'God Wants It!': The Ideology of Martyrdom in the Hebrew Crusade Chronicles and its Jewish and Christian Background

During the first months of the First Crusade, groups of crusaders attacked the Jewish communities in the Rhineland, forcing them to choose between death and conversion. Many converted, but others chose to die as martyrs. Among these, some were killed by the crusaders, some killed themselves, each other, or even their own children in order to prevent forcible conversion. These events are described in a number of Latin accounts, but also in three Hebrew chronicles and in a number of Hebrew litu…