The Enactments of SHU"M

The Roman Catholic Church and its followers tried many times to make up sets of rules for interaction with Jews. The Fourth Lateran comes to mind, as does Henry III's Statute of Jewry in 1253 (and his founding of the Domus Conversorum in 1232).

Likewise, Jewish communities sometimes had to establish their own set of policies and practices to govern themselves. After the Rhineland Massacres, three towns of the Rhineland banded together to devise a set of regulations for the future.

The towns were Speyer, Worms, and Mainz, who had suffered in spring of 1096 as the People's Crusade led by Peter the Hermit ravaged them. The leading Jews of the towns created the Enactments of SHU"M. SHU"M comes from the Hebrew names of the towns: Shpira, Vermayza, and Magentza.

The Enactmnets did not happen immediately, though they were a response to further strife that was started because of 1096. Itinerant merchants felt that travel was no longer safe, and so they settled in the towns and became local merchants or, in many cases, moneylenders. This situation created more contact between Jew and Gentile, leading to more problems between the two groups. The Crusades' need for funds also meant more and heavier taxes being levied against Jews.

The first example of such a system appeared in France. About 1160, a synod was held in Troyes, arranged by Jacob ben Meir (1100 - 1171, depicted above), a well-respected teacher (and grandson of Rashi). He, his brother, and over 250 rabbis from all over France gathered to create decrees that would affect the Jewish community as well as when they would rely on Gentile legal systems as opposed to their own. Some of the decisions they wanted people to accept were:

• A strengthening of a ban on polygamy.
• A dispute between Jews over money should not go to a secular court; the beth din, the rabbinical court, should settle it. It should only go to secular authorities if one of the people involved would not accept the decision of the beth din.
• In the case of the Jewish communities own tax system (called the kehillah), a person disputing the tax should pay it first and then bring his or her case to the beth din.
• If you offer a space you own to be used as a synagogue, you cannot restrict it to only certain members of the congregation. You just allow or deny all members.

SHU"M happened a couple generations later, at a synod in Mainz, agreeing to most of the decisions out of Troyes, but adding their own:

• Anyone who informed on another Jew was served with a cherem (essentially an excommunication) until restitution was made.
• No exceptions to kehillah-imposed taxes.
• Lending money to other Jews must follow strict adherence to the halakhot, the body of Jewish law.
• It was prohinbited to call anyone a mamzer (bastard, or any result of an improper relationship).
• If someone dies leaving young children, the estate may be used for their education, even if the deceased left other instructions in their will.

Many of these are still followed, and they have been added to over time.

This has been an important aside after the post on the Rhineland Massacres. Time tomorrow to go back to see what the People's Crusade was getting up to once they reached the Mediterranean.

The Rhineland Massacres

After Peter the Hermit gathered his followers in Cologne, Germany, on Holy Saturday in 1096 (12 April), they prepared to go south and eventually toward the Holy Land as part of the First Crusade. (Technically, at this stage they were not part of the army called by Pope Urban II, and have been referred to as the People's Crusade.)

This was tens of thousands of peasants in a poorly organized militia, moving through unfamiliar territory with the noble goal of doing something "Christian"; unfortunately, this mood of theirs made them see any non-Christian as a target.

This anti-non-Christian mindset motivated them to attack Jews. There were some specific factors we might consider. One was the need for money: they were peasants, and travel expenses (food, shelter) were beyond their meager personal means. Thousands of people crossing unfamiliar land was always stressful for the natives. Jews were a popular source of quick funds by simply stealing from them or even killing them.

Also, to the Christian citizens of France and Germany, Jews were responsible for the Crucifixion of Christ, and so clearly were the enemy of Christians. This was the beginning of "Crusade fever" that inspired anti-Jewish violence for the next couple centuries at least.

Another factor was the presence of Count Emicho of Leiningen. While Peter's people were likely to threaten Jews in the towns through which they passed, bribes of money smoothed this over and people were usually unharmed. He joined Peter the Hermit and brought along his own history of attacking Jews. Emicho shortly before all this was known to attack Jews and force conversions on them.

Peter supposedly carried with him a letter from the Jews of France requesting of the Jews of the Rhineland that they support the Crusade. A Jewish chronicler of the mid-12th century, in the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle, records that Peter's arrival caused such fear in a town that the Jews readily supplied him with his needs.

Jewish communities in Mainz, Speyer, and Worms were ransacked before the Crusaders moved on. These three prominent populations of Jews banded together to enact a series of rules and policies concerning interactions between Jews and Gentiles. We may continue Peter the Hermit's People's Crusade a little later, but first let's take a look at the Enactments of SHU"M.