Social History Through Liturgy: Public Prayer in Ashkenaz and the First Crusade Piyyutim

The lecture will deal with the fundamental question of how public prayer in Ashkenaz was shaped, conducted, and experienced by the public, specifically when it was based on Piyyutim which were written in order to commemorate the catastrophic events which befell the Jewish communities of the Rheinland during the First Crusade (1096). The time scope for this examination is between the beginning of the Twelfth Century and the middle of the Fifteenth Century (1100-1450), and at its focal point are the members of the communities beyond the scholarly elite – laymen, women, and children.

The lecture aims to provide an example for how the study of liturgy as an academic-historical method may help to shed light on the everyday social reality of living for Jewish people during the Middle Ages. Therefore, it would necessarily include a relevant presentation of sources pertaining to the level of liturgical competency among the Jewish population of the day, as well as their access to prayer books. Following this would be an examination of the degree to which the 1096 Piyyutim themselves were written in order to be understood by a large portion of the members of the communities.

Among the main scholarly methods which will be demonstrated in the lecture is a thorough study of the Ashkenazic Minhagim literature, from the Twelfth Century up to the middle of the Fifteenth Century, as a way of understanding how public prayers were supposed to be conducted in the context of reciting Piyyutim. The rules and regulations formulated therein give us clues both for the intentions of the Rabbis who wrote them, as well as for the ways these Rabbinical scholars were observing and preserving the existing social and religious popular tradition.