Eulogies Without Words: Gestures of Grief in Medieval Ashkenaz

It is impossible to study medieval Jewish life without being interrupted by death. While Jewish quarters were located centrally, the cemeteries were outside the town boundaries: a distance that allowed for unintentionally public performances of Jewish identity. This paper explores how these acts borrowed, commented upon, and subverted Christian understandings of death generally, and of Jewish death particularly. I survey funeral processions and examine gestural practices: pouring out water upon hearing of a death, and tossing earth behind oneself upon leaving a cemetery. Water-pouring was a silent announcement, while earth-tossing indicated the severing of the spirit from the physical world. To Christians, however, these odd-looking gestures fostered confusion and anti-Jewish sentiment. Examining the rituals that brought Jews from the realm of the living to the quiet of the grave, and comparing Christian understandings of them to their Jewish sources, can deepen our understanding of death and mourning practices in Ashkenaz.