May 30 1096 – 6 Sivan 4856
Isaac of Mayence (today Mainz, Germany) committed suicide on Shavuot two days after he had submitted to forced baptism to save the lives of his mother and children. The Jews of west Germany living along the River Rhine were massacred wholesale by armies of knights and their followers en route to the Holy Land during the first Crusade. In Mayence, forces led by Count Emicho of Leiningen killed scores of Jews who refused to accept Christianity three days before the Shavuot holiday. Others committed suicide rather than convert, and a few were baptised. According to the chronicle of Solomon son of Simon, Isaac was one of those few. On the night of Shavuot he decided to repent of his conversion, killing his own son and daughter in front of the holy ark in the synagogue and then burning down his invalid mother’s house as she slept within. Returning to the synagogue, he set it on fire to keep it from being turned into a church, dying in the flames.
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