However, the disorders in France were merely local. If the rage for blood enkindled by the First Crusade scarcely affected the Jews of France, it is because the population was concentrated on the banks of the Rhine. But here its murderous frenzy knew no bounds. The people threw themselves on the Jewish communities of Treves, Speyer, Worms, Mayence, and Cologne, and put to death all who refused to be converted (May to July, 1096). The noise of events such as these perforce "found a path through the sad hearts" of the Jews of Champagne; for they maintained lively and cordial relations with their brethren in the Rhine lands, many being bound to them by ties of kinship. Among the martyrs of 1096 was Asher ha-Levi, who was the disciple of Isaac ben Eleazar, Rashi's second teacher, and who died together with his mother, his two brothers, and their families. From a Hebrew text we learn that the Jews of France ordered a fast and prayers in commemoration of these awful massacres, the victims of which numbered not less than ten thousand.
But all could not sacrifice their lives for the sake of their faith. Though so large a number were slain by the pious hordes or slew one another in order to escape violence, others allowed themselves to be baptized, or adopted Christianity, in appearance at least. After the Crusaders were at a distance, on the way to their death in the Orient, the Jews left behind could again breathe freely. Of many of them, Gregory of Tours might have said that "the holy water had washed their bodies but not their hearts, and, liars toward God, they returned to their original heresy." The emperor of Germany, Henry IV, it seems, even authorized those who had been forced into baptism to return to Judaism, and the baptized Jews hastened to throw off the hateful mask. This benevolent measure irritated the Christian clergy, and the Pope bitterly reproached the Emperor.
What sadder, more curious spectacle than that which followed? Many of those Jews who had remained faithful to their religion would not consider the apostates as their brethren, unwilling apostates though they had been, and strenuously opposed their re-admission to the Synagogue.
This unwillingness to compound, showing so little generosity and charity, must have distressed Rashi profoundly. For, when consulted in regard to the repulsed converts, he displayed a loftiness of view and a breadth of tolerance which Maimonides himself could not equal. In similar circumstances Maimonides, it seems, in intervening, yielded a little to personal prepossession. "Let us beware," wrote Rashi, "let us beware of alienating those who have returned to us by repulsing them. They became Christians only through fear of death; and as soon as the danger disappeared, they hastened to return to their faith."
Though the First Crusade affected the Jews of France only indirectly, it none the less marks a definite epoch in their history. The fanaticism it engendered wreaked its fury upon the Jews, against whom all sorts of odious charges were brought. They were placed in the same category as sorcerers and lepers, and among the crimes laid at their door were ritual murder and piercing of the host. The instigations of the clergy did not remain without effect upon a people lulled to sleep by its ignorance, but aroused to action by its faith. The kings and seigneurs on their side exploited the Jews, and expelled them from their territories.
Rashi had the good fortune not to know these troublous times. But he discerned in a sky already overcast the threatening premonitions of a tempest, and as though to guard his fellow-Jews against the danger, he left them a work which was to be a viaticum and an asylum to them. When one sees how Rashi's work brought nourishment, so to speak, to all later Jewish literature, which was a large factor in keeping Israel from its threatened ruin, one is convinced that Rashi, aside from his literary efforts, contributed no slight amount toward the preservation and the vitality of the Jewish people.
Even if the Crusades had not involved persecution of the Jews and so provoked the noble intervention of Rashi, they would nevertheless have made themselves felt in Champagne. Count Hugo, among others, remained in the Holy Land from 1104 to 1108; and his brother was killed at Ramleh in 1102. According to a rather wide-spread legend, Rashi stood in intimate relations with one of the principal chiefs of the Crusade, the famous duke of Lower Lotharingia, Godfrey of Bouillon. Historians have found that the part actually played by the duke in the Crusades is smaller than that ascribed to him by tradition, yet the profound impression he made on the popular imagination has remained, and legend soon endowed him with a fabulous genealogy, making of him an almost mythical personage. A favorite trick of the makers of legends is to connect their heroes with celebrated contemporaries, as though brilliance was reflected from one upon the other. Thus Saladin was connected with Maimonides and with Richard the Lion-Hearted, and, similarly, Rashi with Godfrey of Bouillon.
The story goes that Godfrey, having heard rumors of the knowledge and wisdom of the rabbi of Troyes, summoned Rashi to his presence to consult with him upon the issue of his undertaking. Rashi refused to appear. Annoyed, Godfrey accompanied by his cavaliers went to the rabbi's school. He found the door open, but the great building empty. By the strength of his magic Rashi had made himself invisible, but he himself could see everything. "Where art thou, Solomon?" cried the cavalier. "Here I am," a voice answered; "what does my lord demand?" Godfrey not seeing a living soul repeated his question, and always received the same answer. But not a man to be seen! Utterly confounded, he left the building and met a disciple of Rashi's. "Go tell thy master," he said, "that he should appear; I swear he has nothing to fear from me." The rabbi then revealed himself.[28] "I see," Godfrey said to him, "that thy wisdom is great. I should like to know whether I shall return from my expedition victorious, or whether I shall succumb. Speak without fear."
"Thou wilt take the Holy City," Rashi replied, "and thou wilt reign over Jerusalem three days, but on the fourth day the Moslem will put thee to flight, and when thou returnest only three horses will be left to thee."
"It may be," replied Godfrey, irritated and disillusioned in seeing his future pictured in colors so sombre. "But if I return with only one more horse than thou sayest, I shall wreak frightful vengeance upon thee. I shall throw thy body to the dogs, and I shall put to death all the Jews of France."