Eschatological Avengers or Messianic Saviors? Violence and Physical Strength in the Vernacular Legend of the Red Jews

University of Maryland, College Park, MD

The vernacular legend of the Red Jews allows us to explore the relationship of violence, physical strength and power during the early modern period, extending the traditional treatment of Jews and violence in that era. Violence is often linked to power and physical strength. Violence is typically associated with ruling authorities and the realm of the majority, rather than in the hands of an oppressed minority, as in case of Diaspora Jewry, which has been identified with victimhood. Moreover, in historiography, the perception of Jews as targets of aggression perpetrated by “the other,” whether Christian or Muslim, corresponds to the widely held idea that Jewish men differ from their non-Jewish peers. The prototype of the “unmanly Jew,” even labeled as “effeminate” Jewish man – i.e., gentle, non-violent, valuing words over actions – runs deep in European and Jewish cultural history as a counter-image to the gentile ideal of muscular and forceful masculinity and takes on various shapes, with negative as well as positive connotations.