The Ottoman Origins of the Hasidic Kaftan
The Ottoman Origins of the Hasidic Kaftan

Summary/Abstract: Scholar Cornelia Aust analyzes the historical connection between the Jewish kaftan and the Polish aristocracyduring the 17th and 18th centuries. This article expands on her work to illuminate the significant influence of theOttoman Empire on Polish Sarmatian and, subsequently, Jewish fashion. The research will trace the slow provenanceof the Hasidic kaftan, showing first the Polish Jewry’s adoption of aristocratic dress, then the Polish aristocracy’s imitationof Ottoman fashion a century earlier. This paper will subsequently examine Ottoman dress from the 15th and 16thcenturies to show its original forms and stability over this period. Contemporary images and 19th century lithographsof Polish and Jewish kaftans will be compared with painted portraits from Istanbul in 1618. As Aust shrewdly describeseastern European Jewish fashion as “out of time;” this article shows Jewish dress as additionally “out of place.”

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