of Peter the Hermit and Duke Godfrey were assuaged. The followers of Enicho
of Leiningem were not. At other times, Jews turned to their Christian burgher
neighbors for assistance, and to the political authorities for protection. In gen-
eral, where violence was poorly organized and sporadic, authorities could arrive
in time and help. If it was organized and sustained, they could not. Some Jews
chose the less conventional option of apostasy when facing the threat of imme-
diate death. While rabbinic tradition makes little or no mention of voluntary
abandonment of Judaism as a way of escaping death, in retrospect it was a rea-
sonable choice in the face of brutal physical coercion.
More difficult to explain are those Jews who chose martyrdom and, in par-
ticular, who martyred their own children in the face of death or forced
conversion. One would expect, given the traditional Jewish taboo against mar-
tyrdom, that Jews would have chosen this option as a last resort, perhaps
reluctantly. According to the chronicles written by Jews immediately after the
First Crusade, however, some Jews enthusiastically embraced martyrdom.
Historians have adduced several explanations. Some have explained this
choice simply as a spontaneous reaction to frightening circumstances. Others
have suggested the influence of preexisting rabbinic precedents that could
potentially feed the urge to martyrdom: the commandment to proclaim the
unity of God (Shema Yisrael), to worship no other deity, to love the Lord your
God with all your faculties (bechol me’odecha), and to sanctify the name of God
(Kiddush Hashem), and the Halachic injunction to choose death over apostasy.
Still other historians pointed to historical precedents such as the Hasideans,
the ten martyrs at the time of Hadrian, and Hannah who martyred her seven
children rather than allowing them to be forcibly converted into Pagans dur-
ing the Maccabean Revolt.
Most engaging, though, is what Robert Chazan described as a “counter-
crusade.” Chazan noted five parallels between the mentality of the Jews who
chose martyrdom and that of the crusaders themselves: a sense of cosmic con-
frontation, a conviction of the absolute validity of their religious beliefs, an
emphasis on profound self-sacrifice, a certainty of eternal reward for martyr-
dom, and belief in ultimate victory.
In the aftermath of the violence, sovereigns and rabbis tried to undo some
of the damage, particularly with respect to Jews who were forcibly converted.
In 1103, Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV issued the Landfried, which
allowed forcibly converted Jews to return to Judaism, albeit for a price; from
this point on, Jews would pay more for imperial protection. The rabbinic
response was expressed most succinctly by Rashi, who welcomed the forced
converts back to Judaism using the rabbinic aphorism Af al pi she-hata Yisrael
hu” (“Although he transgressed, he is still a part of Israel”).
The scale and extent of the violence during the First Crusade were not
repeated during subsequent crusades, owing in large part to the efforts of
imperial and ecclesiastical authorities to curb such violence. Bernard, the
abbot of Clairvaux, when addressing the assembled knights prior to their
The Jews of medieval Christendom 83