Language:
English
Year of publication:
1998
Titel der Quelle:
Jewish History
Angaben zur Quelle:
12,1 (1998) 71-85
Keywords:
Antisemitism History Middle Ages, 500-1500
;
Jews
;
Jewish law
;
Antisemitism History Middle Ages, 500-1500
;
Jews
;
Tosafists
Abstract:
An earlier version of this essay was presented at a conference in Beer-Sheva, June 1996, and at the 12th World Congress for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, August 1997. Examines the state of halakhic creativity in France and Germany in times of catastrophe for the Jewish people, and whether the catastrophe affected halakhic creativity. The massacres of Jews in the Rhineland in the First Crusade (1096) had little impact on halakhic creativity. Rashi (d. 1104) had largely completed his exegetical work by then, and the Tosafists had not yet begun theirs. The burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1242 did not interrupt the creative enterprise of the French Tosafists but only caused it to move from Paris to Normandy and Corbeil. By the time of the expulsion of Jews from France in 1306, the Tosafists had completed their creative work. However, the work of the German school of dialectical exegesis was cut down at the height of its creativity by the anti-Jewish depredations of the late 12th-early 13th centuries - the Rindfleisch, Armleder, and Black Death massacres; the imprisonment of R. Meir of Rothenburg (d. 1293); the death of his pupil R. Mordechai (1298), and the flight of his other pupil, R. Asher (the Rosh), to Spain.
Note:
Assesses the impact on halakhic creativity of four major catastrophes in medieval Ashkenaz.
,
Appeared also in his "Collected Essays" I (2013) 11-30.
URL:
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