Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Reflecting on German-Jewish History
- Part I The Legacy of the Middle Ages: Jewish Cultural Identity and the Price of Exclusiveness
- Part II The Social and Economic Structure of German Jewry from the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Centuries
- Part III Jewish-Gentile Contacts and Relations in the Pre-Emancipation Period
- Part IV Representations of German Jewry Images, Prejudices, and Ideas
- 12 The Usurious Jew: Economic Structure and Religious Representations in an Anti-Semitic Discourse
- 13 Imagining the Jew: The Late Medieval Eucharistic Discourse
- 14 Representations of German Jewry: Images, Prejudices, Ideas - A Comment
- Part V The Pattern of Authority and the Limits of Toleration: The Case of German Jewry
- Part VI Through the Looking Glass: Four Perspectives on German-Jewish History
- Index
13 - Imagining the Jew: The Late Medieval Eucharistic Discourse
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2013
- Frontmatter
- Reflecting on German-Jewish History
- Part I The Legacy of the Middle Ages: Jewish Cultural Identity and the Price of Exclusiveness
- Part II The Social and Economic Structure of German Jewry from the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Centuries
- Part III Jewish-Gentile Contacts and Relations in the Pre-Emancipation Period
- Part IV Representations of German Jewry Images, Prejudices, and Ideas
- 12 The Usurious Jew: Economic Structure and Religious Representations in an Anti-Semitic Discourse
- 13 Imagining the Jew: The Late Medieval Eucharistic Discourse
- 14 Representations of German Jewry: Images, Prejudices, Ideas - A Comment
- Part V The Pattern of Authority and the Limits of Toleration: The Case of German Jewry
- Part VI Through the Looking Glass: Four Perspectives on German-Jewish History
- Index
Summary
Any attempt to appreciate meaning and action in the past must see them as embodied through the working of meaningful images inserted into meaningful narratives. It is to recognize the fundamentally linguistic nature of our consciousness and of the construction of “reality,” and to appreciate that life is never experienced as a raw, material sequence but rather that it is mediated through images and concepts that lend it meaning. To be a Jew, a woman, or a king was an experience arising from the interaction of (sometimes conflicting) expectations of the self and others as to what Jewishness, femaleness, kingliness were, as constructed within the salient narratives of the day. To take on board the symbolic nature of our apprehension of the world is not to draw a picture of historical actors reproducing defined narratives, blindly obeying preordained roles - quite the contrary. It is to see life as an ongoing engagement with available symbols inherited within a culture, as an application of them, through interpretation, to challenges and dilemmas. However poignant, painful, and acute an experience may be, it is always the product of the work of symbols and narratives within the everchanging circumstances of life, in a continuous engagement with questions of meaning and identity.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- In and out of the GhettoJewish-Gentile Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany, pp. 177 - 208Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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