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book: Sons of Saviors
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Sons of Saviors

The Red Jews in Yiddish Culture
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2023

About this book

Envisioned as a tribe of ruddy-faced, redheaded, red-bearded Jewish warriors, bedecked in red attire who purportedly resided in isolation at the fringes of the known world, the Red Jews are a legendary people who populated a shared Jewish-Christian imagination. But in fact the red variant of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel is a singular invention of late medieval vernacular culture in Germany. This idiosyncratic figure, together with the peculiar term “Red Jews,” existed solely in German and Yiddish, the German-Jewish vernacular. These two language communities assessed the Red Jews differently and contested their significance, which is to say, they viewed them in different shades of red. The voyage of the Red Jews through the Jewish and Christian imagination, from their medieval Christian nascence, through early modern Old Yiddish literature, to modern Yiddish culture in Eastern Europe, Palestine, and America, is the story of this book.

By studying this vernacular icon, Rebekka Voß contributes to our understanding of the formation of minority awareness and the construction of Ashkenazic Jewish identity through visual cultural encounters. She also spotlights the vitality of vernacular culture by demonstrating how the premodern motif of the Red Jews informed modern Yiddish literature, and how the stereotype of Jewish red hair found its way into Jewish social critiques, political thought, and arts through the present day.

Sons of Saviors is a story about power: the Yiddish reappropriation of the Red Jews subverted the Christian color symbolism by adjusting the focus on redness from a negative stereotype into a proud badge of self-assertion. The book also includes in an appendix the full text of a significant Yiddish tale featuring the Red Jews.

Author / Editor information

Contributor: Rebekka Voß Rebekka Voß is Associate Professor of Jewish History at Goethe University Frankfurt.

Reviews

"Sons of Saviors stands out as a captivating and innovative interdisciplinary study, bridging a crucial research gap. Seamlessly integrating historical analysis and contextual exploration of the 'Red Jews' motif with investigations into counter-histories, this work delves into literary motifs and societal dynamics. It lays the groundwork for examining a unique visual motif and color symbolism pervasive in both literary narratives and material culture. This symbol, ever-evolving, serves as a poignant reflection of the intricate tensions, projections, and relationships between Christian society and its Jewish minority." --- "Voss is one of the rare historians who is truly attentive in her treatment of literary texts not simply as artefacts of a literary history, but as primary artistic materials to be carefully analysed. Through close readings and literary historical research Voss has produced a complex and fascinating study of a little-known trope in Jewish discourse, one which helps us to better understand the nature of communal Jewish identity historically and to the present day...Sons of Saviours represents the best of literary historical scholarship and cultural studies with its clarity, its erudition, its commitment to close reading, its depth, and its breadth."

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    Frontmatter

    i
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    Contents

    vii
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    List of Illustrations

    ix
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    Note on Translations and Transliteration

    xii
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    List of Abbreviations

    xiii
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    Introduction. Visual Thinking in Yiddish

    1
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    Chapter 1. Red Jews: A Medieval Christian Label

    21
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    Chapter 2. Reclaiming Red: The Red Jews in Early Modern Yiddish

    52
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    Chapter 3. The Little Red Jew: A Vernacular Icon of Ashkenazic Identity

    84
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    Chapter 4. From West to East and Beyond Yiddish: The Transmission History of Ma’aseh Akdamut

    121
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    Chapter 5. Into Modernity: The Wandering Jew in Bright Red

    138
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    Epilogue. An Old Yiddish Legend in a Brooklyn Fridge

    167
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    Appendix. Ma’aseh Akdamut

    173
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    Notes

    183
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    Bibliography

    227
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    Index

    273
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    Acknowledgments

    279
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
July 12, 2023
eBook ISBN:
9781512824339
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
View content
https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512824339
eBook ISBN: 9781512824339
Keywords for this book
Alexander the Great; art history; barbarian; beard; bloodthirst; Christian oppression; color red; diaspora; early Christian Christianity; early modern literature; end of days; Germany; Gog and Magog; heathens; hero; identity; Jewish body; Jewish folklore; Jewish German studies; Jewish History; Jewish-Christian polemics; literary criticism; Ma’ase Akdamut; Marc Chagall; medieval; messiah; myth mythology; Red Jews; Red Jews; red-headed red-bearded; revelations; Ten Lost Tribes of Israel; trope; vernacular; visual culture; wandering Jew; warrior; Yiddish legend; Yiddish literature
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