Magatokon röhögtök?
„Are you laughing at yourself?”

Early Modern, Jewish polemical texts written in parodic form

Summary/Abstract: An interesting new genre began to emerge in the long-established history of Jewish, Anti-Christian polemical writing in early Modern Italy: highly venerated texts of the Jewish religious tradition (e.g. liturgical hymns like Jigdal or Adon olam, or the ritual of the Seder night, called Haggadah of Pessah) started to be rewritten in a new form, recast as textual parodies, ridiculing the person of Jesus or the basic tenets of Christian faith. In the first part of my paper I will present an interesting case study by describing and contextualizing a prominent example of this emerging new genre in the history of Jewish polemical literature: the poem entitled Jihdal Elil (“Let the non-living idol god pass away”) by Yehoshua Segré (1709–1798) – a parodic version of the original Jigdal hymn. Following a brief presentation of one of the most amusing masterpieces of the genre, in the second part of my essay, I will illuminate the possible Sitz im Leben of this newly established and somewhat odd form of polemical writing.

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