Ashkenazic culture and community: Pietists
and Tosafists
The devastating effects of the First Crusade did not bring an end to Jewish
life in the Rhineland. The main Jewish communities in the Rhineland –
Speyer, Worms, and Mayence – were destroyed in 1096, but they were rebuilt
and restored within a generation. This was due in part to the fact that the
Jews in the smaller villages surrounding these towns were left alone. After
order was restored, they eventually relocated to the towns and rebuilt the
Jewish communities. At the same time, the crusades accelerated the westward
movement of Jews from the Rhineland to northern France. In both cases,
owing to the resilience of Ashkenazic Jews, less than a century after the First
Crusade, a period of cultural explosion ensued.
Two differences are detectable between the Ashkenazic culture and the cul-
ture of Sephardic Jews and other Jews in the Islamic world. While both
Ashkenazic and non-Ashkenazic Jews established an extensive network of
yeshivot (rabbinical schools), a typical Ashkenazic yeshiva tended to be
smaller and more elitist than its non-Ashkenazic counterpart. Moreover, in
contrast to non-Ashkenazic culture, which combined religious and secular
components, Ashkenazic culture was largely religious in nature, focusing pri-
marily on the study of rabbinic texts.
Still, it is important not to overstate the difference between Ashkenazic
and non-Ashkenazic culture. In the non-Ashkenazic world, despite the extra-
talmudic focus, talmudic study was still the centerpiece of learning. The
Ashkenazic focus on rabbinic texts did not preclude the study of Jewish
philosophers such as Sa’adia Gaon, Maimonides, and Yehuda Halevi, and the
writing of non-legal genres such as religious poetry.
The main currents of Ashkenazic culture took shape beginning in the
twelfth century, each with distinct theological underpinnings and social phi-
losophy, beginning with the Hasidei Ashkenaz, the Pietists of Ashkenaz.
Despite the name, this group was connected neither to the pietists at the time
of the Maccabees nor to present-day Hasidic Jews. The origins of this move-
ment are unclear. The historian Yitzhak Baer pointed to a parallel between
these pietists and coterminous Christian counterparts such as the Albigenses.
Other historians have argued that their pietistic, ascetic, and mystical out-
look was a response to the trauma and martyrdom of the First Crusade, an
intense moment engendering an intense response. Critics of both contentions
point to the pre-crusade roots of Ashkenazic pietism, notably within the
Kalonymus family, prominent in the development of Jewish learning in
Germany. Most compelling, though, is the assertion that this movement
arose as a response to Rashi’s disciples relocating themselves and the center of
rabbinic scholarship from the Rhineland to northern France after the First
Crusade, leaving behind a corps of intensely spiritual and ascetic pietists.
The Jews of medieval Christendom 85