Clinging to a Jewish Saint in a Time of Growing Turmoil: Appropriating the Figure of Rabbi Judah the Pious in Late Fifteenth-Century Jewish Folktales from Regensburg

Abstract

Abstract Among a unique collection of stories in Hebrew manuscript copied in the sixteenth century and found at the National Library of Israel (NLI) are twenty-seven hagiographic tales about the prominent Jewish pietist of Medieval Germany, Rabbi Judah the Pious (d. 1217) and his father Rabbi Shmuel ben Kalonymus. Scholars have suggested that the entire original collection dates back to ca. 1300 and echoes the lives, concerns, and ideals of thirteenth-century Ashkenazi Jews. However, some of the hagiographic tales found in the collection seem to have been written later, appropriating the figure of the mystical Rabbi Judah and using it in stories from the fifteenth century that were set in his city, Regensburg. Told by the Jews of this city, the tales of Rabbi Judah and his magical abilities seem to have fulfilled the needs and concerns of the community in the turbulent late fifteenth century. The paper analyzes three of these stories, demonstrating how they correspond with the realities of this time and suggesting the possible roles the tales of Rabbi Judah and his miracles played for Regensburg Jewry as they contended with the hardships of daily life and the shadow of expulsion that loomed large over the community in this period.