Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France

by Susan L. Einbinder

When Crusader armies on their way to the Holy Land attacked Jewish communities in the Rhine Valley, many Jews chose suicide over death at the hands of Christian mobs. With their defiant deaths, the medieval Jewish martyr was born. With the literary commemoration of the victims, Jewish martyrology followed. Beautiful Death examines the evolution of a long-neglected corpus of Hebrew poetry, the laments reflecting the specific conditions of...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 069109053X
• ISBN13: 9780691090535
• Release Date: July 2002
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.4"