Pre-Yom Kippur Customs

Johannes Pfefferkorn

1508

Print image of two rows of people in front of river with fish in it.

Print image of people indoors holding roosters in top panel and people eating and bathing in bottom panel.

This woodcut from Libellus de Judaica confessione siue sabbato afflictionis (A Pamphlet Concerning the Jewish Faith or the Sabbath of Affliction), the second treatise of a zealous Christian convert from Judaism, Johannes Pfefferkorn, portrays Jews performing the rite of tashlich on Rosh Hashanah, when Jews symbolically cast off their sins into a body of water. The aim of the illustration was to ridicule Judaism and Jewish customs. Pfefferkorn advocated for the forcible conversion or expulsion of all Jews and for banning the Talmud and destroying all copies of it. The eyes of all those participating in these rituals are covered, symbolizing a common medieval Christian depiction of Jews as blind—to the truth of Christianity. This followed the images of Synagoga (blindfolded) and Ecclesia (unveiled), personifying the synagogue and the church.

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Johann Pfefferkorn, from Libellus de Judaica confessione siue sabbato afflictionis (Nuremberg: Joanne Weyssenburger, 1508). The Freimann Collection, Goethe University of Frankfurt, University Library, from the collection of the Leo Baeck Institute, digitized in cooperation with the Center for Jewish History, New York.
Johann Pfefferkorn, from Libellus de Judaica confessione siue sabbato afflictionis (Nuremberg: Joanne Weyssenburger, 1508). The Freimann Collection, Goethe University of Frankfurt, University Library, from the collection of the Leo Baeck Institute, digitized in cooperation with the Center for Jewish History, New York.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 5.

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Creator Bio

Johannes Pfefferkorn

1469–1523

Johannes Pfefferkorn was a German Catholic theologian and a convert from Judaism. It is believed that he was born in Nuremberg, Germany, and then moved to Cologne (Köln). He was imprisoned for committing a burglary and released in 1504. A year later, he and his family converted to Catholicism. Pfefferkorn became an assistant to the prior of the Dominicans at Cologne and published several libelous pamphlets that claimed that Jewish religious texts, especially the Talmud, preached hostility to Christianity and should therefore be banned. He was opposed by the humanist scholar Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522). The two of them engaged in a debate conducted via a series of pamphlets.

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