Struggling with Tradition

This monograph discusses the disagreement within the Jewish community concerning the medieval practice of active martyrdom, including slaughter of children and suicide, from the 11th until the 16th centuries.

It covers the mainly implicit reservations about and objections in Jewish society to this practice. It is suggested that such opinions existed throughout the period when this practice was accepted in halakhic (legal) terms and by the most outstanding Jurists. It is argued that this was the case during the persecutions of the First Crusade in Germany and in the following centuries in the Ashkenazic cultural sphere. This is complemented by a survey and analysis of the situation in the Iberian peninsula during the 14th-15th centuries, when such phenomenon is detected during the persecutions in 1391 and during the so-called "expulsion" from Portugal in 1497. A series of appendices discuss a variety of related topics and all main texts discussed in the book in the original Hebrew.

While many scholars discussed the phenomenon of active martyrdom and described its status among medieval Jewry as positive and monolithic, this book proposes a different angle which reveals the ongoing objections of scholars and parts of Jewish society who opposed active martyrdom on legal as well as on emotional grounds until the eventual waning and disappearance of this practice. It is suggested that this actual change set the background for an explicit and total legal rejection of a tradition which lasted and was admired and hailed for more than 400 years.