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The Pope and the First Crusade

The First Crusade began after the call of Pope Urban II in 1095. The Pope called on Christians to atone for their sins and embark on a holy war, with the aim of defending the Byzantine Church in the East from the attacks of the Seljuks (the Turks) and additionally liberating the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem from the infidels.

Masses of people, from all social strata—poor and rich, men and women, knights and common folk—set out enthusiastically. What united them all was the symbol of the cross they bore, from which they gained the name “Crusaders.” On their way to the Holy Land, the Crusaders attacked many Jewish communities, looted them, and caused the deaths of thousands of people. Meanwhile, many of the Crusaders themselves did not reach the Holy Land, having died along the way from disease, exhaustion, and hunger.

The Crusader legions marched toward Jerusalem. To make up for their shortage of food and supplies, they looted cities, and along the way, they carried out pogroms, massacring Jews, particularly in the Rhineland in Germany (these events are referred to as the “First Crusade Pogroms”).

In 1099, the Crusaders captured Jerusalem from the Muslims, and the Jewish and Muslim inhabitants of the city were massacred. At the end of the campaign, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was established by the Crusaders.

Audio: Crusader Massacres against Jews with the Support of the Pope by Rabbi Berel Wein

Source: https://torahdownloads.com/search.html?q=crusades

As a supplement to Rabbi Berel Wein’s audio we used ChatGPT to translate a https://www.jdn.co.il/j_world/2104646/ article on this subject.

Regarding the Massacre of the Jerusalem’s Jewish Community by the Pope’s Warriors

The First Crusade is etched in our memory as a time of infamy. Hundreds of thousands of Crusaders, filled with hatred, slaughtered, murdered, destroyed, and burned every Jew who crossed their path on their long and winding journey to the Holy Land. A lesser-known part of their terrible journey, on the rivers of Jewish blood, occurred toward the end of their long campaign—when the Crusaders reached their goal, Jerusalem. In the following lines, we will focus on the horrific massacre that took place in Jerusalem’s Jewish community, many of whom had returned to the city after the Roman emperor Constantine’s ban on Jewish residence in the city was lifted. They had lived there for hundreds of years.

We will attempt to describe and map Jerusalem as it appeared to the Crusaders. The current walls of the city, built by Sultan Suleiman, were constructed on the foundations of the Crusader walls, with some minor deviations where Ottoman walls slightly strayed from the earlier Crusader walls, making it relatively easy to understand the locations of the city’s walls.

At that time, Jerusalem was home to around twenty thousand people, a population significantly increased by refugees from surrounding villages and towns that had been destroyed by the Crusaders. Jerusalem was a large, fortified city. To the east and southeast, there were large valleys that separated the city walls from the surrounding area. To the north and west, a deep moat separated the walls from the surrounding land, and the only place where one could approach the walls was from the north, where the moat was shallower, but even there, the city had another layer of defense, an external wall built by the city’s inhabitants in preparation for the Crusaders’ arrival.

The “Tower of David” & Other Defenses

In addition to the standard defenses, there was a large fortress on the western side of the city, part of which is known today as the “Tower of David.” It guarded the western gate of the city, now called Jaffa Gate. This fortress was formidable and fearsome, with its lower sections made of dressed stone and reinforced by lead by the residents of Jerusalem.
The city was divided into four quarters by two main streets: one running from west to the Temple Mount and the other from north to south. These streets intersected at the city’s main crossroads. The eastern and southern quarters were Muslim, located in areas now known as the Armenian and Jewish quarters, near Jaffa Gate, Zion Gate, and the Temple Mount. The Christian quarter was between Jaffa Gate and Damascus Gate, around the current area of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Jewish quarter extended from the area of the Damascus Gate towards the Mount of Olives and the Valley of Jehoshaphat, until reaching the Temple Mount from the other side. The Jewish community in the city was large, developed, and vibrant, comprising a significant portion of Jerusalem’s population, with estimates suggesting they made up about a quarter of the city’s inhabitants—around five thousand people.

The Initial Attempts to Capture the City Failed

The Crusaders attempted several times to capture the city but were unsuccessful. After their repeated failures, they decided to try a different approach: they staged a large procession of Crusaders led by priests, who, barefoot, marched around the walls of Jerusalem. For reasons that remain unclear to this day, unlike the walls of ancient Jericho, the walls of Jerusalem did not fall in response to the priests’ cries.

However, the Crusaders did not give up and continued to send forces toward Jerusalem, launching relentless attacks until Friday, the 15th of Tammuz, 1099 (July 14, 1099), when they initiated a heavy assault. Two siege towers were erected by the Crusaders. One, commanded by Godfrey of Bouillon, was placed not far from the Flower Gate, an area now near the Rockefeller Museum, where the moat was relatively shallow and the terrain flat. The second tower was placed near the present-day Zion Gate, the area now home to the Jewish Quarter, and was led by Raymond of Saint-Gilles.

The Crusaders Break into Jerusalem

The battle lasted throughout the day, and the following day, on the Sabbath, Godfrey of Bouillon managed to bring one of the siege towers close to the wall and create a bridge through which the Crusaders broke into Jerusalem. This was one of the less fortified sections of the city, allowing the Crusaders to pour in.

The breach occurred right into the heart of the Jewish quarter. According to some accounts, Godfrey broke through the Gate of Mercy, while others say it was a few hundred meters away. Either way, the location was within the Jewish neighborhood. A bloody battle ensued between the Jews and the Crusaders, and the Crusaders managed to push the Jews back. Even the Muslims, whom the Caliph had sent to block the Crusader invasion, could not withstand the intense pressure, and soon, all the besieged in Jerusalem retreated to the last place left free of Crusaders: the Temple Mount.

Synagogue on the Temple Mount

The Jews, knowing their fate under the Crusaders was sealed, quickly gathered in a synagogue located on the Temple Mount. At that time, they likely still knew the areas Jews were allowed to enter, and they built a synagogue in that location. According to various sources, this may have been the synagogue near the Gate of Mercy (Bab al-Rahma), a place recently taken over by Arabs and converted into a mosque.

The Jews gathered in large numbers in the synagogue, praying and crying out to G-d, but fate had a different plan: the Crusaders broke through to the Temple Mount through narrow alleys, crowded with fleeing people, and hurried toward the synagogue. The bloodthirst and savagery of the Crusaders knew no bounds. They went from house to house, street to street, and alley to alley, with a murderous frenzy in their eyes. Some Jews were massacred on the spot, while others were trapped in the synagogue on the Temple Mount, praying for divine salvation, preparing to give their lives for the sanctity of G-d.
Meanwhile, the defense lines of Jerusalem completely collapsed. Even the Muslims were defeated, and Tancred managed to break into the city from another direction as the northern front fell. Tancred was the first to reach Al-Aqsa Mosque, while Raymond entered from Mount Zion. The defense of Jerusalem entirely collapsed, and the Crusaders went on a rampage, massacring the city’s inhabitants, especially the Jews.

The Crusaders Set the Synagogue on Fire with its Inhabitants Inside

At one point during the massacre, the Crusaders set the synagogue on fire with its inhabitants inside, burning them alive becoming like a wholly burnt sacrifice to G-d. According to some sources, this occurred later, on the 23rd of Tammuz, but in any case, many Jews, possibly even thousands, were burned alive in the synagogue, which had become like an altar. A few Jews who survived the massacre and the burning were captured by Crusaders, whose bloodlust was now supplemented by a thirst for money, and they were sold into slavery in the slave markets. Jewish communities, particularly from Italy and Egypt, paid to redeem the captives, purchasing them in Jerusalem and sending money to save them from a brutal fate. These survivors were taken to Ashkelon, where they hid for a short time before fleeing to Egypt.
The Crusaders, drunk on blood and victory, scoured every corner of Jerusalem. After slaughtering the Jews, they turned their attention to the Muslims, and after two days of nonstop massacres, looting, and pillaging the city’s treasures, there was not a single non-Christian left in Jerusalem, except for a Seljuk Muslim battalion that had fortified itself in a tower near Zion Gate and negotiated a surrender with the Crusaders, who allowed them to escape to Ashkelon in exchange for the fortress without a fight. All the Jews were slaughtered, the Muslims were either killed or expelled, and the streets of Jerusalem were filled with corpses. Blood flowed through the streets like rivers, according to contemporary descriptions. Raymond of Saint-Gilles, one of the Crusaders’ top commanders, described how in some streets, horses had to forge paths through bodies and blood, which reached up to the horses’ necks, and that in parts of Jerusalem, the blood reached as high as the horses’ knees!

The Crusaders removed the bodies of the slain from the city and threw them outside the walls, took over all the synagogues and, in contrast, also the mosques, and converted them into churches. A new era began in Jerusalem: the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which, after a brief struggle, saw Godfrey of Bouillon crowned, though he was not titled “king” but called “Defender of the Holy Sepulchre.”