Images of parents slaughtering their children, suicides and marauders led by a goose are only some of the many aspects waiting to be discovered in the three historiographic writings known as the Hebrew Crusader Chronicles which are now available in a new critical edition and translation. Written, as Eva Haverkamp suggests, some time after the First Crusade whose repercussions in the Rhineland they purport to portray, but before 1140 (Mainz Anonymous) and 1146 respectively (Eliezer bar Nathan and Solomon bar Simson), these texts are the product of a mentality that sought to make sense of the fate of an earlier generation. Because the Chronicles represent early literary reflections of the First Crusade and appear to echo behavioural patterns known from contemporary Latin chronicles, Eva Haverkamp's work is a welcome addition to the history of the crusades and in particular to the meaning of martyrdom in Ashkenaz. Ever since the publication in 1993 of Israel Yuval's observations, the Chronicles have been at the heart of lively discussions, and the idea of self-sacrifice, having gained unprecedented relevance in an era of suicide bombings, continues to be hotly debated. It is only now, with Haverkamp's seminal work, that scholars have access to a critical edition of the texts themselves. The book considers the variants of all surviving manuscripts, including texts that perished in the Second World War and are only accessible indirectly today. Moreover, it establishes, for the first time, a decisive text for Eliezer bar Nathan's chronicle. In contrast to much of current scholarship, Haverkamp concludes that the so-called Mainz Anonymous served as a direct vorlage for Solomon bar Simson, who with Eliezer bar Natan also had access to a fourth unknown work.

In order to allow readers to follow the observations made in her 244-page German introduction, Haverkamp presents the chronicles in synoptic tables (pp. 246–493) and as running texts (pp. 518–615), with the latter numbered according to the Hebrew page sequence (pp. 12 (615)–109 (518)). All chronicles are printed with Hebrew texts and German translations on facing pages and the synoptic and running versions are separated by indices of biblical references, names and places.

Haverkamp's careful edition, translation and the inclusion of indices and exhaustive lists of variants make this volume, the first of a new MGH series Hebrew Texts from Medieval Germany, published in conjunction with the Jerusalem Academia Scientiarum Israelitica, invaluable both to scholars of medieval Hebrew texts and to general historians. First conceived of in 1885 by a Jewish initiative that was never strong or universally supported to begin with, this series' predecessor was broken up by the ascent of Nazi rule in Germany and the ensuing forced exodus of German Jewish scholarship. It is to be hoped that the new turn to Hebrew material will lead to the publication of many more texts that are of equal importance to the history of medieval German Jewry.