[6] Though no Crusades explicitly targeted Jews, the fervor for holy war sometimes turned into an outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in Europe, even though both ecclesiastical and secular authorities condemned it.

The focus on crucifixion story and violence against enemies of the Christian faith during the Crusades, as exemplified by the preaching of Pope Urban II in 1095-96 and Bernard of Clairvaux in 1146-47, needed little misconceptions to be translated into animosity towards Jews.

While there had been a number of regional persecutions of Jews by Catholics, such as the one in Metz in 888, a plot against Jews in Limoges in 992, a wave of anti-Jewish persecution by Christian millenarian movements (which believed that Jesus was immediately to descend from Heaven) in the year 1000, and the threat of expulsion from Trier in 1066; these are all viewed "in the traditional terms of governmental outlawry rather than unbridled popular attacks.

[17] The passions that were aroused within the Catholic community by Pope Urban II's call for the first crusade had moved the persecution of Jews into a new chapter in history where previous constraints no longer held.

[18]Emperor Henry IV (after being notified of the pledge by Kalonymus Ben Meshullam, the Jewish leader in Mainz) issued an order prohibiting such an action.

[19] Sigebert of Gembloux wrote that before "a war in behalf of the Lord" could be fought, it was essential that the Jews convert; those who resisted were "deprived of their goods, massacred, and expelled from the cities.

According to a contemporary chronicle of events written by an anonymous author in Mainz: There first arose the officers, nobles, and common people who were in the land of France [Sarefat] who took counsel together and plotted...to make clear the way to go toward Jerusalem.

They wrote letters and sent messengers to all the communities around about the River Rhine, [to the effect] that they should fast...and seek mercy from Him who dwells on high, that He might save them from their hands.

When the letter reached the holy ones in the land [of the Rhine], namely the men of renown ... in Mainz, they responded [to their brethren in] France as follows: 'The communities have decreed a fast.

'[19]In June and July 1095, Jewish communities in the Rhineland (north of the main departure areas at Neuss, Wevelinghoven, Altenahr, Xanten and Moers) were attacked, but the leadership and membership of these crusader groups was not chronicled.

[21] On top of the general Catholic suspicion of Jews at the time, when the thousands of French members of the People's Crusade arrived at the Rhine, they had run out of provisions.

The Solomon bar Simson Chronicle records that they were so terrified by Peter's appearance at the gates that they readily agreed to supply his needs.

[17] According to David Nirenberg,[23] the events of 1096 in the Rhineland "occupy a significant place in modern Jewish historiography and are often presented as the first instance of an antisemitism that would henceforth never be forgotten and whose climax was the Holocaust.

"[24] In the spring of 1096, a number of small bands of knights and peasants, inspired by the preaching of the Crusade, set off from various parts of France and Germany (Worms and Cologne).

[17] The pleas of the clergy were ignored on similar grounds (no cases against individuals were brought forward for excommunication) and the mob believed that anyone preaching mercy to the Jews was doing so only because they had succumbed to Jewish bribery.

In late June 1096, the crusader mob of Gottschalk was welcomed by King Coloman of Hungary, but they soon began plundering the countryside and causing drunken disorder.

Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, absent in southern Italy, ordered the Jews to be protected when he learned of Emicho's intent.

[19] Given the choice between flight, death, and conversion, some Jews opted for a desperate fourth alternative: active martyrdom, that is, killing their family and themselves.

Chronicler Solomon bar Simpson compared Rachel to the martyrdom of the woman and her seven sons in an attempt to make sense of her desperate act.

[28] Eliezer ben Nathan, a Jewish chronicler at the times, paraphrased Habakkuk 1:6 and wrote of cruel foreigners, fierce and swift, Frenchmen and Germans...[who] put crosses on their clothing and were more plentiful than locusts on the face of the earth.

Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV overruled Church law and permitted forcibly converted Jews to return to Judaism.

[37] The Karaite Jewish community of Ashkelon (Ascalon) reached out to their coreligionists in Alexandria to first pay for the holy books and then rescued pockets of Jews over several months.

For example, the twenty-five letters regarding the Jews of Pope Gregory I from the late sixth century became the primary texts for the canons, or Church laws, which were implanted to not only regulate Jewish life in Europe but also to protect it.

[They are not] to be molested, to be offered in their persons, or to have their goods seized... [Rather, they are to be treated] humanely and with clemency..."[41] Benedict enforced the privileges given to the Jews by warning the Christians that their actions toward the Jewish people must not violate those given to them by the Church.

It is equally possible that Bernard held the belief that forcibly converting the Jews was immoral or perceived that greed motivated the original Rhineland massacre: both sentiments are echoed in the canon of Albert of Aachen in his chronicle of the First Crusade.

[50] Historian Israel Yuval understood these choices as a manifestation of a Messianic theology that was uniquely tied to medieval Jews living in the midst of Latin Christendom.

Following from this, the events of 1096 presented an opportunity for the Rhineland Jews to ritually offer their deaths as an example of Christian transgression and spur the Messianic Age – an analysis supported by the frequent ritual tone and symbolism employed by Jewish chroniclers while describing the deaths, and their somewhat lesser interest for Jews who simply died by Christian hands directly.

The descriptions of Jewish parents killing their children was shocking to Christian ears, and may have served as fuel for later accusations of blood libel.

Haym Soloveitchik states that the issue of voluntary martyrdom to avoid committing sins in halakhic literature is highly questionable, and acorrding to that the Poskim should have determined that "all the martyrs [...] were not only not "holy," but were "self-killers," and murderers".

According to them, Ashkenazi Poskim attributed halakhic importance to the legends that appear in the Talmud (Aggadah), many of which involve suicides in order to avoid committing sins.