Ephraim of Bonn

Not to be confused withother similar rabbinic scholars named Ephraim.

Ephraim of Bonn(1132–1200 or 1221?), also known asEphraim ben Jacob,was arabbiand writer, known for documenting the massacre of theJewsin the city ofYorkin 1190.

Biography

Ephraim belonged to a prominent family of scholars, which includedEliezer ben Nathan,to whom he addressed questions, and Leontin ben Jacob. He had two brothers, Hillel and Kalonymus, both of whom he outlived. As a boy of thirteen he witnessed the bloody persecutions to which the Jews on theRhinewere subjected, and, with many other Jews, found refuge from the fury of the mob in the castle of Wolkenburg, nearKönigswinter,in thearchbishopricofCologne.Later he lived atNeuss,and left there for Cologne only a few days before the massacre of 1187. He lost, however, on this occasion, a large part of his fortune. He seems to have resided usually atWorms.He later studied inBonnunderJoel ben Isaac ha-Levi.

Works

Halacha

Ephraim was one of the important GermanTalmudistsof his time, although comparatively little is known of his work in the field ofhalakhah.He frequently wroteresponsain conjunction withJudah ben Kalonymus,Moses ben Mordechai, andBaruch ben Samuel;several of them are quoted inthe Mordechai;but the "Ḥibbur" mentioned in the Mordechai is not by him, but by Ephraim ben Nathan.

Liturgy

Ephraim is better known as a liturgical poet.Zunzenumerates twenty-three of hispiyyutim,several of which are found in German and Polish liturgies. For instance, his "Elohim tzivita li-yedidcha bechiracha"and" HaRachaman Hu Asher Hanan "are still recited in Germany on the occasion of acircumcision.Ephraim was, perhaps, the last German rabbi to compose poems inAramaicfor the synagogue, his selihah "Ta Shema" being especially well known. Thispiyyutis a mosaic containing forty-five lines, a combination of Aramaic expressions and phrases used in the Talmud. His Hebrew piyyutim are frequentlyacrosticcompositions with a Talmudic phraseology, and are therefore in many cases obscure and ungraceful. He had wit and a great command of both Hebrew and Aramaic. In almost all his poems he alludes to the persecutions and to the martyrs of Judaism. He also wrote a commentary on the earlier portions of theMachzor,which became the chief source for the similar work of a compiler at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and which is extant in manuscript inHamburg.

History

Ephraim's account of the persecutions of the Jews in Germany, France, and England, between 1146 and 1196, is of great historical value. It is in a great measure the record of his own experiences, which are related impartially, and is among the most valuable of the documents used by medieval chronographers in their history of the persecutions during the period of theCrusades.It was printed for the first time as an appendix to Wiener's German translation ofJoseph ha-Kohen's "Emeḳ ha-Bacha" (Leipzig,1858), and translated into German by S. Baer in "Hebräische Berichte über die Judenverfolgungen Während der Kreuzzüge," (Berlin,1892). Scattered notices by contemporaneous Christian writers testify to the accuracy of Ephraim's descriptions.

References

This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Singer, Isidore;et al., eds. (1901–1906)."EPHRAIM B. JACOB".The Jewish Encyclopedia.New York: Funk & Wagnalls.

External links

• Medieval Sourcebook: Ephraim of Bonn