Blasphemy, Curses, and Insults
Blasphemy, Curses, and Insults
Yiddish and the Jews' “Hidden Transcript”
Christians viewed Yiddish as the private and secret language of the Jews, which explains their desire to learn it and Yiddish literature for anti-Jewish propaganda and missionary purposes. From a sociological standpoint, privacy and secrecy both imply boundaries and an act of denying access to others. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, many authors in early modern Europe produced numerous works on Jews and Judaism that promised to reveal the secret and subversive aspects of Judaism to their readers. Popular Yiddish texts, including those originally written in the Yiddish language, contained anti-Christian expressions. Other authors, particularly theologians and Hebraists, denounced the Yiddish biblical translations and prayer books for alleged blasphemy and anti-Christian polemics. In addition to exploring Yiddish literature, Christian authors also tried to penetrate the Yiddish oral culture. Jewish anti-Christian propaganda may be divided into two categories. The first consists of curses, insults, and other forms of verbal aggression; and the second category encompasses what Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich calls lehavdl loshn, or differentiation language.
Keywords: Yiddish language, Yiddish literature, Christians, Jews, privacy, secrecy, blasphemy, insults, curses, anti-Christian polemics
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