Bonn בונא
The Rhineland town where the Raavya's father taught and where the memory of the crusade massacres was written down.
Bonn stands on the Rhine between Cologne and Mainz, and its community is among those that gathered again after 1096, when the First Crusade passed through the Rhineland towns.
The yeshiva in Bonn was kept by Rabbi Yoel ha-Levi; his son, Rabbi Eliezer ben Yoel ha-Levi—the Raavya—wrote down his father's rulings, and through them the Bonn training entered Ashkenazi law. Here too lived Rabbi Ephraim ben Yaakov, who wrote the Sefer Zechirah: the book from which we know by name what befell the communities in the Second Crusade and at Blois.
So a small town gave two things without which Ashkenaz cannot be understood: law handed from father to son, and memory written down while the witnesses were alive.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Sefer Zechirah of Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn — the town and the events, recorded by one who lived there
- The Aviezri of the Raavya — the Bonn yeshiva and the rulings that come from it
Basis: documents and evidence.