Addressing the Jewish Question with Humor:Poverty and Unproductivity in the Dutch Purim Productions (ca. 1800)

This essay investigates the appearance in the Dutch Purim productions of such contemporary political issues as the poverty and the unproductivity of the Ashkenazi Jews. At the end of the eighteenth century, pejorative images of the Jew and maskilic reform, as well as enlightened ideals, interacted within these writings. As a result, the focus of the Purim productions shifted from absurd humor to the hardships of Jewish life. This essay analyzes how maskilim employed the Ashkenazi Purim productions to cope with and address the "Jewish Question." As such, it demonstrates that humor became an ide... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Radecker, Tsila
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
Reihe/Periodikum: Radecker , T 2016 , ' Addressing the Jewish Question with Humor : Poverty and Unproductivity in the Dutch Purim Productions (ca. 1800) ' , Jewish history , vol. 30 , no. 3-4 , pp. 233-256 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10835-017-9265-1
Schlagwörter: Amsterdam / Ashkenazi community / Purim productions / Maskilim / Humor
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-29027452
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
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Link(s) : https://hdl.handle.net/11370/3388463e-ff8f-41c1-92b7-f5051900c4b3

This essay investigates the appearance in the Dutch Purim productions of such contemporary political issues as the poverty and the unproductivity of the Ashkenazi Jews. At the end of the eighteenth century, pejorative images of the Jew and maskilic reform, as well as enlightened ideals, interacted within these writings. As a result, the focus of the Purim productions shifted from absurd humor to the hardships of Jewish life. This essay analyzes how maskilim employed the Ashkenazi Purim productions to cope with and address the "Jewish Question." As such, it demonstrates that humor became an ideological motor for Jewish cultural change.