Small tidbits and Sparks of wisdom

“Would that my head were water, and my eyes a fountain of tears…”
— Kinnah for Tishah B’Av, lamenting the Jews of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz

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 A Call to Arms—and to Blood

On November 27, 1095, in Clermont, France, Pope Urban II delivered a rousing sermon that launched the First Crusade. His call to liberate Jerusalem from Muslim control inspired thousands of Christians—peasants, nobles, and zealots—to take up the cross. They would march eastward, he said, to avenge their faith.

But the Crusaders did not wait until they reached Palestine to spill blood.

Instead, they turned their swords on the Jewish communities of Europe—those nearest to them, and most vulnerable.

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 Speyer, Worms, and Mainz: A Triple Martyrdom

In the spring of 1096, between Pesach and Shavuos, mobs of Crusaders swept through the Rhineland, targeting the famed Jewish communities of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz—known collectively as Shu”M.

These were not frontier villages. They were centers of Torah, commerce, and communal life—home to scholars, sages, and families who had lived peacefully under imperial protection for generations.

Speyer was the first. The Jews there had fortified their synagogue and managed to repel the first wave of Crusaders. But outside its walls, ten Jews were butchered. One woman was offered the choice between baptism or death—she chose death and became the first of many martyrs.

In Worms, the story repeated, but with greater ferocity. Despite promises of protection from the bishop and neighbors, hundreds of Jews were murdered. Children were seized for forced baptism, homes were ransacked, and corpses stripped naked for loot.

Those who fled to the bishop’s palace were slaughtered shortly after, on Rosh Chodesh Sivan (May 25, 1096). In one of the most chilling scenes, the victims were singing Hallel (Psalms 113–118) as they were killed—praising God in joy while dying as martyrs.

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 The Avenger of Mainz: Simchah Cohen

In Mainz, the bloodshed escalated further. Over 1,000 Jews were murdered in a single assault. Even the payment of 400 silver coins to the bishop could not buy their safety. The burghers—local Christians—joined the Crusaders, guiding them to Jewish hiding places.

Among the victims was a youth named Simchah Cohen, who watched his father and seven brothers murdered. Feigning a desire to convert, he was brought to church for baptism. As the priest prepared the sacrament, Simchah drew a concealed knife, stabbed the bishop’s nephew, and lashed out at others. He was torn to pieces by the mob—but his final act became a legend of Jewish resistance and sanctified vengeance.

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⚰ Mass Graves, Desecration, and Expansion

The bodies of the victims in Mainz were dumped ignominiously into nine large mass graves. No proper burial, no shrouds—just mutilated sanctity buried under Christian Europe’s thirst for vengeance.

The Crusaders moved on to Cologne, Trier, Regensburg, Metz, and even Prague. The killings spread like wildfire. In total, over 5,000 Jews were slaughtered during the First Crusade.

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 From Churban to Crusade to Holocaust

And yet, the worst legacy of 1096 was not merely the dead.

It was the birth of a new concept: organized, systemic, ideologically driven anti-Jewish terror. The First Crusade introduced a formula Europe would repeat for centuries:

Religious fervor as a pretext

Mob participation sanctioned by elites

Forced conversions and mass killings

Blaming the Jews as Christ-killers, then looting their homes

This same playbook would be refined in the Blood Libels, Inquisitions, expulsions, and finally the Nazi Holocaust, where Hitler completed the process Emicho began.

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 Why We Mourn on Tishah B’Av

After the Holocaust, some proposed a new day of mourning, a Churban Europa. Yet the Brisker Rav, R’ Yitzchak Zev Soloveitchik, responded:

> “Why did Rashi and the Rishonim not establish a new fast for the Crusade massacres?
Because all our tragedies come from the same root—the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash.”

That’s why on Tishah B’Av, we recite the kinnah מי יתן ראשי מים—not about the Temple, but about Speyer, Worms, and Mainz.

And through their stories, we understand:

The fragility of exile

The betrayal of neighbors

The sanctity of martyrdom

And the unbreakable chain of Jewish memory

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隣 Final Words

These aren’t just stories of the past.

They are echoes of the Churban, still reverberating through the centuries.

When we sit on the floor and cry on Tishah B’Av, we cry for the blood of Mainz, for the Hallel of Worms, for the knife of Simchah Cohen, and for the fire that still hasn’t gone out until the Beis HaMikdash is rebuilt.

> “For these I weep; my eye, my eye runs with water…”
— Eichah 1:16