FAQ
Logotyp Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego

Privacy, Literacy, and Gender in Early Modern Jewish Letters from Prague (1619)

Data publikacji: 14.12.2023

Studia Judaica, 2023, Nr 2 (52), s. 401 - 433

https://doi.org/10.4467/24500100STJ.23.017.18943

Autorzy

Maria Diemling
Canterbury Christ Church University, Wielka Brytania
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4717-4748 Orcid
Wszystkie publikacje autora →

Tytuły

Privacy, Literacy, and Gender in Early Modern Jewish Letters from Prague (1619)

Abstrakt

How private were Jewish letters in the early modern period? This article discusses Jewish epistolary culture and notions of privacy by examining an extraordinary cache of Jewish letters that were mostly written on a single day— 22 November 1619—in a single city, Prague, and sent to a single destination, Vienna. The letters never arrived and ended up in the archives where they were preserved for posterity. These letters allow us a glimpse into the lives of ordinary Jews in politically tumultuous times in which privacy and confidentiality could never be taken for granted. This article pays particular attention to gendered communication and privacy. It has been argued that in epistolary culture women are afforded a voice and speak for themselves. The evidence suggests that collaborative forms of writing that involved more than one writer were still common in early seventeenth-century Jewish correspondence, indicating zones of “privileged confidentiality” within larger family networks.

Bibliografia

1. Archival sources

Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Epistolae judaeorum Pragensium: AT-OeStA/HHStA HS W 1002, https://www.archivinformationssystem.at/detail.aspx?ID=15035.

2. Published sources

Buxtorf, Johannes, Institutio Epistolaris Hebraica (Basel, 1629).

Iggerot Shelomim (Augsburg, 1534).

Landau, Alfred; Wachstein, Bernhard, Jüdische Privatbriefe aus dem Jahre 1619: Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutsch-Österreich, hrsg. von der Historischen Kommission der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde in Wien, vol. 3 (Vienna–Leipzig, 1911).

3. Secondary sources

Adelman, Howard, “The Literacy of Jewish Women in Early Modern Italy,”in Barbara Whitehead (ed.), Womens Education in Early Modern Europe: A History, 15001800 (New York, 1999).

Arnheim, Arthur; Turniansky, Chava (eds.), Yiddish Letters: From the Seventeenth-Century World of Glikl Hamel (Jerusalem, 2020).

Bamberger, Kenneth A.; Mayse, Ariel Evan, “Pre-Modern Insights for Post-Modern Privacy: Jewish Law Lessons for the Big Data Age,” Journal of Law and Religion 36 (2021), no. 3.

Baumgarten, Jean, “Listening, Reading and Understanding: How Jewish Women Read the Yiddish Ethical Literature (Seventeenth to Eighteenth Century),”Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 16 (2007), no. 2.

Behringer, Wolfgang, “Core and Periphery: The Holy Roman Empire as a Communication(s) Universe,”in R. J. W. Evans, Michael Schaich, Peter H. Wilson (eds.), The Holy Roman Empire 14951806 (Oxford, 2011).

Bohnenkamp, Anne; Wiethölter, Waltraud (eds.), Der Brief Ereignis & Objekt (Frankfurt am Main, 2008).

Botticini, Maristella; Eckstein, Zvi, The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 701492 (Princeton, 2014).

Buchberger, Reinhard, “Zwischen Kreuz und Halbmond: Jüdische Spione im Zeitalter der Türkenkriege,”in Sabine Hödl (ed.), Nicht in einem Bett Juden und Christen im Mittelalter und Frühneuzeit (St. Pölten, 2005).

Buňatová, Marie, Die Prager Juden in der Zeit vor der Schlacht am Weiβen Berg: Handel und Wirtschaftsgebaren der Prager Juden im Spiegel des Liber albus Judeorum 15771601 (PhD dissertation, University of Vienna, 2009).

Carlebach, Elisheva, “Bella Perlhefter,”in The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women (23 June 2021), Jewish Women’s Archive, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/perlhefter-bella [retrieved: 1 Mar. 2023].

Carlebach, Elisheva, “Letter into Text: Epistolarity, History, and Literature,” in Eliyana R. Adler, Sheila E. Jelen (eds.), Jewish Literature and History: An Interdisciplinary Conversation (Bethesda, 2008).

Crabb, Ann; Couchman, Jane, “Form and Persuasion in Women’s Letters, 1400–1700,”in Ann Crabb, Jane Couchman (eds.), Womens Letters across Europe, 14001700: Form and Persuasion (London, 2005).

Dan, Joseph, “Letters and Letter Writers,”encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/lettersand-letter-writers [retrieved: 22 Feb. 2023].

David, Abraham (ed.), A Hebrew Chronicle from Prague, c. 1615, trans. Leon J. Weinberger, Dena Ordan (Tuscaloosa–London, 1993).

Davis, Joseph M., “Concepts of Family and Friendship in the 1619 Yiddish Letters of Prague Jews,” Judaica Bohemia 49 (2014), no. 1.

Daybell, James, “‘I wold wyshe my doings might be…secret’: Privacy and Social Practices of Reading Women’s Letters in Sixteenth-Century England,”in Ann Crabb, Jane Couchman (eds.), Womens Letters across Europe, 14001700: Form and Persuasion (London, 2005).

Daybell, James, The Material Letter in Early Modern England: Manuscript Letters and the Culture and Practices of Letter-Writing, 15121635 (Basingstoke, 2012).

Del Lungo Camiciotti, Gabriella, “The Construction of Epistolary Identity in a Gentry’s Communication Network of the Seventeenth Century: The Case of Jane Lady Cornwallis Bacon,” Journal of Early Modern Studies 3 (2014).

Del Lungo Camiciotti, Gabriella, “Letters and Letter Writing in Early Modern Culture: An Introduction,” Journal of Early Modern Studies 3 (2014).

Frakes, Jerold C., Early Yiddish Texts 11001750 (Oxford, 2004).

Furger, Carmen, Briefsteller: Das Medium Briefim 17. und frühen 18. Jahrhundert (Cologne, 2010).

Ginsburg, Dovid, “Private yiddishe briv funem yor 1588,” Yivo Bletter 13 (1938).

Goldstein, Lisa L., “Jewish Communal Life in the Duchy of Mecklenburg as Reflected in Correspondence, 1760–1769”(rabbinic thesis, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, New York, 1993).

Green, Michaël, “Public and Private in Jewish Egodocuments of Amsterdam (ca. 1680–1830),”in Michaël Green, Lars Cyril Nørgaard, Mette Birkedal Bruun (eds.), Early Modern Privacy: Sources and Approaches (Leiden, 2021).

Grossman, Avraham, “The Historical Background to the Ordinances on Family Affairs Attributed to Rabbenu Gershom Me’or ha-Golah (‘The Light of the Exile’),”in Ada Rapaport-Albert, Steven J. Zipperstein (eds.), Jewish History: Essays in Honour of Chimen Abramsky (London, 1988).

Halpern, Israel, “A Dispute over the Election of the Community Council at Frankfurt a. M. and Its Repercussions in Poland and Bohemia,” Zion 21 (1956) [Hebrew].

Henriksen, Erin; Zelcer, Marc, “‘Much could be written’: Glikl of Hameln’s Life in Writing,”in Ann Crabb, Jane Couchman (eds.), Womens Letters across Europe, 14001700: Form and Persuasion (London, 2005).

Hödl, Sabine, “Die Briefe von Prager an Wiener Juden (1619) als familienhistorische Quelle,”in Sabine Hödl, Martha Keil (eds.), Die jüdische Familie in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Berlin–Bodenheim bei Mainz, 1999).

Hubatschke, Harald, “Die amtliche Organisation der geheimen Briefüberwachung und des diplomatischen Chiffrendienstes in Österreich,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 83 (1975), no. 3–4.

Kahn, David, The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet (New York, 1996).

Keil, Martha, “‘Maistrin’(Mastress) and Business-Woman: Jewish Upper Class Women in Late Medieval Austria,”in András Kovács, Eszter Andor (eds.), Jewish Studies at the Central European University: Public Lectures 19961999 (Budapest, 2000).

Kieval, Hillel J., “Jewish Prague, Christian Prague, and the Castle in the City’s ‘Golden Age’,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 18 (2011), no. 2.

Klayman-Cohen, Israela, Die hebräischen Komponente im Westjiddischen am Beispiel der Memoiren der Glückel von Hameln (Hamburg, 1994).

Kobler, Franz, Juden und Judentum in deutschen Briefen aus drei Jahrhunderten (Vienna, 1935).

Kotlerman, Ber Boris, “‘Since I have learned of these evil tidings, I have been heartsick and I am unable to sleep’: The Old Yiddish and Hebrew Letters from 1476 in the Shadow of Blood Libels in Northern Italy and Germany,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 102 (2012), no. 1.

Kraemer, Joel L., “Women Speak for Themselves,”in Stefan C. Reif (ed.) with the assistance of Shulamit Reif, The Cambridge Genizah Collection: Their Contents and Significance (Cambridge, 2002).

Maitlis, Jakob, “London Yiddish Letters of the Early Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Jewish Studies 6 (1955).

Matthews-Schlinzig, Marie Isabel, et al. (eds.), Handbuch Brief: Von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart, vol. 1 and 2 (Berlin, 2020).

Salah, Asher, “Correspondence and Letters,”in Dean Phillip Bell (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Jewish History and Historiography (London, 2018).

Schiegg, Markus, “Briefsteller,”in Marie Isabel Matthews-Schlinzig et al. (eds.), Handbuch Brief: Von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart, vol. 1 (Ber lin, 2020).

Schneide r, Gary, The Culture of Epistolarity: Vernacular Letters and Letter Writing in Early Modern England, 15001700 (Newark, 2005).

Schreiber, Arye, “Privacy in Jewish Law: A Historical and Conceptual Analysis,” Jewish Law Annual 20 (2013).

Spufford, Margaret, “First Steps in Literacy: The Reading and Writing Experiences of the Humblest Seventeenth-Century Spiritual Autobiographers,”in Harvey J. Graff (ed.), Literacy and Social Development in the West: A Reader (Cambridge, 1981).

Standhartinger, Angela, “Briefzensur und Briefgeheimnis in der Neuzeit,”in Marie Isabel Matthews-Schlinzig et al. (eds.), Handbuch Brief: Von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart, vol. 1 (Berlin, 2020).

Steinhausen, Georg, Geschichte des deutschen Briefes: Zur Kulturgeschichte des deutschen Volkes, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1889).

Strobel, Jochen, “Der Brief als Gabe,”in Marie Isabel Matthews-Schlinzig et al. (eds.), Handbuch Brief: Von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart, vol. 1 (Berlin, 2020).

Sunshine, Andrew Lloyd, Opening the Mail: Interpersonal Aspects of Discourse and Grammar in Middle Yiddish Letters (PhD thesis, Columbia University, 1991).

Thomas, Keith, “The Meaning of Literacy in Early Modern England,”in Gerd Baumann (ed.), The Written Word: Literacy in Transition (Oxford, 1986).

Tillian, Lisa-Maria, Tu jo nit anderst un´schreib oft briw: Jüdische Privatbriefe aus dem Jahr 1619: Quellen zur Alltagsgeschichte der Wiener Juden in der Frühen Neuzeit (Mag. Phil. dissertation, University of Vienna, 2009).

Timm, Erika, “Zwei neuaufgefundene jiddische Briefe von 1602 und ihre Bedeutung für die Sozial- und Sprachgeschichte,” Aschkenas 4 (1994), no. 2.

Trull, Mary E., Performing Privacy and Gender in Early Modern Literature (London, 2013).

Turniansky, Chava, “A Correspondence in Yiddish from Jerusalem: Dating from the 1560s,” Shalem 4 (1984) [Hebrew].

Turniansky, Chava (ed.), Glikl: Memoirs 16911719, trans. Sara Friedman (Waltham, 2019).

Turniansky, Chava, “Old Yiddish Language and Literature,”in The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women (31 Dec. 1999), Jewish Women’s Archive, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/old-yiddish-language-and-literature [retrieved: 28 Feb. 2023].

Turniansky, Chava, “Yiddish and the Transmission of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe,” Jewish  tudies Quarterly 15 (2008), no. 1.

Turniansky, Chava, “Young Women in Early Modern Yiddish Literature,” Massekhet 12 (2016) [Hebrew].

Weinryb, Bernard D., “A pekl briv in Yiddish fun yor 1588, Kroke–Prag,” Historische shriften fun Yivo 2 (1937) [Yiddish].

Weinryb, Bernard D., “Historisches und Kulturhistorisches aus Wagenseils hebräischen Briefwechsel,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums, N.S. 47 (1939).

Yaari, Avraham, “Shnei kuntresim me-Eretz Israel,” Kiryat Sefer 23 (1947), no. 2 [Hebrew].

Informacje

Informacje: Studia Judaica, 2023, Nr 2 (52), s. 401 - 433

Typ artykułu: Oryginalny artykuł naukowy

Tytuły:

Polski:

Privacy, Literacy, and Gender in Early Modern Jewish Letters from Prague (1619)

Angielski:

Privacy, Literacy, and Gender in Early Modern Jewish Letters from Prague (1619)

Autorzy

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4717-4748

Maria Diemling
Canterbury Christ Church University, Wielka Brytania
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4717-4748 Orcid
Wszystkie publikacje autora →

Canterbury Christ Church University, Wielka Brytania

Publikacja: 14.12.2023

Status artykułu: Otwarte __T_UNLOCK

Licencja: CC BY  ikona licencji

Udział procentowy autorów:

Maria Diemling (Autor) - 100%

Korekty artykułu:

-

Języki publikacji:

Angielski