Eliezer Ben Nathan - As Chronicler: Persecution of 1096

As Chronicler: Persecution of 1096

Eliezer is also supposed to be the author of a history of the terrible events of 1096, the year of the German Crusade, part of the First Crusade. It expressed great antipathy towards the Christian crusaders, and wrestled with the matter of why God would allow so many Jews to be massacred. The persecutions of the Jewish communities in the towns along the Rhine, the horrible butcheries that were perpetrated, are faithfully depicted here in chronological order.

In this work various acrostic verses contain the name "Eliezer b. Nathan." In deference to a passage in Joseph ha-Kohen's Emeḳ ha-Baka, p. 31, which makes a certain Eleazar ha-Levi the author, some writers (as Landshuth and H. Grätz) have denied Eliezer's authorship of this chronicle. This view, however, was refuted around 1900. The chronicle was first edited by Adolph Jellinek (Zur Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, Leipsic, 1854); and was republished as Hebräische Berichte über die Judenverfolgungen Während der Kreuzzüge, by A. Neubauer and Stern, together with a German translation, in the Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, ii., Berlin, 1892.