On this day in 1095, Pope Urban II opened the Council of Clermont, summoned to plan the First Crusade, Host to more than two hundred bishops, the Council decreed that a pilgrimage to Jerusalem made every other penance superfluous, igniting one of the darkest periods in European Jewish history.
Though the Jews of France supplied food and funds for the Crusaders’ journey, by the time they reached Germany, many Crusaders decided to spread the “Kingdom of God” at home before proceeding to the “Holy Land,” striking at four Jewish communities along the Rhine—Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and Cologne. While the Jews of Europe had suffered from anti-Jewish legislation, even violence, prior to the Crusades, the sheer ferocity of the attacks represented a new development, one that widened the gulf separating the Jewish and Christian communities for most of the next millennia and opened the door to several of the most tragic chapters in our People’s history.
— Rabbi Josh Knobel