In addition to the notable Rabbi Yom Tov bar Yitzchak of Joigny, several other Baalei Tosafos are thought to have been among those Jews who were martyred in London in 1189 and in York in 1190.
One of these was Rabbi Eliyahu HaKadosh, a talmid of Rabbi Yitzchak HaZaken, who died at York, while Rabbi Yaakov of Orleans was said to have died a martyr's death in the anti-Jewish London riots of 1189.
Rabbeinu Yom Tov himself was a former talmid of Rashi's grandson, Rabbeinu Tam, and the epithet "HaKodesh" was frequently added to his name. He also was a darshan mikra and a liturgical poet, his best-known work being Omnam Kein, a piyut sung on Yom Kippur.
In one of the few contemporary accounts of the York tragedy, Ephraim of Bonn described Rabbeinu Yom Tov as a "person of no ordinary qualifications" and recorded the words of his final speech to the York bais din, which began: "Men of Israel! The G-d of our ancestors is Omniscient, and there is no one who can say 'Why do You do this?' This day He commands us to die for His Torah; for that law which we have cherished from the first hour it was given, which we have preserved pure throughout our exile among the nations, and which, for the many consolations it has given us and the eternal hope it communicates, can we do less than die? ..."
It has been said that it was mainly because of the cruel death of these notables that the cherem of York, the tradition in England of forbidding Jews to sleep in the City of York overnight, was proclaimed.
Modern Memorial
In 1978, as a healing gesture, a plaque was laid a short way down the slope in front of the tower in the presence of the chief rabbi of England, Lord (then Dr.) Immanuel Jakobovits; the Archbishop of York; and a descendent of Richard Malebisse, the leader of the mob that carried out the massacre. It bears this short, sad reminder of York’s blackest hour:
“On the night of Friday 16 March 1190, some 150 Jews and Jewesses of York, having sought protection in the Royal Castle on this site from the mob incited by Richard Malebisse and others, chose to die at each other’s hands rather than renounce their faith.”
This statement is followed by a quote in Hebrew from Isaiah 42:12: “Let them honor G-d and declare His praise in the isles.”
The Castle Area Campaign has also been active in maintaining the site and plaque. A field of daffodils (considered an appropriate flower because the petals take the form of a six-pointed star) was planted in 1993 as a memorial to what they describe as a “potent reminder of religious and racial intolerance — an educative force in an unstable world.”
Despite conciliatory gestures such as the one recorded above, York remains a city that most Jews avoid. It is said that devout Jews who happen to travel by train through the city even desist from eating their sandwiches. It is therefore somewhat ironic and perhaps even significant to note that the world’s largest concentration of Jews in a single city today exists in the city of New York.
