added to the window frames on the northern wall of the Cologne synagogue.61 We hear of this incident through a let59. See Zvi Avneri, Germania Judaica, vol. 2: Von 1238 bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 1968), 420–42, esp. 427–32. Freimann, Ha-Rosh. 60. A similar lack of rabbinic academies was felt across Germany during the late 13th c.; see Simcha Emanuel, “German Sages in the Thirteenth Century: Continuity or Crisis?” Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 39 (2014): 1–19. 61. Early 12th-c. Romanesque stone window-frame reliefs can still be seen today on the northwestern sealed window of the Groß St. Martin in Cologne, as can lion and dragon/snake reliefs on the baptismal font at the Antoniterkirche. In the Antoniterkirche, the stone is blue limestone from Namur, and the sculpture is late 11th-/early 12th-c. Romanesque art, typical of the Lower Rhine area. For a detailed study of the “incident in Cologne,” including sculptural examples, see Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, “The Clash over Synagogue Decorations in Medieval Cologne,” Jewish History 30.1 (2017): 129–64. SHOHAM-STEINER AND HOLLENDER 259 ter of protest penned by Eliakim ben Joseph of Mainz, probably written in the 1090s (before the 1096 persecutions), either to local rabbis in and around Cologne or, more likely, to the lay leaders who commissioned and executed this initiative, apparently without rabbinic supervision.62 From this incident, we infer that the lay leaders of the Cologne Jewish community had their own ideas—or interpretation of Jewish tradition—regarding the role of figurative art in the liturgical space of the synagogue. Furthermore, when reprimanding them for their behavior, the rabbi from Mainz raised the concern that while attending services at the synagogue, the Cologne locals might bow northward while praying. By this, they would seem to be showing reverence to the graven images on the window reliefs, which were located on the northern wall of the synagogue, albeit unintentionally. This concern subtly alludes to a talmudic maxim that when praying in a synagogue, one should face east, toward Jerusalem; but if one wishes to become wise, he should bow slightly to the south, and if one wishes to acquire wealth and material riches, one should bow slightly to the north.63 By mentioning in his protestations that the reliefs were positioned on the northern flank of the synagogue, the Mainz-based rabbi was reinforcing the notion that Cologne Jews sought material and monetary gains rather than wisdom and knowledge of Torah. Furthermore, he was subtly criticizing the Cologne lay leadership for commissioning these decorations 62. Katrin Kogman-Appel has suggested in a personal communication that as this is an 11th-c. event, the letter may have been addressed to a theological overseer who was appointed by the patron or patrons who commissioned the decorative stone reliefs. On this function, see William J. Diebold, “The Ruler Portrait of Charles the Bald in the S. Paolo Bible,” Art Bulletin 76.1 (1994): 6–18. The use of stone reliefs depicting animals and humans was not restricted to Cologne, as can be deduced from the stone-carved window pillar that probably belonged to the “Kalonymos Haus” in Mainz, now owned by the Landesmuseum Mainz; see Franz Theodor Klingelschmitt, “Das Haus des Kalonymos und der Reichtum des Humbert zum Widder,” in Magenza: Ein Sammelheft über das jüdische Mainz im fünfhundertsten Todesjahre des Mainzer Gelehrten Maharil, ed. S. Levi (Berlin, 1927), 39– 47; Anita Wiedenau, Katalog der romanischen Wohnbauten in westdeutschen Städten und Siedlungen ohne Goslar und Regensburg (Tübingen, 1984), 165. There is, however, a clear distinction between a stone relief ornamenting a house and a stone relief falling only slightly short of a three-dimensional statue in the liturgical space of the synagogue. 63. bBB 25b. For the full textual analysis, see Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, “The Struggle over the Lion and Snake Decorations of the Medieval Synagogue in Cologne” (Hebrew), Zion 80.2 (2015): 175–205; for an English version, see ShohamSteiner, “The Clash over Synagogue Decorations.” 260 JQR 111.2 (2021) and being oblivious of theologically problematic matters in their beautification of the sacred space. Additional Jewish Art in Cologne The “incident in Cologne” about the decorative stone reliefs in the Cologne synagogue was not an isolated occurrence.64 The mid-thirteenth century saw the appearance of richly decorated mahzorim (festival prayer books designed for communal use). One of the earliest of these liturgical artifacts, most probably commissioned by affluent members of the Cologne lay leadership, is the great Amsterdam Mahzor (named after its current location), which served the Cologne community from around 1270.65 It is also one of the earliest extant examples of illuminated mahzorim that contains both animal and human images. These mahzorim were the focus of a sharp critique by the Cologne-based scholar Asher ben Yeḥiel.66 Asher, a resident of Cologne who was trained in the Middle Rhine talmudic academies, voiced his reservations regarding the images in these illuminated books of communal prayer to his Worms-born mentor, Meir of Rothenburg. The earliest surviving positively dated illuminated mahzor is the Michael Mahzor, dated to 1258; by the time the critique was written, illuminated mahzorim were gradually gaining popularity in all parts of Ashkenaz 64. It should be noted that the 11th-c. text of Eliakim ben Joseph of Mainz was discussed and mentioned at least twice in 12th- and early 13th-c. rabbinic writings. It is mentioned in an exchange between two mid-12th-c. rabbis, Ephraim of Regensburg and Joel ha-Levi of Bonn. See Eliezer ben Joel ha-Levi, Sefer Ra’avya, ed. D. Deblitzski (Bnei Brak, 2005), 4:5–6, §1049. 65. The Amsterdam Mahzor was probably produced between 1260 and 1270. Its beautiful, carefully executed illuminations suggest that it was ordered by an affluent individual and intended for use in public prayer in a community that followed the Cologne rite. See Gabrielle Sed-Rajna, “The Decoration of the Amsterdam Mahzor,” in The Amsterdam Mahzor: History, Liturgy, Illumination, 56–70, who suggests an earlier date. For new dating, see Emile G. L. Schrijver, “The Amsterdam Mahzor: Some Remarks,” Studia Rosenthaliana 25 (1991): 162–69. For the Cologne rite, see Fleischer, “Prayer and Liturgical Poetry in the Great Amsterdam Mahzor,” 39–42. For a possible identification of the Amsterdam Mahzor’s patron, see Shoham-Steiner, “Lions and Towers.” 66. This responsum by Meir ben Baruch (Maharam) of Rothenburg appears in three places in the printed versions: Responsa Rulings and Customs: Collected, Annotated, and Arranged in the Order of the Shulḥan Arukh, ed. I. Z. Cahana, 2 vols. (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1960), 2:50–52, §56; Meir ben Baruch, Responsa, ed. J. Farbstein (Hebrew; Jerusalem 2014), 2:29–30, §24; 2:555–57, §39/97; 3:255–56, §385. Asher studied with Meir and maintained constant contact with him for nearly twenty years, although they lived in different locales. See Alfred Freimann, “Ascher ben Jechiel: Sein Leben und Wirken,” Jahrbuch der Jüdisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft 2 (Frankfurt am Main, 1918), 1–24. SHOHAM-STEINER AND HOLLENDER 261 (e.g., the Worms Mahzor, produced for the Würzburg community in 1272; and the Laud Mahzor, from the 1270s in Franconia).67 Attempting to explain his position regarding the mahzorim, Asher invoked similar concerns to the ones used by Eliakim of Mainz almost a century and a half earlier. A close and careful reading of Meir of Rothenburg’s response to Asher’s concern reveals that the mahzorim were not the sole decorative or ornamental elements in Cologne’s liturgical life at this time—Asher was concerned about three-dimensional images, as well.68 The archaeological excavations in the Rathausplatz in the 1950s, along with the more recent 2007–16 efforts, unearthed a fair portion of the Cologne synagogue’s bimah.69 Given the opposition voiced both by a Mainz rabbi at the turn of the eleventh century regarding the stone reliefs extending from the window frames of the synagogue, and the later thirteenth-century critique of images of fauna and humans in the mahzorim, the remnants of the bimah are no less than astonishing. The bimah, situated in the heart of the synagogue and serving as one of its two liturgical focal points (the other was the decorated ark, which featured, inter alia, three gilded crowns), was adorned with reliefs and vegetal as well as animal images, such as birds, monkeys, and dogs, neatly carved in the imported northern French white limestone.70 Both the Amsterdam Mahzor and the bimah were almost certainly commissioned by members of the community’s elite. It seems that they were part of a joint 67. The Worms Mahzor is currently held at the National Library in Jerusalem. It was produced in 1272 and transferred to Worms from Würzburg by Jewish refugees fleeing that city during the 1298 Rintfleisch riots. On this codex, see Malachi BeitArié, ed., Mahzor Worms: National and University Library Jerusalem Ms. 4781/1 (facsimile ed.), vol. 1 (Vaduz, 1985), 13–35, https://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLIS/en/ManuScript /Pages/Item.aspx?ItemID=PNX_MANUSCRIPTS990000445600205171-2. According to the catalogue of the Oxford Bodleian library, the Laud Mahzor (named after Archbishop Laud, who had owned the manuscript since the 16th c.; MS Laud Or. 321) is an illuminated mahzor produced in Franconia ca. 1275. See https://hebrew.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_17. 68. On the connection between the Amsterdam Mahzor and the bimah, see Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, “The Writing on the Wall: A Mahzor, a Bimah and a Privilege. A Look at Social Processes in the Thirteenth-Century Jewish Community of Cologne,” in Visual and Material in Pre-Modern Jewish Culture, ed. K. KogmanAppel et al. (Turnhout, forthcoming, 2021). 69. Sven Schütte, “Der Almemor der Kölner Synagoge um 1270/1280: Gotische Kleinarchitektur aus der Kölner Dombauhütte—Befund, Rekonstruktion und Umfeld,” Colonia Romanica 13 (1998): 188–215. A new reconstruction with twotiered Gothic arches was displayed at an exhibition in Berlin in 2018; see http:// www.architectura-virtualis.de/rekonstruktion/Bima.php?lang=de&img=7&file=7. 70. Schütte and Gechter, Von der Ausgrabung zum Museum, 137–41. 262 JQR 111.2 (2021) effort to demonstrate the Cologne community’s economic prowess and status during a time when it flourished financially and politically. The possible convergence of the 1266 stone-carved privilege granted to the Jews of Cologne,71 along with the costly renovation of the bimah and the commissioning of a lavishly decorated mahzor, points to a clear effort by the lay leadership to bolster both the communal presence and their own importance, regardless of rabbinic critique. Evidently, Cologne Jews and their lay leaders claimed for themselves the right to interpret the second commandment and viewed the stone reliefs as significantly different from the forbidden full-blown sculptures and freestanding three-dimensional statues. They were willing to walk a fine line in order to embellish the sacred space in a manner that echoed the prevailing trend among their Christian peers, while still maintaining what they envisioned as theologically acceptable. These examples highlight our contention that the leadership of Cologne’s Jewish community viewed decoration and embellishment of public liturgical space in a markedly different manner from their coreligionists in the Middle Rhine area.72 Even the opposition of a local rabbi (Asher b. Yeḥiel) did not prevent them from lavishly decorating their synagogue or their mahzor. The Cologne cases are comparatively early and are well known because of the opposition voiced in Mainz, but the tendency to decorate synagogues and their implements spread throughout Ashkenaz, especially into eastern Ashkenaz.73 The talmudically infused opposition did little to quell the appreciation of art advocated by the lay elite. 71. On the privilege awarded the Jews of Cologne in 1266, see the overview provided by Joachim Oepen, “Das Judenprivileg im Kölner Dom,” in Kölner Domblatt: Jahrbuch des Zentral-Dombau-Vereins 2008, ed. B. Waker and R. Lauer (Cologne, 2009), 59–92. For an epigraphic analysis of the stone inscription, see, in the same collection, Helga Giersiepen, “ ‘In Publico Aspectu Hominum’: Epigraphische Überlegungen zum Judenprivileg,” in Kölner Domblatt, 93–112. 72. It should be noted that three-dimensional stone reliefs as well as decorated mahzorim, such as the Worms Mahzor, are present in the ShUM communities, but the mahzorim are later than the ones hailing from Cologne. The stone decorations from the Worms synagogue were recovered from the rubble of this medieval structure but cannot be positively dated; see Stefanie Fuchs, “Bauelemente aus dem Schutt der alten Synagoge in Worms: Dokumentation und Perspektiven,” in Die SchUM-Gemeinden Speyer–Worms–Mainz: Auf dem Weg zum Welterbe, ed. P. Heberer and U. Reuter (Regensburg, 2013), 93–110. 73. Rabbis also voiced their opposition in other cases; see, e.g., Isaac ben Moshe, Sefer or zarua‘, 3:633, §203; Joseph Shatzmiller, Cultural Exchange: Jews, Christians, and Art in the Medieval Marketplace (Princeton, N.J., 2013), 73–109. SHOHAM-STEINER AND HOLLENDER 263 CONCLUSION One of the most important traits of the Jewish community reflected in the literature that emerged from the tenth- and eleventh-century ShUM academies was the importance of rabbinic leadership. In this respect, the rabbinic presence in the Middle Rhine area followed an age-old pattern set by rabbis in Late Antiquity, which bolstered the importance of a rabbinic leadership or, at the very least, adherence to rabbinic and halakhic directives in inner Jewish decision making. Whereas the ShUM-based academies and their rabbis promoted a system of arbitration and governance based on talmudic scholarship transmitted by rabbis, Cologne is an example of a community that appears to have used a different system of leadership. The Cologne lay leaders were invested with authority and made decisions based more on local knowledge about the norms of Jewish life than on talmudic erudition. This system of governance and arbitration could have flourished in Jewish communities that had no strong rabbinic presence and probably existed in many places. Only with the arrival of strong local rabbinic authorities would it cede its place. Changes in patterns of authority and leadership as a result of the arrival of new jurisprudential, exegetical, and liturgical knowledge are also well known within Jewish communities in other areas.74 Is this the case here? Was there a Jewish tradition in these areas that existed prior to the arrival of the Babylonian Talmud and the rabbinic tradition? Is it possible that this earlier system gradually eroded over the centuries until its final disappearance in the thirteenth century, when only echoes of its existence can be heard? The sources presented in this study suggest the existence of a lay leadership entrusted with governance and arbitration in Cologne.75 The type of lay leadership that can now be documented for Cologne likely existed 74. In his groundbreaking research on the “Legend of the Four Captives,” Gerson D. Cohen showed how this applies to the Iberian Jewish context with the decline of geonic power and the rise of local authoritative learning; see Gerson D. Cohen, “The Story of the Four Captives,” PAAJR 29 (1961): 114–31. The story can be found in his edition of the text of Ibn Daud: Abraham Ibn Daud, The Book of Tradition: Sefer ha-Qabbalah (Philadelphia, 1967), 46–48 (English trans., pp. 63– 65). Similarly, Robert Bonfil has highlighted these aspects, focusing on the meaning of the stories and events depicted in the 11th-c. “Chronicle of Aḥima‘az,” discussing the scholarly and mystical traditions in southern Italy; see Robert Bonfil, History and Folklore in a Medieval Jewish Chronicle : The Family Chronicle of Ahima‘az ben Paltiel, (Boston, 2009), 87–128. The motif of the replacement of one tradition with a new one is ancient, already found in Jewish talmudic literature (the story of Hillel of Babylonia and the scholarly family of Bnei Batyra in bPes 66a). 75. See also Stow, Alienated Minority, 162–63. 264 JQR 111.2 (2021) in a large number (if not the majority) of medieval Ashkenazic communities. Community functionaries, such as parnasim, would follow behavioral traditions and traditional understanding of Jewish norms in their organization and administration of Jewish communal life. The ShUM rabbinic academies and their students set talmudic argumentation as a basis for Jewish jurisdiction. Once this happened, governance and arbitration would be split among two local powers, since we may assume that the financial elite reserved the right to calculate taxes and participate in decisions about the communal expenses, while leaving jurisdiction to those who were able to apply talmudic norms to medieval Ashkenazic life. E P H R A I M S H O H A M - S T E I N E R is the director of the Center for the Study of Conversion and Inter-Religious Encounters (CSOC) and teaches medieval Jewish history in the Department of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University of Negev, Beersheva. E L IS A B E T H H O L L E N D E R is professor of Jewish studies at the Department of Jewish Studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main.