Jewish Communities in the Rhineland, 1349
The Black Death unleashed an unprecedented wave of communal violence against the Jewish populations of northern Europe, which by then had become concentrated in towns in or near the Rhine river. As a result of this violence, Jewish communities in the larger cities dispersed to smaller towns, resulting in a kind of internal diaspora. All in all, there are some five hundred for which we have no record prior to the Black Death. This map gives an impression of the dispersion and its scope:

Source: Ruth Gay, The Jews of Germany: A Historical Portrait (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).

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