Constructions of Childhood in Early Modern Jewish Ego-documents

Abstract

The article analyzes childhood stories of six Early Modern Jewish figures who wrote their life stories between approximately 1630 and 1770. The writers construct the stories around two main topics: education and the obstacles in the way of receiving an education, and disease and the overcoming of it and, specifically, dealing with the plague. These decisions, I argue, are not incidental, although the writers were not aware of each other, and did not work according to existing formulas. The authors see these two topics as central to their childhood experience and a way to tell their childhood experience in a nutshell. Yet, these stories are utilized by the authors to present the people they came to be and the people they could have been. Through their childhood stories, the writers turn these ego-documents from descriptive to prescriptive, by enabling the writers to discuss, often in a subtle way, issues of parental care and neglect, and present ideals and norms to their readership and future generations.