大象传媒

Death in York

York pogrom, 1190

Clifford's Tower today, rebuilt in the 13th century after being destroyed twice. In 1190 it was a wooden building. 漏

In 2006 the Jewish Community celebrated the 350th anniversary of its re-admission to England in 1656. The expulsion in 1290 came after a particularly intense sequence of pogroms - anti-Jewish massacres. But how is the persecution that led to the expulsion regarded by Jews today? What do they know of this chequered part of English and Jewish history?

One of the most infamous of the pre-expulsion pogroms took place in York on the site known as Clifford鈥檚 Tower. In March 1190, six months after the coronation of King Richard I, the city caught or was set on fire. Under cover of the fire a mob targeted the Jews. The family and friends of the leading Jew called Baruch* were attacked and killed and his wealth looted. He himself had already been killed in an attack at the time of the King鈥檚 coronation.

This and the attempted murder of Joseph, another leading member, led the Jews to seek shelter. They naturally looked to Clifford's Tower, the site for two castles built by William the Conqueror after his conquest of England in 1066. Its wooden defences or keep were first burned down during a local rebellion in 1069 before being destroyed for a second time during a siege of Jewish citizens in 1190.

The 1190 massacre stained the city's reputation for many centuries.

The events unfold

• The warden allowed the Jews to enter and then left them alone (because the Jews were under the direct protection of the king)
• They feared that the warden would be bribed to betray them so when he returned they refused to admit him
• The warden complained to the sheriff John Marshall that the Jews cheated him
• The Sheriff roused the militia and the rest of the townspeople
• This large gathering beseiged the trapped Jews for some days while preparations were made to storm the castle and force them out to the mercy of the baying mob
• A fire was started in their refuge, whether by the Jews or their persecutors is uncertain
• When it became clear that their situation was hopeless many of the Jews took their own lives
• Husbands killed their wives following the advice of Rabbi Yom Tov* from Joigny in France

On Saturday March 16, 1190 there was a special Sabbath celebration linked to the festival of Passover. As it dawned:

• The Jews who had survived the terrible night of fire and suicide begged for mercy and offered to convert to Christianity if they were spared
• They were tricked into leaving but were butchered instead of being allowed baptism
• The ringleader Richard Malebisse and his accomplices went to the cathedral where they burned documents stored for safekeeping. These specified details of money they owed to the Jews. This, it would seem was the driving force behind the tragedy.
• Malebisse escaped to Scotland

* Baruch is the Hebrew word for blessed. Baruch is sometimes referred to in the history books by the Latin name of Benedict which also means blessed. Whilst he may have been called this by some in keeping with the common language of the time he would have been more likely to be known as Baruch by his fellow Jews.

* Yom Tov is the Hebrew expression for a Jewish holy day although it literally means 'good day'.

After the York pogrom

Repercussions

Historians differ in their judgements as to the severity of the punishments meted out to the perpetrators. But what is certain is that the murder of 150 Jews who had been entitled to the King鈥檚 protection was not ignored. Nor indeed was the loss of royal revenue this implied. Some 50 citizens of the city were fined. There was also a change in the law which protected the interests of the king in any similar events. Richard I introduced a system whereby all debts held by Jews were duplicated to the Crown. But the massacre of the Jews of York left an indelible mark on the city.

There is said to have been a Jewish curse (Cherem) placed on the city and that Jews were not supposed to spend time there and certainly not to eat or spend the night there. This stigma is commonly held to have been lifted following a ceremony conducted at the site in 1990 by the then Chief Rabbi Lord Jacobovits and the Archbishop of York Dr Stuart Blanche.

However, despite an antipathy to the place on the part of some Jews it is difficult to identify any evidence that shows there ever was an official curse or ban on the city. Rabbi Jonathan Romain of the Maidenhead Reform Synagogue, an expert on medieval Jewry, believes that there was no ban. Jews did return to live there within 15 years of the murders although the city never regained earlier levels of Jewish affluence.

For Rabbi Romain the York massacre is a problem. He asserts that the decision to end their lives under the crowd鈥檚 provocation went against the general grain of Jewish law which forbids suicide. At the time and during the medieval period these victims were regarded as martyrs in the same way as those at Massada* in the 1st Century CE. Jews mourned their loss in the same way. However as a spokesman for the Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks confirmed: 鈥淭ragic as the events are it is not something that the Jewish community dwells upon.鈥�

Today there are few Jews living in the city of York. There is a small though active Jewish Students鈥� Society at the university. Chairperson Esther Morcowitz confirmed that she had no knowledge about the massacre when she applied to study there. She feels that the pogrom has been forgotten and recalled 鈥渢he first time we went out into the town centre for a few drinks. At the end of the night, when most people had had a lot to drink, did I realise that what people were actually climbing up and rolling down was in fact Clifford鈥檚 Tower. I felt disgusted by the lack of respect it received. However, that is not to say that it is treated badly. I feel that perhaps it has more been forgotten then disrespected. People don鈥檛 really know what it is or what it really symbolises.鈥�

Once a year a group of Chassidim (Orthodox Jewish sect) conducts a remembrance service on the site and that of a former Jewish burial ground which is now underneath a supermarket car park. In the 1980s when this was built it was claimed that no records existed to suggest the area had ever been a large medieval Jewish cemetery. This is somewhat surprising given that the area was long known as Jewbury.

Though it happened many centuries ago the York massacre may offer a useful lesson even in this year of Jewish celebration. However painful the memory of the pogrom may be, 815 years later the evils of racism and blind prejudice remain ever present dangers to wider British society and offer a real challenge to learn from the mistakes of the past.

* In 70CE a group of Jews who had revolted against Roman occupation committed mass suicide rather than submit to a siege in Massada, today part of the state of Israel.

Sources for this article

Pamela Fletcher Jones, The Jews of Britain: A Thousand Years of History, The Windrush Press, 1990

Rabbi Jonathan A Romain, The Jews of England: A Portrait of Anglo-Jewry through original sources and illustrations, The Michael Goulston Educational Foundation, The Sternberg Centre for Judaism in association with Jewish Chronicle Publications Ltd., 1988

(Both contain passages from 12th Century historian William of Newburgh which detail the massacre and are the basis for the description in this article.)

大象传媒 Timewatch programme All the King鈥檚 Jews from 1990, presented by Dr Christopher Andrew

Find out more

• Readmission of Jews to England