The Mysterious York Minster Fire
On July 9, 1984, around 2 a.m., just hours after the bones of medieval Jews of York had finally been laid to rest, a massive fire destroyed the only part of the historic York Minster Cathedral which dates back to the time of the infamous 1190 York pogrom.
July 8, 1984, was described at the time as having been a warm summer’s day and the spectacular lightning storms that lit up the night sky over York came as something of a surprise. The BBC, North Yorkshire, reported that the cathedral’s superintendent of works believed that a freak lightning strike started the fire. The fire alarm was not activated, probably due to electrical damage to the system, and by the time an on-duty policeman discovered the fire, York’s famous old cathedral was well and truly ablaze.
The dry oak tinder in the roof of the South Transept burned quickly, much stonework was seriously damaged, and the famous sixteenth-century Rose Window was shattered into thousands of fragments. It took four years to complete the repairs at a cost of £1 million.
More than a few observers have viewed this incident, not as a coincidence, but as a possible demonstration of some kind of Divine retribution relating to the sad events of eight-hundred years before visited upon one of the biggest Gothic cathedrals in all of Europe.
Laying the York Bones to Rest
The chain of events which led to the eventual laying to rest of the bones of Jews from medieval York reads something like a bestselling thriller. A full account was published in the chareidi online magazine Dei’ah VeDibur on October 8, 2003 (12 Tishrei 5764). The writer, Rabbi Dov Eliach, obtained his story from the Gateshead avreich, Rabbi Yisroel Chaim Levine.
In brief, the story goes that in 1984, Rabbi Levine, on his way back to Manchester, was forced to change trains at York. Recalling the York massacre and the fact that certain Tosafists were involved, and with several hours on his hands, he sought out the tourist information booth to ask if there was a Jewish cemetery in the city. He was surprised to be told by the in- formation clerk that several months earlier an ancient Jewish graveyard had indeed been discovered and that “hundreds of skeletons” had been carted off to the archaeology department at the University of York. He went first to the site of the dig, near an intended parking garage development, and found nothing. Proceeding to the university, he presented himself to the archaeologists there as “a researcher of Jewish law” (as he was a notable avreich studying Gemara, this was certainly not beyond the bounds of credibility). Rabbi Levine was assured that permission, necessary by British law, had been obtained from the chief rabbi of London to perform the dig at the site, adjacent to “Jewbury” Street.
The cemetery was apparently first used around 1177 and remained in use until the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290. The remains of nearly five-hundred individuals were recovered. On his return to Gateshead, Rabbi Levine immediately began to work on the matter of having the bones suitably re-interred. He called Rabbi Chanoch Ehrentrau, who was later to become av beis din of London, and also enlisted the aid of other well-known rabbanim, including Rabbi Eliyahu Falk. Lord Immanuel Jacobovits, then Chief Rabbi of England, eventually arranged with the British Ministry of the Interior to have all digging stopped and to bring all the bones to a proper Jewish burial, with the construction company involved at the original site funding the operation. According to Professor O’Connor: “The bones from Jewbury were removed temporarily to a Jewish mortuary in Manchester (apparently it was the closest appropriate facility). There they stayed while building work continued on the former cemetery site, a period of around 5 to 6 months.”
In the final report on the excavation in the journal Antiquity (March 1, 1995), the noted York University archaeologist Philip Rahtz gives the date of reburial as July 8, 1984 (8 Tamuz 5744). A stone plaque was placed at the entrance to the site, now a Sainsbury’s supermarket, with Hebrew and English inscriptions recording the location of the Jewish cemetery and that the human remains were re-interred on the site of the present parking lot in the presence of the chief rabbi and representatives of the Jewish community.
Supervised by the rabbanim present, the hundreds of skeletons were buried in several dozen coffins arranged in three layers in a “crypt” constructed within the new building as close as was practicable to their original burial place. In addition to the memorial stone, a sign was set up to warn Kohanim not to enter the building. It remains conjecture as to whether any of the remains re-entombed in 1984 were actually from the victims of the 1190 tragedy.
The next purportedly connected event, a mysterious lightning strike on York Minster Cathedral, took place in the early hours of the following day.
