Sefer ha-zikhronot (The Book of Memories)

Unknown

1685

As for myself, I was constantly going back in my studies as well as in manners and conduct. After a while, my father decided to send me to Prague, which was a day’s journey. My older brother was also there; it was winter then, and I was nine years old. There, too, I did nothing, for my father did not know how to arrange matters properly, and in his…

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The author of this autobiographical text (covering the years 1668 to 1685) failed to record his own name. He was born in a Moravian village to a family that included renowned rabbis Menachem Mendel Krochmal (d. 1661) and Jacob Backofen Reischer (1661–1733). The death of the author’s mother and economic downfall of his father transformed his comfortable childhood to one spent wandering throughout Bohemia and Moravia, including brief stays in Prague. His account sheds light on health practices, talmudic education, and relations between rural and urban Jewry.

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Early Modern Egodocuments

1500–1750

The early modern period witnessed a proliferation of Jewish "egodocuments"—first-person texts where authors reveal themselves. 

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