The Illustrations in Yiddish Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Only eight Yiddish books were printed with illustrations during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The importance of these books lies in the wide distribution that some of them – Yosipon, Minhagim, Tsene U`rene – which have appeared in many editions over hundreds of years.

The printing of illustrated Yiddish books depended on direct contact with non-Jewish print-shops. The examination of the illustrations in views of their traditions and origins suggests three possible modes:

1. The borrowing of illustrations from the stock of non-Jewish printers, thus drawing on an earlier, non-Jewish tradition of illustrating, as, for instance, in Yosipon, Zurich 1546; Paris un Viena, Verona 1594; Tam Ve-Yashar, Frankfurt am Main 1674; Tsene U`rene, Sulzbach 1692. In Yosipon, Tam Ve-Yashar and Tsene U`rene woodblocks were used that had previously been employed in the illustrating of Christian Bibles. Woodcuts after the series of Old Testament illustrations by Hans Holbein the Younger stand out among these borrowed pictures.
2. The adoption of the tradition, common to Hebrew and European literature, of illustrating books of fables; see, e.g., KuhBukh, Verona 1595; Mashal Ha-Kadmoni, Frankfurt an der Oder 1693.
3. Original illustrations appearing in Minhagim books published in Venice in 1593 and 1600/1. Although they show some dependence on illustrations in earlier Passover Haggadoth, they seem to have been designed by a non-Jewish artist, albeit under the direction and supervision of Jewish patrons of publishers.

Books translated from Hebrew into Yiddish were illustrated, where as the Hebrew original editions continued to be reprinted without illustrations, e.g., Yosipon, Minhagim, and Sefer Ha-Yashar. This indicates that illustrated Yiddish books were intended to reach youngsters, too, both in order to read and to look at the pictures. Publishers and printers made clear detailed statements to this effect. These books should be regarded as the beginnings of Ashkenazi literature intended for children.

The last chapter deals with the ways borrowed illustrations were used in books on biblical subjects. There was a tendency to select pictures with no specific Christian significance. In some cases, however, there was blatant intervention by Jewish printers, who obliterated from the woodblocks elements that did not suit the Jewish audience. This is similar to the phenomenon found in transcriptions of German literature in Hebrew characters intended for the Yiddish reader. In the course of these adaptations, Christian elements were eliminated from the text.

Despite the marginality of the borrowed illustrations and of the above-mentioned transcriptions, they are both striking evidence of the constant contact of Jews with the surrounding culture, of the ways used to adapt aspects of it for a Jewish audience, and of the essentially popular character of the elements, literary and artistic, borrowed from the surrounding culture.