The Rhineland Valley (Shu"m) Communities

🏰 The cradle of Ashkenazi Jewish culture was the Rhineland Valley, and particularly the communities of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz. Today, we explore the growth of these foundational communities.

The reconstructed medieval synagogue of Worms, Germany

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In this issue:

• The Shu”m Communities

• The Charter of Bishop Rudiger

• Rabbenu Gershom Meor ha-Golah and the Early Scholars of Ashkenaz

• Reads and Resources

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Last week, I wrote about the movement of the influential Kalonymos (or Kalonymus) family from Lombardy in Italy to the Rhineland Valley. Today, we’ll take a closer look at the Rhineland Jewish communities themselves, known by the acronym Shu”m (שו”ם) for the three main cities of Speyer (שפירא), Worms (וורמייזא), and Mainz (מגנצא), the last of which was the first home of the Kalonymides. These were not the only cities settled by Jews in the Rhineland or in greater Germany, but the most prominent, as well as early centers of Torah study. In 2021, the Shu”m communities were listed by Unesco as world heritage sites and still contain medieval structures that visitors can see—links to those below.

The Shu”m Communities

The medieval mikveh that still stands in Speyer, Germany (Wikimedia).

The story of the medieval Jewish community of Mainz, regarded by early German authorities as the leading and perhaps earliest center of learning (though Worms is a close second), is emblematic of the trajectories of the Rhineland Valley communities. These are characterized by homegrown, robust cultures of learning and thriving trade marred by repeated outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence. The earliest attestation of Jewish life in Mainz comes from a church council document dated 906, which sets out that the murder of a Jew bears the same ramifications as the murder of a Christian, implying that presence of Jews. The date of 917, disputed by some scholars but generally accepted as a salient probability, is given to the migration of the Kalonymides to the city. In other words, in the first quarter of the tenth century, we see the beginnings of Jewish life in Mainz.

Among the first land rights granted to Ashkenazi Jewish communities were the essentials of communal life: grounds for a cemetery and a place to site a mikveh (ritual bath). Other public buildings, synagogues and study halls, came next. Jews were initially allowed to privately own land, a right that was eroded in the later medieval period. As we’ll see below, residing in a Jewish quarter was probably not obligatory but preferred for safety and cultural reasons. Despite being legally able to purchase land, Jews largely remained outside of the landed system of wealth and labor prevalent in northern Europe, including in the Rhineland. As immigrants, many of them merchants, Jews tended to have more liquid assets than the lower and sometimes also the growing middle classes of Christian society. This, coupled with economic need and Christian attitudes towards usury (lending money at interest), pushed Jews into moneylending, though not as uniformly or exclusively as previously thought.

In Mainz, the first flowering of Jewish life was obliterated by the popular outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in the wake of the First Crusade in 1096. We’ll get deeper into the causes of this violence and its profound effects on the Jewish communities of the Rhineland in discussing the Crusade chronicles, a unique genre of medieval Jewish historiographical writing, next week. For now, I want to briefly describe the background of these sad events. The call to crusade—to militarily win control of sites of importance to Christianity in the Land of Israel—was issued by Pope Urban II in November of 1095. Knights, a class of landed nobility that offered military services to regional powers of various ranks, were the target of the pope’s charge, but not only. Growing unrest among the lower classes of Christian society caused rulers to search for a pressure release valve to keep them from revolting against their masters. Crusade proved a potent means of releasing this social pressure.

Unfortunately for Jews, the masses who gathered to accompany orders of knights to the East saw fit to attack infidels in their midst, already in Europe: that is, their Jewish neighbors. This was exacerbated by the massing of restless young men awaiting deployment from the Rhineland. Despite R. Meshullam ben Kalnoymos, then leader of the Mainz community, obtaining an order of protection from Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor (i.e., ruler of Germany), the outbreak of extreme violence left the community shattered, as did similar events in Worms and Speyer. Along with the massive loss of life, some four generations of scholarship were disrupted, taking decades to recover and shifting the center of Torah learning westward to northern France (Tzarfat).

This paroxysm of violence was not the first nor the last that the Jews of Mainz and the Rhineland Valley communities suffered. Blood libels and popular uprisings in the late thirteenth century led leaders of the communities to flee, as Maharam of Rothenburg, who had spent a part of his life in Mainz, attempted, unsuccessfully, to do (he was arrested and died imprisoned). In 1349, when the Black Plague swept through Europe, allegations that Jews had poisoned wells and caused the plague led to another outbreak of extreme violence, including at Mainz. Though the communities attempted to rebuild, they never recovered, in part due to repeated local orders of expulsions, followed by readmissions and final expulsions. In 1483, Jews were expelled from Mainz for the final time. In Worms, the eleventh-century synagogue was destroyed during Kristallnacht in 1938 and reconstructed only in 1961. It was again targeted by anti-Israel arsonists in 2010.

The Charter of Bishop Rudiger

In 1084, a splinter group of Jews from Mainz set out to found a new community following a fire in the Jewish quarter and unrest among the mercantile burgher class, which always had the potential to explode in anti-Jewish violence. We possess both the Latin charter granting the group of Jews rights of settlement in Speyer and a brief account in Hebrew from the later chronicle of R. Shlomo bar Shimshon of Speyer, providing us with an unusually broad view of the events that established the venerable Speyer Jewish community (the surname Shapiro, and its many variants, derives from Speyer, pronounced Shpira by medieval Jews).

The charter of settlement, in this case, was granted not by a royal but by an ecclesiastical official: Bishop Rudiger Huozmann of Speyer, on behalf of the local bishopric, which owned lands in the town. Bishop Rudiger explains:

When I wished to make a city out of the village of Speyer, I Rudiger, surnamed Huozmann, bishop of Speyer, thought that the glory of our town would be augmented a thousandfold if I were to bring Jews.

Robert Chazan, ed., Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages (Behrman House, 1980), p. 58

Here we see part of a complex phenomenon, in which Church officials could serve as protectors of Jews, as was also sometimes the case during Crusader violence—which, of course, was orchestrated on the highest level by the pope. That is, the Church could be an agent of protection as well as an inciting force. It was not a unitary vector in Jewish-Christian relations.

We also see that Bishop Rudiger considered it beneficial to allow the settlement of Jews, likely due to the economic roles he expected them to play in the life of the developing city.

The stipulations of the charter provide us with a picture of how Jewish communities operated in early Ashkenaz. Importantly, the Jewish community is granted semi-autonomy:

Just as the mayor of the city serves among the burghers, so too shall the Jewish leader adjudicate any quarrel which might arise among them or against them. If he be unable to determine the issue, then the case shall come before the bishop of the city or his chamberlain.

Robert Chazan, ed., Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages (Behrman House, 1980), p. 58

The higher court remains that of the bishop, but barring difficult cases, Jews are granted the right to their own courts and thus their own legal system, as well as their own leadership and presumably governance. Jews are also charged with guarding themselves. Another stipulation of the charter is that Jews are allowed to freely exchange gold and silver and engage in commerce; visiting Jews are exempted from tolls and other fees. Jews may employ Christian servants and nurses, and have the legal right to sell unkosher parts of an animal to Christians (a proviso that points to a possible point of tension between the communities).

Tellingly, Bishop Rudiger relates:

Those Jews whom I have gathered I placed outside the neighborhood and residential area of the other burghers. In order that they not be easily disrupted by the insolence of the mob, I have encircled them with a wall.

Robert Chazan, ed., Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages (Behrman House, 1980), p. 58

He carefully notes how the Church acquired the lands it is granting, and thus has the right to rent it to the Jews (at three and one-half pounds, paid annually). The account in the chronicle of Shlomo bar Simshon notes, “The bishop of Speyer greeted us warmly,” and sees the enclosed quarter as a protective measure: “He…expressed his intention to build about us a strong wall to protect us from our enemies.”

Rabbenu Gershom Meor ha-Golah and the Early Scholars of Ashkenaz

The first generations of scholars in Ashkenaz produced a leading light in Rabbenu Gershom ben Yehuda (c. 960–1028), dubbed “the light of the exile” (מאור הגולה) by Rashi in a teshuva. We know about Rabbenu Gershom mostly through later Ashkenazi Rishonim (medieval Torah scholars), including the Or Zarua and Maharam of Rothenburg; his responsa are scattered in later collections. The Or Zarua, for instance, in discussing the laws of mourning, notes in a passage about mourning for those who have transgressed and not had the opportunity to repent, that Rabbenu Gershom mourned for his son who had been forcibly converted to Christianity (II, no. 428, near the end). The time of persecution to which the Or Zarua alludes may be the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II’s 1012 edict of expulsion against the Jews of Mainz. Rabbenu Gershom’s primary students, R. Eliezer ha-Gadol of Worms, R. Yaakov ben Yakar ha-Zaken, and R. Yitzchak ben Yehuda, where among the teachers of Rashi, making Rabbenu Gershom the “grandfather” of Rashi’s scholarship.

Rabbenu Gershom is particularly well-known for takkanot, decrees establishing novel legislation prohibiting certain acts. These include a prohibition on polygamy (having multiple wives), which is Biblically permitted, often known simply as Cherem de-Rabbenu Gershom, and the prohibition on divorcing a wife against her will. Other takkanot attributed to Rabbenu Gershom are the cherem ha-yishuv, the right to limit settlement to protect current residents; the ban on reminding forced converts of their coerced transgression; the ban on the reading of private letters; and a ban on emending texts of the Talmud. The attribution to him of these takkanot is somewhat later, by Rabbenu Tam and Maharam among others, while earlier authorities, like Ravan (R. Eleizer ben Natan) speak of them in terms of communal enactments. Regardless, the importance of attaching them to Rabbenu Gershom bespeaks his great authority in Ashkenaz. His legal independence, piety, and learning established scholarly norms in Ashkenaz for generations to come.

This issue is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Robert Chazan, z”l, who passed away as I wrote this newsletter so deeply informed by his work, honoring his major contributions to the study of medieval Ashkenaz.

Reads and Resources

• This brief video gives you a tour of the remains of the Shu”m communities as they appear today.

• More great images from Worms can be seen here (expand the sections), here, and here. You can see artifacts from the Speyer Jewish Museum here.