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.

Noah in the Middle Ages

There is much more to be said about the story of Noah than an ark, a dove, and animals two-by-two (especially since the command was to collect more animals than just pairs). Jewish thinkers of the Middle Ages looked more carefully at the story and asked themselves questions.

For example, we are told that Noah was "righteous in his generation." Did that mean that he was a good man in the context of that time but not necessarily by absolute standards? (Since the point of the Flood was to eliminate wicked humanity.) After all, he followed God's command to build an ark and collect animals, but could he have warned his neighbors to prepare for the coming Flood? Abraham prayed on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah, but Noah doesn't even talk to God; we never hear his voice; he just follows orders. Noah was the first vintner, a useful thing, but he got drunk and exposed himself. Was he an example of the "righteous man in a fur coat," one who neglects his neighbor while ensuring his own comfort?

One medieval commentator, Rashi, claimed that the building of the ark took 120 years, and that Noah stretched it out to give people time to repent. Rashi also said that the name "Noah" itself supports this, because it means "This one will comfort us in our work and in the toil of our hands, which come from the ground that the Lord had cursed."

The Jewish Encyclopedia points out that there are two different stories of Noah. In one he is the "hero of the flood," in the other he is the savior of mankind who plants the first vineyard. These are two very different anecdotes, and could just as easily have been two different characters.

Adam is described as the first farmer, but farming did not die out with the Flood. It was not necessary for the creation of wine-making to happen post-Flood, so why attach the development to Noah? Was it solely to have his son Ham enter and see his father naked so that Ham could be cursed and explain other human beings in the world who were "cursed"?

Medieval Christianity saw Noah's three sons as the fathers of the peoples in different continents:  Japheth/Europe, Shem/Asia, and Ham/Africa. Ham's curse was intended to explain the dark skins of the African people, and was used as a justification for slavery. All of this was upended after the discovery of animals and people across the Atlantic after 1492, as you can imagine. Even Isaac Newton, writing in the 18th century, saw Noah and his sons as the ancestors of humanity across the world.

There was a medieval group that spent a lot of time on the builder of the ark; tomorrow we'll look at the Anglo-Saxon fascination with Noah.