ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
AppleTree Editor
W O'
b e the most exciting
place in the world. It is filled with
drama, anguish, joy and adventure
community. In this new feature,
AppleTree invites you to learn abOut
Jewish history. We begin with a little
known, but profoundly tragic,
episode from our history— when
one of our great scholars died, though
another managed to survive.
If you would like to rn ore about any
Jewish historical event, s rop AppleTree a
line at the Jewish News,
paljoey@earthlink.net
pringtime is an oddity
on the Jewish calendar.
Between the two
bright holidays of
Pesach and Shavuot, there is a
period of mourning. The
Talmud tells us that during this
interval, hundreds of Rabbi
Akiva's students died, struck
down by a divinely ordained
plague for the sin of not showing
each other respect.
For centuries, Jews in
Christian Europe had their own
reasons for mourning around the
time of Pesach.
Throughout history, Pesach
(Passover), or the week after the
holiday, often coincided with
Easter, when Christians believe
Jesus rose from the dead after
having been crucified. Christians
have said the crucifixion was
instigated by the Jews, and for
this they must be punished.
From ancient times until the
beginning of the 20th century,
anti-Jewish church sermons and
ensuing riots were common.
In the late Middle Ages, Jews
of central Europe also turned to
mourning between Pesach and
Shavuot because they were sub-
ject to some of the most vicious
and murderous attacks visited
upon them since the First
Crusade in 1095 and the Second
Crusade in 1146.
This onslaught was organized
by a knight called Rindfleisch (in
German, the name means
"beef"). Rindfleisch came from
the small town of Roettingen on
the Tauber River in Franconia, in
what is today the wine country
of south-central Germany.
It was not the crucifixion of
Jesus that Rindfleisch sought to
avenge.
Rather, the alleged crimes that
aroused his passions were more
recent — the blood libel and
"desecration of the host."
During the 1280s in various
German cities — Mainz,
Munich and Oberwesel — Jews
were accused of killing gentiles,
usually children, and draining
their bodies of blood for use in
mysterious Jewish rituals. More
common was the accusation that
the Jews need Christian blood to
make matzah for the Passover
seder.
In Paris in 1290, the charge
was desecration of the host. The
"host" was the wafer or cracker
of unleavened sacramental bread
(akin to matzah), a central com-
ponent of the Eucharist service
in the Catholic Church.
In 1215, the Fourth Lateran
Council in Rome (a meeting of
bishops) declared that during
Eucharist the communion wafer
changed into the flesh of Jesus, a
process they called transubstanti-
ation. Soon, stories spread that
Jews would buy or steal the
crackers and subject them to all
kinds of torture, such as crucifix-
ion, stabbing and burning. The
storytellers related how the
crackers would cry out, bleed or
try to fly away. Sometimes, the
wafers were "rescued" and turned
into holy relics.
Jews deemed guilty of the des-
ecration were punished, usually
by burning at the stake. Often,
the entire Jewish community suf-
fered the same fate.
With his head already full of
the anti-Jewish preaching, he
heard at Easter services,
Rindfleisch became even more
incensed at the reports of ritual
murder and sacrilege. He took
advantage of the political turmoil
of the times to bring his own
brand of justice to every Jew.
Battles were raging between
Adolf of Nassau, the deposed
German king, and Albrecht
(Albert), duke of Austria, who
had been elected in his place.
Soldiers were everywhere.
On April 20, 1298 — one
week after Pesach — Rindfleisch
announced that Jews of his
town, Roettingen, had desecrat-
ed a communion wafer, and he,
ordained by heaven, would
avenge the crime.
Rindfleisch and his mob
burned 21 Jews at the stake.
They then moved through the
neighboring towns, spreading
from Franconia through the
duchies of Swabia, Hesse,
Thuringia and Heilbronn. In
many cases, they annihilated
entire communities of Jews.
On July 2, Albert defeated his
rival, but was not crowned until
Aug. 24. Then, acting under
legal charter as protector of the
Jews, Albert ordered an end to
the attacks, but required the Jews
to pay a special tax for the privi-
lege.
Although Albert's authority
put an end to Rindfleisch, his
followers continued to accuse
Jews of using Christian blood
and desecrating communion
wafers and carried out massacres
into the early 1300s.
A Tak Of Two Scholars
In the period of the Rindfleisch
massacres, two renowned figures
in Jewish scholarship stand out,
one as victim and one as sur-
vivor.
Mordechai ben Hillel ha-
kohen, born about 1240 in
Nuremberg, was one of the great
codifiers of HaLachah (Jewish
law). A student of Rabbi Meir
ben Baruch of Rothenburg,
known in Hebrew as the
Maharam MeRothenburg,
Mordechai came a family of dis-
tinguished Torah scholars going
back generations.
In the early 1290s, he began a
compilation of Jewish law that
later came to be known as Sefer
Mordechai (Book of Mordechai),
or "The Mordechai."
Mordechai based his work on
the framework established by
11th century Spanish scholar
Rabbi Yitzhak ben Yaacov Alfasi
(known as the Rif) in his land-
mark codification, Sefer Ha-
Halachot (Book of Laws). Sefer
Mordechai presented each law as
interpreted by almost all the
leading post-talmudic scholars of
France and Germany. The
quotes of about 350 authorities
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2002
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