Jewish and Christian Collaboration in Crime: The Evidence from Medieval Rabbinic Sources

One of the least explored avenues of Jewish Christian “business partnership” are criminal ventures. Naturally these matters were less elaborated upon while the events took place, when texts about them were recorded in close temporal proximity and all the more so when centuries later historians came to discuss them. Many who have encountered this material from within the purview of Jewish history preferred turning a blind eye and not discussing them. After two centuries of the critical philological historical and sociological research regarding the history of the Jews in medieval Western Europe it is time to discuss these matters at face value. In the suggested lecture I will demonstrate that criminal partnerships between Jews and non-Jews existed. I will map and chart some of the guidelines for these collaborations, describe how they operated and analyze what enabled their existence. I will discuss how these collaborations challenged the Jewish communal system as well as the urban medieval European authorities and how matters of class and gender played a major role in these partnerships and collaborative effort. The examples I will bring will focus both on straight forward criminal activities like robbery theft and murder as well as collaborative shady efforts that existed also in “gray areas”. Selling commodities from dubious sources connected with Jewish pawn broking and lending money against collateral is but one such example. Most of the evidence that will be discussed derives from medieval Jewish rabbinic literature complemented by some non-Jewish archival sources