How a Non-Jew Saved the Talmud from Flames

Just over five hundred years ago, in 1504, chaos erupted in the shop of a Jewish butcher named Joseph Pfefferkorn. It was revealed that this Jewish butcher had defrauded half of the meat sellers in the market through an extraordinary scam over a long period. The police were called, and the Jewish butcher faced the prospect of many years in prison.

Unwilling to endure his punishment, the deceitful butcher proposed to his judges that he convert to Christianity. They gladly accepted, and he joined the Dominican monks in the German city of Cologne, where the newly converted made a name for himself in religious studies and in hating his former brethren. As part of his campaign of hatred, or perhaps to curry favor with his new friends, he published a pamphlet urging that Jews be barred from studying the Talmud, asserting that they believed in it more than the Ten Commandments, and that the Talmud taught them to despise non-Jews and disregard the laws of the kingdom.

Pfefferkorn wrote several editions of his pamphlet, employing different forms of exhortation, threats, and persuasion, but his words left little impression. He was not a great scholar, and any educated person who examined his writings saw them as nonsense.

However, hatred holds considerable sway. A group of clerics approached the sister of Emperor Maximilian I, urging her to ask her husband to decree the burning of all Talmud volumes, as had been done by emperors in medieval times. Princess Kunigunde of Bavaria approached her brother the emperor and requested that he carefully review Pfefferkorn's pamphlet. The emperor wished to fulfill his sister's request and initially ordered the confiscation of all Talmud books until a decision could be made...

At this point, several prominent individuals intervened. The first was Bishop Uriel of Mainz, who argued that Jews were valuable citizens of Germany and that their Talmud books contained only morals and virtues, nothing harmful. Echoing the role of Harbonah in ancient times, the bishop whispered a few words to the king to save the Jews, prompting the king to seek the opinions of several important universities on the matter.

Meanwhile, Pfefferkorn continued to publish inflammatory pamphlets, opposed by German intellectuals who wrote in defense of the Jews. This "written battle" became known in history as the "pamphlet wars." The turning point came with the publication of a book by a German scholar, Dr. Johannes Reuchlin, an expert in imperial law. His book demonstrated that all of Pfefferkorn's claims were a collection of errors and that, despite being a former Jew, he knew nothing of the Talmud and that all his accusations were false. In 1516, the Inquisition brought Reuchlin to trial, but he was acquitted, having shown that all his statements were factually supported.

Pfefferkorn continued to spew venom, but soon after, the emperor issued an order prohibiting him from publishing books. Before he could enact his retaliatory plans, the unfortunate man died, and the Jewish community was spared from this malignancy.