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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