The Jewish Pope: Myth, Diaspora and Yiddish Literature: Myth, Diaspora and Yiddish Literature

✍ Scribed by Joseph Sherman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 212
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

To what extent do Yiddish language and literature reflect dominant values of mainstream European culture? How far did this culture shape the self-perception of Yiddish-speaking European Jews? How did the hostile attitude adopted towards Jews over many centuries in Christian Europe shape modern Jewish identity and culture?
Joseph Sherman, winner of the 2002 MLA prize for Yiddish translation, deals with such questions in his close examination of the recurring treatment of the myth of the Jewish Pope in four Yiddish literary texts produced between 1602 and 1958. This myth -- that one day a Jewish apostate might come to rule the world as Pope -- derives from the ambiguities of the Biblical story of Joseph in Egypt (Genesis 37-50).
The importance of this ground-breaking study may be seen in Sherman's focus on the effects of endemic European anti-Semitism on Jewish self-evaluation and self-recognition. In his concern with broader questions of cultural identity, he also addresses a readership with interests beyond the book's central Yiddish context.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Dedication
1 Why?
2 The Master-Narrative and its Ambiguities
3 The Mayse-bukh and the Debut of the Myth
4 Ayzik-Meir Dik, Reformer through Fiction
5 Y. Y. Trunk and the Myth after the Holocaust
6 Radical Subversion with Isaac Bashevis Singer
7 The Case of Israel Zangwill
8 A Kind of Closure
Appendix: R. Shimen Barbun, the Rabbi of Mainz
Select Bibliography
Index