"Sefer Hasidim" and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval EuropeComposed in Germany in the early thirteenth century by Judah ben Samuel he hasid, Sefer Hasidim, or "Book of the Pietists," is a compendium of religious instruction that portrays the everyday life of Jews as they lived together with and apart from Christians in towns such as Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and Regensburg. A charismatic religious teacher who recorded hundreds of original stories that mirrored situations in medieval social living, Judah's