Abstract In recent years, the topic of ›rural Jewry‹ has become a separate subject of research on Jewish history. However, despite numerous relevant regional studies, there are still no uniform methodological and conceptual guidelines for this understudied area. There is disagreement as to whether rural Jews were a transitional phenomenon since the great expulsions of Jews in the late Middle Ages, or whether they were a population group that existed throughout the ages with their own way of life and culture. It is doubtful that there was such a thing as a ›typical rural Jew,‹ however this may be defined. Rather, it can be assumed that there were always great social and other differences within the rural Jewish community, and that a visible process of change took place over the centuries in the early modern period. What has been established in general research on rural Jews can also be demonstrated using the example of Hesse, especially the landgraviates and the dominions of the knights of the empire. In order to substantiate the findings of research on rural Jewry to date, four case studies from Hesse are presented, all of which relate to the influence of the authorities on the cultural system of rural Jews. The topics covered include the normative influence of the Hessian landgraves on the situation of rural Jews, the relationship between village Jews and their Christian neighbours, using the example of a conflict over common land, the internal social structure, using the example of a ›small‹ court Jew from Michelstadt, and the readjustment of the village charity system of the Jews in Reichelsheim under pressure from the state administration.
Abstract The theological foundations for the ecclesiastical images of the High Middle Ages depicting Jews in hell were laid as early as late antiquity by the Church Fathers, who drew on biblical passages. In the early Middle Ages, however, neither hell nor the Last Judgement was a subject of ecclesiastical art. This changed from the late 11th century onwards, and particularly with the emergence of the great Last Judgement portals in the 12th and 13th centuries. In France, almost every new cathedral now featured a large Last Judgement scene on one of its portals. Some of these also included statues of Ecclesia and Synagoga, but none featured figures of Jews. The situation was quite different in Germany, where the Last Judgement images produced from the 1220s onwards, whilst not as extensive as in France, usually depicted one or two Jews amongst the damned. The reason for this lies, on the one hand, in the Church’s anti-Jewish stance, which had been evident since the 12th century but was increasingly publicised following the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, and, on the other hand, in the differing policies towards Jews in Germany and France. Whilst the French kings had been pursuing a strongly anti-Jewish policy since the reign of Philip Augustus, Jews in Germany were granted privileges by the king and the princes right up until the 14th century. In response, the Church sought to portray Jews as sinful, enemies of God and therefore a threat to the salvation of the faithful. Geographically speaking, there is a broad correlation between the regions where images of Jews in hell and ›Jews’sow‹ images were prevalent. Detailed studies included in this essay examine the role of Jews in the Last Judgement scenes at Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne and Bamberg, as well as the statues of the Synagogue at the churches of Notre-Dame in Paris and Saint-Seurin in Bordeaux.
Abstract The evolving political status of the Jews of Moravia offers a fascinating case that helps see the changing role of law in the machinery of political change in the Habsburg Monarchy in the 17 th and 18 th centuries. This paper traces the peculiar history of Moraviaʼs Jewish communities from local communities, to supracommunal organization (vaʼad ha-medina), to the intent of absorption into the state. After tracing the legal foundations of communities in general and their function in early modern state-formation I will explore, how the Moravian Jewish communities contributed to this process. The underlying hypothesis being that corporate Jewish communities in Moravia competed with other societal groups (nobility and royal towns) in the complex process of state-formation in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Habsburg Monarchy. In the core of the paper, I will compare two corpora of law – the Shai Takkanot , the »autonomous« constitution of Moravian Jewry since 1650, and Maria Theresaʼs General-, Policey-, Process- und Commercialordnung for the Jewry in the Margravate of Moravia from 1754 – and try to place them on the continuum between communal self-government and state-imposed law making.
The first printed medical texts in Yiddish were only available from the first half of the 17(th) century onwards. They are addressed to those Jews who were - for a lack of financial means - unable to consult a physician or barber-surgeon, or for various reasons were not used to do so, as they lived, in rural areas where there was no doctor, at least not an academically trained physician. A striking example of this genre is medical handbook written in Yiddish and published in Prague in 1655. Be'er Mayim hayim (Well-Spring of Living Waters) was compiled by Issachar B & auml;r Teller on the bases of various written sources and his own experience as barber-surgeon.
The evolving political status of the Jews of Moravia offers a fascinating case that helps see the changing role of law in the machinery of political change in the Habsburg Monarchy in the 17(th) and 18(th) centuries. This paper traces the peculiar history of Moravia's Jewish communities from local communities, to supracommunal organization (va'ad ha-medina), to the intent of absorption into the state. After tracing the legal foundations of communities in general and their function in early modern state-formation I will explore, how the Moravian Jewish communities contributed to this process. The underlying hypothesis being that corporate Jewish communities in Moravia competed with other societal groups (nobility and royal towns) in the complex process of state-formation in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Habsburg Monarchy. In the core of the paper, I will compare two corpora of law - the Shai Takkanot, the "autonomous" constitution of Moravian Jewry since 1650, and Maria Theresa's General-, Policey-, Process- und Commercialordnung for the Jewry in the Margravate of Moravia from 1754 - and try to place them on the continuum between communal self-government and state-imposed law making.
