KIRCHNER, PAUL CHRISTIAN

“In 1717, Kirchner published Jüdisches Ceremoniel, a brief, insubstantial, inaccurate, and biased survey of Jewish practices…The reworking of the text by an amateur Hebraist, Sebastian Jugendres, resulted in a different book, over twice the length and very different in tone from the Erfurt original…Jugendres substantially revised or rewrote some chapters and annotated all of them, listing an impressive array of sources he consulted…He commissioned a set of elaborate copperplate illustrations for his edition, often set inside the synagogue of Fürth, the most important Jewish community near Nuremberg.…Jugendres's edition refined, corrected, and softened Kirchner's coarse language, orthography, and grammar, as well as his scornful tone toward all things Jewish.” E. Carlebach, Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500-1750 ( 2001), pp. 205-210. Wagenseil (1633-1705), was a German Christian Hebraist, who, in his determination to understand Judaism in all its ramifications mastered Yiddish and studied its literature. The present work is a collection of texts, including: Mishnah, Tractate Nega'im (Leprosy), Hebrew original with German translation and commentary; the Hebrew alphabet and numerical values; the Yiddish version of Adir Hu sung the Passover Seder night; a description of the Vincenz Fettmilch uprising in Frankfurt in 1614; a Yiddish version of the Arthurian legend (cf. EJ, Vol. III, cols. 652-3); a Yiddish version of Hilchoth Derech Eretz Rabah ve-Zuta; and finally a question of Biblical law, whether one may marry two sisters one after the other (includes excerpts from Mishnah, Tractate Yevamoth)