Christliche Kirchen-Gebether [Christian prayer-book]

(LITURGY / MISSIONARY).

Carolo-Ferdinandaeischen Buchdruckerei

Prague

1720

German and Judeo-German in larger square Hebrew characters face`a face. Tailpieces.

Vinograd, Prague 809.

For the most part, it was Protestant theologians and missionaries who made use of Yiddish in their efforts to missionize amongst the Jews in the early modern period. The present volume is a rare example of a Catholic attempt to make the words of Christian prayer accessible to the newly converted. This first edition used square Hebrew characters, presented opposite the German text. By the time a second edition appeared in 1755, the entire work, save for the title page, was printed in waybertaytsh. See Aya Elyada, A Goy Who Speaks Yiddish: Christians and the Jewish Language in Early Modern Germany (2012).