Jewish Eschatological Expectations during the Crusades. A Response to a Period of Crisis and Persecutions

The period of the Crusades has often been considered as an epoch of eschatological fervor for the Christians who participated to this enterprise, a mission that aimed to reconquer the holy places from the Muslims. Such a zeal, however, did not affect only Christians, but also the Jewish communities that lived in Europe, in the Byzantine empire and in the Holy Land. This paper focuses on the Jewish literary production during the Crusades, aiming to demonstrate that the eschatological texts were functional in order to explain persecutions, battles, clash of civilizations and religions. These happenings were interpreted as events anticipating the final era, the time of the advent of the Messiah(s) who would gather the exiles, redeem the Jewish people, reconquer Jerusalem and restore the supremacy of Israel. In other words, this period of crisis was understood as a sequence of events that were part of a divine plan leading to the redemption of Israel. The texts that are taken in consideration are Aggadat Mašiaḥ, The Prayer of R. Šim‘on b. Yoḥʼai and ʼOtot ha- Mašiaḥ.