A Death Well Lived: Communication With, For, and About the Dead in Medieval Ashkenaz

• In Event: Literature and Communal Norms in the Late Middle Ages

Abstract

Using stories, parables, and other material from Sefer Hasidim as a starting point, this paper looks at questions of eschatology, of the need to be protected from danger, and of the desire to be remembered, even once we have gone down into silence. Indeed, the specter of death haunted the towns of medieval Ashkenaz in the form of disease, childbirth and pregnancy gone wrong, incidental violence, and old age. In the standard layout of a medieval town that counted Jews among its inhabitants, death simultaneously occupied a place of centrality and of marginality: Christians were buried as close to the cathedral as possible, with some members of the elite entombed in the church itself. The presence of Jews, however, meant that the dead surrounded, as well as anchored, the town: Jewish cemeteries were frequently located at the very edge of town. Given the physical realities, it appears that, where the dead are concerned, Christians had something that Jews did not: prayer, veneration, and even conversation with the dead on a personal scale, by means of local saints and relics. The Jews lacked this, and so they created an alternative, with the help of years of traditions on their side: a fluid mythos of the mechanics of dying, of being dead, and of living with the dead. Despite the distinctly Christian nature of the practices surrounding the cult of the saints, there is evidence to suggest that Jews in medieval Ashkenaz had their own ways of venerating and communicating with, about, and on behalf of the dead. The exploration of these methods that appear in Sefer Hasidim allows us to appreciate practices and beliefs in common, and to observe the particular ways that the Jews in Ashkenaz understood death and the dead. Death was an intimate part of life in the Middle Ages. Exploring the ways that both Jews and Christians understood it, dealt with it, courted it, or ran from it, is a helpful way of charting how and whether theological, social, and anthropological ties between Jews and Christians were as binding on earth as they were in the grave.

Author

• Emilie E Amar-Zifkin, Yale University