Red Jews
The red Jews ( Yiddish rojite jidlech ) were the medieval legend of a Jewish people . It was believed to be on the edge of the world, somewhere in northeast Asia , across the legendary Sambation River , which cut it off from the rest of the world - because on weekdays the roar of the river prevented a crossing, and on the Sabbath it calmed down , however, the Jews were then forbidden to sail on the river. Only with the coming of the Messiah would they overcome the river; their appearance would be such a sign of the end times .
The core of the legend is the story of the lost tribes of Israel , those parts of the Jewish people who did not return from the Babylonian captivity after the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel in the 8th century BC , since then were considered lost and in various ways up to modern times Regions of the world were localized.
The term Red Jews became known through the Yiddish picaresque novel The Journeys Binjamins the Third by Mendele Moicher Sforim (1836–1917), which is why the name was previously assigned to the tradition of Ashkenazi Eastern Jewry . In fact, the term and legend already appear in Germany in the 13th century.
The legend arose from the amalgamation of several elements: on the one hand the story of the lost ten tribes, on the other hand an episode of the Alexander novel , according to which King Alexander closed barbaric peoples far in the east behind a huge, insurmountable wall, and finally the legend of Gog and Magog , two peoples who, according to the Apocalypse of John , would break out from the east in the end times, but finally the returned Messiah will triumph over them ( Rev 20: 8-10 ELB ). In the Christian imagination, the Red Jews were now next to Gog, Magog and the barbarian peoples of the Alexander romance to form another army of the Antichrist that would attack the Christian world at the end of time.
The role of the Red Jews in the Jewish legend is mirror image of the Christian one: Here the Red Jews are mighty warriors who cross the river Sambation after the arrival of Maschiach , liberate the Jews from the bondage of the "peoples" and take revenge for the millennia Abuse and oppression.
The existence of the Red Jews was considered certain in the Middle Ages, which is why they, like other fabulous peoples, appear on the Mappae mundi , the medieval maps of the world. Mostly they were settled in the northeast, near the Gog and Magog , ogres and other wild peoples. It was not until 1600 that they gradually disappeared from cartography.
In times of chiliastic tension and general expectation of the end of the world , news of the alleged march of the Red Jews was spread in pamphlets and missions and believed. Thus a pamphlet from 1523 reports of a large quantity and violence of the Jews who have long been resolved and concealed with deserts that have been defeated / Yetzunds have been broken and come to light . You see a heavily armed army of Jews, recognizable by their pointed hats , marching out of the mountains of darkness. The river Sambation lies calmly in front of them. The scriptures also report that the Jewish army has already marched 30 days before Jerusalem and camped there. There were frequent Tatar reports of this kind in the 16th century. Conversely, the Jewish expectation of the Messiah, taken to extremes in the time of Sabbatai Zwi , led to the fact that the Jewish communities expected the first daily news of the arrival of the lost tribes.
Various explanatory models have been presented for the connection between the color red and this fabulous Jewish people. The association was established:
- with the negative connotation of the color red in the Middle Ages, especially red beard and red hair, were considered to be signs of falsehood and cunning
in what the beard and da ჳ hâr
beidiu rôt, viurvar.
I hear of the same people say that they
carry valschiu hearts.
- with the connection of Esau with Edom and Edom again with red ( Heb. אדום adom also means 'red'), whereby Christianity saw itself as the people of the New Covenant and as the "true Israel" ( verus Israel ), in contrast to the Jews identified with Edom,
- with the identification of the Red Jews with the White Khazars , a group of the Khazar Turkic people who had converted to Judaism , whose members, according to Arab sources, had reddish hair and blue eyes. A corresponding theory was advocated by Kevin Alan Brook.
From the Jewish side when the legend was reinterpreted, the color red was given a positive connotation by associating it with King David , who, according to biblical tradition, had reddish hair ( 1 Sam 16:12 ELB ). Just as David conquered Goliath , the Red Jews would conquer the overpowering enemies Christianity and Islam.
literature
- Andrew C. Gow: The Red Jews. Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200–1600 (Studies in medieval and reformation thought; Vol. 55). Brill, Leiden 1995, ISBN 90-04-10255-8 (also dissertation, University of Arizona 1993).
- Rebekka Voss: Controversial Savior. Politics, ideology and Jewish Christian messianism in Germany, 1500–1600 (Jewish religion, history and culture; vol. 11). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-525-56900-9 (also dissertation, University of Cologne 2007).
- Rebekka Voss: Of Muscle Jews and Redheads In: Research Frankfurt. Das Wissenschaftsmagazin , Vol. 29 (2011), Issue 3, pp. 37-41, ISSN 0175-0992 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wirnt von Grafenberg : Wigalois , V. 2841-2844. See German dictionary , vol. 14, col. 1287.
- ↑ Al-Istachrī (10th century), cf. Douglas M. Dunlop: The History of the Jewish Khazars . Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 1954, p. 96.
- ↑ Kevin Alan Brook: The Jews of Khazaria. 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, Md. 2006, ISBN 0-7425-4981-X .
Web links
- From the myth of the Red Jews . In: The Standard of January 8, 2012.