ק(הילת) ק(ודש) קולוניא? מבט חדש על הקהילה היהודית בקלן בימי-הביניים

Ephraim Shoham-Steiner’s study of “The ‘Holy Community of Cologne’: New Perspectives on the Medieval Jewish Community” proposes to contribute to the local and urban history of medieval German Jewry. For many years the middle Rhine Shu”m Jewish communities situated in the cities Speyer, Worms, and Mainz have comprised the primary focus of studies of Ashkenazic communities during the Middle Ages, while other localities have been largely overlooked. No doubt this has much to do with the relative availability – or unavailability – of pertinent rabbinic source materials. The Jewish community in Cologne did not have a rabbinic academy (yeshiva) until relatively late in the middle ages and the rabbinic footprint in it was much more modest than in its Shu”m communities a fact that had a profound impact on our knowledge and the sources regarding this community. 

Cologne is one of the only Jewish communities in medieval Europe that received serious and meticulous archeological attention. The Cologne Judenviertel (Jewish quarter) located at the historical center of the medieval city, close to the city hall, was excavated twice over the past 60 years. Both archeological excavations, in the 1950’s and in the early 21st century, yielded fascinating finds that shed light on the Jewish community and its history. These remains include the medieval synagogue, a Mikvah, and some of the homes in the Jewish quarter and the Judengasse.  One of the most intriguing group of new finds form the recent excavations are fragments from the beautiful thirteenth century lime stone Bimah of the medieval synagogue. This architectural element was at the heart of a halakhic controversy alongside an ornamented and illuminated Mahzor (book of festive public communal prayer) that survived and is currently on display at the Amsterdam Jewish Museum known as the “Amsterdam Mahzor”. Another revolutionary find are several hundred pieces of slate inscribed in Hebrew characters. These unique inscriptions on slates are currently being deciphered and catalogued by Prof. Elisabeth Hollender and her team who will be collaborating in the research. Cologne also had a unique land register of the area of the Jewish quarter (Judenschreinsbuch) that survived from the twelfth century and has served since its publication in the late nineteenth century as a treasure trove for scholars studying the social geographical and economical history of the city and its Jewish population. Previous scholarship on Cologne Jewry had hardly looked at rabbinic evidence and had not discussed the current archeological finds. Furthermore, it focused mostly on German and Latin archival documents from the period of the “second medieval community” that developed in the city in the second half of the fourteenth century until the final expulsion of Jews from the city in 1424. The current research project sets out to look primarily at the earlier Jewish community of Cologne from its earliest origins possibly in the late Carolingian era, through the turbulent times during the era of the crusades, the community’s apex in the thirteenth century and up until the Black Death riots of the mid fourteenth century that brought this phase to an end.  The project sets out to describe the profile of the Cologne Jewish community by collecting and considering a wide array of sources, Jewish and non-Jewish alike (textual, archival, artistic, and archeological evidence.) Preliminary findings suggest that Cologne emerges not merely as yet another Ashkenazic settlement that one can add to the Shu”m threesome, mentioned above, but as a community with a membership, leadership, culture, and character that distinguish it from those others – with departures from rabbinic legal norms that prevailed elsewhere and noteworthy patterns of interaction with its Christian neighbors. The proposed study will hopefully also serve as a test case and model for others – other scholars and studies of other communities – perhaps even beyond the Jewish side of the “fence” demarcating majority and minority societies and cultures during the European Middle Ages.