Tephilah Zakah.

AUCTION 58 | Thursday, May 02nd, 2013 at 1:00
Fine Judaica: Printed Books, Manuscripts and Autograph Letters

Back to Catalogue Download Catalogue

Lot 254
(PARODY).

Tephilah Zakah.

<<FIRST EDITION>> Yiddish text. pp. 23. Unbound. 8vo. Davidson no. 368 (g,h) lists a 1903 edition, the present text is 1901 and unrecorded.

London: Arbeiter-Froynd 1901

Est: $800 - $1,000
A parody on the Yom Kippur services and on Kapparoth by Anglo-Jewish Anarchists. Davidson in his Parody in Jewish Literature writes (p. 83): “Bold as these utterances are, they appear quite inoffensive in comparison with the brazen blasphemy of the anonymous parodies published by the Pioneers of Freedom of New York under the title of Tephillah Zakkah and by the Anarchistic Group of Leeds (England) under the title Machzor im Tephillah Zakah. Some of these parodies, it must be admitted, show considerable skill in imitation, but the vulgarity with which they attack the most sacred traditions, obscures their literary value. The antipathy which they display towards anything that savors of religion is only equaled by the insolence which prompted their authors to outrage the sensibility of their co-religionists in turning the Day of Atonement into a day of hilarity. On the other hand, it would be unjust to accuse these men of anything but radical fanaticism.”