Eisenmenger, Johann Andrea. Entdecktes Judenthum [“Judaism Revealed”].

(ANTISEMITICA).

Koenigsberg

1711

Second edition. Two parts in one volume. German interspersed with Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, and Judeo-German in Waybertaytsch letters. Headpieces, tailpieces, and initials.

A notorious anti-Semitic compendium in German with many Hebrew quotes from a prodigious number of sources, ranging from the Talmud through the works of the Mahara”l of Prague. At the onset of Volume I is an impressive register of the works consulted, replete with bibliographic details. Though the texts are quoted accurately and translated literally, “Eisenmenger read the sources through the prism of assumptions which formed the bedrock of medieval Christian anti-Judaism” (E. Carlebach, Divided Souls (2002) pp. 212-13). The Jewish community of Frankfurt succeeded in having the 1700 first edition of the Entdecktes Judenthum suppressed, only to see it reissued in 1711.