might aspire to the throne. Consequently, occupations such as moneylend-
ing, forging metal, alchemy, and sorcery fell into the hands of outsiders,
foreigners – in other words, the politically emasculated. All in all, the con-
centration of Jews in commerce and moneylending fortified their
relationship with the sovereign, and ensured for the most part royal or
imperial protection. In this way, the benefits of protecting Jews for eco-
nomic reasons dovetailed with the Augustinian injunction not to kill or
forcibly convert Jews.
Political and economic stability by the eleventh century facilitated the
development of Ashkenazic Jewish communal and intercommunal life. The
demographic origins of Ashkenazic Jewry posed a problem to Ashkenazic
Jews that their Sephardic counterparts did not have to face. The Jews of Spain
originated in Babylonia and other parts of the Islamic world. Spain and
Babylonia were part of a single Islamic world, with easy access from one to
the other. Thus communal leaders of the Jews of Spain had a direct, unim-
peded link to the Babylonian Gaonate – and a uncomplicated legitimizing of
their authority. Ashekanzic Jewry traced its origins back to the Land of Israel
via Italy; in 917, for example, the Kalonymus family – a leading Italian
Jewish family – migrated to Mayence. By the tenth century, the Rhineland
and the Land of Israel were on opposite sides of the grand border between
Christendom and Islam; thus, Ashkenazic Jews were largely cut off from their
rabbinic forbears in the Holy Land. While rabbinic and lay leaders in Spain
claimed to be the heirs of the Jews of Baghdad, through such means as the
gaonic responsum, Ashkenazic Jewish leaders had no such luxury. Rather,
they had to justify their leadership without the inherited authority of a
Palestinian patriarch or Babylonian gaon or exilarch.
Instead, they derived their authority through mutual consent from their
constituents. That is, the members of the Ashkenazic communities bound
themselves to a common set of laws, investing their leaders with the author-
ity to enforce them. The self-derived communal authority of Ashkenazic
communities provided a system of courts for Jews in an age when other exist-
ing courts were inadequate. Royal, ecclesiastical, and feudal courts assumed
that Jews would handle their own legal and juridical problems. Manorial
courts lacked the sophistication to deal with commercial matters.
At the heart of these laws was the herem Bet Din, the right to adjudicate
cases and, more important, to excommunicate a member of the community
who refused to comply with communal statutes. In an age that did not allow
an individual to be religionslos(without a religion), excommunication from
the Jewish community left no alternative but conversion. Short of converting,
the only alternatives when facing a threat of excommunication were joining a
different community, which was enormously difficult since new members
were expected to bring a letter of reference from the previous community;
or recanting. Most Jews who were threatened with excommunication chose
the latter.
78 The Jews of medieval Christendom