Volume 25, Issue 1

The essay argues against a concept of dissociated Jewish and Christian cultures in premodern Europe that can still be perceived as dominating mainstream scholarship in the field of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish-Christian relations. By contrast it argues for a closer look at some of the links that bridge the gap between Jewish and Christian learned cultures, mainly to be found in vernacular German texts from the 13 th to the 16 th centuries.

The journey to India is an intrinsic part of the Alexander romances. Once transferred to fabulous surroundings, his journey becomes a suitable foundation for discussing and questioning diverse ethical values and cultural models. The Hebrew Alexander romance in MS London Jews’ College no. 145 divides Alexander’s Indian conquest into three parts, which are all told in the same manner. In each section of the journey he gains different experiences as he crosses inaccessible territories and fights against marvellous and monstrous creatures. They change his view of the world and make him understand that he is mortal. Alexander comes to India as a conqueror of the world who aspires to immortality, he travels there as an explorer, getting acquainted with the habits and philosophies of foreign cultures, and returns to Babylon as a sovereign who has been confronted with his own mortality.

This article describes the reception history of the Jewish-Hellenistic author Flavius Josephus in Christian and Jewish literature up to the Yiddish translation of Sefer Yosippon (printed in 1546). Josephus’ description of the Jewish War first shaped Christian historiography and theology. The works of Josephus were not translated into Hebrew until the tenth century, and became then very popular among the Jews. Their importance is confirmed by the 16 th century translation into Yiddish that was the second Yiddish book to be printed after the translation of the Torah.

Wirnt von Grafenberg’s Middle High German romance ›Wigalois‹ features a hero who proves his knightly excellence not only actively when fighting male opponents but also passively when threatened by aggressive women. By killing his most dangerous opponent and burying that opponent’s wife, Wigalois overcomes his passivity and turns into an unquestioned sovereign ruler. The protagonist of the romance ›Widuwilt‹, on the other hand, a late medieval anonymous Yiddish adaptation of Wirnt ’s ›Wigalois‹, is characterized as passive and helpless throughout the text. Instead of overcoming his most dangerous opponent, the hero is overcome himself. Until the very end he depends upon the help of others, especially women. This transformation points to a preference for symmetrical relationships between men and women as well as to a concept of heroism that places the hero within his community instead of apart from it.

This paper explores the role of the Yiddish Magelene Im Folgenden werde ich die Fülle der Namensformen vernachlässigen und die Bezeichnung Magelone generell in Bezug auf die allgemeine Texttradition bzw. Magelene für die jiddische Fassung verwenden. adaptation within the European narrative tradition. In order to uncover seemingly minor changes and expose the original agenda of this adaptation, this paper offers a close reading of the text through the lens of Spinoza ’s Ethics , suggesting that the text exhibits a more individualized worldview by offering an insight into the internal processes of the protagonists. This paper seeks to track these changes in the text’s construction of subjectivity with regard to affects and the figures’ reflection on them.

Einen bedeutenden Aspekt jüdischen literarischen Schaffens bildet von jeher die Auseinandersetzung mit und die Neubearbeitung von Quellen, die außerhalb der jüdischen Tradition entstanden sind. Der Aufsatz beschäftigt sich mit mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen jiddischen Adaptationen nichtjüdischer Stoffe, insbesondere mit der Geschichte der Witwe von Ephesus , einer Erzählung, die in vielen verschiedenen Versionen existiert. Pierre Bourdieu und Roger Chartier stellten 1985 fest, dass ein Buch sich gerade dadurch verändere, dass es sich nicht verändere, wenn die Welt sich verändert oder wenn die Art zu lesen sich verändert. Ausgehend von dieser Aussage und ihren Implikationen wird eine Arbeitshypothese vorgeschlagen, die auf dem Konzept eines besonderen Rezeptionsmodus basiert (›counter reception‹).

A curious story featured as no. 207 in the Old Yiddish Mayse bukh tells about the courtly education of a Pomeranian prince. The touchstone for his successful mastery of courtly manners is his telling an aventiure during a banquet. His education involves skillful treason, pursuing his own material and sexual interests and seducing the three daughters of his host. The youngest becomes pregnant and they fall in love, but it takes yet another ploy to get the permission to marry her. The mayse stands out from the rest of the compilation due to its apparent lack of morality which the Mayse bukh’s compiler seems to hold high otherwise. But a closer look reveals the narrative means of commentary and irony which distance the Jewish recipients of the mayse from the narrated content that is set in the exotic sphere of a Christian court. Readers are led by the narrator to view the narrated events as immoral actions, which are not part of their own culture.

Exploration of the role of folly in medieval and early modern Jewish culture – aside from the festival of Purim and, especially, Purim plays – has been minimal. Looking at Yiddish translations of Ulenspiegel and Schildbürgerbuch as well as a parody of a Jewish engagement contract, the article examines foolish culture as part of European Jewish culture from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. It also discusses the question of how foolish Jewish culture was related to neighbouring Christian foolish cultures. It refines the understanding of the relationship between Jewish and Christian traditions, what is shared and what is distinctive.

Die meisten altjiddischen Bibeldichtungen verwenden ebenso wie auch einige andere altjiddische Texte die gleiche, aus vier Versen bestehende Strophenform. Diese Struktur wird oft Nign Shmuel-bukh genannt, dessen metrische Gestalt wir zwar kennen, dessen Melodie jedoch nicht überliefert wurde. Der Aufsatz diskutiert die Verwendung des Nign Shmuel-bukh auf der Basis der Informationen, die uns heute zugänglich sind. Er zeigt Besonderheiten der metrischen Form und die Ähnlichkeit mit dem deutschen Hildebrandston auf, beleuchtet weitere formale und thematische Einflüsse des Hildebrandslieds auf die altjiddische Epik und geht der Frage nach, ob die Melodie des Hildebrandslieds möglicherweise dieselbe ist wie die des Nign Shmuel-bukhy . In einigen altjiddischen Werken wird die Struktur des Nign-Shmuel-bukh durch zusätzliche Reime erweitert. Es wird untersucht, inwiefern durch diese Modifikation eine neue, aus acht Versen bestehende Strophenform geschaffen wurde. Dabei werden auch mögliche Einflüsse der deutschen Heunenweise und der italienischen Ottava Rime in Betracht gezogen.

This article deals with the role Jewish moneylenders played in the expansion policy of Imperial Cities in the Later Middle Ages. It focuses on the examples of Zurich , Bern and Ulm because it was in these cases that Jews made the most important contributions to the creation of urban territories. As will be shown, there were several ways by which city councils could make use of Jewish money to support their territorial ambitions: Unfortunately, one way of acquiring money for territorial expansion was the plundering of Jewish communities, which happened in Ulm in 1385, for example. Apart from that, the city councils could gain territorial profit from Jewish businessmen granting loans to noblemen who were endowed with landed property in the vicinity of the cities. When these nobles could not repay their loans to the Jews, they were forced to cede their territories to the city councils which, in return, repaid the noble’s loans to the Jewish moneylenders. Probably due to the high interests, the city councils themselves, however, hardly ever took out loans to finance territorial expansion directly.

In einer Handschrift der Kommentare von Raschi und Raschbam über den Pentateuch, die dem Arzt Beifuβ Josephus aus Worms gehörte, gibt es eine Liste von 16 Männern mit demselben Familiennamen: Walch oder Wallich – einer Familie, die der jüdischen Elite angehörte. Wahrscheinlich ist die Nummer 9 auf der Liste Isaak Wallich aus Worms, der bekannte Sammler von Volksliedern. Die Liste zeigt nicht die genaue Beziehung zwischen den 16 Männern. Um die Beziehungen zwischen ihnen zu rekonstruieren, wird im Aufsatz ein einfaches Modell verwendet. Nach dessen Ergebnissen stammt die Liste aus den Jahren 1618–1624, und die Männer sind die Nachkommen von fünf Brüdern. Wahrscheinlich enthält die Liste nicht ausschließlich Namen von Besitzern des Manuskripts. Im zweiten Teil wird die Genealogie der Familie rekonstruiert.