Rebekka Voß - Disputed Messiahs: Jewish and Christian Messianism in the Ashkenazic World during the Reformation

Rebekka Vo

Translated by John Crutchfield

Wayne State University Press

Detroit

2021 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. Originally published in German as Umstrittene Erlser. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

ISBN 978-0-8143-4861-1 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-8143-4164-3 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-8143-4165-0 (e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021938616

On cover: The Jews Entrance with Their Messiah, undated colored reproduction from Dietrich Schwab, Jdischer Deckmantel (Mainz, 1619). Historical Museum, Frankfurt am Main, C 10154. Cover design by Michel Vrana.

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To my parents and grandparents

The idea for this book originated a long time ago, during an academic residency when I was a graduate student at Columbia University in the Fulbright Foreign Student Program. It was in the context of a two-semester lecture course taught by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, of blessed memory, entitled Messianic Movements and Ideas in Jewish History, that I began to explore this fascinating topic. As we examined the sixteenth century and the messianic revival following the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula (149297), we learned about Isaac Abravanel and Abraham ha-Levi, about David Reuveni and Solomon Molkho; but within this illustrious circle of messianic protagonists and their followers, German Jews were hardly represented at all. I decided to investigate this surprising gap.

The study of Ashkenazic messianism during the Reformation became my dissertation project and eventually resulted in the publication of a book in German with the publisher Vandenhoek & Ruprecht in the series Jdische Religion, Geschichte und Kultur in 2011. I am excited that a revised and updated English edition now makes my research available to a broader audience. In the ten years that have elapsed since the first edition, scholarship on Jewish messianism in the Ashkenazic world during the sixteenth century has remained as scarce as it was at the inception of my project. Besides the updated bibliography, this English translation in particular features a revised introduction that sharpens my original argument of how to rethink messianic expectation among Ashkenazic Jews in Central Europe, northern Italy, and Poland-Lithuania.

Unfortunately, Yerushalmi was unable to witness the books original publication; nevertheless, the first thanks go to himfor leading me to this theme, for the careful exploratory conversations we had, and above all for his confidence in my scholarly aptitude. In the end, I did not do my doctoral work at Columbia but rather at Heinrich Heine University in Dsseldorf (Germany) under the supervision of Stefan Rohrbacher. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to him as well as to Marion Aptroot, who took on the role of second reader, for their invaluable support. I am especially indebted to Elisheva Carlebach, now at Columbia University, who from the very beginning supported me with her expertise. Her groundbreaking study, Die messianische Haltung der deutschen Juden (2001), closes with the expectation that a fresh consideration of these source materials will produce a new profile of the Ashkenazic messianic attitude. I have endeavored to begin where she left off; and I thank her for this indispensable foundation and for her critical acumen. The English edition would not have come to fruition without the encouragement of Matt Goldish, who suggested I turn to Wayne State University Press. I wish to thank the anonymous readers for the press for their insightful comments that have further strengthened my manuscript.

For stimulating discussions on various aspects of the project, I would also like to thank Jeremy Dauber, Yaacov Deutsch, Micha Perry, Lucia Raspe, Ursula Reuter, David Ruderman, Anselm Schubert, Wolfgang Treue, and Israel Yuval. For many other useful references and suggestions, thanks go to (among others) Moti Benmelech, Dagmar Brner-Klein, Stephen Burnett, Abraham David, Jonah Fraenkel, Yacov Guggenheim, Elisabeth Hollender, Iris Idelson-Shein, Maoz Kahana, Birgit Klein, Stefan Lang, Tamar Lewinsky, Gianfranco Miletto, Rotraud Ries, Elisheva Schnfeld, Renata Segre, Bernard Septimus, Erika Timm, and Sara Zfatman, as well as to the participants in conferences, symposia, and seminars where I have presented my theses. Furthermore, I would like to thank the staff at the libraries and archives where I have conducted my research.

Various scholarships and stipends made it possible for me to focus for several years exclusively on doing research for my dissertation and on consulting source materials in Israel, the United States, and Europe. Without the financial support of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, and the Rothschild Foundation Europe, this book could not have been written. A Harry Starr Fellowship in Judaica at Harvard University in 20089 provided me the necessary time, in scenic Cambridge, to begin to rework the dissertation into a book. Finally, the present translation into English has been made possible by an ARCHES award from the Federal German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), administered by the Minerva Foundation.

It was a pleasure to work with John Crutchfield, who completed the translation from German into English. The books production was capably supervised initially by Kathy Wildfong and then by Annie Martin and their team at Wayne State University Press. I wish to thank my student assistants Mellanie Plewa and Alena Rabenau for their help in the technical preparation of the manuscript. Any remaining errors or inaccuracies in the book are, of course, my own. Throughout this project from dissertation to translated English book, many others, above all my husband, Robert, and my parents, as well as other family, friends, and colleagues, who cannot all be named here, supported me in different waysand distracted me from it, which was at least as important for shaping this book into what it is.

Frankfurt am Main

January 2021

The transcription of Hebrew and Yiddish follows the general principles laid out in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 1 (2nd ed., 2007), 19798. Technical terms and proper names in Hebrew are generally simplified and rendered in the current English form, while Israeli authors are given in the forms in parallel titles or in foreign language publications. Whenever possible, Hebrew and Yiddish titles are given according to their parallel titles, otherwise in transcription as outlined above.