Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade (Jewish Culture and Contexts)

Rating:
Summary: An Important Piece of Scholarship no Matter Your Discipline
Review: Jeremy Cohen, in this short, well written, and insightful book has brought together recent work on textual criticism, psychology, sociology, and history and innovatively applied it to the analysis of 11th and 12th century Jewish literature. Departing from the traditional view of chronicle-as-history, Cohen approaches the Hebrew Crusade Chronicles as literary texts that tell us more about the time in which they were written than about the events they purport to be chronicling.

Cohen's wonderful book offers a reminder that we must approach texts traditionally assumed to be straight "histories"--reports of "facts"--with suspicion and understand that these texts were produced in a certain historical period and often for specific polemical or ideological reasons. Recovering the impetus for the production of such texts and investigating the way they were (and are) received is a task that warrants the attention of anyone claiming to be a historian.

Cohen's style is confident and clear, and his analysis a joy to read. Even if you do not work in Jewish Studies (as I do not), you will gain something by reading this book.