Abstract
This chapter uses illustrations that were printed in Jewish and non-Jewish books from the late sixteenth century till the mid-eighteenth century to study practices of domestic devotion that included the participation of children. Through analysing the depictions of the positions and actions of the children, the author deduces the ways in which children were included in these acts and the ways in which they served as learning moments. The chapter also explores the role of the illustrations themselves—especially those printed in Yiddish books in the education of children and in the process of standardisation and unification of domestic customs.
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Notes
- 1.
The image appears in Sefer Minhagim [Book of Customs], (Venice: Giovanni di Gara, 1600), 21b.
- 2.
Pinchas Katzenellenbogen, Sefer Yesh Manchilim, ed. Yitzchak Dov Feld, (Jerusalem: Machon Hatam Sofer, 1984). The translation of this text is mine. The author was about nine years old at the time.
- 3.
For a history of the printing of illustrated books, both in Hebrew and in Yiddish, see: Diane Wolfthal, Picturing Yiddish: Gender, Identity and Memory in the Illustrated Yiddish Books of Renaissance Italy, (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), 89–90.
- 4.
Chone Shmeruk, The Illustrations in Yiddish Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: The Texts, the Pictures and Their Audience, (Jerusalem: Akademon Press, 1986) [Hebrew].
- 5.
Chone Shmeruk, Yiddish Literature: Aspects of Its History, (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1978), 72–79 [Hebrew].
- 6.
On the reestablishment and expansion of Jewish communities, especially after 1648: Mordechai Breuer, “The Early Modern Period”, in German-Jewish History in Modern Times, vol I: Tradition and Enlightenment, edited by Mordechai Breuer and Michael Graetz, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 79–103; On the daily life of Jews in the Early Modern Period: Robert Liberles, “On the Threshold of Modernity”, in Jewish Daily Life in Germany, 1618–1945, edited by Marion Kaplan, (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005), 9–92.
- 7.
Shmeruk, The Illustrations.
- 8.
For a full list see: Chone Shmeruk, “HaIyurim Min Haminhagim BeYiddish Venezia 1593 BeHadpasot Khozrot”, Studies in Bibliography and Booklore, 12 (1984), appendix 1, 34–35, and 32, ft. 4. To the best of my knowledge, these images remained in inner-Jewish use and were not used in non-Jewish context even in modern times.
- 9.
Wolfthal, Picturing Yiddish, 94–101. The 1600 edition presents a more skilful work, and the style is Italian and not German. Yet, the illustrations are similar in many ways.
- 10.
Shmeruk, The Illustrations, 33.
- 11.
For a comprehensive study of ethnographic descriptions of Jews and Judaism in early modern Europe, see: Yaacov Deutsch, Judaism in Christian Eyes: Ethnographic Descriptions of Jews and Judaism in Early Modern Europe, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). More specific aspects of this literature were studies by Aya Elyada, A Goy Who Speaks Yiddish: Christians and the Jewish language in early modern Germany, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012); Eli Freiman, Jewish Culture in Ashkenaz in the Beginning of the New Era: A View from the Perspective of Jews and Christians, Popular Culture, and Rabbinic Culture, Unpublished dissertation, (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007) [Hebrew].
- 12.
Elyada, A Goy Who Speaks Yiddish, 4.
- 13.
Deutsch, Judaism in Christian Eyes, 2; Richard I. Cohen, “The Visual Image of the Jew and Judaism in Early Modern Europe: From Symbolism to Realism”, Zion, 57 no.3 (1992), 275–340 [Hebrew].
- 14.
Cohen, The Visual Image, 278. Cohen locates this new tendency in the early sixteenth century, with the publication of Pfefferkorn’s book about Jewish customs. The woodcuts from this book also appeared in some of the editions of Antonius Margaritha’s book. They became the norm in books about the Jews in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Idem, p. 295.
- 15.
Richard I. Cohen, Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe, (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1998), 67.
- 16.
See footnote six for studies on Early Modern German Jewry.
- 17.
“To most scholars, the term ‘Jewish art’ brings to mind ritual objects that were used in the home or synagogue. When illustrated books are discussed, they are usually the magnificently illuminated manuscripts commissioned by wealthy or learned men that were written in the holy language of Hebrew.” Wolfthal, Picturing Yiddish, xxv.
- 18.
On the Jewish family as a nuclear family: Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis, (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961), 135; for statistical studies on Jewish households: Gerald L. Soliday, “The Jews of Early Modern Marburg, 1640–1800: A Case Study in Family and Household Organization”, History of the Family 8 (2003), 503–506; Christopher R. Friedrichs, “Jewish Household Structure in an Early Modern Town: The Worms Ghetto Census of 1610”, History of the Family 8 (2003), 481–493; Liberles, On the Threshold, 52 [Hebrew].
- 19.
See, for example, the following edited volumes: Andrew Spicer and Sarah Hamilton, ed., Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2005); Jessica Martin and Alec Ryrie (ed.) Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain, (Oxon and New York: Routledge 2016).
- 20.
Diane Webb, “Domestic Space and Devotion in the Middle Ages”, in Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Andrew Spicer and Sarah Hamilton, (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2005), 27–47.
- 21.
Tali Berner, “Children in the Synagogue and in Communal Life in the Early Modern Era in Ashkenaz: the Contribution of Childhood Research to Establishing a New Perspective in the Study of Jewish Society”, Zion 78 no.2, (2013), 183–206. [Hebrew]; Tali Berner, “Children and Rituals in Early Modern Ashkenaz” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 7 no.1, (2014), 65–86; Simcha Goldin, “Jewish Children and Christian Missionizing.”, in Sexuality and Family in History, edited by Israel Bartal and Isaiah Gafni, (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar, 1998), 97–118. [Hebrew].
- 22.
Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, (New York: Vintage books 1962), 33–49; Matthew Knox Averett, ed., The Early Modern Child in Art and History, (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2015).
- 23.
Berner, Children and Rituals, 65–86.
- 24.
Paul Christian Kirchner, Jüdisches Ceremoniel, oder, Beschreibung dererjenigen Gebräuche, (Nurenburg: Peter Conrad Monath, 1724?).
- 25.
The three “female” commandments are lighting candles on the eve of the Sabbath, taking a piece from the dough and observing the laws of menstrual purity. Contemporary manuals and moral books stressed the importance of the strict observance of these commandments and their centrality in feminine piety. See: Yemima Chovav, Maidens Love Thee: The Religious and Spiritual Life of Jewish Ashkenazic Women in the Early Modern Period, (Jerusalem: Dinur Center, 2009); Edward Fram, My Dear Daughter: Rabbi Benjamin Slonik and the Education of Jewish Women in Sixteenth Century Poland, (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2007).
- 26.
BnF MS Heb 586. Regarding this manuscript: Wolfthal, Picturing Yiddish, 3–25.
- 27.
On the custom of looking at one’s fingernails under the light of the Havdalah candle: Freiman, Jewish Culture in Ashkenaz, 143–158.
- 28.
On birth rituals: Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and Children: Jewish Life in Medieval Europe, (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004), 55–118. On the Hollekreisch ritual, its history and roots, see Baumgarten, Mothers and Children, 93–99. For the early modern version, see Berner, Children and Rituals, 76–77.
- 29.
Nuernberg cod. 7058 fol. 43v–44r.
- 30.
Boys usually had two names: one in the vernacular, used on a daily basis, and one in Hebrew, used in ritual and sacred occasions, such as in the synagogue and in the marriage contract (the ketubah). The “secular” name often corresponded to the Hebrew name: either a translation of the Hebrew or based on an association with the Hebrew name. Girls usually had only one name, referred to as “secular”, although it could be in either Hebrew or the vernacular.
- 31.
Minhagim, (Venice, 1593).
- 32.
Much scholarly attention was given recently to the monumental work of Bernard Picart, which this image is part of: Lynn Hunt, Margaret C. Jacob and Wijnand Mijnhardt, The Book that Changed the World: Picard and Bernard’s Religious Ceremonies of the World, (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2010); Ilana Abramovitch, “Brenard Picart’s Ceremonies and customs of the Several Nations of the Known World (1723): Moving Pictures”, Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, division D vol. II, (1990), 93–99; Samantha Baskind, “Judging a Book by its Cover: Bernard Picart’s Jews and art history”, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies,15 no.1 (2016), 6–28. See also: Samantha Baskind, “Bernard Picart’s Etchings of Amsterdam’s Jews”, Jewish Social Studies, 13 no.2, (Winter 2007, New Series), 40–64.
- 33.
Ilana Abramovitch, “Brenard Picart’s Ceremonies and customs”, 94–97.
- 34.
Letter by Leona Levia: Yacov Boksenboim, Letters of Jews in Italy: Selected Letters from the Sixteenth Century, (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi, 1994), 208–209.
- 35.
It is interesting to observe that both illustrations include an animal—a cat and a dog.
- 36.
An intriguing feature in Picart’s illustration is the non-Jew, maybe Picart himself, observing the scene from the side.
- 37.
Ariès, Centuries of Childhood, 360–361.
- 38.
Tali Berner, In Their Own Way: Children and Childhood in Early Modern Ashkenaz, (Jerusalem: Shazar, 2018)
- 39.
Another toy that appears in Bruegel’s picture is a rattle. An image showing the reading of the Book of Esther in the synagogue depicts children with rattles, which were used in that case almost as a religious objects.
- 40.
Freiman argues that Hebraist books are important sources for learning about the lay approach and performance of rituals. Freiman, Jewish Culture in Ashkenaz, 22–24.
- 41.
For the Catholic context: Silvia Evangelisti, “Learning from Home: Discourses on Education and Domestic Visual Culture in Early Modern Italy”, History 98 (2013), pp. 663–679. In the Protestant world: Jeroen J.H. Dekker, The Restrained Child: Imaging the Regulation of Children’s Behaviour and Emotions in Early Modern Europe, The Dutch Golden Age, History of Education and Children’s Literature, XIII, no.1 (2018), 17–39.
- 42.
Evangelisti, “Learning from Home”, 678.
- 43.
Evangelisti, “Learning from Home”, 663–679.
- 44.
Evangelisti, “lLearning from Home”, p. 671.
- 45.
Jeanne Nuechterlein, “The Domesticity of Sacred Spaces in the Fifteenth-century Netherlands”, in Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Andrew Spicer and Sarah Hamilton, (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2005), 50–79.
- 46.
Shmeruk, The Illustrations, 39.
- 47.
Shmeruk, The Illustrations.
- 48.
וויא דער בעל בית הבדלה מכט אזו גר ערנשטליך/
אונ’ גיווינט או ציכט צו מצות אונ’ מעשים טובים דייני קינדליך Minhagim, (Venice: Giovanni di Gara, 1593), 3b.
- 49.
דען האט גישלאגן דער טרופף/דש ער הוט קיין קאפף Minhagim, 64b.
- 50.
Shmeruk, The illustrations, 34–60.
- 51.
די גימעל פון דען קינדרן וועגין זיין ווארין דר טרכט/ דז מן זיא וועכדיג מכט/ דש זי ניט זולן שלופן אין דער סדר נכט Shmeruk, Studies, 50–51.
- 52.
Shmeruk, Studies, 35.
- 53.
Wolfthal, Picturing Yiddish, 63–84.
- 54.
Chava Turniansky, “‘Mikra Meforash’ LeEliezer Zusman Rodelson: Sefer Yotze Dofen Lelimud Hachumash BeYiddish”, Hamikra Bere’i Mefarshaves: Sefer Zicharon LeSarah Kamin, edited by Sara Yeffet, (Jerusalem: Magnes 1994), 497–517; Shalhevet Dotan-Ofir, History, Books, and Society: Yiddish Didactic Books Printed in Early Modern Amsterdam, Unpublished dissertation (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2010) [Hebrew].
- 55.
Wolfthal, Picturing Yiddish, p. 208.
- 56.
Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).
Bibliography
Manuscripts
BnF MS Heb 586.
Nuernberg cod. 7058 fol. 43v-44r.
Primary Sources
Katzenellenbogen, Pinchas, Sefer Yesh Manchilim, ed. Yitzchak Dov Feld, (Jerusalem: Machon Hatam Sofer, 1984).
Kirchner, Paul Christian, Jüdisches Ceremoniel, oder, Beschreibung dererjenigen Gebräuche, (Nurenburg: Peter Conrad Monath, 1724?).
Sefer Minhagim, (Venice, 1593).
Sefer Minhagim, (Venice: Giovanni di Gara, 1600).
Secondary Sources
Abramovitch, Ilana, “Brenard Picart’s Ceremonies and customs of the Several Nations of the Known World (1723): Moving Pictures”, Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, division D vol. II, (1990), 93–99.
Ariès, Philippe, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, (New York: Vintage books 1962).
Averett, Matthew Knox (ed.), The Early Modern Child in Art and History, (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2015).
Baskind, Samantha, “Bernard Picart’s Etchings of Amsterdam’s Jews”, Jewish Social Studies, 13 no.2, (Winter 2007, New Series), 40–64.
Baskind, Samantha, “Judging a Book by its Cover: Bernard Picart’s Jews and Art History”, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies,15 no.1 (2016), 6–28.
Baumgarten, Elisheva, Mothers and Children: Jewish Life in Medieval Europe, (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004).
Berner, Tali, “Children and Rituals in Early Modern Ashkenaz” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 7 no.1, (2014), 65–86.
Berner, Tali, “Children in the Synagogue and in Communal Life in the Early Modern Era in Ashkenaz: the Contribution of Childhood Research to Establishing a New Perspective in the Study of Jewish Society”, Zion 78 no.2, (2013), 183–206. [Hebrew].
Berner, Tali, In Their Own Way: Children and Childhood in Early Modern Ashkenaz, (Jerusalem: Shazar, 2018)
Boksenboim, Yacov, Letters of Jews in Italy: Selected Letters from the Sixteenth Century, (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi, 1994).
Breuer, Mordechai, “The Early Modern Period”, in German-Jewish History in Modern Times, vol I: Tradition and Enlightenment, edited by Mordechai Breuer and Michael Graetz, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
Chovav, Yemima, Maidens Love Thee: The Religious and Spiritual Life of Jewish Ashkenazic Women in the Early Modern Period, (Jerusalem: Dinur Center, 2009).Fram, Edward, My Dear Daughter: Rabbi Benjamin Slonik and the Education of Jewish Women in Sixteenth Century Poland, (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2007).
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Cohen, Richard I., Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe, (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1998), 67.
Dekker, Jeroen J.H., “The Restrained Child: Imaging the Regulation of Children’s Behaviour and Emotions in Early Modern Europe, The Dutch Golden Age”, History of Education and Children’s Literature, XIII, no.1 (2018), 17–39.
Deutsch, Yaacov, Judaism in Christian Eyes: Ethnographic Descriptions of Jews and Judaism in Early Modern Europe, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Dotan-Ofir, Shalhevet, History, Books, and Society: Yiddish Didactic Books Printed in Early Modern Amsterdam, Unpublished dissertation (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2010) [Hebrew].
Elyada, Aya, A Goy Who Speaks Yiddish: Christians and the Jewish language in early modern Germany, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012).
Evangelisti, Silvia, “Learning from Home: Discourses on Education and Domestic Visual Culture in Early Modern Italy”, History 98 (2013), pp. 663–679.
Freiman, Eli, Jewish Culture in Ashkenaz in the Beginning of the New Era: A View from the Perspective of Jews and Christians, Popular Culture, and Rabbinic Culture, Unpublished dissertation, (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007) [Hebrew].
Goldin, Simcha, “Jewish Children and Christian Missionizing.”, in Sexuality and Family in History, edited by Israel Bartal and Isaiah Gafni, (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar, 1998), 97–118. [Hebrew].
Hunt, Lynn Margaret C. Jacob and Wijnand Mijnhardt, The Book that Changed the World: Picard and Bernard’s Religious Ceremonies of the World, (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2010).
Katz, Jacob, Tradition and Crisis, (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961).Soliday, Gerald L., “The Jews of Early Modern Marburg, 1640-1800: A Case Study in Family and Household Organization”, History of the Family 8 (2003), 503–506.Friedrichs, Christopher R., “Jewish Household Structure in an Early Modern Town: The Worms Ghetto Census of 1610”, History of the Family 8 (2003), 481–493.
Liberles, Robert, “On the Threshold of Modernity”, in Jewish Daily Life in Germany, 1618–1945, edited by Marion Kaplan, (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005).
Martin, Jessica and Alec Ryrie (ed.), Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain, (Oxon and New York: Routledge 2016).
Nuechterlein, Jeanne, “The Domesticity of Sacred Spaces in the Fifteenth-century Netherlands”, in Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Andrew Spicer and Sarah Hamilton, (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2005), 50–79.
Roper, Lyndal, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).
Shmeruk, Chone, “HaIyurim Min Haminhagim BeYiddish Venezia 1593 BeHadpasot Khozrot”, Studies in Bibliography and Booklore, 12 (1984).
Shmeruk, Chone, Yiddish Literature: Aspects of Its History, (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1978).
Shmeruk, Chone, The Illustrations in Yiddish Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: The Texts, the Pictures and Their Audience, (Jerusalem: Akademon Press, 1986) [Hebrew].
Spicer, Andrew and Sarah Hamilton, ed., Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2005).
Turniansky, Chava, “’Mikra Meforash’ LeEliezer Zusman Rodelson: Sefer Yotze Dofen Lelimud Hachumash BeYiddish”, Hamikra Bere’i Mefarshaves: Sefer Zicharon LeSarah Kamin, edited by Sara Yeffet, (Jerusalem: Magnes 1994), 497–517.
Webb, Diane, “Domestic Space and Devotion in the Middle Ages”, in Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Andrew Spicer and Sarah Hamilton, (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2005), 27–47.
Wolfthal, Diane, Picturing Yiddish: Gender, Identity and Memory in the Illustrated Yiddish Books of Renaissance Italy, (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004).
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Berner, T. (2019). Jewish Children and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Illustrations. In: Berner, T., Underwood, L. (eds) Childhood, Youth and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe. Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29199-0_2
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