Religions (Aug 2022)

Crucified with the Brother from Galilee: Symbol of the Cross in Modernist Yiddish Imagination

  • Freya Dasgupta

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13090804
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 9
p. 804

Abstract

Read online

The European Enlightenment witnessed a Jewish reclamation of Jesus. It led modernist Yiddish intellectuals to experiment with Christian motifs as they tried to contend with what it meant to be Jewish in the modern world. This article proposes to examine, with special focus on poetry, how the crucified Jesus not only became a space of hybridity for Yiddish literary artists to formulate modern Jewish identity and culture but also the medium through which to articulate Jewish suffering in a language that resonated with the oppressors. By doing so, the article seeks to understand the relevance that such literary depictions of Jesus by Jewish authors and poets can have for the Christian understanding of its own identity and its relationship with Judaism.

Keywords