Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- PART I MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN FRAMEWORKS
- PART II THREE EUROPEAN PHILOSEMITES
- PART III THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF PHILOSEMITISM IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN AND IMPERIAL GERMANY
- PART IV AMERICAN PHILOSEMITISMS
- PART V PHILOSEMITISM IN POST-HOLOCAUST EUROPE
- 13 What Is the Opposite of Genocide?
- 14 “Non-Jewish, Non Kosher, Yet Also Recommended”
- Index
- References
14 - “Non-Jewish, Non Kosher, Yet Also Recommended”
Beyond “Virtually Jewish” in Postmillennium Central Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- PART I MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN FRAMEWORKS
- PART II THREE EUROPEAN PHILOSEMITES
- PART III THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF PHILOSEMITISM IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN AND IMPERIAL GERMANY
- PART IV AMERICAN PHILOSEMITISMS
- PART V PHILOSEMITISM IN POST-HOLOCAUST EUROPE
- 13 What Is the Opposite of Genocide?
- 14 “Non-Jewish, Non Kosher, Yet Also Recommended”
- Index
- References
Summary
Froehlich's pastry shop is in the heart of Budapest's former main Jewish quarter, a few steps away from the city's central Orthodox synagogue. A sign in Hebrew at its door declares its wares to be kosher, and the shop is the haunt of Budapest Jews sipping tea and nibbling on sweets, as well as visiting tourists seeking to sample local Jewish specialties. Here, amid the cherry strudel and cabbage pasties, you can often find other items for sale: miniature Jews made out of marzipan. The tiny figures, just three inches high, sport the black suits, black hats, earlocks, and dangling ritual fringes worn by Hasidic or other ultra-orthodox Jews of East European origin. Beardless, they apparently represent boys, Yeshiva bochers; as far as I can tell, they are sold as Bar Mitzvah cake decorations or party favors. Each is in a clear plastic container. Produced by Jews and directed at a Jewish market, they are a humorous, even self-ironic take on a Jewish reality: kitschy, to be sure, but by no means malevolent. At the same time, however, these Jewish self-representations clearly embody the same stereotypical markers so often used to depict Jews in far less flattering contexts. I bought a couple to place beside a hook-nosed Jewish puppet I had bought in Prague and bearded figurines of Jewish peddlers I got in Poland.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Philosemitism in History , pp. 314 - 336Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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