Lavish Dress and Luxurious Lives: Court Jews on the Margins of Jewish Society

• In Event: Jewish Icons: The Image of Early Modern Court Jews in Jewish History and Art

Abstract

For a long time, Court Jews have held an important place in Jewish historiography, be it as negative examples of Jewish assimilation into Christian society and an implicit denial of their Jewish roots, or as forerunners and partial supporters of new enlightenment ideas, who helped to advance Jewish settlement and integration. This dichotomy also holds true in visual sources. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century rabbis scolded Court Jews (though not only Court Jews) for their adaptation of non-Jewish appearance concerning dress, beard, and hair and extensive spending for related luxuries. On the other hand, contemporaries often considered Court Jews as more “cultivated” than their socially lower ranking brethren. In the first portraits of Court Jews, they appear dignified, sometimes carefully stylized as successful Jewish businessmen, sometimes indistinguishable from non-Jews.
This paper approaches the dress and appearance of Central European Court Jews from the larger framework of Jewish dress, its regulation, and its perception in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The interpretative framework explores the question of how dress and dress regulations contributed to various attempts to order the early modern world. Based on the analysis of visual depictions, inventories, and dress regulations internal to Jewish society, this paper will discuss the extent to which (1) garments of Court Jews were representative for Jewish society and (2) their dress, or the image thereof, stimulated moral debates during the eighteenth century. It will argue that in many ways Court Jews were at the margins of Jewish society, contrary to their central place in Jewish historiography. Though they were usually very wealthy and recognized for founding Jewish communities and acting as intercessors, they stood only at the margins of Jewish communities and often were not affected by communal regulations. In this, they are comparable to the poorest stratum of Jewish society. Thus, the paper will also contribute to questioning a master narrative that often iconizes early modern Court Jews until today.

Author

• Cornelia Aust, Bielefeld University