Worms, Speyer and Mainz formed a league whose Hebrew initials give the name SchUM, and between them they were the intellectual centre of Jewish Europe north of the Alps in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Their scholars produced the commentaries and legal customs that Ashkenazi practice still follows, and the young Rashi studied at Worms before returning to Champagne to write the commentary on the Talmud that has been printed on the inside margin of every page since. The synagogue in Worms was first built in 1034 and rebuilt in the twelfth century, with a separate hall for women added shortly afterwards, an arrangement that tells you something about how the community organised worship. The cemetery outside the walls, the Heiliger Sand, holds stones from the eleventh century and is the oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in Europe.
In the spring of 1096, bands attached to the First Crusade attacked these communities on their way east. In Worms as in Mainz and Speyer, people were killed, and many killed themselves and their children rather than accept baptism, an act the Hebrew chronicles written afterwards present as sanctification of the divine name. The memorial books that recorded the names, and the laments composed for the ninth of Av, kept the event in the liturgy for centuries.
The synagogue was destroyed in 1938 and rebuilt on its old foundations in 1961. The three cities' sites were inscribed together on the World Heritage list in 2021.