Obj. ID: 40853
Comparative & Miscellaneous "Kirchliche Verfassung der Heutigen Juden" by Johann Christoph Georg Bodenschatz, 1756
This text was prepared by William Gross:
Kirchliche Verfassung der Heutigen Juden by Johann Christoph Georg Bodenschatz – Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1756 with engravings depicting Jewish Customs
Kirchliche Verfassung der heutigen Juden, sonderlich derer in Deutschland, by Johann Christoph Georg Bodenschatz. Erlanger, 1756.
Four parts in two volumes. German. Second edition.
German theologian Johann Christoph Georg Bodenschatz (1717-1797) described in his work Judaism and Jewish customs, particularly the customs of Ashkenazi Jews. The book includes detailed descriptions of Jewish customs during the author's time and provides an important source of information for the history of Jews in the 18th century.
The book includes twenty-nine (out of thirty) engraved plates. The engravings by Gottfried Eichler (1677-1759), Georg Paul Nusbiegel and Johann Conrad Müller depict various Jewish customs.
Some of these engravings imitated Bernard Picart’s Cérémonies et coûtumes religieuses de tous les peoples du monde, which had been published a few years earlier, but most were specially designed and engraved for the work; several have been reproduced in the Jewish Encyclopedia.
Bodenschatz generally gives an accurate account of Jewish ceremonials and customs; his work is consequently a source for the actual practice of Jewish ceremonies in mid-Germany in the first half of the eighteenth century.
