[The New Game of the Jew]. Board-game with central image depicting the Jew as peddler - a well known 18th and early 19th century English artistic convention.

Beginning in 1807 printed versions of “The New Game of the Jew” were offered for sale in England. All examples display an Oriental Jew his head covered in a turban, seated at a table with bags of gold coins and a numeral 7 by his side. In the present remarkable version, the artist chose to depict what he and the rest of English society saw as “the Jew they knew,” that of the European-Jewish peddler, offering his inexpensive trinkets and wares. Obviously a contradiction arises, as while the figure is pointing to what appears to be gold coins, he is, in the end, still a humble peddler, a far cry from the standard image, that of the disdained moneylender. For a strikingly similar depiction of a Jewish peddler in England, see A. Rubens, A History of Jewish Costume, p. 122. See also B. Nagar, Jewish Pedlars and Hawkers 1740 – 1940 (1992).