Today in Jewish History: 19 Elul - Rabbeinu Yaakov of Orleans - 1189

19 Elul - Rabbeinu Yaakov of Orleans - 1189

On this day in 1189, Rabbi Yaakov of Orleans was murdered in London, making this day his yartzeit. He was among the leading Tosafists of his generation, one of the most distinguished students of Rabbeinu Tam, the grandson of Rashi and the towering figure of French Talmudic scholarship in the twelfth century. So closely was he identified with his teacher's school that he was sometimes called by his teacher's own name. His glosses appear throughout the standard printed Talmud, and he wrote on Chumash as well, work preserved secondhand in later collections and notable for its use of gematria. One scholar has argued that a set of Torah glosses circulating under Rabbeinu Tam's name is in fact his student's work.

He was still in Orleans as late as 1171. Sometime afterward he came to London, most likely at the invitation of the community there, which wanted him as its teacher. He had been in England perhaps a few years, possibly only months, when Richard the Lionheart was crowned at Westminster. The Jewish leaders of England had been barred from the ceremony, but came anyway to present gifts to the new king as custom required. The crowd fell upon them at the banquet, stripped them, beat them, and drove them from the hall. When word reached the city, Londoners attacked the Jewish quarter known as Old Jewry, burning houses and killing roughly thirty people. Rabbi Yaakov was among the dead.

Richard had rioters arrested the next day and hanged some of them, but the chronicler Roger of Hoveden is unsparing about the reason. It was not for the sake of the Jews, he wrote, but on account of the Christian houses and property burned and plundered in the process. The violence spread that winter to Norwich, Stamford, Lincoln, and elsewhere, culminating the following March at York, where roughly 150 Jews chose death over forced baptism. A scholar whose Torah is still learned today was killed by a mob, and the king counted the buildings.