Eisenmenger, Johann Andreas. Entdecktes Judenthum, Oder Gruendlicher und Wahrhaffter Bericht, Welchergestalt die Verstockte Juden [Judaism Revealed]

(ANTISEMITICA)

(Frankfurt a/Main)

1700

FIRST EDITION. Two volumes. German interspersed with Hebrew. Headpieces

Ludwig Rosenberger Catalogue (1971) p. 178

RARE FIRST EDITION OF ESPECIALLY PERNICIOUS WORK OF ANTISEMITICA The notorious Entdecktes Judenthum is a compendium of a prodigious number of Rabbinic sources from the Talmud through the works of the Mahara”l of Prague: See Vol. I, following the table of contents, a register of works consulted, with accurate bibliographic details. Such were the excesses of Eisenmenger here - who did not stop short of reviving the blood libel - that the work piqued rebuttals even from Jewish apostates. "Entdecktes Judenthum provoked a more innovative response among converts than the work deserved as a polemic. It stimulated a reconceptualization of the relationship between converts and Christian Hebraists. In the second half of the eighteenth century, Carl Anton, and, later, Gottfried Selig published refutations of Eisenmenger…With the works of Anton and Selig, the relationship between converts and Christian Hebraists came full circle. Converts had become comfortable enough with their Jewish past to demand that it be represented accurately." See E. Carlebach, Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500-1750, pp. 215, 221) Apparently, the Jewish community of Frankfurt succeeded in having this first edition of the Entdecktes Judenthum suppressed, only to see it reissued in a second edition in 1711