Jewish Children and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Illustrations

A Robe of Many Colors: Children and their Clothing in Early Modern Ashkenaz

Images ◽

10.1163/18718000-12340113 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 20-32

Author(s):

Tali Berner

Keyword(s):

Social Norms ◽

Early Modern ◽

Children And Adolescents ◽

Central Europe ◽

Textile Industry ◽

Visual Representations ◽

Early Modern Period ◽

Modern Period ◽

Children’S Agency ◽

Jewish Children

Abstract This article discusses the clothing of Jewish children and adolescents in Western and Central Europe in the early modern period. Looking at egodocuments, sumptuary laws, visual representations, moral books, halakhic literature and apprenticeship contracts, it gives a first overview of children’s dress and involvement in the textile industry. The article explore the forces that shaped children’s garments—parental desires, legal and halakhic constraints and social norms. It pays special attention to the places where children and adolescents desires were manifested, and the ways children’s agency is professed, through choosing their own garments and contributing to the textile industry and changing of fashions.

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In mehrdeutigen und unsicheren Fällen

Aschkenas ◽

10.1515/asch-2020-0017 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 30 (2) ◽

pp. 349-371

Author(s):

Kay Peter Jankrift

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Medical Advice ◽

Medical Practitioners ◽

Jewish Physician ◽

Legal Restrictions ◽

Jewish Children ◽

Anti Jewish ◽

Bear Witness ◽

Difficult Cases

AbstractThe important role of Jewish medical practitioners in medieval and early modern Aschkenas has been underlined time and again. Regardless of legal restrictions and anti-Jewish polemics Jewish physicians were highly appreciated by Christian patients. However, although sources are rather scare, there were also Jewish patients who consulted Christian doctors. Practice records of the Nuremberg physician Johann Christoph Götz (1688–1733) and letters of his contemporary Christoph Jacob Trew (1695–1769) indicate that Jewish children, women and men from nearby Fürth asked for medical advice or treatment. The documents bear witness to a vivid exchange of ideas between Trew and the Jewish physician Wolf Enoch Levin from Fürth in the age of Enligthment. In ambiguous and difficult cases, Wolf often addressed himself to Trew as intermediary for his sick coreligionists.

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