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Another Jewish Story
Tel Aviv [ENA] Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg is one of the most extraordinary personalities of the Middle Ages. He was a liturgical poet, the highest rabbinical authority in German speaking countries and maybe the greatest Tosafist (=Commentators of the Talmud). However, his life ended in tragedy: as a hostage, imprisoned by the ruling monarch to extort money from the Jewish communities.
Meir of Rothenburg, also known as MaHaRam or Meir Ben Baruch of Rothenburg, was born in Worms around 1215. He came from an honorable family of Jewish scholars and studied in Würzburg, Mainz and Paris. In 1242 he witnessed the public burning of Jewish writings in Paris. The mourning song he wrote is sung to this day on Tischa Be ‘Av, the day the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. After completing his studies, he lived in Rothenburg ob der Tauber for more than forty years. He founded a Jewish house of Study with more than twenty rooms that attracted students from all over Europe.
Meir became one of the most important authorities on Jewish legal issues during this period. It is noteworthy that more than 1,500 responses still exist until today. After the death of his father, he returned to Worms in 1276. In the last decades of the 13th century the situation began to deteriorate further for Jews. Ritual murder charges and Host desecration accusations increased; in addition, King Rudolf I of Habsburg levied extremely high taxes in 1284, which the Jewish community had to pay.
In 1286, Rudolf, the ruler of the “Holy Roman Empire” instituted a new political status for Jews, declaring them “Servi camerae regis”(Latin: servants of the royal chamber), a kind of serfdom or slavery, that allowed direct royal taxation of the Jewish community. Since Rudolf did not prohibit local nobles from also taxing them, the burden on the Jews was devastating. In 1286 the ruler again imposed another high tax burden on the Jews living in his empire and therefore a wave of emigration to their old homeland Israel started.
Meir of Rothenburg founded a charismatic movement that triggered a wave of Jews emigrating to the Jewish homeland. Meir, like other Jews, viewed the return to Eretz Israel as a spiritual experience. He joined with his family, but was recognized by a baptized Jew named Kneppe as the leader of the movement while crossing the Alps and was arrested by Meinhard von Görz. He handed the Rabbi over to Emperor Rudolf. First Meir of Rothenburg was detained in Ensisheim and then brought to Wasserburg am Inn and imprisoned. Rudolf von Habsburg demanded a ransom for Meir of Rothenburg of 23,000 marks in silver – a huge amount. The King of G-d's grace wanted to make up for the tax losses that he had incurred as a result of the emigration.
The negotiations were led by Meir's student Asher Ben Yechiel. The ransom was provided, but the hostage refused several times. Meir of Rothenburg did not want to set a precedent case, because he feared it would then become common practice to take Jewish hostages in order to extort money from the Jewish community. Meir died in 1293 after seven years in a dungeon. Not even his body was released for burial. Only in 1307 Alexander Ben Salomon Wimpfen, a merchant from Frankfurt, succeeded in releasing his mortal remains for the vast sum of 20,000 pounds of silver.
Meir Ben Baruch of Rothenburg was buried in the Jewish cemetery, the "Holy Sand”, in Worms. Alexander Ben Salomon Wimpfen, his benefactor, who died that same year, was buried next to him. Both graves exist to this day. During the Rintfleisch-Massacres of 1298, almost the entire Jewish community of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, around 450 people, was murdered. The Jewish community again fell victim to another pogrom in the year of the Black Death 1349. The synagogue and Talmud school were converted into a chapel and a christian hostel in 1404.