In 1242, thousands of copies of the Talmud were burned in Paris—an act of religious violence that Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, one of the greatest medieval Ashkenazi scholars, immortalized in a haunting lament. Recited each year on the 9th of Av, a day of mourning for Jewish destruction and exile, Rabbi Meir’s poem offers not just grief but a radical theological response to Christian power, messianic hope, and the meaning of Jewish suffering. In this class, we’ll study his lament as both poetry and protest, exploring how it grapples with the tensions between Judaism and Christianity in the medieval period and beyond.

Rabbi Dr. Yaakov Jaffe serves as the rabbi of the Maimonides Kehillah, founded by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in 1963, and as the Dean of Judaic Studies at Maimonides School, both in Brookline, Mass. He is the author of Isaiah and His Contemporaries, on the book and times of the prophet Yeshayahu. Rabbi Jaffe received his ordination and doctorate from Yeshiva University, where he holds graduate degrees in Bible, Jewish History, and Jewish Education and where he also studied in YU’s Kollel Elyon for three years. Rabbi Jaffe's unique approach to Tanach and Hebrew poetry is informed by his degree in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and the historicist approach to the study of ancient texts. He has published more than three dozen scholarly articles on a wide array of topics, including Jewish Law, Tanach, Prayer, and Jewish Philosophy.