Ceremonies et coustumes qui s’observent aujourd’huy parmy les Juifs. [“Ceremonies and customs observed today among the Jews.”] Translated from the Italian. With: Comparaison des ceremonies des Juifs, et de la discipline de l’Eglise

MODENA, JUDAH ARYEH (LEONE) DA

Adrian Moetjens

The Hague

1682

French. Two parts in one volume. Engraved frontispiece of circumcision ceremony. Headpieces and tailpieces

Talya Fishman has suggested that Modena’s bold and unprecedented vernacular presentation of Jewish practices and rituals, was part of a broader campaign to “de-mythologize” the religious “Other,” a project leone Modena advanced from another angle in his Magen va-Cherev, a sympathetic, even conciliatory, treatment of certain Christian doctrines. Just as Magen va-Cherev encouraged Jews to view Christianity in demythologized terms - Modena’s path-breaking work of Jewish self-presentation here, worked to demythologize Christian notions of Judaism. See T. Fishman, Changing Early Modern Jewish Discourse about Christianity in: D. Malkiel (Ed.,)The Lion Shall Roar: Leon Modena and His World (2003), p. 159, 192. Also see Mark Cohen, Leone de Modena’s Riti: A Seventeenth Century Plea for Social Toleration of the Jews in: JSS, Vol. XXXIV (1972), pp. 287-321