The Jewish and Christian faiths share common foundations, but by the Middle Ages were distinct from each other. Nonetheless, Jews lived side by side with Christians in northern Europe and interacted with Christians and their ideas. Focusing on the period between 1100-1350, researchers in the Beyond the Elite project aim to build a clearer picture of daily life at the time, as Professor Elisheva Baumgarten explains.
Getting to the heart of the Jewish community
Seal of the Jewish community of Augsburg. Impression in wax from the year 1298. / Photo: Arye Maimon-Institute for Jewish History, Trier University; photo of a seal cast, original impression in Stadtarchiv Augsburg.
The history of the Jewish people in Europe dates back to the early Middle Ages, but there is a marked increase in the volume of material describing the daily lives of Jews after the time of the first crusade, between 1095-1099. Researchers in the Beyond the Elite project are delving into this material to investigate how Jewish people in Northern France and Germany between 1100-1350 conducted their daily lives. “We’re exploring the fabric of the Jewish community,” says Professor Elisheva Baumgarten, the project’s Principal Investigator. The focus of attention here is ‘ordinary’ members of the community rather than the elite. “We know a relatively large amount about learned men, but what was the distance between them and a less learned person? Did they have the same lifestyle? Did they have the same daily routine? Did they believe in different things? Did they observe rituals differently? These are the types of questions that we are asking,” explains Professor Baumgarten. This period was also marked by a change in attitude towards the Jewish community. In the early part of the period between 1100-1350, Jewish people were invited into cities in Northern France and Germany, but later on there was a higher level of persecution. “Something happened during that period, something changed. The way that scholars have always explained that change is by looking at intellectual discourse 62
Seal of the Jew Jakob Daniel from Trier. Impression in wax from the year 1348. / Photo: Arye Maimon-Institute for Jewish History, Trier University; photo of a seal cast, original impression in Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz.
and exchange between Jews and Christians,” outlines Professor Baumgarten. While this was undoubtedly an important factor behind changing attitudes, Professor Baumgarten believes it doesn’t tell the whole story and that more attention should be paid to daily life. “The story has to include more people and more everyday events,” she stresses. “We haven’t previously looked in-depth at relations in daily life between Jews and Christians. These issues around how a group goes from being a separate but integrated part of society to being persecuted are also very relevant to today’s world.”
Seal of the Jewish community of Regensburg. Impression in wax from the year 1356. / Photo: Arye Maimon-Institute for Jewish History, Trier University; photo of a seal cast, original impression in Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Munich.
we can,” she stresses. Texts and records are available, mainly written in Hebrew, but also in Latin and the vernacular, as well as many other artefacts. The newest member of the team studies the wax seals used on official documents, for example, which can lead to new insights. “Some of the seals during the high Middle Ages were very elaborate, very decorated, and they tell us about people’s values and how they saw themselves,” outlines Professor Baumgarten. “Other students work on architecture, Hebrew legal literature, as well as liturgy, and interpretations of liturgy.” This provides the basis for researchers to
varying degrees of pressure to convert, and Professor Baumgarten says that some people indeed chose to do so, for various reasons. “Maybe they thought their life would be better as Christians, they thought new opportunities would open up to them in the future,” she continues. “Some scholars have suggested that young men in particular were the most likely to convert, the teenagers and young men, who saw it as an opportunity for a better future.” Researchers are also looking at people’s willingness and desire to display their Jewish identity, as well as whether this was related to the level of pressure they were under to convert. Over this period certain forms of dress came to be associated with Jewish people, although they had previously been worn by people of other faiths. “Scholars of art history have shown that during the early part of this period very respectable Christian men wore a particular hat, perhaps even bishops and members of the clergy. But during the course of the 13th century, this hat came to be more and more closely associated with Jews, and by the 14th century it had almost become a symbol of the Jewish community,” says Professor Baumgarten. Jewish people who chose to wear this and other garments associated with their faith were openly displaying their religious identity, while others were more circumspect, which Professor Baumgarten says raises some interesting questions. “Would people rather
Lovers holding hands. Silver plate from the Weißenfels treasure. 1st quarter of 14th century. Moritzburg Gallery in Halle. Registration number: Mo_LMK-E-164. (Photo by Dr. Ido Noy).
MS London, British Library Add. 11639, Fol. 226v.
not stand out? Or would they rather advertise the fact that they’re Jewish?” she asks. An individual’s dress was important at the time as a way of indicating status, wealth or standing in society, and different organisations like convents and monasteries also had their own distinguishing dress, such as certain belts or habits. Some scholars have argued that this willingness of Jewish people to display their cultural identity through dress was related to the relative abundance of resources at the time. “This was a time of plenty, and Jews could afford to manifest who they were and what they believed in,” outlines Professor Baumgarten. This relative plenty was accompanied by a degree of intolerance, yet there was still space for cultural exchange. “Scholars have described this period as both a time of change and as a time of growing intolerance. Still, we have records of Christian scholars sitting with Jewish scholars and studying the Bible for example. And we certainly see cultural exchange, on the level of the stories that we see, written in Latin or the vernacular,” says Professor Baumgarten. The Jewish and Christian faiths share many common foundations, including certain biblical teachings, yet by the Middle Ages they were distinct from each other. Much was still shared between them however, and certain elements of Christian practice were adopted by Jews over time, a topic of great interest to Professor Baumgarten. “It’s fascinating to
We know a relatively large amount about learned men, but what was the distance between them and a less learned person? Did they have the same lifestyle? Did they have the same daily routine? Did
they believe in different things? Everyday life A range of sources are being considered within the project, as researchers seek to get to the heart of what everyday life was like for Jewish people during this period. Rather than focusing on a single type of source, Professor Baumgarten and her team aim to look at as many different sources and genres as possible. “In order to get a fuller picture of daily life, we need to consider as many different factors as
reconstruct people’s daily experiences, including where they worked, how they dressed, and how they expressed their identity as Jews in what were predominantly Christian surroundings. Jewish communities at this time were fairly small, numbering around a few dozen families at the most. “They would live next to Christians, within the Jewish quarter, that was home to both Jews and Christians,” outlines Professor Baumgarten. These communities came under
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Beyond the Elite Beyond the Elite: Jewish Daily Life in Medieval Europe
Project Objectives
Beyond the Elite is a multifaceted research project that seeks to explore what daily life was like for the Jews of northern France and Germany (Ashkenaz) from 1100 to 1350. Beyond the Elite seeks to understand and describe the daily rituals, the objects and the spaces that made up the lives of the members of these communities living within Christian society.
Project Funding
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 681507
Contact Details
Principal Investigator, Professor Elisheva Baumgarten Rabin Building Room 4007 The Hebrew University Mount Scopus Campus Jerusalem T: +9 72 2 588 0424 E: BeyondtheElite@mail.huji.ac.il W: https://beyond-the-elite.huji.ac.il/book/about
Professor Elisheva Baumgarten
Photo by Hila Shiloni
Elisheva Baumgarten is the Yitzchak Becker Professor of Jewish Studies and teaches in the Departments of Jewish History and History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is a social historian who studies the Jews of medieval northern Europe. She has published on family life, rituals and everyday religious observances of medieval Jews.
see how these developments took place. We aim to try and understand what elements Jews chose to adopt while this evolution was going on, what they borrowed, adapted, or acculturated from their surroundings,” she says. In many cases, the Jewish people would take elements that already existed in their culture, and meld them with the common practices that they saw around them. “Some practices existed in late antiquity, but had new manifestations in medieval culture. We’ve noticed that a lot of these changes took place over the period between 1100 and 1350.” A good example is the kaddish, a hymn of praises to God, which became part of the prayer for the dead and how they were commemorated over time. The prayer itself was not new, but saying it on a daily basis for the dead became a part of common practice over the course of the 12th and 13th centuries. “Somebody whose mother had recently died would be in the synagogue every day for a year after the death reciting this prayer,” explains Professor Baumgarten. A further dimension of the project’s work involves comparing Jewish communities of northern Europe – mainly in Germany – with those in the Mediterranean. “We are looking at how identity was formed differently in various locations, because of different cultural, political and social constraints,” continues Professor Baumgarten. “The way that Jews interacted with their neighbours is important in each of these locations, while we’re also looking at the internal structures of the Jewish community.” The project’s findings to this point suggest that Jewish communities manifested and reformulated their ideals as part of their daily activities, and that the choices made by their leaders and individuals were related to the nature of the majority Christian culture in which they lived. The team members are probing the mechanisms behind these processes.
MS London, British Library Add. 11639, fol. 542v, Christian calendar in circles.
By looking beyond the elite and problematizing everyday life, Professor Baumgarten hopes that she and her team have opened up a new perspective on Jewish communities. “We hope that we’ve really helped to change the way we think about Jewish communities, and opened up new questions for scholars who are interested in this topic,” she says. The project is coming towards the end of its second year, and the emphasis on collaboration and inter-disciplinary knowledge sharing has led to new insights, which Professor Baumgarten intends to build on further in the future. “This project will not be finished once the funding period is over in terms of doing what we set out to do,” she says. “Many new questions and ideas will open up from it. So I really see it as passageway into a new area of research, opening up new questions and ideas.”
ERC team on trip to Germany, May 2018 (Photo by Dr. Ido Noy).
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