Book of Remembrance: A Crusade Chronicle

In this excerpt from the beginning of the Book of Remembrance (Sefer zekhirah), Ephraim of Bonn recounts some of the events leading up to the Second Crusade involving the French Cistercian monk Radulf. Radulf called for a vicious campaign of attacks on French, German, and Czech Jewry, though he was in part opposed by institutional forces within the Catholic church, most notably by Bernard of Clairvaux. As Ephraim notes, Bernard forbade attacks on Jews but did encourage war against Muslims. Bernard’s efforts were only partially successful, as many Jews fell victim to the Crusaders in the summer of 1146. Ephraim connects the Second Crusade to the First Crusade, in which crusading forces also killed Jews, and he begs God for respite from his Christian neighbors. Sefer zekhirah presents a much more complex and even positive view of Christians than the Hebrew chronicles of the First Crusade. The initial poem includes an acrostic of Ephraim’s name.