Between Judengasse and the city: Jews, urban space and local tradition in early modern Worms

This article examines the role of locale in the transmission of historical narrative between medieval and early modern Ashkenaz. It compares two accounts of the 1196 murder of Dolce, the wife of Ehazar b. Yehuda of Worms: one in Hebrew from the pen of the bereaved rabbi himself; the other, less well...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Jewish studies
Main Author: Raspe, Lucia 1965- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: [2016]
In: Journal of Jewish studies
Year: 2016, Volume: 67, Issue: 2, Pages: 225-248
Further subjects:B Jews
B Ashkenazim
B Jewish ghettos
B Public spaces
B Streets
B Germany
B YIDDISH manuscripts
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Summary:This article examines the role of locale in the transmission of historical narrative between medieval and early modern Ashkenaz. It compares two accounts of the 1196 murder of Dolce, the wife of Ehazar b. Yehuda of Worms: one in Hebrew from the pen of the bereaved rabbi himself; the other, less well-known, based on oral tradition and included in the Yiddish Mayse tiissim (Amsterdam 1696). The article demonstrates that the manuscript transmission of the medieval narrative is owed to the fact that the Jews of early modern Worms considered it part of their own communal history. It also shows how early modern narrators localized the event in the physical space of the seventeenth-century Judengasse. Finally, it examines the way space markers are deployed in each of the two versions for what they can tell us about changing perceptions of the Jews' place within urban society.
ISSN:2056-6689
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of Jewish studies
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.18647/3277/JJS-2016