JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

lack death
Well Poisoning Libel
Soon, however, the feelings of helplessness to stem the plague,
and the fierce urge to react against the death and destruction
it caused, concentrated the force of the populace on the ageold
target of popular Christian hostility, the Jews. Anti-Jewish
violence was particularly rabid in *Germany, where it had
been preceded by a dark half century of anti-Jewish persecution
in conjunction with a succession of *blood libels and accusations
of *host desecration. This had added to the sinister
traits already attributed to the hateful image of the Jew. In
France, also, the way had been paved for this accusation by a
similar charge leveled during the *Pastoureaux persecutions of
1321. Amid the general atmosphere of hostility, and the cruelty
of the persecutions to which the Jews had been subjected, it
was almost logical that Christians could imagine that the Jews
might seek revenge. Thus, a Jew who was tortured in *Freiburg
im Breisgau in 1349, “was then asked… ‘why did they do it…?’
Then he answered: ‘because you Christians have destroyed
so many Jews; because of what king *Armleder did; and also
because we too want to be lords; for you have lorded long
enough.’” (“… wan umb das, das ir cristen so menigen ju den
verdarpten, do kuenig Armleder was, und ouch um das, das
wir ouch herren wolten gewesen sin, wan ir genug lang herren
gewesen sint;” Urkundenbuch der Stadt Freiburg im Breisgau
(1828), nos. 193, 382).
The first occasion on which Jews were tortured to confess
complicity in spreading the Black Death was in September
1348, in the Castle of Chillon on Lake Geneva. The “confessions”
thus extracted indicate that their accusers wished to
prove that the Jews had set out to poison the wells and food
“so as to kill and destroy the whole of Christianity” (“ad interficiendam
et destruendam totam legem Christianam”). The
disease was allegedly spread by a Jew of Savoy on the instructions
of a rabbi who told him: “See, I give you a little package,
half a span in size, which contains a preparation of poison and
venom in a narrow, stitched leathern bag. This you are to dis-
The Black Death. The map shows, in progressive shades of gray, the spread of the plague across Europe in six-month periods from Dec. 31 1347, to June 30,
1350.
732 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3