Levi's Vindication is a revision of the author's earlier work, The “1007 Anonymous” and Papal Sovereignty: Jewish Perceptions of the Papacy and Papal Policy in the Middle Ages (Hebrew Union College, 1984), which argued that the Hebrew text known as the “1007 Anonymous” was not a contemporary account of royal persecution of the Jews in France in the year 1007 but rather a thirteenth-century fiction. In his new work, named after Israel Levi, who argued in 1906 that the 1007 Anonymous was a later text, Stow argues that the text is not a reliable witness to events in the eleventh century and demonstrates how it instead reflects on the Jews experience in the thirteenth century. For Stow, the text, describing persecution of the Jews by Robert the Pious of France and an appeal to the pope by the Jewish leader Jacob ben Yequtiel, offers a cautionary tale against Jewish reliance on secular authorities for protection and a sophisticated understanding of papal authority and papal protection of the Jews rather than an accurate description of historical events.

The book is divided into two sections: an introductory essay that responds to criticisms of the first edition of the book and introduces new arguments concerning the 1007 Anonymous, which is followed by an updated version of the 1984 book. In the introductory essay, Stow addresses matters found in the first edition, such as references in the 1007 Anonymous to the pope using terms revealing a conception of papal power that did not exist in the eleventh century. He expands on his argument that the papacy had not yet developed a policy of protecting the Jews as a theological necessity in the eleventh century and notes that secular authorities had, negating the image of secular rulers as hostile to the Jews in the 1007 Anonymous. Stow raises new arguments in support of his belief in the thirteenth-century origin of the text. He draws on scholarship concerning textual analysis in his understanding of the 1007 Anonymous and identifies passages in it that seem to have been derived from the thirteenth-century romance La Quête du Graal, arguing that the 1007 Anonymous itself is a romance whose form was shaped by contemporary vernacular literature. Stow examines early eleventh-century accounts of anti-Jewish persecution that have been cited as support for the authenticity of the account in the 1007 Anonymous but contends that these sources are unreliable records of anti-Jewish violence and support neither each other nor the 1007 Anonymous.

The second section of Levi's Vindication is a slightly revised version of Stow's 1984 book, which offers a powerful argument for the thirteenth-century composition of the 1007 Anonymous. In this part, Stow notes a number of anachronistic statements in the 1007 Anonymous that betray its thirteenth-century origin, such as designations of the pope as noted in the opening essay. He argues as well that use of Lotharingia for the region around Rouen did not occur before the thirteenth century and that Flanders, where Jacob ben Yegutiel retires at the end of the story, had no Jewish population in the eleventh century. Stow argues here, too, that the eleventh-century sources reporting anti-Jewish violence cannot be used to support the 1007 Anonymous and that any eleventh-century reports of ritual suicide can only come from the twelfth. The most revealing anachronism for Stow is the depiction of papal authority and policy of protecting the Jews in the 1007 Anonymous. It is a matter Stow addresses in the introductory essay, but here he first demonstrated the development of the papal policy of Sicut Iudaeis non, first enunciated in a bull in 1120, and the parallel development of the papal monarchy and claims of papal authority over the Jews. In this context, he demonstrates how the 1007 Anonymous is best understood as a veiled commentary on the increasing threat to the Jews from secular authorities in the thirteenth century and the hope for papal protection against those threats. Stow also demonstrates something not always fully appreciated: Jewish awareness of religious, political, and literary-cultural developments in the Christian world and the ability of Jewish scholars to make use of those developments in their own communities and literary works.

While Stow effectively demonstrates that the 1007 Anonymous is a thirteenth-century text, his arguments concerning the eleventh-century sources are less persuasive and do not discount the possibility that the text may contain a kernel of truth. His effort to divorce the supposed events of the 1007 Anonymous from those recorded by Ademar of Chabannes and Rodulfus Glaber causes him to misread what those chroniclers recorded, which demonstrates a violent reaction against the Jews in the early eleventh century. Stow's reliance on older editions now superseded by more recent ones causes him to draw incorrect conclusions about these histories, notably Ademar's assertion of Jewish suicide in response to persecution. Stow's claim that the 1007 Anonymous copied a passage from Glaber's history is also erroneous and a consequence of Stow's failure to engage with newer scholarship, which notes the small number and limited geographic dispersal of copies of Glaber's work. Stow's casual dismissal of the apocalyptic beliefs of those around the year 1000 expressed in the writings of Ademar and Glaber also cause him to misinterpret their accounts of Jewish persecution. Stow's rejection of the existence of the doctrine of witness is also problematic; although a papal bull stating the doctrine was not issued until 1120, the idea was known by Christian thinkers from the time of St. Augustine, and papal precedent was set by Gregory the Great, who first used the expression “Sicut Iudaeis non.”

Although Stow is not ultimately convincing in his treatment of the eleventh-century sources and their relationship to the 1007 Anonymous, he offers important insights into the work and how it reflects on the Jewish experience in the thirteenth century.