reading and dialectical applications’.^36 Ramerupt played a quite remark-
ably prominent part in all this. Luminaries associated with the little town
included three of Rashi’s grandsons, the rabbis Samuel ben Meir
(‘Rashbam’), Isaac ben Meir (‘Rivam’) and, above all, Jacob ben Meir
(‘Rabbenu Tam’). Their endeavours continue to touch on Jewish life, in
a whole range of different ways, to this day. Rabbenu Tam, for example,
critiqued some of his grandfather’s ideas about the hanging of themezu-
zah(that is, the little case containing Torah verses, affixed to Jewish
doors and gates in accordance with Deuteronomy 6:9 and 11:20).
Modern Ashkenazi Jews hedge their bets between Rashi and Rabbenu
Tam, placing themezuzahat a slanting angle.^37
The Briennes hardly deserve the credit for any of this, but it is fair to
observe that, in general, they helped to maintain an environment in
whichsuchstudiescouldflourish. On the other hand, however, there
was a rising tide of hostility towards Jews in northern France, with the
pressure on them steadily increasing.^38 Outrages were particularly likely
to occur at times of crusading fervour, and Ramerupt, it seems, was no
exception to the rule. On 8 May 1147, a band of crusaders–quite
possibly those intending to head east under the leadership of Walter II
of Brienne–assaulted Rabbenu Tam and ransacked his house. They
ripped up the Torah scroll in his face and inflictedfive wounds in a
grotesque parody of the sufferings of Christ. The rabbi could well have
perished, there and then, if he had not been able to bribe an unnamed
‘official’to release him from the mob. Although this level of violence
was quite exceptional in Ramerupt, the various pogroms that took place
in France at the start of the First and Second Crusades should be seen
as milestones on the road to the famous holocaust at Blois in 1171–
which, Rabbenu Tam said, should be commemorated like another Yom
Kippur.^39
Yet only a fraction of the Briennes’nuptials brought in rewards on the
scale of Bar-sur-Seine and Ramerupt. The vast majority of these mar-
riages served to anchor the Briennes far morefirmly within Champagne,
forging close kinship ties with other important families, such as the
(^36) E. Kanarfogel,Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz(Detroit,
2013), 1.
(^37) For an overview of Jewish life and culture at Ramerupt, see H. Gross,Gallia Judaica:
dictionnaire géographique de la France d’après les sources rabbiniques, ed. D. Iancu-Agou,
G. Nahon and S. Schwarzfuchs (Leuven, 2010), 634–8. See also E. Taitz,The Jews of
Medieval France: The Community of Champagne(Westport, 1994).
(^38) See the references to‘Lambertus [et] Malgerus, conversi’inCollection des principaux
39 cartulaires du diocèse de Troyes, iii,‘Cartulaire de Basse-Fontaine’, no. 6.
SeeThe Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book, 315– 1791 , ed. J. R. Marcus and
revised by M. Saperstein (Cincinnati, 1999), 142–6, 344–6.
18 ‘Between Bar-sur-Aube and Rosnay’(c. 950–1191)