About the Publication
Níels Páll Eggerz, "Purim in Altdorf: Johann Christoph Wagenseils Interesse am Jiddischen und dessen Kultur sowie seine Zusammenarbeit mit Johann Christian Jakob (Johan Kemper) und jüdischen Konvertiten im Allgemeinen", in: Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte (vol. 71, no. 2), 2019, pp. 176-201.
This paper investigates the relationship between seventeenth-century Christian He-
braists and Jewish converts by using the example of Johann Christoph Wagenseil
and his interest in Yiddish. Special attention is given to the 1697 Purim play found
in the Hebraist’s estate and its writer/copyist. By examining Wagenseil’s interest
in this play and by identifying the converts connected to him as well as by analyz-
ing the tasks allotted to them, this paper aims to shed light on the transmission of
knowledge about Jewish popular culture among Christian Hebraists in particular
and to reconsider the importance of converts for the studies of the latter in general.