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I was taken aback at stores advertising Knight costumes for purim. Aside from the fact that they have a cross isignia (which I assume somehow people don’t realize)the knight and castle-guards were at their peak when they were bound to the church and crusades(i.e. periods when they killed Jews).
ALL current costumes of knights/guards are reflective of a knight from this terrible time period.
Someone buying this costume is basically dressing as a person who was RESPONSIBLE for many of the KINNOS that we say on TISHABAV. Knights were promised great rewards in heaven by priests for killing Jews.
There obviously is terrible ignorance one store I approached said they would pull it off the shelves.They thought a knight was just like an american soldier and didn’t even realize the designs were Tzelems.
(A brief synopsis of a knighting ceremony and its roots in the church) After the high mass had been chanted the young aspirant approached the altar and handed his sword to the bishop or priest. It was laid upon the altar and blessed with the clergyman’s prayer:
If you bought this costume please wear something else
Frielichen Purim lishana haba Biyerushalyim
Edited.
whaaaa? Similarly noone should dress as a king with a cape and crown, because almost all the kings of the past were anti-Semites, promoted pogroms and crusades, were advised by the church, and exiled or murdered countless Jews.
abcd2
Math: treif, science: treif, history: treif, education: treif, nobody knows what you are talking about.
Says: Most of the kids dressing as kings are not any speoific king just a generic king more fairy tale like than related to anything in reality. Some of the king costumes are supposed to be Dovid Hamelech.
Someone buying this costume is basically dressing as a person who was RESPONSIBLE for many of the KINNOS that we say on TISHABAV. Knights were promised great rewards in heaven by priests for killing Jews.
This is somewhat incorrect. The Rhineland massacres took place at the hands of the People’s Crusade, which comprised mostly peasants and freed criminals who were easily whipped into a frenzy by the clergy due to various factors.
(That is not to say that the knights and titled nobility were not just as bad, and didn’t kill Jews on their own. Just that you seem to have mixed up your facts.)
The cross is a big problem, especially when you realize that when real soldiers wore them it likely meant they were part of a Crusade, which were uniformly anti-Jewish (remember, back then we were allied with the Muslims). The normal insignia would be other than a cross – usually the colors of one’s overlord in the feudal system.
Generically, whether a medieval solider was good or bad depended on whether he was on your side or not (as is true today). Jews of course could not legally “bear arms” at the time, though this was probably ignored in practice as long as we were subtle about it.
If one wanted to be a “reinactor” (rather than for Purim) and be a friendly medieval European knight, it would be easy to adopt the uniform of someone who was protecting Jews (as was the case – we were the leading source of tax revenue so the people in charge had an interest in protecting us – if they hadn’t we wouldn’t have remained in that region). Alternatively, one could dress up as someone who was usually friendly (a Muslim soldier) or whom we never met on a regular basis (a Japanese Samurai – they were very colorful looking, and unlike their European equivalents tended to be literate).
dont dress up as a shaver, it was used by nazis and they killed jews.
I agree that Jewish children should not wear costumes with crosses or other goyish religious images. (That includes the yin/yang on the ninja costumes)
However, I think that some misconceptions about history are fueling some of the feelings expressed here.
First of all, most of the Crusader massacres were not carried out by knights. They were carried out by ignorant peasants who were in a religious frenzy. Many knights (who were also noblemen) and Church officials tried to stop them. They were so zealous and undisciplined that they wouldn’t listen to anyone.
Secondly, most medieval soldiers were not knights. Knights were all noblemen. They were educated, well-trained and disciplined. In other words, they were unlikely to go off and massacre a lot of people who had nothing to do with their military objectives. You can tell this by the fact that there were a lot of massacres during the First Crusade (when the common people went) and hardly any during the subsequent ones (when the armies consisted of mostly knights and professional soldiers).
Thirdly, most knights were not in the service of the Church. Most weren’t. I think that some of you are referring to Templars. They wore the white tunics with the big red crosses and are what comes to a lot of people’s minds when they think of knighs. They were one of just a couple of monastic orders of knights (they were fighting monks). Most knights were loyal to a nobeman who outranked them. Whether or not a knight was good or bad largely depended upon under which nobleman he served. Some nobelmen were more tolerant than others of Jews and some had different standards of behavior than others for their knights.
Also, if we want to avoid the cosumes of people who have persecuted us, we won’t have many to choose from. People from all walks of life from many different cultures have persecuted us.
Medieval European knights were soldiers, motivating by the same things that usually motivate soldiers – a desire for an honorable career, service to either their country or their overlord (depending on whether it was in the feudal era), etc. There were no more religious or bloodthirsty than any other soldiers in other times and places. Of course, we should note that traditionally (meaning, before 1948) almost all hagaddahs depicted the evil son as a soldiers. Certainly if you wouldn’t object to a purim costume depicting any other soldiers, why object to a medieval knight. Certainly some of us feel that soldiers are inherently problematic, but that isn’t a universal feeling among frum Jews.
The typical insignia of a knight would almost never be a cross. It would be the coat of arms of his overlord or country (sometimes the same things, often not). While there were exceptions, a picture of a mevieval soldier (either an infantryman or a mounted knight) with a large cross as insignia would suggest a crusaders. Crusaders were a bit less mercentary than most, and much more anti-Jewish than most. The cross is what should be be highly objectionable.
abcd2- yes, i think the cross is a problem, and other religious symbols. I am also disturbed by the nun costume. But the knight costume, that may have been when they were at their height, during crusades, but there were knights of other times and kinds, etc.
There weren’t knights in Persia during the time of the megillah anyways …
WHOS EXCITED 2 DRESS UP TOM???? cuz i am!!! now whos guna guess what im being?? even better, what time era??
Sometimes in life you pick your battles
Most people arent dressing up as a knight. Most either dress up as something from the Megilla or a Pop Culture icon Like Superman, power Rangers or disney princess, these costumes appeal to very few people.
If you are going to say there is a cross, why not ban the Greek Cross , otherwise known as the Plus Sign or the St Andrews Cross otherwise known as an “X”
Someone asked R’ Dr. Bernard Revel about having a diploma from a Catholic college, since it had a cross on it.
He paskened that in such contexts, the cross loses its religious significance and he cited the Rema that they don’t actually worship it, but it just serves as a zecher for them.
If someone dresses as a knight, I don;t see much that could be haalkhically objectionable.
Plus, it is said that the Carolignian dynasty has Jewish roots.
I’m disturbed at people dressing up as Scooby Doo. Don’t they know that Scooby Doo was a Great Dane, one of the breeds of dog that the Nazis used as guard-dogs? (Tfic)
yossi z.– There weren’t any “knights” in Purim since heavy mounted cavalry were impossible into the stirups were be invented at the time in India, but didn’t become in Europe and Middle East until centuries later. At the time of Purim, a horseback rider could be a messenger or a scout, but fighitng on horseback was not practical.
Poskim have also said a Jew can wear the iron cross insignia given by different orders and can in effect, be knighted, or inducted into the Order of the British Empire, and whatnot.
I think this blows things out of proportion a little.
When things become divorced of their origins, there is no more hashash for avoda zara. We have months named after pagans (Tammuz, etc.) Times and circumstances change.
abcd2 – I think I got the point entirely, and realize exactly what you’re trying to say. The names of the days of the week are around entirely because Norse and Roman ovdei avoda zoro attributed significance to them. Anyway, as far as the fleur de lys goes, the lily in and of itself was the religious symbol (it symbolised the ‘purity’ of Mary), the fleur de lys (being a stylised lily) was a variation on it which had, even by the time of the First Crusade, lost all religious meaning and was purely a heraldic symbol used by the Royal Houses of France and (after the Norman Conquest) Britain. In fact, it is only very recently that scholars decided that there was ever any religious meaning behind the fleur to begin with. By the time of the Crusades it had left its religious roots so far in the dust that entirely secular legends about its origins had already passed into accepted wisdom. One legend has the first Frankish king, Clovis I, picking a lily from the banks of the River Luts (hence Luce, hence Lys) and wearing it in his helmet as he rode into battle. The widespread use of the fleur de lys symbol has, therefore, more to do with its heraldic use than its religious symbolism.
abcd2 – Nice of you to be sorry about disagreeing but just saying so really doesn’t prove a thing. Its widespread use is entirely secular in nature (as a heraldic symbol) and has been since before the Crusades. The existence of the entirely secular legends lend proof to this; in a violently religious society the religious connotations would be stressed not entirely ignored in place of a nice story of a bloke putting a flower on his hat.
this is what you are worried about when all the newspapers are busy writing about one of our elected officials who dressed up in BLACKFACE. we look pretty bad based on what he did. hopefully there will not be any repercussions
this is what you are worried about when all the newspapers are busy writing about one of our elected officials who dressed up in BLACKFACE. we look pretty bad based on what he did. hopefully there will not be any repercussions
Ive seen other people dress up this way (not famous people, just people in the street whom I did not know) Just saw the costumes
zahavasdad, other people is one thing…a local elected official who represents his constituents and neighborhood is a totally other thing.
he could have worn a superman costume if he wanted to dress up for purim
Nobody should be dressing up this way.
There was a parade in Broad Channel a few years ago where one of the Floats was “Hassidic Park”. What if Al Sharpton decided to dress up for halloween as a Hassid in “Jewface”
exactly!!
abcd2 – I know of the various versions of the Clovis legend, however the predominant one at the time was the purely secular one. Yes, the fleur is and has been used as a religious symbol but, as your own citations prove, it is much more commonly used in a secular context. I understand your general point but I don’t think it’s worth finding how something someone is doing might possibly have a heicha timtza of issur just to make people aware of what is essentially not much of an issue. And in any case, mutav sheyehe shoggegin…
The elected official is only “Sorry” because its all over the news. If his son did not post a picture of it FB nobody would have heard about it and he would not be sorry
THE NOTORIOUS king Louis WHO USED it as his coat of arms.
When you discuss “Notorious” King Louis of France, either Louis XIV who build Versailles and was the longest reigning monarch in wesern history or Louis XVI who was beheaded during the french revolution, Neither had much to do with jews (Although jews were allowed back in France in 1789)
The knights were also drunk. Perhaps we should avoid that too.
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