Journey to York - The Site of the York Massacre of 1190 The Ba'alei Hatosfos of England

this torah class is brought to you by torahanytime.com we have a red circle yeah okay okay good afternoon everyone thank you everybody for joining us a very meaningful uh trip i want to thank rip shirley strum for helping us get over here and doing a lot of the background work um we're in a very frightening place you walk down the street and you see museums you see people walking the streets and you feel like it's any other location or any other day but this is the site of one of the most terrible massacres in all of the english history perhaps all of european history but to appreciate that you have to understand some of the background of what york was back in the 12th century today by most recent account there are only about 191 jews who are living in this city that was the last statistics but uh in the year 1190 this was a major center of jewish learning many of the ballet had toysvis lived in york and that's what i want to start off talking about so we have an individual by the name of rabbenu eliyahu ben rabbi safe hakadosh why is he called hakadosh hakadosh means from york that was the hebrew name for york may ivarka where do we find him look in twice so you have twice this quotes york sites york so that's one example of the bala one of the balayatosis that's twice the senuma you go to yuma pe alif ahmad bays you look in the taisus yoshanim you have rebel yahoo then raviosafe who's having a discussion with the re he asked the riakasha the re gave an answer so he's also cited in zwarchem daffy dalla base ruka so again this is an area where some of the reshina lives on the ballet toys now it's important to know regardless of everyone's familiar with the greatness of the rambam but actually the svardam say the rambam was the greatest of all the resharing that is not the opinion of the ashkenazim the ashkenazi means that he had more talmidim than anybody else so we follow pisgay ashkenazi and because of the number of tamidim of rabinotam so that's one example rabbino then here's another name you should be familiar with rabbenu yosef benosha he's from the sages of england in the year tough tough kuff nunn tough tough nun is also the year 11 90. how do we know it's the year 1190 there's an easy formula whenever you have a hebrew date you add the year 1240 to it so toughtoff that's 9 50. you add 1240 to it that's that gets you to the year 1190. these are an example of some of the reshinum that lived here in york but the most well-known of these russian was an actual student ravenotam and his name was rabbi yamtif ben yitzhak of joyani is that how you pronounce it thank you juani he was from france and he was a student of rabino tom he is most well known for the piot that he wrote that we say on uh lelia makipurim is that how they sing it in manchester um that's what we're gonna sing it today okay that's how they sing it in new york so um and he was the rev of the city interestingly there was another individual who was the leader of the jewish community in the city and his name was joseph or josiah of york he's the leader of the jewish community and apparently back in the day the jews were allowed to have the position of money lenders which was always fraught with danger because you lend money but then these people gentiles are indebted to you and they want to kill you because if they kill you they don't they don't owe you the money anymore and the jews of york were in a very precarious uh situation right before the third crusade richard the lionheart was coronated and at his coronation a few jews came unannounced uninvited and they presented him with a gift and this uh really irked some of his followers and some of the christians and they started to massacre jews in westminster they started to massacre jews in york um within 24 hours richard the lionheart put an end to it because he needed his jewish clientele first of all to be money lenders and the country needed them but as soon as he headed out for the third crusade so the jews blood uh was was hefnger come now um many of the gentiles here in york um were very angry at the money lenders especially some of the major players here was someone named aaron of lincoln is that correct was one of the major money lenders aaron of york [Applause] well aaron of lincoln was a prominent jewish banker and he had a broker benedict of york who in order to escape the massacres chose baptism he later had kharata but he died of his wounds basically there was a nobleman led by richard malabase who uh his name should appear over here where we have on the night of friday 16th march 1190 some 150 jews and jewesses of york having sought protection of the royal castle on this site from a mob inside by richard malabasa and others chose to die at each other's hands rather than renounce their faith we're going to speak about the fact that this was the sack of rabbino yamtif of the student of rabbenutam and he passed in rabbiniyamthaf of juane and he pascand that it was permitted and indeed admirable of them to either kill their wives and children and then commit suicide themselves so what happened was the father of the family would kill his wife would kill his children and then by some accounts the rev then killed the father of the house the last man standing was rabinoyamth of jorgenae and he then killed himself now is this permitted we know that suicide is one of the uh most uh severe alveros in the torah we're going to discuss that in uh in another episode but uh rabino yamtov paskin this was the correct thing to do and many years later at some kind of uh reconciliation event again uh hundreds of years later the the gentiles they want to reconcile with us of course we never reconcile with them there is no forgiveness only god could avenge the murder of our brothers and sisters but the archbishop of york benachar ben was a descendant of richard malebese and he came back here together with rabbi emmanuel jacobowitz at the ceremony over here unveiling this area but of course there's no forgiveness for them yeah it's interesting if you look in the hakadama of the mishabura he brings that in in shamayim the ribanus punishes all these rashaam with such severe punishment that they completely are ceased to exist and then the evangelism has to come and reconstitute their molecules and give them the kayak to withstand even further punishment and all the while that sadiq come and they rejoice in the vengeance of the rashaam and as cruel as that may sound says part of the joy of the afterlife is to see the ultimate justice of the rashawn so here um i guess during certain seasons you see that the the daffodil is planted it's supposed to symbolize the six petals are supposed to symbolize the six uh points of the manganese david and this location uh according to this plaque 150 there are other accounts that there are even more jews who are allowed entrance into the castle where ultimately the mob came surrounded the castle they they were depleted of food and water and they had no choice either to come out and be forcibly baptized or to uh give up their life akira shashem and they chose the latter so on the one hand this is a site of great horror great anti-semitism and great persecution on the other hand this is a holy site this is the place where 150 yiden were mekaim the greatest mitzvah where hazal say anyone who gives up their life okay this was the site where these jews gave up their life paying the ultimate price to show that their love of akadesh baruch superseded any love in this world so we hope that hashem should be nick we're going to um for the occasion we're going to together say the piot am nom came a rabbino yamtif and uh we're going to use the traditional nosak that they sing in new york there's something special about today today yeah today's the day we happen to be here it's a fast day for the cover kadisha so so we have um i think i actually have it here as well oh you have a song okay [Music] 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