Chasidei Ashkenaz: the measure is not 'did he do it' but 'as if no one were watching'

The movement grew on burnt ground. After 1096, when the communities of Worms, Mainz and Speyer were destroyed, the question was not how to live on but what a man is worth when there is no one to watch him.

Their answer came out thus: the law is not enough. The law says what must be done; but there is also din shamayim—the judgment of heaven—which requires what no court will demand. Hence their measure: not 'did he do it' but 'did he do it as he would have if no one were watching'. Hence too the severity toward themselves, running to heavy penances, and their distrust of honour.

The men: Rabbi Samuel he-Hasid of Speyer; his son Rabbi Judah he-Hasid, who moved to Regensburg, the movement's chief figure; and Rabbi Eleazar ben Judah of Worms, the Rokeach, the last of the great, through whom their teaching passed into later kabbalah.

Their book is Sefer Chasidim. It is built not as a code but as a scatter of cases and instructions, and so more of the everyday life of an Ashkenazi community can be seen in it than in any other text of the period. Rabbi Judah he-Hasid, incidentally, also wrote down Rabbi Petachiah of Regensburg's account of his journey east—this circle was not occupied with itself alone.

And one piece of testimony from inside the house. In Kislev 4957 two men broke into the Rokeach's house and killed his wife Dulcea and both his daughters. He wrote an elegy for them on the pattern of Eshet Chayil—and from it one sees what a woman in such a household did: she handled money and lent at interest, keeping the house while her husband studied; she spun, bound books, sewed covers for scrolls, prepared wicks; she taught women and led their prayer. The attackers are usually called Crusaders; scholars hold they were robbers—the town authorities caught and executed them.