The Destruction of the Temple

This chapter looks at a Yiddish booklet for the Ninth of Av. This is a hitherto unresearched Yiddish collection of aggadot on the destruction of the Temple in a booklet of twelve pages with no title page, no title, and no mention of the author, the year, or the place of publication. The significance of this booklet lies in two main factors. First, it includes the fullest collection of sequences of talmudic narrative in Yiddish that is known of up to its time. Second, it coincides entirely—except for a few small differences in vocabulary and style—with the distinct cluster of stories entitled Khurbn or Khurbn beys hamikdesh that appears in the Tsene-rene after the discussion of the book of Lamentations. If this collection is an original component of the Tsene-rene, and perhaps even if not, there is much to be learned from it about the manner in which this foundational text of Yiddish literature was consolidated.